Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 53
March 3, 2023
Liverpool, Manchester United and a shifting dynamic towards similarity | Jonathan Liew
Fortunes on the pitch have changed this season but, as global super-clubs, they resemble each other more and more
It was October 2021 and Jürgen Klopp was in a knife-twisting mood. “United never look happy when they play us,” he told his Liverpool squad in their final team meeting before their visit to Old Trafford. “They always want to use this game to sort out everything. We are different. We want to squeeze everything out of this amazing situation we have here.” The subtext was clear enough: this was a team liable to shatter on first contact. In for the kill.
Before the game, as Liverpool coach Pep Lijnders recounts in his book Intensity, Klopp and his staff homed in on United’s pressure points with a sadistic relish. Scott McTominay and Fred were to be targeted ruthlessly in midfield. Roberto Firmino was assigned to drag Harry Maguire and Victor Lindelöf out of position. Bruno Fernandes’s space was to be shut down aggressively. The result was a 5-0 victory, the Theatre of Dreams set ablaze, thousands of fans beating a path for the exits at half-time.
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February 28, 2023
Vinícius Júnior is essentially being hunted and hounded for sport | Jonathan Liew
The racist abuse aimed at the Real Madrid striker is becoming routine and there seems to be little appetite to drive change
In 1997, Roberto Carlos was racially abused while playing his first clásico for Real Madrid. Barcelona fans made monkey chants every time he touched the ball, held up racist banners and even scratched the word “monkey” on his car as a special treat for him to find later.
No charges or punishments were issued and if, after complaining publicly, Carlos was hoping for a little professional solidarity at this most harrowing of moments, he was out of luck. “This man talks a lot, he talks too much, he doesn’t know our fans and he hasn’t been here for long enough to justify these things,” Barcelona’s central midfielder retorted that day, a Spain international by the name of Pep Guardiola.
Continue reading...February 26, 2023
Newcastle not yet an evil-empire side but cup final feels like a springboard | Jonathan Liew
Some of Eddie Howe’s team are not likely to stay for much longer but Saudi fortune should see them continue to improve
Trafalgar Square, Saturday evening. White smoke against a red sunset, the hot breath of a thousand singing voices wafting into the cold London air like pissed little doves. Wembley is still a day, a three-zone Oyster card journey and several cans away. But in a way, the 2023 League Cup final has already been under way for several hours.
They’ve braved the trains, the traffic and London prices. Whole towns have emptied for the weekend. Sam Fender and his band have come along for the party, and pump out a raucous version of Local Hero. Everyone wants a piece of this. And of course the game still means everything. But somehow there is also a larger undertaking here, the idea that what matters above all is their presence: a reclamation of turf, an assertion of self. We can win or we can lose. But either way, you will notice us again.
Continue reading...February 24, 2023
Loris Karius knows only too well how one game can change a career
After a Champions League final sent his trajectory off course, the goalkeeper gets an unlikely shot at glory with Newcastle
Four days after the 2018 Champions League final, Jürgen Klopp got a call from Franz Beckenbauer. Like everyone, the legendary former Germany captain and coach had seen the game in Kyiv, seen Liverpool losing 3-1 to Real Madrid after a pair of blunders by their goalkeeper Loris Karius. And something about it hadn’t quite looked right. After a conversation with a doctor, he picked up the phone to Klopp. “Your goalkeeper had a concussion,” Beckenbauer told Klopp.
An armchair diagnosis, for sure, but one that intrigued Klopp enough to make further inquiries. The next day Karius was flown to Boston where he had rigorous tests at the Spaulding Rehabilitation hospital. The concussion assessment consists of a checklist of 30 symptoms, including headache, light sensitivity, loss of memory and nausea. Five days after the biggest game of his life, Karius still had 26 of the 30 clinical signs of concussion.
Continue reading...February 22, 2023
Pep Guardiola ‘delighted’ with Manchester City’s draw at RB Leipzig
Pep Guardiola launched a characteristically counterintuitive defence of his approach after half-time in Manchester City’s draw against RB Leipzig. City were held to a disappointing 1-1 score in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie, but despite being dominated for long periods of the second half Guardiola refused to make a single substitution, and afterwards explained that he was wary of Leipzig’s danger on the counterattack.
“My expectations were not high,” he said. “I had the feeling that the tie would be decided in the second leg. It’s 180 minutes and I didn’t want to lose 4-0 or 4-3 here. We had four games in 10 days, we come here, and then the day after tomorrow we fly to Bournemouth. I put all this in perspective and I am so delighted for the game we played. It’s the Champions League. Such a demanding competition.”
Continue reading...Gvardiol cancels out Mahrez opener to leave Manchester City and Leipzig level
The overwhelming likelihood is that Manchester City will be fine. A draw away from home in the Champions League is never a bad result, and in front of their own supporters in three weeks’ time they should probably finish the job they left frustratingly undone here. And yet if the 1-1 draw against Nottingham Forest on Sunday could be dismissed as a fluke, this was an altogether more worrying display from Manchester City, who seemed to play the second half of this game in strange pastel shades.
Of course, City is a club that has rendered itself largely immune to panic over the years, that in its stickiest moments simply trusts in the redemptive power of a well-drilled process and 75% possession. Paradoxically, that was probably their undoing here: the curious lack of urgency as RB Leipzig raised the tempo and briefly threatened to take the tie away from them. As the first XI toiled on the pitch, Phil Foden and Julian Álvarez grimaced away on the bench. Full time came and went with Pep Guardiola not making a single substitution.
Continue reading...February 20, 2023
Strike threats and Netflix feuds: Wales’s rugby crisis exposes greater problem | Jonathan Liew
As off-field tensions reach new levels, you have to wonder if the modern international governing body is fit for purpose
Got to say, I’m intrigued to see how the Netflix Six Nations documentary covers the Welsh rugby crisis. Given that the Wales team are refusing to cooperate with the Netflix crew, denying them access to team meetings and even turfing them out of Alun Wyn Jones’s press conference last week, you have to wonder what sort of material is going to be cobbled together. Perhaps Wales will simply be pixelated out of the final product: a ghostly apparition at the edges of the screen, implied but never physically present, which, you might argue, is a pretty good way of describing their performance against Scotland.
But the indignities of a global streaming giant are the least of our worries here. With England visiting Cardiff on Saturday afternoon, the prospect of an unprecedented Wales player strike remains worryingly real. Ask the players and they will insist this is not really a dispute about money, but security and basic dignity: the dozens of players who, in the absence of a new funding deal, have no idea whether they will still be employed in four months. The sleepless nights and declined mortgage offers. The breathtaking ineptitude of a union asking players to take a haircut while furnishing the new coach, Warren Gatland, with a £2m contract and planning a range of new capital investments: an interactive rugby museum, a roof walk and a zip wire at the Principality Stadium.
Continue reading...February 18, 2023
Frank half-time ‘chat’ inspired Arsenal comeback at Aston Villa, says Jorginho
A frank exchange of views in the Arsenal dressing room at half‑time proved the foundation for their spectacular late comeback against Aston Villa. Arsenal returned to the top of the Premier League on Saturday lunchtime by coming back from 2-1 down to win 4-2, with the key moment a freak own goal in the third minute of added time by Emiliano Martínez after Jorginho’s shot had hit the bar. But in the euphoria of the victory Mikel Arteta sounded a note of concern on his team’s limp first-half performance, in which they twice fell behind.
He sent his players out early for the second half and elaborated on what was said. “We have to raise our individual level, look each other in the face and do much, much more if we want to win,” he said. “In the first half we didn’t do the simple things right. In the second half we dominated. We needed a magic moment and Jorginho produced it.
Continue reading...Arsenal boost title hopes as dramatic late double settles thriller at Aston Villa
Three touches. Three impacts. Three distinct noises. The whip of a perfectly struck football off the meat of Jorginho’s boot. The symphonic clank of the Villa Park crossbar. The dull thud as it clattered off the skull of a blameless Emiliano Martínez. Perhaps this is what salvation sounds like. Those three noises were immediately engulfed by a fourth: the sound of the travelling Arsenal fans shrieking in disbelief, as if rescued from the depths of a despair they feared they might never escape.
Three points for Arsenal, then, and back to the top of the league they go, just as everyone expected. And yet nothing about this felt simple or preordained. Indeed, until Martínez’s own goal in the third minute of injury time it felt as if their race might well be run, right here in the Birmingham suburbs.
Continue reading...February 16, 2023
Resurgent Rashford is becoming the complete forward under Erik ten Hag | Jonathan Liew
Manchester United manager deserves credit for unlocking striker’s full potential in a way his predecessors never could
The clock had not quite struck 8pm local time when Marcus Rashford began to glide across the Camp Nou turf in pursuit of a pass from Fred. And Rashford really is a beautiful runner in full flow: all clean lines and clear air, a player who moves as if he will never get mud on his boots. Marcos Alonso, the man who had headed Barcelona 1-0 up barely a minute earlier, moved across to jack-knife his run.
Well, of course Rashford scored. The ball was running away towards the goalline and the angle was tightening and Marc-André ter Stegen is one of the best goalkeepers in the world and none of that really seemed to matter. Rashford operates in a kind of deep thought these days: a mind constantly calculating, triangulating, finding solutions. If there is a gap to be found, he finds it. If there is no gap, he tries to create it. Within the space of a few seconds, and a few inches, Rashford had changed the entire feel of this tie.
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