Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 27

Alexander-Arnold can prove Rooney wrong on England’s centre stage | Jonathan Liew

Doubts have been raised about Liverpool star’s defensive prowess but his ability could make difference at Euro 2024

This past week, Wayne Rooney declared that he “wouldn’t have Trent Alexander-Arnold anywhere near the middle of the pitch”. Which feels just a touch proscriptive, especially when you consider that – given the relatively modest distances involved – pretty much everywhere on a football pitch could be described as “near the middle of the pitch”. Presumably Alexander-Arnold’s role in a Rooney-coached team would be a highly bespoke corner-flag-to-corner-flag operation: shuttling up and down the right flank but bending his runs via the first few rows of the crowd, avoiding that all-important centre‑circle blast radius.

Of course, this was not the only reason Rooney’s comments struck a weirdly discordant tone. “I love him as a footballer and what he does on the ball,” Rooney explained. “But defensively he’s all over the place. He can’t defend.” Which, on the face of it, makes instinctive sense. Rooney wants his midfielders to be skilled in the defensive arts. Simple enough. Until you remember – with a certain irony – that just two Euros ago the defensive colossus Rooney was proposing in the crucial England creative midfield role was none other than Rooney himself.

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Germany look like a team intent on writing their own history | Jonathan Liew

There will be tougher tests ahead, but the Euro 2024 hosts looked brutally efficient in their demolition of Scotland

That’s the thing about fairytales: they don’t have to make sense in advance. They just start, and implicitly we accept the premise, however far-fetched. A cruel prince is turned into a grotesque beast by a beggar woman bearing an enchanted rose: fine, fine. That pumpkin is actually a carriage: OK, fair enough. Anxious host nation on a run of horrific tournament failures wrap up their opening game within 20 minutes while playing football from the spheres: we’re listening.

And as the fireworks went off in cities across Germany, as the fan zones rumbled and erupted, as pilsners and radlers were spilled in pub gardens across the land, you could sense a nation slowly and happily coming to terms with its new reality. A reality in which the indignities of the past were buried under fresh flurries of fresh memories. The time for angst and introspection is over. Over these 90 brutally efficient minutes, Germany rediscovered its sense of imperial poise.

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Euro 2024 kick-off: Germany and Scotland prepare to get party started – as it happened

Scotland and Germany fans descended on Munich before the opening night of the European Championship

“Live in the moment. Be calm,” says a Zen-like Cristiano Ronaldo before appearing at his sixth European Championship – a record.

“I think the team is very prepared. I’ve prepared myself very well. The dream must always be alive, and it’s game-by game. We know it’s a short tournament, now it’s about getting on with it.

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Germany team must turn nation from doubters into believers | Jonathan Liew

Recent tournaments have been calamitous, but side can reconnect with public in Euro 2024 opener against Scotland

If only the Germans had a word for “zeitgeist”. There’s a football tournament starting here on Friday, not that you would necessarily know it. Indeed, from a cursory trawl of Thursday’s media what was most striking of all was the absence of Euros-buzz, the suspicion that there are bigger priorities out there. “CANCER,” screamed the front page of Bild, just in case you were thinking of getting too excited. Chancellor Olaf Scholz is missing the opening game to attend the G7 in Italy. The sports bulletins were dominated by the sudden resignation of the Borussia Dortmund coach, Edin Terzic. On the Kicker website, the first Euro 2024 news appeared some way below a story about RB Leipzig’s summer transfer business.

None of which should necessarily be mistaken for pure apathy. Rather, there is a more complex melange of emotions at work here. Euro 2024 is still very much present, as long as you know where to look: the big town squares where overseas fans have begun to congregate, the television ad breaks where Joshua Kimmich is shaving his chin baby-smooth with a next-generation razor. Tickets for Germany’s open training session in Jena sold out in 10 minutes.

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Form, injuries and mood: how are the Euro 2024 favourites shaping up?

France, Spain, England, Germany and Portugal all have Euro 2024 hopes – but they also have problems

How is the form? Les Bleus approach a tournament in which they are one of the favourites disjointed and in search of fluidity. Kylian Mbappé sounded the alarm after a 2-0 loss against Germany in March. “There are lots of warnings: technically, tactically, in terms of desire and even efficiency too,” said the captain, adding that the “leadership” was “deficient”. Not exactly the serene buildup France would have hoped for, but they have known worse. The defeat to Germany came in the absence of Antoine Griezmann; without him, Didier Deschamps’ men looked lost, and the over-reliance on individuals is a concern.

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Rise of the far right a permanent cloud on Germany’s Euro 2024 horizon

As the country prepares for the big kick-off this week the uneasy political backdrop cannot be ignored, even if some would very much like it to be

“The team is no longer German,” explains an older gentleman in a baseball cap, calmly loading shopping into the boot of his car. “If you look at how many Germans still play, it’s a joke.”

“How do you define who a German is?” asks the presenter, a documentary-maker named Philipp Awounou.

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Euro 2024 offers a kernel of something pure amid the maelstrom | Jonathan Liew

Our disunited continent may be suffering a crisis of identity but for four weeks we will all be watching

Almost three years ago, at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, the Euro 2024 logo was officially launched, featuring the colours of all 55 Uefa member nations in a symbolic display of continental solidarity. “It shows that in Europe we are united, we are friends,” the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, announced of the new design. “Football is about friendship, it’s about good values, different cultures uniting.”

Friendship. Good values. Everyone united. Yes, good luck with all that. Perhaps it would be unnecessarily harsh to point out that just a few months after Ceferin spoke these words, Europe would be embroiled in its biggest land war since 1945, a crisis of identity and division from which the continent is still forlornly trying to extricate itself.

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José Mourinho’s sanctuary of discomfort will fit right in at Fenerbahce | Jonathan Liew

It always starts the same and ends the same way but winning with spite in a seething cauldron is the manager’s currency

Towards the end of the second hour, with the time beginning to drag like heat, and even the flies losing the will to live, José Mourinho leans towards the microphone. “After 20 years of football,” he announces with a wry smile, “this is the longest press conference of my career.”

“Welcome to Turkey,” replies Ali Koc, the billionaire president of Fenerbahce.

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Chelsea’s temporary vision has led to shopping in the Championship aisle | Jonathan Liew

Perhaps it should be no surprise the club has started signing managers like they sign players. Enzo Maresca knows his fate

Seriously, Behdad: it’s going fine. Don’t worry, Todd. Everyone knew the plan from the start. Sack the guy who won you the Champions League, sack the promising young coach you hired to replace him, sack the experienced blue-chip coach you hired to replace him, hire a guy from the Championship, raise ticket prices for the first time in 13 years. This is the process. We get it. We see it working. Meanwhile, all the best in next season’s Conference League.

And as sure as night follows day, eventually Enzo Maresca will be sacked too. Eventually. Even as he unfurls his club-shop scarf and smiles for the photographers, even as he moves his belongings into his new office at Cobham, a whispering shadow follows him through the corridors and across the training pitches. It may not happen next season. It may not happen the season after that. It may even be dressed up for the website as “mutual consent”. But it’s the fate that awaits them all in the end.

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Dortmund try to outrun reality before sipping from cup of sadness again | Jonathan Liew

Runners-up find out that playing well is often not enough against Madrid after spurning chances and gifting goals away

The medal ceremony may be the most painful bit. Borussia Dortmund do not want to receive them, and judging by the impatience of his manner, Uefa’s Aleksander Ceferin has very little interest in handing them out. And so the medals are not so much draped around Dortmund necks as shoved on them, with a certain peremptory curtness, and without the faintest pretence that Ceferin knows or cares who most of the recipients are.

Jadon Sancho, to be fair, gets a faint flicker of recognition, a microscopic straightening of the lips only detectable by VAR. Karim Adeyemi, the man who missed those two big chances in the first half, receives a “well, what can you do” shrug. None of the rest, even the departing Marco Reus, are granted so much as eye contact by the Uefa president. Julian Ryerson rips his medal off at the first opportunity. Edin Terzic, the coach, is moist in the eyes. Meanwhile there are Dortmund fans in the stands with crumpled faces, broken and vengeful. Angry at whoever dared allow them to hope.

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