The final night of the group stage produced plenty of drama. We hand out honours and dishonours from the latest round of action
Manchester City
Continue reading...Surreal, dreamlike, confusing: a night watching 18 Champions League ties
Trying to keep across 29 hours’ worth of football was not just akin to major substance abuse but a cause of fear and panic
Raspberry Beret by Prince, Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees, American Pie by Don McLean, All I Want is You by U2, the theme tune to Sesame Street: these are all in their different ways excellent pieces of music. But as part of playlists broadcast without end and at high volume, all have been used by the US army in psychological warfare – demonstrating that too much of a good thing is not just possible but, at extreme levels, absolutely excruciating. Watching the manic conclusion to the Champions League group stage on Wednesday brought those playlists to mind, as I debated whether I was being entertained or encouraged to run screaming from my house.
The trend in sport for many years has been to make competitions bigger, longer, more drawn out, and at first the new 36-team Champions League format felt like another step on this tiresome journey. But the widely acknowledged need for the final games of a group stage to be played at the same time forced tournament organisers into a temporary swerve in a very different direction. If you watched the final round of fixtures traditionally, soberly, one game at a time, even without breaks or pauses it would take you one entire day and five additional hours, including stoppage time.
Continue reading...Manchester City 3-1 Club Brugge: Champions League – as it happened
City went behind just before half-time but Savinho, on as sub, helped change the game, and City ran out comfortable winners to qualify for the playoffs
Which is to say there are a lot of teams in the playoff and last 16 who, if they turn up, are capable of beating opponents with more money. I guess the likelihood is that, by the last eight and definitely by the last four, it’s the usual names, but don’t rule out some surprises. No one will fancy facing Atalanta or Villa, while Leverkusen also have a chance.
I may receive heat for this hot take, but none of the below are all that are they? Liverpool are good, of course, but they’re not that good; already this season, Barca have lost to Osasuna, Las Palmas and Leganes; yet they’ve clattered Madrid, who generally hang about until someone good does something good, twice; and so on.
Continue reading...Champions League: Aston Villa 4-2 Celtic, Girona 1-2 Arsenal, PSV 3-2 Liverpool – as it happened
All five British clubs survived to fight another day as the Champions League league phase came to an end
Here we go, then. It’s on. I’m going in. Good luck everyone.
The teams are out! Of the 36 currently doing their stretches, politely listening to corporate anthems, shaking hands, tossing coins and swapping pennants, only 11 are sure of their fate. Liverpool and Barcelona are definitely through to the last 16; Bologna, Sparta Prague, RB Leipzig, Girona, Red Star Belgrade, Sturm Graz, RB Salzburg, Slovan Bratislava and Young Boys already know the jig is up. Everyone else pensive, in their special place. A kind of hush, all over the continent tonight. The calm before the storm. We’ll be off in a couple of minutes.
Continue reading...Fire outside Etihad Stadium causes disruption before Manchester City game
- Merchandise kiosk caught fire before Club Brugge match
- Presentation of new signings cancelled as area evacuated
An area outside the Etihad Stadium had to be evacuated before Manchester City’s Champions League game against Club Brugge on Wednesday after a merchandise kiosk caught fire.
The blaze broke out shortly before 6pm, close to where Pep Guardiola’s City team had been due to enter the stadium at around 6.30pm. Supporters had gathered in the area for a pre-match entertainment show which included on-stage interviews with January signings Omar Marmoush, Vitor Reis and Abdukodir Khusanov.
Continue reading...Football League: Leyton Orient roar into playoff spots as Birmingham march on
- Wrexham lose first home game in 22; Wycombe win late
- Millwall edge out Portsmouth; Walsall lose again
Azeem Abdulai scored a hat-trick as Leyton Orient moved into the League One playoff positions with a 6-2 win at Exeter.
Orient were 4-0 up after 34 minutes with two goals in two minutes from their new signing Abdulai and further goals from Sean Clare and Dilan Markanday. Millenic Alli scored twice for the hosts before Abdulai completed his hat-trick and Jamie Donley’s goal piled more misery on to the Grecians.
Continue reading...Guardiola says City will tackle must-win Champions League match with coldness
- Manager keen to score ‘a lot’ in opening 20 minutes
- Oscar Bobb in contention after five-month injury
Pep Guardiola is approaching Manchester City’s must-win final Champions League group game against Club Brugge with “no emotion” to ensure his players understand precisely how to execute the manager’s gameplan.
City are in 25th place, two points behind Stuttgart in the final qualifying position. So if Brugge are not defeated, Guardiola’s side will be knocked out of Europe. The City manager is therefore unsurprisingly approaching the match with cold-eyed intent. “We’d like to score goals in the first 20 minutes – a lot,” he said. “But I think it’s not going to happen. The approach is now to read the game you have to play, for them [players] to do. Completely relaxed, not emotional, it’s to understand the game.
Continue reading...Eric Ramsay’s road from Shrewsbury to Minnesota via Manchester United
The Minnesota United coach was at Old Trafford under Solskjær, Rangnick and Ten Hag – now he is branching out on his own in MLS
“I felt like my personality was well suited to it,” Eric Ramsay says, explaining why he jumped into coaching as a teenager. There is drive and inquisitiveness to the Welshman, who was on the backroom staff at Manchester United before moving to the USA to become Minnesota United’s manager last March. Before the real stuff begins, Ramsay wants to know about life at the Guardian. Is this the interviewee putting the interviewer at ease? Or evidence of someone who knows how to connect with strangers?
Ramsay has the leadership gene. He grew up in a small market town in rural Wales and was a busy type, captaining the county team and putting on coaching sessions for local children. “At 14 or 15 I could get a feel for what my coaching voice was,” he says. What was he like? “More self-conscious. You trip, you stumble. But I felt like I was making enough of a mark with kids for it to grab me. From 16 or 17 almost everything I did was geared towards that pathway.”
Continue reading...Mark Delgado ready to embark on ‘next chapter’ as part of LAFC roster overhaul
Mark Delgado has lived in Southern California for most of his life, and the former Galaxy midfielder is hoping to pull off a rare MLS title feat with LAFC.
A night of high stakes for Europe’s big guns, but is the new format a success?
Nail-biting drama awaits as 18 Champions League games take place all at once, and the nerves will be jangling at some of the biggest clubs
The level of chaos expected in the final round of European “league phase” fixtures can be summed up by the fact Uefa officials have been directing clubs to a simulator that helps them make sense of the permutations affecting their team. They will also be able to monitor changes to their prospects in real time.
Nothing like Wednesday night’s Champions League denouement, when 18 games will take place simultaneously in a dramatic scramble for progress to the knockouts, has been seen before and the challenges are obvious. Swiftly communicating the implications of sudden swings in a densely packed table may tax the ablest of mathematical brains.
Continue reading...Burnley v Leeds United: Championship – as it happened
A dull goalless leaves Leeds two points clear of Sheffield United at the top of the Championship, with Burnley a further point behind in third
Email! “You drew the long straw then?” asks Jeremy Boyce. “This is as tasty a match up as you suggested. Top scorers v top defenders. Top of the table v third, in a group of four class teams, two of which will have to go through the nightmare of the playoffs, and they all have experience of that. Is the top of the Championship better than the bottom of the Prem? We’ll find out next season. Burnley need a four-goal win to go top tonight, but I’m thinking a regulation Scott Parker 1-0 would do them. Leeds will need all of their 66% possession to break down the Clarets’ defence. Fast start? Solomon four mins? We’ll find out shortly.”
I can’t see Burnley shutting Leeds out a second time – they won 1-0 at Elland Road earlier in the season – nor can I see anyone finishing above Leeds. They just have too many ways of scoring.
Continue reading...Where does Brendan Rodgers’ star sit now Celtic have made European headway? | Ewan Murray
With a Champions League playoff spot secured before Wednesday’s trip to Aston Villa, the manager will have a plan for life after Glasgow
These are compelling times for a compelling character. January has witnessed Brendan Rodgers jousting with his own supporter base, fall victim to an ultra-rare Old Firm defeat and guide his team to the playoff round of the Champions League. The argument was entertaining, the loss at Ibrox totally unimportant, and Celtic’s manager will return to the Midlands on Wednesday night having achieved a stated goal – making material headway in Europe. Substance over style.
Timing is everything. Rodgers has done this just as Ange Postecoglou flounders badly at Tottenham in a blow to those at Celtic desperately clinging to the Australian’s supposedly transferable skills. Rodgers and Postecoglou are fundamentally different in umpteen senses, one being that the Irishman has an emotional attachment to Celtic. Without that, the Scottish champions could not attract a coach of his standing or ambition. A persistent question surrounds how long that connection can sustain Rodgers in a domestic scene which should not excite him beyond a contract term that ends in the summer of 2026. In that context, the Champions League is hugely significant.
Continue reading...A chronic lack of ambition has laid waste to Tottenham | Jonathan Wilson
Ange Postecoglou has serious shortcomings as Spurs manager. But he has hardly been helped by a team trying to do things on the cheap
The good news for Ange Postecoglou is that it seems relatively straightforward to recover from being Tottenham manager: his two immediate predecessors, Antonio Conte and Nuno Espírito Santo, are top of Serie A with Napoli and third in the Premier League with Nottingham Forest respectively. As the banner unveiled on Sunday by Spurs fans during the defeat by Leicester read: “24 years, 16 managers, one trophy”. Nobody really looks at Tottenham any more and thinks the problem is the manager.
But it is usually the manager who pays the price. Their past 10 league games have yielded four points. They have just lost against Everton, who had not won in six, and Leicester, who had lost their previous seven. They’ve reached a stage at which it feels possible that they could lose any given fixture. The only saving grace is that they are 1-0 up against Liverpool after the home leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final and that they are sixth in the Europa League table, assured of automatic passage to the last 16 if they beat the Swedish side Elfsborg on Thursday.
Continue reading...Cesc Fàbregas is writing a Hollywood script at Como as film stars watch on | Nicky Bandini
Promoted team with expensive signings and celebrity fans are driven by the intensity of their manager and stakeholder
The faces surrounding Cesc Fàbregas were glum, yet he spoke like a conquering general: bellowing praise at his troops as he strode among them, pointing at his eyes then pounding a fist into his open palm. “We devoured them! We devoured them! Keep going because this is only the start!”
It was another cinematic moment at a venue that has become a favourite for Hollywood stars. Keira Knightley, Hugh Grant, Michael Fassbender, Kate Beckinsale and Benedict Cumberbatch are but a few of the A-listers who have come to watch Como play this season at their Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia. All to see a team struggling in the bottom half of the Serie A table. You might not have guessed it from Fàbregas’s tone, but his team lost 2-1 to Atalanta on Saturday.
Continue reading...Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action
Sandro Tonali sets the tone, Manchester City debutants have mixed fortunes and Brighton must find their edge
As a cure for the Sunday fear, the self-identifying worst Manchester United team in history’s trip to Craven Cottage was pot-boiling viewing. It will be some time until Ruben Amorim can stage high-end entertainment of a Wolf Hall standard but at least relegation is now unlikely to be the series conclusion. United fans were singing the manager’s name once Lisandro Martínez’s fortuitous winner span in. A fragile belief is growing. Such are the lenses on United any result is seen as a signifier, but beating Fulham is not a return of the glory days. The last United manager to lose at Craven Cottage was Sir Alex Ferguson himself. Amorim should take heart from a more solid defensive performance, Harry Maguire the organising heart of the trio, Martínez aggressive and provocative alongside him, looking closer to be the player he promised to be two seasons ago. Toby Collyer’s late clearance off the line completed a much more positive week than last. John Brewin
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