A 1984 Italian movie chronicles the tail-end of the innuendo-led era and, though it has a few dated scenes, it helped set an agenda in its own wayBefore Mike Bassett, there was Oronzo Canà. The former was a fictional English football manager, played by Ricky Tomlinson, who was overpromoted into coaching the national team in a 2001 comedy that became a cult classic. The latter: a fictional Italian football manager, played by Lino Banfi, who was overpromoted into coaching a Serie A team in a 1984 comedy that went the same way.Both make up some tiny part of my cultural heritage, and yet the truth is that until recently I knew only one of them well. Neither parent actually cared...
Gino Pivatelli does not have a prominent place in the hearts of Milan fans but a foul in a European Cup final and telling Arrigo Sacchi he wasn’t good enough changed historyYou can plan, you can plan and you can plan some more and then something happens over which you had no control, that you couldn’t reasonably have been expected to foresee, and everything changes. That’s not to say that there’s no point in coaches and directors planning, but it is to say that there are times when entirely external events take control – and that doesn’t have to mean something as enormous as coronavirus. Football can turn on events that seem random, unconnected, unpredictable – the bounce of a...
Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Juve and others have become short-termist as domestic success has bred complacencyJust wait for the knockout phase of the Champions League. That’s when the season really gets going, that’s when the real football begins. That’s when you get the festival that justifies the tedium of the group stage, the greatest football ever played, the glorious pay-off for the grotesque iniquities of the game’s financial structure.Ah. Related: Pep Guardiola expects 'incredibly aggressive' Manchester United in derby Atalanta’s story is romantic but this is the first season in which the last 16 all come from the richest five leagues Continue reading...
A tally of 16 goals across the two Sunday games able to take place offered relief from conflict, confusion and CoronavirusAtalanta and Lecce did their best to pick up the slack on a weekend missing its headline act. Cagliari and Roma, too. For the second week running, Serie A’s Sunday schedule was reduced to two games, with the rest all postponed amid disagreement over the appropriate response to Italy’s Coronavirus outbreaks. This time, the cancellations included the Derby d’Italia.No other match could capture the imagination like that one: Juventus taking on Internazionale in the first season when both have truly contested the title against one another for almost two decades. But the four teams who did take the field entertained...
When the final whistle went, allowing Simone Inzaghi to charge the field at last, it felt as though we had entered a new chapterSimone Inzaghi finished Sunday night with a torn pair of trousers. The Lazio manager had been in perpetual motion through the final minutes of Lazio’s game against Inter, running the touchline with such bellicose vigour that you half expected him to leap into a sliding challenge at any moment. When a ball came out to Milan Skriniar on the near side of the pitch, Inzaghi was quicker to him than any defender.Lazio were on the cusp of another landmark victory in a season that has known a few. Inzaghi’s team beat Juventus 3-1 twice in the space...