Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 7
May 17, 2025
FA Cup final buildup, Celtic’s trophy day, playoff action and Bundesliga – matchday live
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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May 16, 2025
Will Hughes: ‘I don’t like the limelight … you’ve got to remember the priority is football’
Crystal Palace midfielder on the hype in his early career, ‘shit’ VAR and embarrassment of the 2019 FA Cup final
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.”
It’s the week of the FA Cup final and there’s a frisson in the air. But Hughes is happy to talk about anything and everything: the good, the bad, the ridiculous. What the first trophy of his career would mean. How a wispy teenage No 10 turned into one of the Premier League’s toughest, most reliable midfielders. Why VAR is “shit”. Whether he was ever as good as everyone said he was. Why he doesn’t really watch football.
May 13, 2025
Beyond the runs: Virat Kohli’s obsessive intensity left indelible mark on Test cricket | Jonathan Liew
The retiree’s final innings may have been unremarkable but his entire career was a testament to his relentless pursuit of excellence which helped redefine Indian cricket
At dawn on a pale pastel morning in late January, thousands of fans started queueing outside the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. Before long the queues turned chaotic. Scuffles broke out. Three people were injured and a police motorcycle was damaged. Armed security personnel were deployed inside and outside the venue, occasionally stepping in front of the sightscreen and causing play to be stopped.
But the consequences of Virat Kohli playing his first domestic red-ball game for Delhi in 12 years are less interesting than why he was there in the first place. Kohli rolled up in his Porsche two days before the game, arriving early to beat the crowds and so he could fit in a full gym session before team fitness drills and net practice. Desperately short of form, and yet a desperate romantic, Kohli had come to worship at the altar. One last crack at Test cricket. One last attempt at rekindling the skill that had long deserted him.
Continue reading...May 11, 2025
Triviality of the non-title decider leads to fun, frivolity and petty booing | Jonathan Liew
Had Liverpool and Arsenal been playing for the league, the heckling of Trent Alexander-Arnold wouldn’t have occurred
In the 95th minute, Martin Ødegaard ran through on goal. The Arsenal fans in the Anfield Road stand lurched forward in anticipation. Somewhere in the great gantry in the sky, Brian Moore was clearing his throat. It’s up for grabs now! Alas, the Premier League was denied what would surely have been one of its all‑time great moments by Ødegaard dragging his shot wide. Also, to be fair, by the 15-point gap between Arsenal and Liverpool.
And for all the rich entertainment on display here, it was hard for the neutral to ignore the sheer dizzying gulf between how important this could have been, and how important it actually was. Goals and cards, intrigue and controversy, late drama in both penalty areas: this was a game with everything you could possibly want from a title decider, except an actual title to decide.
Continue reading...May 9, 2025
Two decades of the Glazers: a debt of morals at United with football paying the bill
Fans protested against the leveraged takeover but were offered little support and the toxicity has had a lasting impact
The first time the Glazer family visited Old Trafford, in June 2005, they paid a visit to the megastore. Outside, hundreds of furious Manchester United fans turned up with banners and placards, shouted slogans such as “Die Glazer die”, and a few clashed with police. Inside, the Glazers were doing a spot of – and here we must stretch the word to its broadest possible definition – shopping.
For Joel, Avram and Bryan had no intention of doing anything quite as undignified as parting with their own cash. Instead they swarmed the aisles, scooped up armfuls of replica shirts and merchandise, which shop staff dutifully ran through the tills and bagged up. When the time came to leave, the Glazers simply took the bags and left. This was, after all, all their own property, theirs to take and use as they pleased. And as a metaphor for how they intended to run Manchester United over the next 20 years, it is about as good as any.
Continue reading...May 6, 2025
Simone Inzaghi hails Inter for beating ‘best two sides in Europe’ on way to final
Simone Inzaghi claimed that his Inter team had beaten “the best two sides in Europe” on their way to the club’s seventh European Cup final.
Inter beat Barcelona 4-3 in extra time here, and 7-6 on aggregate in a spectacular semi-final. Inzaghi’s side also put out Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals, and although the Inter coach was wary of the threat posed by Paris Saint-Germain or Arsenal, he was also keen to recognise the scale of their achievement so far.
Continue reading...Frattesi fires Inter into final as Barcelona fall short in seven-goal instant classic
Fittingly, after three-and-a-half hours, the 13 goals and the three invasions from the substitutes’ bench, the heavens opened: a downpour that also felt like a kind of baptism. Inter and Barcelona had drained themselves many times over, and discovered every time that they still had more to give. We were in a place beyond plans and maps, beyond shapes and tactics, beyond sanity.
And so ended what turned out to be less a Champions League semi-final and more of an elongated scream, the sort of game that emerges when both sides give up on perfection and in so doing somehow manage to produce it.
Continue reading...Untameable darts crowds tell us about the future of sport – and maybe society too | Jonathan Liew
Booing and flashpoints are commonplace in a sport further along on a journey that others are taking to varying degrees
Let me tell you the moment I realised Boris Johnson was fucked. It was late 2021 and there had been some talk about parties in Downing Street during Covid, but in these febrile siloed times, when the entirety of human existence has blurred into a single personalised scrolling feed, who even knows what constitutes “the news” any more? Who knows what fragments of reality ever emerge from Westminster’s furiously spinning vortex of unintelligible jargon: prorogue, backstop, Aukus, Slapps? What is a Morgan McSweeney and what time does it start?
But then came the magical night, a few days before Christmas, when the darts crowd turned. As Florian Hempel swept to a routine first-round win against Martin Schindler (bit of an upset, to be honest, but you never write off Flo at the Palace), Alexandra Palace rocked to strains of “Boris is a cunt”. Fans held up signs reading “Work Event”, drew pictures of cheese and wine and gleefully held them up to the cameras. And you realise, with a piercing we’ve-lost-Cronkite clarity: oh wow, he’s fucked.
Continue reading...May 4, 2025
Cole Palmer takes aim at ‘idiots and trolls’ as Enzo Maresca lauds star man
“The kind of player who can do things that no one expects,” Enzo Maresca said of Cole Palmer after this game. Still, pretty much the last thing anyone expected Palmer to do in mid-January was to go 18 games without a goal in all competitions.
Now, with the drought finally at an end courtesy of a late penalty against Liverpool in a 3-1 win for Chelsea, Maresca said that Palmer was “not happy” with his lack of goals in the last few months, and backed him to help the side “reach something important” in the crucial last few games of their season.
Continue reading...Chelsea 3-1 Liverpool: Premier League – as it happened
Chelsea aided their hopes of Champions League qualification with an excellent win over the champions
“There’s no point in keeping players that Slot won’t play, so Chiesa and Nunez go, maybe others”, emails Nigel Guest. “Robertson is fading, so we need another left back. Salah desperately needs a good backup. He can’t keep playing every minute. Otherwise, it depends who else leaves.”
Yep, certainly a bonafide right winger is needed, as well as a right back if/when Trent Alexander-Arnold departs. I would personally keep Robertson for his experience and buy a top younger left-back for him to mentor, such as Bournemouth’s Kerkez or Fulham’s Antonee Robinson. Maybe sell Tsimikas, although the Greek is dependable. Another excellent centre-back, to challenge Konate and Van Dijk would be prudent, if they can afford that. The goalkeeper situation is interesting, given Giorgi Mamardashvili is going to join this summer from Valencia.
We have to try to manage the emotions. We have regained our momentum by winning some games. We are playing against winner players with winner mentality, so I expect a tough game.
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