Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 71

Glory awaits but first comes the pain for Guardiola and Manchester City

Victory against Aston Villa will secure another Premier League title, although City’s history shows it may not be that easy

To this day Joleon Lescott still hates watching the final day of the 2011-12 Premier League season. Arguably it was his error, a poor defensive header allowing Djibril Cissé to equalise for Queens Park Rangers, that set up the most thrilling climax seen in English top‑flight football.

And so for Lescott the memory of Manchester City’s greatest day evokes a plethora of varying emotions, not all of them pleasurable. “I just don’t enjoy it,” he confides in 93:20, the documentary commemorating City’s triumph. “I want it to be cleaner. I want a 3-0.”

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Joe Clarke played a game that trivialised rape: England cricket should demand better | Jonathan Liew

If he cannot prove he is no longer the man who engaged in ‘foul sexism’ on a WhatsApp group, how does he represent all of us?

The rules of “Stat Chat” were simple enough. The game would begin the night after Joe Clarke returned from England Lions duty in the United Arab Emirates. “Got to be freshies,” Alex Hepburn wrote in their shared WhatsApp group, meaning women they had not slept with before. “Names, age, black or white, your rating, their rating.”

“No reheats allowed,” Clarke confirmed, meaning women they had slept with before.

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FA Cup final win encapsulates essence of Emma Hayes’s Chelsea | Jonathan Liew

Manager has built a durable, controlled side over a decade and it was telling in the victory against Manchester City

Chelsea are not a sentimental team by nature. Nor are they a team who appear overly preoccupied by questions of style and process. They can play football from the stars and football from the gutter – often in the same game, occasionally even in the same move. They are not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ugly or unappealing side to watch. But nor, by the same token, do they crave approval in the slightest.

What does this mean in practice? If you are Jess Carter, it means that, when Lauren Hemp starts running at you with 80 minutes played in the FA Cup final, at the head of a five-on-three Manchester City counterattack, you immediately and instinctively chop her down. If you are Sam Kerr, it means that even when you have barely had a touch of the ball all game, you still somehow leave the pitch with two goals and a medal round your neck.

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Old traditions meet modern convention in FA Cup final of promise | Jonathan Liew

Liverpool and Chelsea clash at Wembley on Saturday with a rich history of Cup success in today’s changing landscape

Ah, the Cup final. All that pomp and ceremony, the classic rites, the time-honoured rituals. The tingle of anticipation as we approach the sacred 4.45pm kick-off. A bespoke set from the world-famous house DJ Pete Tong in the buildup. Banners and placards honouring the competition’s airline sponsor. The traditional taking of the knee. And then, after a peep of Craig Pawson’s whistle, a football match played almost entirely without conventional strikers.

One of the greatest misconceptions about the FA Cup over the years is that it has failed to move with the times. In fact, ever since the first final at the Kennington Oval 150 years ago people have been messing around with it, tweaking and tampering and trying new things. It was the first competition to use goal nets and experiment with numbers on shirts; the first to embrace VAR; the first to allow games on a Sunday. Third-place playoffs have come and gone. At its best the FA Cup is not simply a time capsule or historical re-enactment. It can show us who we are and where we’re going.

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Chelsea’s Christian Pulisic: ‘I want to be on the pitch. I enjoy this club a lot’

American probably faces tough summer decisions but his focus is on the FA Cup final and making this ‘a pretty successful season’

Which direction is Christian Pulisic going in? For most of his career, it was a question that preoccupied opposition defenders; more recently, it is one Pulisic has perhaps begun to ask himself. Pulisic is 23 years old, a player of rare poise and skill, by common consent the greatest male footballer to come out of the United States. Back home his face is used to sell energy drinks, computer games, burritos and peanut butter chocolates. The path to stardom has been blazed and beaten with an inexorable momentum. Now he’s here, a Champions League winner at one of the biggest clubs in the world. And yet.

Pulisic has started only 12 league games this season. A few days before this interview his father, Mark, went on Twitter to express – and then quickly retract – his disappointment at his son’s treatment at Chelsea. The FA Cup semi-final, the Club World Cup final, the Champions League second leg against Real Madrid: Pulisic was left on the bench each time. “The sad thing is he loves this club, teammates, and London,” Pulisic senior wrote. “Puts his heart and soul into being a pro. Onwards and upwards my boy ... big six months ahead.”

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Resurgent Naby Keïta keeps Liverpool going when the limbs are screaming | Jonathan Liew

The midfielder, something of a forgotten man at Anfield on occasion, has found his place this season and his energy has helped to drive Jürgen Klopp’s side

By the end, Alisson was trying to waste time. Sadio Mané was listlessly dribbling the ball into the corner in an attempt to burn away a few more seconds. Deep into injury time Naby Keïta started rolling around on the turf in apparent agony. Was it a cruciate? A broken leg? A debilitating muscle tear that would put him out for the season? Happily, as a victorious Keïta disappeared into the embrace of his teammates just a few seconds later, we have to conclude that he may just survive the night.

Curiously, given his famously forthright views on teams adopting cynical tactics in an attempt to win games, Jürgen Klopp had very little to say about any of this afterwards. But then, perhaps it was understandable that aesthetics would be the last thing on his mind at Villa Park. This was the sort of win you have to extract like one of your own teeth, the sort of win that almost feels too debasing to truly celebrate, the sort of win you pull out on the day your title rivals sign Erling Haaland for next season.

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Global star and Australian icon: Chelsea’s Sam Kerr has triumphed against the odds | Jonathan Liew

The forward’s magical second goal against Manchester United was a snapshot of her incredible ability and belief

About four years ago, as the 2017-18 Ashes reached Perth, someone organised a game of football between the travelling English media and their West Australian counterparts. We assembled on some nondescript piece of suburban scrubland, the standard was extremely mixed and after Michael Vaughan slotted home the winning penalty we all retired to the bar for the most important business of the day.

As we sat there with our schooners, a local women’s team was heading out to train on the pitch we had just vacated. One of them was incredible. She had feet like hands. She had a head like a foot. She had a shot like the lash of a velociraptor’s tail. Clearly, I extrapolated, this woman was destined for bigger things. Bigger stages. Someone needed to discover her, find her an agent, get her a trial and a boot deal. I hastily made inquiries behind the bar.

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City fans reminded of healing powers of De Bruyne and likely league title | Jonathan Liew

Events in Madrid were bone-chilling, but Pep Guardiola has the tools to ensure supporters’ heartbreak is brief

How do you mend a broken heart? Not literally, that is. If you’re Manchester City, your solution to a broken heart would probably be to spend £30m on hiring the 50 best heart surgeons in the world to defibrillate it for the next 10 years.

But emotionally speaking, the time-honoured way of getting over a recent trauma is to surround yourself with loved ones, throw yourself into your work and rediscover the simple pleasures in life, which in City’s case usually involves dishing out merciless spankings to bottom-half Premier League sides. Here it was the unfortunate Newcastle United who would be City’s boxercise class, their family‑sized tub of Häagen‑Dazs, their 3am booty call to a long-lost ex.

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Four-game scrap to keep Leeds up can whet Marsch’s appetite for adversity | Jonathan Liew

American manager enjoys constructive confrontation and Sunday’s trip to Arsenal begins a critical test of his mettle

The mood in the room was heated, bordering on mutinous. It was January 2015 and the New York Red Bulls had decided to organise a town-hall meeting with season-ticket holders, a decision they were quickly beginning to regret. Ten days earlier the club had sacked their wildly popular coach Mike Petke. Now, on a freezing Friday night in Harrison, New Jersey, about 300 furious Red Bulls fans wanted to know why.

Even though the meeting was supposed to be off the record and no media were invited, footage of the chaotic evening quickly found its way online. The general manager, Marc de Grandpre, and sporting director, Ali Curtis, were mercilessly heckled and interrupted at every turn. “You guys don’t know shit!” one fan shouted at them. Some supporters demanded a refund of their season tickets. Others simply wanted to express their disdain for the decision to sack Petke, a man who had led the Red Bulls to some of the greatest successes in their history, and replace him with an unfancied young coach called Jesse Marsch.

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David Moyes has taken West Ham far but failure to adapt cost them | Jonathan Liew

Ride to Europa League semi-finals has been a joy for fans but club must now decide if it wants more or just treads water

The clock was ticking. Eintracht Frankfurt, two goals up on aggregate, looked comfortable but not impregnable. And even with 10 men, West Ham were enjoying plenty of possession and had four substitutes left to deploy. And so, with a European final at stake and the climax approaching, the world eagerly awaited David Moyes’s next move.

As it turned out, Moyes’s next move was to attack a ball boy and get himself sent off. So close. The margins in this game, and all that. And although this tie was probably already gone by the time he was slinking down the tunnel, the angry veins in his temples finally receding, the departure of the West Ham manager felt like a bizarrely fitting epilogue to this semi-final, one that began in east London in a bouquet of bubbles and euphoria, and ended on the banks of the River Main in ignominy and anticlimax.

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