Vesper

Friday November 27 2020 Football Nerd Manchester City's attack is at its lowest ebb under Pep Guardiola By Daniel Zeqiri Manchester City begin the Premier League weekend as many points away from the top as they are from the relegation zone and have scored just 10 goals in eight games. What has happened to Pep Guardiola's attack? City have sometimes suffered from defensive instability during his tenure, but creating a high volume of quality chances has never previously been an issue. City are down on all of their key attacking metrics compared with previous campaigns under Guardiola, but will have the chance to reduce the deficit when Burnley visit the Etihad Stadium on Saturday. Injuries to Sergio Aguero and Gabriel Jesus have proved problematic and Guardiola has also experimented with a more conservative midfield set up. I analyse where City have dropped off from their peak level here and ask how they can turn things around. Want more sport in your inbox? Sign up to receive our Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal newsletter A Telegraph Sport subscription is only £1 a week, or £40 for 12 months Get unlimited access Telegraph Football: the best of this week's coverage Oliver Brown column: Why football will never have another Diego Maradona, a singular yet tortured genius The Maradona I knew: Team-mates from Barcelona and Napoli recall what it was like to share a dressing room with him Maradona's former agent: How I helped Diego Maradona run red lights in Naples - and the truth over how he 'nearly' moved to Leeds Anton Ferdinand exclusive interview: 'I loved playing but hated what football stood for' What tier is my football club in? How Premier League and Football League fans are affected by new tier system This week's screamer "To me, football is and always will be about winning, and stretching all legal boundaries to maximise your chances." Jamie Carragher writes about how footballers across the ages have pushed the line of legality, just like Diego Maradona This week's best stat 79 Number of Premier League games Newcastle have lost in London, more than any team in the competition's history. They travel to Crystal Palace with a depleted squad due to three positive Covid tests. The week in a picture CREDIT: AP Football said goodbye to an incomparable genius. Former Sunday Telegraph football correspondent David Miller recalls covering the 1986 World Cup quarter-final against England here.

Getting their hoops kicked by Sparta Prague Some Queen’s Celtic woe, earlier. Photograph: Martin Divíšek/EPA Scott Murray NEIL DOWN On the face of it, shipping a two-goal lead against Benfica for the second time in three weeks isn’t a great look for Pope’s O’Rangers. Especially as the Teddy Bhears would now be through to the knockout stage of Euro Vase if they’d managed to hold on to just one of them. But it wasn’t too long ago that they were getting themselves knocked out by the likes of Progres Niederkorn, so going toe-to-toe with a bona fide European giant is a sign of genuine progress. With things slowly coming together at Ibrox, perma-worried boss Steven Gerrard was able to relax his trademark frown into Light Crease, its lowest setting, for Thursday night’s post-match interview, which there’s no need to quote. The forehead speaks volumes. Pressure on Neil Lennon after Celtic are thrashed by Sparta Prague again Read more It’s not such a happy camp across the city, though. The Queen’s Celtic return to Glasgow having had their hoops kicked by Sparta Prague. “I’m really disappointed with the first and second goals,” began Neil Lennon’s post-match analysis. “After half-time, for 35 minutes, we were superb. We got caught on the counter for the third goal. I didn’t think we deserved to lose 4-1.” As attempts at self-justification in the face of all reason go, it’s not quite up there with Open golf legend Maurice Flitcroft explaining away his round of 121 with “I left my 4-wood in the boot of the car” and “I thought I putted pretty well apart from the five putts on the 11th”, but it’s fairly close. TQC are now nine games into a run in which they’ve only tasted victory twice, a jolt to the system for a fanbase accustomed to the good life. Getting knocked out of Europe in short order may prove a blessing in disguise, freeing them of commitments as they chase that record-breaking 10 titles in a row, and Lennon is desperate to look on the bright side. “I’ve been in situations like this before so there’s no reason to believe we won’t turn it around. We’ve got the minerals to turn it around.” But as they’re already 11 points behind their big rivals, there’s no room left for error. One more slip and Lennon could be swapped out for Eddie Howe, David Moyes or [Fiver adjusts glasses, squints] Gordon Strachan. And things change quickly in football: should any new man enjoy a honeymoon period and close that gap, expect Stevie’s forehead status to be upgraded to Concerned Furrow before the year’s out. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE Join Scott Murray at 8pm GMT for red-hot minute-by-minute coverage of Crystal Palace 2-1 Newcastle. QUOTE OF THE DAY “I don’t like fiction, I like reading proper history” – it’s Tony Pulis of course, in this piece on Sheffield Wednesday that includes other nuggets such as the new Owls boss going to Corsica to celebrate Napoleon’s 250th birthday. Yup. Well, he was never going to be into Murakami was he? Photograph: Athena Pictures/Getty Images RECOMMENDED LISTENING It’s a special Football Weekly tribute to Diego Maradona. FIVER LETTERS “Oh my God/Diego, Rob Smyth, that was an absolute perfectly pitched thing of beauty (Thursday’s Fiver). Seriously and I’ve had no Tin (well, maybe 1?) Funny, poignant, more accurate than an ad for Ronseal and well, top notch. I may even pick up and start to read your book Kaiser that has been sitting on my bookshelf for two years still in the eBay state of ‘like new’. Although somehow I feel kaiser may be tame compared to the life and times of Diego Armando Maradona” –Antony T. “To all the people writing in to comment about the phrase ‘greatest GOAT of all time’ using the word ‘redundant’, I salute you” – Tim Scanlan (and no others). “I see Spurs won 4-0 against Ludogorets in Big Vase. If you rearrange the letters of Ludogorets, you get ‘good result’, which it was (for Spurs). It’s to be hoped they don’t draw a side in the next round called Shutstiler” – Marten Allen. “Re: Thursday’s letters. Surely ‘Kieron Fulop’ is the latest alias for Noble Francis. Can we from now look forward to Kieron Fulop’s regular submissions helping ensure word count obligations are met? Or would look forward be too strong a description?” – Joel Flood. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Tim Scanlan. Prizes are back next week! We have copies of The Got, Not Got Football Gift Book – Every Fan’s Catalogue of Desires, by Derek Hammond and Gary Silke. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS Tributes are continuing to pour in for Diego Maradona from Premier League managers. “He was the player that made me fall in love with the game,” said Chelsea’s Frank Lampard, with Ole Gunnar Solskjær calling El Diego “the best that’s ever played football”. Jürgen Klopp said: “I met him once and for a player of my level it was like meeting the Pope.” Meanwhile, Maradona’s agent and lawyer has vowed to take action after images emerged of three funeral workers posing for photographs next to the late Argentinian footballer’s open coffin. Tottenham will allow 2,000 fans in for the North London derby against Arsenal on 6 December, with season tickets and “other stakeholders” eligible to enter a ballot. Ole Gunnar Solskjær feels Bruno Fernandes is having a Him-like impact at Old Trafford. Joleon Lescott, 78, is coming out of retirement to play for fourth-tier Spanish outfit Real Murcía in their Copa del Rey game against Levante in December. José Mourinho isn’t interested in playing mind games before his return to Stamford Bridge. “It’s another game for me. No problem at all. I am not even worried about who is going to play, because [Chelsea] only have very good players.” Ah, we see what he did there. Up your mind-games game, Frank. Photograph: Getty Images Preston’s Darnell Fisher has been handed a three-match ban for grabbing Calum Paterson’s bits in Saturday’s 1-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday. England will be in pot one for the Uefa 2022 World Cup qualifying draw, which will be made on 7 December. Wales are in pot two, with Scotland, Norn Iron and the Republic O’Ireland lurking in pot three. And with a six-pointer at West Brom looming, is Chris Wilder getting a touch desperate? Judge for yourself. “We’re looking for game changers, Lys [Mousset] is in that category, We’re glad to have him back.” STILL WANT MORE? “The terrible, terminal journey from human to myth divided him in two: on the one side Diego; on the other Maradona.” Jorge Valdano on the life and death of his former Argentina teammate. “Never mind the barrio boy chutzpah. Maradona’s triumph was a triumph of will, of bravery and of acute intelligence too.” Barney Ronay on El Diego: it’s good. Crystal Palace have never won a top-flight game on a Friday, and nine other things you need to know for another big Premier League weekend. Scotland have two big Euro 2022 qualifiers coming up this week, but manager Shelley Kerr will be watching from her sofa. Louise Taylor has more. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! RELIVE DIEGO’S FINEST HOUR

well, we agree on the top 3 Maradona Pele Cruyff we probably disagree (perhaps) over the rest of my top 10 (you also mentioned my 9th place, Garrincha) my 11th (not counting the GKer I added, Lev Yashin, who is my 20th greatest player overall) would have been Zidane btw (I am sure most would put him top ten, I almost did, but Maldini pipped him based off sheer length of world class play at 2 positions, longest WC level run by far of any defensive player in history) 12th Eusébio 13th Gerd Müller 14th Marco van Basten (would be top 10 if not for his horrible, career-ending injury) 15th Ronaldo (the striker) 16th Michel Platini 17th Zico 18th Franco Baresi 19th Giuseppe Meazza 20th Lev Yashin

Wednesday November 25 2020 Matt Law's Chelsea briefing Dressing-room influence of senior pros like Giroud and Azpilicueta will be vital during title bid By Matt Law, Football News Correspondent Ask Antonio Conte for three of the most important players of his title-winning Chelsea season and one of the answers may come as a surprise. N’Golo Kante and Eden Hazard were undoubtedly the star performers of the 2016/17 campaign, but John Terry’s influence was less obvious as he made just nine Premier League appearances in his final season as a Chelsea player. Terry was vitally important for Conte, however, and the Italian would freely admit that losing his control on the dressing room and over the squad contributed to the problems that followed in a stormy second season in charge. It was a similar story during Jose Mourinho’s second coming at Stamford Bridge, as Dider Drogba made a limited contribution on the pitch to the 2014/15 title success, scoring four Premier League goals, but off the field his impact was huge. Like Terry did under Conte, Drogba set standards at the training ground and in the dressing room, putting out potential fires before they got anywhere near bursting out of control. Following his departure, Mourinho’s reign went up in flames. So it was interesting to hear Chelsea’s current head coach Frank Lampard praise two of his substitutes following the victory over Newcastle United that helped to set up Sunday’s clash against Mourinho’s Tottenham Hotspur as an early marker of the two club’s title credentials. Asked about club captain Cesar Azpilicueta and Olivier Giroud shouting encouragement from the bench, Lampard said: “I can’t understate what it means to the group and what it means to me when I hear that from players that have been great players for the club and really important members of the squad. Players that are sitting out a game or a period of time, supporting the lads. “It means sometimes as much as the performance on the pitch to me because we will rely on those players and it shows the professionals that they are. We have a big squad and half the players every game are probably not happy they are not starting, but when they show personality and support like that then it’s a big deal for us.” Lampard earlier this season made a point of underlining the fact Azpilicueta will remain Chelsea’s club captain, while, ahead of the Champions League clash against Rennes, he also insisted that he wants Giroud to stay at the club. Giroud, like a lot of Lampard’s Chelsea squad, has never won a Premier League title but he has won a World Cup with France and his professionalism was never better illustrated than last season when he returned to the team after the coronavirus restart and helped to secure Champions League qualification with six League goals. Losing Giroud in January would be a big blow to Lampard as the know-how brought by players like him and Azpiliceuta, who has won two titles with Chelsea, is invaluable and often irreplaceable. The dynamic of the squad has changed since the days of Mourinho and Conte, meaning there is far less chance of egos getting out of hand these days but Azpilicueta and Giroud can certainly help to ease some of the younger players through the highs and lows of a season. While Lampard has been reluctant to talk up Chelsea’s title chances just yet, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Mason Mount have made their excitement clear but the older professionals will know there are many bumps in the road to navigate. Lampard added title-winning experience to his team with the addition of Thiago Silva, but the defender does not yet speak fluent English which means his verbal impact in the dressing-room and around the training ground is limited. Kante, of course, knows how to win titles but his introverted character means he is far more likely to lead by example on the pitch rather than acting as a sounding board through difficult times or pulling up team-mates if they get carried away. The midfielder is practically silent on the rare occasions he has to watch from the stands. It is not just at Chelsea where the influence of older heads has been felt. Manchester City have not looked the same since the departure of Vincent Kompany, while James Milner proved again at the weekend just what an important player he has been for Liverpool. If Chelsea are to close the gap on City and Liverpool, or even sustain a title challenge this season, then Lampard knows he needs the Azpilicuetas and Girouds of this world, even if it is from the bench rather than on the pitch. Get in touch at @Matt_Law_DT or via [email protected]. A Telegraph Sport subscription is only £1 a week, or £40 for 12 months Get unlimited access The week at Chelsea Analysis: How Frank Lampard has turned Chelsea into Premier League title contenders Latest: Tammy Abraham turns training ground frowns into smiles as Chelsea striker makes himself key man again Antonio Conte interview: 'I wanted to sign Lukaku and Van Dijk at Chelsea — we lost momentum after that' The making of Hakim Ziyech: How a petulant prodigy became the 'Wizard of Amsterdam'

Diego Maradona, a life in pictures https://theathletic.com/2221730/2020/11/25/diego-maradona-pictures/ At The Athletic, we are all about words. Sometimes though, it’s best to let pictures do the talking. So please take a few minutes to enjoy these beautiful photographs of the great Diego Maradona and share your memories below. Maradona enjoying a cup of tea with his team-mates. He made his debut for Argentinos Juniors 10 days before his 16th birthday A football is never too far from a young Maradona (centre), even while relaxing at the beach with his family Never one to follow the norm, Maradona reads intently while laying at an angle on his bed. The less said about the pyjamas the better During the maverick Argentine’s first World Cup in 1982, Belgium’s Ludo Coeck follows one of the few routes to stop Maradona — with a foul As Maradona’s stature grows, he takes a trip down memory lane in 1983 by visiting the local ground where he first played in the outskirts of Buenos Aires Maradona strikes the ball with a left foot that other players envied and fans marvelled during a friendly at Wembley An English club fortunate enough to have Maradona don their jersey, Tottenham played Inter Milan in Osvaldo Ardiles’ testimonal. In a rare sight for many English fans, Maradona shows the crowd what they’re missing in front of 30,000 at White Hart Lane in May 1986 Eyes on the only thing that mattered The “Hand of God” against England during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final is etched in football folklore. Here, Maradona leaps above Peter Shilton to score with his hand A nation’s hero, Maradona lifts the World Cup after guiding Argentina past West Germany in the final in Mexico An image that captures his genius and vulnerability in the aftermath of that World Cup win. Everyone’s eyes were on him as he broke down with joy Maradona breathes life into an entire city by winning the double at Napoli Maradona and Claudia Villafane kiss for the cameras during their wedding at Luna Park Stadium on November 7, 1989 in Buenos Aires Maradona is bereft after defeat in the 1990 World Cup final Maradona cements his status as an Argentine hero after scoring the third goal in his country’s 4-0 triumph over Greece at the ’94 World Cup. The celebration was best remembered for him screaming down the TV cameras. He was later removed from the tournament after failing a drugs test The gifted footballer once traded his boots for boxing gloves, taking part in an exhibition bout in Argentina in 1996 After retiring from football, Maradona entered a more troubled phase in his life and his health suffered. He struggled to escape his addictions, and here he smokes a cigar not long after being hospitalised on March 28, 2000 As concern grew over the beloved Argentine’s cocaine addiction, he took to a television programme in 2004 to confirm he would seek treatment Yet Maradona returned to the national team, managing Argentina in 2010 in South Africa and here entertaining local children From one icon to another. Maradona offers some advice to his fellow countrymen and heir apparent Lionel Messi at the 2010 World Cup on how to follow in his footsteps. Argentina lost 4-0 to Germany in the quarter-finals Although his managerial career never quite reached the heights of his playing days, Maradona remains a deity in the eyes of Argentines. Here, he salutes fans during a match in January 2020 of Gimnasia y Esgrima, the side he coached at the time of his death

Diego and Maradona https://theathletic.com/2222291/2020/11/25/diego-and-maradona/ “When you’re on the pitch, life goes away. Problems go away. Everything goes away” — Diego Maradona, 1960-2020 Those words, uttered by Diego Armando Maradona over slow-motion images of his artistry, carry immense poignancy. This mythical player, surrounded by madness that bloated and blurred the boundaries between his professional career and chaotic personal life, was able to escape when he played. The noise faded. The claustrophobia lifted. Only now can we appreciate how much we should be thankful he found something blissful in those moments on the pitch as well as the rest of us. In a way, the reason Maradona means so much to the masses is that he embodied escapism for anyone who cherished his genius. In Argentina they lived for his impassioned World Cups. In Napoli they prayed for wild Sundays at Stadio San Paolo. Even outside of his spiritual homes, only a fool would take their eyes off Maradona. His draw was magnetic because at any moment something incredible could happen. That possibility was an essential part of him and his operatic relationship with football. Maradona danced. The way he moved with a football, a tango of his own design propelled by his own rhythms, leading the game with bursts and flourishes that were uniquely his, was something to behold. Nobody has ever moved with a football as Maradona did. Not before. Not since. He was able to elevate the game of football with his own intoxicating interpretation of how to play. At his best, he played with an otherworldliness. It was sorcery. He seemed at one with the ball in a way that felt different to everybody else. Playful. Mischievous. Determined. Balanced. Charged. He propelled himself and the ball forward as one. Obstacles were there to be deceived, teased, outmanoeuvred with that pumped-up mix of blessed talent, street-fighting instincts and precocious, bare-faced cheek. As Jorge Valdano put it, “No ball ever had a better experience than when it was at his left foot.” The milestones of his life in football are boldly etched in the game’s history. It takes a rare combination of ability and personality to carry a team towards the most glittering prizes. The abundance of both in Maradona fuelled him. The boy who left the poverty of Villa Fiorito, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, to chase his dreams was thrust to centre stage at a prodigious age. A professional debut for Argentinos Juniors at 15, the opportunity to sparkle for the national team at 16. One of his regrets was that he was not trusted at 17, despite his obvious brilliance, to take part in the 1978 World Cup hosted by Argentina. He was one of three culled from the list by Cesar Luis Menotti. Maradona wept like a child. That day he spent an hour alone, outside, leaning on a fence and staring into the distance. While it was big news in his homeland this exclusion, back then he was not a global sensation. That level of intrigue and notoriety would not, however, take long to find him. Within a couple of years he played at Wembley and it was noted by the Sunday Times that “Maradona kept possession of the ball for two minutes and 10 seconds of continuous action”. Echoing the shockwaves of the Magical Magyars in 1953, the Hungarian team who forced observers to re-evaluate what they thought about football, here was a teenager from Argentina doing remarkably different things. His dextrous control, his searing dribbling, his unshakable balance, his effortless dominance. He was a redefining footballer. Of course, the World Cup was a driving force. For the best player of his era — arguably any era — who didn’t make the cut in his teens as his compatriots hoisted the trophy it was the holiest grail. Finding a way to overcome the targeted rough tackling he endured during his first World Cup experience in 1982 was a challenge. He didn’t just rise to it. In 1986 Maradona soared, with all of his might — and some of God’s, as he would have it — propelling him along. The 1986 World Cup is Maradona’s World Cup. With the captain’s armband strapped to his No 10 shirt he scored or assisted 10 of Argentina’s 14 goals. Of course he made the most dribbles. Of course he was fouled a record number of times. He had to be brave to evade and bounce back from fearful kicks. He had to be resourceful to create and score by any means possible. He played the best, sang the loudest, partied the hardest and became a national deity. Look at the impishness to score against Italy, bursting in at an angle to outfox the last defender and dink a perfectly placed volley. Re-watch those yin/yang goals against England which are the stuff of legend and infamy. Sir Alf Ramsey saw fit to remark on how it made him supreme but also undermined him. “Pele had nearly everything. Maradona has everything,” he observed. “He works harder, does more and is more skilful. Trouble is that he’ll be remembered for another reason. He bends the rules to suit himself.” The paradox of Maradona’s art, the particular charge that comes from his mix of beauty and beast, has always made the story more complex, more compulsive. On he went. His goals saw off Belgium in the semi-finals and the way he hurtled at full speed — at the exact point where he could maintain balance without losing a millisecond of velocity — is classic Maradona. Then, despite being double marked in the final against West Germany, his speed of thought and vision enabled him to jab a defence-splitting pass for the winning goal. Boca Juniors was the club of his boyhood fantasy and, while spells at Barcelona and Sevilla were fraught at times, Napoli stole his heart in European football. Only Maradona could have emulated that concept of carrying a team to the summit, as he had with Argentina, at Napoli. The way he is revered there is felt to this day and will be for as long as the city stands. In the clip of his warm-up before a Napoli game which has done as much as any of his matches to introduce the wonder of Maradona to the YouTube generation, accompanied by the 1980s song Live is Life, he literally dances with the ball. He mixes his stretches with an exhibition of joyfully spontaneous ball mastery and nightclub grooves. It is as if he is serenading the ball. Seducing it even. The nonchalant trickery makes the crowd roar long before kick-off. The showman, the centrepiece of any match, the maker of miracles. As they sang in the Curva B “Mamma, why does my heart beat so? Because I’ve seen Maradona, I’m in love”. For his disciples that love endures. Through giant murals, shrines, and now grief, from Buenos Aires to Naples, Maradona remains emblematic of their cities, their culture, their people, their struggles and dreams. “When you’re on the pitch, life goes away. Problems go away. Everything goes away” — Diego Maradona, 1960-2020 And then, when Diego Armando Maradona was back in the real world, the problems came flooding back. On the pitch, he would captivate audiences and mesmerise opponents with his brilliance. Off the pitch, chaos reigned. “Every Sunday we played a match,” he said, recalling his time at Napoli, in Asif Kapadia’s stunning documentary Diego Maradona. “We went out to eat. Claudia (his wife at the time) would stay in with the girls and I went out to drink with my friends. And that’s when we took coke. And that carried on until Wednesday. And then I started cleansing, cleansing, cleansing to play on Sunday.” Imagine that: the greatest footballer on the planet, quite possibly the greatest ever to play the game, going on three-day cocaine binges as a matter of routine, coming home so high that he would hide in the bathrooms so that his daughters could not see him in that state. And then spending the next three days sweating it out of his system so that he could perform his magic again on the Sunday afternoon before the cycle of destruction started up again. It caught up with him in the end. Well of course it did. As Maradona said years later, “Drugs made me a worse player, not a better one. Do you have any idea the player I would have been if it weren’t for the drugs?” And not just the cocaine, but the chaos that engulfed his life, whether in Barcelona, Naples, Seville or back home in Buenos Aires. If the modern football superstar lives an almost monastic existence, helped by an entourage that keeps distractions to a bare minimum (think Cristiano Ronaldo, think Lionel Messi), then Maradona was the opposite. In Naples in particular, he was surrounded by chaos. Ultimately, it overcame him. Fernando Signorini, his personal fitness coach for many years, used to draw a distinction between “Diego”, the footballer and family man, and “Maradona”, the phenomenon whose fatal flaws came to be exposed at every turn as his career and life spiralled out of control. We expect our sporting idols to be perfect, to be able to take everything in their stride, including the attention and the riches that change their lives in ways we cannot begin to comprehend. The gifts that Maradona was born with took him to heights which, arguably, no footballer had scaled before or since. Those gifts did not extend to an ability to cope with the ferocity of the attention and the adulation that came with the god-like status he attained in Naples and in Argentina. The footage at the start of Kapadia’s documentary is astonishing. It begins with a car chase through the tunnels and streets of Naples and you think it is just generic footage, a little bit of creative licence to depict a sense of unruliness, until the convoy screeches to a halt inside the compound of the Stadio San Paolo and Maradona gets out. At the age of 23, with a $10.48 million price tag that shattered the world transfer record, he was being lauded as a godsend not just to the club but to a city that was one of the poorest in Europe. Before being paraded to 70,000 success-starved supporters, Maradona was presented to the media in what looks like the most claustrophobic, frenetic press conference imaginable. The first question comes from a journalist asking Napoli’s saviour whether he knows what the Camorra is — “and if he knows that their money is everywhere here, even in football”. The club’s president, Corrado Ferlaino, intervenes, calling the question “highly offensive” and demanding the journalist in question is ejected before angrily telling the audience, “Naples works and it has a good work ethic. Criminals are a minority and there’s a serious police force ready to intervene in these matters.” During his years in Naples, Maradona was strongly linked to the Camorra crime syndicate. He drank in their bars, gleefully accepting their gifts, their free champagne, their drugs, their sex workers and their willingness to hush things up so that poor Claudia, along with the rest of the world, remained oblivious to his many excesses. On the pitch, Maradona was peerless in those years when he led Argentina to World Cup glory and Napoli — success-starved Napoli — to two Scudettos, a Coppa Italia and a UEFA Cup. Off it, his life was a mess. In January 1991, after a phone conversation with a sex worker was tapped by the police, Maradona was charged with cocaine possession and distribution. Three months after that, he was banned from football worldwide for 15 months after testing positive for banned substances. Further doping bans followed in 1994, after testing positive at the World Cup in the United States, and in 1997 as a most illustrious career meandered towards a sad denouement back in Argentina. It wasn’t just the drink and the drugs. In 1998 he received a suspended prison sentence of two years and 10 months following an incident four years earlier in which he shot an air rifle at reporters, causing injury to four of them. It took him 29 years to recognise publicly a son born from an extra-marital affair in Naples. There were allegations of domestic abuse towards a girlfriend. As he said many times in his later life, “I made mistakes.” This is what Signorini meant when he drew the distinction between “Diego” and “Maradona”. “For Diego, I would go to the end of the world,” he said. “But with Maradona, I wouldn’t take a step.” Few sportsmen better encapsulate the phrase “flawed genius”. He was a flawed human being, but a bona fide genius with a ball at his feet. Without question, those flaws curtailed his career as well as, ultimately, his life. The great unanswered question is whether fame, fortune and adulation changed Maradona or whether, conversely, he was undone by an outright refusal to change as the spotlight shone on him with ever greater intensity. In last year’s documentary, there were moments when he looked terrified, vulnerable and lost and moments when he looked so completely comfortable in his own skin, utterly convinced of his ability to play by his own rules and do whatever he pleased — both on the pitch and off it. In the end, Maradona cracked, his flaws exposed for the world to see. But he did so having brought more unparalleled joy to the people of Naples and Argentina. There have been many great footballers — and Messi and Ronaldo, the greatest of this generation, can certainly claim to have scaled heights of excellence over a much longer period — but it is doubtful that any player has ever inspired such fervour as Maradona. In Naples and in Argentina, he crossed the line from sporting hero to cultural icon. The sense of loss in Argentina is overwhelming. To the people of Buenos Aires in particular, he transcended his sport. Raised in the slums of Villa Fiorito, without electricity or running water, he called himself a “cabecita negra”, the phrase used witheringly by some of the upper classes to describe those of mixed Argentinian and Italian heritage. The literal translation is “little blackhead”. Maradona was proud of his roots. He became a talisman and a world-class figurehead for a country in turmoil. If Argentina’s 1978 World Cup success was seen in some quarters as a propaganda victory for the military junta that had seized control two years earlier, the Maradona-inspired triumph in Mexico in 1986 seemed to herald the emergence of a new Argentina. Maradona was not just a great footballer. He was an artist, a warrior, a fierce patriot, a populist. He was a few less pleasant things besides, but, among those worshipped his talents, those flaws and rough edges only strengthened to his appeal and enhanced his legend. He was loved in spite of his demons. In some ways it felt as if he was loved all the more because of them. And loved is the right word. In March, he returned to La Bombonera, the home of Boca Juniors, as coach of Gimnasia. His face was puffy, his expression confused and his movements as far as could be imagined from the combination of power and grace that once defined him, but, to those in the stands, whether young or old, this was like falling in love all over again. It was an outpouring. It was a flashback to his previous farewell to La Bombonera for his benefit match in 2001, four years after a glorious career had been brought to an ignominious conclusion. He had made mistakes in his life, he said, but football had always been his salvation. “La pelota no se mancha,” he said — the ball does not show the dirt. Or to put it another way, when Diego Maradona was on the pitch, life went away. Problems went away. Everything went away. And we just watched, enthralled.

Rooney can learn plenty from Lampard and Gerrard’s path to credibility https://theathletic.com/2218529/2020/11/24/lampard-gerrard-rooney-derby-rangers-chelsea/ During his time in charge of the England rugby union team, Stuart Lancaster liked to share his theory about the value of credibility. He felt that every coach or manager could be placed on a credibility scale running from zero to 100. Every match, every training session, every meeting and every decision or action, however seemingly minor, offered an opportunity to increase his credibility in the eyes of his players — or, conversely, a threat to the goodwill and credibility he had already built up. Lancaster liked to point out that, whereas a manager or coach would typically walk into a new job at around 50 per cent on the credibility scale, his own experience was different. Having risen quietly through the ranks at the Rugby Football Union, without having played or coached at elite level, he felt he registered no higher than 20 on his own scale when he was promoted to the England job in 2011, but, from that low starting point, he was sure he would build his credibility over time, whereas a high-profile candidate could feasibly and unwittingly do the reverse. It didn’t work out, though. Lancaster was praised for the groundwork he did to improve the culture around the England team, but results weren’t good enough and he resigned after a poor showing at the 2015 World Cup. But much of what he said still holds true. “If you arrive with a big reputation but turn out not to be good at handling people, or lose your rag under pressure, then you lose points,” he said. “And when that happens, the players eventually stop listening to you and start talking behind your back and then, suddenly, you’re gone.” That principle applies even more in football, where the financial stakes are so high, the pressure on managers is so intense and, for whatever reason, that tendency to “stop listening” seems to take hold so much more easily. In the eyes of an unforgiving dressing room, a single incident or defeat can see credibility lost, never to return. It is one reason why, ultimately, football management rarely works out in the longer term for those who assume, having excelled as players, that they will make a successful transition into management. A player with an illustrious reputation and, in many cases, a strong personality might start out much further up Lancaster’s scale — and any early successes will only increase that credibility — but very few great players prove as adept at the finer points of the job as, for example, Sir Alex Ferguson or Jurgen Klopp, who, after unremarkable playing careers, rose to the very top of the credibility index as managers. Even those great players who have initially made it look easy, such as Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer, have tended not to thrive in management for the long term, for one reason or another. Zinedine Zidane, who won three Champions League titles in his first spell as Real Madrid coach, rarely comes across as someone who regards it as his natural calling. But still they come. Indeed, they seem to be coming in ever greater numbers. Look around the top clubs in Europe and you will see several managed by distinguished but relatively inexperienced alumni. It might seem like a Premier League-centric trend — Ole Gunnar Solskjaer at Manchester United, Frank Lampard at Chelsea, Mikel Arteta at Arsenal — but it has gained popularity in Italy, with Andrea Pirlo at Juventus and Simone Inzaghi at Lazio. If anything, it is the success stories of Pep Guardiola at Barcelona, Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid and Zidane at Real that these clubs hope to emulate. So many players see what Guardiola has done at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Manchester City, or what Zidane has done at Real, and imagine they could do something similar with the right backing and the right talent at their disposal. If the concern a decade ago was that so many of the best minds in the game were being lost to the lure of the television studio, then these days it feels as if the managerial job market is saturated by the number of top-class players who feel they are destined to become top-class coaches. Beyond those mentioned above, there is Steven Gerrard at Rangers, Ryan Giggs with Wales, John Terry learning the ropes on Dean Smith’s staff at Aston Villa, Michael Carrick likewise under Solskjaer at Manchester United and now Wayne Rooney outlining his desire to be part of the succession plan at Derby County following Phillip Cocu’s dismissal last week. They cannot possibly all succeed. Indeed their first challenge, at this stage of their careers, is to demonstrate to their players that they have more to offer than the credibility and authority that their playing career affords them. Take away Gerrard’s name and he would not, aged 37, have been appointed by Rangers on the basis of a season coaching Liverpool’s under-18 team. Neither would Lampard have got the Derby job or, a year later, having narrowly missed out on promotion from the Championship, the Chelsea job. And it goes without saying that Manchester United would not ordinarily have appointed a coach who had previously relegated Cardiff City — those two Norwegian Eliteserien titles with Molde notwithstanding. Their credibility, upon taking those jobs, was based almost entirely on their reputations as players. That tends not to sustain them for long. The media, the fanbase and, of course, the board of directors might be seduced by a big name and a familiar face, but players, once they have overcome any initial sense of awe, want to see more from their managers. If they and their staff cannot bring individual and collective improvement on the training ground, or if they are clumsy or insensitive in their handling of players, they will not last long. From the moment Gerrard and Lampard took over at Rangers and Derby respectively in the summer of 2018, there has been an unhealthy fascination with their fortunes. It has sometimes felt as if, for Gerrard, the Rangers job could only go one of two ways: 1) succeed (which means breaking Celtic’s stranglehold in the Scottish Premiership, preferably before they win 10 in a row) and he will put himself firmly in contention to succeed Klopp at Liverpool or 2) fail to meet expectations at Ibrox and find future employment much harder to come by. Such is the dichotomy faced by an inexperienced big-name manager who is so closely associated with one club. Football is so fickle — not just the fans or the media, but players and owners too. Reputations can fluctuate wildly, sending managers can go up and down that credibility scale from one week to the next. Just as it was wrong to write off Lampard five weeks ago, when Chelsea were leaking goals at an alarming rate, so too would it be wrong to go overboard after a run of six consecutive wins against Krasnodar, Burnley, Rennes, Sheffield United, Newcastle United and Rennes again. Lately there has been more stability and composure to their defending and a far greater swagger going forward, but assessments are ongoing. The next six games (Tottenham Hotspur, Sevilla, Leeds United, Krasnodar, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Everton) will tell us more. What can be said with certainty, though, is that Gerrard and Lampard both appear more credible as managers now than when they started out just over two years ago. That might seem like a statement of the obvious when, lacking experience, they were thrust into roles where they had to learn the job, but it doesn’t always work that way. Bryan Robson, Roy Keane, Ruud Gullit and Gianluca Vialli, four very different characters, seemed to peak in their first year or two as in management. If Gerrard and Lampard are still improving and developing in year three, that bodes well — and perhaps it says something about the merits of taking a year or two to study coaching and build up your knowledge, rather than going straight from player to manager or, in the cases of Robson, Gullit and Vialli, player-manager. Maybe there is a lesson there for Rooney. He sounded desperate last week to outline his candidacy for the Derby job, but, although he is studying for his UEFA A Licence and was part of Cocu’s coaching staff, that immediate transition from player to manager seems a hazardous and outdated one. Better, surely, to continue his studies and to be better equipped for the challenge when management becomes his full-time preoccupation. As it stands right now at Derby, yes, he would have immediate credibility as a team-mate and as one of the great players of his generation, but it is unlikely he has built up the knowledge, the experience and, crucially, the distance and perspective that a manager needs to thrive beyond the short term. Even with Steve McClaren returning to the club in an advisory capacity, the idea of appointing Rooney would, beyond the expectation of an initial uplift, seem risky for all concerned. “The reality is that having a good, long playing career, which I’ve been lucky to have, doesn’t automatically make you ideal for the hot seat,” Lampard told me in the summer of 2017, having retired as a player. “Management is a long road and any manager worth his salt has been on the pitch, on rainy days, with young ones learning their trade. To switch from playing to the other side, there are loads of things you have to take on board that you’ve never even had to consider as a player — from the real basics behind the scenes to the top-end things on the pitch. Until you’ve earned your stripes, to the degree that you feel totally ready, you shouldn’t do it. I’m just not in that position right now.” He would not have imagined back then that he would have been appointed Derby head coach a year later or at Chelsea a year after that. It has all happened far quicker than he had in mind — to the disapproval who would see it as a “silver spoon” appointment for one of English football’s golden boys — but at this point, it feels increasingly positive. Lampard was hired with a different brief to his recent predecessors at Chelsea: to start building a younger team to challenge in the longer term. He did that last season with the emergence of Reece James, Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham, securing Champions League qualification and reaching the FA Cup final. This season, with the additions of Edouard Mendy, Thiago Silva, Ben Chilwell, Kai Havertz, Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner, far more is expected results-wise. After a sloppy start, with far too many goals conceded, the past six weeks have brought a distinct improvement in what they are doing both in and out of possession. Rangers’ progress under Gerrard is undeniable. It hasn’t come cheap — the wage bill has increased significantly through the expansion of the squad and the building of a support staff that is colossal by Scottish standards — but they look like a real team now. In 21 games in all competitions this season, they have won 18 and drawn three. They are 11 points clear at the top of the Premiership and, although Celtic have two games in hand, Rangers are now widely regarded as favourites. Celtic are in a turbulent state right now, but, for Rangers, this is far from a case of standing still and catching up with a target that is going backwards. By just about every metric, they are improving under Gerrard. In 15 Premiership games this season, they have scored 41 goals and conceded just three. That will, of course, invite familiar questions about the quality of the Premiership, but Rangers’ results in European competition under Gerrard merit recognition and praise. In July 2017, under the more experienced Pedro Caixinha, they were knocked out of the Europa League by Progres Niederkorn, of Luxembourg, in qualifying. Since then, they have played 38 Europa League matches under Gerrard, losing just five and keeping 20 clean sheets. Their draws away to Villarreal, Benfica and Porto have been characterised by a level of tactical discipline that few imagined would be a defining feature of Gerrard’s management style. Rangers might now be seen as the perfect first job for Gerrard, in much the same way as it was for Graeme Souness in 1986, but it was far from an easy one. It is a tough gig, trying to drag the club onwards and upwards at a time when it seemed to be weighed down not just by its past — both glorious and more recently traumatic — but by Celtic’s continuing domination of Scottish football. Appraisals of Gerrard will be far less positive if Celtic end up celebrating 10 in a row next May, but the former Liverpool captain can currently be said to be raising standards, rather than merely meeting them at a club that was crying out for strong leadership. Chelsea isn’t an easy gig either. A succession of experienced and highly qualified coaches have pitched up at Stamford Bridge and achieved far better results than Lampard in the short term, but they have usually done so without showing the slightest inclination to integrate academy players into the first team. Lampard, his hand forced to some extent by last season’s FIFA transfer ban, was willing to put his credibility at stake to look beyond short-term results in year one. These are early days in year two, but the way James, Mount and Abraham are combining with new arrivals such as Chilwell, Ziyech and Werner reflects well on his ability to manage a group as well as his planning. It wasn’t always clear last season what Lampard’s Chelsea was meant to look like. It seems much clearer now, with a more solid-looking rearguard but also a strong emphasis on defending from the front. If you go back to the principles Lampard set out when he took over at Derby — an emphasis on young players, a desire to stretch and over-run opponents with a creative, high-energy game — they are immediately apparent in the way Chelsea are playing now. That is not always the case with those managers who tell you to embrace and believe in their philosophy. We come back, inevitably, to the suggestion that Lampard only got the Chelsea job — indeed only got the Derby job — because of who he is. Well, yes, that is pretty obvious. When a manager is appointed in those circumstances, his playing reputation brings a certain credibility, but it also brings an increased scrutiny at the first sign of trouble. So far, Lampard has dealt calmly with that pressure and with the various challenges that come with managing a group of elite-level players. There have been few murmurs of the type of discord that crept up repeatedly during Antonio Conte’s final season in charge or Maurizio Sarri’s brief tenure. None of this means that Lampard’s or Gerrard’s impact can be likened to that of Guardiola at Barcelona or Zidane at Real Madrid, or anything close to it, but it does suggest that, a little over two years into their management careers, the former England team-mates are going some way to justify the faith that has been placed in them. If they are only ever one or two bad results from a perceived crisis, then that is just the reality of life as a big name in a high-profile job. To this point, both of them seem to be handling that pressure more comfortably than many of us would have expected. If initially their credibility was based almost entirely on their reputations as players, then the Lancaster theory suggests they would have struggled had they not quickly shown there was substance and ideas behind the big name. Neither has yet won a trophy as a manager, but both appear more credible now than when they started. That is one of the first challenges facing any legendary player taking his first steps into management. All too often, the first casualty of a coaching career is credibility.

Kante and Silva the key to Chelsea stopping Kane in his new, deeper role https://theathletic.com/2220981/2020/11/25/chelsea-kante-harry-kane/ “The problem with Harry Kane,” begins former West Bromwich Albion defender Gareth McAuley, pondering the Premier League’s most burning question right now, “is that he scores all types of goals. He can finish with his left foot, right foot, he can score headers, he can score from inside the box or outside the box. He poses a massive scoring threat, and this season he’s dropping into that No 10 position where he can get shots off from the edge of the box. How do you counteract that?” Frank Lampard’s days leading up to Chelsea’s clash with Tottenham at Stamford Bridge on Sunday will be dominated by the challenge of dealing with the unique problems Kane is likely to cause. His tally of seven goals in nine Premier League matches this season may be bolstered by two penalties, but his non-penalty expected goals (NPxG) rating per 90 minutes of 0.5 is his highest average since 2017-18, when he scored a career-best 28 non-penalty goals in 37 league appearances. The even more worrying thing for Lampard is that Kane isn’t even Tottenham’s top scorer this season. That title belongs to Son Heung-min, who has scored nine goals in nine league appearances against an expected goals (xG) rating of just 3.9. The two men have forged the most productive and dangerous active attacking partnership in the Premier League era, and Son’s talent for attacking the space behind opposition defences has unlocked the creative capabilities that Kane always insisted were a big part of his skill set. Kane also has nine assists from his first nine Premier League matches, seven of which have been for Son goals. The pair combined to utterly destroy Southampton’s high defensive line in a 5-2 win for Tottenham at St Mary’s in September, as well as picking apart Manchester United and Burnley away from home. No player in Europe’s big five leagues has been directly involved in more goals this season than Tottenham’s talismanic striker who, increasingly, profiles as an elite No 10 as well as a deadly No 9. An expected assists rating per 90 minutes (xA90) of 0.43 marks out Kane as more than twice as creative as in any of his previous three Tottenham seasons. He is touching the ball 10 more times and attempting six more passes per 90 minutes on average than in 2019-20, and they are generally occurring in deeper positions. The most startling example is the Southampton win in September, when he touched the ball just once in the opposition penalty area while registering four assists for Son. Harry Kane touch map vs Southampton How do you deal with this as a central defender? McAuley, who faced Kane many times during his Premier League career with West Brom, admits there are no easy solutions. “It suits Harry’s game because he’s a clever player,” he adds. “When he’s coming off the (defensive) line and players are running past him, you can’t go with him. That’s where your communication comes into play with your central midfield players, getting people around you. As a defender you’re thinking about the threat behind you, that slipped pass to the runner. He’s also got the vision to slide the likes of Son through when he finds those pockets of space on the half-turn. “When we did it as a four (at West Brom), we tried to box off the central area with two midfielders (in front of the two centre-backs). We wanted to force teams to play wide, especially the bigger teams. Chelsea have top defenders who will fancy themselves, but they can’t do it as individuals. It has to be as a unit. Our particular way would be to keep it tight and narrow, force them wide and bet on our strengths to deal with crosses. Chelsea will probably approach it differently, but he scores the majority of his goals from the middle of the box, so they’ll have to get it right in that area. “The defensive unit and the sitting midfielder will have to deal with his movement, as well as the clever positional rotations that Tottenham have when they attack. For me, communication — passing on players and information quickly and early — is the best way to combat it. One lapse of concentration against Kane right now and he’s either scoring or assisting a goal.” Chelsea have found impressive defensive stability in recent weeks, following Lampard’s shift to an expansive 4-3-3 system with N’Golo Kante at the midfield base, making full use of his positional intelligence, elite anticipation and speed to snuff out opposition attacks before they can gather momentum. On the occasions when Kane drifts deeper it will be into the Frenchman’s sphere of influence, and the outcome of that particular contest could end up having a big impact on the result at Stamford Bridge. But the organisation of Chelsea’s defensive unit as a whole will fall to Thiago Silva, whose impact and influence since arriving on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain in August has been monumental. “He reads the game so well and puts himself in position,” McAuley says of Silva. “All that top-level experience informs his decisions, and his decision-making will be massively important (against Kane and Tottenham). But he’ll need the players around him as well. “Kante covers so much ground in front of the defence, and he covers it quickly. It’s about killing that space. Zouma has recovery pace too, but he won’t be wanting to recover too much. He’ll want to use his speed to get up to the ball, to push out and keep the defensive line higher.” Lampard could try to spring a tactical surprise and return Chelsea to 3-4-2-1, the formation Jose Mourinho belittled as “the system they played for two years with Antonio Conte” after watching his Tottenham team suffer the first of two Premier League defeats to their London rivals in 2019-20. But that would risk surrendering the confidence his players have built up in 4-3-3 over recent weeks, while Spurs — and Kane — are also playing very differently this season. McAuley’s scepticism that such a change would be effective springs from personal experience. “We tried to do it with a back three with West Brom once at White Hart Lane and he (Kane) got a hat-trick. We changed to try to defend with a back three, mainly because of his goal threat, and we got hammered on the day (losing 4-0). “How do you do it tactically? I don’t know. You do need a massive game from your central defenders in terms of their positioning, blocking shots, organising, talking to the midfielders in front of them — particularly when he drops off and isn’t playing up against them. It’s a big challenge in terms of concentration and communication, and he’s in great form right now.” Chelsea can only look at nullifying the threat of Kane — and, by extension, Son — as a collective challenge at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. If they manage to keep both off the scoresheet, it will only add to Edouard Mendy’s burgeoning reputation and constitute one of the most impressive defensive achievements of the Lampard era. If they fail, they can at least console themselves with the fact that so has pretty much everyone else who has faced Tottenham so far this season.

Packing more into 60 years than most would manage in 60 trillion An icon. And that iconic image from 1986. Photograph: Carlo Fumagalli/AP Rob Smyth A LIFE LESS ORDINARY Wednesday was another triumph for the best breaking-news service in the business. At 4.10pm, The Fiver filed a Slow News Day special and wandered jauntily down to our illegally open local, the Failure & Acceptance, a place where there is no signal, no wifi and even less hope. At 4.25pm, as we were draining our second glass of Instant Decompresser, news broke to the outside world that Diego Maradona had died. This awful story finally reached us when we emerged, blinking into the sunlight, at 7.41am this morning. At first we hoped it was all a hoax, that he would appear on his balcony with an air rifle to tickle any journalists who had come to harass his family for a quote. Alas, it turned out the greatest GOAT of all time really had died. At this difficult time, our thoughts are with those who genuinely think they think Maradona wasn’t the best footballer ever. Spoiler alert: nobody will ever play better than he did at the 1986 World Cup; and nobody will ever empower ordinary teams to win the World Cup, Serie A (twice) and the Uefa Cup. He did it when football pitches were made of corrugated mud and GBH was a bookable offence at most. And he did it all without giving a solitary one what anyone else thought. The best and worst moments of Diego Maradona’s turbulent career | Scott Murray Read more Maradona was the most compelling sportsman of our lifetime. And, perhaps most importantly of all, nobody has ever given The Fiver as many deep, meaningful belly laughs. Our last memory of him in public is at the 2018 World Cup, when Argentina qualified from the group stage with a late winner against Nigeria. A TV director decided, not unreasonably, that it would be nice for billions of people around the world – especially the kids allowed to stay up late as a special treat – to see an icon like Maradona celebrate such a vital goal. What the director didn’t know was that, at the precise moment the camera cut to a palpably invigorated Maradona, he was unfurling both middle fingers and impatiently delivering a popular Spanish swearword to anyone within hearing or lip-reading range. It was Diego and his people versus the world, the way he always liked it. He’d be troubled by much of the goodwill towards him in the last 24 hours, certainly from the places he was hated and the people he had vaccinated. Maradona chatted a lot about “vaccinating” opponents, and he wasn’t talking as a qualified medical practitioner. He vaccinated England from the front and back in the Azteca in 1986, scoring two goals of unimaginable breadth in the space of a few minutes. Four years later he performed a savagely emphatic procedure on Brazil and the hosts Italy. If ever a life deserved celebration, it’s Maradona’s. The only regret is that he didn’t fulfil his other calling, as a Buddhist monk. Sure, if you want to nitpick, he might have struggled a wee bit with all that serenity and abstinence stuff, but he would have been a peerless meditation teacher. Nobody in human history has ever lived so defiantly in the moment. ‘Lived’ is the operative word: Maradona packed more into 60 years than most of us would manage in 60 trillion. As The Fiver reported exclusively at 7.42am this morning, Maradona is dead – but only in the medical sense. Somebody with his personality and genius will always be larger than death. Keep an eye on that balcony though, just in case, especially if you’re a journalist. QUOTE OF THE DAY “Today even the ball, the most inclusive, shared of toys, feels alone, inconsolably weeping for the loss of its owner, its master. All of those who love football, real football, cry with it. And those of us who knew him will cry even more for that Diego who, in recent times, had almost disappeared beneath the weight of his legend and his life of excess. Goodbye, great captain” – Jorge Valdano pays tribute to his former teammate and “God of football”. RECOMMENDED LISTENING Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Jonathan Wilson, Philippe Auclair, Marcela Mora y Araujo and Asif Kapadia as Football Weekly Extra celebrates the life of El Diego. RECOMMENDED VIEWING A father and daughter by the Obelisk in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images Two beautiful galleries: one on Maradona’s life and another on how fans around the world have reacted to his death. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE Join Barry Glendenning now for red-hot minute-by-minute coverage of Molde 1-3 Arsenal, Braga 1-1 Leicester and Sparta Prague 1-0 Celtic, while Rob Smyth will be on hand later for Tottenham 2-0 Ludogorets and Rangers 1-1 Benfica. FIVER LETTERS “If only The Fiver had been late as usual it could have avoided the ignominy of declaring the day Maradona died to be ‘a very slow news day’” – Ian Copestake (and 1,056 others). “For all the sadness that Maradona’s death has generated, I am thankful today (Thanksgiving here in USA! USA!! USA!!!) that he played when he did. Today, a player of his luminescence and individuality wouldn’t get anywhere near the league leaders in any of the European leagues. The noughties and beyond have sadly made zeros of heroes like him. Shine on you crazy diamante, Diego!” – Justin Kavanagh. “If God really is an Englishman, Diego Maradona is going to have a nasty surprise when he gets to the Pearly Gates, isn’t he?” – Bruce G Bradley, USA! USA!! USA!!! “Instead of printing the same letter (Ian Potter) two days in a row to fill space why not just make up a letter from ‘Noble Francis’ like you usually do?” – Keiron Fulop. Send your letters to [email protected]. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Justin Kavanagh. NEWS, BITS AND BOBS The San Paolo stadium in Naples. Photograph: Alessandro Garofalo/AP There has been an outpouring of grief in Naples to Maradona’s death and on the front pages of the world’s newspapers. After the government announced new tiering measures for England on Thursday, 10 top-flight clubs – including those in London and Liverpool – will be able to welcome a limited number of fans into their grounds from next week. Newcastle are not one of those and they’ve been hit with the added complication of three positive Covid-19 tests before their trip to Selhurst Park on Friday. And clubs in Scotland still remain out of pocket from last season. STILL WANT MORE? Oh! Diego! Jonathan Wilson explains why Maradona fulfilled a prophecy, while Marcela Mora y Araujo writes about the lasting impact he has had in Argentina. From Mexico 86 to shooting journalists with an air rifle, here’s Scott Murray’s verdict on the best and worst moments of a turbulent career, and do enjoy Diego’s best bits in our bumper edition of Classic YouTube. What has happened to Anthony Martial this season? Josh Wright has the answers. David Hytner on Gareth Southgate’s new book and his determination to ignore the suggestion he should have become a travel agent. From toilets to 50cm seats, Paul MacInnes explains what clubs are doing to prepare for the return of supporters. Barney Ronay imagines a world without Gordon Taylor. Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO! THE LAST LINE MUST GO TO DIEGO

Diogo Jota tipped to leave Liverpool and "go higher" by former teammate Diogo Jota has made a stunning start to life at Liverpool after joining from Wolves in the summer but a former team-mate thinks his long-term future lies away from Anfield https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/liverpool-diogo-jota-transfer-news-23048607

Everton suffer hammer blow as Lucas Digne ruled out for two months with ankle injury The French left-back has been one of the Blues' most consistent players this season, but he is now facing a spell on the sidelines after an ankle injury in training https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/lucas-digne-ankle-injury-everton-23073141

The Napoli firesale that will alert Chelsea ahead of January transfer window https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/news/chelsea-napoli-transfers-koulibaly-mertens-19343712 The coronavirus crisis has impacted all aspects of life in 2020, and football clubs are no exception. Having to play games behind closed doors has resulted in a massive loss of match day income to all teams, and the financial effects could be devastating. Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have already announced annual losses, and they won’t be alone in doing so. However, those clubs don’t appear to have problems as grave as those which are currently facing Napoli. Gennaro Gattuso’s side are sixth in Serie A after eight rounds of matches, which is remarkably good form when you consider that the players reportedly haven’t been paid since July. That’s according to Ciro Venerato, who was speaking to Radio Goal on Kiss Kiss Napoli (which was later reported by areanapoli.it ). If this is true, and there is to be a fire sale in Naples, then there are certainly players who could be available who might be of interest to Chelsea. Kalidou Koulibaly Let’s be honest, if Kalidou Koulibaly is sold then it won’t just be the Blues who would be interested, but probably every top club across the continent. The 29-year-old is widely regarded as one of the top centre-backs in the world, probably second only to Virgil van Dijk, and would shore up any backline in need of improvements. Chelsea have improved defensively since Thiago Silva joined from Paris Saint-Germain, and while the 36-year-old may extend his one year contract, he won’t be around forever. Koulibaly could become the Blues’ new defensive lynchpin for a long term basis, and the Senegal international would be sure to be a hit in the Premier League. Dries Mertens It might seem odd to suggest that Chelsea sign a player who is 33-years-old when they have so many exciting young attacking players on their books at the moment. But there’s no harm in having a wily veteran who can make a difference in certain matches. Pedro and Willian both provided that option for the Blues in recent years but left the club in the summer, so there’s a definite vacancy at Stamford Bridge for that sort of input. And as much as Mertens is in the autumn of his career, he scored 28 league goals as recently as the 2016/17 season ( per WhoScored ). He has also made the most goal contributions for Napoli in Serie A this term, scoring three and setting up three more. The Belgian is far from finished. Hirving Lozano Mexican international Hirving ‘Chucky’ Lozano looks more than ready to make the step up to a side challenging for the title. He has scored four goals and assisted one in his first seven league appearances in 2020/21 (per WhoScored). His tally in those first seven games equals his totals on both fronts for the whole of last season. Lozano is also capable of playing on both sides of the attack and there’s no harm in adding tactically flexible players to a squad. The former PSV Eindhoven attacking midfielder is also willing to put in the hard yards defensively, so would be a valuable addition to any squad.

Napoli players wear Diego Maradona No.10 shirts in tribute to club legend prior to Europa League clash against HNK Rijeka

My Top 10 All-Time GKer

no, food shopping, went to Östermalms Saluhall

Leicester scored with the last kick of the game (Vardy) to go through

2020-21 UEFA Europa League, Group Stage Tottenham Hotspur Ludogorets Razgrad http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/europa-league-tottenham-hotspur-vs-ludogorets-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/tottenhams/

sorry was out shopping

2020-21 UEFA Europa League, Group Stage Molde Arsenal http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/europa-league-molde-vs-arsenal-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/arsenal-streams/

fuck them too!

nice, the dippers got spanked

nil 2! scouser vermin in deep trouble