Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 19

Aston Villa lose their inhibitions to craft fresh memories for a new generation | Jonathan Liew

On a glorious night when the club celebrated its past, beating Bayern Munich has turned the clock forward

Pau Torres gathers possession in front of the Holte End, where in 2016 a banner was unfurled reading: “No fight, no pride, no effort, no hope.” He threads the ball over the halfway line, where Tony Xia once stood as the new Aston Villa chairman and promised to build a theme park. In the dugout Unai Emery leans forward expectantly, just a few yards from where – six years ago to the day – a disgruntled fan threw a cabbage at Steve Bruce.

And so as Jhon Durán’s speculative shot brushes the back of the net and the hairs stand up on the back of the neck and the crowd surges and swells, was it all worth it in the end? Worth the indignities, worth the irrelevance, worth 11,000 against Middlesbrough in the League Cup, worth losing at home to Stevenage, worth Remi Garde and Roberto Di Matteo?

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Tadej Pogacar has delivered an alternative reality for the true believers | Jonathan Liew

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? With 23 titles in one rhapsodic year, the Slovenian has made an art of winning

He’s going. And for the first few seconds after Tadej Pogacar launches the solo attack that will win him the world championship, nobody can quite believe it. He’s going. “Suicide move,” Remco Evenepoel mutters to Mathieu van der Poel alongside him. “I didn’t even know he’d gone, to be honest,” Britain’s Oscar Onley would later recall. “Everyone’s thinking it’s too much,” said Ireland’s Ben Healy. There are more than 100km remaining in Zurich and the rational consensus in the peloton is that the world’s greatest cyclist has just blown his chance at the rainbow jersey.

He’s gone. And for all the puzzled faces he leaves in his wake, the shock and disbelief that will materialise when he rolls over the finish line in first place several hours later, perhaps the first thing to say about Pogacar’s gamechanging move was that it wasn’t quite planned, but it wasn’t quite unplanned either. For one thing, he had been corralling his remaining Slovenian teammates on the front for some time. Afterwards, his UAE Team Emirates colleague Tim Wellens revealed that the pair were recently on a training ride in Monaco where Pogacar confided his intention to attack early. “I thought he was joking,” Wellens admitted.

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Tottenham roll the dice and cash in on United’s sorry shrine to wasted money | Jonathan Liew

Chastening defeat adds to Old Trafford crisis story but the reality is they were simply undone by a maverick opponent

Well, Manchester United: here’s your Wembley of the North. Several years ahead of schedule, and perhaps not quite as envisaged in the architects’ drawings, but note-perfect in most other respects. A retail temple with a football concession attached; a shrine to wasted money; a ground where the noise barely rises above a disgruntled murmur, and where Tottenham feel pleasantly at home.

Afterwards, Erik ten Hag tried to maintain some semblance of dignity, like a plumber calmly filling out his invoice even as brown water sloshes around his knees. After all, this is not simply a job but an office, and even in moments of decay a certain carriage is demanded. “Is there a fire drill?” the Tottenham fans gleefully asked as Old Trafford slowly emptied. There wasn’t. But the real thing is beginning to feel dangerously close.

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Thoroughbred Savinho hits the ground running at Manchester City

Young Brazilian has gone straight into the team after joining from Troyes and is first success story of multi-club model

He still dreams of the horses. They roam the fields and ranches around São Mateus, stroll untethered along the roadside, take morning constitutionals on the sand. There are pedigree breeders and rodeo shows dotted around the province. When he was a kid he used to ride the life out of them, but he doesn’t really do that any more for insurance reasons. Instead, he owns and breeds them, tracks their progress through pictures and videos sent by family members, a little slice of Espírito Santo flickering on a phone screen in Manchester.

For him the horse represents home, hearth, familiar comforts, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s freedom, the open pasture, the ability to go where you want, at whatever pace you want, for whatever reason you want. But of course you don’t just get on a horse and ride. It takes months, years, to build that understanding, to kindle the magic, to train without ever quite taming. For Savinho the equestrian, as with Savinho the footballer, the only true freedom comes through a long, disciplined process of control.

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Manchester United stumble and will City cope without Rodri? - Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Troy Townsend to preview this weekend’s Premier League games

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; Manchester United laboured to a 1-1 draw with FC Twente in their opening Europa League game and now face a tricky test against Tottenham on Sunday in the Premier League.

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Players want to fix the broken football calendar. But why not dream bigger? | Jonathan Liew

If the megastars of the men’s game were to lead a movement for all players, they could truly transform the sport

The distant strains of The Internationale can be heard on the approach to the Etihad Stadium. Outside, partially obscured by banners and placards, Rodri and Erling Haaland are in high-vis jackets, gathering around a smouldering brazier for warmth. Locals arrive every few minutes bearing trays of hot tea and buttered scones. Passing motorists parp their horns in solidarity.

A chant goes up. “What do we want?” There is no reply for several seconds. Then a thin voice from the back of the huddle pipes up. “Um … maybe get rid of the Carabao Cup?”

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Liverpool bounce back in style to see off Milan in Champions League opener

A stirring comeback against Milan: say what you like about Arne Slot, but at least he knows his history. Two minutes into this game, perhaps the first genuine inflection point of the new Liverpool era: defeat at Nottingham Forest on Saturday, followed by an early goal for Christian Pulisic that put Milan 1-0 up. So, how are your nerves?

Pretty solid, as it turned out. Abetted by some shambolic Milan defending, Liverpool spent the next 88 minutes methodically taking the seven-time champions apart on their own turf: not always fluently, and not always clinically, but with an encouraging directness and above all an instinctive calm.

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‘Nobody asks the players’: Alisson hits out at new Champions League format

‘If you are tired, you cannot compete at a high level’Liverpool face Milan in first of eight group matches

On the eve of Liverpool’s return to the Champions League their goalkeeper Alisson has criticised the expanded format of the competition, claiming that players had not been consulted on adding two extra games to the group phase and that “maybe our opinion doesn’t matter”.

Liverpool begin their campaign for a seventh European Cup against Milan at San Siro on Tuesday night. While Alisson admitted he was eager to play in the world’s leading club competition again after a season in the Europa League, he also sounded a warning for the future of the sport unless administrators start listening to players’ concerns over the schedule.

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The Champions League: a new dawn, or just the richest winning in more lucrative ways?

Uefa’s new Champions League is less about greater jeopardy, than its growing desire to supplant sporting integrity with the confected thrills of the TV game show

Once more, with seeding. Uefa’s new Champions League group-stage format is known as the “Swiss system”, and frankly you can write your own jokes there. It’s full of holes. It’s totally unaccountable and its inner workings largely impenetrable to outsiders. It’s a handy conduit for sequestering and laundering the money of some of the world’s worst people. It’s a complex and morally contested way of putting people to sleep for long periods of time. Take your pick.

Perhaps fittingly, it is in Switzerland that the first strides into this bold new era take place, with Young Boys v Aston Villa selected as the early Tuesday kick-off, alongside Juventus v PSV. And of course this is an emblematic choice for other reasons, too. The Berne-based club may be competition outsiders, having secured their spot in a playoff against Galatasaray last month. But domestically they have been an insuperable force, claiming their sixth Swiss title in the past seven years despite a season marred by internal wrangling and insipid route-one football.

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Happy Rashford is a happy Manchester United as winger ends goal drought | Jonathan Liew

After a first goal in 189 days in the win at Southampton, some players seem to inspire these feelings and mean more

The sun was just trying to break through as Manchester United took their curtain call here: a weak and hazy sunlight, an autumn-adjacent sunlight, sunlight if it had been taught how to press by Ole Gunnar Solskjær. But sunlight all the same. And as perfunctorily routine as this win seemed in retrospect, days like these are actually pretty rare for United, a club where the roof always seems to be leaking, even when it isn’t raining.

This was – by way of illustration – only their second away win in the Premier League since February, their biggest win on the road since November, their biggest league win against Southampton since 2001, the year they left the Dell. And yes, getting to that stage required half an hour of pure inertia, a saved penalty and a pretty complete implosion from a home side that failed to register a single shot in the last hour of play. But finally, United had carved themselves out a little breathing space.

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