Is the tactical wheel turning for Jürgen Klopp, the manager whose guided chaos changed the modern game?‘Something,” Jürgen Klopp said in February 2019 after Liverpool had drawn 0-0 at home against Bayern, “changed in the world of football – everyone adapted to it and we have to make sure we adapt.”He was talking about a new-found willingness from top teams to defend. In as far as it has been possible to trace anything in the vastly changed environment of Covid-19, he was probably right – and yet watching Liverpool beat Atlético Madrid 3-2 on Tuesday, nobody could have believed football has entered a new age of attrition. And in that, perhaps, lies one of the two doubts that lurk behind...
Jürgen Klopp will have mixed feelings after a wild, ragged win over Milan that showcased all the best – and worst – of his team“Proper Champions League”. You said it, Jürgen. At times in the second half at Anfield, as the red and cream shapes spun and surged, exchanging darts and overloads, as the crowd generated that rolling surge of heat and noise under the low white lights, this felt like a kind of tribute night, a nostalgia spectacular, Those Famous European Nights redux.Part of the PR puff behind the European Super League – a wheeze the owners of these teams were so keen to embrace – was the sense these autumn games are a trudge, a schlep, cold product....
Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea team can keep dangerous opponents at arm’s length, an unusual asset in the modern eraStep back from football and amid various ups and downs, backs and forths, check-backs and dead-ends, the first 100 years of its development after the modern laws were first drawn up in 1863 can be seen as comprising roughly linear development. We started with seven forwards and one defender and we slowly moved players back until we had four defenders and two forwards. We went from a chaotic charging game, through man-marking to zonal marking. By the mid-1960s, football was mature.The changes since have been incremental. There is far less sense of forward momentum. A style of play or shape becomes modish and...
Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea team can keep dangerous opponents at arm’s length, an unusual asset in the modern eraStep back from football and amid various ups and downs, backs and forths, check-backs and dead-ends, the first 100 years of its development after the modern laws were first drawn up in 1863 can be seen as comprising roughly linear development. We started with seven forwards and one defender and we slowly moved players back until we had four defenders and two forwards. We went from a chaotic charging game, through man-marking to zonal marking. By the mid-1960s, football was mature.The changes since have been incremental. There is far less sense of forward momentum. A style of play or shape becomes modish and...
Brendan Rodgers’ side were unlucky to miss out on top four after a season racked by injuries, while Chelsea imploded but held on to fourth and Liverpool stormed to thirdAs you were, then. At the end of this most unpredictable and turbulent of seasons, a time of pandemic and insurrection, the top four places in the Premier League ended in the hands of its four biggest and richest clubs.Eight restless months after we started, English football’s new order – it turned out – looked largely like the old. Related: Leicester’s defeat to Tottenham hands Champions League place to Chelsea Related: Chelsea qualify for Champions League despite stumbling at Aston Villa Continue reading...