Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 70

Primal power of Kyle Jamieson is one of Test cricket’s great wonders | Jonathan Liew

The towering bowler’s almost mythic qualities will be a major hurdle for England to negotiate if they are to win at Lord’s

It was around a quarter to five, with Joe Root and Ben Stokes settling in and nerves just beginning to jangle, that Nasser Hussain on Sky Sports urged New Zealand to bring Kyle Jamieson back into the attack. Alas, on this occasion his timing was slightly unfortunate. For as the camera homed in on Jamieson at long-leg, the giant fast bowler was just in the process of stifling a large yawn.

You couldn’t blame him, really. For one thing, he had already put in quite the shift earlier in the afternoon: eight back-breaking overs that had ripped out England’s top order and left them close to a chaotic defeat. For another, Test cricket when played at its normal pace must feel terribly languid and laborious to Jamieson, a man who in his short international career has become accustomed to things unfolding in a tremendous hurry.

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Toxic relationship with money an elephant in the long room at Lord’s | Jonathan Liew

Lord’s works the senses so thoroughly that attendees of England v New Zealand barely notice it working their wallets

The second evening at Lord’s, and the day has begun to sag a little. The cricket begins to lose its grip on you, a day of breezy sunshine has made you sleepy, and so you decide to stretch your legs and take a stroll. You stop for a cup of tea, which costs £3.10. Tap. Bleep. The tea merely draws attention to your empty stomach and so you join the ragged queue for a portion of fish and chips at £12.50. Tap. Bleep.

You walk a little longer, past the pasty stall, past the gin concession, past the souvenir shop and Great British Fudge emporium. A little way beyond there’s a charity collector shaking a tin. An invitation to book a tour of the ground. Tap. Bleep. It’s all so easy and frictionless, a sunlit orchard of card readers all arching their boughs towards you and promising you a little pleasure.

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Ukraine players offer their suffering nation a moment of joy and clarity | Jonathan Liew

For 94 minutes these bruised and grieving men managed to shut out the world and throw themselves into their sport

Trauma can produce a devastating clarity. It paints the world in new and shocking colours, ruthlessly strips away what matters from what doesn’t, dulls the pain with pure adrenaline and primal instinct. Car crash victims talk of calmly strolling away from a burning wreckage. Survivors of dreadful accidents often chat lucidly away to the paramedics while lying in their own blood. When pushed to extremes, humans have a limitless capacity to endure, to carry on, to do the thing that is needed.

A lot of the speculation ahead of this game centred on how Ukraine’s footballers would cope with their first international fixture since the invasion of their country. Whether, for all the goodwill and generosity they have encountered, their lack of match practice would ultimately be the telling factor, that the emotional burden would take its toll in the pivotal moments.

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Champions League chaos proves football is run by authorities hostile to fans | Jonathan Liew

Were the indignities experienced by fans a large-scale outbreak of bureaucratic incompetence or something more sinister?

For once it is the still photos that capture the scene better than the videos. Were one to base one’s impression of the hellscape in Paris on Saturday night on the grainy, shaky moving footage alone, one would probably conclude it was a lawless, seething moshpit of disorder: of youths scaling spiked fences, gates being rattled and clattered, a ceaseless stream of teargas and baton charges. But the overwhelming sensation being conveyed by the thousands of fans massed outside the Stade de France was stasis: the quiet, festering frustration of nothing moving, nothing changing, nothing happening, a sea of thwarted humanity waiting patiently for hour upon hour, as if queueing for bread.

So much for the what. The manifold indignities and inconveniences visited upon fans at the Champions League final on Saturday – long lines, denial of entry, a lack of stewarding and security, police brutality – have been well documented in the subsequent days. What is missing from all this is any sense of the why. Why did Uefa and the French authorities allow this showpiece occasion to degenerate so catastrophically? Was it simply a large-scale outbreak of bureaucratic incompetence? Or was something more sinister at work?

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Eduardo Camavinga: the supersub ready to shape Real Madrid’s future | Jonathan Liew

With Toni Kroos and Luka Modric blocking his path, the 19-year-old has had to bide his time in Spain but there is no player of whom Liverpool will be more wary

Eduardo Camavinga is not accustomed to waiting. This is a man for whom everything has happened in a tremendous hurry. The youngest player in Rennes’ history, at 16 years and four months. The youngest to be named player of the month in Ligue 1. The youngest male France international for more than 100 years. For Camavinga, the trajectory of his career has been steep, swift and spectacular. Until, that is, he joined Carlo Ancelotti’s Real Madrid, and was forced to bide his time.

Camavinga signed for Madrid on the final day of last summer’s transfer window, an all-action midfielder coveted across the continent. The fee, £26.6m with add-ons, looked a bargain for a teenage prodigy of rare versatility and poise. With Toni Kroos and Luka Modric well beyond 30 and Casemiro having just crossed that threshold, Camavinga was rapturously welcomed in the capital, and immediately tipped to take the Bernabéu by storm.

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The man who can fix anything: Carlo Ancelotti defies time and critics | Jonathan Liew

Real Madrid coach is not afraid to hand decisions to his players as he looks for a fourth Champions League title as a manager

Perhaps the best insight into how Carlo Ancelotti manages big games came as the final whistle blew at the Bernabéu this month, with Real Madrid leading Manchester City 2-1 and another 30 minutes in prospect. While Pep Guardiola drew his players into a tight huddle, explaining exactly what he needed from them, Ancelotti calmly strolled over to Marcelo and Toni Kroos on the substitutes’ bench and asked them who they thought he should bring on in extra time. Because he wasn’t really sure.

Of course if Real had lost that game and City qualified for the Champions League final, you could easily spin that anecdote into a tale about how a passive Ancelotti lost the plot, about how Guardiola’s clear-headed gameplan won the day. Ancelotti has seen and done it all at club level, and yet he is often the first to admit that the first secret of management is that you need a little luck.

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Todd Boehly’s vision for Chelsea? Glossy spectacle and ruthless profit | Jonathan Liew

Judging by his time with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Boehly will sanction big spending as long as he sees even bigger returns

A billionaire completes a spectacular takeover of one of the world’s most cherished sporting institutions and immediately goes on a lavish, jawbone-loosening spending spree. New signings pile up like presents under the Christmas tree. Debts spiral into the hundreds of millions, piquing the ire and envy of their rivals. But on its own terms, it works: success is duly bought, the people placated, the sport gently bent to its will.

This is the story of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team under Todd Boehly and his business partners and, for all the sense of cataclysm and upheaval surrounding Chelsea of late, what is most striking of all is what hasn’t changed. Results on the pitch have largely been maintained: the same players and the same coach playing roughly the same level of football in front of roughly the same people. Third place and Champions League football next season were secured. And now one ambitious tycoon has simply been replaced by another.

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Lawrenson’s retirement marks the end of football punditry’s era of innocence | Jonathan Liew

He did not rant, laugh or ‘destroy’ anybody: Mark Lawrenson reached back to when sport on TV was still light entertainment

This is no tribute. In many ways to break out the violins for Mark Lawrenson would really be to miss the true essence of the man. You may even have missed his retirement last week amid the opera of season-ending farewells. Divock Origi gets a guard of honour at Anfield. Mike Dean gets a 1,500-word valedictory feature in the Athletic. Lawrenson, by contrast, simply slipped away with a droop of the shoulders and very possibly a wry quip about not letting the door hit him on the way out.

Which does feel a little strange, even when you take into account the fact that Lawrenson has now been in gentle recession from our screens for some time now. There was still the odd radio gig, semi-regular appearances on Football Focus, the weekly prediction column for the BBC Sport website. But it has also been a curiously inconspicuous retreat, given that – if you give it a moment’s thought – most football fans in this country will probably have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours watching Lawrenson’s face over the years.

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Manchester City’s glory, Raphinha in the stands and Mbappé – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Troy Townsend and Jonathan Liew to reflect on a momentous final day in the Premier League

Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.

On the podcast today: it went right to the wire at the top and bottom of the Premier League as Manchester City had to come from two goals down to overcome Aston Villa and earn their fourth Premier League title in five years. Meanwhile at the bottom, Leeds beat nine-man Brentford to secure a place in the top flight next season at the expense of Burnley.

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Gündogan joins Manchester City heroes in a win for the club’s people | Jonathan Liew

City showed rare vulnerability for a super-club but recovered to win the Premier League and send their fans into raptures

The greatest lie in sport is that winners embody strength and character, that losers embody frailty and brittleness. That victory is the inevitable function of mental fortitude and warrior spirit, and defeat its opposite.

Manchester City’s eighth English league title was clinched at their moment of greatest weakness, in one of their worst performances of the season, from a place where all hope had deserted them. And it felt perfect.

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