A new documentary film explores the story of a move that led to a pig’s head being thrown at the Portuguese superstarResearch conducted by Edward Geiselman, a former Professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, corroborated the theory that somebody who is lying will often break eye contact and glance away at a crucial moment during interrogation. Although it’s easy to read far too much into somebody’s tics or mannerisms, it is quite telling that in the recently released Netflix documentary The Figo Affair, on two separate occasions when the eponymous subject is asked directly about his seismic transfer from Barcelona to Real Madrid, he gives one-line replies during which his normally inscrutable stare is broken by...
After a Saudi takeover helped propel them back to La Liga, the minnows pushed the European champions all the wayFor an hour, the 15,238 Almería fans in the Horse Power stadium might have wondered if the almighty was on their side after all. The man who had begun the night floodlit out on the field, collecting the final few shares he didn’t already own from the founder of the club, certainly did. Or so it goes. Almería had returned to primera for the first time since 2015, faced Real Madrid in their opening game, and proprietor and president Turki Al-Sheikh, the minister in charge of entertainment at the Saudi royal court, didn’t have much faith. Not in his footballers, at...
Were the indignities experienced by fans a large-scale outbreak of bureaucratic incompetence or something more sinister?For once it is the still photos that capture the scene better than the videos. Were one to base one’s impression of the hellscape in Paris on Saturday night on the grainy, shaky moving footage alone, one would probably conclude it was a lawless, seething moshpit of disorder: of youths scaling spiked fences, gates being rattled and clattered, a ceaseless stream of teargas and baton charges. But the overwhelming sensation being conveyed by the thousands of fans massed outside the Stade de France was stasis: the quiet, festering frustration of nothing moving, nothing changing, nothing happening, a sea of thwarted humanity waiting patiently for hour...
Where other teams are built on systems and philosophies, Madrid mix regal self-assuredness with calculating geniusAs the world turned a shade of white close to midnight in Paris, dissolving into a familiar frieze – the same shapes and songs, the Champions League trophy waved about with the same sense of dieu et mon droit – there was also a feeling of something revealing itself, of a question being answered.In the build-up to Real Madrid’s narrow but decisive victory at Stade de France on Saturday night there had been a lot of talk in England about claims on greatness and ultimacy, born out of Liverpool’s own thrillingly sustained attempt to chase the sun right to the seasons’s end. Continue reading...
Jürgen Klopp’s side came close to an extraordinary season but teams, rightly or wrongly, are judged on resultsSo what next? Where do Liverpool go from here? This was a season that came agonisingly close to perfection. One fewer goal for Manchester City or one more goal for Aston Villa on the final day of the season and the league title would have been Liverpool’s. One fewer save from Thibaut Courtois and they would have taken the Champions League final into extra time. The Quadruple has never been so close for any club and yet Liverpool achieved no more than to match the feat of Arsenal in 1992-93 and, with all due respect to Steve Morrow, John Jensen and Andy Linighan,...