Real Sociedad and Athletic Bilbao’s delayed Copa del Rey final will be an historic occasion – even without any fans to witness itThey have waited a long time for this, just not for it to be like this. Saturday night’s Copa del Rey final between Real Sociedad and Athletic Club, the Basque derby staged almost 1,000km south in Seville, should have been played 12 months ago. Instead, it was postponed by the pandemic and a decision that defines these two historic representatives of a unique place, a country: together, they refused to play without their people. But it’s not that, or not only that.It’s not just that this match, the match, will take place a season late and, with supporters...
The Norwegian goal machine is obsessed by the Champions League but he may have to move to play in it next seasonEven for a man who is making racing through his footballing to-do list his calling card, it was an abrupt exit. It was “exactly 14 seconds after the full-time whistle”, noted Bild’s Mirko Frank and Jörg Weiler, that Erling Braut Haaland was in the tunnel at Köln’s Rhein-Energie Stadion, tired of the gloomy scenario that his own last-minute equaliser had done little to alleviate.The sense of Borussia Dortmund’s talisman having his patience stretched had been bobbing to the surface for much of the afternoon. Once again he had done the necessary, opening the scoring early on to suggest a...
The Bianconeri slumped to defeat by Benevento but senior figures at the club cannot lay all the blame on the managerPippo Inzaghi put his arm around Andrea Pirlo’s shoulder before kick-off at the Allianz Stadium. It was an instinctive moment of reconnection between two men, who played together for a decade at Milan. They were brought to San Siro by the same agent, Tullio Tinti, in the summer of 2001 and shared more than 200 matches side by side.As players, they achieved some of football’s highest highs. On the footage of Milan’s 2007 Champions League final win over Liverpool, you can see them in an identical pose, Inzaghi pulling his friend close as they head for the changing rooms at...
The £220m of attacking talent at Stamford Bridge has been a rare puzzle, but Thomas Tuchel’s job is to make it work – now he has the missing pieceWith 33 minutes gone at Stamford Bridge something startling happened. There are moments in the life of a successful team that come to be seen as transformative. It might be pushing it to see outright ignition, a lightning bolt, the man of many parts creaking up from his trolley, neck bolts whirring, in a breakaway goal from an attacking trio with a combined record of five goals in their past 66 Chelsea games before this second leg.But then, it really was a brilliant goal. And something did seem to stir here, enough...
Peter Bosz’s side looked to be back on track after winning at Gladbach, then lost at home to struggling Arminia BielefeldThe fall is always, it seems, on the way after the slippery part of the road has been negotiated. In a difficult start to 2021 for Bayer Leverkusen, Peter Bosz has tried many things to shake his team out of their funk. This week, the coach prescribed to the old adage of never changing a winning team. He kept the same XI that won, crucially, at Borussia Mönchengladbach last week, the first time that he had named the same starting line-up for successive Bundesliga matches in over a year. Trust appeared to be the watchword of the week.So why, then,...