For all the Manchester City player’s sustained Premier League brilliance he has not had a crowning wider world momentYou failed. No matter. Fail again, fail better. All very well. But when you’re as good as Kevin De Bruyne – which is, to be clear, very good indeed – and as the bloom of those peak years continues to roll by, you probably want to start nailing a few of those moments too.“We need to learn, it’s not good enough,” De Bruyne told the TV cameras nine months ago, wreathed in Beckettian despair in the bowels of Estádio José Alvalade. Defeat by Lyon had capped Manchester City’s Champions League run at the quarter-finals for the third successive year, and for the...
Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel prioritise dropping deep, pulling wide, aiding the collective and protecting possessionManchester City’s leading Premier League goalscorer this season is Ilkay Gündogan with 13. Jorginho tops Chelsea’s scoring chart with seven, followed by Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount and Timo Werner who are all on six. And yet these are the two sides who will contest next week’s Champions League final.Among elite clubs over the past decade there has been a clear tension between those who focus on celebrity, the big-name goalscorers, and those who prioritise the collective. Neither is necessarily right nor wrong, but as the age of Lionel Messi (who has become increasingly a celebrity individual having been key to one of football’s greatest collectives)...
Real Madrid were unable to cope with Chelsea’s power but Thomas Tuchel’s side need to be more ruthless in the finalHow do you kill that which cannot be killed? How do you stop the white-shirted spectre from rising once again as a Champions League semi-final reaches its decisive final moments? Just a thought. But sticking the ball in the net might be a start.On a glorious, occasionally excruciating night at Stamford Bridge Chelsea simply ran right through Real Madrid, with N’Golo Kanté a commanding, decisive presence. Frankly they should have won this game 6-0. Madrid looked gone after 20 minutes, an ageless team grown old, unable to cope with Chelsea’s power and spring. Related: Chelsea power past Real Madrid to...
There have been more obviously brilliant performances by City but none surely so calm or complete as PSG lost their headsEverywhere you looked, people were losing their heads. There was Ángel Di María stamping on Fernandinho. There was Leandro Paredes hurling the ball at an opponent. There was Marco Verratti, seconds after being booked, pulling Riyad Mahrez’s shirt. There was Presnel Kimpembe and Danilo flying into challenges. There was Mauricio Pochettino, having at one point marched on to the pitch to try to calm his side, giving up and sitting glowering on the bench. And there was the Dutch referee Bjorn Kuijpers smiling beatifically, determinedly keeping 21 players on the pitch, although had one of those late lunges brought a...
Serial Bundesliga champions will judge their new manager not by titles but rather a handful of European knockout matches Julian Nagelsmann is 33. This summer, he will fulfil what always seemed his destiny and become manager of Bayern Munich, the club he supported as a boy growing up in Landsberg am Lech, the Bavarian town where a young Johnny Cash was stationed with the US air force. It is a story with an almost mythic quality: the young professional suffering serious knee injuries and committing himself to coaching, emerging as the brightest talent of the dominant German school. But this is where it gets real; this is where he has to win.Nagelsmann will face the problem common to all managers...