The former Bayern midfielder has solidified a baffled, lost squad of players with methods so old-school that they’re almost ingenious againHey Bundesliga? Si senõr, the league is on. Ten games into the 2016-17 season, there are the old, familiar, expected faces at both ends of the table – FC Bayern (unbeaten und unconvincing) at the top, Hamburger SV (clueless, rudderless, irreparable) at the bottom – but otherwise, it’s a jolly good mess of smart overachievers, former giants growing in stature, elite sides mired in inconsistency and an array of sporting disasters of varying magnitude. Only six points separate the first seven teams. RB Leipzig, are second behind Bayern on goal difference after another exhilarating win, 3-1 over Mainz. While their...
A 0-0 draw at the Signal Iduna Park was a fine result for Schalke but served to increase the pressure on Dortmund’s Thomas TuchelAs if the Revierderby wasn’t claustrophobic enough, Saturday night at the Signal Iduna Park only served to squash the warring neighbours closer together. Nothing at all could separate Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 after 90 draining, goalless minutes, and in the table, too, the Royal Blues (12th and rising) and the Black and Yellows (sixth and falling) were firmly put on a mid-table collision close, having spent the opening weeks of the season at opposite ends, a million miles from each other. Related: Tim Wiese goes from Bundesliga to WWE: ‘I’ve got trash-talking in my blood’ Related:...
Napoli supporters were furious when they lost their talisman to Juventus in the summer but the Old Lady have benefited from Higuaín’s potency ever sinceIn the end, you never stop loving your own kid. Even when, technically speaking, you aren’t related. The Napoli manager Maurizio Sarri has a way with words, and his response to a TV host’s question about how he would greet Gonzalo Higuaín on Saturday was perfection. “Like a son who has pissed you off,” he explained.Higuaín enraged more than just Sarri when he joined Juventus in the summer. Napoli supporters variously set fire to his shirt, fitted it to public bins, or attempted to flush it down the toilet. “Core ‘ngrato” read the sign placed above...
On a night when most Serie A watchers were left contemplating acts of God, Roma supporters saw the restoration of their striker’s sight continueThere are no instructions in Fifa’s Laws of the Game for what to do when the ground starts to shift beneath your feet. The second of Wednesday night’s earthquakes in central Italy struck at 9.18pm, at a time when nine Serie A matches were in progress, and was felt inside several football grounds.Only one fixture – Pescara-Atalanta – was suspended as a result, and even then only briefly. Not all fans were pleased by referee Marco Guida’s decision to resume play after a two-minute pause, and a number abandoned the stadium. Although the tremors felt at the...
Supporters across Europe have long got together as a force for good but suspicions over negative aspects of tribal warfare have left British clubs behindLook out! The ultras are coming. Well, not quite. And definitely not those ones – although it depends on what your definition of an ultra is – but there are moves afoot in Britain to try to adopt a culture of support which often appears to be more misunderstood than Mario Balotelli.Whenever stories about European ultras penetrate British media they invariably come dripping with negative connotations of the fans involved: extreme violence, racist chanting, threats against players and other such depressing accounts that help portray these groups as a repugnant, often entitled, subculture within football. Related:...