The podders look back on the opening round of games in the Champions League. Plus, previews of Liverpool v Chelsea, the rest of the big games in the Premier League, and the secret behind Huddersfield’s successSubscribe and review: iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, AcastToday’s Football Weekly Extraaaa sees AC Jimbo, Raf Honigstein, James Horncastle and Barry Glendenning chew over the first round of Champions League fixtures. There were big wins for Leicester at Brugge and Manchester City, and even bigger ones for Barcelona over hapless Celtic, and Bayern Munich and Dortmund. No such joy though for Arsenal, who were lucky to draw in Paris, and Spurs, who lost 2-1 to Monaco in front of 85,011 fans. Ouch! Continue reading...
It was an apt defeat, for the culture shock was not about moving up the road, it was about Spurs finding themselves in elite European footballDon’t blame Wembley. Don’t blame the spiffy dressing rooms or the slightly different tone and timbre of the noise around those deeply tiered stands on a close, sweaty night in London.In many ways Tottenham’s 2-1 opening Group E defeat to an excellent Monaco team was perfectly apt, entirely at home in its surroundings, a fine metaphor for the Premier League’s wider engagement with elite level European football. Wonderful staging. Endless hunger for the spectacle, with that record crowd announced over the PA even as Spurs attacked at the end. All combined with a sense of...
Claudio Ranieri described Leicester’s prospects of winning the Champions League as ‘impossible’ but their travelling fans were of a different opinionOne down, 12 matches to go. “Impossible,” says Claudio Ranieri and the Leicester City manager may well be right when he rules out the prospect of the English champions being crowned kings of Europe, but the first step on a long road to the final was taken with the minimum of fuss on a balmy evening in Belgium.The phrase ‘dream start’ barely does it justice as Leicester’s inaugural Champions League match turned into a belated extension of their title celebrations, with Ranieri’s players cantering to a victory that was every bit as comfortable as the scoreline suggests. “Don’t take me...
Barcelona and Bayern have already flexed their muscles and the chances of the leading lights not reaching the lucrative knockout stages are negligible, which is just as Uefa desiresIt is not exactly news that the Champions League group stage has become dull and predictable – chances are you might have heard the complaint before – but it is coming to something when the greatest spectacle as well as the only genuine surprise of the first match day were both provided by the weather in Manchester.The biggest clubs have long had it far too easy in the first phase. The competition is more or less drawn up to guarantee them safe passage to the post-Christmas knockout stage and Barcelona and Bayern...