Milan’s narrow victory in Turin sealed a top-four finish but for Juventus the scandal over alleged false accounting rolls onIt should have been blood and thunder, two of Italian football’s biggest clubs squaring off on the penultimate weekend with Champions League football on the line. Juventus and Milan instead gave us dull, with blunders, in front of a listless crowd.Significant sections of the Allianz Stadium were empty at kick-off. Fewer than 500 Milan supporters had made the short trip to Turin, others balking at the €80 ticket price in the away section. Juventus Ultras from the Curva Sud, meanwhile, were staging a protest outside against what they perceive as heavy-handed treatment from their club, including restrictions on flags, banners and...
Centre-forward whose goal knocked England out of the World Cup is often overlooked while all eyes are on Kylian MbappéI heard someone say recently that the France forward Olivier Giroud, their new record goalscorer, “deserves his flowers”. He does. Before each game for France at this World Cup, all eyes are on Kylian Mbappé, the star who has scored five goals in five games, but the impact of Giroud, who has four in four, flies under the radar. In the buildup to England’s 2-1 loss to France the story was the same: will Kyle Walker be the player to stop Mbappé? How effective is Mbappé going to be able to be?This matches a narrative that has stuck with Giroud throughout...
A centre-forward who works hard but doesn’t score is still a costly luxury for any clubThere was a moment in Maurizio Sarri’s post‑match press conference on Saturday when, having eulogised Eden Hazard and spoken of the way he has challenged him to score 40 goals this season, the Chelsea manager was asked about the danger of being dependent on one player. Pedro and Willian, he replied, could score 10.Which is fair. Pedro has three league goals this season and Willian one. There is no reason at all why one, or both, couldn’t get up to double figures in all competitions (which was, Sarri had stressed, what he was talking about; he was not anticipating Hazard scoring 40 in the league)....
The Arsenal striker’s acrobatic opening goal against Crystal Palace will live long in the memory and is likely to be the highlight of his careerOn a sodden, cold and otherwise underpowered afternoon at the Emirates Stadium Olivier Giroud provided an unforgettable moment of illumination. The Frenchman has found himself down the pecking order in recent months, demoted to second choice as collateral damage to Alexis Sánchez’s reinvention as a spiky central striker. One thing does seem certain, though. Whatever direction Giroud’s strangely divisive five-year Arsenal career takes from here, however the club’s hotly-contested modern history ends up remembering him, he is unlikely to have a better moment, in isolation, than the opening goal here. Olivier, old boy, we’ll always have...