Monthly Archives: September 2023

Keeping the threat alive: The importance of the second phase at corners

“When a stat about goals from corners pops up during a Premier League match, a common question from viewers is why the number of goals their team has scored from them is higher than they expected. Any confusion generally arises because of goals that are scored in the second phase of corners. The second phase starts when the team taking the corner quickly collects the ball after it was cleared — or in some cases overhit — and is in position to attack again with most of the attacking players still in the box. …”
The Athletic

What’s Wrong With German Football?

“Over the last century, Germany has had one of the best football teams in the world. They’ve won four World Cups, three European Championships and produced some of the greatest players the world has ever seen. And yet, after nearly a decade of underachievement, they are currently ranked only 15th-best in the world. Written by Seb Stafford-Bloor, illustrated by Craig Silcock.”
YouTube

Xabi Alonso and why everyone wants Bayer Leverkusen head coach

“From the relegation zone to being level on points with Bayern Munich at the top of the Bundesliga, Xabi Alonso has led Bayer Leverkusen on quite the ride in his 12 months as manager. Some sort of rebound was almost inevitable given the team’s talent, but the complete change in the team’s attitude under the Spaniard has been nothing short of remarkable. …”
The Athletic

How Diego Simeone’s Atletico Madrid Pounced on Real Madrid Passivity and Ended Their Unbeaten Start

“After beginning their season with six straight wins, Real Madrid faced off against Atlético Madrid at the Wanda Metropolitano on Sunday. Whilst Real were coming off a 1-0 win against Union Berlin that saw Jude Bellingham score in the 94th minute, Atleti had seen their share of late drama with Lazio goalkeeper Ivan Provedel scoring in the 95th minute to snatch a draw away from home for Maurizio Sarri’s side. Atleti would take the lead within four minutes via Álvaro Morata, with Antoine Griezmann doubling their advantage shortly after, but Toni Kroos halved the deficit before the break for Los Blancos. Carlo Ancelotti took the opportunity to sub on Spanish center forward Joselu for Croatian midfielder Luka Modrić at halftime, but it wasn’t enough as Morata restored their two-goal advantage immediately after the restart, securing a 3-1 victory for Atlético Madrid. …”
Breaking the Lines (Video)

Marseille are a managerless mess and their fans deserve some of the blame

Marseille were beaten 4-0 by PSG on Sunday but that has not been their biggest disaster in the last week.
“A coach’s life is never simple at the Vélodrome. After just seven games in charge, Marcelino resigned as Marseille manager last week in response to what he called ‘intimidation, threats, insults and slander’. The Spaniard became the fourth Marseille coach to resign in less than three years and he is not the first to do so under duress from the club’s volatile fanbase. Marseille, so often their own worst enemies, routinely implode and start again. As their 4-0 thrashing to PSG on Sunday night underlines, this latest farce will be difficult to overcome. …”
Guardian

Victor Osimhen calls time on TikTok saga but Napoli cannot set clock back

Victor Osimhen bellows in frustration after missing a chance

It has been a troubled week for Victor Osimhen after the Napoli forward was mocked by the club’s TikTok account.
“By full time, it was tempting to believe that Napoli’s troubles had all been an illusion. After 24 hours of accusations and legal threats resulting from videos that the club’s TikTok account posted of striker Victor Osimhen, the Partenopei had come back to their home stadium and thrashed Udinese 4-1. The Nigerian played the first hour of the game, scored the second goal and continued to cheer his teammates after being substituted in the second half. …”
Guardian

How Spurs’ excellent Udogie recovered from his early struggles against Saka

“Fourteen minutes into the north London derby on Sunday, Destiny Udogie flew into a tackle on Bukayo Saka. It was a genuine attempt to win the ball, but it was late and an obvious yellow card. For the next 75 minutes, Udogie had to face arguably the in-form winger in the Premier League in the knowledge that another foul could be the end of his match. After Tottenham team-mate Emerson Royal’s daft dismissal in this same fixture last season, it seemed history might be about to repeat itself. …”
The Athletic – Michael Cox

How Football Works: Third-man combinations in the double pivot

“When Xabi Alonso played for Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, he usually operated as a lone defensive midfielder, presumably because he was so handsome that team-mates were too intimidated to stand next to him. Not many clubs play that way now. A decade of increasingly sophisticated pressing has forced sides that want to build up through the middle (as opposed to going over or around the other team) to put two bodies on their defensive midfield line. … Their secret weapon was third-man combinations in the double pivot. …”
The Athletic (Video)

Liverpool’s new system is blunting Andy Robertson – but there could be a solution

“There were five minutes of normal time remaining at Molineux when Andy Robertson found himself storming forward into the Wolverhampton Wanderers box. He found Mohamed Salah on the edge of the penalty area, took the Egyptian’s return pass in his stride and stroked the ball into the net for the goal that completed Liverpool’s comeback and set them on their way to three more precious points. …”
The Athletic (Video)

Germany: 2023-24 Bundesliga – Location-map, with 3 Charts

“… The map page shows a location-map for the 18 clubs in the 2023-24 Bundesliga, with recently-promoted and -relegated teams noted. (Promoted in 2023: Darmstadt, Heidenheim; relegated in 2023: Schalke, Hertha [Berlin].) The map also shows the 16 Federal States of Germany, and the 14 largest cities in Germany, with 2021 population estimates listed at the the top of the map. …”
billsportsmaps
2023-24 Bundesliga

Bin Salman’s sportswashing quip reflected growing power but was perhaps a mistake

“Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia gave the impression of having swallowed a spreadsheet during his midweek interview with Fox News. Every answer he gave seemed to have a statistic attached. He reeled off figures comparing the economic growth of his country and South Korea. He estimated the level of annual profits in the global esports sector. …”
Guardian (Video)

Rotherham’s Millmoor: The mystery of the unused ghost stadium

“You can see the floodlights as you come off the motorway, just before reaching central Rotherham. Turn onto Masbrough Street and the stadium reveals itself on the left, halfway up the hill and just before Coronation Bridge that goes over the train line. If you just went past with not much more than a glance, Millmoor would look like any other lower league football ground: old, could do with a little care and attention, but identifiably a football ground. Until, perhaps, you caught sight of the barbed wire. …”
The Athletic (Video)
W – Millmoor
YouTube: Abandoned Millmoor Football Stadium Exploration 15:53

The De Zerbi tweak that saw Brighton outwit Ten Hag and Manchester United

“Tactical changes are often associated with switches in shape — a back three becoming a back four, say, or a midfield three turning into a diamond. However, it’s not exclusive to that. Shapes are a way of explaining the positioning of the players on the pitch in simple terms. The dynamic of how a team operates within a given shape is another dimension — two identical formations could attack and defend in different ways depending on the movement of the players concerned with and without the ball. …”
The Athletic
The Athletic: Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United are no longer improving
Guardian: Manchester United had sights set on title charge – but right now it’s chaos

FC Barcelona: Entertainers again at last

“So that’s what it is all about. Having fun watching football. The crowd at Montjuic stared incredulously up at the scoreboard and down at the pitch. They had practically forgotten this feeling. Barcelona had won La Liga last season, yes. But at Barcelona, it’s not just about winning, you also have to entertain a public with an exquisite palate, who demand excellence incessantly, even at times when they are aware that the club’s current squad doesn’t have it in them. …”
The Athletic

The €437m worth of players that PSG let go

“PSG have, in recent years, built a team of superstars. But by including Mbappe, Neymar and Messi in the same team, they’ve had to say goodbye to many young and homegrown players. Over €400million worth of young talent in fact. They’ve sold so many players, they could theoretically field a team capable of competing at the top level. These are some of those players. Written by Seb Stafford-Bloor, illustrated by Craig Silcock.”
YouTube

Klopp moving Szoboszlai was key to Liverpool’s second-half turnaround at Wolves

“The Liverpool fans at Molineux saved their final song — ‘I’m so glad that Jurgen is a Red’ — until the 99th minute, which was fitting for more than one reason. Jurgen Klopp has let his feelings be known about the premature nature of chanting in his direction before the job is done, so with 99 minutes on the clock and Liverpool 3-1 up against Wolves, it felt like the perfect timing. …”
The Athletic

Not in my name: are we so blinded by tribalism that we can’t see the real issues? Jonathan Wilson

“It’s a strange world that makes you yearn for the days of Ted Croker, Bert Millichip and Gordon McKeag. Football seemed so simple then. And to think that they once seemed absurd in their pomposity, with their velvet bag in the wood-panelled Football Association committee room at Lancaster Gate. The draw for the Champions League group stage, though, was something else, a festival of glitzy vapidity in which we had to be told over and over again how exciting it was that we were about to learn which pot-four side would be getting hammered by Manchester City. …”
Guardian

Selling Saudi Soccer, One Like at a Time

“Neymar’s endorsement was not, perhaps, the most ringing. Back in Brazil to play for his national team this month, he had been asked — not for the first time — to address the lingering suspicion that, in leaving Paris St.-Germain for Saudi Arabia and Al-Hilal, one of the finest players of his generation might not have chosen the most challenging coda to his career. Neymar’s immediate instinct was to dismiss the premise. …”
NY Times

Tactical Analysis: Napoli 1-2 Lazio

“After stringing together eight consecutive league wins, Napoli entered March in sensational form and the heavy favorites to pick up a victory at home against Lazio featuring a former player in Elseid Hysaj and a former manager in Maurizio Sarri, who spent three years in charge at the Partenopei and took them within touching distance of the Scudetto on multiple occasions, only to fall at the last hurdle to Juventus. Lazio took the lead within 67 minutes via Matías Vecino and prevailed 1-0, going on to finish second in their second full season under Sarri, a mere 16 points behind Napoli. …”
Breaking the Lines (Video)

The art of publicly criticising players: Why do managers do it and does it ever work?

“… One way to look at things is Ten Hag was simply answering a question honestly and straightforwardly. Another is that the United manager saw a passing bus and chose to throw Sancho under it, that he could quite easily have fobbed the question off with benign platitudes and avoided potentially alienating one of his squad. It does raise the question: is it ever justified for a manager to single out an individual player for public criticism? What purpose does it serve? Is it just the boss lashing out in frustration, or is there a more deliberate purpose to it all? Does it actually work? …”
The Athletic

Aaronson brothers on different routes to same Bundesliga destination

“… Once he arrived in Austria, Brenden thrived in the youth development focused environment in Salzburg, first under Jesse Marsch and then in tandem with Marsch’s successor as head coach, the highly rated Matthias Jaissle. The Medford Messi (a reference to the New Jersey town 40 minutes west of Philly where the brothers grew up, it was a nickname used more and more after his winning goal in a friendly against Barcelona in summer 2021) was a runaway train. …”
Guardian

Scotland v England in 1872: The story of football’s first international

“England’s Harry Kane, fresh from his gentle pre-match warm-up, which essentially involved smoking a pipe, is running slightly uphill on a field wearing white knickerbockers. Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford, Jack Grealish and James Maddison are all running closely behind him. The four players are shadowing their captain’s run to try to deflect a challenge from Billy Gilmour, who is doing his best to marshal Scotland’s defence in their bold 2-2-6 formation. Gilmour’s hat falls off and he is briefly distracted, allowing Kane to aim a shot that is about to hit the tape fixed between two posts before goalkeeper Angus Gunn catches the ball and runs with it in his hands to the halfway line to start a Scotland attack. …”
The Athletic

Investigation: The football club owner with four names believed to have been convicted of fraud

“With the cupboards bare, bills to pay and another relegation looming, Scunthorpe United fans were holding out for a hero. Then David Hilton arrived. The Nottingham-born businessman bought the club from the deeply unpopular Peter Swann in late January, clearing a six-figure tax bill and pledging to take Scunthorpe back to the English Football League. …”
The Athletic

Barcelona’s dramatic end to the transfer window – and how Joao Felix was signed

“On Monday last week, four days before transfer deadline day, Eric Garcia entered Xavi’s offices at Barcelona’s Joan Gamper training ground and told the manager he wanted to leave the club. Garcia had received an offer to go on loan to Girona, with the promise of more regular game time. Xavi tried to talk him out of it, insisting the defender was part of his rotation plans, that he was a valuable asset to the team. …”
The Athletic
W – João Félix

The secret world of football boots

“Anti-clogs. Blackouts. Mixed soleplates. Customised conversions. To the uninitiated, that will sound like gobbledygook. To the modern-day professional footballer, it’s the language of the dressing room and the tools of their trade. We are talking about football boots, in case you were wondering, and Jon Tootle’s garage — now converted into a workshop — is full of them. A garish pink pair on the workbench — Nike Air Zoom Mercurial Vapor, for those of you who know your ‘cleats’ — belong to one of last season’s leading Premier League goalscorers. …”
The Athletic

Liverpool’s 2019-level pressing intensity might well be back

“Liverpool’s win against Aston Villa resembled an Anfield performance from 2019-20. That season, Liverpool won 18 of their 19 home league games en route to lifting the Premier League trophy. They were wins characterised by four trademarks: three of those being fast starts with them usually ahead by half-time, set-piece goals (because many opponents defended deep to limit open-play opportunities) and Mohamed Salah scoring in front of the Kop. All three happened in Sunday’s win. …”
The Athletic (Video)

Tactical Analysis: Arsenal 3-1 Manchester United

“In the vast theatre of human endeavours, where the pursuit of meaning often reveals itself in the most unexpected of places, we find ourselves drawn to the sacred cathedral of football. In this timeless ritual, where passion transcends reason, and the spirit of camaraderie meets the cruelty of fate, a tapestry of narratives unfurls. Picture, if you will, the canvas of a stadium – a canvas that bore witness to a spectacle of Shakespearean proportions. It was a game that encapsulated the very essence of existence–the agony and the ecstasy. …”
Breaking the Lines
YouTube: Tactical Analysis : Arsenal 3-1 Manchester United | Arsenal A Cut Above

Union Berlin, RB Leipzig and the 15 minutes the drums fell silent

“In East Berlin on Sunday, the Stadion Alte Forsterei hosted one of the Bundesliga’s most complicated fixtures. Union Berlin against RB Leipzig ended in a 3-0 win for the visitors. In itself, that was remarkable. It was Union’s first defeat in 24 matches at home and the culmination of a game full of wonderful goals, bad fouls and high drama. All of which was secondary to the main issue. …”
The Athletic (Video)

Bitcoin football: the story of Real Bedford FC

“Football has become the establishment. Thirty years since the publication of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, the gentrification of professional football in England is no longer confined to the executive suites. Where once the middle-class enthusiast—like Hornby—was an exotic presence, now the entire culture of the game is awash with the instincts of the bien pensants. Whatever demotic power football had in the 1970s and 80s has completely dissipated. Like Glastonbury Festival or the Labour Party, Premier League football has mostly decoupled from the affiliations, tastes, and preferences of the everyman. …”
Football Paradise

Are Manchester City stronger or weaker this season?

“You might look at Manchester City, the treble winners sitting top of the table with the only 100 per cent record as they try to win their fourth Premier League title in a row, and think, ‘What could possibly stop them?’ Maybe the answer is: Manchester City. That’s because there are plenty of City fans who worry that the squad is weaker after the comings and goings of the transfer window. …”
The Athletic

The Business of Football: Rubiales under fire, Haaland celebrations, Saudi sceptics

“The last thing UEFA wanted to talk about at the annual launch of its club competitions this week was the only thing everyone else has been talking about. So, you could argue it was a case of mission accomplished for European football’s governing body in Monaco, as nobody — not with a microphone, anyway — said ‘Luis Rubiales’. But it would equally be true to say that the fate of the Spanish FA chief was the first topic of every conversation. …”
The Athletic

Arsenal 3 Manchester United 1: Rice delivers, VAR controversy, Hojlund’s lively cameo

“Arsenal’s meetings with Manchester United always tend to deliver drama and this latest instalment in one of the Premier League’s longest-running rivalries did not disappoint. Some fine goals, a late controversy involving the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) and Declan Rice’s stoppage-time winner… it all added up to another memorable encounter. …”
The Athletic

The last minute drama of Harry Kane’s transfer

“Harry Kane became the most expensive player in Bayern Munich’s history, when he moved from Tottenham Hotspur in the summer of 2023. Although the move wasn’t a great surprise by the time it was finally completed it had survived meddling executives, prankster journalists and a dramatic late crisis. Charlie Eccleshare explains, Craig Silcock illustrates.”
YouTube

Judge Vacates Convictions in Bribery Case Over Soccer Broadcast Deals

Federal prosecutors had said that the Argentine sport marketing firm Full Play Group paid bribes for the rights to multiple World Cup qualifiers, exhibition matches and tournaments. A judge acquitted the firm on Friday.
“Less than six months after a federal jury convicted a former Fox employee and an Argentine sports marketing company of participating in a scheme to pay bribes in exchange for lucrative soccer broadcasting contracts, a judge in Brooklyn vacated the convictions on Friday. In a 55-page ruling, the judge, Pamela K. Chen, concluded that the federal wire fraud statute under which the defendants had been convicted did not apply to their actions. …”
NY Times

European roundup: Barcelona edge past Osasuna, PSG thrash rock-bottom Lyon

Robert Lewandowski (centre right) celebrates with Ferran Torres after his match-winning penalty.
“Robert Lewandowski’s late penalty earned Barcelona a hard-fought 2-1 La Liga win at Osasuna on Sunday evening. Lewandowski converted from the spot in the 85th minute after Alejandro Catena grabbed the Poland forward’s right arm inside the penalty area. The defender was shown a red card for the last man-foul, before Lewandowski scored with a tidy finish to the goalkeeper’s left. …”
Guardian

Champions League 2023-24: Ten players to keep an eye on in the group stage

“For those longing to hear the melody of the Champions League anthem again, fear not. European football’s top club competition is back for one last season in its current guise. The group-stage draw was made on Thursday and there are some mouthwatering games in store when it all kicks off in just over two weeks. …”
The Athletic

Luton’s Kenilworth Road… A Premier League stadium like no other

“A 20-minute walk west from Luton train station takes you to one of the most peculiar stadiums in England. As you approach the four streets Kenilworth Road occupies, in what seems to be a quiet, residential area, it is remarkable that you find a football stand located in between a row of terraced houses. The location is unlike any other and feels like a secluded area that is separated from the rest of Luton. …”
The Athletic

Ryan Gravenberch Could Be the Perfect Player to Conclude Liverpool’s Midfield Rebuild

“Last summer, reports suggested that Liverpool wanted to sign Ryan Gravenberch from Ajax, along with several other big clubs. Ultimately, the young Dutchman chose Bayern Munich, and Liverpool didn’t sign a midfielder until a panic loan deal for Arthur Melo on deadline day, which worked about as well as you would expect. …”
The Analyst

Ten years on from The Fellaini Window, United’s age of waste goes on

“Manchester United’s official Twitter account kicked off its feed on Monday morning with a quietly coy assessment of the week to come, described through a haze of robotic corporate optimism as “an intriguing seven days”. May you live in intriguing times. Although perhaps not, for the sake of everyone engaged in following this great creaking, wheezing ghost ship through the entropy of the late Glazer age, as intriguing as this. …”
Guardian