Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 37

Reds rout Blues, plus Afcon and Asian Cup stories – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Paul Watson, and Jonathan Wilson to discuss the latest Premier League games, Afcon and the Asian Cup

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On the podcast today: the panel discuss all of Wednesday night’s Premier League action, including Liverpool’s dominant win over Chelsea. How good is Conor Bradley and just how many times is Darwin Núñez going to hit the woodwork? Also, ‘a game of three bits’ as a 10-minute flurry of goals from Tottenham helps them see off Brentford and there’s a routine home win for Manchester City. The panel ask: how long before Burnley fans become fed up with Vincent Kompany?

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Franck Kessié brings Ivory Coast back to life as Afcon hosts bury Senegal

A week ago, Ivory Coast were on the end of a 4-0 battering from Equatorial Guinea. Now they are in the last eight of the Africa Cup of Nations having eliminated the champions. They are a team that has repeatedly seemed dead and buried since the tournament began – never more so than when a goal behind with four minutes remaining on Monday – and yet somehow Sébastien Haller’s zombie army marches on to a quarter-final against Mali or Burkina Faso.

Senegal, having been the best side in the group stage, had seemed in control until the introduction of Haller. This had seemed like a classic case of scoring an early goal and then seeing the game out. It was not, and so the curse goes on: no defending champion has made it to the quarter-finals since Egypt in 2010. “We deserved to go to the quarter-final,” said the Senegal coach, Aliou Cissé, who professed himself disappointed yet proud – “but this is the game of football so we can’t complain”.

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Klopp, Xavi and the burden of the managerial love affair | Jonathan Wilson

The Liverpool and Barcelona bosses announced they will walk away from their clubs at the end of the season citing exhaustion

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Jürgen Klopp leaving Liverpool. Xavi leaving Barcelona. Thomas Tuchel perhaps under pressure at Bayern Münich. Extremely speculative stories in Spain about Mikel Arteta contemplating his future at Arsenal. There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen: this summer there could be a truly spectacular merry-go-round of managers with Roberto De Zerbi, Thiago Motta, Unai Emery, Hansi Flick and Rúben Amorim all in the mix.

The situations of Klopp and Xavi are different, even if they have both won one league title. Klopp will have been in the job almost nine years when he leaves and in that time has transformed Liverpool into one of the best sides in Europe. For him that title count of one is misleading because it doesn’t reflect the level of opponent he has been up against, the near-impossibility of taking on Manchester City under Pep Guardiola. With inferior financial resources he has been consistently competitive and that itself is enough to make him one of the greatest three managers in the club’s history.

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Jürgen Klopp, like Bill Shankly, will leave his Liverpool successor a strong hand | Jonathan Wilson

Manager’s rejuvenation of Reds’ squad has been successful but there is no obvious Bob Paisley-like figure in the wings

The similarities between the unexpected departures from Liverpool of Jürgen Klopp and Bill Shankly are unavoidable. Shankly also spoke of weariness, although he perhaps felt, after a brilliant performance in the FA Cup final a couple of months earlier, that there were no more worlds to conquer. But in both cases there was no buildup, no warning, a team playing well, quite possibly on the ascent to yet greater heights. With both managers, the prevailing sense at the announcement was shock, the sense of more to give.

But perhaps the hardest thing is to know when it’s over. The temptation must always be for one last try. If things are going well, why not try to burnish the record just a little more? And if they are not, then what trope is more beloved of sport than that of the return from the wilderness? How better to redeem the years of frustration than by joining Muhammad Ali, Jack Nicklaus and Mark Cavendish is one final act of defiance against time, the critics and the fates?

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Nigeria soar into Afcon quarter-finals as Lookman vanquishes Cameroon

Perhaps in knockout football, nothing ever matters apart from the result. You go through, you go out, the rest is noise. But that is especially true when the tie in question is the biggest rivalry in modern sub-Saharan African football. It was not the prettiest game, but it was never going to be, particularly given a pitch slippery with dew (and perhaps the 25 minutes of watering it took before kick-off).

Not many people are going to be watching the full 90 minutes back with childish wonder. But it doesn’t matter. Nigeria go on to face Angola in the quarter-finals of the Africa Cup of Nations; Cameroon go home.

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The journeyman French coach is fast becoming an endangered species in Africa | Jonathan Wilson

There’s been changing of the guard at the Africa Cup of Nations, spearheaded by Aliou Cissé – and the football is better for it

A few years ago, one of the greats of African football invited me to his home for dinner. While his wife grilled fish and plantains, we watched Sunderland beat Arsenal in the FA Cup. Gradually, various former players began turning up. As they talked, it slowly dawned on me they were plotting a coup against the president of their country’s football federation.

One of the biggest problems, I was told, was that the sports ministry paid the salary of the national coach but had little idea about football. The federation, like many others, had realised that if they nominated a European, the salary would be higher; the higher the salary, the more there was to be creamed off. Hence the fleets of journeymen Frenchmen in African football.

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Clubs blaming officials for defeats is childish and dangerous | Jonathan Wilson

Forest say they will write to PGMOL, the body that governs the officiating of Premier League games, after Ivan Toney’s controversial goal. To what end?

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With 19 minutes of Saturday’s Premier League game at Brentford played, Nottingham Forest led 1-0. The euphoria that had greeted Ivan Toney’s return after an eight-month ban for breaches of FA gambling regulations had begun to dissipate. The thought was that Brentford, disjointed against the team a place above them in the table, were in serious relegation trouble, that Toney might not be enough to save them. Then Mikkel Damsgaard was felled by Orel Mangala just outside the penalty area.

Matt Turner, Forest’s US goalkeeper, set his wall. Toney adjusted the position of the ball a few inches to the right. Then, as the referee Darren England fussed around the wall, Toney moved it a little further, this time taking up a handful of the referee’s disappearing foam and moving it as well. How far did he move it in total? Eighteen inches, perhaps? Maybe two feet maximum. It was enough. Toney strolled up and was able to arc the ball, apparently relatively easily – although free-kicks tend to look easy when they go in – between the edge of the wall and Callum Hudson-Odoi, guarding for runs on its outside edge, bringing it back inside Turner’s left-hand post.

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Ivan Toney shows Brentford what they’ve missed – and may fear to lose | Jonathan Wilson

He has hinted at moving but had an instant impact after his eight-month ban, making Brentford much more coherent

As it had to be, so it was. There were plenty of scares and bumps and wobbles along the way – and surely nobody was anticipating a brilliant Neal Maupay winner – but the story that always seemed probable eventually played out as the returning Ivan Toney brought Brentford their first win in 49 days, lifting them above Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace.

Toney, having been suspended for eight months for breaching Premier League gambling regulations, scored – “of course”, as the stadium announcer bellowed, after an unnervingly euphoric sprint through the stand – but more significant in easing Brentford’s relegation fears was how much more coherent they looked as an attacking force with him in the side.

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Is the game really up for José Mourinho or could he morph into the Geordie One?

The coincidence of the ‘Little Magpie’ losing his job at Roma just as Newcastle falter is almost too perfect – or too hilarious

The Premier League, we should never forget, is essentially the most popular soap opera in the world. Yes there’s the football, the winning and losing of matches, and that is important, but alongside it runs the constant drama, the ludicrous plots, the intrigue, the operatic farce. It is the bend of the two that has made football a global obsession. All the best soap operas require a great villain and the greatest, the Dirty Den, the Paul Robinson, the JR Ewing of football is José Mourinho.

Mourinho is 60 now, his hair white, his eyes perched above swales of shadow. The old shtick has worn a little thin. The power to predict the course of matches has deserted him. The game has moved on and so have players: he cannot, as he used to, kindle in his squads the outraged fire of the wronged avenger. He once mocked Rafa Benítez for winning the Europa League; now he celebrates winning the Conference League and was angered enough by not winning the Europa League last season that he waited for the referee Anthony Taylor in the car park after the final.

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Jordan Henderson has badly damaged his image – and that of the Saudi Pro League | Jonathan Wilson

By quitting the upstart league so soon, the former Liverpool captain makes a mockery of his principles and the wider project

How bad must it have been? How awful must Jordan Henderson have found life in Saudi Arabia’s Pro League to make it worth this? He went there boldly, portraying himself as a pioneer off to develop Saudi football, naively insisting he had to find out the truth about LGBTQ+ rights in Saudi Arabia; he is poised to return to Europe with Ajax after six months, looking ridiculous and facing an enormous tax bill.

Henderson had a reputation as one of the brighter, more engaged footballers. He led a campaign to raise funds for NHS staff during the pandemic and spoke out on issues of homophobia. As he put it plaintively in his notorious interview in the Athletic: “I’ve worn the laces. I’ve worn the armband.” But when it came to it, he took the cash: he says not quite the £700,000 a week that was reported, but “good money” nonetheless. Everybody has principles until they get offered £30m a year.

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