THE THREE men who have managed a European Cup/Champions League winner on three occasions are well known to all: Bob Paisley, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane. Unsurprisingly, most of Europe’s biggest names have won the competition and some equally notable managers have not – Bill Shankly, Don Revie, Arséne Wenger and Franz Beckenbauer, for example, […]
ONLY three times since the UEFA Champions League was formed have both of the previous season’s finalists exited at the round of 16 stage. The structure of the competition is designed to allow the rich to become successful, so that fact should come as no great surprise. The Champions League has become the playground of […]
TOTTENHAM Hotspur were supposed to be different, a club that didn’t follow the zeitgeist of football as a rich-man’s plaything. Spurs were committed to developing players, providing the hub of the Southgate project, and they resisted the temptation of throwing money around. They had also kept faith with a coveted manager that was popular, played […]
THE VULTURES are already circling the Bernabéu stadium after Real Madrid were trounced 3-0 by Paris Saint-Germain in la Ville des Lumières. The body they are eyeing is none other than Zinedine Zidane, three times winner of the UEFA Champions League as coach of Real. So convinced are people that “Zizou” will be on his […]
THE INEVITABLE happened, the end of the Mourinho era at Old Trafford. Football is a funny game, it tip-toes to the abyss with alarming regularity, making bad and expensive decisions that play to the wisdom of trends time after time. Nobody, but nobody, should be surprised about the outcome, the media have been talking about […]
IT’S not fashionable to defend José Mourinho, especially after his poor impression of Ted Rogers on the TV Show, 3-2-1, but is it really so big a crisis at Old Trafford? Mourinho has the best win rate of any Manchester United manager – 61.48%, a figure that beats even the records of Sir Matt and […]
WAS this the most expensive set of players to contest the FA Cup final? Quite possibly it was, with the combined market value of the 22 starting players amounting to € 1.2 billion according to CIES Football Observatory. Surely, then, we could expect something better than what was served up at Wembley? With Chelsea adopting […]
THE return of Jose Mourinho to Chelsea with his club Manchester United was always going to attract comment, especially given the typical friction between the self-styled “Special One” and his successor, Antonio Conte. Mourinho rarely looks happy when he’s happy, but his persona these days looks a little sad, even though he’s manager of United […]
HAS JOSE MOURINHO lost his mojo? It certainly looks like the decline that started at Chelsea in 2015-16 is continuing into his first season with Manchester United. The unconvincing league form, and a disappointing European campaign both suggest that the “special one” may be past his best. Chelsea fans may have seen the last embers […]
