Lampard gets it, Solskjær too. Sentimentality goes a long way in football – but it takes more to win a titleIn most lines of work your job application would discarded straight away if you listed “getting it” as a key skill. Be aware that it might come across as slightly vague, a bit fluffy, damning evidence of a lack of substance. You would probably be written off as a spoofer attempting to blag your way through life. A bluffer. A charlatan. A fraud.Unless, of course, you happen to be applying for a job as manager of a football club grasping for a way to connect with a discontented fanbase. Then it makes perfect sense to place a heavy focus on...
The club should take their lead from Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham and forge a real team ethosThe premise of Good Morning Transfers, a new Sky Sports segment that begins on Monday, is that the present transfer window is poised to be the biggest, best and most expensive of all time and viewers will naturally wish to tune in from 9am just to make sure they did not miss anything while they were sleeping. Related: Gianfranco Zola turns down new role at Chelsea and targets job as manager Continue reading...
Zinedine Zidane identified the Belgian in 2010. Finally he has his man and Hazard will start despite the heftiest competition“I would take Eden Hazard with my eyes closed.” Zinedine Zidane’s words are not from this week or last; they’re not from last year, the year before, or even the year before that. Real Madrid’s manager said that in April 2010, almost a decade ago, when the Frenchman was just about to return to the Bernabéu as presidential adviser and Hazard was 19 and playing for Lille. He was also, Zidane said, “the star of the future”. Now, aged 28, he is Madrid’s present, not just their latest galáctico but their first for five years. He has been a long time...
Bewitching winger is set to depart Chelsea as an old-fashioned showman whose majesty cannot be told in numbersOne of the things that always stood out watching Eden Hazard play for Chelsea was the way the game sounded a bit different when he had the ball. The press seats at Stamford Bridge are low down and right behind the managers’ dugout, a kind of clanky metal pillbox crammed with swivelling press-box heads.From there you can hear most things that happen on the pitch quite clearly, from the clicks and clacks of the ball being passed and trapped; to the familiar deep thunk of David Luiz attempting one of his full-body tackles, those moments where he simply runs right through his man...
The manager could go after winning the Europa League and a top-three finish. Eden Hazard is on his way. It sums up ChelseaYou hope Maurizio Sarri enjoyed his first trophy in professional football – but this, surely, was not how he imagined it when he whiled away the hours working on the foreign exchange desk at a bank in Florence. Perhaps he had dreamed of one of the great citadels of European football, of Wembley or San Siro, of the Camp Nou or the Luzhniki, but instead he got the Olympic Stadium in Baku. It is a place so ill-conceived that not only is the stadium inaccessible to most of Europe but the pitch seems inaccessible from most of the...