Uefa’s president wants to improve competitive balance but the top clubs’ financial dominance equates to power too, and it is unlikely his mooted measures will make a significant differenceFor football people raised on the foundational European Cup feats of Manchester United’s home-schooled Busby Babes and Celtic’s 1967 triumph with a team of local lads, the modern Champions League is a mixed blessing. Over the last 23 years the tournament has constructed a glittering stage for Lionel Messi and the world’s greatest players but European football’s concentration of wealth is delivering the final rounds and trophy itself to the same few richest clubs. Related: Chelsea given painful reminder of declining European status by Barcelona | Dominic Fifield The measures Ceferin has...
Sam Allardyce has lifted Everton to ninth in the Premier League and José Mourinho’s Manchester United sit second but Pep Guardiola has altered fans’ expectationsAfter five minutes of Brighton’s game at Goodison Park on Saturday with the score at 0-0, a passionate and extremely vocal Evertonian took the opportunity to run to within five yards of the dugout I was sitting in and vent his anger and frustration by screaming “Get out of my fucking club” directly at Sam Allardyce – the man who, in my opinion, has successfully done the job required and expected of him. The Everton manager has stabilised a huge club that had lost its way to the point where relegation was a distinct possibility based...
The defending champions desperately needed a positive result on Sunday, yet they set up negatively and played even worse, suggesting they did not believe victory was possibleThere was a moment in the second half of Manchester City’s win against Chelsea – it was probably with about quarter of an hour to go, but perception in a featureless landscape can become difficult – when Aymeric Laporte passed the ball to Ilkay Gündogan near the halfway line. Gündogan rolled it back. Laporte knocked it back again. Gündogan nudged it to Kevin De Bruyne who turned, looked about for a bit, and gave it back. They exchanged a static one-two and then Gündogan rolled it wide to David Silva who controlled it, looked up,...
Chris Hughton deserves plaudits, Sam Allardyce will not win Everton fans’ affections and Spurs look ready for JuventusThere is something striking about watching the defending champions cede their title to their successors, and this was a particularly mournful way to go about it. The last time a title-winning Chelsea team visited the side that was destined to succeed them they lost 2-1 to Leicester in December 2015 and promptly sacked their manager. This display is unlikely to accelerate Antonio Conte’s apparently inevitable summer departure, but a performance so stripped of ambition and attacking quality certainly reflected poorly on him. “My tactic was: don’t concede space between the lines,” he said. “If you concede space at Manchester City you risk losing...
Wenger’s side used to bounce back from bad results but at the Emirates they showed frailties evident in Carabao Cup finalContrary to recent evidence though it may seem, this was the most un-Arsenal of outcomes. The bigger disappointments of the past decade have generally been followed by flickerings of life, results pulled out of the fire in the nick of time, signs of enough incipient quality to maintain the illusion that it is darkest before the dawn.But Arsenal do not even have that to lean on any more. Arsène Wenger sent his team out with good intentions, a top-heavy starting XI designed to trade blows. But for the second time in five days they crumbled at the first sign of...