Jonathan Wilson's Blog, page 68

Andriy Yarmolenko’s tears eclipse West Ham’s win against Aston Villa

Andriy Yarmolenko sank to his knees, arms out, less in celebration it seemed than in exhaustion. His teammates surrounded him, their reaction less of joy than of something more profound. When the Ukrainian got to his feet, his mouth was tight as he tried to fight back the tears. In the end he could not and, as he walked back to his own half to restart the game, he wept openly. Even Aston Villa’s players applauded. Football can be a horrible sport, its ownership model perhaps addled beyond repair, but there are still times when it can provide moments of enormous poignancy and perhaps more.

“Goal for West Ham and Ukraine,” boomed the stadium announcer, “Andriy Yarmolenko.” Was that overdoing it? Perhaps. But the bombast matched the mood. This was a goal that set West Ham on the way to their second win in seven games, and that kept West Ham dreaming of Champions League qualification. But it felt a lot more important than that.

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Ronaldo continues to be a problem and a magnificent solution for United | Jonathan Wilson

Forward answered his critics with a fine hat-trick to set a new Fifa goalscoring record and secure victory over Tottenham

Cristiano Ronaldo has been a problematic signing for Manchester United. Particularly in the last few weeks he has – finally, at 37 – begun to look his age. He would create tactical problems for any coach, especially one as devoted to gegenpressing as Ralf Rangnick. He is not the player he was. But though much was taken, much abides.

That this was only his second hat-trick for Manchester United is testament to how he has changed as a player. As he moved past Josef ‘Pepi’ Bican in Fifa’s charts as the leading goalscorer of all time, it’s easy to forget that when he left Manchester United in 2009, he was not yet the goal machine he would become but rather a wide forward who would occasionally be deployed through the centre. It was only at Real Madrid that the goals came by the bucketload.

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Magical misfit Philippe Coutinho may have found unlikely home at Aston Villa | Jonathan Wilson

Brazilian is unsuitable for celebrity clubs and philosophy sides, but Steven Gerrard could build a team around him

Philippe Coutinho has played 598 minutes for Aston Villa, in which time he has scored four goals and set up three more. Victory at Leeds on Thursday meant Villa have won three league games in a row for the first time since the beginning of last season. There is a real sense of momentum there now and it is not just about results. Coutinho, quite aside from his direct contribution, is a player of stature, the sort of figure whose very presence can persuade fans, even other players, that a club is going places. Which inevitably prompts the question: what is he doing at Villa?

It’s probably largely an economic question. As the rest of European football retrenches because of the economic impact of the pandemic, the Premier League’s relentless expansion goes on. The English middle class can afford players who are out of range to all but a tiny handful abroad.

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Roman Abramovich and Chelsea symbolise the rotten state of football | Jonathan Wilson

The Premier League is often a beautiful spectacle, but its thirst for success and wealth at all costs has tainted its spirit

Imagine we were starting again. Imagine this was a world when professional sport was in its infancy and even the concept of a league was controversial in case it made people overprioritise winning. Imagine you had a vague sense the clubs in this new competition might represent their local areas, that they might come to fulfil some sort of community function. Who would you want running them?

Would it be a fabulously rich Russian who made his fortune exploiting the economic chaos that followed a period of political turmoil to buy up his country’s oil and gas reserves and who was accused – although he strenuously denied it – of having close ties to that country’s autocratic leader?

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Manchester United flounder without foundations to build upon | Jonathan Wilson

Lack of future certainty in Ralf Rangnick’s side is resulting in failure not only defensively but also in their nerve and will

If there is good news for Manchester United on a bleak afternoon it is that their performance was good in parts. Admittedly those parts were few and far between and confined almost entirely to the first half, but that is still better than the derby at Old Trafford in November.

The use of Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba as central attacking players, to the extent it caused Manchester City problems, worked, at least before half-time. But the problem is that none of that much matters if you’re going to defend like the visitors did.

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Russia exploits football as soft-power tool but it also helped forge Ukraine’s identity | Jonathan Wilson

The Kyiv Death Match of 1942 has resonance in the present context of conflict but its significance is complex

Josef Kordik was sitting in a cafe in Kyiv when a bedraggled man on the street caught his eye. That, he was sure, was Myklova Trusevych, the great Dynamo goalkeeper. He rushed outside. It was spring 1942, a few months after the city had fallen to the Nazis.

Kordik was a Moravian who had been left behind after fighting for Austria-Hungary in the first world war. He had not enjoyed his new life and watching football had been his only joy, but the occupation had meant opportunity. He had falsely claimed Volksdeutsch status and been installed as manager of Bakery Number 1.

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Chelsea may struggle to find another Abramovich in a different world | Jonathan Wilson

The departing owner transformed them into an indisputable superclub but the game he changed may be about to shift again

Zilina is a pretty town of squares and churches with a population of a little more than 80,000 that sits at the confluence of three rivers in the mountains of north-west Slovakia. It was, frankly, an incongruous place for a revolution in English football to begin, but it was there in 2003 that Chelsea played their first game under Roman Abramovich, a routine 2-0 win over MSK in a Champions League qualifier. Their last may come at Norwich in a couple of weeks, or perhaps at home to Brentford a fortnight after that, depending how soon a buyer emerges and how quickly the deal can be finalised. But it will be soon and, a couple of months after completing the full set of possible trophies by winning the Club World Cup, the Abramovich era at Chelsea will be over.

The legacy he leaves is complex, not least because it is very hard to assess when it is still not clear why he bought the club. From a purely footballing point of view though, he brought Chelsea huge success. The temptation to point out that he took on a club that were fourth in the league, spent £1.5bn and leaves them third is strong, but Chelsea now are a very different club from the one he bought. They are no longer the flaky mavericks of the Kings Road, but an indisputable superclub. They had won the league only once before he arrived but he brought them five further championships, along with two Champions Leagues, five FA Cups and three League Cups. Might they have won more with more patience? Perhaps, but that is an enviable amount of silverware.

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Liverpool’s Wembley win and fans unite to support Ukraine – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, Nedum Onuoha and Andrew Todos to discuss the latest games and football’s ever-changing relationship with Russia

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 win the Carabao Cup after beating Chelsea 11-10 on penalties. Kepa Arrizabalaga came on to replace Édouard Mendy for the shootout, failed to save a single spot-kick and then sent his own effort miles over the bar.

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Bruno Lage finds right connections at Wolves to shrug off Portuguese struggles | Jonathan Wilson

Many of the disciples of Vítor Frade are in decline but Lage has shown he can adapt and Wolves have chance of top-four finish

The temptation when Bruno Lage was appointed by Wolves was to assume it would just be more of the same: another Portuguese manager, another Jorge Mendes client, at a club with a strong Portuguese core. If managers from the German school of hard-pressing are the most modish appointment for an aspirational modern club, Portugal’s disciples of Vítor Frade and periodisation are not far behind.

While Lage is very much of that school – to the extent that in 2012, despite being a youth coach at Benfica at the time, he co-authored a report with the former Sheffield Wednesday and Swansea coach Carlos Carvalhal on the latter’s implementation of periodisation at Besiktas – this has been a season of change at Wolves.

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Christian Eriksen returns to a fond ovation and a wonderful coincidence

Brentford and Newcastle fans come together to hail sight that felt impossible on grim day at the Euros last summer

It was 259 days ago that Mathias Jensen came on for Denmark against Finland at the Euros, replacing Christian Eriksen, who had been carried away on a stretcher an hour and three-quarters earlier having suffered a cardiac arrest. That substitution was leant poignancy by its banality, an ordinary act in extraordinary circumstances. What nobody realised then was that it was a substitution that would echo forward as well as back: it was Jensen who went off on Saturday as Eriksen made his return to football, the sort of coincidence that hints at wider patterns and things that are meant to be.

“If you take away the result, I’m one happy man,” said Eriksen. “To go through what I’ve been through, being back is a wonderful feeling. It’s been very special since day one. Brentford have taken good care of me. Everyone’s been really happy about it and everyone’s been really helpful.”

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