Aurélien Tchouaméni and Benoît Badiashile have brought in €120m in the last six months – and the players keep comingBy Luke Entwistle for Get French Football NewsNew Chelsea signing Benoît Badiashile is the latest player to emerge from Monaco’s unrelenting conveyor belt of talent and he won’t be the last. The Monaco academy boasts a star-studded list of alumni: World Cup winners Thierry Henry, Emmanuel Petit, Lilian Thuram, David Trezeguet and Kylian Mbappé all graduated from the club. When Monaco tinkered with their successful formula of youth development, signing Radamel Falcao and James Rodríguez for big money, they won Ligue 1 and reached the Champions League semi-finals, but that strategy eventually proved unsustainable. They have since returned their focus to...
With Bernardo and David Silva, Riyad Mahrez and Ben Foden left on the bench, City spent much of the Champions League defeat to Lyon crouched behind a defensive guardYou failed. No matter. Fail again. Fail in pretty much exactly the same way.How many times, Pep, how many times? The idea that Pep Guardiola over‑complicates knockout games has become such a truism it seems impossible a manager of such clarity of thought could still be following that pattern; still finding ways to insert his own anxieties,his maniacal intellectualism into the fine details of elite knockout football. Related: No excuses for Manchester City's defeat to Lyon, says Pep Guardiola Related: Dembélé at the double as Lyon crush Man City's Champions League dream...
Only one French club has been European champions but after Lyon beat Juventus no country has more teams in the last eightIf Euro 2020 had not been postponed, then as world champions France would have fancied their chances of embellishing the country’s roll of honour this summer. But when it transpired that the only competitions to take place would be the eight-team Champions League and Europa League mini-tournaments that kick-off next week, hopes of French glory faded.Only once has a French club lifted one of Europe’s top two competitions and that victory was tainted, as Marseille’s 1993 Champions League triumph came in the year in which they were stripped of their domestic title for match-fixing. This year, by contrast, events...
French clubs are still unsure when they will play again, though next season may see 22 in the top flightAs the football lamps flicker back on across Europe, France remains in the dark. A glimmer of clarity came on Tuesday as the country’s highest administrative court upheld the decision made in April to terminate the Ligue 1 and 2 seasons but, with Germany, Italy and Spain having already returned to action and the Premier League due to restart on Wednesday, French football clubs are still not sure when and how they will play again.Three clubs – Lyon, Amiens and Toulouse – had been so angered by the cancellation of the season and the “arbitrary and unfair” decision to determine the...
At his best the Tottenham record signing resembles Michael Essien but his attitude has been questioned in the pastEverybody knows how much Mauricio Pochettino loved Mousa Dembélé when the Belgian midfielder was strutting his stuff for Tottenham. “He’s one of the genius players I have been lucky enough to meet – together with Maradona, Ronaldinho, Okocha and Ivan de la Pena,” the Spurs manager once said. And everybody knows how badly he wanted to make a statement signing this summer in order to reinvigorate his project in north London.Imagine Pochettino’s excitement now. He has done the latter with the £55m club record purchase of Tanguy Ndombele from Lyon and it is a move that not only plugs the gap left...