“Less talk, more action? Having stepped out of Austrian football for the first time in his career, Christian Ilzer has taken the opposite approach as he seeks to establish himself and to find his feet at Hoffenheim. Appointed to the top job little more than a week ago, the new head coach took over an alarming situation, with his new European-qualified team teetering just above a weak-looking bottom three. Yet he immediately felt that making time to chat was the best start. …”
Guardian
Christian Ilzer’s people-centric approach revives Hoffenheim spirit
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“While they were humbled by an attack-minded Monaco on Friday evening at the Stade Louis II, as 
“… A — Paulino Alcantara Not 
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“Five games into the new-look 
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“… Hello! 
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“At a 
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“Today should have been Thomas Tuchel’s inauguration day. The man who 
“Fairytales continued in the 
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“It was a very good weekend for Liverpool, and a pretty good weekend for the Premier League. It’s one round of games, and blips and quirks do happen. But that three of the top four on Saturday morning could lose felt not only invigorating – maybe this isn’t a league entirely predetermined by how much money you have – but also, perhaps, part of a pattern. And that pattern is of football that is a bit patchy, a bit scratchy, a bit lacking the sort of fluidity and quality we’ve become used to, which is perhaps not so good. Moisés Caicedo’s equaliser aside, Chelsea’s draw at Manchester United in 
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“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 
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“It was 
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“For long periods of their 2-1 victory over 
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“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 
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“Life at 
“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. …”
“What are 
Adi Hütter
“‘At three o’clock on Saturdays, we know who we are, where we belong, and where we should be even when we aren’t,’ wrote Daniel Gray, the author and historian, in his 2016 book Saturday, 3pm: 50 Eternal Delights of Modern Football. Gray calls that sacred point in the English week ‘football time’, the opportunity for hundreds of thousands to escape the humdrum and stresses of everyday life and find a fleeting, common sanctuary. ‘What a privilege that is,’ he concludes. …”
“When Nicolas Jover signed up for an online set-piece course last summer, the tutors initially thought it was a prank. Despite transforming 
“It is unwise to 
Hungary’s ‘Carpathian Brigade’ before a recent game against Bulgaria 
“Life provides us all with many reminders that we’re getting older. Your body aching for no ostensible reason. The increasing realisation you have no idea what music is cool anymore. Hangovers appearing after a couple of quiet beers, rather than a big night out. Measuring the time since you last visited a nightclub in decades, rather than years. For us football fans, there’s another: managers getting younger. And in the 
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Larbi Ben Barek of Marseille and Eloy of Sedan during a French Cup quarterfinals match in 1954.
“The draw for the revamped Champions League league phase is — after what seemed like 
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“The 
Scissors Kick 