Draw at Napoli was yet more evidence that the manager’s bond with his players has improved results immeasurablyAs the curtain came down on Napoli’s 1-1 draw with Roma, Lorenzo Insigne turned and booted a water bottle back toward his bench. His body language spoke less of rage than resignation. The player’s hopes of leaving his boyhood club with a Serie A title as a parting gift had already dimmed with defeat to Fiorentina in the previous round.Still, this was a day that could have belonged to him. Insigne’s well-taken penalty put Napoli ahead for 80 minutes. A win would at least have kept them in touching distance of the summit. Instead, someone else had taken hold of the narrative. Not...
To follow PSG and Chelsea, Sevilla were the latest team to suffer from Carlo Ancelotti’s men’s powers of recoveryIn the middle of it all, someone fetched David Alaba a chair. It was late, it had been a long week, his legs were weary and everyone were making a lot of noise, but this seat was not for sitting. This was for celebrating, his thing now, and so he took it and lifted it above his head. Back by popular demand, he emulated what he had done after that absurd comeback against Paris Saint Germain, a cheer went round the dressing room and his team-mates started singing: “That’s the way Madrid win!”They had only gone and done it again, and this...
Champions League defeat at the Bernabéu was a gladiatorial spectacle where the visitors left everything out on the fieldHow do you kill that which cannot be killed? Sanctioned, escrowed, hawked about the place like a bag of meat in a country pub: but still that self‑fuelling, indissoluble substance that is Chelsea Football Club continued to roll along on an extraordinary night at the Bernabéu.There was defeat with honour for Chelsea here, a 3-2 win over 120 thrilling, gruelling, relentlessly high‑craft minutes that translated into a 5-4 loss on aggregate. But the numbers hardly told the story, on an evening that felt also like a kind of farewell, a Viking funeral for an undeniably glorious part of this club’s history. Continue...
Four years on from a famous title-chasing failure against Fiorentina, Napoli allowed history to repeat itselfFour years have passed since Napoli “lost a Scudetto in the hotel”. That was how Maurizio Sarri explained things after his then team was thrashed 3-0 by Fiorentina in April 2018, effectively ending their title bid. They had begun the weekend with hopes of going top of the table but suffered an emotional collapse after watching Juventus come from behind to beat Inter the night before.The Bianconeri trailed that game as late as the 87th minute, despite playing with an extra man for more than an hour. They should have gone down to 10 themselves when Miralem Pjanic, already booked, leapt knee-first into Rafinha at...
It was like looking through a window of the past at a squad full of familiar faces. They were still too strong for ChelseaThe world, we are told, is in a state of chaotic and unprecedented flux.Technology is changing our lives at a frightening rate. All across the globe, societies are fracturing and falling apart. The destruction of the planet is accelerating before our eyes. Every passing week seems to bring new ruptures, new shocks, new disfigurements. Continue reading...