THIS could finally be the season when the stranglehold starts to loosen across European football and some of the top leagues finally celebrate a new champion. According to CIES Football Observatory, trophies in Portugal, Spain, Italy and France will be changing hands, while Manchester City will regain the Premier League they last won in 2019. Bayern […]
BAYERN Munich recently revealed a drop of around € 50 million in revenues in 2019-20 due to the covid-19 pandemic, but the Bavarians’ financial statements make reasonable reading at this stage of the crisis. Bayern made a net profit of € 9.6 million versus € 52.5 million in 2018-19. While matchday income would have been decimated […]
SOMETHING strange is happening this season, a curious set of events very much in keeping with the peculiar world we are watching behind our surgical masks. The Champions League last 16 has a familiar look, as it always does, but among the usual suspects there is not a single league leader. Early season tables are […]
BEFORE anyone had time to wonder if Bayern Munich could continue their unprecedented run of success, the Bavarians answered in style, scoring eight goals (again!) without reply against a very poor Schalke 04 team in their opening fixture of the 2020-21 season. It took the European champions just four minutes to open the scoring, effectively […]
BAYERN MUNICH joined the illustrious list of teams that have won the treble of domestic league and cup and Champions League when they beat Paris Saint-Germain 1-0 in Lisbon. The Bavarians’ success is remarkable given they changed manager earlier in the campaign, appointing Hans-Dieter Flick as head coach. Flick had been the number two at […]
IN RECENT years, Champions League finals have not been dull but this one was a little on the uninteresting side at times, definitely not the goal feast some people suggested it might be. To put it into context: Bayern, in 50 games prior to the final, were involved in just three games settled by a […]
IT MAY be a clash of the titans, but Paris Saint-Germain go into their first UEFA Champions League final on August 23 as the underdogs, a role they are relatively unaccustomed to, such has been their dominance of French football. Bayern Munich, meanwhile, judging by their form in the competition and in post-lockdown Germany, are […]
AND SO, UEFA gets the final it probably hoped for, the emerging force of Paris Saint-Germain against German aristrocrats Bayern Munich. New versus old money. It will be the first time since 1997-98 that two teams have reached the final having qualified for the competition as champions. The fact a team does not have to […]
IT was shades of Brazilian’s dramatic World Cup capitulation in 2014, the curtain-down on a golden age, the beginning of the end of a glittering career and the awe-inspiring intent of a team determined to become European champions. It wasn’t just Barcelona that looked shell-shocked, resigned and distraught, the millions who watched the epic, “The […]
