“What is it really like to be a football manager? How do you escape the pressure? What impact do results have on your family? How long are the hours? Where do your best ideas come from? Do players still get a rocket at half-time? Can you wear what you want on the touchline? And, most importantly of all, how do you choose from 17 different varieties of cider? To find out the answers to all those questions and more, The Athletic spent a month with a head coach in the most volatile and unpredictable league in English football: the Championship. Gerhard Struber, a 48-year-old Austrian, took over at Bristol City last summer after spells with Koln, Red Bull Salzburg, New York Red Bulls, and Barnsley. …”
NY Times/The Athletic
Inside the real life of a football manager
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“It is coming up to two years since Sir Jim Ratcliffe got his hands on a piece of Manchester United and set about his mission to restore the club to ‘the top of the game’. It would not be a quick fix, the petrochemicals billionaire said, given the sense of decline and drift that had taken hold over the previous decade. It wasn’t a case of flicking a switch or waving a magic wand. ‘We have to walk to the right solution,’ he told the 
“The dominant reaction to Liverpool’s season has been one of disbelief. Seven consecutive wins to start the campaign were followed by nine defeats in their subsequent 12 across all competitions, with few reigning Premier League champions experiencing such a sharp decline in such a short space of time. Arne Slot’s second season was always likely to come with choppier waters. Becoming the hunted league champions, reshaping a playing squad and experiencing an incomprehensible summer of loss is enough to unsettle any club. Still, no one anticipated the events that have occurred in recent months. Still, despite some disappointing draws, there have since been green shoots of recovery with Liverpool currently on an unbeaten run of 11 games in all competitions. …”
“The best thing about the Africa Cup of Nations is its ability to shrink our vast continent. It spins connections between places assumed to be distant and disconnected, only to reveal how deeply Africans are bound by shared dreams and struggles. The semi-final of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations between Senegal and Egypt does precisely that, drawing an unlikely line from Bambali, Senegal, to Nagrig, Egypt. Until recently, both villages were unknown even to most Senegalese and Egyptians, let alone the wider footballing world. It was only with the rise of their most famous sons, Sadio Mané and Mohamed Salah, into global stardom that their names began to circulate beyond borders. …”
“There is a class of footballer, to which Victor Osimhen now unmistakably belongs, against whom the only useful preparation is a steeling of the mind. To face up against those in this cadre is to know what is coming, but be powerless to prevent it. Against Algeria in the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations quarterfinal, poor Ramy Bensebaini had the best view in Stade Marrakech, bearing witness as the striker took flight, laughed in the face of gravity, and headed home. As has been his wont for half a decade now. Dread it, run from it, Osimhen arrives just the same, with the certitude of destiny. …”
Scissors Kick 