City’s rivals, still in limbo after bungling the task of replacing Alex Ferguson, are proof of the pitfalls of a poor succession planMany years afterwards, Pep Guardiola would joke that the reason he never took over at Manchester United was because he couldn’t understand Alex Ferguson’s accent. The pair went for dinner in New York in September 2012, when Guardiola was on sabbatical and pondering his next move. Over a luxurious meal and fine wine – all paid for by Ferguson – they talked falteringly about football and life and the future.“My English is not so good,” Guardiola later said, “and when Sir Alex spoke quickly I sometimes had a problem to understand him. That’s why maybe I didn’t understand...
Victory was secured at Peterborough, but not without the visitors learning that a playmaker needs possession to make their playsYou had to feel for Peterborough in a way. Make it through to the last 16 of the FA Cup for the first time in 36 years, bravely hold off one of the world’s best teams for an hour, and your reward? To get schooled by half a billion pounds’ worth of talent on your home turf.But if the skilled resistance of Grant McCann’s team finally crumbled in the last half-hour, in many ways the real reward was simply to be here: in the shop window, live on primetime ITV, bumping Emmerdale off the schedules. Continue reading...
Jürgen Klopp’s ‘greatest squad’ are closing in on Manchester City with Liverpool now just six points behind them in the tableAs if from nowhere a title race has appeared. Manchester City’s 12-point lead is down to six which means that if Liverpool win their game in hand and if Liverpool win at the Etihad Stadium in April, they will be level on points. City are still in the better position, particularly given they have not lost a league game at home to Liverpool under Pep Guardiola but what had started to look like a procession, quite unexpectedly, has regained a sense of intrigue.It is an indication of how dominant City had come to appear that this feels surprising. Liverpool, after...
Striker burgled a spectacular winning goal but helped his team as a pressing midfielder, playmaker and false forwardAbout an hour before kick-off at the Etihad Stadium a member of staff walks around handing out puzzles. At most grounds they are more popularly known as “team sheets”, but ever since Pep Guardiola arrived at Manchester City the exercise of deciphering his starting XI has become almost as absorbing as watching it. Brows are furrowed. Heads are scratched. Is that Bernardo Silva as a false 9? João Cancelo in midfield? That can’t be an 8, or a 7, and the 5 goes there, so … Ederson at centre-half?The real trick, of course, is realising that at Guardiola’s City, formations and starting points...
The Portuguese champions were outclassed in their first Champions League knockout match since 2009José Alvalade, the man who established Sporting Clube de Portugal in the early 1900s, originally intended to study medicine, only to drop out of his Harvard degree because he couldn’t stand the sight of blood. After spending two years as president of the club, he stormed out in a dispute with his fellow directors, tragically dying of Spanish flu at the age of 33. And perhaps the nicest thing one could say about Sporting’s performance against Manchester City on Tuesday night was that it was a more than fitting tribute to his legacy.Squeamish, rancorous and over far too soon: Sporting’s big night out, their first Champions League...