There are too many grey areas in football’s rulebook for the technology to work properly - as Marcus Rashford’s goal against PSG provedThe VAR decision that took Manchester United into the Champions League quarter-finals was a good example of why the new technology that will be in the Premier League from next season comes with the capacity to cause more arguments than it actually settles.Though Neymar’s sweary reaction betrayed an understandable disappointment at Paris Saint-Germain going out of the competition in such a manner in the final minute, his point about games being decided by remote officials who are not necessarily in tune with the contest on the pitch was a fair one. There was no clear and obvious mistake...
It was a great week for the puckish charms of football and its ability to confound hubrisFootball still, it turns out, has the power to fight back. Money is a lot of things but it isn’t quite everything, not yet.Although before we get carried away, it should be acknowledged that it really is a lot of things, most things even, almost everything. The leagues of Italy and France are a walkover yet again. Spain and Germany will probably have very familiar champions. So distorted has the modern view become that not only are Ajax, grandees of the Dutch game, transformed into plucky giant-killers, but somehow Manchester United can be cast as improbable outsiders. It was a great week for the...
Lukaku and Rashford made it all happen on a night which the caretaker had always insisted would not be ‘mission impossible’Whatever substance Marcus Rashford’s spleen, guts, backbone and other vital parts are made from, Manchester United’s official industrial concrete partner would be well-served setting about trying to replicate its precise unbreakable formulaWith 90 minutes gone, and with Manchester United 2-1 up and a VAR-assisted penalty kick away from eliminating the home side, the Paris Saint-Germain players gathered around the referee, stamped at the edge of the penalty spot, sniped at Rashford, and did everything in their power to create some turbulence. Rashford just looked down and waited, ball in hands. Related: Manchester United floor PSG as Marcus Rashford’s late penalty...
Ole Gunnar Solskjær wants his team to remember glorious revivals from times past when they step out at Parc des PrincesOle Gunnar Solskjær tried his best to sound confident. He insisted there was “never mission impossible” and, not for the first time recently, he was reminded about that seminal match against Juventus in 1999 and the hard evidence Manchester United did at least have previous when it came to almost implausible feats of escapology in Europe’s premier club competition.The only problem with that line is that there is a good reason why so many people reminisce about that semi-final in Turin, when Sir Alex Ferguson’s team were putting in place their unprecedented Treble and produced one of the more spectacular...
PSG forward shows his repertoire of speed and skill, including scoring the second goal that may have already ended the tieFor all the complexities of elite sport, some things don’t change. In his novel End Zone, Don DeLillo obsesses about the speed of NFL running backs. “Speed is the last excitement left,” he writes. “The one thing we haven’t used up, still naked in its potential.”In which case DeLillo could do a lot worse than have a peek at Kylian Mbappé, who glided around the edges at Old Trafford for half an hour; who scored a decisive second-half goal; and who by the end had provided some moments of exhilaration so natural and easy in among the collisions you could...