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Tag: Champions League

  • How Aston Villa’s plan paid off to beat Bayern Munich – with a finish fit for a future king

    How Aston Villa’s plan paid off to beat Bayern Munich – with a finish fit for a future king

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    The future King of England, William, Prince of Wales did not leave quietly into the night.

    “I’ve lost my voice,” he said. “I can’t quite believe it — 42 years…”

    Aston Villa supporters had started to filter out of the stadium even if no one wanted to move. Villa Park was still drinking in Jhon Duran’s magnificent finish, demonstrably a moment in time that gave the club, arguably, its greatest night in 42 years — following the European Cup final triumph against the same opposition in Bayern Munich, and with the same 1-0 scoreline.

    “Villa till I die” bellowed. The flags, now famous memorabilia, were being joyously waved. Emiliano Martinez, having pulled off his own acts of heroism with time-stopping saves at the end, kissed the badge. The roars that grew in decibels as Duran’s lob sailed over Manuel Neuer were guttural and piercing. It was almost a disbelieving noise and a realisation that an astonishing goal had marked Villa’s astonishing rise under manager Unai Emery.


    Prince William pumps his fists after Villa’s victory (James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)

    Less than two years ago, Villa were outside the Premier League relegation zone on goal difference. Now they had just beaten Bayern in a home Champions League fixture. Emery had spoken about making memories “like that great generation did in 1982” and, under his leadership, Villa continue to break new ground. The sense of occasion was marked, but Emery had long preached Villa needed to show they belonged on the biggest stage. And they did.

    “The whole night was special,” Morgan Rogers told The Athletic after. “Walking out to that atmosphere, I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

    “It’s the loudest I’ve ever heard Villa Park,” said Martinez to TNT Sports. “It was hurting my ears at times.”

    Walk down Holte Road and you will see a newly painted mural. Emery, rightly so, is at the forefront but there is reference to the 82 triumph and Peter Withe, clad in white and the goalscorer that night in Rotterdam, his hands in the air and feet off the ground. In years to come, Duran clenching both fists and roaring will be synonymous with the second Bayern victory.

    Villa Park was raucous all evening, apart from the moments leading up to Duran’s goal. Supporters, perhaps subconsciously, had started to become nervous, knowing the clock was ticking and their team could earn a draw. The only other time the atmosphere lulled was when the stadium fell quiet for the Champions League anthem before kick-off as if it gave time for every fan to absorb the grandiosity of it all. Fireworks were set off and a large Tifo hung from the Holte End. A thirty-metre banner was unfurled at the bottom of the stand and read ‘All heroes are Villans’.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Understanding Aston Villa’s Jhon Duran – ‘Nothing he was given was free’

    Duran has been described as “a bit nuts” by team-mates, but few doubt his immense talent. His goal, his fifth as a substitute this season, was a crystallisation of all those traits, from having the sheer conviction to lob one of modern football’s most eminent goalkeepers, to having the actual skill to pull it off. He was introduced in the 70th minute after Ollie Watkins’ running battle with Dayot Upamecano and Emery recognised that Duran’s pace, power and natural dare could serve as a point of difference.

    Martinez had started off the move, with Pau Torres playing a whipped left-footed pass into the channel where Duran was on the shoulder of Upamecano.

    Curiously, just as the teams came out for the second half, Villa’s individual performance coach, Antonio Rodriguez Saravia, was deep in conversation with Watkins and motioned the precise move that Duran would end up making.

    Saravia tapped Watkins to get his full attention before giving an example of a curved run, from right to left, arching his body as if he was sprinting on the outside of a central defender.

    Duran had little time to set himself, but went for it anyway. The Colombia striker told U.S. broadcaster CBS Sports after that he did not see Neuer off his line, a sign of his instinctive nature or recalling some of the observations made to him in the morning’s analysis sessions.

    “Jhon’s been on fire,” Martinez told TNT. “He’s a super sub. With his first touch, he lobbed Neuer, one of the best keepers in history. We know Neuer plays high and we watched a lot of movies with the manager — an hour and a half this morning.”


    Martinez blew kisses to Villa fans after his late heroics (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

    “In the analysis, we were speaking about the positioning of Neuer — always high,” said Emery. “I spoke to my assistant coaches about how he (Duran) shoots. Because he had in his mind this possibility. He scored a goal similar last year against Hibernian. Pau Torres made a similar pass and at that moment, he drove at the keeper and shot. This time, he just shot.”

    A day earlier, Bayern coach Vincent Kompany was asked about Villa’s key strengths. Kompany identified their compact defensive structure and threat on transition.


    Rogers was a threat on the counter throughout (Michael Steele/Getty Images)

    It was therefore peculiar that Bayern seemed happy to allow Watkins and then Duran a constant one-v-one battle against Upamecano and push so many players into high areas. Villa knew they would have limited possession but were content to stay in shape, closing the distances between the lines and, upon regains, make a couple of short, quick passes before driving into the oceans of space left on transition.

    “We knew they were going to have more of the ball so it was about trying to hit them on the counter,” Rogers said to TNT. “It was about allowing them to have the ball in certain areas but when it’s in midfield we had to be at it.”

    The only surprise in Villa’s lineup was Jaden Philogene coming in for his first start since rejoining this summer. Players had trained at 5pm the previous evening but most were not told the team until the afternoon of the game, with some excitedly calling family and agents. But given the magnitude of the task, Philogene, who was playing for Hull City in the Championship last season, was told early.

    “I found out I was starting yesterday,” he said. “Leon Bailey got injured in training and he (Emery) pulled me into the office. He asked how I was feeling. I said, ‘Yeah, I feel fine’ and he said, ‘Good, because you’re starting tomorrow’. There were no nerves. I just wanted to play football. Unai just told me to play my game and gave me instructions.”

    Villa’s analysis sessions are exhaustive and often long. They are admittedly tedious, yet the breadth of detail Emery imparts on his players requires full concentration and buy-in. Duran’s finish was an example of why players remain so enamoured of Emery — because there is continuous evidence his coaching and analysis bring success.

    “There were two meetings today. We are used to it. That’s why we win games,” Rogers said. “We go through everything. We know what every player’s traits are.”

    “He’s very demanding, focused and knows what he wants,” said Watkins. “You hear about professionals putting in hard work and doing extras, but it’s the same for him. He arrives early and leaves late.”

    The explosion of noise that met Duran’s finish and then at the final whistle was a spine-tingling sound that will stick with Villa supporters. A night and a goal fitting of Villa’s extraordinary transformation.

    (Top photo: Duran and Lucas Digne celebrate against Bayern. David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • London has several major football clubs. Why does Paris only have one?

    London has several major football clubs. Why does Paris only have one?

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    Follow live coverage of Arsenal vs PSG in the Champions League today

    When European club competition was originally devised back in 1955, it was in the form of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, the predecessor to the UEFA Cup and Europa League.

    As the name hints, the competition was originally designed to promote European trade fairs, and had a strict ‘one club per city’ rule. On that basis, this week’s Champions League clash between Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain is, in basic terms, pretty much what you’d expect. On the basis of domestic titles won, this is the most successful club from each of Europe’s biggest two cities (discounting Russia) playing each other.

    But there are several complications.

    First, PSG might be France’s biggest club today, but back in 1955, they were 15 years away from being formed.

    Second, Arsenal are one of seven top-flight London clubs in 2024-25, and have often finished behind Chelsea and Tottenham in recent seasons. PSG, meanwhile, have been the only top-flight Parisian club for the last three decades.

    And when you look at the average attendances of the biggest clubs in both cities last season, the difference is stark.

    So how have western Europe’s two major cities managed to do club football quite so differently? Or, more to the point, how come Paris can only support one major club?

    The British clubs

    London is unique, in terms of boasting so many major football clubs. If we’re slightly generous with our definition of city boundaries, Madrid and Lisbon often feature four top-flight sides, Athens effectively has five this season, while Istanbul can offer six. But London’s seven is highly unusual, and a further three London clubs — Charlton Athletic, Queens Park Rangers and the old Wimbledon FC — have previously played in the Premier League since its formation in 1992. Millwall featured in the top flight between 1988 and 1990 too.


    London has a network of intense football rivalries (Marc Atkins/Getty Images)

    Paris, on the other hand, is highly unusual in contributing just one top-flight club. The standard approach for big cities — Rome, Milan, Manchester — is generally two. But while Paris is an outlier in European terms, it isn’t in French terms. In 2024-25, France’s top-flight features 18 teams from 18 different settlements.

    In keeping with many other major European cities, the first Parisian football clubs were formed by Britons. Sides with English-language names like the Standard Athletic Club and White Rovers came into existence in the final decade of the 19th century, and primarily featured British players. In comparison with Nordic, Mediterranean and central European nations, football was slow to develop in France. The authorities considered the rugby version of football to be more sophisticated, and association football was barely played in schools.

    The first Olympic football tournament was held in Paris in 1900, and won by Great Britain — or, in reality, by an East London outfit named Upton Park. They had no link to nearby West Ham and were an amateur side, as professional athletes were, at that stage, not allowed to compete in the Olympics. Britain had a hold over Parisian football already.

    Meanwhile, as noted by Chris Lee in his book Origin Stories, when France formed a cup competition in 1910, quality and interest was so low from within France that the tournament was an invitational event open to English sides. Therefore, while this was not the Coupe de France — which would be formed in 1917 — the first three winners of a major cup in Paris were Swindon Town, Clapton Orient (now Leyton Orient) and Fulham. They defeated Barnsley, Millwall and QPR respectively at the Parc des Princes, the same site PSG play on today, between 1910 and 1912.

    In that sense, you can reasonably argue that London was more influential than Paris in the rise of French football. While the key figure in France’s belated footballing development was Henri Delaunay, the man after whom the European Championship trophy is named, he was inspired after attending the 1902 FA Cup final at Crystal Palace between Sheffield United and Southampton.


    Scenes from the 1902 FA Cup final between Sheffield United and Southampton, an inspirational match for Henri Delaunay (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

    The French clubs

    So what about actual Parisian clubs themselves?

    Well, the other famous French football innovator of this time — and another with a major international trophy named after him — was Jules Rimet. He formed Red Star, a Parisian multi-sport club, in 1897. They are the only true constant of the last 125-odd years.

    When Ligue 1 was originated in 1932, Red Star were one of four Parisian clubs in the top flight. The others were Club Francais (as the name suggests, the first Parisian club formed by French players, and represented France at the aforementioned 1900 Olympics), Cercle Athletique de Paris and Racing Club de Paris.

    But these clubs struggled to grow. The Tour de France was created in 1903 and cycling was unquestionably the biggest sport in France. Rowing and gymnastics were also favoured, and rugby was still more popular. Football was, in contrary to what was happening in England, not the sport of the working class — it was favoured by the anglophile liberal metropolitan elite of the early 20th century. Paris was clearly the centre of that, but the game was treated as a pastime rather than to build a town around.


    Cycling became France’s most important sport in the 20th century, not football (AFP via Getty Images)

    Intra-city rivalries didn’t develop anywhere in France. With some early French competitions only accepting one club per region, combined with minimal public support and a reliance on local councils for income and building stadia, French clubs found that mergers were more conducive to success than city rivalries. Of the aforementioned four clubs, Club Francais were relegated from the inaugural Ligue 1 season and essentially ceased to exist after a merger in 1935. Cercle Athletique de Paris were also quickly relegated, managed another three decades and then also fell victim to a merger, becoming an amateur side.

    It was really only Red Star and Racing Club which survived.

    Red Star are more notable for being a left-wing club than a successful one, attracting a committed cult support and experiencing a turbulent time on the pitch. In the 21st century, they’ve competed at every level between the sixth and the second tiers.

    Racing Club, meanwhile, were briefly managed in the 1930s by Jimmy Hogan — referred to as ‘the most influential coach in football history’ by Jonathan Wilson in his history of football tactics, Inverting The Pyramid — and won a single Ligue 1 title three years after his departure in 1936. They suffered serious financial problems in the 1960s and tumbled through the divisions, but were revived by a famous French businessman, Jean-Luc Lagardere, in the 1980s. He was most notable for his stewardship of Formula 1 team Matra, who won the world championship in 1969.

    Lagardere threw money at the side, signings the likes of David Ginola, Luis Fernandez, Pierre Littbarski and Enzo Francescoli, and even appointed Artur Jorge as manager immediately after he’d led Porto to the European Cup in 1987. Lagardere was serious about Racing Club, although it attracted few supporters. After a desperate attempt to increase the profile of the club, and his brand, by renaming it Matra Racing, Lagardere eventually conceded defeat and withdrew his financial support. The club was relegated from Ligue 1 in 1990, and financial problems meant they were double-relegated to the third tier.


    David Ginola playing for Matra Racing in the 1980s (Marc Francotte/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)

    There’s a wider question about quite how football-crazy France is, compared to other European nations. The country didn’t really capitalise on the national side’s fine performance in finishing third at World Cup 1958. Then the national side didn’t qualify for a major tournament between 1966 and 1978. David Goldblatt, in his seminal book The Ball is Round, writes that, “While in Britain the new youth and musical cultures of the 1960s interacted with football, in France they stood as an alternative and an opponent. The counter-cultures of the late 1960s explicitly rejected football and its antiquated provincial hierarchies.”

    The lift-off moments were the national team successes on Parisian soil in 1984 and 1998, but the boosts to domestic football — and in particular, domestic support — were negligible. The heroes of those sides soon moved abroad, if they hadn’t emigrated already, in part due to high taxation rates in France.

    The modern clubs

    So where did PSG come from?

    Well, in a sense it was a new club, and in another sense it was another merger. While generally mocked for a relative lack of history — even before the Qatari takeover in 2011 — PSG are interesting in that they were born due to a crowdfunding campaign that attracted startup capital from 20,000 ‘supporters’ who were prepared to contribute to the foundation of a new club, although two wealthy businessmen were the figureheads.

    Slightly confusingly, PSG was originally a merger of Paris FC (a club only formed the previous year) and Stade St Germain, although two years after the formation of PSG, Paris FC split from the new club because the city’s mayor refused to financially support a club which technically played outside the boundaries of the city. Paris FC re-established themselves as an independent entity, retained the club’s players and Ligue 1 status, while PSG were relegated to the third tier and had to work their way through the divisions again.

    PSG’s first golden era came in the 1990s, when they were taken over by television giants Canal+, but attendances were always relatively modest considering the size of the city they represented. PSG, of course, are unlike any clubs in London in that they carry the name of the city, something they’ve been increasingly keen to take advantage of over the last decade. They’ve made ‘Paris’ more prominent on their crest, and like their name to be abbreviated to ‘PAR’ rather than ‘PSG’ on television graphics.


    PSG won the Coupe de France three times in the 1990s (Christian Liewig/TempSport/Corbis via Getty Images)

    Also worthy of mention is US Creteil, from the south-eastern suburbs of Paris. Formed in the 1930s, they played in the second tier regularly at the start of the century, and as recently as 2016, although even at that stage only attracted attendances of around 2000. They’re now back in the fourth tier.

    But Parisian football is at its strongest point for many decades. Red Star won the third-tier Championnat National last season and are competing in Ligue 2 alongside Paris FC — who are currently top of the table, and aiming for promotion to Ligue 1 for the first time since relegation in 1979. Paris FC also have a strong women’s side, who regularly finish third in the Premiere Ligue (formerly known as Division 1 Feminine) behind PSG and Lyon, and eliminated Arsenal in the Champions League qualifiers last season, although they were soundly beaten by Manchester City this time around.


    Red Star’s players celebrate winning the 2023-24 Championnat National (ANTONIN UTZ/AFP via Getty Images)

    But those two clubs are still struggling for support. Paris FC averaged 5,500 last season, the 13th-highest attendance of the 20 clubs in Ligue 2. Red Star attracted around 3,500. And the reality is that their dual rise owes little to local support, and more to what many would consider the twin evils of modern football: state ownership and multi-club ownership.

    Since 2020, Paris FC have been 20 per cent owned by by the Kingdom of Bahrain, who have seemingly been inspired by PSG’s Qatari-led dominance. Bahrain also act as the club’s main sponsors. “They join us for many objectives — mainly to help them to spread the image of Bahrain in France and Europe,” said director general Fabrica Herrault said in an interview upon the takeover.

    The situation at Red Star also feels familiar, and somewhat unsatisfying given their long history of being a left-wing club. In May 2022 they were purchased by a US investment firm, 777 Partners, who also own the likes of Genoa, Hertha Berlin and Vasco da Gama. That attracted serious opposition from supporters, and their protests led to the postponement of a league match two years ago.

    With a major fraud claim recently brought against 777, Red Star have been the subject of interest from another American, Steve Pagliuca, who owns Atalanta and is part-owner of the Boston Celtics. According to Bloomberg, Pagliuca “saw opportunities to invest in French football, where lower broadcast revenue has left clubs in need of capital.”

    Average attendances in French football are currently positive. Ligue 1 recorded its highest-ever attendance last season of 27,100, while Ligue 2’s figure was 8,650, the best figure for 15 years — although that was boosted by two traditional giants, Saint-Etienne and Bordeaux, unusually, being in the second tier. The Ligue 2 stadiums, in general, were still only 55 per cent full.

    In the capital, Paris FC’s 20,000-capacity stadium is only around a quarter full most weeks, while Red Star at least manage to make a modest 5,600-capacity ground in the northern suburbs look busy.

    And while the nature of these clubs’ ownership is relatively modern, this is the history of Parisian football. The financial investment arrives before the support — if the support ever arrives at all. Of course, PSG have won 10 of the last 12 Ligue 1 titles and attract an average attendance of over 45,000, although there have been waves of unhappiness from supporters in recent years, and there are sporadic reports that Qatar might consider rethinking its investment.


    Arsenal’s Ian Wright taking on PSG in March 1994 (Anton Want/Getty Images)

    In general, French clubs are still struggling to generate their own money. Ligue 1’s new television rights deal represents a 12 per cent decrease on the previous agreement, and that’s a joint agreement with DAZN and BeIN Sports, the latter being Qatar-owned and surely less likely to stick around if Qatar isn’t investing in PSG. Unlike in England, domestic football has never become appointment television viewing in France.

    If Paris FC continue their fine start to the campaign, next season there will be a top-flight Parisian derby in Ligue 1 for the first time since Racing Club’s relegation in 1990. But with seven top-flight sides, London boasts 42 derbies a year. The difference owes to many factors, including the historic structure of competitions and clubs’ reliance on local councils for funds.

    But more than anything else, it’s simply a reflection on wildly varying levels of interest in football.

    (Header photo: Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Nicknames, barbecues, unity: What Mbappe can expect from Madrid’s dressing room

    Nicknames, barbecues, unity: What Mbappe can expect from Madrid’s dressing room

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    Real Madrid’s long-awaited signing of Kylian Mbappe has plenty of upside for the reigning Spanish and European champions — but there are some question marks.

    One of them is how Mbappe fits into the starting line-up, given his preferred position is on the left wing, which is where Vinicius Junior, last season’s 24-goal top scorer, plays. The other is how the 25-year-old Frenchman will gel with an established dressing room — an aspect the La Liga club looked at in January when they again started to seriously consider signing him.

    The Athletic has previously detailed how head coach Carlo Ancelotti plans to use a flexible 4-3-3 system, with Mbappe playing through the middle, Vinicius Jr on the left and Rodrygo on the right. This will become a 4-4-2 in defence, with Mbappe and Vinicius Jr as the front two and Jude Bellingham moving to left midfield.

    GO DEEPER

    Mbappe at Real – how does he fit in with Bellingham, Vinicius Jr and Rodrygo?

    That leaves the personality question. Madrid did not want Mbappe to enjoy the degree of power he had at previous club Paris Saint-Germain after renewing his contract there in 2022. They also feared giving him an excessively high salary could raise suspicions among a harmonious group of players. Reports have suggested Mbappe will be paid a signing bonus in the region of €100million ($109m; £84m) then a €15m salary.

    This current set of Madrid players is considered one of the most tightly knit of recent years. Sources close to the dressing room — who, like all those cited in this article, asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships — have said the atmosphere is the best they have ever known and recognised they had not felt the same way in previous years.

    That was something referred to by the recently retired Toni Kroos when he was asked at an event last week if he would stay in contact with any of his former Madrid team-mates.

    “Yes, I have a personal relationship with many of them,” the German midfielder said. “Last season was not only very successful but we also had a top dressing room — I can’t say the same for every team I played for. They are people I want to keep in touch with.”


    Mbappe was presented to much fanfare last week (Alvaro Medranda/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)

    There have been signs of that during the players’ summer holidays.

    As in 2023, Vinicius Jr invited a selection of his club team-mates to home city Rio de Janeiro after Brazil’s Copa America quarter-finals exit against Uruguay this month. Many could not go because of family commitments or scheduling issues around international tournaments, but Eduardo Camavinga, Ferland Mendy, Eder Militao and Rodrygo went.

    The players attended a charity event for the winger’s foundation, the Instituto Vini Jr — into which he has invested €1.3million over the last year to help more than 3,500 children — and enjoyed a few days of rest, parties and playing football against each other. They were joined by people from their entourages and other high-profile figures from the world of sport and elsewhere, such as the Boston Celtics NBA star Jaylen Brown and singers Ozuna, Rauw Alejandro and Ludmilla.

    Mbappe was among those invited along with Vinicius Jr’s countryman, friend and now-Madrid team-mate Endrick. But both were due to be officially unveiled at the club’s Santiago Bernabeu home stadium after their respective involvements in the European Championship and the Copa America — Mbappe was unveiled last Tuesday; Endrick will be this Saturday — and needed to deal with the logistics of their new life in Spain.

    At his opening press conference, Mbappe confirmed that Vinicius Jr had played a role in him finally joining Madrid. He was asked which players had spoken to him about the club before his arrival from PSG.

    “I had all the French players, who always told me and explained to me that it is the best (club) in the world,” Mbappe said. “Also Vinicius, who asked me to come, and told me that we would play together in attack. Thank you to them, because it’s always a good thing that they want me to play with them.”


    Mbappe with now-Madrid team-mates Camavinga and Tchouameni in France training (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

    Several players showed public support — whether implicit or explicit — for Mbappe’s signing before it was made official.

    When rumours linked Madrid with the move last year, Rodrygo posted a photo of himself partying with Mbappe in the August. And, once the deal was announced, there was a big reaction on social media from the whole squad.

    Sources at Valdebebas, Madrid’s training ground, said Mbappe has made a good impression, describing him as “intelligent” and “cheerful”. The club offered him lower terms this time than those in their failed 2022 proposal, although his base salary is among the highest in the squad (and with his signing bonus included he is by far their best-paid player).

    Mbappe made the right noises in his first press conference, saying he would play where Ancelotti asked him to and adding that he was not thinking about taking the No 10 shirt worn by Luka Modric for the past seven seasons, out of respect for the long-serving Croatian midfielder (he’ll wear the No 9).

    So there are good signs — and it is worth considering what happened when Bellingham, another big personality, joined Madrid last year.

    Initial reports suggested Bellingham and Vinicius Jr did not get on, but that was soon proven wrong. They sometimes took the same car to training and Vinicius Jr celebrated some of his goals by recreating the Englishman’s ‘open arms’ celebration. When Bellingham was interviewed by the club’s official TV channel during Madrid’s La Liga title celebrations in May, he said, “I’m here, with the best player in the world” as he embraced Vinicius Jr.

    The Brazilian called Bellingham ‘Belligol’ in that interview, one of several nicknames that is within the squad.

    Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is 6ft 7in (200cm) so is known as ‘Jirafa’ (Giraffe), Antonio Rudiger is ‘Loco’ (Crazy), David Alaba is ‘Alabama’, Ferland Mendy is ‘General’, Eduardo Camavinga is ‘Pantera’ (Panther), Federico Valverde is ‘Halcon’ (Hawk), ‘Gaucho’ (the cowboy-like horsemen who are a folk symbol in his native Uruguay) or ‘Bombazo’ (Bombshell — because of the power of his shots), while Arda Guler is ‘Abi’ (‘older brother’ in the language of his Turkish homeland). Players use these nicknames regularly on social media, evidence of the positive atmosphere in the dressing room.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Cliques in football dressing rooms: The good, the bad and the ugly

    That was helped last term by the mix of youngsters and veterans such as Nacho, Kroos and Joselu — all of whom have left the club this summer. But other experienced players such as the 38-year-old Modric and Lucas Vazquez, 33, remain after they extended their deals for a further year.

    Club staff have played an important role in forging that harmony.

    Last summer, the influential chief scout Juni Calafat took new arrivals Bellingham and Guler and Brahim Diaz (who was returning from a three-year loan at AC Milan) for dinner at a well-known restaurant in the centre of Madrid. Guler then hosted a barbecue at his home after the crucial La Liga win against Barcelona in April, attended by Brahim, Valverde and staff members.

    The players have a great connection with Ancelotti and the other coaches. Carlo’s son and assistant Davide is the key given that, at 35, he is closer in age to the players and speaks several languages.


    Carlo and Davide Ancelotti have a good relationship with the players (Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)

    They also enjoy a good relationship with doctors, physiotherapists and trainers. That was clear when physiotherapist Jaime Salom insisted on being at the Bernabeu for Militao’s comeback from a serious knee injury against Athletic Bilbao in March, despite the death of his mother that week. Rodrygo dedicated a goal in that game to Salom.

    “These kinds of details are usually given privately and often you can’t see them, but they are very important,” a Valdebebas source said at the time.

    It all paints a picture of a united dressing room, ready to welcome another star player in Mbappe.

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • The full inside story of Kylian Mbappe’s Real Madrid transfer

    The full inside story of Kylian Mbappe’s Real Madrid transfer

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    Real Madrid have been trying to land Kylian Mbappe for years — and now they finally have their man.

    The 25-year-old Frenchman’s signing was confirmed on Monday, more than two years on from their previous attempt to bring him in.

    In May 2022, Mbappe dramatically turned down a move to Madrid, making a last-minute decision to renew his contract at Paris Saint-Germain instead. This time, things have gone much more smoothly, and there is great excitement among everyone at Madrid over the arrival of one of the world’s best players, especially with the squad that just won the club’s 15th European Cup/Champions League already brimming with young talent.

    But that doesn’t mean the free-agent transfer has been without intrigue — and nor was it totally unopposed.

    This is the full story of how Madrid finally signed Mbappe.

    The start of 2024 marked the beginning of the end.

    In early January, at Madrid’s Valdebebas training complex — where the club’s offices are also located — it was agreed that a final attempt to sign Mbappe would be made.

    Several meetings were held on the matter, but some senior figures at Madrid were not convinced it was a good idea.

    The thinking behind this was two-fold. First of all, there were concerns the club’s interests could be damaged again after Mbappe’s rejection two years ago. Others simply thought the time was not right — for both sporting and economic reasons.

    Some preferred to be more cautious with the club’s finances — which are in good shape, even with the extensive remodelling of their Santiago Bernabeu stadium, which will cost at least €1.3billion (£1.1bn; $1.4bn at current rates).

    Some thought the positive dressing-room atmosphere could be affected by Mbappe entering as the highest-paid player when the vast majority of his new team-mates had won more trophies for the club. Some thought Madrid could get by fine without him — especially with 17-year-old Brazilian Endrick set to arrive and the team already performing admirably.

    In short: there was a view that Madrid’s project was working really well without Mbappe.

    But club president Florentino Perez decided nonetheless that another attempt would be made, with the above factors taken into account. It was also decided that Mbappe would be given a deadline to respond to this new proposal, the terms of which would be lower than the one in 2022. According to sources familiar with those previous talks — like all sources cited in this article, they preferred to speak anonymously to protect relationships — Mbappe was offered a six-season contract with a €130million signing bonus and a salary of €26m a year.

    Mbappe took a first step of his own on January 3 when, without consulting PSG, he stopped to speak with reporters after PSG beat Toulouse in the Trophee des Champions — a game between the previous season’s winners of Ligue 1 and the French Cup, much like the Community Shield in England.

    “In 2022, I didn’t know my decision until May,” Mbappe said in reply to questions about his future — it being the start of a new year, he was now into the final six months of his contract and free to negotiate with interested clubs.

    “If I know what I want to do, I shouldn’t let the decision drag on. It wouldn’t make any sense.”

    Meanwhile, PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi said the club wanted him to stay: “He is the best player in the world, and the best thing for him is PSG. He is at the heart of the project. I ask everyone to leave Kylian in peace.”


    Mbappe with his Trophee des Champions winner’s medal (Christian Liewig – Corbis/Getty Images)

    Mbappe’s words were interpreted positively in the Spanish capital, where Madrid were already working on the detail of their offer. When what they were proposing reached the player’s entourage in the following days, the club made it known that his salary (the offer was for slightly more than Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham were getting) and signing fee would make him their best-paid player.

    Perez was in regular contact with Mbappe during this process, something that is unusual for Madrid’s club president. Ordinarily, his right-hand man, their director general Jose Angel Sanchez, conducts negotiations. Mbappe told Perez he was keen on the move. All the while Madrid insisted, through briefings to the media, that they had no interest in the player. But the reality was quite different — as The Athletic reported on numerous occasions.

    Sanchez travelled to Paris before Madrid took part in the four-club Supercopa de Espana tournament, which was played in Saudi Arabia from January 10-14. He returned full of optimism — another good sign, as he is usually cautious and very restrained.

    By the end of that month, everyone at Madrid believed a deal would be done. But still there was no definitive agreement. Some people close to Mbappe were not as clear on the move as he was.


    Perez, pictured at a Madrid game in January (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

    As reported by The Athletic in mid-February, influential members of his entourage were unconvinced by the offer because it was below what he was making at PSG, and could earn from another potential suitor.

    In talks with Perez, the president outlined how signing for Madrid would take the player’s profile to another sporting and marketing level, which would help bring in further personal revenue. With a few exceptions such as Vinicius Jr, the split at Madrid over image rights is usually 50 per cent for the club and 50 per cent for the player, although the share for Mbappe is expected to be in his favour.

    Sources at PSG still felt it was likely that Mbappe would leave. They recalled how he had already decided last summer against taking up an option to stay for an extra year, and knew he had repeatedly expressed admiration for Madrid.

    But these sources also explained that PSG felt “protected economically”. They described an agreement in principle with Mbappe that would see the club compensated financially if he did leave following the expiry of his contract on June 30. They said it was a complex arrangement that covered several scenarios — including the France captain waiving certain loyalty bonuses he might otherwise have been entitled to. Mbappe himself has also talked of “all parties being protected” when he leaves, and discussions on this aspect are still ongoing.

    It remains to be seen exactly what agreement, if any, Mbappe and PSG make in this regard. But the French champions have always sought to stress that any departure for the forward at the end of the 2023-24 season would not be a ‘free transfer’ in their eyes.


    Mbappe and Al-Khelaifi, pictured after PSG’s Coupe de France win (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

    Then came a key development.

    On February 13, a Tuesday, Real Madrid played away against RB Leipzig in the first leg of a Champions League last-16 tie. Senior club figures travelled with inside information. They had been told Mbappe would inform PSG of his decision to depart at the end of the season.

    The news did not become public until the Thursday, but with the Madrid squad still in Germany, the club’s board informed head coach Carlo Ancelotti. Without being told whether or not Mbappe had actually signed a contract, the Italian was made to understand that he could count on having the striker in his squad for next season.

    About 10 days later, Mbappe was spotted on Spanish soil, but in Barcelona not Madrid, enjoying a few days off. One source told The Athletic he had gone to the capital first to sign his contract.

    Only this week, in early June, did two more sources share further information on the February talks. They said this was when Mbappe’s move was sealed.

    The final stages of negotiations were conducted in utmost secrecy. Madrid do tend to operate this way, but sources involved in the deal also said Mbappe’s mother and agent Fayza Lamari requested there be no leaks at all, in order for her son to be as protected as possible during his final months with PSG.


    Mbappe scored 44 goals in 48 games for PSG last season (Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Some tensions between Mbappe and PSG followed, with manager Luis Enrique occasionally substituting him or leaving him out altogether. “We have to get used to playing without him,” the Spaniard said in March.

    After being replaced at half-time of a goalless draw away to Monaco, his first professional club, on March 1, Mbappe sat in the stands with his family instead of on the bench with team-mates. Watching the rest of the match just a few rows away were members of the PSG board, and reports said there was a heated conversation between them and his mum. Madrid and the player’s camp believe PSG penalised Mbappe by reducing his playing time. Sources at the French club dismiss this as untrue.

    The end was drawing near, but the fact both PSG and Madrid were still competing in the Champions League added to the strategy of total discretion. Three days after PSG were eliminated by Borussia Dortmund in the semi-finals, however, Mbappe made his decision to leave public.

    “I need a new challenge after seven years,” he said, while thanking almost everyone at the club (most notably, Al-Khelaifi was not mentioned), but they did not know it was coming.

    Mbappe wanted to make the announcement before PSG’s final home game of the season on Sunday, May 12. The club decided not to organise anything special for him, but the team’s ultras (with whom Mbappe had shared a barbecue on the Friday) dedicated a huge tifo to him.

    The following Monday, newspaper Le Parisien reported that, in the run-up to the game, Al-Khelaifi and Mbappe had an argument, with the former reproaching the latter for not mentioning him in his farewell video.

    A PSG source strongly denied this happened, adding that an agreement with Mbappe over the economic terms of his departure was almost done.

    Later that Monday, Mbappe was named Ligue 1’s player of the year for a fifth consecutive season. In his acceptance speech, he did acknowledge Al-Khelaifi, who in 2021, 2022 and 2023 repeated that his star player would not leave PSG for free.

    “The new chapter will be very exciting,” Mbappe said of his next move, without revealing the identity of his next club. “Maybe it’s not the time (for everyone) to find out.”

    The big reveal was always expected to come after the Champions League final, this past Saturday. Madrid did not want anything, not even the biggest signing they have ever made, to distract attention from something so important and difficult to achieve.

    Early on Monday, two days after the club won a record-extending 15th European Cup/Champions League title, The Athletic reported the announcement would be made this week.

    Now it is finally done — and fans can excitedly look forward to seeing Mbappe in that famous white kit.

    (Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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  • Fight for the Champions League’s future threatens an age of uncertainty in Europe

    Fight for the Champions League’s future threatens an age of uncertainty in Europe

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    A love story. Florentino Perez called it a love story. Speaking to reporters on his way out of Wembley Stadium after Saturday’s Champions League final, the Real Madrid president sounded like a man in thrall to the mystique, the allure and the romance of a relationship that has spanned seven decades and so many special times.

    “It’s a magnificent night, because this competition is the one we like the most,” Perez said after Madrid, 2-0 winners over Borussia Dortmund, were crowned European champions for the 15th time. “It was created by Santiago Bernabeu (the club’s president from 1943 to 1978) along with L’Equipe newspaper, and it made us important in the world. Some (clubs) leave and others come, but this competition is very much ours.”

    There is a beautiful story there: the all-conquering Madrid team that won the first five European Cups from 1956-60, inspired by Paco Gento, Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas; a sixth title in 1966, and then an unthinkable 32-year wait before three more around the turn of the century, won by a team illuminated by the homegrown Raul Gonzalez and embellished by the arrivals of Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane before the Perez-driven galacticos project lost its way; their re-emergence over the past decade with a side initially built around Cristiano Ronaldo and other A-list talents, but now extensively rebuilt around the young talent of Vinicius Junior, Rodrigo, Jude Bellingham and, coming soon, a bona fide galactico in Kylian Mbappe.

    No club have contributed more to the game’s growth in the European Cup era. Equally, no club have grown more with the game. It is, on one level, a beautiful relationship, particularly when they are led by coaches such as Carlo Ancelotti and Zidane, whose personal history with the competition dates back to their illustrious playing careers.


    Perez wants to overhaul a tournament Madrid have dominated (Angel Martinez/Real Madrid via Getty Images)

    But it is a strange kind of love story when Perez appears intent on killing the Champions League as we know it.

    He has the European football landscape he dreamed of — a vast and enormously lucrative competition, so elitist that it now attracts talk of fairytales if the second-biggest club in Germany make it to the final — but it is still not enough. Nothing will ever be enough.

    One way or another, European football is approaching a tipping point.

    It has felt that way for several years now, as if the unprecedented financial advantages enjoyed by the biggest, richest, most powerful clubs in the biggest, richest, most powerful leagues just aren’t enough anymore.

    Perez wants the European Cup to be replaced by a Super League. Why? “We are doing this to save football at this critical moment,” he told Spanish television show El Chiringuito around the time of the failed Super League launch in the spring of 2021. “If we continue with the Champions League, there is less and less interest, and then it’s over. The new format which starts in 2024 is absurd. In 2024, we are all dead.”

    And now here we are in 2024. Perez is still pushing the Super League project, emboldened and encouraged by the outcome of the latest court case in Spain, and continuing to wage war on UEFA, the game’s governing body on this continent, which he has accused of running a “monopoly” on European football.

    UEFA, for its part, has responded to the constant demands for more matches by introducing a new Champions League format from next season: the so-called “Swiss model”, where 36 teams will play eight games each, not in a group format but in a notional 36-team “league” from which 24 of them progress to the knockout phase. This is what Perez has described as “absurd”. And he might well be right.

    It sounds… bloated, convoluted, unwieldy, all the things that European competition should not be. It looks like a forlorn, misguided attempt to go with the flow when what the game really needed was for UEFA to do the impossible by stemming and reversing the tide.

    It is designed to placate the demands of the biggest, richest, most powerful clubs.

    Some of us would say UEFA has acceded far too much over the past two decades in particular, creating a financial model that has created a chronic competitive imbalance between leagues and within leagues. Perez and others have already concluded next season’s reforms don’t go anything like far enough.

    Sitting at Wembley on Saturday evening, soaking up the atmosphere created by their supporters, it felt like something of a throwback to see Dortmund in the final again. If it felt that way the previous time they got there, in 2013, when Jurgen Klopp characterised them as a “workers’ club” against a commercial juggernaut in fellow German side Bayern Munich, it certainly felt that way when they played Real Madrid in this season’s showpiece.

    It was similar when Inter Milan reached the final against Manchester City last season. Inter have won the European Cup as many times (three) as Manchester United and indeed they have won it more recently, but they too seem to have been left behind in the modern era. The latter stages of the Champions League felt like their natural habitat in the 2000s. By 2023, reaching the semi-finals, never mind the final, seemed extraordinary.

    And that is Dortmund and Inter — never mind other former giants such as Benfica, Porto and Ajax (to say nothing of Celtic, Red Star Belgrade and the rest). The 21st-century financial landscape has put these clubs far beyond most of their domestic rivals but unable to compete financially with even mid-ranking Premier League clubs, let alone the Champions League elite.

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    What comes next for Borussia Dortmund?

    The European game is at such a strange point in its history.

    The football itself is frequently enthralling, highly technical and played at an astonishing speed, but the structure of the sport’s European model feels increasingly broken: by greed, by entitlement, by the biggest clubs demanding an ever greater share of revenue and ever more protection against underperformance. Attempts to preserve wild-card places for underperforming big clubs have so far been resisted, but that is clearly the direction of travel.


    Dortmund reaching the final feels almost like a fairytale in the modern game (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)

    UEFA’s solution, as always, is to give the elite more of what they want — but not enough to please most of them. The solution proposed by Perez and others is for the most powerful clubs to wrestle power from UEFA and to be allowed to do as they please.

    “To fix a problem, you have to first recognise that you have a problem,” Perez said in 2021, before making clear his belief that European football’s issue was not dubious ownership models, nor the spread of multi-club networks, a bulging fixture calendar or a chronic financial and competitive imbalance across the continent. The only problem he was interested in was the one that could be solved by “top-level games year-round, with the best players competing”.

    But Perez doesn’t necessarily mean “top-level games” between the best teams of the day. He wants the most marketable matches.

    If he feels short-changed by a Champions League campaign in which Madrid faced Napoli, Braga, Union Berlin, RB Leipzig, City, Bayern and Dortmund, you suspect he would be happier to have played Juventus and Liverpool (who didn’t qualify), Manchester United (who were knocked out in the group stage) and Barcelona (beaten in the quarter-finals).

    Provided his team still ended up winning, of course.

    Two great contradictions arise from the past decade of European competition.

    The first, much discussed elsewhere and not greatly relevant to this article, is that this period of Madrid domination, unprecedented in the Champions League era, has felt strange as far as the quality of their performances is concerned.

    It is undoubtedly strange that they have come to dominate an era while rarely dominating their matches against top-class opponents. It must leave Pep Guardiola wondering how on earth, beyond the small margins of knockout football, his City side have just one European Cup to show for their sustained excellence over the past seven seasons.

    The second contradiction — perhaps linked to the first, perhaps not — is that, in an era when the biggest clubs have enjoyed access to revenue streams that were previously beyond their wildest dreams, several of them have lost their way due to serious mismanagement.

    Barcelona, Madrid’s fiercest rivals, have flirted with financial calamity and have reached the Champions League semi-finals just once in the past eight seasons; Manchester United have reached just two quarter-finals in the past 13 seasons under the Glazer family’s miserable, directionless ownership; Juventus reached the final in 2015 and 2017 while in the midst of winning nine consecutive Serie A titles, but they have fallen away from the top tier of European football as ownership and management issues escalated.

    It is almost as if some of these ownership regimes became so fixated on driving up revenue streams and reimagining European football’s future that they lost sight of their own club’s present.

    That is not an accusation that could be levelled at the Perez regime.

    Obsessed as he might be by his Super League dream and his power struggle with UEFA, he has overseen Madrid’s evolution into a club that plays the transfer market shrewdly, always looking for the next big talents in world football (Vinicius Jr, Rodrigo, Bellingham, incoming Brazilian teenager Endrick) and always respecting experience and knowledge while recognising when it is right to let a fading A-list talent grow old at another club’s expense.

    Barcelona and Manchester United, from a broadly similar financial position, have spent enormous sums of money in a wildly erratic manner and allowed dysfunction to take hold. By contrast, Madrid have established a clear vision, made good appointments and built a winning environment.

    They have also without question ridden their luck at times in the Champions League. That needs to be emphasised: both the luck they have had in some of their winning campaigns (not least the last two) and the assurance Ancelotti and his players have shown in being able to ride it. In some of the individual success stories — Ancelotti, Nacho, Dani Carvajal, Toni Kroos, Vinicius Jr, Bellingham — there is so much to like.

    The most uplifting stories of the past few seasons in European football, though, have come away from the Champions League’s spotlight, with Europa League final successes for Villarreal, Eintracht Frankfurt, Sevilla and Atalanta, as well as the success of the initially derided third-tier Conference League, which Roma, West Ham United and Olympiacos have won in its first three years.

    The joy in those celebrations, particularly after Olympiacos beat Fiorentina in the Conference League final last week, was truly something to behold.

    It has shown there is still life and ambition among those clubs who have been conditioned to accept their place in the game’s 21st-century order and be grateful for whatever crumbs might fall from the top table.

    Former Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli once infamously asked whether Atalanta truly merited a place in the Champions League while on their way to a third consecutive third-placed finish in Serie A. When it comes to outperforming expectations and resources over recent seasons, few clubs in Europe have been more deserving.

    Surely that is the lesson for European football to draw from the past decade: that, in 2024, there still has to be such a thing as upward mobility, that a club like Olympiacos can win a European trophy, that clubs like Atalanta, Bologna and Aston Villa can still reach the Champions League, that a club like Bayer Leverkusen can break Bayern’s monopoly of the Bundesliga. In an era when hope has been crushed — when Bayern have been able to sleepwalk their way to some of their 11 consecutive Bundesliga titles, often sacking coaches as they go — Leverkusen’s success under Xabi Alonso has been particularly inspiring.


    Olympiacos fans celebrated their own European triumph in huge numbers (Giorgos Arapekos/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    But such love stories rarely seem to endure these days. It seems inevitable that, before long, Leverkusen will fall prey to those clubs higher up the food chain, seeing their best players whisked away, just as Klopp’s Dortmund team did, just like the Monaco team of 2016-17 or the Ajax of 2018-19 did. Maybe their manager, too.

    And at the very top of that food chain are Madrid, the sport’s apex predator, now champions of Europe for a 15th time, somehow re-establishing their dominance in an era when they felt threatened like never before.

    Leaving the stadium after Saturday’s final, it was hard to escape the feeling that European football, having allowed its problems to pile up over a long period of time, is entering a period of uncertainty and seismic change.

    This convoluted “Swiss format” will be the most inescapable change in next season’s Champions League, but, whether it has the desired effect or not, you can imagine the Super League mob clinging to its success or failure as irrefutable evidence of the need for radical reform.

    The game needs proper leadership. It needs someone to stand up and fight for tradition, for jeopardy, for the romance that runs through the history of European competition.

    Hearing his heartening words on his way out of Wembley, you might have imagined that person would be the 77-year-old president of Real Madrid, the man who talks fondly and reverently about the European Cup and his club’s enormous contribution to it.

    But no, Florentino Perez has a different perspective on that relationship these days. As love stories go, it’s increasingly complicated.

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    Real Madrid’s Champions League party: Speeches, cigars, Carvajal’s dad on horseback

    (Top photo: Visionhaus/Getty Images)

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  • How Borussia Dortmund’s Yellow Wall became the envy of European football

    How Borussia Dortmund’s Yellow Wall became the envy of European football

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    Nobody is quite sure about when the largest grandstand in Europe earned the name it is now famous for, though it is certain it happened more recently than most people think.

    The Yellow Wall at Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion was described by German author and writer Uli Hesse in 2018 as the thing that Bayern Munich, the most successful and powerful club in that country, did not have: “a massive terrace that seemed like a throwback to football’s golden age”.

    This architectural beast can hold 24,454 spectators for Bundesliga games — more than twice as many as Celtic’s fabled ‘Jungle’ did in the 1960s, and only slightly less than the maximum capacity of the Kop at Anfield during the same period, a golden age in Liverpool’s history.

    “Unlike the Jungle or the Kop, the term Yellow Wall is not very old,” Hesse stressed, using Kicker, the most popular football magazine in Germany, as a reference point for its relevance. Only in May 2009 did the description ‘Yellow Wall’ appear in its pages for the first time and that was because of the reflections of Dortmund’s then goalkeeper Roman Weidenfeller when he found out 10,000 of the club’s fans had travelled to a game against Eintracht Frankfurt.

    “It’s incredible; even when we are playing away from home, the yellow wall will be there,” Weidenfeller said.

    Yet another 21 months would pass before Kicker started to use the expression regularly, helping it become an established term in the global football language.

    This was around the time Dortmund won the Bundesliga two seasons in a row under the management of Jurgen Klopp, who had transformed underachieving giants into a club competing for domestic and also European honours.

    His Dortmund side would lose the Champions League final to Bayern at Wembley in May 2013.

    This weekend, the club have the opportunity to win, at the same London venue, the same trophy for the first time since their only triumph in the competition in 1997. On this occasion, Real Madrid are the opponents and Dortmund, who finished fifth in the Bundesliga this season, 27 points behind champions Bayer Leverkusen, are a talented side but not quite in the same state of rude health as 11 years ago.

    Klopp’s charisma and achievements helped Dortmund become the second club for lots of football supporters across Europe. Yet iconology was also a significant feature of Dortmund’s attraction.

    Their popular former manager, who left Liverpool in May after almost nine years, described the experience of seeing the Yellow Wall as you emerge from the Westfalenstadion’s bowels as an almost out-of-body experience.


    Dortmund fans say farewell and thank you to a departing Klopp in 2015 (Patrik Stollarz/AFP via Getty Images)

    “This dark tunnel, it’s exactly two metres high (just under 6ft 7in), and when you come out it’s like being born,” the 6ft 3in Klopp said. “You come out and the place explodes — out of the darkness, into the light. You look to your left and it seems like there are 150,000 people up on the terrace all going completely nuts.”

    Weidenfeller was a leader in Klopp’s team: “If you are the enemy, it crushes you, but if you have it at your back as a goalkeeper, it’s a fantastic feeling.”

    This view was supported by Bayern’s Champions League and World Cup-winning midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger, who later played for Manchester United and MLS team Chicago Fire. When he was asked whether he was more worried by Dortmund’s players or their manager, Klopp, he responded: “It’s the Yellow Wall that scares me the most.”

    The sheer scale of the structure offers an array of vantage points. “From the front of the lower tier you can almost scratch the goalkeeper on the back — while way up high below the roof, where there is an inclined angle of 37 degrees, it’s like a ski jump,” concluded the German news magazine, Der Spiegel.

    According to Hesse, Daniel Lorcher, born in 1985, was “more or less responsible” for creating the Yellow Wall term. In 2004, when Dortmund were facing doom on and off the pitch and as their financial position became bleaker, the club’s largest ultras group produced a mosaic that paraphrased an Oscar Wilde aphorism, “Many walk through dark alleys, but only a few are looking at the stars.”

    Lorcher was a leading member of The Unity, who stood in the centre of what was then known simply as the Sudtribune, right behind the goal. It was their job to make as much noise as possible but Lorcher felt there were greater possibilities at Dortmund, due to the size of that stand. If the ultras could involve other fans, persuading them to dress in bright yellow while holding flags and banners of the same colour, say, the effect would be startling, helping Dortmund’s players, as well as potentially creating more of an intimidating atmosphere for opponents.

    This not only required a huge amount of fabric, but it all had to be in the right shade of yellow.

    Lorcher and other ultras contacted a Danish retail chain which had stores all over Germany. “They sold us more than three miles of cloth and we produced four thousand flags,” Lorcher told Hesse. “We rented sewing machines for weeks on end and then had to learn how to use them. It was hard work, but we had lots of fun.”

    As the 2004-05 season reached its finale and Dortmund avoided oblivion, “the flags bathed the entire stand in yellow” before a home game with Hansa Rostock, Hesse wrote in his book, Building The Yellow Wall.

    One of the banners read: “At the end of the dark alley shines the yellow wall,” and another said: “Yellow Wall, South Stand Dortmund.”

    Since 2005, the Westfalenstadion has been known as Signal Iduna Park after the club decided to use a sponsorship deal to reduce a debt, which was eventually paid off to bank Morgan Stanley three years later.

    There were lots of contributing factors towards Dortmund’s precarious financial state during that period and one of them was the demand for stadiums to be converted into all-seater venues in the wake of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in England.

    In the summer of 1992, the Westfalenstadion’s north stand terracing was converted into a seated area, reducing the overall capacity from 54,000 to less than 43,000. The club’s directors realised they could charge more money for a comfier experience but there was a reluctance to subject the southern Sudtribune (as it is still referred to by older Dortmunders) to the same treatment after discussions with fans, who made them realise the terrace was the club’s only real marketing tool.

    After Dortmund beat 3-1 Juventus in Munich, securing the Champions League title in May 1997, the south stand was doubled in size. As the stadium became bigger and safer, Dortmund spent more money than ever on players. But more success did not follow and, by 2005, there was a real chance the club might go out of business.

    Today, Dortmund’s ground is the biggest in Germany, while their mean attendance in the Bundesliga is greater than any other Bundesliga club — including Bayern: this season, Dortmund averaged over 81,000 and Bayern, at their futuristic Allianz Arena, were at 75,000. Between Dortmund and the third- and fourth-placed teams (Eintracht Frankfurt and Stuttgart), the drop was nearly 26,000, which is only slightly more than the capacity of the Yellow Wall alone, a terrace that could accommodate the population of a reasonably-sized town.


    The Yellow Wall salutes Marco Reus at his final home game this month (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)

    Though the stadium’s capacity is reduced to make it an all-seater stand on European nights, the three clubs with the lowest average attendances in the Bundesliga (Union Berlin, Darmstadt and Heidenheim) could get their entire crowds onto the Sudtribune with room to spare; yet the club have not really sought to capitalise on it economically in a direct way.

    Hesse even suggests the Yellow Wall “hurts” Dortmund in this sense, because ticket prices have been kept so low.

    On average, season-ticket holders pay €14 (£11.90/$15.10) per match, but if Dortmund put seats there and charged more, the club, according to Hesse, would lose a sense of their soul.

    The fact that, according to the financial experts at Forbes and Deloitte, Dortmund are not even in the top 20 clubs in Europe when it comes to matchday revenue (when they have one of the biggest stadiums on the continent) is a reflection of the attitude that exists in their region, the industrial heartland of Germany. Instead, there is a residual monetary benefit from the Yellow Wall, with businesses including chemical company Evonik, brewer Brinkhoff’s and pump manufacturer Wilo keen to be associated with a creation that is authentic to a working-class region of the country.

    The Westfalenstadion has become a tourist destination but the Yellow Wall remains unaffected for the time being.

    The biggest decision for visitors, says Hesse, is whether to join the party on the terrace, or watch its radiance from afar.

    (Top photo: Alex Gottschalk/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)

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  • How do you know if a football manager is actually good at their job?

    How do you know if a football manager is actually good at their job?

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    An important thing to remember about Andre Villas-Boas is that he had ridiculously good hair.

    You don’t spend a record-shattering €15 million (£12.9; $16.3m) fee to sign a rookie manager away from Porto unless you’re pretty sure you know what you’re getting, and one thing Chelsea knew for certain, back in the heady days of 2011, was that the man with a swirling, fox-red side-parting looked impossibly cool getting tossed in the air during trophy celebrations.


    Villas-Boas at Porto in 2010 (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images)

    Hair like that had sexy new ideas — a philosophy, perhaps. It had the sort of rakish sweep that could command a press conference, smouldering volcanically above the jagged peaks of an unbuttoned collar. But when the 33-year-old prodigy conducted his first interview as the world’s most expensive manager, all of the glamour quickly drained away.

    “Don’t expect something,” Villas-Boas warned gently, “from one man.”

    True to his word, he was sacked by March.

    Villas-Boas to Chelsea might have gone down as a historic blunder if not for all the other managers teams have squandered transfer fees on in the last few years alone: Marco Rose to Borussia Dortmund (€5 million up front for one lacklustre season); Adi Hutter to Borussia Monchengladbach (€7.5 million, ditto); Julian Nagelsmann to Bayern Munich (€25 million for 19 months); Graham Potter to Chelsea (let’s not talk about it). These were the cream of the crop, the head coaches clubs couldn’t afford to wait around for, yet in their new jobs they had the shelf life of a bunch of bruised bananas.

    How do we know if a manager is good? The question sounds almost too obvious to ask — anyone down the pub will be happy to explain it to you loudly over a pint — but professional organisations with millions at stake whiff on it every year. Apparently the answer isn’t great hair. It can’t be trophies, either, since those are pretty much only available to managers already at top clubs. If the study of up-and-coming coaches can be called a science, it remains a largely theoretical one.

    “We’ve done work with football clubs and leagues, actually, around what predicts head coach success and it’s very, very hard,” says Omar Chaudhuri of the sports consultancy 21st Group. “There are very few strong predictors.”

    Everyone loves a winner, so it makes sense that employers would start by looking for coaching talent toward the top of the table. But we also know that in the grossly unequal world of European football, wage bills are destiny for most teams, no matter who’s in the technical area. The managers we admire most are the ones who find a way to punch above their weight.

    To pick out those overachievers, we can start by modelling the relationship between squad strength and success using crowdsourced “market values” from Transfermarkt, which are a decent proxy for player quality when you don’t have wages handy. We’ll average this season’s values with last season’s, where available, to give coaches some credit for player development, then weight the values by minutes played to account for absences.

    For the performance side, we’ll use a 70/30 blend of non-penalty expected goal difference and actual goal difference, which captures team strength pretty well and puts more emphasis on the parts of the game coaches are likely to have some influence over (creating and denying chances) than the parts they probably don’t (finishing, saving shots, successfully lobbying for penalties by doing the VAR rectangle thing with their fingers).

    The results are striking. Over the last seven seasons across Europe’s top leagues, our simple player quality model can explain around 80 per cent of teams’ success.

    But what about the remaining 20 per cent — who should get credit for that?

    When we look at the outliers on the chart above, it seems fair to say that Gian Piero Gasperini’s freewheeling style helped elevate Atalanta’s mid-budget squad into a Champions League contender a few years back, and the whole platoon of head coaches and interim guys who oversaw Schalke’s disastrous 2020-21 campaign probably weren’t so hot at their job. Maybe performance over squad value is a fair measure of what a manager brings to the table.

    Reassuringly, this season’s list of top teams for adjusted goal difference over expected is a veritable who’s who of coaching legends and the game’s hottest up-and-coming managers.

    Xabi Alonso has turned down overtures from Bayern Munich and Liverpool to stay at German champs-in-waiting Bayer Leverkusen, while Brighton’s Roberto De Zerbi, whom no less an authority than Pep Guardiola called “one of the most influential managers of the last 20 years,” remains a strong contender for both jobs.

    In Catalonia, Barcelona have been making eyes at Girona’s Michel. Sebastian Hoeness, Paulo Fonseca, Thiago Motta and Will Still have flocks of admirers, and maybe we should all be paying more attention to whatever Eric Roy’s got cooking at Brest.

    So is that it — have we cracked the not-so-secret formula to finding Europe’s next top manager?

    Well, hang on a second.

    One important trait for a good sports stat is stability, or how much it varies from season to season. If last year’s performance can’t predict next year’s because the number is too sensitive to context, you probably don’t want to make it the sole basis for any expensive hiring decisions.

    By that standard, our manager metric is a bust. For head coaches who change jobs, there’s no correlation whatsoever between the previous year’s performance above or below expectations at their old club and their first season at their new club. Even though goal difference added seemed pretty good at identifying this season’s hottest managers, it has zero predictive value for new hires.

    When Chelsea spent £21.5 million to sign Graham Potter, he was coming off one of the best runs by any head coach in the last seven years: in 2020-21 and 2021-22, Brighton finished 22 and 13 adjusted goals better than expected. His seven months in London went, er, not quite as well.

    Brighton, meanwhile, signed Roberto De Zerbi even though his final season at Sassuolo had been about average compared to their squad value. He’d had a pretty good season the year before that, and a respectable stint outside the top five leagues at Shakhtar Donetsk in between, but nothing that might have hinted that his first season at Brighton would be the fourth-best out of hundreds in our dataset.

    What can explain the difference between these two very different hiring stories? Maybe there’s a clue in how Brighton’s famously analytical owner Tony Bloom explained his process. “I am confident,” he said of the De Zerbi hire, “his style and tactical approach will suit our existing squad superbly.”


    De Zerbi (facing camera) and Potter in 2022 (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

    Smart clubs don’t just hire successful managers in hopes that they possess some innate knowledge of how to win. They’re careful to match a coach’s tactics to the players they already have, knowing that changing styles will cost them money and time.

    “I don’t want to have to replace 15 players or something like that over two years,” says one veteran analytics consultant, who requested anonymity to protect client relationships. “Because then it becomes a project of just kind of cycling through players and hoping things work out.”

    Not every club is as careful about this step as Brighton. Chaudhuri explains that searches often start with a “performance piece” to determine whether managers are making the most of their current squad, but “then you have a playing style piece, which clubs generally tend to be quite vague on how they want to play. They say, ‘We want games to be attractive and exciting,’ whatever that means. And then you go, ‘Okay, tell us what you think that looks like.’”

    The other consultant agrees. “I had this meeting yesterday, I gave five candidates, like, ‘What do you think of these five?’” he says. “And he was like, ‘Well, I like these four.’ But I said, ‘One of these four is actually not the style you said you want.’”

    Figuring out which managers have exceeded expectations is the easy part. You can watch their players flinging them into the air at a trophy celebration and envision your club doing the same next season. But success, on its own, is fickle. It also tends to be expensive. The right question isn’t “How do we know if a manager is good?” but “How do we know if a manager will be good for this group of players?”

    The secret ingredient in hiring the right coach is style — and not just the kind that comes with really good hair.

    (Header photo: Lars Baron/Getty Images)

    The Athletic recently profiled six of European football’s most innovative up-and-coming managers.

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  • Football’s best up-and-coming managers: Thiago Motta, a fascinating tactician

    Football’s best up-and-coming managers: Thiago Motta, a fascinating tactician

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    This is the first article in a six-part series looking at some of European football’s most innovative up-and-coming managers.

    Thiago Motta knows a thing or two about success.

    When your CV includes two La Liga titles, one Serie A title, five Ligue 1 titles and two Champions League winners medals, you tend to command instant respect within a dressing room.

    That said, few people need reminding that a successful playing career does not directly translate to a successful coaching career — so, what of Thiago Motta, the manager?

    The 41-year-old has transformed Bologna from Serie A strugglers to one of the most aesthetically pleasing sides in Italy. With just nine games remaining this season, the Rossoblu sit in fourth place and are within touching distance of a Champions League spot for the first time in 60 years.

    Motta’s stock has never been higher, but persistence and endeavour during difficult periods have already shaped his early managerial career.

    Life as a top-flight coach got off to something of a false start after Motta was sacked after just nine games at Genoa in December 2019. It was not until the summer of 2021 that he had a full season to fully display his coaching credentials by keeping relegation-favourites Spezia in Serie A in an against-all-odds campaign.

    A move to Bologna followed in September 2022, where things did not start according to the script after taking over from much-loved Sinisa Mihajlovic in controversial circumstances. Winless in his first four games, Motta had to gradually earn the trust of the Bologna fans, repaying their faith by leading the club to a ninth-placed finish in 2022-23 — the club’s best for over 10 years.

    With the support of Giovanni Sartori (technical director) and Joey Saputo (Bologna’s owner), Motta has been entrusted to put his tactical ideals into place — but what exactly are those tactical ideals?

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    Motta was not shy in sharing his philosophy during his first coaching role with PSG’s under-19s squad in 2018. It was here that he garnered unnecessary derision for discussing a 2-7-2 formation — which was erroneously interpreted as a structure spanning from back-to-front, rather than his intended left-to-right.

    “I count the goalkeeper as one of the seven players in the middle of the pitch,” Motta said. “For me, the striker is the first defender and the goalkeeper the first attacker. The goalkeeper starts the play with his feet and the attackers are the first to put pressure to recover the ball.”

    It is fair to say that Motta has since successfully moulded Bologna in his image.

    This can be seen in the data below when looking at the Rossoblu’s playstyle evolution, which breaks down a team’s metrics compared with the top seven European leagues.

    In specific reference to Motta’s philosophy, you can see a notable uptick in Bologna’s defensive work rate from the front since 2022-23, rarely allowing the opposition to build a sequence of passes before making a tackle (Intensity, 80 out of 99).

    As a consequence, Bologna’s defensive foundation is one of the strongest in Europe this season (Chance prevention, 92 out of 99), with just 0.8 non-penalty expected goals conceded — a rate bettered only by Torino, Juventus and Inter Milan in Serie A.

    The manner in which Bologna like to build out from the back (Deep build-up) is particularly interesting.

    Most commonly setting up in a fluid 4-2-3-1, Motta encourages his centre-backs to push forward and act as a pivot player when in possession — in a similar way you might see Manchester City’s John Stones rolling into midfield.

    With goalkeeper Lukasz Skorupski trusted as the “first attacker” within build-up, the core idea is that there should always be a free man to pass to when progressing the ball through the thirds.

    An example of this can be seen from the first minute during Bologna’s game with Inter Milan earlier this month. As Jhon Lucumi has possession, fellow centre-back Sam Beukema ventures into a central area ahead of the ball to provide a passing option on a different attacking line. Beukema’s positioning helps Lucumi to receive the returned pass in space before releasing right-back Stefan Posch down the right flank.

    Later in the first half, it is Lucumi who pushes into midfield to receive the ball as Bologna form a back three — this time with midfielder Michel Aebischer (20) dropping in. On this occasion, Lucumi does not receive the ball, but his positioning drags an Inter player with him to make space elsewhere, with Bologna continuing to have a free man as they build out.

    Where Bologna differ from Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City is that Motta encourages both centre-backs to drift into midfield, with full-backs tucking inside to be… fully back.

    Whether it is Lucumi, Beukema, or 21-year-old starlet Riccardo Calafiori, this approach is foundational to the fluidity of Bologna’s play and relies on a strong technical profile among Motta’s centre-backs.

    In his UEFA Pro Licence thesis, titled “The Value of the Ball”, Motta discusses collective “technical trust” as a key part of his philosophy, where each player is given the freedom to make decisions that they believe are most beneficial to the team in a given situation.

    Unsurprisingly, possession is central to the decisions that are made.

    Only Napoli boast a higher share than Bologna’s 58 per cent possession in Serie A this season, with Motta keen for his side to patiently work an opening with their dynamic positional rotations.

    As shown by this season’s playstyle wheel, Bologna’s high “Circulate” ranking shows that Motta’s side are not quick to progress the ball forward, but will instead make short, sharp passes to move the opposition structure and bait the press before working an opening — not dissimilar to Roberto De Zerbi’s Brighton.

    Motta is also a keen admirer of Marcelo Bielsa’s vast body of work and will frequently focus on third-man combinations and off-ball running as a key part of Bologna’s progression upfield.

    One example can be seen during Bologna’s game against Roma this season, where Beukema attracts pressure on the right touchline with team-mates gathering closely. A blindside run from midfielder Remo Freuler sees Beukema thread the ball into the space to transition forward at speed, with winger Dan Ndoye subsequently cutting it back for Nikola Moro to finish the fast break that Bologna have curated for themselves.

    Such penetrative runs from Bologna’s forwards are a key theme in Motta’s style. As you can see from their “Central progression” rating (98 out of 99), Bologna are not frequent crossers of the ball — only Frosinone average fewer than their 13.4 crosses per 90 — but will use the pace and trickery of dangerous wingers in Ndoye, Alexis Saelemaekers and Riccardo Orsolini to drive forward and shoot or create from advanced positions.

    Ultimately, Bologna’s key attacking threats run through the centre of the pitch, with versatile Scotsman Lewis Ferguson able to drift into a No 10 position behind the technically gifted Joshua Zirkzee.

    The pair have forged a potent partnership together and are responsible for over one-third of Bologna’s goal involvements in Serie A this season.

    “I play close to Joshua. Technically, he’s really, really good,” Ferguson told The Athletic last year. “He’s strong, fast, powerful. He’s got everything you’d want in an attacker. It’s enjoyable to play with him. We bounce off each other. If he makes one run, I make another.”

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    Lewis Ferguson: The not-so-secret ingredient behind Bologna’s impressive form

    While Zirkzee’s 10 Serie A goals (eight non-penalty efforts) lead the way within the Bologna squad, the 22-year-old Dutchman is not your typical No 9. Beyond his technical ability, Zirkzee is more appreciated by his team-mates for his ability to bring others into play — regularly dropping off into a false 9 position or pinning a centre-back to release runners ahead of him.

    Judging him on his goals alone — he is yet to register an effort from inside the six-yard box this season — would be to misunderstand his role within Motta’s system.

    Bologna’s recent goal against Empoli brings together a lot of the discussed themes in how Motta likes his side to play in the opposition half. As Empoli’s centre-back plays the ball into a central area, Moro pounces to nick the ball away. As it falls to Zirkzee, he pins the defender with his back to goal before flicking the ball to Orsolini making the overlapping run. The Italian drives into the box and converts emphatically.

    From regaining possession high up to breaking the deadlock in no more than seven seconds.

    If Motta is able to guide Bologna to a top-four spot this season (fifth place may also suffice), the prospect of leading the Rossoblu into their first European Cup campaign since 1964-65 will surely be the highlight of Motta’s early managerial career.

    The reality is that Motta’s contract expires in the summer and there are already plenty of top European clubs who are in the market for an exciting young manager ahead of the 2024-25 season. Bologna CEO Claudio Fenucci was understandably deflective at the possibility of losing his coach in the coming months.

    “Thiago is very happy in Bologna,” said Fenucci in a radio interview recently. “It’s as if he had a longer contract than he actually has.”

    Whatever the outcome in the summer, Motta has shown himself to be one of the most attractive managerial prospects in European football.

    Wherever he goes, success typically follows.

    (Top photo: Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Playing out from the back: Why teams do it and is it worth the risk?

    Playing out from the back: Why teams do it and is it worth the risk?

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    Picture the scene: a team has been awarded a goal kick. The goalkeeper throws the ball to one of two central defenders standing nearby in the six-yard box. One of them puts it down to restart and plays it laterally to the ‘keeper, who receives the pass and rests their studs on the ball as opposition players close in…

    That’s just one variation of a way of restarting play that has become extremely common in the last five years, and one that tends to split opinion like it does centre-halves.

    To some it’s a tactically and statistically proven method of starting a high-value sequence of play. To others it’s needlessly risky, a fad that may work for Pep Guardiola in the rarified air of the top end of the Premier League but which invariably fails as you get lower down the leagues.

    Who’s right? Who’s wrong? How did we get here? And what happens next?

    Here — to help answer those questions — is The Athletic’s complete guide to playing out from the back.

    How did we get to this point in football’s evolution?

    Tactical innovations can come from various sources.

    They can arise because of law changes. They can be inspired by individual players interpreting roles in different ways. They can come from revolutionary managers with new ideas. They can emerge because of improvements in the conditions football is played in. And they can grow because football has evolved from being pure recreation to being both big business and a form of entertainment. The history of playing out from the back takes into account all five of these concepts.

    First, law changes have been important. The most important change was the introduction of the back-pass law in 1992, which meant goalkeepers could no longer handle balls deliberately played back to them by defenders. It’s bizarre to watch matches from the pre-1992 era today; it’s almost like a different sport.

    One of the first red cards for a goalkeeper in the Premier League era came when Sheffield United’s Simon Tracey panicked after receiving a back pass at White Hart Lane and ended up running the ball out of play on the touchline, before hauling down the Tottenham player trying to take a quick throw-in.

    This change meant goalkeepers were, for essentially the first time, forced to practice kicking a moving ball. Their improved confidence in possession meant passing the ball out, rather than hammering it downfield, was more viable.

    There was also a key law change in 2019, which meant that goal kicks no longer had to be played outside the box before another player could touch the ball. Opposition players still have to start outside the box, but goal kicks can now be taken short to a team-mate inside the penalty box, essentially giving goalkeepers and defenders a few seconds’ head-start over their opponents. This has enabled them to play out under (slightly) less pressure.

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    Second, pitch conditions have improved dramatically over the last couple of decades. Go back to an average mid-1990s Premier League pitch, especially in winter, and you would be mad to attempt to pass the ball across your own box. There was a danger the ball would simply get stuck in the mud — or, at least, not run properly to its recipient.


    Stamford Bridge, 2003 (Matthew Ashton/EMPICS via Getty Images)

    These days, players can broadly trust the turf and therefore trust their technique to pass the ball properly.

    Third, the revolutionary goalkeepers tend to be those who push the boundaries in terms of what they’re capable of in possession. Essentially the goalkeeper has become an 11th outfielder. After the back-pass law change, Peter Schmeichel insisted on being involved in ‘outfield’ drills with the rest of the Manchester United players. A future United goalkeeper, Edwin van der Sar, was often credited with being the first ‘modern’ footballing goalkeeper in his days with Ajax. In recent times, the likes of Claudio Bravo and Andre Onana have been recruited by major clubs on the basis of their ability in possession, but have often looked under-equipped in terms of actual shot-stopping.

    Fourth, in terms of managers who have proved particularly influential in terms of playing out from the back, in the Premier League era — and the post-back pass era — things probably start with Mike Walker, manager of Norwich in 1992-93. Walker was, unusually for a manager, a former goalkeeper and recognised the need for ‘keepers to completely adjust their way of playing. In Bryan Gunn, he had a goalkeeper who was particularly adept at using his feet, and Norwich’s free-flowing style worked very well in the new era of football. They were top for a considerable period during the first Premier League season, eventually finishing third.

    Arsene Wenger is often credited with transforming Arsenal’s style of play, although arguably the initial revolution came from his predecessor Bruce Rioch, who put a big emphasis on Arsenal playing the ball out from defence and through midfield, rather than playing it long straight away as they had usually done under George Graham. Goalkeeper David Seaman was another who proved calm in possession and was unusual at this point for being able to use both feet effectively.

    Brendan Rodgers’ Swansea were hugely courageous in possession upon their promotion to the Premier League in 2011, with goalkeeper Michel Vorm recruited for his footballing skills as much as his shot-stopping ability, while the arrival of Guardiola in 2016 was another key moment. He immediately ditched Joe Hart, considered too old-school to adjust, but his first goalkeeper, Claudio Bravo, took an absurd number of risks on the ball, while also looking uncomfortable at the basics of goalkeeping.


    Claudio Bravo was brave in possession but ultimately took too many risks (Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

    In recent times, Roberto De Zerbi has also proved something of a game-changer, often asking his goalkeeper to stand still with their studs on top of the ball, almost baiting the opposition to move up and close down, creating more space in midfield for Brighton and Hove Albion to pass into.

    Fifth, supporters are paying serious money for tickets these days, and expect to be presented with something that is aesthetically pleasing. Tastes vary, of course, and too much playing out under pressure can rile some supporters even more than hoofing the ball long. But, as a general rule, modern supporters don’t want route one football.

    They want something more precise and considered. What was once the preserve of Barcelona is now, broadly speaking, the norm for most Premier League clubs — goalkeepers playing short passes to players in and around the edge of the penalty area.

    And, of course, that filters down to every level. Everyone wants to play like the footballers you see on television, but we don’t all have the technical skills to pull off one-twos in our own penalty box, and for the risk-and-reward situation to be in our favour. At almost every level now, you see maddening goals conceded by overplaying in deep positions.

    Sometimes, just thumping the ball long makes most sense. But in 2024, that approach is barely tolerated.

    Michael Cox

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    How do you teach (and convince) players to do it?

    “That rule change has influenced tactics more than any coach or manager could. And, as the stats will prove, it led to a big spike in teams playing short from goal kicks. It’s almost a little bit embarrassing if you don’t. It’s a real message that you don’t want the ball – and I think that exposes teams.”

    An experienced coach at a Premier League club is talking about the 2019 goal kick law, which gave teams a “free” pass, essentially.

    Speaking on condition of anonymity so that he can talk openly about his own experiences, the coach recalls a presentation that he put together for a group of players a few years ago (prior to the law change) showing multiple examples of what he describes as “really good teams” punting the ball forward from goal kicks.

    Manchester United, at a time when David de Gea was in goal and Romelu Lukaku was up front, were one of those teams.

    “And I said, ‘In that moment, no matter who you are, you could have the best striker and goalkeeper in the world, and the best midfielder in the world, that is a 50-50 ball. If we’re saying we really want to dominate the ball, we cannot kick it long and just hope for a 50-50. That’s not valuing possession.’

    “So if you’re asking me why we’re doing it, it’s because we want the ball.”


    David de Gea was more comfortable hitting the ball long (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    Risk and reward is the phrase you will hear a lot on this subject — and for some coaches (and a lot of fans) the risk is too great. Lose the ball in the first phase of build-up and the consequences can be calamitous. Beat the press, however, and the pitch totally opens up.

    That is easier said than done. Playing out from the back requires bravery on the ball and a high level of technical ability too.

    Or does it?

    “I saw some pretty average players… the execution of what we’re asking a player to do here is very simple,” the Premier League coach adds. “We’re talking about a 10-yard pass, or we’re talking about control and a 15- to 20-yard pass, maybe a one-touch pass. But we’re not talking about something the player can’t do. We’re talking about, does he have the decision-making capacity to make the right choice at that moment?

    “Decision making — I think that’s where the good coaching does come in, to really be clear and make it simple and effective for them, and make them believe it.”

    Graham Potter’s time in charge at Brighton provides a good case study. His appointment in 2019 is worth revisiting, not least because he took over a group of players who had previously been coached to play a totally different way under Chris Hughton.

    Speaking at the 2020 OptaPro Analytics Forum, Tom Worville, who was working as a football writer for The Athletic at the time, pointed to a graph showing how Brighton had taken 75.8 percent of goal kicks short under Potter compared to 6.4 percent under Hughton. Even allowing for the fact that it was the same season that the new goal-kick rule was introduced, the shift was huge.

    “I know Brighton were used to it (playing out from the back) in a certain era under Gus (Poyet),” says Dale Stephens, who played for Brighton under Hughton and Potter. “But we’d not seen it for a few years, so it’s almost like re-educating the players and the crowd.”

    Potter was an excellent teacher in that respect. A hands-on coach, he married practical work with the theory and, perhaps more than anything, had total conviction in his beliefs. Naturally, that rubbed off on his players.


    Potter was keen for his Brighton side to play out from the back (Bryn Lennon/Getty Images)

    “He convinced the lads from when he first came in,” Stephens says. “We had a great start and that just builds confidence with the evidence of what you can see on the pitch that it’s working. So the message from the manager and the confidence from him repeating that message day in and day out… because it’s not just something that you can do ad hoc.

    “I’ve been in teams that try to do it (play out from the back) because it’s ‘the thing to do’. That never works. There has got to be an idea and a process as to why you’re doing it, and why you’re going to try to do this to get into a better attacking position.”

    That idea, or process, will usually involve trying to move up the pitch by creating — and exploiting — a numerical advantage.

    Some managers have choreographed moves to play out — passages of play that are rehearsed over and again on the training ground.

    Others work more on principles around finding “the free man”, including rotation — the use of inverted full-backs is an example — and third-man movements.

    Much, however, depends on the opposition press. At times, the onus is on the team in possession to provoke pressure, whether that be through a bounce pass (a straight one-two), the use of the sole of the foot as bait, or dribbling towards an opponent to commit them.

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    Last season there was a fascinating interview on Sky Sports when Jamie Redknapp, the television pundit and former England international, showed Lewis Dunk a superb passage of Brighton build-up play after a game.

    Smiling as he watched the footage, Dunk told Redknapp that he hadn’t made the pass that he was supposed to do in that scenario — a comment that said a lot about De Zerbi’s meticulous approach on the training ground and the extent to which principles, or phases of play, become ingrained.

    “Graham didn’t necessarily have patterns in terms of, ‘This is the pattern we’re going to try this weekend,’” Stephens explains. “(Instead), he almost gives you alternative solutions. So it is off their (the opposition) pressure: how many players are coming to press your centre-backs? Are they coming right to the box? Are they not pressing? Are they really aggressive on the full-backs?

    “Brighton (under De Zerbi) will let the centre-half take the goal kick, pass to the goalkeeper and he will roll his sole on top of the ball, and when he’s doing that he’s looking to see who is coming to press him.

    “So it’s not necessarily manufactured patterns. It’s multiple solutions for wherever the press comes from, and what’s happening behind that first line of pressure.”

    That could easily end up being a much longer pass from the player whose role has changed more than any other over the last 30 years or so.

    “The goalkeeper is in charge of everything now,” Stephens says. “I think we’ve seen it at Brighton with Jason Steele. He’s pumped the ball 60 to 70 yards and they’ve created the attacking transition that way because they’ve (the opponent) gone real high pressure and he’s just gone over the top of them.”


    Ederson almost getting caught in possession on his goal line against Liverpool in 2022 (Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)

    Guardiola, whose influence on this whole way of playing is impossible to overstate, has often talked about the importance of players moving up the pitch together in build up.

    The Manchester City manager is “a big fan of short passes”, overloading spaces, in particular in central areas, and players staying connected, rather than big distances opening up between them or between the lines — a strategy that also makes it easier to regain possession.

    An EFL coach, who has been wedded to playing out from the back across several divisions and different clubs, touches on that theme when he discusses how “our trigger to move is when the opposition releases to the ball carrier” and why it is important not to “miss” players during the build up.

    “So if I switch from right to left (in one pass) against a structured press, that team will be able to shuffle by the time the ball travels that distance,” the coach, who asked to remain anonymous, says. “But obviously the more ball speed you have, and the shorter the passes, the harder it is for that team to have a specific trigger.

    “So you’re constantly getting people to jump and as they jump — provided you’re passing at the right speed — their jump will be too late because I’ve never seen a player that can run faster than a ball can move. And then you’ll find that spare man, that left-back, without them having the structure to be able to slide and press.”

    Potter, Stephens says, was “huge on playing in tight spaces”.

    The idea behind that was to draw as many opposition players towards the ball as possible and leave room in behind to exploit, opening up what Stephens describes as “a four-v-four in half a pitch, which is a lot of space, especially if you’ve got dynamic, quick players in wide areas”.

    A goal that Swansea scored against Manchester City in an FA Cup quarter-final in 2019, during Potter’s time in charge at the Championship club, provides a good example of both his philosophy and what another coach describes as the “attract to take advantage” premise.

    This goal that Pascal Gross scored for Brighton under Potter at Old Trafford in 2022 talks to the same point — a great example of the philosophy working as it is designed to.

    Stuart James

    Mitigating risk and the importance of convincing fans

    There are examples of a very different kind, where the ball gets turned over close to goal, a team concedes and supporters despair.

    So, tactically, how do coaches mitigate risk when playing out from the back and what can they do to prepare players for all the external factors — crowd reaction in particular — that impact on the team’s ability to execute what they’ve practised?

    The EFL coach who spoke earlier offers an interesting response to those two questions.

    “This is the hardest thing — replicating the chaos of match-day on the training pitch. And the chaos of match-day includes fan noise and fan pressure, the weight of expectation — you have to manage all of that,” he explains.

    “But, for me, it’s just practice, repetition and recruitment. Recruitment is key, and if you’ve got a clear ideology of how you want to play the game, then it is absolutely vital that you recruit to that ideology.

    “As for the risk mitigation, initially that comes from having the ‘plus one’ (a free man), so we’ve still got the numerical advantage — I think that’s really important.

    “We try to stay compact centrally as much as we can, and the movement wide to disrupt and stretch the opposition always comes on the ball side. So once we manipulate one side of the pitch, we can be stretched that side but, as best we can, the opposite side is in a structured position inside the pitch, ready for transitions.

    “Also, we’ve worked really hard on counter-pressing, just avoiding disappointment, no negative body language, just a fast reaction to swarm the ball. It’s the acceptance of it going wrong, because that instant fast reaction can almost make it right straight away.”

    All of which makes you wonder how footballers feel about playing this way.

    On the face of it, being encouraged to pass to a team-mate and retain possession should be a lot more enjoyable than chasing second balls off a 70-yard hit-and-hope punt.

    That said, with so little margin for error in the first phase of build-up in particular, and a collective groan often the soundtrack to any misplaced pass in that area of the pitch (let alone the prospect of your team then conceding), it must also be stressful trying to play out at times.

    “I loved it,” Stephens, the former Brighton midfielder, says. “I just felt we had more control over what we were trying to do rather than percentage balls.


    Dale Stephens experienced a tactical revolution in his time at Brighton (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

    “But it wasn’t really necessarily just possession that we wanted. It was more: can you attack quickly from small spaces to big spaces? And that was Graham’s consistent message.

    “Even from throw-ins he’d try to get bodies around the throw-in, so that the opposition would go man for man, and the space would be on the other side of the pitch, and from there you can attack big space.

    “It opened my eyes. I was 30 years old and had been playing since I was 17 but I’d never really done it. I was learning so much from Graham and the way he saw football.”

    Football is always evolving, though, and a lot has changed since Potter took over at Brighton. The Premier League coach who spoke earlier says that, generally, clubs are much bolder and more aggressive in how they press now — and the quality of the opponent is almost unimportant.

    He cites Manchester City as an example and says there was a time when opponents thought, ‘Drop off. Don’t go near City in the build up, they’re too good, they’re going to kill you, they’ll rip you apart.’

    “But now you look at a lot of teams and they’ll go and press City when Ederson has got the ball,” he adds.

    In fact, in a scenario that would have been unthinkable years ago, teams are now quite happy to press high and leave themselves man-for-man (three-versus-three) on the halfway line.

    The coach smiles. “And this is where the game is going and why this is such an interesting topic, because the whole benefit of playing out was that it was all about generating the free man. And that was generated pretty easily because you obviously had your goalkeeper plus one other player, and your front three would pin back four players.

    “Basically, you know you have got seven players versus their six, plus your goalkeeper, so eight-v-six. That eight just need to get the ball… in my head, build-up is getting the ball over the halfway line successfully. If you’ve done that, you’re out of the build-up phase.

    “Let’s say their six were pressing your seven — forget the ‘keeper for now; now it’s their seven pressing your seven, so the only free man is the goalkeeper.”

    Interestingly, what shines through more than anything when talking to coaches on this subject is that the people they worry least about buying into the merits of playing out from the back are the players.

    “I think players who have come through the academy system from the 2010 era onwards all understand it,” adds the Premier League coach. “The hardest bit, I think, is convincing the fans. If they’re not on board, the whole thing can quickly fall apart.”

    Stuart James


    Onana was bought by Manchester United for his on-ball qualities (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

    Quantifying how it works in the Premier League and beyond

    Build-up play is booming these days. That’s as true in London and Liverpool as it is in Las Palmas or Los Angeles. The trend is especially striking in the English Championship, not long ago a bastion of the old long-ball game, now a proving ground for an international talent pool, technically gifted academy graduates and a new generation of coaches schooled in Pep-ish positional play.

    But is this fad for futzing around at the back really a good idea? As with most football tactics, that depends on who’s doing it, how and why.

    One interesting thing about the Premier League’s playing-out craze is that it’s not restricted to the elite. Over the last six years, the top five teams on the league table have stayed fairly steady in their number of build-ups per game (where a build-up is defined as a possession that includes at least three passes ending in a team’s own third). Meanwhile, the bottom half of the table, once all too happy to hit and hope, are building out about 50 per cent more often than in 2018-19, daring to dream of more watchable football.

    But the steepest increase has come from the upper-middle class, teams five through 10 on the table, who are doing twice as many build-ups per game as they did just six years ago. This season, for the first time, the second tier has actually overtaken the first, averaging more build-ups per game than the top five clubs.

    What’s going on here? One part of the answer is that, when it comes to playing out of the back, it takes two to tango. Opponents often feel safer falling back into a compact mid-block while Manchester City or Liverpool walk the ball up to midfield, bypassing the build-up phase. When Manchester United or Chelsea start passing the ball around the back, though, they’re more likely to draw pressure.

    De Zerbi’s Brighton fall right in the sweet spot for maximum build-up play: they want to be pressed high and opponents are happy to oblige them, since both sides figure the reward of playing the game in Brighton’s half will outweigh their risk. Although Manchester City have more overall possession, Brighton do more build-ups than any team in the Premier League.

    But not all build-ups share the same purpose. For Brighton, who want to break from small spaces into big ones, passing around their own half is an attacking tactic. All that press-baiting sole-on-the-ball stuff? The point is to find a short pass into the space behind the first presser, then lay the ball off to a nearby “third man” who’s facing forward so that Brighton can move briskly through the lines.

    City, on the other hand, don’t mind taking it slow. Even when they build out of the back, City tend to do it with side-to-side circulation designed to push the defensive lines back rather than pry them apart. This serves a defensive purpose, since passing the ball through pressure in your own half is dangerous, but also an attacking one, as it allows City to move all of their players into the other team’s end and keep the game trapped there.

    We can see the stylistic difference by mapping where teams take their touches during build-up possessions. In the graphic below, Brighton’s bright red press-baiting blob in the middle of their own half means they take a lot more build-up touches there than the rest of the league, while City’s red wedge at the other end suggests that even on possessions that start with a few passes in their own third, the goal is to set up a good rest-defence structure and play patiently in the attacking half.

    You can see hints of other build-up styles here, too.

    Although Liverpool don’t play out of the back that much, when they do they split the difference between City and Brighton, spreading the ball safely across the width of their half before looking to attack quickly with long passes.

    With Oleksandr Zinchenko or Takehiro Tomiyasu tucked inside, Arsenal rarely use their left flank in the build-up. They build through the middle but take their time when the ball reaches the wings, where their possessions lean slightly toward Martin Odegaard and Bukayo Saka on the right.

    Some talented teams such as Aston Villa, Newcastle and Chelsea are willing to court danger by playing in areas out wide of their own box, where any opponent who wants to press them will have to open large spaces between the lines. Other, perhaps less talented teams such as Brentford and Wolves get stuck out there on the flanks and rarely make it to the final third at all.

    Burnley are an especially interesting case. Last season their build-up dominance made them look like the Manchester City of the Championship. But instead of moderating the team’s style when they reached the Premier League, Vincent Kompany has stuck to his principles, resulting in the rare relegation candidate that keep trying to pass their way out of the back even when the results are disastrous.

    Which brings us back to the most important part of a good build-up: the players.

    It may not look that hard to make a few practised movements and string together some short passes, but doing it at the speed the Premier League demands, against increasingly sophisticated pressing schemes, takes technical and decision-making abilities that can’t be easily coached. A manager may influence the frequency and style of a team’s build-up play but outcomes still depend largely on the players.

    The chart below compares the number of passes a team makes in its own third per game against the average expected goal difference in the next 30 seconds after each pass. Brighton do the most passing at the back, of course, but all those dicey combinations in front of their box are nearly as likely to lead to conceding a goal in the near future as to scoring one. It’s the same story for Tottenham, who are playing out of the back a lot more under Ange Postecoglou but also committing more costly mistakes.

    In general, the teams that see the best results from their build-ups either have a lot of talent or don’t take a lot of risks. That’s old news. The question the current craze for playing out of the back poses is whether teams have been taking enough risk. Just how much can skill in possession be taught in order to nudge a squad’s probabilities in the right direction? Can improvements in the build-up phase outpace innovation in the press?

    Nobody really knows how far football tactics can stretch one way before they’re pulled back in another, but the answers are just a short goalkeeper pass away.

    John Muller

    (Photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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  • Robert Lewandowski was Barcelona’s big post-Messi gamble. It hasn’t entirely paid off

    Robert Lewandowski was Barcelona’s big post-Messi gamble. It hasn’t entirely paid off

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    “Everything Robert won at Bayern Munich, the goals he scored, it was all with the aim of ending up where he is now: playing for Barcelona.”

    Robert Lewandowski’s career has been full of targets, but two summers ago he fulfilled what is fair to describe as his ultimate ambition. The quote above comes from a source very close to the 35-year-old striker — who, like all those cited in this article, preferred to speak anonymously to protect relationships.

    Signing for Barca was a longstanding aim of Lewandowski’s. But since joining for €45million (£38.5m; $48.7m at current rates) in July 2022, not everything has turned as rosily as he might have expected. This season has not been his greatest, and uncertainty has developed around his position at the club — even though this week’s Champions League round-of-16 first leg at Napoli comes as he has begun to show better form in front of goal.

    Lewandowski was the star of the show in Barcelona’s La Liga victory at Celta Vigo on Saturday, scoring a brace that included a 97th-minute winner from the penalty spot, and he now has four goals from Barca’s past three matches.

    This recent momentum, however, shows up as a rare bright spot when looking back across what has so far been a very disappointing campaign at Barcelona. Lewandowski has not been the only player underperforming, but his status as a marquee signing opens him up to extra scrutiny, and wider concerns over his suitability have been growing for some time.

    Lewandowski’s arrival at Barca was meant to signal the true starting point of a new project under Xavi. One of Europe’s most prolific goalscorers was to act as a role model for a new generation and help the club forget Lionel Messi’s traumatic departure.

    Now, that ‘project’ has essentially already folded, with Xavi to step down at the end of the season. And Lewandowski looks set for a tense transfer window in the summer, with some at the club already resolved to seeking a sale — unless he can prove the doubters wrong.

    “A lot of people believe Barcelona need to have a franchise player. A go-to man who sells shirts, represents the public image of the team and becomes a reason to attract fans to the stadium. Deep down, that was the reasoning behind Lewandowski’s signing in 2022.”

    This is how a senior club source describes the gamble Barcelona took two summers ago with Lewandowski’s signing from Bayern. The previous summer had seen the club’s biggest legend, Messi, leaving in tears, while other key figures such as Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets and Jordi Alba seemed to be reaching the final stages of their careers in Catalonia. It was decided the Camp Nou needed a new idol, and president Joan Laporta looked to Lewandowski.

    The deal to bring him did not wholly escape criticism at the time. In the summer of 2021, Barcelona decided not to extend Messi’s contract, with terms already agreed, in order to help solve the club’s financial problems. One year later, they spent €45million on a 33-year-old Lewandowski, signing him to a three-year deal with an option for a fourth. This August, he will turn 36.

    If the Messi deal had been completed, the Argentinian would have earned €20million in the first year of his new contract, before then seeing his wage increase significantly. Lewandowski’s annual salary, as an average over four years, is reportedly set at €26m.

    But Lewandowski hit the ground running. Over 2022-23, he scored 33 goals and provided eight assists in all competitions. He was La Liga’s top scorer with 23 as Barca won their first league title in four years. Despite once again suffering Champions League failure (they were eliminated at the group stage) Barca fans had some reason to hope they were seeing the start of something bigger.

    Yet, you could also see the early signs of problems beginning to build to where they are now.

    The 2022 World Cup was clearly the turning point in Lewandowski’s debut season. Before its start, he scored 13 goals in the first 15 La Liga matches of the season, also grabbing five Champions League goals.

    After coming back from a disappointing display with Poland (he scored two goals and they were knocked out in the last-16 by France), nothing was quite the same. Lewandowski lost a bit of his spark, which can be normal in a season, but as it turned out, it never really came back.

    Lewandowski played 19 more games in La Liga after Qatar 2022, scoring 10 goals, of which four came with the title already secured. Tensions in the dressing room started to appear, as well as frustration with himself. But most significant of all, it also became clear that the best version of Xavi’s Barcelona was not fully compatible with his preferred style of play.

    Barca’s Supercopa de Espana victory over Real Madrid in January 2023 is still arguably the most convincing display under Xavi’s tenure. They outclassed their Clasico rivals in a 3-1 win ignited by a tactical tweak: sacrificing one winger for another body in a four-strong midfield.

    Xavi was convinced it provided the path to follow, despite the effect it had on Lewandowski.

    “I understood this team needed more control and less transitions and that’s why we changed our approach a bit,” he said on the day Barca were crowned league champions following victory over city rivals Espanyol, in May last year.

    “We felt better controlling the ball and I prioritised the players that didn’t lose possession. That’s how I understand football, it belongs to that kind of players: the midfielders who are always able to keep the ball.“

    Lewandowski didn’t see things quite so positively. In an exclusive interview with The Athletic during Barca’s pre-season tour last summer, he described how he had been left frustrated by the change. He knew losing a winger meant fewer chances to receive balls and crosses into the box, the strongest area of his game.

    GO DEEPER

    Robert Lewandowski exclusive interview: ‘Barcelona is still the place to be’

    There was a situation to resolve here. From the team’s tactical perspective, they had to find a better fit for their star striker. From the player’s side, he needed to recover the form he showcased in 2022.

    Instead of a solution being found, things only got worse.


    Lewandowski’s four goals in three matches followed a six-match dry spell (DAX Images/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    “We do not possess the quality of 2010 Barcelona, we just don’t. We need to run our socks off. If we don’t run like animals, we won’t win games. If we can’t be clinical, we need to have soul as a team. This is Barcelona, things need to change.”

    After his side’s final league match of 2023, Xavi directed his most critical words as Barca manager. They had just managed to get away with a scrappy 3-2 win against La Liga’s bottom side Almeria, in a game they were drawing 1-1 at the break.

    A few days later, it emerged that Lewandowski had come in for strong criticism from Xavi in a half-time dressing-room address that railed against a lack of intensity and aggression among his players.

    By that point, coaching staff sources had already started to describe Lewandowski’s goalscoring effectiveness as below what was expected. They also thought he had lost some of his strength in individual duels, and were concerned by his worsening link-up play.

    Comparing his La Liga stats for this season and last (according to Fbref.com), Lewandowski has a similar rate of balls miscontrolled per game (around 2.7) and aerial duels won (53.6 per cent last season; 52.8 per cent this season). But his passing success rate has decreased significantly.

    For short passes, there’s a drop from 83.9 per cent last season to 77. 7 per cent this season, while medium-range passes fall from 77.1 per cent to 71.4 per cent, and long-range passes from 65.2 per cent to 55.6 per cent.

    His expected goals (xG) data does not look too bad at this point. Over 2022-23, he scored 23 goals from 24.3 xG in La Liga, while this season he is on 12 goals from 14.6 xG.

    However, it is worth pointing out that, before his four goals from Barca’s last three league games, he was on eight goals from 12.1xG and had only scored three times in the competition since September (with two matches out injured).

    Lewandowski has so far scored 17 times and provided six assists across 33 games in all competitions this season. His match-winning strike against Celta on Saturday was his 50th for Barca.

    And yet this term Xavi has subbed him off four times with the team drawing and in need of goals (against Real Sociedad, Las Palmas, Real Betis and Villarreal). It is also clear that team-mates have been struggling to connect with him. Last season he averaged 34.3 touches per league game. His average so far this campaign is 26.7.

    Is Lewandowski entirely to blame for having slightly lower numbers at this stage of his career? Probably not — and clearly Xavi’s change of system also had an effect.

    But off the pitch, there have been issues too.


    Lewandowski and Yamal, pictured in September (Pedro Salado/Quality Sport Images/Getty Images)

    Lewandowski is known to be an honest character. As soon as he believes something is wrong, he will say it. This has led to some moments of friction.

    In February last year, dressing-room sources said that after Manchester United knocked Barca out of the Europa League at Old Trafford, Lewandowski had a verbal exchange with Ansu Fati, who he criticised for being too selfish and not combining with team-mates when he had better options than to shoot.

    This season, in November against Deportivo Alaves, we also saw Lewandowski complaining to 16-year-old Lamine Yamal when the winger decided to shoot instead of crossing.

    But this friction does not reveal a fundamentally bad relationship, and no one in the dressing room has ever doubted Lewandowski’s commitment to the team. When Xavi personally told players of his decision to step down, a day after he announced it at a January post-match press conference, Lewandowski showed his appreciation for the work he had done in a tough moment for the club. Xavi was particularly moved by that.

    Hours later, Lewandowski showed he could still be counted as one of the dressing-room leaders by organising a team dinner at his home in Castelldefels, which all the first-team players attended. It was a team-building activity, held with the approval of the club, to help focus minds on the rest of the season to come.

    So what’s next for Lewandowski at Barcelona?

    With Barcelona needing to sell players before thinking about how to reshape their squad this summer (and appoint a new manager), multiple senior sources at the club say they would welcome a lucrative offer for him.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Barcelona have to sell this summer – so who might they look to move on?

    But, here — as with several others of those Barca would ideally like to move on — the power is on the player’s side. Under contract until at least 2025, he has no desire to leave. He also fully believes he is capable of overcoming his recent dip in form and returning consistently to his goalscoring best.

    Lewandowski dreamed for years of joining Barcelona, and sources close to the player say they understand how the atmosphere around the club can turn particularly bitter when things do not go to plan.

    In terms of his contract, he has one more year fully guaranteed before an option for a fourth that will be automatically triggered if he plays over 55 per cent of Barca’s games during 2024-25.

    All the same, we can expect pressure might come in the summer, in the form of media reports suggesting how beneficial his departure could be for the club’s finances. Lewandowski’s camp is fully aware of what happened with Frenkie de Jong in 2022, when Barca spent the summer trying to force him out.

    But, for the moment, despite the doubts among a coaching team that is set to depart, despite the extra tension and scrutiny his position brings, Lewandowski is in the exact place he wants to be. And for him and Barcelona, there should be no immediate concern more pressing than Wednesday’s trip to Naples.

    (Top photo: DAX Images/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

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  • Sir Jim Ratcliffe on Man United, Old Trafford, Sheikh Jassim and Mason Greenwood: Full transcript

    Sir Jim Ratcliffe on Man United, Old Trafford, Sheikh Jassim and Mason Greenwood: Full transcript

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    On Tuesday evening, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS completed their purchase of a minority stake in Manchester United, as the British billionaire acquired a 27.7 per cent stake in the Premier League club in a deal worth over $1.3bn.

    On Wednesday, Ratcliffe spoke to the written media for the first time about his decision to take a minority investment, for which he has received control of the club’s sporting operation. Inside a boardroom at INEOS’ offices in Knightsbridge, London, Ratcliffe sat at the head of the table and took questions from 13 assembled journalists from the British and international media.

    Along the way, Ratcliffe answered every question, including:

    • His ambitions to restore Manchester United to the summit of English and European football, knocking the “enemy” Liverpool and Manchester City “off their perch”
    • How INEOS will make a fresh decision this summer on the future of Mason Greenwood
    • Insight into the year-long battle to secure a stake in Manchester United, “odd affair” of Sheikh Jassim’s rival bid and how INEOS previously thought they had won the battle nine months ago, opening a bottle of champagne to celebrate at the Monaco Grand Prix in May
    • Why Manchester United have targeted Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth and the club’s battle to prise him away
    • His ambitions to create a ‘Wembley of the North’ as Manchester United seek to redevelop Old Trafford or build a new stadium, including his argument for the British state to support funding plans for the project

    Has the last decade been quite painful? 

    Sir Jim Ratcliffe: “It’s been a complete misery really in the last 11 years and it’s just frustrating if you’re a supporter during that period of time. That’s football isn’t it? It has its ups and its downs. I remember pre-(Sir Alex) Ferguson it wasn’t great for quite some time — for a more extended period of time, actually, for about 25 years.

    Is that your incentive for investing: to transform Manchester United into what it used to be?

    “Fundamentally, you want to see your club being where it should be. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. It should be playing the best football in the world and it hasn’t been doing that for 10 or 11 years. So it’s certainly related to the decision (to invest).”

    Do you have a time frame for achieving success?

    “It’s not a light switch. it’s not one of these things that change overnight. We have to be careful we don’t rush at it, you don’t want to run to the wrong solution rather than walk to the correct solution. We have two issues: one is the longer term, getting Manchester United to where we would like to get it but there’s also the shorter term of getting the most out of the club as it stands today.

    “We would like to see the Champions League for next season if we can. The key challenge here is that, longer term, we need to do things well and properly — and thoroughly. So it’s not an overnight change. It’s going to take two or three (seasons). You have to ask the fans for some patience. I know the world these days is about instant gratification but that’s not the case with football, really. Look at Pep Guardiola at Man City; it takes time to build a squad.

    “What you need are the foundations to be in a good place for Manchester United to be successful, which means you need the right organisational structure. It means not having a coach reporting to the chief executive, for instance.

    “Then we need to populate all the key roles with people who are best in class, 10 out of 10s, and there’s clearly a lot of interest in these roles in Manchester United because it’s one of the biggest clubs in the world but also it’s one of the biggest challenges — because you’re taking it from a difficult place to hopefully where it should be at the top of the pyramid.

    “Thirdly, you need to create this environment which is driven and competitive. It is going to be intense at times, but equally it needs to have warmth and friendliness and be a supportive structure because the two things marry together well. They probably haven’t had that environment for the last 10 years. If we get those three things right, then you have to believe the results will follow.”

    “If you look at a club like Manchester City, you see they’ve got a very sensible structure. They’ve got a really driven competitive environment but there’s a bit of warmth to it. There are two clubs not very far from us who have been successful and have got some of those things right, and United don’t.”


    Ratcliffe and his INEOS company have spent £1.3billion to buy a 25 per cent stake in Manchester United (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

    How is a minority stake going to work? What do you get to drive?

    “We have a really good relationship with Joel and Avram (Glazer), who are the only two of the siblings that we’ve got to know and have met. And there’s a fair amount of trust between those two parties. And they obviously are very comfortable with us running the sports side of the club.

    “This is going to be a very sports-led club, it’s all going to be about performance on the pitch. I’m still a significant shareholder even in respect of all the other things in the club.

    “We’re obviously going to be on the ground, whereas the Glazer family are a fair way away. So I don’t see an issue in us being able to influence the club in all the right ways going forward, to be honest.

    “I don’t think we’re going to be taking the legal agreements out of the bottom drawer. I just hope they gather dust and we never see them. Which it should be. It should be on the basis of a relationship.

    “As long as we’re doing the right things, then I’m certain that relationship is going to go very well.

    “One of the things I’d add is that the transaction was quite challenging, as you know. We met all sorts of obstacles on the way, a lot of them in relation to hedge funds, and SEC, American (regulations) and a few with the Qataris and all those sorts of things. It obviously it was a rocky road for quite an extended period of time.

    “And the Glazers really, from the beginning, preferred ourselves to the Qatari option — which, in a way, for them was a much easier option because they could just sell the whole thing and they would have walked away and financially done quite well.

    “But they stuck with us through the whole process. Our offer was a bit more complicated and that sort of adversity, that rocky road for a year, has forged a relationship between ourselves and the other shareholders.

    “We’ve all got to know each other. You get to know people better in adversity than when the whole thing is going swimmingly.”

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    INEOS and Ratcliffe finally have the keys to Old Trafford. What does it mean for Man United?

    Did you always have confidence that you would end up here? Were there moments when you thought about walking away?

    “How long have you got? Time and time again. I remember at the Monaco Grand Prix, which was in May, we opened a bottle of very expensive champagne and all celebrated. That was in May — but that was a false dawn and we went through several more false dawns after that.

    “We had a few surprises on the way. Not at the Glazers’ making. We just kept bumping into problems, particularly with the non-executives on the board.”

    How would you rate the scale of this challenge? You are up against clubs linked to nation-states, financial fair play, it has not been a great season, etc…

    “I don’t know about the biggest thing in my career. But certainly, the biggest challenge in sport that we’ve undertaken. It’s enormous — and the club is enormous. The tentacles reach around the world. Everywhere I go in the world, it’s Manchester United. It affects an awful lot of people on the planet, and getting it right is not easy.

    “We’ve got to get so many aspects of that club right. And the right people doing the right thing at the right time and doing it well. It’s a very complex problem, football – which is surprising considering it’s just putting 11 players on a football field, and they run around. But it’s very complex getting there.”

    Part of the INEOS mantra is a compass which says you “don’t like losing money” — but you have spent so much for a 27 per cent share…

    “To be honest, I don’t think I’ll ever lose money. For me, it’s not about a financial investment. The objective was to get involved and be influential in the future of Manchester United.

    “I don’t believe I’ll ever lose money in it and I’m not interested. I’ve just put that aside. It’ll sit there forever but I don’t see that the value is going to devalue. I don’t believe that. In that sense, I don’t think I’ve been financially stupid but it’s not my motivation in life at all.”

    What do you think the biggest growth is financially, in terms of the ability to grow revenue?

    “We’re really, really clear about that: it’s football-led. So if we’re successful on the pitch, then everything else will follow.

    “Manchester United (has been) a bit, I think, in the last 10 years or so, that if you’re really good in commercial and you make lots of money, then you’ll be successful in football because you’ve got lots of money to spend.

    But I think that’s flawed because it only starts for a certain while and you start to degrade the brand if you’re not careful. But we’re really clear that football will drive the club. If we’re really successful at football, then commercial will follow. And we’ll make more money.”

    And how do you take on the challenge of those nation-states? It’s now almost viewed as impossible to take them on…

    “I don’t agree with that. Firstly, the nation-state bit helps to a degree but FFP limits the degree by a considerable margin, doesn’t it? Ultimately, it becomes about how successful the club is because that dictates your FFP.

    With FPP, you have to operate the club within its own means. So clearly that means that if you’ve got a bigger club it ought to be more successful than a smaller club, by definition, because you’ve got more means that you can spend more money and recruitment.

    How much is FFP an issue for United (particularly ahead of the summer)? How patient will fans need to be with the damage that’s been done before — i.e with what’s been spent?

    “Firstly, FFP has become a new aspect of running the football club, and it’s clearly a really critical part of running a football club. And you have to think about how you can manage FFP to the benefit of the club. But ultimately, FFP says you have to operate the club within its own means. Effectively, it takes into account your prior expenditure, and the club’s spent quite heavily in the last couple of seasons. So that does impact FFP going forward because they’ve used quite a large part of their allowance.

    “I don’t know the full answer to that question at the moment. It’s obviously related to sales as well as purchases, and so we need to get our heads around that well before the summer window — there’s no question that history will impact this summer window.

    You have been heavily linked with Newcastle’s sporting director Dan Ashworth in the media in recent weeks. Would it be fair to say that identifying player sales and purchases is an area that United can make a real improvement on?

    “Recruitment in the modern game is critical. Manchester United have clearly spent a lot of money but they haven’t done as well as some other clubs. So when I was talking about being best in class in all aspects of football, recruitment is clearly top of the list.”

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    What do you make of the recruitment under the current manager? Because it seems like he’s had quite a lot of sway…

    “We don’t benefit too much from thinking about that. I’m thinking about getting recruitment in a good place in the future. There’s not much I can do about what’s happened in the past. Our thinking is all about how we become first in class in recruitment going forward. Which means you need the right people.”

    You talk about being best in class… is it a five-year plan or is it a 10-year plan?

    “It’s not a 10-year plan. The fans would run out of patience if it was a 10-year plan. But it’s certainly a three-year plan to get there.

    “To think that we’re going to be playing football as good as Manchester City played against Real Madrid last season by next year is not sensible. And if we give people false expectations, then they will get disappointed. So the key thing is our trajectory, so that people can see that we’re making progress. I think it’s the club’s 150-year anniversary in 2028… if our trajectory is leading to a very good place in that sort of timeframe then we’d be very happy with that. Because it’s not easy to turn Manchester United into the world’s best football team.”

    Is it the aim to win the Premier League and then the Champions League?

    “The ultimate target for Manchester United — and it’s always going to be thus, really — is that we should be challenging for the Premier League and challenging for the Champions League. It’s one of the biggest clubs in the world. There are six who are probably the six biggest clubs in Europe: three in the north west (of England), two in Spain and one in Germany. United should be in that small group. It hasn’t been for a while. And so, therefore, it must be challenging for the Premier League. And if we’re not, then in a way, we’re not doing what we saying we ought to do.

    Does FFP influence your thinking about the need for a modern stadium? 

    “You have to think about how you can optimise the football club in FFP terms — and a stadium is one of those. You can increase your revenues by building a new stadium, rebuilding a stadium or putting all the facilities in. You have to think practically because money doesn’t grow on trees. The two most talked-about issues at Manchester United are number one, the football, the performance on the pitch and the second one is the stadium.

    “What we can see so far is a really good case to refurbish Old Trafford, probably about £1billion in cost. You finish up with a great stadium, it’s probably an 80,000-90,000-seater. But it’s not perfect because you’re modifying a stadium that is slap-bang up against a railway line and all that type of stuff, so it’s not an ideal world. But you finish up with a very good answer.


    The Trafford Park area around Manchester United’s stadium is a far cry from the modern surroundings of Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    “Manchester United needs a stadium befitting one of the biggest clubs in the world and, at the moment, it’s not there. Old Trafford maybe was 20 years ago but it’s certainly not today. There’s this wider conversation with the community as to whether you could use a more ambitious project on-site as a catalyst to regenerate that Old Trafford area, which is quite an interesting area in a way because it was the heart of the Industrial Revolution — it is the oldest industrial park in Europe, it was the first industrial park in Europe. And it’s still one of the biggest ones. And they obviously built the Manchester Ship Canal to service it. That’s where all the coal came in, the cotton. And that’s why they built Old Trafford there.

    “People would finish their shift and then walk to the ground; there was no transport in those days. That’s the history of why the club is there. But today it’s a bit run-down and neglected in places. There’s a strong case for using a stadium to regenerate that area, like with the Olympics, as Sebastian Coe did with that part of east London quite successfully. City have done it and they’ve done quite a good job.”

    But both of those had some state funding… (There have been reports suggesting United may seek state support) 

    “The people in the north pay their taxes like the people in the south pay their taxes. But where’s the national stadium for football? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for rugby? It’s in the south. Where’s the national stadium for tennis? It’s in the south. Where’s the national concert stadium? It’s the O2, it’s in the south. Where’s the Olympic Village? It’s in the south.

    “All of this talk about levelling up and the Northern Powerhouse. Where is the stadium in the north? How many Champions Leagues has the north west won and how many Champions Leagues has London won?

    “The answer to that is the north west has won 10 — Liverpool (six) have won more than us — and London (Chelsea) has won two. Where do you have to go if you get to the semi-final of the FA Cup and you’re a northern club? You have to schlep down to London, don’t you? So what happened to HS2, which was going to be a substantial amount of investment in the north, what happened to that? They cancelled that. And where are they going to spend that? They’re going to spend it on the rail network in London.

    “People in the north pay their taxes and there is an argument you could think about a more ambitious project in the north which would be fitting for England, for the Champions League final or the FA Cup final and acted as a catalyst to regenerate southern Manchester, which has got quite significant history in the UK.”

    Might your tax status, having relocated to Monaco, pose a challenge in the optics of requesting state support? 

    “I paid my taxes for 65 years in the UK. And then when I got to retirement age, I went down to enjoy a bit of sun. I don’t have a problem with that, I’m afraid.”

    Do you prefer a new ground or a refurbishment? 

    “In an ideal world, I think it’s a no-brainer, a stadium of the north, which would be a world-class stadium where England could play and you could have the FA Cup final and it’s not all centred around the south of England. So in an ideal world, absolutely, that’s where I would be, but you’ve got to be practical about life.”

    Is there a financial estimate of what that might be?

    “In broad terms, a refurb is one (billion) and a new stadium — both of these would include the campus so, you know, the museum’s crap and the shop is too small and you’d have the Xbox thing for entertaining the fans. So in other words, the fans could come there and do some stuff. So include the campus in both cases, in very simple terms you are talking about one versus two (billion).”

    And how long would it take to happen?

    “I think the refurb would take longer than the new one because it’s more complicated, because obviously you’re building and you have to build over a main railway line which is quite complicated and expensive.”

    And a stadium for the women’s team as well?

    “If you use that as a centre of regeneration, a bit like the Olympic Village, then I think what you probably finish up doing is Old Trafford would end up being reduced in size to a smaller facility still in the same footprint but a smaller facility which can be used for all sorts of community things, be it a concert or whatever. The ladies’ teams could play there. The academy teams could play there. Some of the local teams could play there and Old Trafford could sort of become a community asset and then you’d have this world-class stadium next door to it.”

    What’s your vision for broader control of Manchester United? Would you like to increase your stake?

    “We spent well over a year getting to where we are. We got to where we could do. I’m really pleased we are here and we are going to be able to influence the future, to be in charge of the sports side. I haven’t had the energy to think about the future or worry about it because I’m focused on the problem today — not what I might do in three, five, 10 years.”

    In the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filing, it said that if the Glazers received an offer for a complete buyout within 18 months, then they could force you to sell…

    “There’s all sorts of scenarios. We might get hit by an asteroid. There’s been lots of opportunities for someone to come in and buy United in the last 12 months.”

    What are your ambitions for the women’s team?

    “I know we have been around since Christmas but we only took over today. What I would say is that if it’s a team wearing a Manchester United badge on shirt then it’s Manchester United and they need to be focused on winning and being successful.”

    Dan Ashworth, are you confident you will get him?

    “Dan Ashworth is clearly one of the top sporting directors in the world. I have no doubt he is a very capable person. He is interested in Manchester United because it’s the biggest challenge at the biggest club in the world. It would be different at City because you’re maintaining a level. Here it’s a significant rebuilding job. He would be a very good addition. He needs to decide if he is going to make that jump.


    Dan Ashworth has been placed on gardening leave by Newcastle United (Serena Taylor/Newcastle United via Getty Images)

    “We have had words with Newcastle, who would be disappointed. They have done really well since their new ownership. I understand why they would be disappointed, but then you can’t criticise Dan because it’s a transient industry. You can understand why Dan would be interested because it’s the ultimate challenge. We’ll have to see how it unfolds.”

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    There have been reports of a £20million asking price. Does £20m seem strange for a sporting director?

    “A bit silly, personally. I won’t get dragged into that. What I do think is completely absurd is suggesting a man who is really good at his job sits in his garden for one and a half years. We had a very grown-up conversation with City about Omar Berrada. When things got done, we sorted it out very amicably. They could see why he wanted to take that challenge.

    “You look at Pep and when he’s done with one of his footballers: he doesn’t want them to sit in the garden for one and a half years. He doesn’t do that. That’s not the way the UK works or the law works.”

    One of the main stories at Manchester United last year was what the club would do with Mason Greenwood (who is on loan at Getafe). That is now a problem on your doorstep as you control the sporting operation…

    “I can talk about the principle. I am not going to talk about Mason. I am familiar with it. The principle is the important one. We will have other issues going forward. You are dealing with young people who have not always been brought up in the best circumstances, who have a lot of money and who don’t always have the guidance they should have.

    “What we need to do when having issues like that is understand the real effects — not the hype. Then we need to make a fair decision in light of the club’s values. That’s what we need to do and that’s how we will deal with it.”

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    Man United will make fresh decision on Greenwood, says Ratcliffe

    Will that be a fresh decision then? 

    “Yes, absolutely. We will make a decision and we will justify it.”

    So it’s feasible he could still have a future at Man Utd?

    “All I can do is talk about the principle of how we will approach decisions like that.”

    What are the values you are defining? 

    “Is he the right type of footballer? Is he a good person or not?”

    We don’t want to misquote you or take this out of context… Are you saying you are not closing the door on Mason?

    “He’s a Manchester United footballer, so we are in charge of football. So the answer is ‘yeah, we have to make decisions’.

    “It’s quite clear we have to make a decision. There is no decision that’s been made. He’s on loan obviously, but he’s not the only one. We’ve got one or two footballers that we have to deal with and we have to make a decision on, so we will do that. The process will be: understand the facts, not the hype, and then try and come to a fair decision on the basis of values, which is basically: is he a good guy or not, and answer could he play sincerely for Manchester United well and would we be comfortable with it and would the fans be comfortable with it?”

    Is the INEOS ownership of French club OGC Nice an issue for playing in the Champions League if you both qualify under UEFA’s regulations? 

    “We’ve spoken to UEFA. There are no circumstances upon which an ownership of Nice would prevent Manchester United from playing in the Champions League — I’ll be crystal clear on that.

    But at the moment, the rules say you can’t…

    “It says you have to change the ownership structure. So it’s all about influence and positions on the board and that sort of thing. So, a) the rules are changing, and, b) there are shades of grey, not black and white. Manchester City will probably have the problem before we have the problem because they’ve obviously got Girona who are doing well in the Spanish La Liga.

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    You tried to buy Chelsea when they were for sale in 2022…

    “We have a collection of quite interesting sports clubs, Formula 1, America’s Cup, cycling etc. but we’ve always recognised that the biggest sport in the world is football and the Premier League is the biggest league in the world. So we’ve always had an interest in having a Premier League club — but they don’t come up very often, and at the time we had no inkling that Manchester United might ever be sold. So that’s how we finished up in that Chelsea equation.”

    Dave Brailsford is the director of sport at INEOS. Can you talk about what his role will be, how important he is and what his attributes are? Some will look at his history in cycling and query his role at United amid the criticisms…

    “Well, I think he will be critically involved in the future of Manchester United. He’s interested in elite sport and performance, which is what Manchester United is and I think he’s been very, very successful in sport in cycling, but he’s generally viewed as one of the world’s best thoughtful people on the subject of sports performance.

    “It’s for good reason. I’ve known Dave now for quite a few years. He is obsessive about performance in elite sports, and he is going to be very successful at Manchester United.”

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    What will Brailsford, Ratcliffe and Man Utd’s new faces do? And who could follow?

    Rival fans will bring up the parliamentary select committee and (his role in) questions about Team Sky previously…

    “I’m not interested in all that. Really, I’m not. You can keep harping on about the past, but I am not interested in the past. I’m interested in the future. My view is he is a really good man and is really good at his job.

    “That, for me, was all nonsense, in the past. I’m not interested.”

    Chelsea was a very busy process but there seemed to be fewer bidders for United. Why was that?

    “Good question, that.”

    There was this Qatari guy (Sheikh Jassim) that no one’s ever seen. It was very odd…

    “Still nobody’s ever seen him, actually. The Glazers never met him… he never… I’m not sure he exists!” (laughs). I would say this but there is no comparison between Chelsea and Manchester United. The scale of Manchester United is incomparable to any of the London clubs, to be honest with you.”

    The SEC filing suggested Qataris did not provide proof of funds…

    “No, they didn’t. No.”

    Were they really bidding against you, or were you potentially the only bidder?

    “I don’t know. They were they were obviously there and there was a whole host of people on the team in their squad… I didn’t ever meet them. But it was it was a very odd affair.”

    There seemed to be a lot of background briefings. Did they play clean?

    “I’m not going to comment on that. I know what the answer is.”

    They claimed the bid was a lot higher than it was…

    “Yeah, that’s correct.”

    Do Chelsea show how not to do things given their recent spending?

    “I don’t want to finish up criticising Chelsea but what I would say is that, in having bought other clubs in Lausanne and Nice, we have made a lot of cock-ups. We’ve made some really stupid decisions in both those clubs. There are a lot of organisations in the world where, if you make a mistake, you get shot, so nobody ever puts their head above the parapet.

    “But at INEOS, we don’t mind people making mistakes — but please don’t make it a second time. So with that, we’re much less than sympathetic when they make the same mistake twice. We have made mistakes in football, so I’m really pleased that we made those mistakes before we arrived here at Manchester United. If we hadn’t, this would be a much tougher job for us. Because it is huge and it’s very exposed.”

    What sort of player do you want at the club? Youngsters or superstars?

    “We’re probably still debating what precisely is the style of football we want to play. If you look at Manchester City, they know precisely what the style of football is they want to play and all 11 teams at the club play the same formula. We need to do that, but I think in terms of the nature of the players, you want Manchester United types of players: attacking football, exciting football, bringing the youth through. You want players that are committed. You want players that play 90 minutes — those are the types of players you want playing for Manchester United.

    “The academy is really, really important for us. It’s probably the most successful academy in football in terms of number of players that have come through.”

    “We’ll decide that style, plus the CEO, sporting director, probably the recruitment guys, what the style of football is and that will be the Manchester United style of football, and the coach will have to play that style. We’re not going to oscillate from a (Jose) Mourinho style to a Guardiola style. That’s not the way we’ll run the club. Otherwise, you’re changing everything all the time, you change your coach, you’ve got the wrong squad — we won’t do that.

    “In modern football, you need to decide what’s your path and stick to your path.”

    You are doing something today that has been very rare at Manchester United in recent decades: communicating. How important is it to reconnect the fans and the club? 

    “Again, I have a very simple view of a football club. It’s a community asset. The club is owned by the fans, that’s what it’s there for: for the fans. We’re guardians or stewards for a temporary period of time. I’m not going to be there forever. It is important we communicate to the fanbase. We underestimate how important an aspect it is of their life and how it affects their life.

    “On a wet Monday morning in Manchester, that’s the first thing you talk about when you go into the office or the factory: how did we do at the weekend? And you either start off with a good week or a bad week depending on how it went. It’s beholden upon us to… It’s not my job to do it on a frequent basis but it was quite important today that we are seen by the true owners, who are the fans really.”

    You are sitting in front of a jersey in here where there is a No 7 on the back and the collar up. It looks like an Eric Cantona shirt.…

    “He was a maverick, obviously. He was the catalyst for change in Ferguson’s era… and that kickstarted everything off. He was a talisman.

    “There has always been a bit of glamour attached to Manchester United which has been lacking a bit in the last few years. You’ve had George Best, Bobby Charlton, Eric the King. At the end of the day, we are in the entertainment business. You don’t want to watch bland football or characterless football. And to be honest, since Christmas, with the young lads, they have played some fantastic football. There have been some great matches.

    “I can’t remember many matches at the beginning of the season that I was really excited by. The three young lads sitting on the hoarding at the side; that was a good picture. So I think that’s the Eric point, really. We are cognisant of the fact you do need a bit of glamour in this.”

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    How would you assess the job Erik ten Hag has done during his time at Old Trafford?

    “I’m not going to comment on Erik ten Hag because I think it would be inappropriate to do that. But if you look at the 11 years that have gone since David Gill and Sir Alex stepped down, there have been a whole series of coaches — some of which were very good. And none of them were successful or survived for very long. And you can’t blame all the coaches.

    “The only conclusion you can draw is that the environment in which they were working didn’t work. And Erik’s been in that environment. I’m talking about the organisation, the people in the structure, and the atmosphere in the club. We have to do that bit. So I’m not really focused on the coach. I’m focused on getting that bit right. And it’s not for me to judge that anyway — I’m not a football professional.”


    Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Sir Dave Brailsford visited Erik ten Hag and others at the club’s Carrington training base in January (Manchester United via Getty Images)

    Have you spoken to Sir Alex Ferguson much? 

    “I have. He was the first person I met when I went up there, which I think was the second week of January. I had a meeting from 9am to 10am at his house and I left at 1pm.

    “He never stopped. He’s got a lot of experience, a lot of stories to tell and a lot of thoughts about the club.

    “I don’t think he has been encouraged to get involved but he is still very thoughtful about the club and he has an immense amount of experience. He really understands the values and traditions of the club and what it’s all about. He’s still fiercely competitive, Alex Ferguson.”

    You have mentioned Manchester City an awful lot in this conversation…

    “Well, they are one of the best teams on the planet.”

    Are they a blueprint?

    “Blueprint? (laughs) We have a lot to learn from our noisy neighbour and the other neighbour. They are the enemy at the end of the day. There is nothing I would like better than to knock both of them off their perch.

    “Equally, we are the three great northern clubs who are very close to one another. They have been in a good place for a while and there are things we can learn from both of them. They have sensible organisations, great people within the organisations, and a good, driven and elite environment that they work in. I am very respectful of them but they are still the enemy.”

    Would it help if they were found guilty of 115 breaches they are accused of by the Premier League?

    “I would not wish that upon them. I don’t understand any of that. I just want to smash them on the football field.”

    When you refer to knocking them off their perch… is that a knowing nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous comments about knocking Liverpool off their perch?

    “It is, actually. He was the first one who came out with that expression. I am in the same place as Alex — 100 per cent. He was fiercely competitive and that is why he was successful. We have to be the same.

    “Queen Victoria was present at the first America’s Cup when we (the UK) challenged America in 1851. They sent a yacht across called America. We had 11 yachts and we had a race around the Isle of Wight. It was hosted by the Royal Yacht Squadron. In the end, the American boat won the race. Queen Victoria turned to the commodore and said ‘Did we come second?’ And the commodore said: ‘There is no second’.”

    (Top photo: Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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  • Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over

    Mbappe is leaving PSG: Thank god that’s finally over

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    Ice ages haven’t lasted as long as this.

    Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid… it has been a thing for about a decade at least.

    The Athletic was not even in existence when the pair began courting each other. Twitter was still fun (and called Twitter), Taylor Swift hadn’t heard of American football and the closest thing we got to a global pandemic was from watching Contagion.

    It has been an inexorably long saga, the very worst kind of transfer saga in fact, with endless posturing, incessant lies and spin and thousands upon thousands of stories claiming that it is finally happening.

    Well now, once and for all, it surely is. Mbappe will leave PSG and you’d have to assume that next season, he will play in the Bernabeu (assuming another club doesn’t have the opportunity to pip them and he ends up at, say, Osasuna) and the football world can concentrate on talking about other stuff like, you know, football matches.

    The world’s best player will not rot in PSG’s reserves, believe it or not. He won’t be put on gardening leave either. Instead, he’ll play for the club he’s wanted to play for forever and Real Madrid will sign the player they’ve wanted to sign forever. Imagine that.

    If you think we have had it bad here, try living in Spain where the coverage has been akin to the kind we would get for the death of a royal family member in the UK.

    In recent months, since Mbappe did not take up the option to extend his contract until 2025, things have gone feral. On TV and radio, whether Real Madrid are winning matches or losing matches, whether Jude Bellingham is scoring goals or not, whether Carlo Ancelotti is staying as manager or leaving, Mbappe news trumps the lot.


    Do not fret, the saga is almost over (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

    Ancelotti will regularly face questions about Mbappe in press conferences, which you kind of expect. But Real Madrid players, Javier Tebas (the president of La Liga), even Xavi and Joan Laporta over at Barcelona, they have all been quizzed for their Mbappe opinions. Honestly, who cares? Other than the TV producers who need to quench an insatiable need for 24/7 rolling football coverage.

    Why would anyone want to know what Laporta thinks about another club signing another player? Just ask Nick Knowles what he thinks of the UK slipping back into recession while you’re at it. It’s pointless to the point of utter saturation, a stage we reached with this on/off transfer yonks ago.

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    Front pages have been dominated by Mbappe in Spain for ages, focusing unremittingly on ‘the decision’.

    “Mbappe will want to play for Real Madrid,” one Marca headline screamed in April 2020. Presumably “in 2024” was in the small print.

    “Mbappe takes the step” followed in September of that year, implying he was on his way to Madrid. Presumably just on holiday.

    “The game of the summer” was last year. Maybe they meant the Ashes.

    There has even been a saga within the saga, with Madrid feeling betrayed by Mbappe when he chose to sign his last extension with PSG. Madrid fans said they wouldn’t forgive Mbappe… for choosing to stay with his current employers. Grow up.

    The journalists were at it too. Mbappe’s decision to remain in Paris was called “the biggest mistake in his career”; even if he won the Champions League and another World Cup, it wouldn’t be enough. Oh, and the fact he wanted to stay in the fifth-best league in the world indicated “he holds himself in very low esteem”.


    Mbappe in 2022 committing his future to PSG for, well, another couple of years at least (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

    That does feel like a very Real Madrid thing, though; sheer indignation at any player in the world daring to turn them down. It’s a very special kind of attitude, one that has fuelled and exacerbated the dullest soap opera storyline since Ian Beale’s weight loss struggles on Eastenders.

    There has never been a moment when it did not seem as if Mbappe was heading to Real Madrid at some point soon. It has always been when, not if — even when he tweeted “LIES” about a report saying he wanted to join Real last summer. “I have already said that I will continue at PSG where I am very happy,” he added, while doing the David Brent long nose mime.

    To be honest, we say it’s a done deal, but no doubt we should be prepared for the next chapter. Which club will Mbappe join now that he has confirmed he is leaving PSG? Within minutes of today’s news breaking, an odds comparison website sent out an email (in such a hurried fashion that the email subject mistakenly read “Kylian Mbappe set to leave Real in summer 2024”) stating there was an “implied chance of 83.3 per cent” that Mbappe was off to Madrid, but also a 3.8 per cent chance he could go to Barcelona, a move that would involve more lever pulling than an octopus running a train station.

    But for now, it feels like it’s finally over. And when we see Mbappe, at last, holding aloft that famous all-white kit, we’ll all be relieved. Unless it’s Leeds United on a Bosman from PSG in 2034.

    (Top photo: Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images)

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  • Xavi’s Barcelona resignation: The full story behind his decision to step down in June

    Xavi’s Barcelona resignation: The full story behind his decision to step down in June

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    “President, I’d like to speak with you.”

    Barcelona’s traumatic 5-3 home defeat against Villarreal prompted an agitated evening behind the scenes at their temporary home ground on Montjuic on Saturday.

    Club executives immediately held an urgent meeting after the final whistle at the Estadi Olimpic Lluis Companys, just next to the VIP boxes, where other board members were still having dinner.

    Alongside Barca president Joan Laporta was vice-president Rafa Yuste, sporting director Deco, director Enric Masip and Laporta’s closest confidant, Alejandro Echevarria. The topic of discussion was Xavi’s position. At that meeting, Laporta decided he had to stay true to the convictions he had held over the past few weeks and keep Xavi as manager.

    Suddenly, as the meeting came to an end, he felt his phone buzzing.

    Xavi’s message to Laporta asking to speak prompted a dramatic turn of events. Top executives feared the manager had decided to abandon his role that very same night, leaving Barcelona in a tough position. The decision had already been made not to sack him, partly because it would have been hard to bring in a replacement due to the financial state of the club. Barca are over La Liga’s limit on salary spending, which makes it tough to register new players; the rules apply to managers’ wages, too.

    One of the executives present at that meeting even texted Xavi back, asking him not to “take final decisions in heated moments” and to “let the situation cool down”.

    But Barcelona’s legendary former midfielder, who led them to the Spanish league title in his first full season in charge last term, had made his mind up. He could not keep carrying the same amount of pressure and needed to tell the board.

    Well-placed Barca sources — who, like all those cited here, preferred to speak anonymously to protect their positions — told The Athletic that Laporta was very surprised by how well Xavi articulated his message when they eventually spoke and that he quickly understood this was a decision he had deeply considered.

    The manager’s wish to step down not now but at the end of the season would also give them some time to make plans and Laporta accepted his request.

    In this piece, we explain:

    • How Barcelona’s toxicity ended up wearing down Xavi, a man who knows the club as well as anyone but who could still not escape its unique pressures and saw his family affected
    • When Xavi made his decision and why it ended up being revealed so abruptly, with players hearing the news through social media
    • How the dressing room reacted, with some relationships with the manager deteriorating and others open to seeing him staying
    • What went wrong from last season and why, despite being a man of the club in tough times, players and executives believed Xavi ended up underperforming

    “Xavi slept better tonight than he had in a long time,” sources close to him told The Athletic on Sunday morning. They said he felt liberated after making known his decision to leave the club on June 30 — and so did his entourage.

    The coach had been mulling over the decision for months, but it was only after the 4-1 defeat against Real Madrid in the Supercopa de Espana final that he made it known to those closest to him: his brother and assistant manager Oscar Hernandez, his wife Nuria Cunillera and a few most trusted members of his staff. Not many knew.

    They had devised a plan to make his decision public, with the idea to tell the players at a training session the day before a match over the upcoming weeks. He would then give a press conference with the board to explain it to the media. Instead, everything came to a head after Saturday’s game with Villarreal.

    Barca lost the match despite coming back from two goals down to lead 3-2, suffering a 3-5 defeat that leaves them fourth in the table, 11 points off surprise La Liga leaders Girona (on whom they have a game in hand) and 10 points behind rivals Real Madrid.

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    The defeat essentially saw them say goodbye to a third competition in 15 days. First, the Supercopa de Espana, then the Copa del Rey (Athletic Bilbao knocked them out last week), now an almost definitive farewell to the league title they were defending.

    After the final whistle, Xavi did several flash interviews with broadcasters and nobody could have guessed what was going to happen next.

    After Xavi wrote the message to Laporta, he communicated to the board that he was leaving the position. According to sources close to the coach, he then went to find the players in the dressing room, hoping to tell them himself before they heard it elsewhere.

    In their own post-match interviews, Frenkie de Jong, Joao Cancelo and Ronald Araujo had all strongly defended the coach, with De Jong saying: “It’s our fault, not the coach’s.”

    Xavi wanted to talk to them, but by the time he was in a position to, over an hour after the final whistle, they had all left the stadium already.


    Barcelona conceded two late goals against Villarreal (David Ramos/Getty Images)

    Xavi had already said several times at recent press conferences that if he ever became “a problem” for the club, he would leave.

    There were several reasons behind the decision.

    After suffering another defeat, Xavi could see a week of polls in the media coming, asking whether Laporta should sack him or not — a turbulent week in which Barca had to play two games that were now key to keeping up the pace in the race for Spain’s Champions League spots.

    He wanted to calm the waters and face the end of the season without the extra tension and uncertainty. He felt the club needed a change and the best thing to do was to make it clear that he would be leaving.

    But there was also another reason. According to sources close to Xavi, he was fed up. The toxicity of being in the Barca environment not only affected his mood but also had consequences for his closest family.

    Club sources saw him as being overwhelmed. These sources also said that some Barca board members had been calling for his head for some time and that this also affected him, even though Laporta had defended him. He felt this only added pressure to an already critical environment.

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    Xavi is not blameless but Barcelona’s problems run far deeper

    When Xavi left his meeting with the board after Saturday’s game, his only concern was how the players were going to take it. He felt bad that he had not spoken to them earlier. His announcement took the squad by total surprise.

    When the manager and players did finally get a chance to speak at training the following morning, several club sources told The Athletic that the group was affectionate towards him. Some of them approached Xavi at the end of the session to ask him if there was anything they could do to make him reconsider and stay.


    Xavi and Lewandowski embrace during Saturday’s defeat (Alex Caparros/Getty Images)

    It might be surprising to hear that Xavi, a man who spent half his life at Barcelona and knows the ins and outs of the institution better than possibly anyone else, just could not deal with its unique demands. But this was actually a major factor behind his decision to step down.

    “Over the last weeks, you could see that he was not going through a good time,” a club source said. “He was not enjoying his work and he was especially affected by the fact all the pressure was not just impacting him, but his family.”

    The club’s hierarchy expected Xavi to deal with the demands of the job in a more healthy way given his background. Xavi played for Barcelona for 17 years, making 767 appearances (only Lionel Messi has more, with 782) and winning 25 trophies.

    Pressure has grown on him since the start of his tenure in November 2021. He arrived at a difficult time for the club, amid financial struggles and with a weakened squad, but as the years went by and patience levels were tested, Xavi began to face the kind of criticism any manager deemed to be underperforming will be subjected to at Barca. This became a problem for him.

    “He focused too much on knowing everything that was said around him and even followed daily radio programmes and TV shows,” a club source said. “He also read the press too much, and it didn’t do Xavi any favours.”

    Those who have worked with Xavi on his backroom staff point to the pressure of the merciless Barcelona ‘entorno’ as the main reason for the manager’s downfall.

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    The Spanish word ‘entorno’, literally translated as environment or surroundings, was coined by Barca legend Johan Cruyff when he was the manager in 1992 to describe the noise that is constantly generated around the club: the media, the fans, the politics of its executive board, or other major figures across the city and wider Catalonia region.

    “Here, everyone belongs to one side or ideology,” a club source said. “Every journalist, media outlet or person who can give an opinion has their own agenda and uses whatever happens on the pitch to turn the tide to their favour. There were constant attacks on Xavi and barely ever a will to build on and help the project.”

    But it’s not only in the media where Xavi felt left out and mistreated: he’s been progressively isolated within the club as well.

    Xavi was aware that multiple Barcelona executives have been criticising the team’s performances for months, as well as an alleged lack of intensity in the training sessions his staff led. Some were even pushing for president Laporta to sack him after the Supercopa de Espana final.

    Looking back to the end of last season, just after Barca won La Liga, there were signs of Xavi’s influence being eroded. The day after the bus parade through the city, where the Spanish league title was celebrated with fans, then-sporting director Jordi Cruyff announced he would be leaving.

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    Cruyff and Xavi had established a close bond. The Dutchman was an ally to the Catalan’s vision of how the squad should be assembled and defended it to the board of directors. But Barcelona’s senior management was already working on the arrival of Deco in the sporting direction department and Cruyff eventually felt there was no space left for him.

    Just a few months later, Cruyff’s partner in the role, Mateu Alemany, also left. Despite initially not being as close to Xavi as his colleague, during the last months of his tenure, they had worked together in planning for the future.

    When Alemany departed in August and Deco stepped up as the main leader in the sporting direction department, it left the latter and Laporta as the two most active voices in shaping the squad.

    Xavi has publicly stated his relationship with former team-mate Deco is perfectly fine, but last summer’s transfer activity simply reveals how his position has been weakened.

    The biggest investment Barca made during the off-season was in 18-year-old Brazilian striker Vitor Roque, for whom the club paid €30million (£25.5m; $32.5m), plus a potential €31m more in add-ons. Roque has played 86 minutes in five matches since arriving this winter, not starting a single game. In the manager’s eyes, he has been behind 18-year-old La Masia graduate Marc Guiu in the pecking order.

    Xavi’s biggest priority last summer was the addition of a new holding midfielder to replace club legend Sergio Busquets, who left to join Inter Miami. While the manager put the names of Martin Zubimendi, Joshua Kimmich or Marcelo Brozovic as his three priorities, Barcelona were only able to bring in Oriol Romeu, whose impact has been disappointing, to say the least.

    Further evidence of Xavi’s waning power within the club came in the build-up to the final game of the Champions League group stage this season, away at Royal Antwerp, which they lost 3-2. With Barcelona practically qualified, the club’s board interfered in the manager’s squad selection, pushing him to make all the team’s top guns travel instead of giving them a rest, as had been his intention.

    All this does not exempt Xavi from a share of responsibility over what has undoubtedly been a disappointing follow-up campaign to the success of 2022-23. In terms of recruitment, he has still been a part of the club and has sanctioned the moves that have taken place. He could, and perhaps should, have raised his voice as soon as his authority began to come under threat. When you spot problems inside the club but do not stand in their way in some manner, you might as well be considered part of it.


    Xavi alongside his brother and assistant coach Oscar Hernandez (Gongora/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    It should also be noted that Xavi was heavily backed in the market during Barca’s infamous ‘summer of levers’, when, back in 2022, the club made a series of future asset sales to finance a transformative spend in the transfer market.

    None of those signings (Ferran Torres, Andreas Christensen, Franck Kessie, Robert Lewandowski, Raphinha and Jules Kounde) can be, right now, deemed as a successful deal.

    All of them have been heavily exposed and contrasted by the brilliance of several emerging La Masia talents, with 16-year-old Lamine Yamal (who made his debut aged 15 last season) the biggest attacking threat for the club in recent weeks. Pau Cubarsi has just turned 17 and has impressed more at centre-back in two games than Christensen or Kounde have all season.

    A few months into the 2023-24 campaign, coaching staff sources complained about last summer’s signings and assessed their attacking line as being far from the best in the country, but there’s a brutal reality in Xavi’s tenure: he’s been unable to make the team progress despite having been financially supported with transfers.

    “He has not shown his players that he has the tactical level to be considered a top-level coach,” said a source close to one of the current Barcelona players. The fact Xavi’s only managerial experience before landing at Camp Nou was in Qatar also played a part in their assessment.

    However, Xavi’s trust in the youngsters from La Masia can’t go unnoticed. Fermin Lopez, Yamal, Cubarsi and Hector Fort are all names that many now believe are capable of playing at the club for years. With other managers, they might have struggled to find a pathway to the first team.

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    But equally, Barca’s manager has also had to deal with the deterioration of the dressing room’s harmony under his watch, with several examples already reported by The Athletic recently.

    Before the start of the season, Kounde told Xavi he didn’t enjoy being played as a right-back and that he would prefer to be used in his natural central defensive position. This saw club captain Araujo being relocated as a right-back more regularly, but he has ended up complaining about this, too. Christensen has become disgruntled over consistently being the first player to be dropped when everyone in defence is fit despite never complaining and performing well last term.

    There’s also the case of Lewandowski, arguably the club’s key senior player, who has seen his position at the club, and relationship with the manager, change significantly throughout the past year.

    The 35-year-old has devolved from a dressing room role model to an expendable asset in the eyes of the coaching staff. According to sources close to the player’s camp, the striker’s dip in form since the World Cup break for Qatar 2022 owes more to a change in system that didn’t benefit him, although they admit he’s been far from his best. Lewandowski himself spoke to The Athletic about such concerns during Barca’s pre-season tour of the United States.

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    Robert Lewandowski exclusive interview: ‘Barcelona is still the place to be’

    In many ways, much of this is all part of the normal running of an elite football club. Nobody can expect top athletes to be happy when things aren’t going the way they planned and some of the examples mentioned above are now thought to have been dealt with. Others have not been tackled in time.

    There is still a part of the dressing room that truly believes in the manager, especially players who broke into the first team thanks to him or ones who were given a second chance.

    Some 20 minutes after Xavi revealed his decision on Saturday night, Gavi posted a picture with the manager on social media with a caption that read: “Always backing you, boss.” Local radio station Cadena SER Barcelona reported that, on Sunday morning, club captain Sergi Roberto told Xavi in front of the whole dressing room that he’d support him if changed his mind and decided to stay.

    The bottom line, though, is that Xavi himself does not believe he can turn the situation around.


    Joan Laporta and Xavi on the day the Barca legend was presented as manager in 2021 (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

    Xavi said he could not understand why his team lost in the Copa del Rey against Athletic Bilbao. He also believed they deserved to win against Villarreal and especially against Girona in December’s La Liga meeting — a defeat that badly damaged him in the eyes of Barca’s hierarchy.

    There was also a sense that Xavi failed in attempts to improve the narrative with his words in press conferences. He went from protecting players to then calling them out by admitting they were not following what he practised in training. He also described attitude problems after struggling to beat bottom-side Almeria at the end of December and promised fans his team would never replicate that. Three weeks later, Barca were being outplayed and outrun by Real Madrid in Saudi Arabia.

    So, what now?

    There is still the possibility of Xavi not lasting the rest of the season if he does not manage to reverse the team’s dynamic in the four months remaining. The board has taken the decision to wait and see. Club sources told The Athletic that the manager has already written off any salary related to next season.

    Barcelona’s board are already looking for a new manager. During his campaign for the Barcelona presidential elections back in 2021, Laporta said his preference was to bring in a German coach at a time when Thomas Tuchel, Jurgen Klopp and Julian Nagelsmann were at their peak.

    However, there are sections of the board that are very hesitant to bring in a coach who does not speak Spanish as they believe it would make the situation more difficult. They want to see how the players react; if they fight to climb the table and go as far as possible in the Champions League.

    Xavi tried everything and nothing worked. Sacrificing himself was his last desperate move; one to ease the pressure around the players and protect his legacy at the club.

    At the same time, it pushes Joan Laporta and his board to spot further problems inside Barcelona and decide who has to lead the club’s new project for the foreseeable future.

    (Top photo: Aitor Alcalde Colomer/Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)



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  • Which players can now sign pre-contract agreements for Bosman moves?

    Which players can now sign pre-contract agreements for Bosman moves?

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    Follow live coverage of Liverpool vs Newcastle in the Premier League today

    This season’s winter transfer window is now open, meaning clubs can officially start the scramble to add reinforcements or offload players deemed surplus to requirements.

    Premier League sides can do business until 11pm GMT on Thursday, February 1 — and, following discussions with the major leagues around Europe, that will also be deadline day in La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy), Ligue 1 (France) and the Bundesliga (Germany).

    But while clubs who want to sign players under contract must negotiate and, usually, pay a transfer fee during a FIFA-determined transfer window, wise forward planning allows ‘pre-contract agreements’ in some circumstances.

    The Athletic explains what these are and which players due to be out of contract in the summer could now step up transfer plans…

    What is a pre-contract agreement and when can players sign one?

    A pre-contract allows clubs to get ahead with their recruitment, with a player and an interested club able to commit to a move before that player’s current deal expires.

    Talks can begin up to six months before a contract expires — meaning January 1 is a key date for the many players whose deals end on June 30 — but only with teams other than the one the player concerned is currently registered with (their parent club if presently out on loan).

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    Domestic transfers are regulated by each country’s football association as opposed to world governing body FIFA — and in a further restriction, the English FA cuts longer pre-contract timeframes in a bid to avoid conflicts of interest in the event a player might face their future club before leaving their current one.

    Any player looking to move from one English team to another as a soon-to-be free agent can only open talks a month before their contract expires.

    Which notable players can sign a pre-contract agreement?

    Note: Some players below have club options in contracts that are yet to be triggered.

    Premier League

    Raphael Varane

    Manchester United have a decision to make about a player who has won one World Cup final, played in another and won the Champions League four times. Varane’s contract expires this summer, with the option of an additional year to extend his stay until 2025.


    Varane is in the third and final year of his contract (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

    Thiago

    Thiago’s consistent injury problems played a part in Liverpool signing four new midfielders in last year’s summer window. He rejected offers from Saudi Arabia at that time but, as things stand, it seems more probable he will leave Liverpool after this season rather than stay.

    Jorginho

    It is common for clubs to include the option of an extra year in a contract and Jorginho, who was signed by Arsenal for £12million on deadline day in January 2023, is no exception, with an option to extend the Italy midfielder’s stay at the Emirates by an additional year should Arsenal choose to.

    Thiago Silva

    Chelsea are heavily reliant on Silva, despite his age. The 39-year-old remains a regular starter halfway through their first season under Mauricio Pochettino. It is not yet known if Silva will be offered a new contract. Chelsea’s current centre-back options beyond the long-time Brazil captain include Alex Disasi, Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile, Levi Colwill, Trevoh Chalobah, Bashir Humphreys and Malang Sarr.

    Fabian Schar

    Having started all 19 of Newcastle’s Premier League games this season, Schar looks set to stick around beyond June when his current contract expires. Newcastle are expected to offer him a new deal in the coming months.

    Eric Dier

    The Tottenham defender was offered to Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest in the summer transfer window but ended up staying in north London. Dier has featured in only four Premier League games this season, starting one, and seems likely to continue as a backup option who rarely plays under Ange Postecoglou.

    Anthony Martial

    Martial became the world’s most expensive teenager when Manchester United signed him from Monaco in 2015 in a deal worth £36million, potentially rising to £58m. He then signed a five-year contract in 2019 with an option of an extra year. But, like David de Gea, who left in the summer despite having an optional year on his deal, United do not intend to prolong Martial’s stay under the terms of his current agreement.

    Ivan Perisic

    After featuring in all but four of 38 Premier League games last season, with 23 starts, Perisic, who was originally signed for Tottenham by his former Inter Milan coach Antonio Conte, had not featured as much during the current campaign even before an ACL injury in September. Spurs are not expected to offer him a long-term extension.

    Joel Matip

    “I’m pretty sure the club will show their class,” manager Jurgen Klopp said in December when asked if Liverpool plan to offer Matip a new contract. Originally signed on a free transfer in the summer of 2016, Matip has a long-term knee injury that means he might have already played his last game for Liverpool.

    Seamus Coleman

    Coleman is now into his 15th season at Everton after signing an extension last summer. The 35-year-old defender is club captain but is now a peripheral figure in terms of the first team, having made just two Premier League appearances this season.

    Willian

    Like others, Willian was offered the opportunity of a pay rise via a move to a club in Saudi Arabia last summer. Al Shabab were willing to offer the now 35-year-old Brazilian winger a salary of £200,000 per week. In the end, he signed a new one-year deal at Fulham, which includes the option to extend by an additional 12 months.


    Willian could yet extend his stay in London (Alex Davidson/Getty Images)

    James Milner

    Jurgen Klopp was interested in keeping Milner last summer but Liverpool opted against it, which paved the way for Brighton to swoop in and sign him as a free agent. With more than 600 Premier League appearances under his belt, the ever-present midfielder continues to be an important player under Roberto De Zerbi.

    Mohamed Elneny

    Arsenal’s longest-serving player signed a contract extension in February 2023 that will keep him at the club until June. Opportunities for first-team action this season have been limited, with Elneny making only four appearances in all competitions; just one as a substitute in the Premier League.

    Adam Lallana

    If Lallana, who turns 36 in May, decides to call time on his playing career, a pathway into coaching with current club Brighton could be his next venture. During the international break in September last year, Lallana joined up with the England Under-21s squad in a coaching capacity, and Brighton have a reputation for hiring former players in coaching roles.

    Serge Aurier

    Following the recent appointment of Nuno Espirito Santo, it remains to be seen if Aurier will feature as prominently for Nottingham Forest as he did under predecessor Steve Cooper. If Forest do want to keep the now-31-year-old full-back, they have an option to extend his current agreement by an extra year.

    Idrissa Gueye

    Everton brought Gueye back to the club from Paris Saint-Germain in summer 2022, three years after he left them for the French side, and signed him to a two-year contract. The midfielder has featured in the majority of Everton’s games so far under Sean Dyche.

    Danny Welbeck

    As one of Brighton’s most senior pros, Welbeck’s contributions extend beyond what happens on the pitch. Despite not being a regular starter, he is still considered a valuable player at Brighton.

    Tosin Adarabioyo

    Tosin was on Tottenham’s radar last summer and with his contract now running down, he is likely one of most coveted free-agents-to-be over the coming months. Signed for a bargain fee of just £1.5million, Fulham could lose a player they thought they would be able to make a sizeable profit from, for free.

    Felipe

    The Brazilian defender was signed on an 18-month contract a year ago after moving from Atletico Madrid to Nottingham Forest. It was expected that he would be a key player during the current campaign, but Felipe has made only four appearances during 2023-24.

    Nathaniel Clyne

    Clyne, an academy graduate at Crystal Palace, has signed successive one-year contracts during the past two seasons having returned to them in 2020 after three years with Southampton and five at Liverpool. His latest agreement is set to expire soon. The former England full-back, who will be 33 when the season ends, has featured sparingly (nine league appearances with six starts) but could still be retained for the seniority and leadership he offers.

    Lukasz Fabianski

    In 2022, Fabianski signed a one-year contract at West Ham with the option to extend it by an additional 12 months. That option was activated last summer. The goalkeeper has predominantly been used in cup competitions this season, with five appearances in the Europa League group stage and two in the Carabao Cup to go with three Premier League starts.


    Fabianski has been second-choice at West Ham this season (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

    Ben Mee

    Brentford are expected to keep 34-year-old defender Mee at the club beyond this summer’s expiry of his current contract. Mee, signed on a free transfer from relegated Burnley after the 2021-22 season, is considered to be a leader under head coach Thomas Frank.

    Aaron Wan-Bissaka

    Wan-Bissaka has a 12-month extension clause in his current contract, but Manchester United are yet to announce if they will trigger that option or not. The defender became United’s fifth-most-expensive signing when he moved from Crystal Palace for £50million in the summer of 2019.

    Bertrand Traore

    Traore spent last season on loan at Turkey’s Istanbul Basaksehir and finds himself on the fringes of Unai Emery’s Aston Villa squad in this one, with just two Premier League appearances – both as a substitute. It is expected that the winger will be allowed to leave in the summer once his contract expires.

    Michail Antonio

    West Ham’s longest-tenured player signed a two-and-a-half-year contract in January 2022 that included the option of an extension to 2025. The forward came close to leaving the club last January — Wolves and Nottingham Forest wanted to sign him permanently, and Chelsea submitted a loan offer.

    Ryan Christie

    Bournemouth have a few players whose deals will expire at the end of the season. Of that group, Christie, who has featured prominently this season under new coach Andoni Iraola, seems the most likely to stick around. Other players whose contracts run out in June are Darren Randolph, Ryan Fredericks, Emiliano Marcondes and Adam Smith.

    Will Hughes

    Hughes joined Crystal Palace for £6million in the summer of 2021 and finds himself entering the final few months of the contract he signed upon arrival from Watford. His team-mates Joel Ward, Nathan Ferguson, Jairo Riedewald, James Tomkins and Remi Matthews are also set to become free agents when this season comes to a close.

    Dele Alli

    The former Tottenham and England midfielder is yet to feature for Everton this season, after spending the previous one out on loan at Turkish club Besiktas. Any future contract extension will likely depend on how often Dele features during the latter half of the season.

    Adrian

    Goalkeepers often spend the final part of their career as the third-choice at a club, providing intangible contributions for others. Adrian falls into that bracket. “I know the situation and my role in the squad,” he said during an interview with The Athletic in June. He is firmly behind Alisson and Caoimhin Kelleher at Liverpool and his contract situation is assessed on a year-to-year basis at the end of each season.

    Jonny Evans

    Northern Ireland’s fourth-most capped player originally signed a short-term contract back at Manchester United before the deal was extended for the duration of the current season on deadline day last September. The 35-year-old defender has made 12 appearances in the Premier League and two in the Champions League.

    Josh Brownhill

    Having started all but three games for Burnley this season following their return to the Premier League under Vincent Kompany, it would seem likely that the club will activate the option to extend Brownhill’s contract by an additional year. Jay Rodriguez, Jack Cork and Charlie Taylor are also set to be out of contract, while Johann Berg Gudmundsson has an additional one-year option.

    Josh Brownhill


    Brownhill has been a regular for Burnley (Jan Kruger/Getty Images)

    Vladimir Coufal

    West Ham are in negotiations with Coufal to keep him around beyond the summer. Aaron Cresswell and Angelo Ogbonna are also set to be out of contract, but the club are unlikely to offer them new deals.

    Chris Wood

    The loan agreement Forest had in place for Wood was made permanent for £15million because of a clause in the agreement with his previous club Newcastle. Eighteen months later, the striker finds himself out of contract soon, alongside Ethan Horvath, Cheikhou Kouyate, Ola Aina, Wayne Hennessey, Willy Boly, Scott McKenna and Harry Arter.

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    La Liga

    Luka Modric

    A staple of Real Madrid’s dynastic run in the Champions League that yielded five trophies between 2014-22, Modric does not have much left to accomplish at club level. Croatia’s record cap holder is out of contract soon, turns 39 early next season and received offers from clubs in Saudi Arabia last year.

    Toni Kroos

    Modric’s long-time Madrid midfield partner finds himself in a similar position, but there is an interesting difference between the two players in terms of their contracts. When Madrid gave Kroos a new deal last summer, they wanted to sign him until 2025. But the 2014 World Cup winner, who’ll turn 34 this week, opted to sign just a one-year contract instead.

    Sergio Ramos

    In April 2022, Ramos said he wanted to play at the top level for another “four or five years”. Basic maths tell us the former Real Madrid defensive stalwart, who is now back at his first pro club Sevilla, is intent on extending his career until 2026 at the earliest, which suggests retirement is not on the cards in June.

    Koke

    Atletico Madrid are the only club Koke has ever played for. The midfielder, who turns 32 in a week, still features regularly for Diego Simeone’s side, which would suggest he may be set to continue his career in Spain’s capital.

    Serie A

    Olivier Giroud

    Giroud is still making meaningful contributions at AC Milan, having scored eight goals to go along with five assists in Serie A. The now 37-year-old signed a new contract in April that runs to the end of this season. Given that he is still in good form, he will not be short of suitors in a few months.

    Adrien Rabiot

    Manchester United have tried to sign Rabiot twice in the past two years. Last summer, he chose to remain at Juventus for another season instead. The terms of that agreement will see the France midfielder again become a free agent in June.


    Rabiot has been courted by Manchester United (Isabella Bonotto/AFP via Getty Images)

    Leonardo Spinazzola

    An Achilles injury during Italy’s triumphant European Championship finals campaign in summer 2021 derailed Spinazzola’s climb towards becoming a household name across the continent. Since his recovery, the Roma full-back has continued to deliver under coach Jose Mourinho and was part of their side that won the first Europa Conference League in 2022.

    Alexis Sanchez

    Sanchez left Manchester United for Inter Milan, initially on a season’s loan, stayed two more years, left for Marseille, then rejoined Inter 12 months later last summer. With just two goals, both of which came in the Champions League, and zero assists in 13 overall appearances at age 35, his value to Simone Inzaghi’s team appears to be declining.

    Ligue 1

    Kylian Mbappe

    When Mbappe signed a new deal with Paris Saint-Germain in 2022, it was for two years with the option of an additional one. Usually, it is the club who decides whether or not to extend an agreement. But in this case, Mbappe has the final say. That contract is set to expire at the end of this season and he is yet to announce if he will activate the option to stay in Paris for an extra year.

    Keylor Navas

    Navas left PSG on loan last January in search of first-team football but after that spell with Nottingham Forest now finds himself back on the bench in Paris, and without any first-team appearances so far this season. A move away would seem probable, given that he is now 37 years old and Gianluigi Donnarumma, 24, is unlikely to be displaced as the club’s undisputed starter.

    Bundesliga

    Marco Reus

    Having spent more than a decade of his career at Borussia Dortmund, a logical assumption would be that Reus would be more interested in staying put rather than playing elsewhere. For now, there is no official word about where the midfielder, who turns 35 in May, will play next season, if at all.

    Mats Hummels

    Hummels’ next move has not yet been decided either but his age does not appear to be limiting his opportunities. The now 35-year-old continues to feature regularly for Dortmund and he was also named in new coach Julian Nagelsmann’s first Germany squad this past October.

    Which other players will soon be free agents?

    (Top photos: Getty Images)

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  • One year of Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia

    One year of Cristiano Ronaldo in Saudi Arabia

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    It was one of those rare days when nothing comes off for Cristiano Ronaldo and he cannot conceal his rising frustration.

    An offside flag denied him a goal and a VAR intervention denied him a penalty before he sent a wild shot and two headers off target in the closing stages of a crucial game. At one stage, he wrestled an opponent to the ground and was perhaps lucky to avoid a red card. As the game slipped away, he kept grimacing, looking to the heavens in disgust, as if to ask what he had done to deserve this.

    It was another blow for Al Nassr’s Saudi Pro League title hopes and, walking off the pitch at the final whistle, Ronaldo heard mocking chants from the jubilant Al Hilal supporters. “Messi, Messi,” they shouted, trying to taunt him with the name of his great rival.

    Grinning, he twice grabbed his crotch in what looked like a pointed response to his hecklers before disappearing down the tunnel.

    The incident attracted widespread media coverage, not least in Saudi Arabia during the holy month of Ramadan. A Saudi lawyer, Nouf bin Ahmed, described Ronaldo’s gesture as “a crime of public dishonour and (…) one of the crimes that entails arrest and deportation if committed by a foreigner”, adding that she intended to file a complaint to the Saudi public prosecutor.


    (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)

    For this particular foreigner, there was no danger of deportation. Al Nassr responded by issuing a statement saying Ronaldo was in fact suffering from an injury because a tussle with Al Hilal midfielder Gustavo Cuellar had started with a blow in a very sensitive area.

    “This is confirmed information,” the club added — and that was the end of the matter.

    But that incident last April was part of a difficult period early in Ronaldo’s first year in Saudi Arabia. A week later, Al Nassr suffered a shock defeat to Al Wehda in the semi-final of the King Cup of Champions, leaving Ronaldo to vent his displeasure at his team’s coaching staff as he left the pitch.

    In a column for Arabic-language newspaper Al Madinah, Dr Saud Kateb, a former minister at the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, asked whether the government-backed acquisition of Ronaldo might have been “a losing bet”. He suggested that “excessively focusing on attracting the most famous and the biggest” was a “double-edged sword” because there was a downside to the global exposure that Ronaldo and other superstars bring with them.

    “I think that it would be better to attract more useful players,” Kateb said, “whose excessive fame does not constitute an unnecessary burden for their clubs and the league as a whole.”

    A year on from Ronaldo’s extraordinary move, that is not a view shared by Saudi Arabia’s modern ruling class.

    Whatever “burden” Ronaldo might carry is far outweighed by the profile and glamour he brings not just to Al Nassr and the league, which has been transformed over the past 12 months, but to the kingdom: visiting historic sites, opening a “CR7 Signature Museum” at the futuristic Boulevard World, wearing traditional Saudi dress to commemorate national holidays and signing up to promote numerous events, usually in the company of Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s general authority for entertainment and one of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s most trusted advisers.

    Today (Saturday, December 30) marks the anniversary of the moment Ronaldo put pen to paper for Al Nassr, signing a two-and-a-half-year deal worth up to £173million ($210m) a year. Al Nassr called it “history in the making”, a deal that “will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our children, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves”.

    No pressure, Cristiano.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Rejection, revenge and soft power: Inside Cristiano Ronaldo’s move to Saudi Arabia’s Al Nassr

    Pressure? By the start of February, Ronaldo would have been forgiven for feeling it.

    His Saudi Pro League debut had initially been delayed by a two-match suspension dating back to his final months at Manchester United. He scored twice for a Riyadh all-star team in an exhibition match against Paris Saint-Germain and Messi, but he drew a blank on his Saudi Pro League debut against Al Ettifaq (four shots, no goals) and again four days later as Al Nassr lost to Al Ittihad in the Saudi Super Cup semi-final four days later.

    Next up was a game away to Al Fateh. Again nothing was coming off for Ronaldo: a goal disallowed for offside, a wayward first-time shot, another one rattled against the crossbar, an over-ambitious 35-yard free kick that went straight into the wall, another 90 minutes without a goal.

    And then, in stoppage time, a gift: a penalty kick for Al Nassr following a crass challenge on his team-mate Jaloliddin Masharipov. Brazilian midfielder Anderson Talisca stood on the penalty spot, holding the ball, but he knew to hand it over when his more celebrated colleague stepped up behind him. Everyone knows to defer to Ronaldo.

    A buzz went around the Prince Abdullah bin Jalawi Stadium. Young boys were hoisted upwards by their fathers, eager for them to share in their moment in history. Ronaldo briefly closed his eyes and exhaled in the manner of an action-movie hero who knows he has one chance to save the world.

    He did it. He saved the world. Well, he saved a point against Al Fateh. The 17,631 crowd — by far Al Fateh’s biggest attendance since their title-winning campaign a decade earlier — rose to acclaim a goal by an opposition player. Some of them called for him to perform his famous “Siiiiiiuuuu” celebration, but Ronaldo was already racing back to the halfway line, hoping there was still time for a winner. (There wasn’t.)


    Ronaldo sprinting back to the centre circle after scoring his first goal for Al Nassr in February (Ali Aldaif/AFP via Getty Images)

    In many ways, that game against Al Fateh last February summed up Ronaldo’s Saudi experience to date: a lot of attempts, at least one goal, a crowd desperate to see him play the hits (the stepovers, the flicks, the powerful long-range shots, the towering headers and, of course, the celebration) and an athlete in the twilight of his career determined to give them what they want, but above all, determined to get what he wants: even more goals, even more wins, even more trophies, even more glory.

    Towards the end of his first year in Saudi Arabia, Ronaldo submitted to a lie detector test as part of a marketing campaign for a cryptocurrency venture he was promoting.

    A cryptocurrency venture? That is a whole other story, and not a pretty one, but the lie detector test was a nice gimmick. It suggested he was totally convinced of his greatness — quite right, too — but not when he said he believed Portugal would win the World Cup.

    Then came the question of whether, at the age of 38, Ronaldo thought he would still be “playing at the highest level” in his 40s. He dwelt on this one, closing his eyes, before delivering the answer: “Yes”.

    This time, the polygraph reflected little or no change in Ronaldo’s body response, suggesting he was telling the truth. Ronaldo smiled, looking relieved, as if reassured by the feedback.

    The obvious thing to say here is that the test — or the premise of the advert — was flawed because, quite clearly, a player in the Saudi Pro League cannot claim to be operating at the highest level of the sport.

    But the point of a polygraph is not to establish truth or falsehood. It is to try to identify the physiological changes — rises in blood pressure, pulse, respiration, skin conductivity — associated with deceit.

    And everything Ronaldo does, on and off the pitch, is consistent with the belief he is still at the very top of the game.

    With one game remaining, away to Al Taawoun on Saturday, Ronaldo has scored 53 goals in 2023, one more than Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane and his highest total in a calendar year since 2017 when he was at Real Madrid. Ten of those goals have come in nine appearances for Portugal and 43 of them in 49 matches for Al Nassr, including 19 goals in 17 league games so far this season.

    The latest of them came away to Saudi champions Al Ittihad on Tuesday. Needing to win to keep the pressure on league leaders Al Hilal, his team fell behind before Ronaldo held his nerve to equalise from the penalty spot in the first half. A second Ronaldo penalty midway through the second half put Al Nassr 3-2 up and, eventually, they ran out 5-2 winners. “We’re not stopping!” he said on Instagram afterwards.


    Ronaldo celebrates a goal against Al Ittihad on December 26 (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)

    Those 19 goals put him clear at the top of the Saudi Pro League scoring charts, two ahead of Al Hilal’s former Fulham forward Aleksandar Mitrovic. He also ranks highest for assists (nine). In terms of goal contributions (goals plus assists), he is on 28 for the season, seven ahead of second-placed Mitrovic.

    It adds up to 1.65 goal contributions per 90 minutes — or, to put it another way, a goal or assist just over every 54 minutes — and it strengthens the view that Ronaldo is inspiring his team to new heights, even if the reality is not quite as straightforward as that appealing narrative suggests.

    Al Nassr were top of the Saudi Pro League when Ronaldo signed for them last December. They were still top, two points clear of Al Hilal and Al Ittihad, when he made his debut more than three weeks later.

    After that stuttering start, the goals soon flowed for the five-time Ballon d’Or winner, but then came a game against Al Batin, the league’s whipping boys, when Al Nassr trailed 1-0 until a dramatic turnaround in stoppage time. Ronaldo didn’t score in that game. He had seven shots, just one of them on target.

    A week later came what was effectively the title-decider against Al Ittihad. Al Nassr went into that game top of the table, but they were beaten 1-0 and were overtaken. Again hearing chants of “Messi, Messi” from the home crowd, he stormed off the pitch at the final whistle, kicking water bottles as he went.

    Then came that chastening defeat by local rivals Al Hilal: the one with the headlock, the offside goal and the crotch-grabbing gesture. By the end of the season, he had scored 14 goals in 16 Saudi Pro League appearances, but those goals (four against Al Wehda, three against Damac, two against Al Adalah) came largely against the league’s struggling teams. He racked up eight or nine goal attempts in some of those games. In two different matches, damaging 1-1 draws at home to Al Khaleej and away to Al Ettifaq, he took eight shots without scoring.

    They ended up finishing five points adrift of Al Ittihad having performed better without Ronaldo in the team (33 points from 14 games) than with him (34 points from 16 games). Their top scorer was Brazilian midfielder Anderson Talisca, but 13 of his 20 goals had come when his more celebrated team-mate was not playing.

    It has become a familiar question in the later years of Ronaldo’s career: whether there is a price to be paid, in terms of fluency and cohesion, for trying to play to his strengths.

    But after his miserable final months in Manchester, there have no been questions or criticisms about his attitude or application in Riyadh. On the contrary, his influence on the team is said to have been entirely positive.

    “Cristiano has responded very positively since day one,” Al Nassr sporting director Marcelo Salazar tells The Athletic. “Not only him but his family and his staff as well. And this is a very important factor in his good performance inside the field since his debut with us. Check the number of goals and assists he has made since his arrival. It’s huge. Check out the game against Al Wehda last season when he scored a ‘poker’ (four goals) and we won 4-0.

    “When he came, we already had very good professionals like Luiz Gustavo, David Ospina and Alvaro Gonzalez, who are role models, but nothing can be compared with the impact that comes with Cristiano’s absolute commitment and care about every detail that has an impact on his performance — and the impact that causes in a changing room. He puts the bar very high and this causes a cascade effect.”

    That has been more apparent since Ronaldo was joined by highly experienced players like Aymeric Laporte, Marcelo Brozovic, Sadio Mane and Portugal midfielder Otavio and since Rudi Garcia was replaced as head coach by the experienced Luis Castro, a long-time Ronaldophile. “(Ronaldo’s) relationship with Luis Castro is the best possible,” Salazar says. “Honest, close, direct and professional.”


    Sadio Mane has joined Ronaldo at Al Nassr this season (Francois Nel/Getty Images)

    But, like last season, Al Nassr have been left trailing. This time it is Al Hilal, reinforced by the summer arrivals of Yassine Bounou from Sevilla, Kalidou Koulibaly from Chelsea, Ruben Neves from Wolverhampton Wanderers, Sergej Milinkovic-Savic from Lazio, Malcom from Zenit and Mitrovic from Fulham as well as coach Jorge Jesus.

    Mitrovic’s strike rate (17 in 16 Saudi Pro League matches) has been metronomic, scoring in almost every game. Ronaldo’s has been a little more fitful. In no fewer than 10 of his 17 league appearances this season (against Al Fateh, Al Hazem, Al Raed, Al Tai, Abha, Damac, Al Fayha, Al Okhdood and Al Riyadh) he has had at least six goal attempts. In three of those games he took at least 10 shots; against Al Tai he made it 11th time lucky from the penalty spot with three minutes remaining.

    Last season, the title was effectively decided by results in the games between the big two or three teams: in Al Nassr’s case the defeats by Al Ittihad and Al Hilal when Ronaldo could not find the net. A 3-0 defeat by Al Hilal on December 1 continued that unhappy trend. A 5-2 victory away to Al Ittihad, featuring two Ronaldo goals from the penalty spot, was a significant step in the right direction.

    When Ronaldo stroked home each of his two penalty kicks on Tuesday, he embarked on a now-familiar celebration, running towards the corner flag, pointing to himself, slowing down to a trot and leaping into the air and making a “spin” gesture with his hand as he pirouettes mid-flight and then flings his arms down and outwards as he lands, shouting “Siiiiiiuuuu”.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    How Ronaldo made iconic ‘SIU!’ celebration his personal calling card

    The crowd shouted it with him, which is normal enough until you consider that this was a home game for Al Ittihad, one of Al Nassr’s fiercest rivals.

    There is a desperation to see Ronaldo play — and not only in Riyadh. Six of the nine away games he played in the Saudi Pro League last season attracted the home team’s biggest attendance of the campaign. One of Al Nassr’s away games this season, against Al Fayha, was attended by just 5,400 spectators, but Al Fayha have frequently played in front of three-figure crowds. Many clubs move home games against the bigger clubs, such as Al Nassr, to bigger stadiums to try to meet demand.

    Al Nassr’s results have not necessarily improved since Ronaldo’s arrival, but their attendances have. In the opening months of last season, they frequently drew crowds below 15,000. This season their average league attendance is 20,308.

    But even with Al Awwal Park holding just 25,000 spectators, there are still tickets available for most Al Nassr home games. A few days before their home game against Al Ettifaq, their last game before the winter break, tickets were available from SAR 35 (£7.30) behind the goal to SAR 650 (£135) for the sports lounge and SAR 1500 (£313) for the most expensive lounge. They are still selling half-season tickets to cover the final eight games of the campaign, ranging from SAR 4020 (£837.58) for the sports lounge to SAR 17258 (£3,595.77) for the membership lounge.

    More than in the stadiums, the real difference Al Nassr has felt — which has extended to the league as a whole — is via Ronaldo’s vast fanbase on social media.

    On December 29 last year, the day before the deal was announced, Al Nassr had just over 823,000 followers on their main official Instagram account. Within four days, that had risen to 7.8 million. A year on, it is 22.4 million. To put that in context, it is more than all but five clubs in the Premier League — and almost as many as Tottenham Hotspur (16.5 million), Aston Villa (3.7 million) and Newcastle United (2.6 million) combined.

    It is also considerably more than Al Hilal (10.1 million) and Al Ittihad (4.1 million). Those clubs have enjoyed huge surges in social-media following over the past 12 months but, while this can be indirectly linked to Ronaldo’s arrival in the league, Al Hilal’s big jump (from 4.5 million to 8.7 million) came in August after the signings of Bounou, Mitrovic and particularly Neymar. Al Ittihad jumped from 1.5 million to 3 million in June as they agreed deals to sign Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante and others.

    As for the league, although it has always attracted passionate interest within the region, the market for its global media rights pre-Ronaldo was almost non-existent, but now the league claims to have international broadcast with 38 broadcasters across 140 territories. It also expects to become the world’s third most profitable football league in terms of sponsorship revenue — and while that is down to more than just one new arrival, it can all be attributed to the “Ronaldo effect” which helped persuade so many other big names to follow the path to Saudi Arabia.

    When Ronaldo signed for Al Nassr, Amnesty International issued a statement urging arguably the world’s most famous athlete to use his platform to highlight Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights record.

    “Cristiano Ronaldo shouldn’t allow his fame and celebrity status to become a tool of Saudi sportswashing,” the charity’s Middle East researcher, Dana Ahmed, said. “He should use his time at Al Nassr to speak out about the myriad human rights issues in the country.”

    Ronaldo, like so many other high-profile athletes and figures from the entertainment industry, has done nothing of the sort. Visit Saudi, the tourist board, is among the government entities helping finance his enormous contract and so, like Messi, Ronaldo has been photographed visiting tourist attractions, most recently the oasis city of AlUla where he declared himself “amazed by the extraordinary human and natural heritage … where ancient history meets a modern (heart emoji) story”.

    As for the idea that Ronaldo might take the Saudi leaders to task over their human rights record, he took to Instagram in October to say it was an “honour to meet again with his Royal Highness Prince Mohammed bin Salman and great to be part of this panel today discussing the future of esports and the launch of the first-ever #esportsworldcup that will be held in Saudi Arabia next year”.

    While much was made of Ronaldo’s awkward ringside encounter with Irish mixed martial arts star Conor McGregor at last week’s “Day of Reckoning” boxing event in Riyadh, not too many people outside of Saudi Arabia paid much attention to the figure on the other side of Ronaldo: MBS’s trusted adviser, Turki Al Sheikh.

    Some of those players moving to Saudi Arabia, such as former Liverpool midfielder Jordan Henderson, have talked — rather naively, as it has turned out — about trying to bring “change” in the kingdom, particularly where the oppression of LGBTQ+ rights is concerned.

    go-deeper

    GO DEEPER

    Jordan Henderson: I strongly believe that me playing in Saudi Arabia is a positive thing

    Ronaldo made no such pledge. He has been effusive about the hospitality extended to him and his family. On the kingdom’s founding day and national day he, like many other of the league’s high-profile imports, wore traditional Saudi dress and performed the Ardah dance. Ronaldo took it further by incorporating the dance into a goal celebration.

    From the moment he arrived, spending the first weeks with his family in the vast, opulent kingdom suite at the Four Seasons hotel, Ronaldo has enjoyed life in Riyadh. He is far more positive about his life experience than he was in Manchester.

    Even during his first spell at United, never mind his frustrating second spell, Ronaldo used to hate the Manchester weather. Manchester has, on average, 45 hours of sunshine in December and 50 hours in January. Riyadh has more than 200.

    Manchester is an industrial English city which has evolved over centuries and has all the quirks associated with that. Riyadh, too, has existed for centuries, but it has been revolutionised by the extreme financial investment of recent years. Its restaurants, hotels, entertainment complexes and shopping malls are geared towards a VIP crowd in a way big European cities, generally, are not.

    Ronaldo says Riyadh has “some of the best-quality restaurants I have come across”. He and his partner, Georgina Rodriguez, have been seen at Le Maschou (French), Lavash (Armenian) and Clap Riyadh (Japanese), as well as Patel Riyadh (Spanish), in which he is one of the investors.

    He has visited Boulevard World with his family and described it as “very beautiful”. Naturally, he enjoyed his trip to the CR7 Signature Museum. He has praised the standard of his children’s schooling in Riyadh.

    His enthusiasm for Saudi life appears entirely genuine. Life in Riyadh would not be to everyone’s taste — and that is before we get to the restrictions still faced by women and members of the LGBTQ+ community — but Ronaldo and Rodriguez are able to live the A-list lifestyle they could never really enjoy in Manchester.

    They have even been granted the freedom to live together unmarried, a right not extended to Saudi couples. Ronaldo is unlikely to spend much time worrying about human rights. He has everything he wants in Riyadh. Well, almost everything.


    Ronaldo was a high-profile attendee at Day of Reckoning: Fight Night earlier this month (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)

    When Ronaldo talks about “still performing at the highest level”, he is referring to his own standard rather than Al Nassr’s or the league’s. In body, he is still the same supreme physical specimen. In his mind, he is still the same insatiable, supremely driven, ultra-professional athlete.

    Europe’s top clubs were not exactly queueing up to sign him last winter after his acrimonious departure from Manchester United, but Ronaldo is not the type to waste time thinking about that. When asked why he had moved to a league that European players have previously regarded (if at all) as a graveyard, he said he was in Saudi Arabia because “in Europe my work is done” and “this is a new challenge”.

    The standard wasn’t what he was used to. If he was critical of the training facilities and the professionalism of his team-mates at Manchester United second time around, he has had to make allowances for some aspects of life at Al Nassr. Salazar spoke about how Ronaldo had “put the bar very high” in terms of professional standards, but he has had to do so in a gentler, more compromising, more inclusive manner than he did in his second spell in Manchester.

    Ronaldo has never tried to claim the Saudi Pro League is equal to the leading European leagues. From an early stage, he said he expects it gradually to become one of the top five leagues in football, but “step by step”. “They need time, players and infrastructure,” he told Saudi TV station SSC at the end of last season, which again is not an allowance he was willing to make for Manchester United after years of stagnation under the Glazers’ ownership.

    More top-class players arrived in the summer: Neymar, Mane, Benzema, Riyad Mahrez, Roberto Firmino and so many more. But the majority of the high-profile arrivals were those at the tail-end of their careers. Younger ones like Otavio, Ruben Neves, Seko Fofana and Gabri Veiga are in the minority. Al Ittihad, last season’s champions, fielded one XI with an average age of 32 years and four months.

    It makes for a slightly disjointed viewing experience. Competitive balance is an issue in almost all leading leagues these days, but in Saudi Arabia, there is a huge gulf in quality not just between teams but, in certain cases, within teams. That is inevitable when a league has placed so much emphasis on attracting A-list talent in the hope of achieving rapid growth.

    Similar was said of Major League Soccer at one time; less so now after years of more organic growth. And with Messi moving to Inter Miami, Ronaldo did not hesitate to state in the summer that “the Saudi league is better than MLS”, adding that it will also “overtake the Turkish league and Dutch league” within a year.

    It could well do given the wealth and ambitions behind the government-backed project. If Ronaldo and so many other big-name players can be lured to Saudi Arabia, some of them with far more years ahead of them in their careers, then the European game’s hegemony could in time come under serious threat.

    Might that even become a worry for Ronaldo? He is already seeing his position as the league’s outstanding goalscorer challenged by Mitrovic. If it is to be expected that Ronaldo will slow down given he will turn 39 in February, what happens if the standard of the league grows around him, coming up against better, fitter, more experienced, more organised opponents every week?

    That has already happened to an extent with this year’s influx and, for now, Ronaldo is still setting the standard — leading the charts for assists as well as goals. There were moments against Al Ittihad when it looked like a Ronaldo masterclass, featuring the explosiveness and audacity of old, but it still took two penalty kicks to get him on the scoresheet, whereas other games, against the league’s lesser lights, can sometimes look like shooting practice for the Portugal captain.


    Ronaldo’s competitiveness is as strong as ever (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

    Catching Al Hilal in the title race looks like a daunting task for Al Nassr after their slow start to the campaign, but they have already won the Arab Club Champions Cup and Salazar points out they are still in contention for the King Cup, the Super Cup and the Asian Champions League, in which they will face another Saudi team, Al Fayha, in the last 16.

    “We can achieve (victory in) all the competitions we are involved in,” Salazar says. “Nothing is impossible. That is the ultimate goal that drives our daily work in Al Nassr FC.”

    It is Ronaldo, five weeks from his 39th birthday, who is behind that — driving interest, driving up attendances, driving his team forward (even if, yes, it is legitimate to say they were top of the table when he signed a year ago) and, above all, driving himself to enhance his extraordinary legacy.

    The Saudi Pro League is not the challenge he envisaged when, on the eve of last winter’s World Cup, he suggested he still felt his future would be in European football. But with his options reduced, he embraced it and, a year on, it looks like it was the challenge he needed — almost as much, you might say, as Saudi Arabia needed him.

    (Top photo: Abdullah Mahdi/AFP via Getty Images)

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  • Champions League draw analysis: City thrilled, Barca-Napoli dream tie and predictions

    Champions League draw analysis: City thrilled, Barca-Napoli dream tie and predictions

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    The draw for the last 16 of the Champions League was made in UEFA’s Nyon headquarters this morning and Europe’s big guns will have largely liked the outcome.

    England’s two remaining representatives, Arsenal and Manchester City, were handed kind draws in Porto and Copenhagen, while Real Madrid were paired with RB Leipzig.

    Of the more established big guns, Barcelona face arguably the toughest task, having been paired with last season’s Italian champions Napoli.

    Here, our experts cast their eye over the draw and what could happen next.

    Which game are you most excited about?

    Oliver Kay: Napoli vs Barcelona. Both clubs are experiencing hangovers from last season’s title success, but what better than a tie like that to get them going? In terms of individual talent, tactical intrigue and the atmosphere expected in Naples in particular, this tie sticks out. Second choice: Paris Saint-Germain vs Real Sociedad.

    James Horncastle: Maurizio Sarri will be disappointed. The Lazio manager wanted the chance to coach at the Camp Nou. Nevertheless, Lazio vs Bayern Munich sees him face Thomas Tuchel, pitting a couple of cantankerous ex-Chelsea coaches against each other in the ‘Miroslav Klose-ico’. Inter Milan vs Atletico Madrid is also Simone Inzaghi vs ex-Interista Diego Simeone and looks delicately poised, particularly because last year’s finalists face one of the better vintages of Simeone’s Atleti.

    Laia Cervello Herrero: Barcelona vs Napoli. It could be an interesting match, especially given how Xavi’s team are faring. They are unpredictable and that makes the match more attractive. It will also be the first time in three years that we will see Barca in the knockout stage of the Champions League.


    Victor Osimhen and Giacomo Raspadori pose a threat to Barcelona (Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

    Liam Tharme: PSG vs Real Sociedad. Two teams that will go toe-to-toe, playing out and pressing. Don’t expect this to be a typically cagey knockout game. PSG just about squeezed through their group — even if Group F was the hardest of the lot — and will need a statement performance. They have looked vulnerable when pressed high and La Real will certainly do that.

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor: Peter Bosz against Borussia Dortmund. Now flying at PSV Eindhoven, Bosz lasted half a season at the Westfalenstadion in 2017 and the way his Dortmund side fell apart still impacts how he’s viewed. Bosz is a punchline to some and he will be thrilled to take his brilliant PSV side (16 wins from 16 in the Eredivisie) to Germany. Fascinating — and that’s without even considering the questions surrounding Edin Terzic’s future.

    go-deeper

    Key dates

    Round of 16: February 13/14/20/21 and March 5/6/12/13
    Quarter-finals: April 9/10 and 16/17
    Semi-finals: April 30/May 1 and May 7/8
    Final (Wembley): June 1

    Who will be happiest with the draw?

    Oliver Kay: Manchester City. No disrespect to Copenhagen, but that is the opponent all the group winners wanted. The Danish team were a real surprise package in the group stage, but they will find City a rather tougher proposition than their neighbours.

    go-deeper

    James Horncastle: City, as usual. I look forward to Stefan Ortega, Micah Hamilton, Oscar Bobb and Mahamadou Susoho helping the treble winners reach the quarter-finals. Serie A leads this season’s UEFA co-efficient sweepstakes and, alongside Ligue 1, still has a full contingent of teams across UEFA’s three competitions. The draws look tough for Italy’s representatives but in the Champions League, Barcelona are not what they used to be and Inter got the ‘right’ team from Madrid, too.

    Laia Cervello Herrero: City, without a doubt. They’ve been drawn with the lowest-ranked opponents and they still have the tag of reigning Champions League winners. They can already see themselves in the quarter-finals.

    Liam Tharme: Presumably City, even if they did draw in Copenhagen in the group stages last season. They have missed the big hitters and get the bonus of a chance to eliminate the team that went through in place of their city rivals — not that they needed to justify which of the Manchester teams is faring better.


    Manchester City were held in Copenhagen last year (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor: Bayern Munich. Tuchel will probably have two or three new players to weave into his first team at the end of the transfer window and this tie, against Sarri’s underwhelming Lazio, should offer a chance to grow into the latter stages of the tournament. Bayern’s worst-case scenario would have been a fast-paced, vertical opponent, and Lazio certainly aren’t that.

    Which ‘giant’ could be in the most trouble?

    Oliver Kay: Barcelona, although I would still put them as slight favourites to overcome Napoli. It’s a funny season. None of the heavyweights are performing particularly well, so it’s possible to imagine any one of Barcelona, Bayern or Real Madrid coming unstuck — plus PSG, whom I’m not going to categorise as giants.

    James Horncastle: The underwhelming Barcelona. Will Xavi still be in charge come February? Robert Lewandowski seems a shadow of himself. Of course, a lot can change in two months. But a Spalletti-less Napoli still has enough skill to win the ‘Maradona derby’.

    go-deeper

    Laia Cervello Herrero: Real Sociedad have shown a great level in La Liga and the Champions League and they have a chance against PSG, who are not having the best season.

    Liam Tharme: PSG, for all the reasons I mentioned above. Luis Enrique was brought in as a project coach — which is reflected in their summer signings, more youth and less galactico-y — but PSG have gone out in the last 16 in the past two seasons (though to bigger European clubs, in Bayern Munich and Manchester City). If they lose to Real Sociedad, it will probably be down to tactics.


    Luis Enrique is under pressure at PSG (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor: The draw didn’t create too much jeopardy, but it’s probably Barcelona. Napoli are not what they were under Spalletti, but Xavi’s Barca have so little life in them — and so few goals. You can imagine them losing in Naples.

    Your predicted quarter-finalists

    Oliver Kay: Arsenal, Barcelona, PSG, Atletico, Dortmund, Bayern, City and Real Madrid.

    James Horncastle: Arsenal, Napoli, Real Sociedad, Inter, Dortmund, Bayern, City and Real Madrid.

    Laia Cervello Herrero: Arsenal, Barcelona, PSG, Atletico, Dortmund, Bayern, Manchester City and Real Madrid.

    Liam Tharme: Arsenal, Napoli, Real Sociedad, Inter, Dortmund, Bayern, City and Real Madrid.

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor: Arsenal, Napoli, PSG, Inter, PSV, Bayern, City and Real Madrid.

    What would be your dream final from these teams?

    Oliver Kay: I’m not going to say an all-English final (too parochial) and I’m not going to say one English club and not the other. From a neutral perspective, in terms of what the clubs stand for, I like the idea of Real Sociedad vs Borussia Dortmund, but that’s not going to happen, is it?

    James Horncastle: Copenhagen against Real Sociedad. You asked for a dream final and this is the wildest fever dream. Jokes aside, I would like to see an outsider make it to Wembley on the 20th anniversary of Porto’s victory in Gelsenkirchen.

    Laia Cervello Herrero: Barcelona vs Manchester City. Although it is unlikely and it would be painful for the Catalans, I would like to see a final between Pep Guardiola and Barca.

    Liam Tharme: I would love to see Inter get to the final again, so wouldn’t be against a repeat of last season’s final, or perhaps against Arsenal, for another clash of styles.

    Sebastian Stafford-Bloor: City against Real Madrid. They bring out the best in each other; something always happens to make those games a spectacle. Adding Jude Bellingham seems unlikely to make it any less so, but the broader sub-plots are just so compelling. The contrasting historical and evolutionary dynamics have really made this into an absorbing rivalry between a symbol of the game’s past and a vision of its future.


    Jude Bellingham will be targeting Champions League glory (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)

    How will Arsenal view the draw?

    Arsenal will feel slightly at ease by drawing Porto for the round of 16, but should not be lulled into a false sense of security.

    They have missed most of the big names in the draw, including PSG, Inter and Napoli, but Porto are doing well in Liga Portugal. They have an identical record to Sporting Lisbon, with both clubs two points off league leaders Benfica and a game in hand against each other tonight (Monday). Last season, Arsenal drew Sporting in the Europa League round of 16, which was seen as a favourable draw, but the Portuguese side advanced via a penalty shootout.

    Even so, Arsenal have looked exceptional in this year’s Champions League and should be strong enough to progress. They had the best goal difference (+12) of any team in this year’s group stage and have looked more free-flowing in Europe than the Premier League.

    Mikel Arteta has not rotated his side as much as he did in the Europa League last term. A consistent team, mixed with the fact that European defences do not defend as deep or tightly as English ones, has allowed his attacking players to flourish on Champions League nights. These encounters should lift Arsenal’s confidence before they kick on into the business end of the season.

    And there is an intriguing sub-plot, as well: a reunion for Fabio Vieira with his boyhood club, the midfielder having signed from Porto in the summer of 2022.

    Art de Roche


    Fabio Vieira will return to his old club Porto (Glynn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images)

    How will Manchester City view the draw?

    It will be a great trip to a lovely city for the fans (albeit a bit pricey) and City should win.

    They only played each other last season and the game at Parken was a goalless shocker, but only after City had back-up left-back Sergio Gomez sent off in the first half.

    City have got their problems but we have seen time and time again, not just with this club but many others (often Real Madrid), that issues in December often count for very little by the time the last 16 rolls around in February.

    And even if City are still struggling with silly mistakes (which is basically what is costing them) there should still be a big enough margin for error given how strong they are compared to Copenhagen.

    Inter and PSG could have caused a bigger headache and, while you can never say never in football, City can be very pleased with this draw.

    go-deeper

    Sam Lee

    How will Real Madrid view the draw?

    They avoided Kylian Mbappe’s PSG, Inter and Lazio, but Real Madrid won’t consider Leipzig comfortable opponents. Far from it.

    Last season, Leipzig beat Madrid 3-2 in the Champions League group stage — a defeat that will not have been forgotten. And even though Leipzig have seen important players move on since, including Josko Gvardiol, Dominik Szoboszlai and Christopher Nkunku, they are doing well this season; third in the Bundesliga behind Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich, comfortable runners-up behind Manchester City in Group G.

    That is why Carlo Ancelotti’s Real should not be overconfident — although, as always in European matches, they start as favourites. Even more so when bearing in mind that the second leg is at the Santiago Bernabeu, where the atmosphere always helps.

    go-deeper

    Guillermo Rai

    How will Barcelona view the draw?

    With Barcelona seven points behind Real Madrid in La Liga and with Girona still to play Alaves this evening, the Champions League is a huge deal.

    Falling short on domestic expectations means Xavi has to deliver in Europe — and returning some self-esteem to a club that last played in the knockout stages in 2021 would greatly help overcome the trauma of recent European failures.

    The draw could have been better, but it could have been way worse — especially with PSG in the mix.

    Barca and Napoli have met twice in knockout ties over the past four years. In February 2022, Xavi helped Barca past the Italians in the Europa League intermediate stage in his first season in charge. In 2020, Barca beat them over two legs in the Champions League last 16.

    This term, Napoli have struggled to match their dominating form of last season. Barca are struggling under Xavi, too, but this match-up will at least mean they can have realistic hopes of reaching the quarter-finals — which would also provide a huge financial relief.

    Pol Ballus

    (Top photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

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  • Marie-Louise Eta – Union Berlin's quiet Champions League trailblazer

    Marie-Louise Eta – Union Berlin's quiet Champions League trailblazer

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    This season, The Athletic is following Union Berlin, a Bundesliga club from the former East Germany who were playing regional-level football less than 20 years ago, on their inaugural Champions League journey for our series Iron In The Blood.

    GO DEEPER

    Is the Premier League still on course for an extra Champions League spot?

    As Union Berlin’s players drifted down the tunnel and the stands in Braga’s Municipal Stadium emptied to the tune of one last song over the PA system, Marie-Louise Eta stood alone by the side of the pitch for a moment, lost in her thoughts.

    Union had just picked up a second successive point in the Champions League on the road — that was the good news.

    The bad news was that Union had carelessly squandered a lead against a team that had played with 10 men for more than an hour, leaving the Bundesliga club’s hopes of finishing third in Group C and qualifying for the knockout stage of the Europa League, hanging by a thread.

    On top of that, Union’s winless run had been extended to 16 matches in all competitions and the team’s mental fragility was painfully exposed after Braga equalised. For a period, it felt like Braga had the extra player.

    Eta had plenty to ponder in that respect.

    But there was another storyline for Eta to try to take in: the 32-year-old had just created history by becoming the first woman to be part of a coaching team in a men’s Champions League match.

    Promoted to the role of interim assistant coach just over a fortnight ago after Union and their long-serving manager Urs Fischer agreed to part ways, Eta has become a trailblazer for the small but increasing number of women working in the men’s game.

    Her presence in the dugout alongside Nenad Bjelica, Union’s new coach, felt like a personal triumph for a woman who has been obsessed with football ever since she was a small child, and a landmark moment for the sport.

    “It’s not a conscious decision (to appoint) a woman. That almost discredits this decision,” said Dirk Zingler, Union’s president. “She is a fully qualified soccer coach and that’s exactly how I see her, whether it’s a woman or a man.”

    Promoting Eta to work with Union’s first-team squad was straightforward in the eyes of Zingler. Marco Grote, the club’s under-19 coach, had been asked to take charge of the first team on a temporary basis following Fischer’s exit after five years at the helm, and Eta was Grote’s assistant.

    Logic dictated that Eta, who has held a UEFA Pro Licence since April and had coached youth teams at Werder Bremen and within the German Football Federation since retiring from playing at the age of 26, would step up with Grote.


    Eta was a history-maker for Union Berlin on Wednesday (Octavio Passos/Getty Images)

    Except it soon became clear that not everyone outside of Union saw it that way.

    It felt telling that when Kicker magazine ran the story about Eta’s new role on their Facebook page, they turned off comments.

    Old-school opinions (that’s a polite way of putting it at times) still make a lot of noise in football, particularly on social media, where some people felt that it should be the best man for the role of interim assistant coach at Union, rather than the best person.

    Maik Barthel, the chief executive of the agency Eurosportsmanagement and a former representative of Barcelona striker Robert Lewandowski, was among those who held that view.

    In a social media post that led to one of his leading clients terminating his relationship with him, Barthel accused Union Berlin of making German football “look ridiculous” by giving Eta, who was a Champions League winner with Turbine Potsdam in her playing days, a role with the first team.

    Responding on Twitter to Union’s announcement about Eta, Barthel posted: “An assistant coach has to be in the locker room Union? Please don’t make German football look ridiculous. It was already enough that the team’s hierarchy was completely destroyed with transfers.”

    It turned out that Barthel was out of touch with how his own players felt, let alone the views of Zingler and Union Berlin.

    Although Barthel subsequently deleted the message because of the backlash and posted another — “I have to rephrase it. Making a co-coach an issue will not help Union to put the destroyed team hierarchy back in order” — the damage was done.

    Kevin Schade, the 22-year-old Germany international and Brentford forward, terminated his agreement with Barthel with immediate effect.

    “I parted ways with my agent because I absolutely do not share his attitude and views,” Schade said. “I stand for openness, equality and diversity. And that’s how I want to feel represented.”

    Barthel has since apologised and said it was never “my aim to make Ms Eta the focus of my message or to discredit her”. He did, however, go on to say in an interview with Kicker that he believed Union were trying to “generate good press and distract attention from their own mistakes”. In other words, promoting Eta was some sort of publicity stunt.

    This week, it transpired that Barthel has lost another client — Maximilian Beier, the talented Hoffenheim forward and Germany Under-21 international. Beier has not spoken about his reasons for changing agents but people will join up the dots.

    It is not surprising that Union have been inundated with interview requests for Eta over the last fortnight. It is also not surprising that Eta has no desire to say anything right now, making the point to club officials that assistant coaches wouldn’t normally speak to the media.

    Instead, Eta has quietly gone about her work on the training pitch and on matchdays — she oversaw the ball-related work in the warm-up against Braga and was giving tactical advice to Kevin Volland during a break in play in the first half — while leaving others to answer questions on her behalf.

    Marie-Louise-Eta


    Eta takes Union Berlin’s warm-up (Octavio Passos/Getty Images)

    “The collaboration with Marie-Louise Eta is on an equal footing,” Grote said before Saturday’s Bundesliga match against Augsburg, when Volland scored an 88th-minute equaliser to lift Union off the bottom of the table and end a run of nine consecutive league defeats. “There are no big differences. We divide it up completely.”

    Asked about the significance of gender, Grote replied: “In the coaching booth, it’s all about a human fit. Whether someone is a little taller, maybe has a bigger belly or what T-shirt they wear, long hair, short hair — I don’t give a damn.”

    That Augsburg game was a milestone for Eta and the Bundesliga.

    “The day has finally come for us to see a woman in the male domain of football, “said Julia Simic, the TV pundit and former Germany international. “She definitely has the expertise to fill this role.”

    Although Grote returned to his under-19 position following Bjelica’s appointment on Sunday, Union announced that Eta would continue working with the first team until assistant coach Sebastian Bonig, who has been given a period of extended leave for personal reasons, returns to his post.

    Women have held senior positions in men’s teams before, albeit generally operating at a lower professional, or semi-professional, level.

    When my colleague Oliver Kay wrote about League Two Forest Green Rovers’ decision to promote Hannah Dingley to interim head coach last summer, he listed several similar examples going back over the last couple of decades, including the case of Imke Wubbenhorst.

    In 2018, BV Cloppenburg, then struggling in Germany’s fifth tier, appointed Wubbenhorst as their head coach. She had previously played for the club’s women’s team where, coincidentally, Eta was one of her team-mates.

    In that sense, Wubbenhorst has an insight not only into Eta as a person (“very calm”) and a player (“very intelligent”) but also the world that she is stepping into — a place that can throw up some strange questions at times.

    At Cloppenburg, Wubbenhorst was once asked whether players are forced to cover themselves up when she enters the dressing room. She replied sarcastically: “Of course not. I’m a professional. I pick the team on penis size.”

    Speaking more recently, in an interview with Deutsche Welle last week, Wubbenhorst was candid about the challenges that women such as Eta are confronted with in the men’s game.

    She described how players “are not impressed with your career from the beginning” when you are a female coach, talked about football being “a man’s game” in Europe, and said that significant change will take time.

    “When you are the first person to do something, it’s hard because the media look at every word you say… but when you are the second or third, it will be so much easier,” Wubbenhorst explained. “The management of the clubs have to see that it works. So they will (then) decide more often to choose a woman for this position.”

    Eta’s own path has not been straightforward. “I noticed that some people treated me differently compared to before, and that is not always comfortable,” she told UEFA last month in an interview, which took place before her promotion at Union, about her coaching journey.

    “But I’ve always tried not to think about that and to focus on the important things. I’ve always tried not to put the focus on the fact that I am a woman. It’s not about women or men, or whether a man is good for a women’s team, it’s always about diversity.”


    Marie-Louise Eta alongside interim head coach Marco Grote (Boris Streubel/Getty Images)

    According to Grote, Eta was quickly accepted by Union’s under-19 players when she arrived in the summer, and the word is that it has been no different with the club’s first-team squad.

    Perhaps the more relevant question, given some of the wider reaction, is whether Germany is ready to embrace a female coach operating at this level.

    “Definitely Germany is ready,” says Stephan Uersfeld, a reporter for ntv.de. “You have to brush aside all the stuff you see on social media. We’ve had female coaches in the minor leagues before — they weren’t successful. But she (Eta) has got all the skills, she’s done all the courses that male coaches do.

    “If you speak to the people at the club, they are convinced she can do it. And it’s a club like Union Berlin, which is quite the opposite of what has been mostly reported in the international media — it’s quite a conservative club. So if they say she’s ready, you’ve got to trust them. And why shouldn’t you trust a woman with this job?

    “The culture is changing. You see it on TV — we’ve got female pundits everywhere now. Football is opening up. There are two final barriers — women coaching in the men’s game and the homosexual players who still remain silent. Those are the final barriers to fall to see football arrive in the 21st century.”

    (Photos: Getty Images; graphic: Sam Richardson)

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    The New York Times

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  • Moment brawl erupts between Newcastle & PSG fans before Champions League clash

    Moment brawl erupts between Newcastle & PSG fans before Champions League clash

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    A HUGE brawl between Newcastle and PSG fans erupted in Paris last night less than 24 hours before their crucial Champions League clash.

    Newcastle fans claimed PSG ultras stormed into a restaurant and threw chairs, smashed glasses and let off flares in front of terrified families and kids.

    4

    Newcastle fans have claimed they were attacked by PSG hooligans outside a restaurantCredit: Twitter
    Chairs were seen being thrown and glasses smashed as red flares were let off in front of terrified families and kids

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    Chairs were seen being thrown and glasses smashed as red flares were let off in front of terrified families and kidsCredit: Twitter

    Footage on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows a group of people – thought to be Newcastle fans – stuck inside a pub as chairs and drinks are thrown at the restaurant’s front entrance by both groups.

    Bright red flares just outside the front doors can also be seen plaguing the area making it hard to see through the smoke.

    According to @GeordieJord who posted the video, the Newcastle fans in the 30 second clip were sat outside a bar having a drink moments before the video started.

    It’s also believed there were children, women and families having a drink at the same place when the situation badly escalated.

    read more in fans clashes

    Many of the people seen throwing chairs at the glass windows have hidden their identities by wearing hoods and face masks.

    Throughout the chaos a voice can be heard pleading for the fighting to end.

    A man says: “Stop it, Stop, Stop it.”

    The clash happened less than 24 hours before their crucial Champions League group stage match that Newcastle need to win to have a chance to qualify for the knockout round.

    The teams are both still battling it out to qualify from Group F as all four teams can still go through.

    The clip has already got over 440,000 views and has several comments noting that similar issues occured in the return fixture when Parisians came to Newcastle.

    Back in October, Newcastle breezed past PSG, battering them 4-1 in their only win in Europe this year but before the game fans clashed and videos showed both sets of fans being aggressive and having to be quickly separated.

    Videos show bottles and flares being thrown back and forth between both sets of fans.

    Many of those filmed have their hoods up.

    Chants of “Who are ya?” could be heard as Newcastle supporters taunted the travelling Parisians on their way to the stadium.

    While police officers lined the streets and acted as a barrier between PSG’s away following and the Toon Army.

    When Newcastle played Borussia Dortmund in October nine people were reportedly arrested.

    There was a heavy police presence on the streets approaching the ground pre match and cops have now revealed eight men and a woman have been detained.

    Dortmund supporters were heard chanting in both German and English as fights reportedly broke out between rival fans, with cops attempting to keep them apart.

    The moment a chair was thrown at a glass window

    4

    The moment a chair was thrown at a glass windowCredit: Twitter
    The flares made it hard to see through the smoke as the brawl worsened ahead of tomorrow nights Champions League game

    4

    The flares made it hard to see through the smoke as the brawl worsened ahead of tomorrow nights Champions League gameCredit: Twitter

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    Georgie English

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  • ‘I visualised the stadium enclosed by rock’: How they carved Braga’s home into granite

    ‘I visualised the stadium enclosed by rock’: How they carved Braga’s home into granite

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    The most significant of Braga’s many hilltops is the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and place of pilgrimage for Christians who climb the white and gold zig-zag staircase to its doors.

    Six kilometres west, planted upon Monte do Castro as if a piece of Lego, sits another monument that is both incongruous yet completely natural in a way that suggests the divine played a part here too.

    But SC Braga’s Municipal Stadium was designed, engineered and built by man — and on Tuesday, it will host one of the greatest club sides in the world, Real Madrid.

    Braga will become the 152nd different club Real have played in 68 years of continental football, but never will the 14-time European champions have played at a stadium with a backdrop quite like this.

    At the end of the spiralling roads that lead to the highest point in the Dume area, right next to an old quarry lies a stadium that seems to defy logic.

    A stand with its foundations built into a rock; a giant scoreboard perched on a granite embankment behind one goal; and nothing but empty space behind the other, offering a panoramic of the city below.


    Braga’s incredible stadium overlooking the valley (Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

    Known as ‘A Pedreira’ (The Quarry), the stadium could have been unremarkable were it not for architect Eduardo Souto de Moura, whose creation was awarded the Pritzker Award in 2011, regarded as the Nobel Prize of architecture.

    “Being an architect is not an easy life, and to get international recognition for a small country like Portugal… I’m not going to pretend I suffer from false modesty,” Souto de Moura tells The Athletic.

    “The Braga stadium might be the most difficult project I ever did. And perhaps for that very reason, the one I enjoyed the most.”

    Souto de Moura was not the architect originally handed the reins for the project in 2000. The vice-president of Braga City Council had already approached Norman Foster, the brain behind the Gherkin building in London and the glass dome of the Reichstag in Berlin, but he was too expensive.

    They called to ask whether he could put them in touch with Santiago Calatrava, the architect who designed New York’s World Trade Centre Oculus. He informed the council they would likely run into a similar problem.

    Sensing an opportunity, he agreed to a meeting the next day to discuss the brief where it was decided the capacity should be 30,000.

    “They had found a plot of land for a stadium, in a valley with a waterway. They thought the stands could follow the curves of the valley. I visited and fell in love with it,” says Souto de Moura.

    “I still have the photos I took at the time. Above the land was this old quarry. I started to visualise the stadium below, enclosed by the rock. I told the council I wanted to build it there with a 15,000-capacity stand carved into the rock and then do the same on the other side.


    (Eduardo Souto de Moura)   

    “There would only be two stands and people would be able to have a good view of the game. One thing I realised while designing the stadium was that every stadium is now a TV studio.

    “That’s why I designed the lighting to be almost vertical above the pitch (they shine down from the extremities of both stands), and as close as possible. I am not an expert in football but it’s a kind of theatre, with actors on both sides.”

    Turning his sketches into a reality required innovation, painstaking experimentation and years of safety testing — all while having to stay within budget and a three-year build time.


    Two of Eduardo Souto de Moura’s original sketches (Eduardo Souto de Moura)

    The main ambition was to integrate the stadium into the environment, therefore trusses, poles and cables could not be part of the aesthetic as they are in most football stadiums.

    The west stand is carved into a granite massif, to give the effect of a Greek amphitheatre. It involved 1,700,000 cubic metres of hard rock and gravel being excavated before the 18 one-metre thick uprights could be held down by anchors.


    Site of the excavation (Eduardo Souto de Moura)

    Drawing inspiration from Incan bridges and Washington Dulles Airport’s roof in forming his vision for a cover over the pitch, it was the experience of working alongside Alvaro Siza Vieira to create the Portugal Pavilion at Expo ’98 World Fair that he leaned most heavily on.

    “It was a big open space under a concrete cover. It made me realise that it was possible to cover a structure without using glass or anything else,” says Souto de Moura.

    “But UEFA said that there needed to be natural light, and that the stadium had to be ventilated so the cover could not be completely closed. I tried to make small adjustments to allow light to come in from above, using holes in the cover, but the sun would have come in and made circles of light on the pitch.

    “I gave up on that idea and thought about leaving a rectangular opening that was the exact same size as the proportions of the pitch.”

    A colleague travelled to UEFA’s headquarters in Switzerland and received approval for his plan to have two concrete slabs covering each stand, connected and held up by a network of 25-metre-long steel cables that stretch across the pitch. Each one is connected to girders, which are secured to the rock of the quarry.

    Braga stadium granite


    (Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

    It was a mammoth task to achieve the correct balance of forces with no pillars to support the roof — which is a cantilever only supported by the west stand with the cables anchored into the rock. Two large beams at the top of both stands add support but it took computer simulations and small-scale model tests in a wind tunnel before it was safe to build.

    The stadium was successfully completed in time for Euro 2004, a home tournament in which Portugal lost to Greece in the final.

    Yet Braga still regularly only fill half of the arena, which belongs to the city council, and Ricardo Rio, mayor of Braga and president of the city council, confirmed the stadium is up for sale earlier this month.

    Estadio 1 de Maio was Braga’s long-term home from 1921 until 2003. They have been paying just €500 (£435; $533) per month to rent their current stadium and, with improvements needed to modernise facilities, the council are cutting ties.

    “The dialogue has opened, therefore we are going to formally make an assessment of the value at which the stadium could be sold. It only makes sense for the stadium to be used by Braga,” said Rio.


    View from the stands (Octavio Passos – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)

    “I do not intend to demand the €200million that was invested in this facility, but, obviously, an amount that allows the City Council to be reimbursed and, for example, to make other projects viable, including the rehabilitation of the Estadio 1 de Maio, which after these years of abandonment, has ended up suffering very rapid degradation.”

    There has been talk in recent years that Braga could build a new stadium on the old site, which is a thought that saddens Souto de Moura even more than it does to his unique creation being altered.

    “Portugal is one of the hosts of World Cup 2030, and to be eligible for the knockout games you need a stadium with 60,000 seats” he says. “Braga only have 30,000. When it was built, Braga were usually finishing in the bottom half of the table, often at risk of relegation; now they’re near the top, so people now demand more of the club.

    “If it was the other way around and the stadium was too big, people would be complaining as well. It’s a risk of the profession.”

    Until 2013, Braga had only won a single major trophy — the 1966 Portuguese League Cup. Since then, have they solidified their profile as the fourth-best team in Portugal, winning four domestic cups and establishing themselves in Europe, reaching the 2011 Europa League final and qualifying for the Champions League group stage for the third time this season.

    In line with their growing ambitions, Braga are close to completing their ‘Sports City’ project, first set out in 2017, with a new women’s arena complementing the sprawling academy building and pitches above the Municipal Stadium.

    It has been a home for Braga as they have grown into one of the big boys of Portuguese football — and are now 22 per cent owned by Paris Saint-Germain owners Qatar Sports Investments.

    It is not on the grand scale of the Bernabeu but in a world of glass and stainless steel, this concrete amphitheatre by the cliff face is a work of art as much as it is a football stadium.

    (Top photo: Diogo Cardoso/Getty Images)

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    The New York Times

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  • Celtic v Lazio: A political powderkeg

    Celtic v Lazio: A political powderkeg

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    In April 1945, in the last months of World War II in Europe, Benito Mussolini, the leader of Italy, was captured by Italian partisans near Lake Como. Mussolini was executed and his body was taken to Milan and hung upside down in a square where a year earlier his Fascists had similarly displayed 15 local Resistance fighters. Two days later, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin.

    Granted, it’s not 4-4-2.

    And this may seem an odd way to introduce a Champions League match; it’s just that when Celtic host Lazio tonight, the image of Benito Mussolini and his name will again be prominent. Celtic-Lazio has become more than a game, more than a Group E qualifier: it is a clash between two fanbase cultures.

    When the two clubs met in the Europa League four years ago, Lazio ultras marched through Glasgow giving Fascist salutes; they were then mortified when they got to Celtic’s ground, Parkhead, to see a local banner with Mussolini on it — upside down — with the words “Follow Your Leader”.


    Celtic fans display a banner depicting a dead Mussolini at the game against Lazio in 2019 (Rob Casey/SNS Group via Getty Images)

    “From what I remember, the response within the ground was one of celebration,” says Paul McQuade of the Celtic-curating Shamrock website. “It was Mussolini, it would upset Lazio fans and it was aligning the support with anti-fascism. It was well-taken.”

    “It’ll be a lot of the same people,” author James Montague says of Lazio fans in Glasgow in 2019 and this Wednesday, “and I imagine a few of them will be looking for that Celtic banner.”

    There is a spectrum of political opinion among football fans across Europe and Celtic and Lazio are at either end of it. Speaking of large fanbases inevitably involves generalisations, but we can say Celtic supporters are at the leftish end of this culture and Lazio’s are out on the far right. There are, of course, individuals in between, but their voice tends to get drowned out when squads of young and middle-aged men — and it is a testosterone-fuelled environment — are pacing up and down the streets of foreign cities intent on a temporary takeover of that ‘turf’.

    It is called ‘ultra culture’, a term so broad it ranges from footwear to flags to fistfights in forests. As Montague explains, it originated in Italy in the 1960s and 70s and mushroomed in the 1980s and 90s. It became an economic force as well as a cultural and sporting expression. It has a meaning in Italy, and a daily effect, deeper than in many other countries.

    Montague, author of 1312: Among the Ultras, and someone who has spent time with Lazio’s ultras, including with their former leader Fabrizio Piscitelli, says, “It begins with this word ‘ultra’, which means ‘go beyond’ in Latin, and it finds a position in the psyche of Italy at a very interesting time in Italian history — post-war, a political time, a changing country.

    “You get groups finding identities in an increasingly atomised world. It’s based around your club; but there is also this concept of campanilismo, which means your bell-tower — you have an identity with your district and your town above country or city.

    “It’s interesting historically, because Italy is a fairly modern construct — it was said around the 1870s that Italy had been made, ‘now we must make Italians’.

    “In the late 1960s, you see ultra culture emerging as the modern representation of supporting your bell tower. It was a politically fraught time — The Years of Lead — when you had far-left and far-right terrorism, bombs all across Italy.

    “This protest gets dragged into stadiums and you see these flags, this pageantry, maritime flares, the use of the terraces for expression through songs and chants. It evolves through the 1970s and becomes the most fun part of the game to be attached to for many young people; by the 1990s Italy has the best league, the most colourful league, and suddenly people around the world start following it, some watching just for the ultras.

    “So it’s a selling point for Serie A, as much as the great Milan team or Lazio with Paul Gascoigne.

    “Something that had developed over two decades explodes in the ’90s. It becomes global, the aesthetic, the look, and you get the use of the Italian language — in Indonesia or Morocco for instance, they’ll say they’re on the curva sud or curva nord, it’s capo for leader.”

    As the ultra scene grew, so did the influence of those involved. Piscitelli, known as Diabolik, rose through Lazio’s curva nord to lead the group called Irriducibili — roughly, ‘The Indomitable’. They were proudly right-wing in their politics, anti-Semitic, violent and their aggressive presence on the Olympic Stadium’s Curva Nord made them feared outside the club and warily respected inside it.


    Lazio’s ultras, the Irriducibili, pay tribute to their former leader Fabrizio Piscitelli (Matteo Ciambelli/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

    “From the 1970s onwards the Lazio ultras take on a far-right, neo-fascist identity,” Montague says. “But you have to understand, in Italy, Fascist politics has never been ostracised as it is in Britain, where it seems like an alien concept.

    “The ultras merely reflect the constituency they come from and that can change. Lazio’s have always been to the right, but many others have moved that way over the years. Roma are a great example — in the 1970s and 80s Roma had a distinct left-wing, almost Communist, identity. They were from central Rome which was a Communist hotbed. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Communism became less fashionable, those areas changed. So the identity of the ultras changed.

    “One of Roma’s oldest groups is the Fedayn — named after the Palestinian resistance. That tells you about the politics of the time. But they have had to disband.”

    The Irriducibili have also had to stand down. This followed Diabolik’s murder in a Rome park in 2019 — shortly before the trip to Glasgow. As Piscitelli, he had been imprisoned for offences such as drug trafficking. He was part of Rome’s organised crime scene.

    The physical threat he carried enabled access to Lazio’s training ground. Diabolik once had a meeting with World Cup winner and Lazio captain Alessandro Nesta to question the team’s poor form — unthinkable in Britain — and dealt with the club’s owners over tickets and merchandise.

    Montague conveys their logic. “In the 1980s, when the popularity of ultras was on the rise, Lazio’s were one of the first to realise how powerful they are. They see their influence as legitimate. If you look at Italian Sky TV, how are they selling their game? It’s not just through star players, it’s through the atmosphere and that has a dollar value. So why shouldn’t they get a cut? That’s their stance.

    “There are videos from the 1990s of the Irriducibili turning up at the training ground as if they’re the teachers and the players are children.”

    It is worth re-stating that far from all Lazio fans share or shared this attitude. In the beginning, in 1900, Lazio were a multi-sports club and even when Mussolini made football political in the 1920s, forcing three clubs to merge in Rome — forming AS Roma in 1927 — so the capital would have a sporting power to challenge northern giants such as Juventus, Lazio stayed independent. That said, the fact the club’s major figure, Giorgio Vaccaro, was a senior Fascist helped mollify Mussolini.

    In 2018, Lazio signed the dictator’s great-grandson, Romano Floriani Mussolini (now on loan at Serie C side Pescara) but as the march through Glasgow in 2019 showed, the Lazio ultras’ sense of identity has not gone away. This January, their curva was closed as a punishment for ongoing racism, the Laziali responding with an ‘official statement’ pointing out the World Cup had just been held in homophobic Qatar due to “a bribe ring” in football’s corporate world.

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    Anti-Fascist and anti-racist stickers distributed by Lazio fan group “Laziale e Antifascista” (From Lazio and Anti-fascist) in 2019 (Andreas Solaro / AFP via Getty Images)

    There is a football country where ultra culture has never really taken off — Britain — although Montague argues there is an exception. “Celtic are the one club, in terms of organisation, numbers, power and choreography,” he says. “Celtic’s ultras are considered legitimate.”

    The key element of the club’s identity, according to McQuade, is “the Irish aspect. The club was set up entirely by an Irish teaching Brother, often mis-referred to as a priest, called Brother Walfrid. He was Irish and all those who helped found the club were second-generation Irish, without exception.

    “Walfrid was a head teacher in Bridgeton (Glasgow) and he realised that if they could provide the kids with food it would encourage poor parents to send their children to school. After a couple of charity football games, he saw this was a way to raise funds for the dinner table. Along with others in the parish, he thought they should set up their own football club.

    “The club quickly became known for songs, Irish songs, not overly political. Within a year Celtic supporters started organised travel to away games, which had not been done before — the author David Goldblatt says Celtic fans effectively invented away fans.”

    When Lazio’s away fans arrive at Parkhead, they will see a giant portrait of Brother Walfrid hanging beside the main entrance and his legacy of Irishness and charitable works resonates 136 years on.


    The statue of Celtic’s founder Brother Walfrid (Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

    “Especially for the hardcore, he still matters,” McQuade says of Walfrid. “It was fans who raised the money for the statue (2005), not the club. That was the first statue at Celtic Park. He’s still seen as important, although I think Celtic’s Catholic identity has diluted in recent years, because of secularism more than anything else.”

    Celtic have never had the word ‘Glasgow’ in their name, but the club is inseparable from its place. There is a favourite current chant of ‘Celtic, Glasgow oooh-oh’, and fan culture in a football-obsessed city has always been strong.

    “It’s a generalisation, but Celtic are seen as Scots-Irish, Catholic, IRA supporters,” says Joe Miller, who has been writing for the Not The View fanzine since 1987. “But these are generalisations, just as there are elements of Lazio’s support who are anti-racist.

    “Personally I see us as a Scots-Irish club. We’ve had Irish nationalism at our ground since year dot and some say we’re ‘plastic Paddies’, but many of us are descended from Irish parents and grandparents. There are still a lot of Irish songs sung. But then I’ve many friends who just go to see Celtic play football, they’re not involved in the political side. I totally get that.”

    Celtic’s Irish identity meant they were outside the establishment from the beginning and in a left-leaning city, nationally that has been maintained. When their ultra grouping, the Green Brigade, was formed in 2006, they brought high-profile support for issues such as Palestine into the stadium.

    “I like to see it,” Miller says. “The Green Brigade mention what the government are doing, racism, food banks — and you’ve 60,000 people there. Maybe everyone doesn’t have the same view, but these are good values.

    “And if one young kid sees it and looks into it, then it’s good, it’s education you don’t get elsewhere.”

    Miller wore a Gil Heron T-shirt to the last Celtic match — Heron was the father of Gil Scott-Heron and played for Celtic — and cites that as an example of informal education, the punk rock, do-it-yourself ethos.

    “Stories like that are great. Music is educational, very much so. Gil Heron and Gil Scott-Heron are still discussed.”


    Celtic’s Green Brigade fans arrive for a game against Rangers in 2016 (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

    The starting of sometimes difficult conversations is why Miller says he thought the Green Brigade’s Mussolini banner in 2019 “was brilliant. It got people talking and I loved that. It puts a public eye on it. There’ll probably be a bit of that again.”

    There may well indeed be a bit of it again because as Montague explains, the greatest thing in ultra culture “is to snatch the opposition’s banner, display it upside down on your curve during the game and then burn it.

    “If that happens, those who lost their banner are supposed to dissolve. It’s an unwritten rule. The reason Roma’s Fedayn disbanded was because Red Star Belgrade ultras snatched their banner, took it back to Belgrade and burnt it.”

    Montague says these unwritten rules can seem “quaint”, but there is nothing soft about the shameful Anne Frank stickers the Irriducibili produced and the antagonism inside Parkhead will be sincere.

    “The real feature was the antipathy between the Green Brigade and the Lazio ultras, the Mussolini banner and another saying, ‘F*** off’ in Italian,” says McQuade of the 2019 game which Celtic won 2-1.

    “Despite the criticism the Green Brigade get occasionally from supporters, the fact is they carry a massive following among those who go to games, as opposed to those who just watch from home. I never hear criticism of the Green Brigade at games and the amount of Celtic fans who wear Green Brigade merchandise is incredible.

    “Of all the clubs in Europe, Lazio are considered to be the most right-wing and since the draw, what I’ve noticed among Celtic fans, even those who wouldn’t be overly political, is them calling Lazio ‘Nazio’.

    “I’m thinking, ‘Calm down a wee bit’.”

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    “It sounds negative,” Montague says of ultra culture overall, “but in Germany for instance, it’s positive. You see there how the ultras are the gatekeepers of the 50+1 rule. Left, right, centrist ultras — they get together there because they have a common enemy in the establishment.

    “You saw Bayern Munich’s ultras in the Champions League protesting against Qatar and the banning of travelling fans. This space in the right circumstances can be progressive politically — look at Celtic. It’s potentially powerful and it could have the rights of fans at its heart — ticket prices for example. It’s sometimes worth seeing ultras as a vessel for young people seeking identity, from left or right.”

    Nuance and modern football discourse?

    McQuade points out that Paolo Di Canio is an interesting figure for both Celtic and Lazio. A hero to both as a player, McQuade says Di Canio’s Mussolini tattoo would make him unwelcome at Celtic today — “and that wouldn’t just be the Green Brigade” — whereas at Lazio he is revered.


    Paolo Di Canio appears to make a far-right salute towards Lazio fans in 2005 (Paolo Cocco/AFP via Getty Images)

    “When he was with us, we didn’t fully understand his political views and he kept them quiet,” McQuade adds.

    McQuade notes another man born in Rome who links the two clubs — Pope Pius XII. He declared 1950 a Holy Year and a football occasion was seen as part of marking post-war peace. The two clubs selected to face each other in a hands-across-Europe friendly were Lazio and Celtic.

    So Celtic’s players travelled to Rome and to the Vatican, where the joke was the Pope got to meet Celtic’s legendary Irish forward Charlie Tully — not the other way round.

    So far, so amicable. When the game at the Olympic Stadium kicked off, however, the tenor changed. Two players were sent off and when Lazio made the return trip to Glasgow, Celtic made sure they won, and won well — 4-0.

    1950 sounds like ancient history. But a favourite Celtic song contains the line “if you know your history” and, as banners, chants and tattoos prove, when Celtic and Lazio meet, history matters.

    (Top photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)

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