Another handball horror show, Calvert-Lewin is benefiting from Ancelotti effect and sentiment alone will not save LampardOle Gunnar Solskjær said Manchester United had “three or four weeks to catch up to a few teams”, and how it showed. United could not get out to prevent crosses or track Brighton’s runners. Their lack of match sharpness is a consequence of their lack of a pre-season. It was interesting to hear Gareth Southgate say the players in his England squad in early September who had played in European competition until mid‑August were the fittest because they had, effectively, played all the way through. Solskjær has a different view and feels comfortable in advancing it as mitigation, essentially because it is not his...
Tottenham midfielder’s talent shone brightly against Real Madrid three years ago – but when Mourinho starts calling you talented you need to worryLast year Sport England announced it would be spending £85m on The Talent Plan For England. The idea behind the Talent Plan is to create “the world’s best talent plan” – a shoot-for-the-moon ambition that becomes more achievable if you accept the rather pedantic objection that a Talent Plan is something you’ve just made up, and thus, technically, nobody else in the world has one anyway.What is certain is that the Talent Plan has a lot to say about talent, so much that its 35-page outline mentions it 258 times in total. This is the big takeaway from...
The Real Madrid reject should still have explosive pace and looks suited to Harry Kane and José Mourinho’s tacticsFootball loves nothing more than a redemption myth. While there are many who will tell you to never go back, there is more rejoicing in the kingdom of football over one player who returns home than over nine and ninety who never leave.The narrative appeal of Gareth Bale at Tottenham is clear. He was the protagonist of their first side to compete in the Champions League, the explosive forward who scored a hat-trick at San Siro and obliterated Maicon at White Hart Lane, Tottenham’s first global superstar since Paul Gascoigne left for Lazio. Related: Why I can't wait to see Gareth Bale...
The man in the YouTube reels may be seven years older but this is the kind of modern football moment too good not to enjoy As a long-term observer it is always tempting to look out for moments that capture the essence of modern football, those single images that really get its basic weirdness. A personal favourite is the terrifying cube of death built by Qatar 2022 on the banks of the Moskva river at the last World Cup, a beautiful glass and steel exhibition centre intended to generate a thrill of carefree excitement about the next global festival of football, but one that resembled simultaneously a giant haunted cancerous polyp overseen by alien lizard secret service personnel.There are plenty...
Spurs fans need the homecoming nostalgia of someone they saw turn from a boy into a joy of a footballerGareth Bale’s final – well hopefully not final – goal for Tottenham was in the last minute of the last game of the season. Sunderland at White Hart Lane, 19 May 2013. He picked the ball up on the right, cut inside like Arjen Robben and bent the ball into the top left corner from 25 yards past Simon Mignolet. It feels like Bale scored that goal a hundred times that season.As soon as the ball hit the net, Emmanuel Adebayor ran to ask the crowd whether it was enough to get Spurs into the Champions League. It wasn’t. Beaten into...