Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 65

Alf’s revenge: disruptor Erling Haaland can be the striker Pep Guardiola craves | Jonathan Wilson

Signing offers the ruthless unpredictability needed to break better rivals but Manchester City have still taken a risk

Once upon a time, many years ago, there were two warriors named Alf and Roy who fought for rival clans. Alf accused Roy of feigning injury after he had collapsed with ruptured knee ligaments and for the next four years, whenever they met on the battlefield, their fighting was fierce. But then Alf joined the local rivals of Roy’s team. In the derby, Roy hit Alf on the knee, hard, and Alf conceived a terrible revenge.

Alf had a young son, less than a year old, and he raised him to be a great warrior. His son had extraordinary physical gifts. He was tall and powerful and fast. He was highly skilled. Kings and queens from all around the world wanted Alf’s son to join their army. But Alf’s son was only going to end up at one place: at the rivals to Roy’s team.

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Outbreaks of chaos expose fatal flaw that keeps denying Guardiola European glory | Jonathan Wilson

As four pre-final defeats highlight, City’s mechanism is so complex that when it misfires it cannot easily be put right

At what point does just one of those things become more than just one of those things? If Manchester City’s defeat to Real Madrid on Wednesday night were a one-off, it could be written off. What can you do about luck like that? If you have nine shots on target to the opposition’s none in the first 90 minutes and still lose 2-1 what, really, have you done wrong? Especially when you’ve dominated the first leg as City had done.

But this keeps happening. Season after season, Pep Guardiola finds his teams dominating Champions League ties and losing. Bad luck follows him: the Icelandic volcano that forced Barcelona to take the bus to Milan in 2010, Fernando Llorente’s handled goal in 2019, Raheem Sterling missing an open net from six yards in 2020 …

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Conor Coady grabs last-gasp equaliser to complete Wolves’ comeback at Chelsea

A scratch of the eyebrow. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. This, Todd Boehly, who on Friday signed a contract to buy Chelsea, seemed to be acknowledging, is what sport can do. His prospective new side had been leading 2-0. They had seemed comfortable. It had seemed that those vague worries about Arsenal and Tottenham catching up would disappear as rapidly as the spring sunshine. But as Conor Coady headed an equaliser deep in injury time, the reality dawned: Chelsea, out of form and out of sorts, still face a major fight to secure their place in the top four.

Boehly’s purchase will go through so long as approval is granted by the Premier League and the UK government. The former should be a formality; the latter may be rather more complicated, if only for logistical reasons. Boehly was at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, sitting in a largely empty corporate box, although the chairman Bruce Buck joined him at half-time.

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Everton re-energised while Leeds look limp – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Robyn Cowen and Jonathan Liew after a weekend of Premier League football that saw Leeds’s relegation worries deepen

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: at the bottom of the table Everton and Burnley secured vital wins as they continue their fight against relegation while Leeds’s 4-0 loss at home to Manchester City means they are very much in the mix now.

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Ivica Osim: a Yugoslavian football giant who twice rejected Real Madrid

Coach who led Yugoslavia at the 1990 World Cup and whose spell with Japan was ended by a stroke has died aged 80

Ivica Osim was ill, his wife Asima said. Would I mind coming to his Sarajevo flat the following day? But the following day he was little better. Go to the cafe in the square, Asima said, wait there and he would try to come down later. By that point, in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much. But after an hour or so he shuffled slowly over, sat down and began to talk. His voice was weak, his pale eyes watery, but when we said goodbye three hours later, it was because I had to go to the airport.

That was in 2009 and Osim was still suffering the effects of the stroke two years earlier that ended his career as Japan manager. He had been watching an Arsenal game and when he came round in hospital, his first question was what the final score had been. In truth, he never really recovered and died on Sunday, five days short of his 81st birthday. But he talked, with characteristic eloquence, thoughtfulness and directness.

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Pochettino and the paradox at PSG, a club that is almost unmanageable | Jonathan Wilson

So what next if Mauricio Pochettino leaves? Manchester United seemed ideal, but another possibility could occur sooner

There is probably only one thing a manager can do at Paris Saint-Germain that would enhance his reputation, which is to win the Champions League – and even then there would be plenty of people looking at the £900m net spend since the Qatari takeover in 2011 and thinking: “About time.” Mauricio Pochettino has not done that.

If, as seems likely despite his insistence this week he is staying, he leaves PSG in the summer, he does so with the blot of a rare second-placed league finish on his record. He will at least have answered the criticism that he had never won silverware – collecting last season’s Coupe de France and this season’s Ligue 1 title – but that jibe was always largely meaningless; leading Tottenham to third, second and third in successive seasons, and to the second-highest points tally in their top-flight history (adjusting for two/three points for a win and size of the division), is a greater achievement.

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Liverpool’s Jordan Henderson wins captains’ duel with Jonjo Shelvey | Jonathan Wilson

Newcastle’s midfielder appeared more talented when they played together a decade ago but Henderson has risen higher

What is talent? There is a tendency to prioritise what looks good over what works, to be wowed by a player with grace rather than somebody effective, to rave about a footballer who can swoop by another with a sway of the hips or in a blur of feet, or who can caress a shot into the top corner, and to be slightly dismissive of those whose game seems based on graft, who have through dedication and focus made the most of their gifts.

At which, enter two exhibits, the two captains at St James’ Park: Newcastle’s Jonjo Shelvey and Jordan Henderson of Liverpool. They arrived at Anfield a year apart, Shelvey as a highly rated 18-year-old who had already amassed 42 league games for Charlton, Henderson as a 20-year-old worth £16m. There was a time when they represented a possible future for the centre of the Liverpool midfield: both scored in a 4-1 win over Chelsea in May 2012, in what turned out to be Kenny Dalglish’s last home game as manager.

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What Real Madrid do shouldn’t work but yet again they are still standing | Jonathan Wilson

Manchester City battering brought relatively minimal damage and there are troubling big-match parallels for Guardiola

Manchester City had 60% of the ball. They had 16 shots to Real Madrid’s 11. They won on xG, taking a consensus of various algorithms, about 3.1 to 1.6. And yet they will go to the Bernabéu next week leading only 4-3 and, probably, with a grim sense of a familiar history being played out.

Madrid have won four Champions Leagues in the past decade. They have rarely, if ever, been the best side in the world in that period. In Cristiano Ronaldo’s nine years at the club, they won only two La Liga titles. They couldn’t produce consistently enough to dominate the league and yet, somehow, in the Champions League, in what had always been their tournament, they got results.

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By stealth rather than in one swoop, the European Super League has arrived | Jonathan Wilson

As this week’s semi-finals lineup shows, the Champions League is no longer a fair competition but in the grip of a few franchises

The two best teams in Europe, the most successful club in the history of the competition, a gritty outsider – in some ways the lineup for this week’s Champions League semi-finals is perfect. Each offers in addition an intriguing subplot: Pep Guardiola fighting the curse of overthought, Jürgen Klopp and Liverpool chasing an implausible quadruple, Luka Modric and Karim Benzema raging against the dying of the light, the frankly hilarious prospect of Unai Emery returning to Paris for the final and making a point to Paris Saint-Germain, a club that never took him seriously (perhaps he could have a three-day party to celebrate and invite Neymar along to cut the cake as the Brazilian had him do during his 26th-birthday celebrations).

And yet, and yet … the four clubs come from only two countries and those two countries are England and Spain, who have between them produced 62.5% of all semi-finalists over the past two decades.

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Liverpool and Chelsea set up another final face-off – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Ed Aarons and Jonathan Wilson after a busy weekend of Premier League and FA Cup action. Plus Ewan Murray joins to discuss the Scottish Cup semi-finals

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: Liverpool and Manchester City play out yet another classic in their 3-2 FA Cup semi-final. The Reds will face Chelsea in another domestic final this season after Thomas Tuchel’s side beat Crystal Palace in the other semi.

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