Monthly Archives: October 2024

Real Madrid 0 Barcelona 4 – Mbappe’s Clasico to forget as Flick’s team stun European champions

Barcelona demolished Real Madrid at the Bernabeu to take a six-point lead in La Liga. Hansi Flick’s side were rampant at the home of their fierce rivals, frustrating Kylian Mbappe with their well-organised offside trap in the first half and then striking four times after the break. Robert Lewandowski scored in the 54th and 56th minutes, his 13th and 14th goals in La Liga this season, to put Barcelona in control. Then Lamine Yamal scored his first Clasico goal in the 77th minute before the in-form Raphinha added a fourth with six minutes left to play. The result takes Barcelona to 30 points at the top of the table, six clear of Madrid. Here, our writers analyse the key talking points. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic: The three passes that can unlock El Clasico and the two Barcelona players who can make them
NY Times/The Athletic: So… Barcelona are good again?

Does height matter in football? Yes, but not in the way you might think

“Conventional wisdom has it that being tall is advantageous. The problem with conventional wisdom is that it’s often wrong. There are studies that correlate height with happiness and higher salaries, admittedly at the cost of shorter lifespans. In certain sports, elite athletes are almost exclusively big, such as basketball, rowing (except the cox) and volleyball (except the libero). Successful Olympic swimmers have become bigger and heavier in recent decades. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Jhon Duran reminds Aston Villa he can be an ‘awesome’ starting option

“Jhon Duran. Villa Park. Champions League nights. It is a combination that has provided nothing but unbridled joy to Aston Villa so far. That dramatic winner from the bench against Bayern Munich set the tonebut Duran took the opportunity to show his quality from the first whistle against Bologna after being named in the starting XI for only the second time in all competitions this season. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Barcelona 4 Bayern Munich 1: Raphinha hat-trick gives Hansi Flick a triumphant night against his former club

“It was Robert Lewandowski against Harry Kane. It was Hansi Flick taking on his former side. It was Barcelona against Bayern Munich, two of the continent’s most decorated clubs going head-to-head in a gripping, frantic clash in the Champions League. Barcelona were ahead inside the opening minute, Raphinha taking advantage of Bayern’s muddled defensive line to round Manuel Neuer and score. Then it was the turn of the big-name strikers to make their mark. Harry Kane headed past Inaki Pena but was judged, semi-automatically, to be offside. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

RB Leipzig 0 Liverpool 1: Rampaging Nunez, Liverpool go three from three and Leipzig stutter

Darwin Nunez’s poacher’s finish fired Liverpool to victory at RB Leipzigand maintained their flawless start to life in this season’s Champions League. Arne Slot’s side made it three wins from three in the competition with a 1-0 win in Germany, with former Leipzig players Ibrahima Konate and Dominik Szoboszlai tasting victory against their old team thanks to Nunez’s first-half goal. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Thomas Tuchel is a symptom, not a cause, of English football’s coaching problems


“There is one issue with England appointing Thomas Tuchel as Gareth Southgate’s successor — and it isn’t his nationality. Rather, what does it say about English coaches — in number and quality — that Tuchel was the ‘outstanding candidate’? The FA interviewed ‘approximately’10 candidates for the senior men’s head coach role, including ‘some’ English coaches. However, none have a CV that can compete with Tuchel’s. He’s won 11 trophies in a 15-year career, including the top division in Germany and France and, most notably, the Champions League with Chelsea in 2021 — he was voted the world’s best club coach that year. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

Liverpool’s patience out of possession under Slot is working – but Chelsea showed the approach isn’t flawless

“For long periods of their 2-1 victory over Chelsea on Sunday afternoon, Liverpool didn’t feel quite like Liverpool. It’s been two months since Arne Slot’s first competitive game in charge, but this was something new: his first Premier League match at Anfield against genuinely strong opposition. Previous home games were against Brentford, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth — sides you expect Liverpool to dominate. There was no guarantee of that against Chelsea, who wanted to play out from the back and enjoy long spells of possession. Liverpool, for most of the last decade, would try to deny opponents that luxury. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action

Wolves 1-2 Manchester City
“… 2 – Tight margins go against O’Neil again: The obvious topic of debate at Molineux centred on whether Bernardo Silva impeded José Sá’s ability to save John Stones’s 95th-minute header. The officials concluded Silva had no impact on the goal and, while hugely disappointed, the first thing Gary O’Neil did when he got into his manager’s office was to study how Stones was able to register an effort on goal. O’Neil acknowledged the minutiae make the difference in tight games, leading him to bemoan having to substitute the 6ft 4in Wolves goalscorer Jørgen Strand Larsen, owing to fatigue. …”
Guardian

Confessions of a football collectibles obsessive: ‘I’m uneasy… my palms are sweaty’

“The woman behind the counter hands me a piece of cardboard and tells me to hold it up in the air if I want to bid. I’m number 7002 and that makes me feel uneasy. Is that how many people are going to be involved? Inside the auction room, it is a Trevor Francis nostalgia-fest. There are medals and trophies laid out on a table and, in a glass cabinet, the shiny red shirt from the night he — the first £1million footballer — scored the goal that won Nottingham Forest the 1979 European Cup. People are taking their seats. We eye each other suspiciously and avoid small talk. But those of us attending also know it’s the people we cannot see that we really have to worry about: the online bidders, dialling in from Canada, the United States and Australia to fill out their collections. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Bournemouth 2 Arsenal 0: Saliba sent off, unbeaten start over and hosts’ set-piece magic

“For the third time in eight games this season, Arsenal had to navigate a large chunk of a Premier League match with 10 men — but for the first time it cost them as their unbeaten start to the campaign came to an end at Bournemouth. William Saliba’s 30th-minute dismissal — given after a VAR review — for bringing down striker Evanilson meant Mikel Arteta had to adapt his game plan, something he had to do in draws with 10 men against Brighton & Hove Albion on the opening day and Manchester City last month. This time, though, the outcome was very different. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
Guardian: Arsenal’s sloppiness calls into question whether they are serious contenders – Jonathan Wilson
NY Times/The Athletic – Explained: Why was William Saliba sent off for Arsenal at Bournemouth? (Video)

Reach Barcelona – or die trying: The hope and abandon behind a famous rallying cry

“Walking through the streets of Barcelona, there’s a common slogan you are bound to spot among the graffiti around the city: ‘Barca o mort’ (Barca or death, in Catalan). For some of Barca’s most fervent fans there is an almost religious bond with the club. Almost 5,000 kilometres away on the west coast of Africa, a similar expression reflects a very different reality. In Senegal, it is ‘Barca ou Barzakh’. Barzakh is an Arabic word that literally means ‘isthmus’. In Islam, it describes a stage of the afterlife where souls rest until judgement day. The phrase is like a rallying cry. It is an expression of solidarity, of shared hope before a voyage towards peril, leaving peril behind. Reach Barcelona, or die trying. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Manchester City have a specific defensive flaw – but will their rivals be able to take advantage?

“The thing with Manchester City is that everybody seems to have learned not to worry too much about any dips in form. Whether you are a fan of the club or one of their rivals for the Premier League title, City have proven that they smooth things out sooner or later. (There were doubts about the team in the second half of the season during the last two years, but they won the title on both occasions anyway.) Heading into the international break, following City’s fairly uncomfortable 3-2 victory over Fulham, Pep Guardiola said he would use his time to look at the goals that his team have conceded this season. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

Liverpool have the best defence in the Premier League – can they maintain it?

Liverpool are the early leaders for the best defence in the league competition. Yet while there has been plenty of talk about the impact of Arne Slot’s possession-based philosophy, less remarked upon is that his side have conceded just two league goals in their opening seven games — four fewer than the joint-second lowest, Arsenal and Nottingham Forest. In their 10 matches in all competitions, they have conceded just four goals and kept six clean sheets. That is a significant improvement from last season when they kept the same amount of clean sheets in their final 27 games. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

France: 2024-25 Ligue 1 – Location-map with 3 Charts

“The map shows the 18 clubs in the current season of the French Ligue 1 [2024-25]. The map features the locations and crests of the 18 current Ligue Un clubs, plus the recently-promoted and -relegated teams are noted. (Promoted in 2024: Angers, Auxerre, and Saint-Étienne; relegated in 2024: Metz, Lorient, Clermont.) Also shown on the map are the 10 largest French cities, and the 13 Regions of Metropolitan France (aka European France). {Largest French cities’ metropolitan area populations from 2016 census, here}. The major French rivers are also shown on the map, and at the foot of the map the 10 longest rivers in France are listed (with brief descriptions). The first chart shows the consecutive seasons each club has currently spent in the 1st division… Paris Saint-Germain are the current longest-serving member of Ligue 1, with 51 straight seasons (PSG have also won 10 of the last 12 French titles, including 2023-24). …”
billsportsmaps
W – 2024–25 Ligue 1

‘This is more than Subbuteo’: A day with the best table footballers in the world

“It’s the firmly established anthem for calms before sporting storms — but what’s the maximum number of times you’d want to listen to Intro by the xx in a single day? If your answer is ‘a dozen, easily’, I may well be experiencing the Sunday of your dreams. It’s two minutes and eight seconds of calm. The storm? More than 300 players from 26 nations descending on the 168th-biggest town in England for the World Cup… of Subbuteo. I arrive at Tunbridge Wells Sports Centre with an open mind but one lingering doubt: is this just Warhammer for full-kit wankers? …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

Mauricio Pochettino’s week of ‘speaking about confidence’ pays off for Musah and USMNT

“It is a rarity to see Yunus Musah without a smile. An ear-to-ear grin is a mostly-permanent feature for the 21-year-old midfielder. But as he sprinted towards the corner flag on Saturday night in Austin, Texas, having scored his first goal in a U.S. senior men’s national team jersey in his 42nd appearance, the sense of gratification on his face shined through — even for someone who usually has a happy expression plastered on. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

England 1 Greece 2 – Carsley’s wake-up call, defensive jitters and a fitting tribute to Baldock

England have endured the first setback of Lee Carsley’s stint as interim head coach. Greece, placed 44 places below their hosts in FIFA’s world rankings, secured their first win over England after Vangelis Pavlidis’ stoppage-time goal. For Carsley, there was plenty to ponder after this 2-1 defeat in the Nations League. The head coach had briefly seen Jude Bellinghamwho else? — haul England level, but even a draw would have felt fortuitous on a night when the home side’s tactical tweaks failed to pay off. England’s performance was disjointed for long periods. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
NY Times/The Athletic: Lee Carsley’s England future no longer looks secure after confusing moments on the pitch and off it
Guardian: It is hard to see how Lee Carsley claws back his case to be England manager

Advantage Amorim? How Hugo Viana appointment might influence City’s Guardiola succession-planning

“Life at Manchester City is generally pretty calm, but this week’s events could be a sign that times are changing. Monday brought the much-disputed outcome of City’s associated party transaction legal challenge to the Premier League, Tuesday the news that Txiki Begiristain is to step away from his role as director of football at the end of this season and now it has been revealed that Hugo Viana will leave Sporting Lisbon to replace him. …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)

Football Manager 2025 has been delayed until March – why? Is this a big deal? And has this happened before?

“Football Manager 25, scheduled for release next month, has been delayed until March. This is the first major delay for an edition of Football Manager since 2002 and will impact millions of gamers worldwide. The 2024 edition of the game was played by seven million players within 100 days of its release. Football Manager content creators attract hundreds of thousands of subscribers on YouTube. And Sports Interactive, the creator of Football Manager, had revenues of over £66million in the financial year ending in March 2023, according to Companies House. …”
NY Times/The Athletic

Dissecting Manchester United’s ‘game model’: What is Erik ten Hag hoping to achieve?

“What are Manchester United hoping to achieve this season? An underwhelming start to the new campaign has left those around the club trying to ascertain what Erik ten Hag wants from his squad. Things are not helped by the United manager’s cagey approach to press conferences, where he prefers to discuss previous successes than talk about tactical details at length. Ten Hag believes United will be successful at the end of 2024-25, but figuring out how that success will come about is proving difficult. A clue might be found in Ten Hag’s use of the phrase “game model”, which has steadily increased in recent weeks. But what is that? And how will it affect his team in the coming weeks? …”
NY Times/The Athletic (Video)
The Times: Erik ten Hag does have a plan – so why are United still in disarray?
NY Times/The Athletic – Aston Villa 0 Manchester United 0: Evans gamble, lucky Rashford, what now for Ten Hag?

Celtic’s humiliation exposes the miserable state of Scottish football


“The sniggering from Dortmund to Durness has been unmistakable. The intensely tribal nature of Scottish football combined with Celtic’s dominance of the same scene means results such as the 7-1 trouncing by Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday are widely celebrated. Petty, parochial but perfectly understandable. The trouble is, yet another harrowing night for Celtic provided the latest snapshot of Scottish football’s miserable state. There is no point in revelling in Celtic’s scenario because the pickle they continually find themselves in against serious opposition tells all about the standard in Scotland. …”
Guardian

Monaco mark their centenary in style as young talents point to bright future

Adi Hütter
“There was just cause for Adi Hütter to feel a little intimidated on Saturday evening. Not because of the calibre of opponent that awaited his Monaco side, but on account of the onlookers in the stands. Between the club president, Dmitry Rybolovlev, and Prince Albert II in the VIP box and Hütter on the touchline sat a cast of managerial club legends, including Arsène Wenger, Gérard Banide, Claude Puel and Leonardo Jardim – the latter being the last to win the Ligue 1 title with Les Monégasques. …”
Guardian