Champions League win was a moment of Manchester City perfection with Messi, Neymar and Mbappé left in their wakeFrankly, this could have gone on all night. Did we have to stop? Did we really need to call an end to it? On a chilly, still night at the Etihad Stadium, Manchester City produced a performance that was oddly hypnotic: a brilliantly fluid, delicately stitched, oddly gentle display of how to win a game by simply picking your opponent apart.For the opening 45 minutes they stuck those fine, sharp fingernails into the guts of PSG. It was melodic in the flesh, the ball passed with a thud and a fizz between the sky blue shirts, one of those periods where a...
Real Madrid and Barcelona meet in the league without either Sergio Ramos or Lionel Messi involved for first time since 2005Eduardo Iturralde González could see it coming. “I saw Sergio Ramos running towards Leo Messi and I thought: ‘He’s going to whack him,’” the referee recalled – and he was right. It was late on a Monday night in November 2010, Messi was left on the floor, a fight started and Ramos was sent off. On Saturday afternoon they should have been preparing for the latest chapter in a seemingly never-ending story. Instead, though neither had exactly planned it this way, they found themselves at Camp de Loges, north of Paris. Together.No one has played more clásicos than Ramos or...
An exhilarating 2-0 win against Manchester City showed flickers of what Paris Saint-Germain and Messi 2.0 can do togetherAnd so it came to pass. With 73 minutes on the clock, He finally turned up.Lionel Messi had done very little for the previous 20 minutes at Parc des Princes. A promising first half had given way to one of those extended periods where Messi resembles a man maintaining a pretence of polite interest while milling around a notably disappointing flea market. Continue reading...
With Qatari investment the previously unfashionable French club are becoming giants of the global gameOn the banks of the Seine in Paris, five minutes from the Louvre, stands the Samaritaine department store. The building was last renovated at a cost of €750m. The interior is wood-panelled, there is a VIP area. The product selection consists of Dior, Gucci, Prada and Louis Vuitton. Shoes cost €1,000. Champagne bottles can be personalised, perfume bottles can be bought for six figures. Even in the pandemic, the luxury goods business continues to grow.The Samaritaine attracts people. They stroll through and admire the exhibits as they would the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. People want to see it like the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame....
The travails of the traditional European elite as new money dominated the transfer window suggest things have changedIn times of crisis, the winners are usually the rich. As clubs across Europe continue to struggle against the financial impact of the pandemic, the lesson of this transfer window is that the powerful are mopping up. Or at least they are if they are well-run, which rules out the two Spanish giants and several clubs in Italy.The transfers of the two players who have defined football for a generation understandably generated great excitement, with fans camping out at the airport in Paris to welcome Lionel Messi and queuing round the block to buy a shirt with his name on the back while...