Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 6

‘Always in my heart’: Luis Enrique pays tribute to late daughter after PSG triumph

Manager says fans’ banner left him ‘very emotional’

Simone Inzaghi backs Inter to come back stronger

As Paris Saint-Germain clinched their first Champions League title, Luis Enrique’s thoughts turned to his late daughter. Six years ago Xana died of osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. She was nine. And at the moment when he scaled the peak of his coaching career, Luis Enrique paid tribute to the child who he said was “always in my heart”.

At full-time the Paris fans unveiled a tifo depicting Luis and Xana, recreating the moment when he planted a flag in the pitch alongside her after winning the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015. “It was very emotional with the banner from the fans for my family,” Luis Enrique said. “But I always think about my daughter.”

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Game is up for Inter after Champions League journey ends in bitter humiliation | Jonathan Liew

After losing two finals in three seasons to state-owned investment funds, this ageing team reduced their fans to tears

They stay just long enough to see the trophy lifted. Most have discarded their losing medals by the time the pyrotechnics go off and Marquinhos raises the European Cup into the muggy Munich night. There is a watery smattering of applause. Then, with a turn of pace so sadly lacking during the game itself, they turn and head for the tunnel, past a battalion of photographers whose lenses are facing in the opposite direction.

What does it feel like to lose a Champions League final 5-0? Right now, and possibly for many years to come, this Inter team will be the only ones who know. Many of their fans were weeping uncontrollably in the stands, in the concourses, all along the road that leads back to the Métro station. For the 22 players and thousands of supporters who crossed the Alps so full of dreams, this is the sort of sporting trauma that defines generations.

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Despotism v capitalism: PSG v Inter is clash of styles on and off pitch | Jonathan Liew

Champions League final features opposing tactical approaches and two radically different ownership models

In 2021, Oaktree Capital quietly rebranded its “Distressed Debt” division as the “Opportunistic Credit” platform. For decades the LA-based investment fund had specialised in picking up what is known in the trade as distressed assets, a strategy it described as looking for “good companies with bad balance sheets”.

So let’s say your company is screwed. You’re deep in debt, severely short of cash, perhaps even at risk of bankruptcy or default. In sweep Oaktree. They have a mosey around, shake down some creditors, restructure your cost base, perhaps offer you a high‑interest loan to stop the bleeding. Once they’ve got you battle-lean they find you a buyer, you sell up, and they take a fat cut. Four years ago, as they cast an eye over the Covid-emaciated carcass of Inter, this was exactly the strategy they had in mind.

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Straight-talking Slegers lifted Arsenal to glory – now club must back her vision

Head coach stands out for her impressive lack of flourish and WCL triumph will make Gunners a destination club for the world’s best young players

The levels of content are, quite frankly, off the charts. Content-wise, Arsenal have come to Lisbon, eaten and left no crumbs. Katie McCabe sliding on her belly along the dressing room floor through a pool of champagne. Alex Scott and Jess Glynne in their retro tops. Managing to drop the F-bomb on live teatime television, not once but twice. McCabe recreating the moment she threw a ball at Chloe Kelly’s head during a Women’s Super League game, only this time with the Champions League trophy.

And then, in their more reflective moments, thoughts turn to the past. To where they came from. To the journey, those who came, and those who couldn’t make it all the way. Laia Codina wraps herself in the Catalan flag. Leah Williamson and her father share an embrace. Beth Mead thinks about her late mother. Kelly reminisces about her academy days, getting the train from Finsbury Park to Potters Bar with Lotte Wubben-Moy. Because nobody ever gets themselves to a Champions League final. You are delivered, like stones in a river, by the forces and influences that shaped you.

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Women’s Champions League triumph will redefine how Arsenal see themselves | Jonathan Liew

Gunners’ victory was built on a multi-layered courage that respected but was not overawed by Barcelona or by fatalism

There is always a little more time than you think. A red number 7 blinks across the pitch from the fourth official’s board. Seven minutes of injury time: it’s a lot. Against Barcelona, it’s an age. Against this Barcelona, in this heat, in this game, it may as well be all of eternity.

But you push through. You pace yourself. Beth Mead goes down under a challenge; there’s 30 seconds right there. Kim Little rolls the ball up the left touchline to no one: eight seconds. Daphne van Domselaar hesitates over a free-kick, squeezing out those seconds like drops from a towel. You push through because whatever happens in these seven minutes, however those minutes make you suffer, seven minutes is still less than 18 years.

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Jack Grealish looks out of time at Manchester City now Guardiola has moved the goalposts | Jonathan Liew

In the Premier League’s shifting landscape, this struggling team can no longer carry a winger lacking straight-line pace and a goal threat

Jack Grealish is prowling. The wind tousling his hair, the ball at his feet, the way it was always meant to be. In front of him a wall of Bournemouth defenders jumpily stands guard, eyes wide like stags ready to bolt. Grealish shuffles inside, body feinting, hips dancing. You want to know what happens next. What happens next is that the referee blows for full time.

It’s the 97th minute; Grealish came on in the 91st. In that time Bournemouth somehow managed to score a goal. It wasn’t Grealish’s fault, but it did eat up most of the time in which he was hoping to make an impression. No matter. As the game ends, the cameras hunt down a treble-winning City legend making what might well be his final appearance at the Etihad Stadium. Kevin De Bruyne takes his handshakes and his tributes. Grealish slips quietly down the tunnel.

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Some guts, no glory: end of my amateur football career brings a painful realisation | Jonathan Liew

As my body begins to show undeniable signs of decay, it’s time to reflect on a profoundly underwhelming sporting life

There are the nights when the 10-minute walk to the tube station takes half an hour. There are the crossbow bolts of knee pain at 3am. There are the evenings when you convince yourself the recycling doesn’t actually need to be taken out tonight. We can wait a couple of days, squash it down a bit, crush that box flat. And secretly, it’s because you can’t handle the stairs.

There are the mornings when the bus is coming and the kids shout “Come on!” and start running, but you can’t, you just can’t, and you don’t know how to tell them. There is the very particular indignity of the 39-year-old man crossing the road in socks because blisters and swellings have rendered his boots useless. There are the fitness fads – hot yoga, reformer pilates, cold plunge – adopted at great expense and with the sole purpose of pushing back oblivion, of rendering the intolerable fleetingly tolerable.

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The Joy of Six: Kevin De Bruyne at Manchester City

Before his final game at the Etihad, our writers pay tribute to a creative genius who lorded over the English game

The great passers play passes only they can see. Very occasionally Kevin De Bruyne would go one step further: playing passes even he couldn’t see. Take his little slip-and-slide against Stoke at home in October 2017. It wasn’t even his most celebrated pass against Stoke at home in October 2017. But for me it’s the ultimate De Bruyne pass.

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Chelsea’s dominance begins to erode the scale of their achievement | Jonathan Liew

Triple substitution against Manchester United in the FA Cup final illustrates the gap they have opened up over their rivals

Your name is Sonia Bompastor. Your Chelsea team are winning 3-0 in the FA Cup final and about to cap a 30-game unbeaten domestic season with a league, cup and league cup treble. Wembley is a sea of triumphant blue flags. Manchester United, shuffling and straggling around the pitch, look like the victims of some macabre reality television endurance challenge that will later be censured by Ofcom. What is your next move?

Well, if you’re Bompastor, your next move is to make a triple substitution in the 93rd minute. On come Guro Reiten, Sjoeke Nüsken, Johanna Rytting Kaneryd. Just in case. Just to see things out. Just the 198 international caps, 14 league titles and 26 major trophies, casually hauled off the bench in injury time of an already won cup final. And for Chelsea this really was the most insouciant flex: the victory lap before the victory lap, the £50 tip you give the waiter just because you can.

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FA Cup final buildup, Bradley’s new Liverpool deal, Bundesliga action – as it happened

Barney Ronay answered your questions as we built towards an eagerly-awaited FA Cup final at Wembley

Chat over. Will Hughes strolls across the car park to get some photographs taken. As it happens, the man emerging from the gym at that very moment is the Crystal Palace midfield partner whose praises Hughes has just been lavishly exalting.

“Just added about £20m to your fee in that interview,” Hughes shouts at Adam Wharton as they pass. “You can have half,” Wharton retorts. All delivered with a knowing smile, for this is the Palace of Oliver Glasner, where – as Hughes puts it – “there’s egos, but good egos”. No arrogance, none of the blame culture he sees elsewhere. “You watch other teams and hands are in the air, there’s moaning,” he says. “But I honestly don’t see any of that here.”

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