Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 72

Old-school racer Vincenzo Nibali gears up for what may be his last Giro d’Italia | Jonathan Liew

The Italian who races on instinct rather than power data will pay an emotional visit to his home town of Messina next week

The Giro d’Italia begins on Friday and Vincenzo Nibali is not going to win it. We should probably be clear about that at the outset. Nibali has won it twice before, in 2013 and 2016, but that was a younger and hungrier man.

Now he is 37, has not won a race of any real repute in three years and missed a big chunk of training time after catching Covid earlier in the year. When Nibali says his main goals are to ride for his Astana-Qazaqstan teammate Miguel Ángel López and hopefully pick up a couple of stages, he is not bluffing.

Continue reading...

Everton re-energised while Leeds look limp – Football Weekly

Max Rushden is joined by Jonathan Wilson, Robyn Cowen and Jonathan Liew after a weekend of Premier League football that saw Leeds’s relegation worries deepen

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: at the bottom of the table Everton and Burnley secured vital wins as they continue their fight against relegation while Leeds’s 4-0 loss at home to Manchester City means they are very much in the mix now.

Continue reading...

Back in the last-chance saloon: Richarlison and Everton beat the odds again | Jonathan Liew

Brazil forward knows all about last chances and his winner against Chelsea was proof of his deep reserves of spirit

It was the last trial. The last chance. After countless rebuffs and rejections, a 12-hour bus journey to Belo Horizonte for an open training session with América’s under-17 side awaited him. If he failed to make the grade at the Brazilian club then not only would he have no real future in football, but he also had no way of getting home. A one-way ticket was all Richarlison de Andrade could afford. No safety net. No second chances.

Perhaps in a parallel timeline, Richarlison does not impress the América scouts that morning. Perhaps he turns an ankle and is forced to limp to the sidelines, dejected and distraught. Perhaps he hitches a lift back to his home town of Nova Venécia, just off the eastern seaboard of Brazil, and goes back to selling sweets from a cart. Perhaps like many of his hometown friends, he ends up running drugs, in prison or in the ground.

Continue reading...

Survival of Everton and Lampard may hinge on creaking Goodison Park | Jonathan Liew

The club are due to move to a new stadium but hopes of avoiding relegation rest on three games at their old fortress

The average English adult in the 1890s was about four inches shorter than today, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident that when trying to navigate one’s way around Goodison Park.

The ceilings are low, the doorways and gangways narrow, the seating evidently designed with the more compact late-Victorian posterior in mind.

Continue reading...

Michail Antonio strives in vain to add twist of unknown for West Ham | Jonathan Liew

The forward brings unpredictability to his side and offers their best chance of retrieving the deficit against Eintracht Frankfurt

As the minutes leaked away in east London, the trickle of West Ham fans heading for the exits began to swell and thicken: first dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands. By full time there were white plastic seats as far as the eye could see. Perhaps this will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever found themselves trapped in the infamous London Stadium kettle, where the queues outside Stratford station can last well over an hour and you eventually begin to wonder whether you will ever see your family again.

Still, with West Ham straining every sinew in search of a famous equaliser, it was a strange look. Certainly, you had to wonder at the risk-reward calculus. Cons: potentially missing a defining last-minute goal in your team’s first European semi-final for 46 years. Pros: getting a seat on the Jubilee Line. And as the home side slipped to a disappointing if eminently retrievable defeat, it felt like an appropriate metaphor for a game in which they could just have dared a little more, dreamed a little harder.

Continue reading...

Michael Antonio strives in vain to add twist of unknown for West Ham | Jonathan Liew

The forward brings unpredictability to his side and offers their best chance of retrieving the deficit against Eintracht Frankfurt

As the minutes leaked away in east London, the trickle of West Ham fans heading for the exits began to swell and thicken: first dozens, then hundreds and finally thousands. By full time there were white plastic seats as far as the eye could see. Perhaps this will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever found themselves trapped in the infamous London Stadium kettle, where the queues outside Stratford station can last well over an hour and you eventually begin to wonder whether you will ever see your family again.

Still, with West Ham straining every sinew in search of a famous equaliser, it was a strange look. Certainly, you had to wonder at the risk-reward calculus. Cons: potentially missing a defining last-minute goal in your team’s first European semi-final for 46 years. Pros: getting a seat on the Jubilee Line. And as the home side slipped to a disappointing if eminently retrievable defeat, it felt like an appropriate metaphor for a game in which they could just have dared a little more, dreamed a little harder.

Continue reading...

No pause for thought as Villarreal run into relentless Red hurricane | Jonathan Liew

Facing Liverpool was a quick-fire interrogation for the Spanish side, who suffered concussive red blows on a torrid night

Van Dijk to Konaté back to Van Dijk to Thiago and in a flash Thiago’s gone and he gives it to Fabinho Fabinho to Robertson and he’s running oh God he’s running and Díaz is making the run Henderson is making the run you see Salah out of the corner of your eye but Robertson is cutting inside and there’s a big space between Juan and Pau so you close it but now Mané is free and Robertson crosses Díaz goes for it plus some other red shirt is that Mané and the ball runs out for a goal-kick and breathe you can finally breathe. Oh Christ, is that Jota getting ready to come on?

This, insofar as you can even express it, is the experience of facing Liverpool at their best: football without punctuation marks or pause for thought, a dizzying stream of consciousness, a quickfire interrogation that you can barely process, let alone begin to follow. It took 16 years for Villarreal to reach their second Champions League semi-final and a little over two minutes for them to lose it. In all likelihood it may have felt even quicker than that: just a concussive blur of red streaks, the sound of triumphant songs and the taste of blood rising from your lungs, the sensation of being a long way from home and completely out of place.

Continue reading...

Paul Pogba’s wasted prime should be a cause for sadness, not scorn | Jonathan Liew

While few would claim Pogba has been a success at Manchester United, his decline reflects the deep dysfunction at the club

That first training session. Has ever a training session been so romanticised and mythologised as Paul Pogba’s first for Juventus in 2012? Is there a training session you would rather have been there to see in the flesh? “He is not real,” Giorgio Chiellini remembers thinking as they watched their new teenage magician at work. “Are they blind in Manchester?” Gigi Buffon exclaimed. “We were just laughing in total disbelief,” Andrea Pirlo later wrote. “That a player with so much obvious quality was able to leave a club the size of Manchester United for free.”

Well, you can write your own joke there. And yet as United prepare to part ways with Pogba for a second time, having spent almost £90m to buy him back, you will find very few at the club who feel even the slightest twinge of regret. “Fuck off,” the United fans roared at him as he was substituted against Norwich last week, six years of bottled frustration finally finding its voice. This will, in all likelihood, be Pogba’s epitaph at United: a profligate indulgence, an expensive failure, a player who can be safely jettisoned with the minimum of fuss.

Continue reading...

Everton execute cynical Anfield plan perfectly but still comfortably lose | Jonathan Liew

The visitors tried everything to derail Liverpool but it was only enough for an hour’s respite against Jürgen Klopp’s team

With eight minutes to go in a petty and ill-tempered Merseyside derby, Michael Keane received a pass in his own penalty area. Normally Keane is a pretty decent ball-playing centre-half, with the ability to advance out of defence and spring quick attacks. But then, very little about his afternoon had been normal.

Keane’s sole job here was to destroy: to clear crosses and then boot the ball as far away as possible. He completed three passes all afternoon. And so as Dele Alli rolled the ball casually towards him you could see a certain horror rising in him, the flustered panic of a man who had absolutely not prepared for this turn of events. With red shirts hunting him down, Keane simply fled towards the sanctuary of his own corner flag, gingerly carrying the ball with him as if it were a leaking bin bag.

Continue reading...

Liverpool v Everton may still be a derby but it is no longer a rivalry | Jonathan Liew

While the red half of Merseyside has flourished under Jürgen Klopp, the blue side have lost their direction in recent years

For Evertonians, perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the past week has been the number of Liverpool fans and former players reflecting on what a shame it would be if they got relegated. “I would be sad and I’m sure there’s a lot of other Liverpool fans who’d feel the same,” Ian Rush said on Friday. Jürgen Klopp used his press conference to lament Everton’s plight, admitting he would miss the derby if they ended up in the Championship next season.

In a way, the outpouring of lament is its own sly little twist of the knife. Turns out Everton could bear Liverpool’s hatred. They could live with the taunting and the tribal banter. It’s the sympathy they can’t stand.

Continue reading...