Daily Archives: October 22, 2024

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

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“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

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“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

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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’

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“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