The quiet Italian is a born winner set to become a champion in a fifth country – and he may even add a fourth European CupIn 2016 Bayern Munich faced a very difficult task. The club had to find a successor for Pep Guardiola. Only one came into consideration: Carlo Ancelotti. For us players this meant a change on the one hand. What Ancelotti said in one week, Guardiola said in three hours. On the other hand, as was the case for his predecessor, it was also true for Ancelotti: as a player you feel comfortable because you sense that the coach is ready to make his methods available to the team. That is why he is successful everywhere.In a...
What more could you ask of your sporting sibling than the performance Giroud turned in against Napoli on Sunday?As players swapped shirts and fans began to make their way to the exits at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, Olivier Giroud ran a hand over his beard and listened to an interviewer from Dazn complimenting his Italian. His eyebrows raised at the question that followed: “You’re a bit like Zlatan [Ibrahimovic]: you give instructions, you encourage, you motivate your teammates. So now that he’s back, who plays?”It was an unexpected line of enquiry on a night when Giroud had, once again, shifted the course of Serie A’s title race, scoring the goal that delivered Milan victory over Napoli just as his...
Forward turned the derby on its head with a quickfire double that breathed life into the title race – and the dreaded No 9 shirtEven Olivier Giroud was starting to wonder if he might have jinxed himself. The Frenchman had no hesitation in accepting Milan’s No 9 shirt after he joined last summer, shrugging off the fact that no player in a decade had hit double figures while wearing it in Serie A. Ten players had tried and failed – among them such talented goalscorers as Gonzalo Higuaín, Fernando Torres and André Silva – but Giroud insisted: “I’m not superstitious.”By the turn of the year, he was sounding a little less confident. “I don’t believe in the curse of the...
Tottenham and England striker with two accurate feet brought magic to football, whether you were there to see it or not• Jimmy Greaves: a life in picturesThere are some heroes you illogically hope will never die, certainly in the imagination. Muhammad Ali was one, George Best another (despite his best efforts) and Jimmy Greaves, too. Even Tottenham fans who never saw him play in the flesh so treasured his deeds it seemed he belonged solely to them. Only Glenn Hoddle and Harry Kane were later revered at White Hart Lane with such unquestioning intensity.Others from the black-and-white era will have loved Greaves for his goals at Chelsea, for England and in early- and late-career cameos at Milan and West Ham....
He scored goals in abundance for Tottenham and Chelsea and his omission from the England team that won the World Cup was the cruellest of blowsWhen Jimmy Greaves was playing against the team you supported, a sense of foreboding accompanied you through the turnstiles. The pleasurable anticipation of witnessing one of the greatest footballers of his era was severely undermined by the knowledge of the effect that this slender, neat-featured, dark-haired, quick-footed little man was likely to have on the course of the afternoon.Like his great contemporary Denis Law, Greaves was a footballer who could appear to be entirely aloof from the proceedings until the moment, perhaps not long before the final whistle, when he flickered into life and settled...