The Premier League’s lack of downtime is much maligned – but few clubs are truly idle over an ever more frenzied ChristmasThe Champions League returns this week and, for many, the most thrilling football tournament in Europe and arguably the world starts now. The wheat has been separated from the chaff, the Juves and Bayerns from the Qarabags and Maribors. As the first country in the history of the competition to have five teams through to the last 16, England’s interest in the knockout stages has never been greater, even if José Mourinho believes it will end sooner rather than later because of the absence of a winter break in the football calendar.Speaking in November, the Manchester United manager poo-poohed...
Ralph Hasenhüttl has belief in the match-winning debutant who ‘only brought one pair of boots with him from England’It could have been all so different for Diego Forlán. So he thought, at least. Some years back he famously told an interviewer the tale of his last match for Manchester United, against Chelsea in 2004. Sir Alex Ferguson told him to wear boots with soft-ground studs but, feeling more comfortable in moulded, low studs, he ignored his boss. Late on, Forlán lost his footing in front of goal and missed a chance and was never picked again. After RB Leipzig’s late win at Borussia Mönchengladbach on Saturday, it appears that Fussballgott is very much on the side of Ademola Lookman. Three...
Eintracht went second in the Bundesliga for 19 hours after the league’s hardest-working team triumphed againIt was short, but oh so sweet. For 19 hours following their 2-0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach on Friday, Eintracht Frankfurt were second in the Bundesliga, with just Bayern Munich ahead of them. It wouldn’t last, of course, with Bayer Leverkusen, Schalke and the other riders in a sub-champion field still to play, but Die Adler were determined to make the most of their “one-night stand”, as sporting director Fredi Bobic put it after.“I said before the game,” Bobic continued, “that if we win, we have to take a picture and frame it.” Maybe, in a season where no credible challenger to Bayern has emerged...
Saturday’s win at their fellow strugglers sparked the sacking of Markus Gisdol and raised hopes of an unlikely escapeAlready, it threatens to be the story of the season. FC Köln were dead, buried and we were just waiting for the post-mortem. Following the worst start to a Bundesliga season in the competition’s near-55-year history – no wins and three draws in the first 16 games, which finished off one of the club’s greatest coaches ever, Peter Stöger – the patient hasn’t just woken up. They’ve put their best clothes on, left the hospital and gone out clubbing.Saturday’s vital win at fellow strugglers Hamburg, who Effzeh are now only three points behind, was their third in a row since breaking their...
Dortmund wanted to return from the winter break with a clean slate but Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang’s exclusion ruined thatA new year, a new Borussia Dortmund. That was the plan after a fractious, difficult and sometimes traumatic 2017, which took in the stress of parting company with two head coaches and – more seriously – the horror of the attack on the team bus in April before the Champions League quarter-final with Monaco. Following the exit of the influential head scout Sven Mislintat to Arsenal, still affected by being marginalised under former coach number one Thomas Tuchel, the failure of former coach number two, Peter Bosz, is still being unpicked by his replacement Peter Stöger.Looking at the team sheet for Sunday’s resumption...