Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 67

Switzerland win reminds Southgate that internationals are about control | Jonathan Wilson

England won out in the end but encountered familiar problems in defence and in the space beyond Harry Kane

Imagine that was a league game. England found a path to victory. They were better after half-time. They had the strength of character to come from behind. It’s a sign of a title-winning team that they can still win when nowhere near their best. A lot of the squad players had a run-out. The friendly win against Switzerland, in that sense, was a satisfactory evening for Gareth Southgate.

But this was not a league game. It was international football, so everything is heightened, hysterical and overblown, albeit not perhaps as much as it would have been in the pre-Southgate days. There is so little evidence available that everything has to be over-scrutinised – except, perhaps, the opposition.

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Football in Russia is crashing and isolation can only hasten its decline

Trajectory has been downwards for some time and the country’s pariah status spells disaster for its clubs and national team

Last Saturday, Zenit St Petersburg beat Arsenal Tula 3-0 to stretch their lead at the top of the Russian Premier League over Dynamo Moscow to five points. Dynamo, managed by the German Sandro Schwarz, needed a last-minute penalty to salvage a draw at home to Rostov, while in Nizhny Novgorod, the Italian coach Paolo Vanoli threw on Victor Moses at half-time as his Spartak Moscow side drew 1-1.

But this is another world now. Foreign involvement lingers, but these are games that feel as if they are happening in a different reality. There will almost certainly be no European football for Russian clubs next season. Spartak have been expelled from this season’s Europa League. Russia did not play their World Cup playoff against Poland on Thursday.

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Anfield and Salah are a perfect match – but Liverpool could cope without their hero | Jonathan Wilson

There should be a clinical assessment of whether it is worth paying £400,000 a week to keep the talismanic Egyptian

The immediate thought is that it cannot happen. Mohamed Salah, the embodiment of this glorious period of Liverpool’s history, cannot be allowed to leave: the club have to give him whatever he wants. Just make sure he stays, keeps rattling along at 20-odd goals a season, many of which will be stunning, keeps delighting both fans and neutrals with his verve and imagination.

But the immediate thought may not be entirely helpful: no player is ever irreplaceable. Of course, there is a sentimental appeal to the idea that a player and a club have a special relationship, particularly when that player has been instrumental in a club’s rise, as Salah has been for Liverpool under Jürgen Klopp. But circumstances change. Liverpool’s history is a study in the importance of not becoming unduly attached to heroes, of moving players on at the right time.

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Nigeria out to scratch 15-year itch against Ghana in clash of great rivals

World Cup play-off is flavoured by history and a sense that chaos is never far away for both teams

A bitter February night at Griffin Park in 2007. A friendly between Nigeria and Ghana, as though such a thing were possible. Ghana had not beaten their neighbours in 15 years but when Nigerian defences cracked, they collapsed.

It was 0-0 at half-time but then Laryea Kingson, Sulley Muntari and Junior Agogo struck between the 50th and 60th minutes. It was a lot less than 10 minutes of playing time given the gleeful pitch invasions that followed each goal. The game finished 4-1, well over an hour later than scheduled, thanks to a delayed start for a larger than expected crowd and the frequent interruptions (a personal confession: I queued for more than an hour at an overwhelmed press entrance with the Observer’s then-sports editor Brian Oliver, before giving up and hopping over a barrier, ripping my coat as I did so).

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Is this Wales’ biggest game for 64 years? - Football Weekly Extra | Podcast

Faye Carruthers is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, Nedum Onuoha to preview the upcoming international fixtures. Plus Suzy Wrack joins for a Women’s Champions League round-up.

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; Wales face Austria on Thursday evening and are only two games away from Qatar 2022 which would be their first World Cup since 1958. We hear from a nervous Elis James prior to the game.

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Empty seats in FA Cup a visible reminder of Chelsea’s present reality | Jonathan Wilson

Riverside’s sparse away end a symbol of visitors’ ongoing crisis, but also of the deep dysfunction at the heart of the game

The Riverside has been no stranger to the sight of empty seats in recent years, but on Saturday those that surrounded the 700 or so Chelsea fans who had managed to buy tickets before Roman Abramovich was sanctioned by the UK government told not of Middlesbrough’s troubles but a more poignant story of the state of English football.

Football’s capacity to normalise the most ludicrous scenarios is remarkable. It is only three weeks since Abramovich declared his intention to hand over “stewardship and care” of the club to its trustees and yet that already feels at least two major news cycles ago. The idea that Chelsea have to be parted from their owner because they have, for almost two decades, been a pawn in a far greater game has been generally assimilated.

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Forest v Liverpool FA Cup tie offers reminder of another time in Clough era | Jonathan Wilson

The institution of the Cup is widely devalued but Nottingham Forest v Liverpool brings up memories of a more innocent age

Every year the question is asked: what is the point of the FA Cup, why should we care? This is not the Premier League, with its slick production values, glamorous stars at every turn and sense of dramatic urgency. There’s no great sense that it matters: you lose, you’re out and it has no bearing on the race for fourth. You win the thing and your manager still gets sacked a few days or weeks or months later – between 2012 and 2018, Arsène Wenger was the only FA Cup-winning manager still to be in his job a year later.

Yet it remains a tremendously democratic institution and, amid everything else – the landmark final, the money it diverts down the pyramid, the chance it offers smaller clubs for a day to mark indelibly in their history (the time we won at Burnley, the afternoon we drew with West Ham, the night we played at Everton …), it offers a reminder of games that used to be. And for fans of a certain age, disillusioned by the transformation of clubs into commercial vehicles or tools of soft power, nostalgia may be the most important thing we have left: it’s the only thing to look forward to – the past.

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Champions League quarter-finals: tie-by-tie analysis and verdicts | Jonathan Wilson

Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City and Bayern Munich are the favourites to progress from a set of fascinating ties

Are Real Madrid any good? They are 10 points clear in La Liga but the sense is that Spanish football is in retreat. They were outplayed for two and a half hours of the last-16 tie against Paris Saint-Germain and for all the brilliance of Karim Benzema and Luka Modric in those final minutes, it’s also true that the turnaround was as much the result of another PSG collapse as anything they did.

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A strange Stamford Bridge backdrop to Chelsea v Newcastle – Football Weekly

Faye Carruthers is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson and Robyn Cowen after another eventful weekend in the Premier League.

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: Chelsea leave it late to beat Newcastle, but all of the intrigue was away from the pitch as Eddie Howe faced questions about Newcastle’s owners and Chelsea remain in search of a buyer.

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‘It was so emotional’: Yarmolenko on his tears for Ukraine after West Ham goal

Ukrainian grateful for support of team, fans and British public‘It was impossible to train – I was thinking about my family’

Andriy Yarmolenko broke down in tears after setting West Ham on their way to a 2-1 victory over Aston Villa on Sunday. The Ukrainian, who had not played in more than a month, scored the opening goal 18 minutes after coming off the bench and described the strain he has been under since the Russian invasion of his country.

“It was so emotional for me,” he said. “It is so difficult for me right now in this moment thinking about football because every day the Russian army kills Ukrainian people.”

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