The two do not fit together and so the Italians’ push for Champions League glory seems even more like a last throw of the dice In 2015, Max Allegri led Juventus to the double. In 2016, Max Allegri led Juventus to the double. In 2017, Max Allegri led Juventus to the double. In 2018, Max Allegri led Juventus to the double. In 2019, Max Allegri did not lead Juventus to the double, although he did lead them to an eighth straight Scudetto.Failure to win last season’s Coppa Italia was not why Allegri was ousted last summer. He probably would have been replaced even if he had landed a fifth double in five seasons, because this is the pitch of absurdity...
The manager could go after winning the Europa League and a top-three finish. Eden Hazard is on his way. It sums up ChelseaYou hope Maurizio Sarri enjoyed his first trophy in professional football – but this, surely, was not how he imagined it when he whiled away the hours working on the foreign exchange desk at a bank in Florence. Perhaps he had dreamed of one of the great citadels of European football, of Wembley or San Siro, of the Camp Nou or the Luzhniki, but instead he got the Olympic Stadium in Baku. It is a place so ill-conceived that not only is the stadium inaccessible to most of Europe but the pitch seems inaccessible from most of the...
Unai Emery has proved a master of two-leg ties but also has the wherewithal to impose his gameplan in a one-off finalTransition is often a useful excuse for football clubs but in the case of Arsenal and Chelsea it happens to be true. The Europa League final will be a battle of two managers coming to the end of their first season at their respective clubs, both hamstrung by oddly imbalanced squads, and both charged with leading their sides into a bold new era.Maurizio Sarri’s problem, though, is that all Chelsea’s existence since José Mourinho was first removed in 2006 has been transition. Related: Arsenal’s ongoing Champions League absence has not been so costly | David Conn Related: Eden Hazard...
Chants of ‘We want Sarri out’ punctuated the game in Cardiff, where the manager started with Hazard, Kanté and Hudson-Odoi on the bench and ended with an ill-gotten 2-1 winBack when the mutiny in the far corner of this arena was at its most poisonous, the chants of “Fuck Sarri-ball” and “We want Sarri out” uniting the away support, it would have felt perverse to suggest that Maurizio Sarri would end up getting away with it; that he would not be punished for such a risky and provocative team selection or undermined by a performance so appallingly limp from a side seemingly unconvinced by his methods; or that he would mutter through his later media duties with regular references to...
Stamford Bridge No 2 steps out for a rare appearance in a comfortable win for Maurizio Sarri’s improving teamYou can’t even, you can’t even, you can’t even make a sub. It took half an hour from kick-off for the Tottenham fans to find the best joke to date about Chelsea’s latest psychodrama on the theme of authority and control.And yet by the end that wheel had turned completely. It was instead the Chelsea fans who cheered their team and taunted the away support, after a performance of fire and purpose by a team that is constantly in the process of dying and resurrecting itself, west London’s own zombie FC. Related: Pedro strike and Trippier howler lift Sarri and give Chelsea...