Christian Pulisic and Mario Götze excelled in a ruthless, full-throttle victory at Wolfsburg which made mincemeat of the predictions after a summer of turmoilEverybody loves a shock result on the opening day of the season. What was so unusual as the Bundesliga got back to business was that Borussia Dortmund’s comprehensive victory at Wolfsburg on Saturday afternoon – last term’s third-placed finishers winning at the team that ended third-bottom, having to win the dreaded relegation-promotion play-off to save themselves – felt as if it was one of them.Given that this summer was supposed to tidy up some loose ends at Westfalen, it’s been far from a smooth ride for Dortmund and their fans over the last two-and-a-bit months. After the...
Some think Juventus are vulnerable but can Milan, Napoli or any of the other contenders really prevent them from winning a seventh straight Serie A title?If you can’t beat them, join them. But what if they can’t beat you? Leonardo Bonucci turned the old adage on its head this summer, swapping the Juventus team where he had won six consecutive Serie A titles for a Milan side that haven’t finished higher than sixth for four years.Can one transfer transform a division? Just ask Juventus, whose signing of Andrea Pirlo after he was discarded by Milan in 2011 was arguably the most crucial factor in launching them back to the pinnacle of Italian football after their post-Calciopoli wilderness years. Bonucci is...
Lyon top the table after Ligue 1’s first match day after a 4-0 win over Strasbourg – an emphatic validation for their reconfigured attackBy Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French Football NewsIt seemed too familiar for Lyon in the early going, even if the faces were different. Nabil Fékir is flagged offside, Mariano Díaz finds himself in a good position but shoots straight into the hands of the Strasbourg goalkeeper Bingourou Kamara, and Memphis Depay, hugging the touchline, foolishly concedes a throw-in. Fékir and Lyon’s three other attackers, Depay, Díaz and Bertrand Traoré, looked set to dazzle without any end product, their skill on the ball for nought as they struggled to break down a side who looked...
Barcelona inserted the Brazilian’s €222m buyout clause last year as a Not For Sale sign but playing second fiddle to Messi and the benefits of a world-record transfer have seemingly turned his headAt the end of Barcelona’s comeback against Paris Saint-Germain in March, their hero leapt on to the advertising boards at the north end of the Camp Nou, fans surging forward at his feet, still barely able to believe what they had just seen.At first he swayed a little but they held him steady and so he stood above them, fist raised, taking it in. From below, a match photographer, Santiago Garcés, pointed his camera. Within two days, 70 million people had seen the picture of the night, which...
The forward’s likely destination is Real Madrid for a world record £160m fee – in another age it would not happen but history suggests it may work outWhat do you get if you cross Kylian Mbappé with Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Love Island, Jeremy+Corbyn+hot+leaked+pics and What Is Wrong With My Thumbs? It’s hard to say for sure. But thanks to the hive-mind thought-invasion robots of the internet you are at least now reading this article about the brilliant, wonderful Mbappé and the most interminable, clickbait-heavy transfer story of football’s great summer of money.Most things don’t happen. Often football transfer talk is a kind of currency in itself, a semi-detached entity, enough to lubricate the cogs, push related deals along and keep...