Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 96

Lennon quits Celtic and Guardiola gets his coat – Football Weekly Extra

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Liew, Ewan Murray and Jacqui Oatley to review this week’s Champions League games, tackle a host of questions that have never been asked before and talk coats

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The pod discuss Manchester City overwhelming Mönchengladbach, as Pep Guardiola bemoans his side’s finishing while sporting a Partridge-esque branded jacket.

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Published on February 25, 2021 07:11

Imperious Manchester City hypnotise Gladbach into compliance | Jonathan Liew

The mesmerising dominance of Pep Guardiola’s side made a talented team look like a bunch of choreographed patsies

The critical passage of this game, you felt, arrived around an hour in, when Borussia Mönchengladbach – 1-0 down and having just enjoyed a rare shot on goal – threw on two attacking players in attempt to wrestle back control. On came Marcus Thuram and Valentino Lazaro, jogging on to the pitch with vim and purpose, pointing in various directions for no reason, in the way that substitutes often do.

At which point, with Ederson in possession, Manchester City simply walked the ball up the pitch and scored. Ten passes in total, broken only by a desperate sliding clearance from the midfielder Florian Neuhaus by his own penalty spot. Then 16 more passes, ending with João Cancelo’s pinpoint diagonal, Bernardo Silva’s header across goal and the finish from Gabriel Jesus. Thuram and Lazaro had been on the pitch for two minutes. Neither of them had yet treated themselves to a touch of the ball.

Guardiola has restored not just City’s principles and philosophy, but their aura too

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Published on February 24, 2021 15:09

'He killed me': Angeliño takes aim at Guardiola over treatment

Leipzig left-back was with Guardiola at Manchester CityHe claims he was judged on two friendlies and not trusted

There appears to be little love lost between Angeliño and Pep Guardiola. Having made his transfer to RB Leipzig permanent this month, the left-back has spoken of his unhappy return to Manchester City in 2019, claiming he was cast adrift on the basis of two pre-season games and blaming Guardiola for not having the courage to put him in the starting XI.

“He killed me,” said Angeliño, one of the Bundesliga’s most exciting players with eight goals and 11 assists, and a key part of Julian Nagelsmann’s team. “The confidence, for me, is everything. And when you don’t have the trust of the coach, it’s everything. I was judged on two games in pre-season, and then I didn’t get my chance for a few months. It’s hard to play one game every two months.”

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Published on February 24, 2021 08:56

Big club power grab in danger of going unnoticed in football's infinite scroll | Jonathan Liew

Fatigue from a seemingly never-ending fixture list means outrage at the actions of self-interested clubs appears to be in short supply

There is a concept in web design called infinite scroll, which you will be familiar with if you’ve ever used Twitter, Facebook or any other popular social media site. Essentially, it’s a piece of code that automatically adds new pages whenever you reach the bottom of the old one, allowing you to keep scrolling forever.

Football’s infinite scroll has been longer in the gestation, but its effects are largely similar. Last week it was announced that every Premier League fixture would be broadcast live until fans can return to stadiums: a move that will create a largely unbroken chain of televised football stretching from restart last June until at least May. On one level, this is a feast of football the likes of which we have never experienced in our lives. But to what end?

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Published on February 22, 2021 14:00

Ubiquitous Cancelo a symbol of Manchester City's thirst for carnage | Jonathan Liew

Nominally a versatile full-back, the Portuguese played an elusive anti-role – popping up in places you would least expect

On a mild Sunday Cancelo evening at the Emirates Gündogan Stadium, Manchester Fernandinho City restored their Cancelo 10-point lead at the top of De Bruyne Fernandinho the Premier League with Gündogan a comprehensive victory against Arsenal. Bernardo after being blown Fernandinho away in the early Stones Fernandinho part of Zinchenko the game, Arsenal gradually Sterling Bernardo came into Cancelo the match more and Mahrez more as it went on, but were ultimately Fernandinho unable De Bruyne to strike Cancelo the Gündogan telling Cancelo blow.

Quite disorienting, isn’t it? Hard to follow. Probably very annoying. This, in essence, is what it is like playing Pep Guardiola’s side at their best these days, a team running rings around their opponents, the rest of the Premier League and very often each other. Here it was Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal who blew and puffed and chased all evening, at times even threatening to earn an unlikely point. But even in their slackest moments City always seemed to have extra gears in them, extra reserves that they would only use if they had to.

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Published on February 21, 2021 11:42

Making a superhero: how Pelé became more myth than man | Jonathan Liew

Netflix’s new film captures the legendary Brazilian’s genius, but its lead character remains a fascinating enigma

Casa Pelé, the small two‑room house in Três Corações where Pelé was born in 1940, is now a popular tourist attraction. As no photographs or descriptions of the original house have survived, it was rebuilt entirely from the memories of Pelé’s mother, Dona Celeste, and his uncle Jorge, with period furniture and fixings sourced from antique shops. And so what greets visitors today is really only a vague approximation of the house where one of the world’s most famous footballers spent his earliest years: a heavily curated blend of hazy memories and selective detail. As you walk in, a wireless radio plays classic songs from the early 1940s on an endless loop.

As it turns out, this is also pretty much how Pelé himself is remembered these days. It’s 50 years since he played his last game for Brazil. Only a fraction of his rich and prolific playing career has survived on video. The vast majority of us never saw him play live. And so for the most part, the genius of Pelé exists largely in the abstract: something you heard or read about rather than something you saw, a bequeathed fact rather than a lived experience, a processed product rather than an organic document.

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Published on February 19, 2021 00:00

Liverpool rediscover sense of joy and magic in the home of the Magyars | Jonathan Liew

In the city where the Magical Magyars beat England 7-1, Klopp’s side were rejuvenated as he taught the young apprentice Julian Nagelsmann a lesson

The main stadium in Budapest used to be the Nepstadion, or “People’s Stadium”: the vast marble-lined Communist-era monolith where the Magical Magyars beat England 7-1 in 1954 and Louis Armstrong played to 80,000 people in 1965.

A few years ago it was demolished and replaced by the Puskas Arena: a vast and costly monument to the vanity of Hungary’s right-wing populist prime minister Viktor Orban, and which for one night only was the designated home ground of RB Leipzig, a club from 500 miles away established by a soft drink company to get round Bundesliga ownership rules. If you wanted a snapshot of European football in 2021, then this felt like a pretty good place to start.

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Published on February 16, 2021 15:32

India protests highlight uncomfortable links between cricket and establishment | Jonathan Liew

Some of the country’s best-known players have been united in their condemnation of those such as Rihanna and Greta Thunberg who have questioned the treatment of farmers

As seasoned followers of the genre will doubtless be aware, the recent online feud between Rihanna and Pragyan Ojha is by no means the first example of a global pop superstar and a former Surrey left-arm spinner clashing over issues of domestic policy. There was the regrettable and very public spat between Zafar Ansari and Bruno Mars a few years back over civil service pensions. And who could forget the classic early-1990s episode of Newsnight when Keith Medlycott and Aretha Franklin angrily weighed in on opposite sides of the privatised utilities debate?

In box-office terms, however, the Rihanna/Ojha dispute could end up topping them all, largely because it’s the only one that actually happened. What actually happened was that Rihanna shared a CNN article about the protests by Indian farmers, which have mobilised hundreds of millions around the country. “Why aren’t we talking about this?!” Rihanna tweeted.

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Published on February 15, 2021 11:46

Guardiola's free spirits expose Tottenham's predictability

José Mourinho’s stale Spurs unable to change the script as they are swept away by Manchester City’s swashbuckling style

There was a moment around six minutes in, when the score was still 0-0 and the promise of this game was still fresh and Tottenham still harboured fanciful ambitions of a credible 2-1 defeat rather than a 3-0 trouncing, and Harry Kane got the ball in the centre circle.

There wasn’t much on, but with a single, magical dip of the shoulder, he wriggled past Bernardo Silva and Rodri and bore down on the Manchester City penalty area. Alas, this was the point at which reality bit. Despite having just shrugged off two blue shirts, Kane was now confronted by four more. With no player in his vicinity, all Kane could do was keep dribbling until he lost the ball. Which, with a dulling inevitability, he did.

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Published on February 13, 2021 11:54

Post-striker Manchester City may be Guardiola's latest masterpiece | Jonathan Liew

No goalscoring centre-forward, no problem for the Premier League leaders – and the contrast with opponents Spurs is stark

A couple of weeks ago Pep Guardiola was asked about Manchester City’s shortage of options up front. “If we dream that the striker is going to solve our problems,” Guardiola replied, “we are not going to win the games. What will help us to still be there is the way we play.”

One of the hallmarks of this strange season, with its relentless churn of games and ceaselessly shifting narratives, is that what might once have been considered anomalous or remarkable now passes with barely a murmur. Sunday 7.15pm kick-offs. Champions League games getting moved to Hungary. And, perhaps most strangely of all: Manchester City are on course to win the Premier League while playing large chunks of the season without a recognised striker.

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Published on February 12, 2021 12:00