The man who guided Marseille to Champions League glory is seldom remembered outside France and Belgium but his tactical wizardry and brushes with crime render him a fascinating figureThe first final after the rebranding of Europe’s premiere club competition as the Champions League took place 27 years ago this Tuesday. It was a stinker. Marseille, who beat Milan 1-0 in Munich, had contested an even grimmer final two years previously, losing the European Cup on penalties to Red Star Belgrade. Two lustreless showpieces are part of the reason why Marseille’s then manager, Raymond Goethals, is seldom recalled as a great outside France and his native Belgium despite an extraordinary career spanning nearly four decades. Related: Daniele Massaro: ‘The Marseille defeat...
Gino Pivatelli does not have a prominent place in the hearts of Milan fans but a foul in a European Cup final and telling Arrigo Sacchi he wasn’t good enough changed historyYou can plan, you can plan and you can plan some more and then something happens over which you had no control, that you couldn’t reasonably have been expected to foresee, and everything changes. That’s not to say that there’s no point in coaches and directors planning, but it is to say that there are times when entirely external events take control – and that doesn’t have to mean something as enormous as coronavirus. Football can turn on events that seem random, unconnected, unpredictable – the bounce of a...
Liverpool were utterly dominant but could not deliver the killer blow and allowed a defiant Atlético to come back from the dead Midway through this second leg, as the black shirts fell back into their carefully-stitched patterns, as Liverpool’s players struggled a little in their familiar home spaces, it was hard to avoid the feeling of a pair of hands reaching almost imperceptibly for the lapels, the clavicle, and finally the throat. This was a beautifully controlled strangulation, enacted in plain sight by Diego Simeone’s Atlético Madrid.But it was also a heist, a rearguard victory during which the Atlético goal seemed to be protected by some invisible membrane, sealed within a kind of high-strength footballing clingfilm. Related: Atlético Madrid and...
Only 10 months after Tottenham reached the European Cup final they hit the buffers in Leipzig – it looks like a long way backSo farewell then, Tottenham. Who knows when our paths will cross again? A fixture they embarked upon with a puncher’s chance and plenty of underdog spirit ended merely in crippling defeat and more questions. A broken team that under the joyless stewardship of José Mourinho has been broken still further, they looked here exactly what they are: the eighth‑best team in the Premier League, exhausted and error-prone, bad in defence and bad in attack, with no discernible long-term strategy and no identifiable short-term plan. Related: RB Leipzig leave Lloris squirming and hurry Mourinho's stale Spurs to the...
Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Juve and others have become short-termist as domestic success has bred complacencyJust wait for the knockout phase of the Champions League. That’s when the season really gets going, that’s when the real football begins. That’s when you get the festival that justifies the tedium of the group stage, the greatest football ever played, the glorious pay-off for the grotesque iniquities of the game’s financial structure.Ah. Related: Pep Guardiola expects 'incredibly aggressive' Manchester United in derby Atalanta’s story is romantic but this is the first season in which the last 16 all come from the richest five leagues Continue reading...