Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 104

The Champions League returns and more breakaway talk – Football Weekly

Max Rushden, Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew, Nicky Bandini and Anne-Marie Batson discuss Manchester United’s 2-1 win at PSG, Chelsea’s draw with Sevilla and more breakaway league rumours

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Ole Gunnar Solskjær proved he might actually know what he’s doing as Marcus Rashford scored a late winner against PSG. Chelsea were less exciting against Sevilla but perhaps that’s what they need at the moment.

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Published on October 21, 2020 08:26

Neymar and Bruno Fernandes reveal a tale of two talismans in Paris | Jonathan Liew

United’s captain enjoyed a far happier game, while PSG’s star was booked for dissent on a dim night for the home side

How Manchester United must wish they could play Paris Saint-Germain every week. Of course, given the current mood within the game, one imagines the Glazers are probably sitting down with the relevant European stakeholders to make that prospect an imminent reality. Yet at a deserted Parc des Princes, United conjured up a triumph that in many ways more impressive than their great heist of 2019.

Nineteen months have passed since the remarkable 3-1 comeback victory that put United into the last eight and sealed Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s ascent to the permanent job. Nineteen months in which a good deal of water has passed under the bridges of the Seine. And yet, until Bruno Fernandes’s first-half penalty the last goal PSG had conceded at home in the Champions League was scored by United themselves. That was a measure of their achievement.

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Published on October 21, 2020 00:00

The absurdity of Mesut Özil’s exile, yet another top talent cut adrift | Jonathan Liew

Arsène Wenger must despair at the inefficiency in the game, embodied by the German midfielder’s omission

There’s been something strangely disconcerting about seeing Arsène Wenger back on our screens, promoting his new book. Almost every interviewer he has faced has tried to lure him into some sort of indelicacy. Come on Arsène, settle some scores. Shit-talk Mourinho. Shit-talk Arteta. Shit-talk the board. Give us the full-body contact. Yet by and large, Wenger has refused to dance. His book is restrained, measured, high on facts and light on gossip, and has thus inevitably been panned as a crushing disappointment. Occasionally, however – much like his teams – he can still produce a moment of pure transcendence.

On Friday night, Wenger was a guest on the Graham Norton Show, where he explained why footballers need a coach. “When people come together, it creates a magic,” he answered. “Sometimes the energy gets together, and they go up to a level where it becomes art. The art of flying together.” It was a beautiful, succinct image: his life’s mission, boiled down for a prime-time BBC One audience. Naturally, Norton quickly changed the subject to Wenger banning Mars bars. Freddie Flintoff told a story about drinking pints. The audience roared. Later, when the show’s Facebook page posted a clip from the programme, the one they chose was: “Arsène Wenger on his iconic fight with José Mourinho.”

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Published on October 20, 2020 01:10

Manchester City show Arsenal that the game belongs to the players | Jonathan Liew

The match began as a battle of minds between Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta, but City looked more comfortable as things became more conventional in the closing stages

For much of the night, the Etihad Stadium was thick with the fog of war. Games between managers who know each other well can often grind themselves into stalemate. There was never any realistic chance of that happening with Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta. Their two previous meetings as coaches had been contrasting, highly evolved affairs, and for an hour this was no different: a coaching duel that more closely resembled a heads-up poker game, an exercise in inscrutability.

And yet in the end, this was not really a game won and lost on plans or schemes. That much became manifest in the anticlimactic closing stages, as Manchester City imperiously closed down a game that had spent much of its life teetering on the brink of chaos. Ultimately, they won because they had better players who had been coached together for longer. Sometimes it really is that simple.

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Published on October 17, 2020 13:20

Southgate's faith in England's class of 2018 is showing diminishing returns | Jonathan Liew

Most of the young stars who shone in Russia have stagnated, so is the manager’s faith in them based on stability or nostalgia?

At the time – even amid the ruins of defeat – it felt like the start of something. Even as John Stones cried his heart out, as a distraught Dele Alli chewed on his shirt, as Jesse Lingard stared blankly into the abyss, it was possible to see this moment as Year Zero, the rebirth, the beginning of the next chapter. Yes, Croatia had your number this time. But you’re young. You’ll be back. You too, Eric. You too, Raheem. Maybe not so much you, Phil.

This was, perhaps, why the 2018 World Cup felt so transformative. It wasn’t just the hot summer euphoria, the flying pints, Three Lions back at No 1 in the charts. It was the sense that this was a vivid, exciting group of players who would only get better with time. Seven of the starting XI for the semi-final in Moscow were aged 25 or younger. By the next Euros in 2020, we assumed, this would be a squad approaching full bloom.

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Published on October 15, 2020 11:00

Grealish sums England's aspirations up but Mount is man of the moment | Jonathan Liew

Mason Mount’s work without the ball and technical ability have justified his England place all while suffering unfair scorn

Two steps forward, one step back. In a way, this has been the story of Gareth Southgate’s England in microcosm. Stirring progress followed by chastening tournament defeat; goodwill earned and then squandered; the heartening emergence of Conor Coady and Tyrone Mings tempered by the sharp decline of Harry Maguire. And here again a broadly encouraging international week curdled at its climax, defeat to Denmark an unhappy epilogue after the wins over Wales and Belgium.

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Published on October 14, 2020 15:49

The Guppy paradox: are England's left-sided woes back to haunt them? | Jonathan Liew

Gareth Southgate has been wrestling with an all too familiar problem for England managers this week, to which Kevin Keegan certainly never found the answer

Steve Guppy is the one everyone remembers. Most dedicated followers of English football in the late 1990s and early 2000s would also be able to name Jason Wilcox and Steve Froggatt. Then you have your David Dunns, your Alan Thompsons, your Chris Powells. Two decades on, the infamous “England left-sided problem” tends to be evoked more as an exercise in nostalgia, a display of performative recall, than as a long-term failure of systems and imagination that Gareth Southgate may just be in danger of repeating.

A “left-sided David Beckham” was Kevin Keegan’s memorable description of Guppy ahead of his England debut, which sadly would also turn out to be his England swansong, against Belgium in 1999. And over the years, as the tournament failures piled up, England’s problem left flank would become a sort of hex, a footballing black hole, a lost cause to which some of our best young men were sacrificed, not all of whom would survive the experience.

The emergence of Ashley Cole as England’s first genuinely world-class left-sided player since Chris Waddle jolted them into a painstaking evolution

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Published on October 14, 2020 00:00

Elite clubs' offer to EFL sides: you will be looked after – and know your place | Jonathan Liew

Leaked proposals contain both good and bad ideas, but Project Big Picture must be more than a licence to print money

Not many people seem to remember Benjamin Disraeli’s novels these days, partly because – by and large – they weren’t very good. Indeed, had their author not gone on to become one of the most important politicians of the 19th century, it’s likely they would have been almost entirely forgotten: a mixture of Byron-esque pastiche and half-baked political manifesto churned out largely to subsidise his extravagant London lifestyle. “When I want to read a novel, I write one,” Disraeli once claimed. Contemporary critics scoffed that it showed.

And yet for their many flaws, there’s some interesting stuff in there: the flesh and bones of the ideology he would take with him into office, a paternalistic conservatism whose influence over modern politics – even if only in motif – endures to this day. Disraeli deplores the widening gap between rich and poor. He chides the avarice of the ruling class and the thoughtless worship of wealth. He declares: “Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE.”

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Published on October 12, 2020 11:00

Gareth Southgate stumbles upon perfect tactics to take down Belgium | Jonathan Liew

England compensated for the lack of a cultured technical midfielder by turning the game into a wrestling match

It wasn’t the perfect performance. Perhaps, in a weird way, that was for the best. Imagine the nonsense we would have had to put up with for the next eight months if England had beaten the world’s No 1 team – and the home of the European parliament to boot – with a perfect performance. The hoopla. The hubris. The jingoistic fervour. The Michel Barnier memes. Lather up Europe, our brave lads are coming for you.

Yet in the absence of perfection, you suspect Gareth Southgate will be content simply to pile up results. And this was a very decent result against a good side, albeit one secured with a contentious penalty and a massive deflection. After all, this wasn’t a useless friendly: these three crucial points took England top of Group A2 of the 2020-21 Nations League. Win the group and England will progress to the next stage, whatever it is, whenever and wherever it takes place.

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Published on October 11, 2020 13:36

Premier League may not need the pyramid but England and Southgate surely do | Jonathan Liew

Put simply: this is an England team that would simply not exist without the Football League

The foul was won just inside the Wales half by Danny Ings. Released by Southampton as a teenager for being too small, Ings came through the Bournemouth academy, making his professional debut when they were still in League Two. Ings took the free-kick quickly to Kalvin Phillips, who until this season had played all his football in the Championship with Leeds.

Phillips found Atlético Madrid’s Kieran Trippier on the right. At 30, Trippier has still played more than half his league football in the EFL, with Barnsley and Burnley. Trippier slipped the ball to Jack Grealish, who credits his three seasons with Aston Villa in the Championship for hardening him mentally and physically. Grealish’s cross found the head of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, a product of the Sheffield United academy, via a loan spell at Northampton.

[THREAD]

24 of @England's 30-man squad named by Gareth Southgate earlier this week have EFL experience.

Nine of tonight's starting XI have played in the EFL.

Where stars are made. #EFL | #RaisedInTheEFL https://t.co/VqVpFrCvIr

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Published on October 10, 2020 00:00