Sergio Ramos’s injury limits score-settling from the 2018 Champions League final but there’s a season on the lineMohamed Salah did not disclose much in an interview with Marca last week but enough to let the Spanish sports daily with close ties to Real Madrid know that, yes, he is open to playing in La Liga one day and, yes, there is “special motivation” for Liverpool’s Champions League quarter-final on Tuesday. A reunion with the Spanish champions is one he and Liverpool have craved since their agonising night in Kyiv in 2018.There will be no opportunity to exact personal revenge on Sergio Ramos with the Real captain sidelined by injury, but there always was more to a tie with major implications...
Brushing aside Atlético showed the club are back on track and players are revelling in the manager’s counter-attacking verveThere was a sense on Wednesday night that it was almost too easy. As Chelsea held Atlético Madrid at arm’s length with a performance of tremendous purpose and intelligence, the brain was tricked into believing this was just another curiously scheduled Premier League game. Or had they perhaps brought Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final against Sheffield United forward by a few days? Only the occasional close-up of Koke or Luis Suárez, or an increasingly despondent Diego Simeone prowling the touchline, offered a reminder that this was Atlético, the leaders of La Liga, experienced old Champions League campaigners, the gnarled scrappers who eliminated Liverpool...
Diego Simeone’s team were not only outplayed but made to look physically weak and a major reset may be requiredThere was a moment just before the hour between Chelsea and Atlético Madrid when Diego Simeone, prowling the side of the pitch all dressed in black, shouted at his players: “Don’t leave the game.” Listening to his command, crystal clear and echoing round Stamford Bridge, watching what was happening or, more accurately, what wasn’t happening, you couldn’t help but think: leave the game? They’d have to get into it first. Related: 'No one wants to play us': Tuchel talks up Chelsea's European chances Related: Kai Havertz and Timo Werner click with Hakim Ziyech in a flash | Barney Ronay Related: Ziyech...
The £220m of attacking talent at Stamford Bridge has been a rare puzzle, but Thomas Tuchel’s job is to make it work – now he has the missing pieceWith 33 minutes gone at Stamford Bridge something startling happened. There are moments in the life of a successful team that come to be seen as transformative. It might be pushing it to see outright ignition, a lightning bolt, the man of many parts creaking up from his trolley, neck bolts whirring, in a breakaway goal from an attacking trio with a combined record of five goals in their past 66 Chelsea games before this second leg.But then, it really was a brilliant goal. And something did seem to stir here, enough...
His last Champions League final was in 2011, but Manchester City have it in them if the manager finds the right combinationsAs a basic rule, the best TV sitcoms tend to centre on a character stuck in their surroundings; and trapped, by extension, in their unfulfilled desires.The office manager who wants to be a comedian but doesn’t realise he’s not funny. The ennui-ridden cafe owner who falls in love with a priest and can’t escape her family. Plus, of course, the genius-level football coach in the high fashion yak-weave hoodie who can’t stop trying to win the Champions League, but keeps electing an ultimately self-destructive inverted-diamond false wingback system in the key knockout game against Dinamo Plovdiv. Related: Liverpool's slump:...