By the end of the 5-1 Champions League capitulation there was an air of sadness, of a wonderful manager caught in the final stages of a long goodbyeThis was a strange, decelerating, ultimately rather sad occasion for a great club and a wonderful manager caught in the final stages of his own torturous long goodbye. Before kick-off a caravan of two hundred or so Arsenal supporters had staged a procession from Highbury to the Emirates in protest at Arsène Wenger’s continued employment, a kind of Jarrow march for the parochially enraged of north London. “We want you to go, we want you to go,” they sang on the streets outside the stadium. “No New Contract,” the signs read. Which, as...
HSV’s malaise has run deep this season, and it will need a real shift in terms of collective responsibility to avoid a season’s end as ruinous as its start“This is something that can’t be allowed to happen, but it has happened.” Just when life starts to look good again, along come Bayern Munich. Or more specifically in Hamburg’s case, a trip to Munich to face them in the Allianz Arena. Among a squad of shell-shocked players, few seemed quite as humbled as the captain, Gotoku Sakai, after Saturday’s 8-0 drubbing by Bayern. In terms of even recent historical perspective, it was hardly a coupon-buster. Starting from 2010, Hamburg’s reverses on their visits to Bayern have been by the scores of...
It was raining goals in Manchester on Tuesday but where does City’s 5-3 win over Monaco stand alongside other great Champions League nights?Dynamo Kyiv’s wonderful team of the late 1990s deserved a Champions League final – but on a pulsating night at a packed Olympiyskiy they threw away the best chance they would ever have. It was exquisite fare for much of the evening and, when Andriy Shevchenko squeezed in his second goal of the night two minutes before half-time, seemed to be going precisely as the old master Valeriy Lobanovskiy had designed. Moments later Michael Tarnat’s daisycutter of a free-kick restored some doubt but Vitaliy Kosovskiy’s 50th-minute goal – capitalising on some sloppy defending – suggested Dynamo would cut...
The embattled manager saw his team fold at disturbing speed against Bayern despite the efforts of a frustrated Alexis Sánchez, and the end now seems a lot nearerAt times, as Arsenal’s players flickered in and out of focus during a traumatic second half in Munich, it was almost possible beneath the roars and whoops and gurgles of a sated home crowd to hear the sound of something else. Departures, farewells, changing trains, a little distant exit applause.For 15 first‑half minutes this Champions League last 16 first leg had swung wildly on its axis. From 1-0 down Arsenal were led back into the game by a passage of thrillingly angry, high-energy centre-forward play from Alexis Sánchez, who became briefly an embodiment...
Their late win at Ingolstadt was the spirit of Old Bayern, as they are perceived nationally, and made it 25 points from 27 to go seven points clear at the topThere simply had to be some sort of tribute and, in the event, there was more than one, conscious and subconscious. As Bayern Munich worked to just about chisel out a win at struggling Ingolstadt – which ultimately proved to be even more valuable than it might have first appeared – it was impossible to ignore the context of the match, unfolding just four days after Philipp Lahm confirmed that he would indeed be retiring from football at the season’s close.The most ostentatious hat tip to the captain was in...