A good start under Bruno Labbadia has festered optimism with Die Wölfe having already upstaged Leverkusen and SchalkeLooking into one’s crystal ball a fortnight ago, it would have been no surprise to learn that following the meeting between Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg on the Bundesliga’s second weekend, one team would have six points in the bag, while the other would be waiting to get off the mark and preparing to spend the international break doing a spot of soul-searching. If you’d have seen Wolfsburg being the former and Leverkusen the latter, you might have been tempted to give the ball an extra polish. It may be just two games in but you can forgive those from Lower Saxony for feeling...
City’s acclaimed behind-the-scenes documentary shows the soft power that has been bought by their Abu Dhabi ownersIt was the best of times, it was arguably not really the worst of times. Either way we once again have football public relations to thank for a tale of two cities. In Manchester we have Manchester City, whose enjoyable and interesting fly-on-the-wall Amazon documentary has received almost nothing but plaudits.Despite the series having been quite clearly subject to a form of copy approval by the club, City have been praised for their “risk-taking”. The results have been described as “not sanitised” in the Daily Mail, which was presumably still high on the Dettol fumes. I note one particular guy in Manchester did not...
Huesca are the 63rd team to make it up to primera and they marked their first game there with an historic successOn the opening day of the season, the happiest boy in the Basque country was in the stand on Indalezio Ojanguren street, when his cool older cousin came across to get him. It was full-time and everyone had left the pitch at Ipurúa, the picturesque little home of Eibar, but Huesca winger Álex Gallar headed the other way towards the family that had flown in from Mallorca, lifted him over the barrier and together they walked across the grass holding hands, waving at the 500 fans at one end. Then they disappeared down the tunnel and turned right in...
On Ronaldo’s debut, the Bianconeri started fast at Chievo, lost their way in the middle but ultimately found a way to winAt last, the real thing. A month had passed since Cristiano Ronaldo touched down in Turin, placing Juventus and Serie A back at the centre of the football world’s attentions. Fans logged on in their millions just to see him walking on a treadmill at his medical, losing a game of foot-tennis in training and singing Portuguese pop at his team initiation.His marketing impact was obvious. Now, though, it was time to find out what he had to offer on the pitch. That Ronaldo should begin with a trip to the Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi felt apt. This was where...
To pay such a sum for a player surely past his peak seems a risk but the Italian champions have not made many mistakes latelyCristiano Ronaldo described it in matter-of-fact terms as “the moment to begin a new cycle”. In Italy the headline writers went a little bigger as they hailed Juventus’s capture of the Portugal forward as “the deal of the century”.Even the club’s most optimistic supporters might not have dreamed such a thing possible at the start of this summer. A five-times Ballon d’Or winner coming to Turin? No Serie A player had even finished among the top three vote winners for that award since Kaká won it in 2007. Related: Cristiano Ronaldo joining Juventus in €100m deal...