Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 61

Fearless Rodrigo Bentancur keeps Tottenham ticking under pressure | Jonathan Liew

Midfielder has an all-round game of passing and pressing that has made him invaluable since signing from Juventus

Rodrigo Bentancur was four years old when his mother died. It is why he wears the No 30 shirt, commemorating the date of her birthday. When he was 13, he left his small town in Uruguay to live at the Boca Juniors academy in Buenos Aires. When he was 19, he had the chance to move to Europe, a decision that terrified him. “When they talked about the possibility of coming to Juventus, I panicked,” he would later remember. “I was very happy, but also very scared.”

The point of dredging all this up now is that when you have overcome challenges of this magnitude, perhaps you become more relaxed about the prospect of being outnumbered three on two in midfield. Life taught Bentancur to grow up fast, that the only real defence against adversity is fearlessness. This may well explain his unusual maturity on the pitch, the tenacity that has made him one of the most impressive midfielders in the Premier League and – with apologies to Harry Kane – probably Tottenham’s best player this season.

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The commentators have taken over but it’s time to let football do the talking | Jonathan Liew

Televised football has gone only one way in the attention economy with more chatter and voices but perhaps less is more

Somewhere in a reinforced concrete bunker in the northern hemisphere, Paul Dempsey is still talking. He was talking long before you turned the television on and you can be sure he’ll be talking long after you turn it off. He’s got a list of names in front of him, stats and facts, reserves of time and patience that will outlast any human, living or dead.

Here’s Lautaro Martínez, who has never scored a volley in October. Lays it off to Francesco Caputo, who owns four hats. That’s Jackson Borck on the Sampdoria bench, who joined in the summer from Fighting Spiders in the Maltese Premier Division, whose next game you can catch on BT Sport 8 on Thursday at 11am. Now here’s Denzel Dumfries, who has never tasted jam.

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Gabriel Jesus is not the perfect striker but he may be just perfect for Arsenal | Jonathan Liew

Brazilian is a master of grafting and chasing, finding the gaps and quietly making the players around him look a little better

Five-nil. But then, Manchester City just look so strong at the moment. Still: five- nil. But that injury to Bukayo Saka, how much of a blow could that be? Anyway, it was five-nil. But those Nottingham Forest chances, the Jesse Lingard shot where Gabriel Magalhães basically passes it straight to him, one day those are going to cost you. And yet, check the scoreboard, girls and boys: five-nil.

It is the eternal gift of Arsenal fans to be able to identify the potential anxiety in virtually any situation, however favourable or triumphant. Pleasure is simply misery deferred. Most people look for crumbs of comfort; Arsenal fans look for crumbs of concern, scan the fixture list for oncoming hazards, scan every horizon for grey clouds. And so, even a routine and rampant 5-0 victory comes with its own quantum of unease.

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Mahrez penalty saved as Manchester City held by Borussia Dortmund

The final whistle was celebrated with a rasp of relief, hugs and handshakes, an exhausted but elated Jude Bellingham sinking to the turf, a stirring curtain call in front of the Yellow Wall. It meant something to Borussia Dortmund, at least. They qualified for the last 16 with a performance of maturity and ambition, one that might even – with a little more poise and penetration in the final third – have ended with all three points.

That their opponents were largely going through the motions was of only the barest relevance. Of course Manchester City came to win. It’s just that if they had really needed to, you sensed they would probably have found a way.

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Will the novelty of Erling Haaland scoring – again and again and again – wear off?

Assessments of the Manchester City striker’s first season in English football have been reduced to a counting exercise

There was another Erling Haaland Moment at the weekend. If you didn’t see what happened, I’m afraid I’m going to spoil the ending for you: he scores. The moment came about 20 minutes into Manchester City’s game at Brighton when Ederson sent forward a long goal-kick. Haaland chased it. Robert Sánchez, Brighton’s goalkeeper, came and missed it. All that remained was Haaland and the Brighton defender Adam Webster, shoulder to shoulder, vying for the ball.

Football has a familiar and established lexicon for describing what happened next. You could say Webster “lost out”. You could say he “came off second best”. You might even say he was “shrugged” or “muscled” off the ball. And yet somehow none of these phrases would really do justice to what happened. Webster just sort of … detonates.

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Richard Gould, critic of the Hundred, named new ECB chief executive

Former Somerset and Surrey CEO replaces Tom HarrisonAppointment shows ECB wants to rebuild bridges with counties

Richard Gould has been named as the new chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board in a sign that the governing body is trying to rebuild bridges with the counties after the divisive Tom Harrison era.

The former Somerset and Surrey chief executive has been an outspoken critic of the Hundred in the past, and while he will doubtless strike a more conciliatory tone at the ECB his appointment increases the likelihood that changes will ultimately be made to the franchise competition.

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‘So yeah, I wrote this piece …’ Jonathan Liew meets Jonathan Agnew

In 2019 an article about Jofra Archer led to an incendiary Twitter row and a very public falling-out. Last month, our writer and the BBC’s cricket correspondent met to talk things over

Late one Sunday evening in April 2019, I was on a train from Manchester to London when I received a series of Twitter messages from the BBC cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. As would soon become clear, this was no friendly social call. Agnew was incensed with an article I had written on the media reaction to the selection of Jofra Archer for England. His response, robust and laced with personal insults, would be widely reported in the press and almost cost Agnew his job.

Last month I sent Agnew a text and asked if he wanted to talk things over. We met at his local in Lincolnshire to discuss everything: cricket, broadcasting, race and diversity, that article, those messages. But before all that, we discussed a young Guyanese cricketer who Agnew briefly met as a teenager in the Surrey second XI.

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Classy Casemiro brings balance to Manchester United’s midfield at last | Jonathan Liew

Against Chelsea, the Brazilian, Bruno Fernandes and Christian Eriksen looked like a slick, modern and fully functional unit

And you can sit there all night, playing with your silly machines. By the end of this taut and thrilling match, the iPads and the tactics boards had been stashed away. Graham Potter and Erik ten Hag stood on the touchline, contemplating this 1-1 draw, looking drained and perhaps even a little concussed by the experience. It had been a game of stratagems and counter-stratagems, plans made and then remade, two coaches trying to control the space on the pitch with the space in their heads. But ultimately this is also a contact sport, a thing of guts and loins, of inches and millimetres, of who can win the grapple and who can summon the courage to leap highest when everything is on the line.

There have been more consequential games between Chelsea and Manchester United over the years. Louder games. Better and more exciting games. But perhaps never a game that has felt like more of an intellectual exercise, that has been so unashamed of its own erudition. As Potter and Ten Hag traded blows on the touchline, the evening began to splinter a little, not so much a single game of football as several distinct campaigns, a ceaseless and gripping battle for supremacy in which both teams probably got what they deserved.

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Traits that made Cristiano Ronaldo great now hasten his painful decline | Jonathan Liew

Manchester United player lost a child and is struggling as his athletic gifts erode away. Does he not deserve compassion?

Cristiano Ronaldo trained alone on Friday. In a way it was the perfect image: a footballer who perhaps more than any other embodies the trope of the individual superstar, the idea that one man can do it on his own, doing it on his own. The television cameras were there to film his arrival and they were there a few hours later to film Erik ten Hag as he weathered a squall of Cristiano-related questions. The soap opera continues. But for now the football career is on hold.

Ronaldo will not feature for Manchester United against Chelsea on Saturday afternoon. He has been suspended for storming down the tunnel after refusing to come on as a substitute against Tottenham on Wednesday. The word is that United will again try to move him on in the January transfer window, and may even pay him to leave.

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Ronaldo-less United have more than enough for Spurs – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew and Troy Townsend after the midweek round of games in the Premier League

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Today: Manchester United put in possibly their best performance under Erik ten Hag, helped somewhat by a lacklustre Spurs side – the game topped off by Cristiano Ronaldo stomping down the tunnel before full-time.

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