They may be foreign-owned corporations featuring few homegrown players but we should celebrate English club successes built on the blurring, not the building, of bordersNous sommes les meilleurs! Wir sind die Besten! We are the cosmopolitan, financially skewed, managerial-outsourcing champions!It turns out the English aren’t coming. Look out of the window. We’re already here, in Madrid and Baku, Porto and Amsterdam, complaining about the milk, circling the cafe chairs, standing arms-spread on the hotel bar, simultaneously drunk on English exceptionalism and also deeply mistrustful of the phrase “English exceptionalism” because it contains a lot of syllables. Related: How English football rules Europe (with a little help from foreigners) Related: Premier League: 10 things to look out for on the final...
Manchester City, Liverpool and Spurs provided three remarkable nights – and the Premier League climax is next upThis week, football has improvised the perfect movie script, full of fight, heart, desire, determination, tears of anguish, tears of joy, unsung heroes taking centre stage and the impossible becoming possible. This movie is a true story that ended with two English teams reaching the Champions League final, proving that maybe the Premier League is the best in the world after all.Now it goes into its final weekend with Manchester City one apparently inevitable win from the title while just behind them Liverpool, after Tuesday night’s miracle at Anfield, can make up for any domestic disappointment at the Champions League final in Madrid...
Technique must now be matched by physique and Klopp’s side used old English virtues to blow away a decadent BarcelonaTalk all you want about great European nights. Talk of the swell of the crowd, the roaring emotion inside Anfield. Talk of St-Étienne and Olympiakos and Borussia Dortmund. Talk of glory and heart and implausible goalscoring heroes, of Fabinho’s energy, Trent Alexander-Arnold’s wit and Jordan Henderson doing it on one leg. All that played its part. But talk also of Barcelona’s impotence in the maelstrom, of the familiarity of their problems, and conversely of the way in which Jürgen Klopp has resurrected the great historical virtue of English football: its power.When a three-goal advantage is overturned, of course it is a...
A club great as a player is a pariah because of his dealings with the Sun when manager, yet he seems deeply remorseful. Does he care enough to try to heal the wound?Perhaps you may have seen that clip recently of Graeme Souness getting so worked up in the television studios about the jargon of modern football, so aggrieved by what he perceives to be the loss of old-fashioned values, that he has a fit of pique and ends up flinging his pen across the desk in front of him.It is classic Souness: dyspeptic, unflinching, never one for concealing his feelings. It is a big part of what makes him so watchable as a pundit. Everything will be fine, then...
Rafa Benítez stood in the way of Jürgen Klopp’s title challengers but fate had other plans on a topsy-turvy night at St James’ ParkLunchtime was fast approaching when Liverpool’s morning charter flight taxied towards the private terminal adjacent to Newcastle airport. Travelling Premier League teams do not usually touch down with only hours to spare before kick-off but, right now, almost every conceivable margin is becoming uncomfortably tight for Jürgen Klopp and his players.With a domestic title and an improbable Champions League semi-final comeback to pursue, Liverpool are all out of wriggle room and it is not only their travel schedule that is being squeezed. On the pitch there is no room for error; not when Klopp’s team headed back...