The podders reflect on United winning a thrilling EFL Cup final against Southampton, and Leicester’s decision to sack Claudio Ranieri nine months after leading them to the Premier League titleSubscribe and review: iTunes, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast & Stitcher. And join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter.On today’s Football Weekly, AC Jimbo is joined by Barry Glendenning, Iain Macintosh and Gregg Bakowski to look back on the cut-throat world of game we so love. Continue reading...
Two astonishing goals in Roma’s 3-1 win at Inter showcased the Belgian’s talents and helped keep the Giallorossi snapping at Juve’s heelsRadja Nainggolan makes no secret of his vices. He likes to smoke, to stay out late and to dance. When Rolling Stone magazine asked him whether he considered himself a “discotheque footballer” in late 2015, he replied with an unapologetic “yes”, before adding: “I have no desire to stay home every evening like other players who just go ‘house, football pitch, house, football pitch’.”That mindset has not always endeared him to coaches. Marc Wilmots, after leaving Nainggolan out of Belgium’s 2014 World Cup squad, eventually came to recognise the player’s talent and subsequently made sure that the player’s hotel...
How does a team that had not beaten anyone on the pitch all season – nor indeed won a Serie A match since 2013 – suddenly produce a 5-0 thrashing of Genoa?Harold Wilson believed a week was a long time in British politics. What on earth would he have made, then, of football on Italy’s Adriatic coast?Seven days ago, Pescara were in freefall – bottom of Serie A and reeling not only from consecutive thrashings by Lazio and Torino but also an arson attack on their president’s private property. Desperate to change something, anything, they fired manager Massimo Oddo, replacing him with Zdenek Zeman. On Sunday, they thrashed Genoa 5-0. Related: Italy still producing prize managerial exports from its winning...
Coverciano outside Florence has been the nerve centre of the Italian game for almost 60 years and the reverence in which it is held by many seems to have had a positive effect on plenty of its graduatesAs long as he doesn’t blow it, and nothing in his record suggests that he will, sometime within the next three months Antonio Conte will become the fourth Italian manager to lead a team to the Premier League title. Remarkably, that quartet – in which he would join Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Mancini and Claudio Ranieri – will have claimed the English championship in four of the past eight seasons.No English-born manager, of course, has won the title since Howard Wilkinson in 1991-92, the...
The Delfini are suffering one of the worst seasons of any club in Serie A history, a rout at Torino coming fresh off an arson attack at their president’s houseSixty-five seconds. That was all it took for Pescara to start unravelling at Torino’s Stadio Olimpico. A pair of defenders failed to prevent Antonio Barreca sending a cross over from the left, a third was outjumped inside the box by Marco Benassi and two more lunged hopelessly after Iago Falqué as he pounced on the loose ball and drove it into the roof of the net.Within 15 minutes, Torino had trebled their lead. It was 5-0 by the 61st. Pescara’s manager, Massimo Oddo, tucked himself into a corner of the visitors’...