Vesper

Boom Gnabry

Ekmabi hit the post lol

wow, Memphis should have scored Thiago with a horrid pass

I think this might be the game Lewandowski explodes in again

2019-20 UEFA Champions League, Semifinals Olympique Lyonnais v Bayern München http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/oll-vs-bay-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/bayern-munich/

Antonio Conte’s masterclass in tactics, tone and execution https://theathletic.com/2004691/2020/08/18/conte-first-european-final-inter-sevilla-europa-league/ Of all the medals in Antonio Conte’s collection, the oldest and perhaps most in need of a polish is from the 1993 UEFA Cup final. It was the first professional trophy he ever laid his hands on. The Juventus midfielder was 22 and serving a ban when the second leg kicked off at the Stadio delle Alpi, but the hard work had been done in Germany a fortnight before. In the first leg, he had hared around the middle of the park to help Juventus come back from 1-0 down and enter folklore as the first foreign side to win at the Westfalenstadion in almost three decades. Roberto and Dino Baggio’s away goals made any Dortmund turnaround distinctly unlikely, so rather than go in the stands with the executives, the banned Conte watched the game in the curva with the ultras instead. In the dugout for Juventus that night was Giovanni Trapattoni, back at the club for a second spell after five years calling the shots at rivals Inter. It was his success on either side of Serie A’s most bitter rivalry that gave Juve hero Conte a pass with fans when it emerged Inter were determined to appoint him last summer. As with Trapattoni, the blue-and-black half of San Siro entered into a pact with these icons of the old enemy’s dominance, on the condition they restored the club to its place at the top of the game. Trapattoni and the Germans he assembled, Lothar Matthaus and Andreas Brehme, set a record points total on the way to winning the league title in 1989 and then added the UEFA Cup in 1991. It was the first of three Inter won that decade as they reached the final four times. Now it’s Conte’s turn. Monday’s stunning 5-0 shellacking of Shakhtar Donetsk — the biggest winning margin by a Serie A side in a European semi-final since Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan discombobulated Real Madrid 31 years ago — will go down as one of the signature games in Conte’s coaching opus. It was a masterclass in tactics, tone and execution. It also represented meaningful progress on nine months ago, when Inter dazzled in Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund only to fade in the second half, returning home with nothing but regret and rancour amid Conte’s bellyaching over a lack of depth. The team picked up from where they had left off against Bayer Leverkusen last week, a marginal 2-1 win that felt like a rout. This time, the scoreline better reflected Inter’s dominance and confidence. Here was a group of players playing their 53rd game of the season as if it were their first under Conte. To watch Monday night’s semi-final was to experience again the same hope and enthusiasm generated on the opening night of his opera at La Scala del Calcio last August — a 4-0 trouncing of Lecce — when anything seemed possible. Confidence is percolating right now like a spitting, whistling moka pot. Inter have won six games on the bounce. If it wasn’t for that Kai Havertz goal for Leverkusen, which came against the run of play, they would have seven consecutive clean sheets. Romelu Lukaku has found the back of the net in each of his last 10 Europa League appearances and is a goal away from matching the great Ronaldo in having the most prolific first season of any player in Inter’s illustrious history. Watching him and his strike partner Lautaro Martinez each score a brace in the same game for the first time since October when the “LuLa” combo really began to spark served to electrify the atmosphere over Dusseldorf and made every hair on the back of Interistas’ necks stand up. The storm caused by Conte’s coruscating comments after the Atalanta game a fortnight ago appears to have passed. “By now it’s all forgotten,” said Inter’s chief executive Giuseppe Marotta shortly before kick-off on Monday. A reason for that is Conte has already obtained one of the things he dearly wanted. Steven Zhang, the club’s 29-year-old president, flew in from China last week for the first time since the pandemic hit. His absence had been flagged by Conte as an issue. Having the boss around keeps everyone, not just the players, on their toes. It’s one of those intangibles Juventus draw strength from in the regular presence of Andrea Agnelli and, crucially, also means the coach has direct access to the club’s principal, allowing him to share what’s on his mind and affect the change he wants to see. Publicly Conte has cut an altogether different figure from the irascible malcontent we saw at the end of the Serie A season. “I am not a ‘political’ person,” he said, as honest and unrepentant as ever on Monday night. “It can happen that I say what’s on my mind.” But the tactfulness with which he has walked back from overstepping the line has been appreciated. Conte seems more serene. Perhaps it can be ascribed to getting out of Milan, away from the insufferable tension of the Italian game or maybe we should put it down to Conte knowing he has only strengthened his hand in the interim. The smiles are coming easier, his pale blue eyes are glinting again and the video of him joining in the team’s rondos has successfully left the impression Conte is enjoying his work more than ever. “It’s good to see,” Ashley Young said. “It’s nice when we keep him in the middle, keep him running about, so then he doesn’t shout as much after training.” Young has formed part of a Europa League-winning squad before and he’s one of the few players in the team, along with Victor Moses and Diego Godin, to be able to count on experience at this stage of continental competition. A lot of Conte’s pride in the afterglow of Monday’s “manita” came from the knowledge that this is new territory and therefore a breakthrough for much of the squad. The Italians on the team, some younger than others (Nicolo Barella is 23 and Alessandro Bastoni is 21), remind Conte of the kid he was in 1993. Roberto Gagliardini and Martinez weren’t first-team regulars last season and 10 of the 16 players used in Dusseldorf have either joined in the last year, returned from loans elsewhere or, as with Sebastiano Esposito, risen through the academy. For players such as the captain Samir Handanovic, Danilo D’Ambrosio and deep-lying playmaker Marcelo Brozovic, this is the kind of occasion they’ve been aiming towards for a long time. Inter’s last final of any sort was nine years ago — the swansong of the hallowed treble winners — and the lament after July’s undeserved exit at the semi-final stage of the Coppa Italia was tinged with the fear that such a restorative and promising season threatened to end like all the others since 2011. Friday’s final against Sevilla changes that and makes the progress Conte has brought about over the last 14 months more tangible than it otherwise might have been. He deserves kudos for that alone and for ending Serie A’s 21-year wait for a finalist in this competition — an aeon for a league whose teams reached nine finals in the 1990s, four of which were all-Italian affairs. Conte managed to play in a couple of them. Now he gets to coach one. He has come full circle.

How Romelu Lukaku is ‘doing something extraordinary’ at Inter Milan https://theathletic.com/1998380/2020/08/16/romelu-lukaku-inter-milan-europa-league/ We all know how much defenders struggle to move Romelu Lukaku off the ball. La Gazzetta dello Sport can’t shift him from the front page at the moment either. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday the Inter striker was the newspaper’s cover story and, no doubt sensing he’d stolen all the ‘Luka-King’ headlines again with goal number 31 of the season against Bayer Leverkusen, the Belgian, magnanimous as ever, wanted to ensure one of his team-mates got the recognition he felt he deserved. In flawless Italian, Lukaku told Sky Italia, “For me, (Inter midfielder) Nicolo Barella was the Man of the Match. The way he’s been playing in recent weeks, he’s just been getting better and better.” It isn’t the first time Lukaku’s generosity of spirit has come to the fore. One of the most memorable moments of Inter’s year was in December when Lukaku relinquished his duty as the team’s designated penalty taker to give 17-year-old Sebastiano Esposito the chance to score his first goal in professional football. The Neapolitan playmaker seized it with both hands and became the club’s second-youngest scorer of all-time behind the late Mario Corso. His celebration, a red-faced tearful hug with his mother, won’t be forgotten for a long time. Had Lukaku shown a selfish streak and put the penalty away himself, he would likely have ended up with his first hat-trick in Italian football but some things are more important. Inter coach Antonio Conte appreciated the gesture, although the former Italy manager wasn’t so pleased when Lukaku tried to help his strike partner Lautaro Martinez out of a goal drought in July by doing the same thing — only for the out-of-sorts Argentinian to miss from the spot. If Martinez had scored, the game would probably have been over. Instead, the 10 men of Bologna came back from behind to win and Conte was furious. Overall though, Lukaku’s leadership qualities have vindicated the irascible persistence with which Conte pursued him a year ago almost as much as the goals. “Only I know what I went through to get him here,” Conte said. “Trust me when I say that. It was not a walk in the park.” Inter smashed their transfer record to sign him, but months of hard work would have gone up in smoke had Paulo Dybala agreed to join Manchester United rather than stay put in Turin. The Athletic understands Juventus had the framework of a deal in place to swap the two of them. Prestige competition for Lukaku’s signature meant Inter still had to pay full whack: €65 million (£59 million) with another €10 million (£9 million) to come in performance-related add-ons. Lukaku’s intention was always to join Inter but, as Conte indicated, there was the risk the clubs wouldn’t be able to reach an agreement. In the end, the one they shook hands on was worth it. Where do we start with Lukaku’s numbers? The former Anderlecht striker is on course to match or even surpass Ronaldo, whose 1997-98 debut season was the most prolific of any player in Inter history with 34 goals across all competitions. That campaign ended with victory in the UEFA Cup final — which is a good enough excuse to re-watch the Brazilian’s mesmerising footwork that night at the Parc des Princes. “It was the first final I ever saw,” Lukaku told another former Inter striker and the player he’s compared to most in Italy — ‘The Emperor’ Adriano, a hero of his childhood. Lukaku’s first season could yet end the same way as O Fenomeno’s all those years ago. Against Getafe, he equalled Alan Shearer’s record by scoring in eight consecutive Europa League/UEFA Cup games. Against Leverkusen, he broke it — and he might well have broken poor Edmond Tapsoba too. How to describe Lukaku’s performance against one of the game’s brightest up-and-coming centre-backs? It called to mind a few of the scenes from The Last Dance when Michael Jordan hears an opponent slight him and says, “And I took that personally.” Lukaku has played with that kind of drive all season. “He has been on a mission,” his brother Jordan tells The Athletic. Hasn’t he just? It would perhaps be an exaggeration to say Lukaku had a point to prove after last season at Manchester United. “One bad year can happen to anybody in their career,” he told his good friend and former Arsenal striker Ian Wright over lockdown. But Lukaku evidently felt he needed to correct some misconceptions. While on tour with United in Australia last summer, he posted performance data from a training session showing he was the second-fastest player on the team behind Diogo Dalot, a reminder that people should maybe think twice before calling him a slouch. A selfie of his chiselled physique — “not bad for a fat boy” — then followed in the wake of stories he was overweight. The critics haven’t entirely lost their voice but finding the net on your Serie A debut, doing the same in successive Milan derbies and scoring 70 per cent of your league goals in away matches will go some way to keeping them quiet. “Watching Lukaku at the moment… He’s a top player, but he was already a top player at Everton and Man United, so it’s nothing surprising,” Sassuolo winger and former Chelsea team-mate Jeremie Boga tells The Athletic. “I think Conte’s style suits him perfectly.” Lukaku’s time at Old Trafford was split between being used front on his own (55 per cent of minutes played), playing in a two (21 per cent) or as part of an attacking trio (24 per cent). At Inter, he’s spent 98 per cent of his time alongside either Martinez or Alexis Sanchez. Playing more time in a single formation — Conte’s trademark 3-5-2 — has meant less disruption, and the results have been excellent. What has emerged is one of Europe’s most dangerous strike partnerships, as the “LuLa” double act with Martinez has racked up 50 goals this season. How does it work? Well, Lukaku doesn’t pressure all that much off the ball. Of all players in Serie A this season, only Andrea Petagna presses less, and it’s marginal — 7.29 pressures per 90 minutes for Petagna, 7.31 for Lukaku. Even Zlatan Ibrahimovic (7.9) is doing more pressing off the ball. That’s quite the drop-off from Lukaku’s time at United, where last season he was applying pressure to opponents 14.7 times per 90 minutes. If these figures fall below what you expect from a striker in a system as intense as Conte’s, it isn’t for a lack of fitness or desire. Sources tell The Athletic that Conte wants his players to clock up 11km (almost seven miles) on their activity belts in training, even on light days, and Lukaku is as lean as ever thanks to meal plans drawn up by nutritionist Matteo Pincella. Instead, there are tactical reasons for Lukaku’s low pressing numbers. Martinez applies the pressure and uses his energy to hassle from the front. Eighteen pressures per 90 puts him in the 70th percentile for all strikers, similar to the likes of Genoa’s Andrea Pinamonti and, tellingly, his Inter back-up Sanchez in his small sample of minutes. His role is slightly more pivoted towards doing the defensive work — as noted by his pressure figures, as well as tackles and interception statistics, which sit above Lukaku’s lower numbers. Although both are elite at getting touches in the box, Lukaku is better at holding the ball up and not turning it over (look at the “turnovers” spike below), involving himself in the build-up to goals (“open play passes”) and also creating chances for team-mates (“open play xG assisted”). “He’s a really good crosser,” his brother Jordan, a defender with Serie A rivals Lazio, says. The epitome of that came in Prague in November’s Champions League group game, when Lukaku played a delightful pass with the outside of his left foot for Martinez to volley home. His expected assist numbers sit above his actual assists, meaning that if it weren’t for poor finishing from team-mates, he would have at least double the two assists he’s registered in the league. Lukaku has also been key in the meticulously choreographed build-up schemes Conte designs to draw opponents in, then beat the press and release his strikers to play against unsettled defences. For those kinds of situations, it helps that Lukaku can score all kinds of goals. He has always been a versatile finisher, capable of shooting with both feet while also being decent with his headed chances too. That’s the same at Inter. See his shot maps below. The first is his left foot and is peppered with efforts from all over. Next is all of his right-footed shots, where he’s aiming for the bottom right-hand corner. And finally, with his head, right from the middle of the box. Put the ball where Lukaku wants it, though, or he’ll let you know about it. “Victor! Fucking hell!” he shouted, when the right pass didn’t arrive from Victor Moses away to Parma in June. The naturalness with which he cursed Cristiano Biraghi in Italian after a similar situation showed off his growing vocabulary too. “He puts you under pressure,” Jordan says. “But it’s OK.” This is the mindset Conte wants. Too often this season, he has lamented the lack of a truly ruthless edge at Inter — a murderous bloodlust to kill games. Lukaku was guilty of missing a couple of chances in the December defeat to Barcelona that relegated Inter from the Champions League to the Europa League and there are other opportunities he wishes he could have back. But that’s a striker’s life. The manager’s personality radiates off Lukaku perhaps more than anyone else on the team. Conte dearly wanted him and sometimes everything else is immaterial. That’s what a player needs most — to be wanted. When the Mister singled him out in a video analysis session after the underwhelming 1-1 group-stage draw at home to Slavia Prague in mid-September, he took it how it was intended — as motivation to improve. The mentality it has forged is there for everyone to see in Lukaku’s reactions to those wayward crosses from Moses and Biraghi. He believes, as Conte does, that it raises standards and makes players better. The aim is to lift everyone around him. The last week has demonstrated that even Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo cannot win matches on their own — or at least, not as easily as they once could. Football remains a team game and the right cast is essential to any Oscar-winning performance. “Romelu is doing something extraordinary,” Conte said in Dusseldorf ahead of Monday’s Europa League semi-final against Shakhtar Donetsk. “But he is supported by the team. I’m happy for him because he deserves it, but he has to thank the team for putting him in a position to express himself in a way he has never expressed himself in the past.” Lukaku has never been better.

‘Sevilla became addicted to success in Europe after 2006 UEFA Cup’ https://theathletic.com/1996174/2020/08/16/sevilla-uefa-cup-europa-league/ “It was such a big moment,” former Sevilla goalkeeper Andres Palop tells The Athletic of the club’s UEFA Cup victory in 2006. The Spanish side were not big favourites for that final against a Middlesbrough team led by the soon to be England manager Steve McClaren, and captained by a future one in Gareth Southgate, but they completely dominated and won 4-0. “Sevilla had gone 60 years without winning a trophy, not having a title to celebrate,” Palop says. “It was a critical moment for the club, the club’s centenary year, and the previous season (city rivals Real) Betis had won the Copa del Rey. To be able to win the UEFA Cup was huge. It relaunched the club, it was like a rebirth. For many players in the squad, it was our first experience participating in a victory like that, on a European level. It filled us with life, with enthusiasm and with character to go on and win more. We became addicted to playing finals, and wanted to have more of those incredible experiences.” Sevilla were one of the biggest clubs during Spanish football’s formative years, winning the 1945-46 Liga title and three Copas del Rey between 1935 and 1948, but their only other trophies over the next five decades were the 1968-69 and 2000-01 Segunda Division titles. When Palop joined the club from Valencia in summer 2004, they were not even the biggest club in their own city. After ending the long wait for any senior trophy with a European title, the “reborn” team quickly set about changing all that. The following season, Palop played a crucial role as they retained the UEFA Cup, scoring a 93rd-minute headed equaliser at Shakhtar Donetsk to keep them in the competition in the round of 16. The final was against La Liga rivals Espanyol in Glasgow, and the keeper saved three penalties in the shoot-out to secure victory. “You started to get the feeling that this competition could be something sensational for Sevilla,” Palop says. “There was my goal so we could get through the quarter-finals. Years later there was also (Stephane) Mbia’s goal in the last minute, against Valencia, to put Sevilla into another final (2014). There is an aura that is around this competition, for Sevilla, which makes it special. It seems they go hand in hand, and the UEFA Cup or Europa League brings good fortune for Sevilla.” Palop moved on, and the competition changed its name to the Europa League, but Sevilla came again. They beat Benfica on penalties in the 2014 final, a year later came from behind to beat Dnipro 3-2, and in the 2016 decider again fought back after conceding first, this time to defeat Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Many players have come and gone over that time — with the likes of Dani Alves, Freddie Kanoute and Ivan Rakitic passing through the Estadio Sanchez Pizjuan — but the remarkable relationship with the competition has remained. Nine of the starting XI which overcame both Roma and Wolverhampton Wanderers to get to this season’s semi-finals, where they play Manchester United at the Stadion Koln on Sunday evening, were recruited just last summer by the club’s iconic sporting director Monchi. “Monchi is the keystone of this project, of this club,” Palop says. “He is the person who knows best of all what Sevilla football club means. Apart from doing his work magnificently in the offices, he also connects very well with the players, with the team. When a player arrives at the club, there is an environment, a project, you are shown what Sevilla means. Monchi has great respect, so much experience, and everything he says to the players has a huge weight.” A link back to the first run of wins is veteran Jesus Navas, who played in both the 2006 and 2007 finals as a young winger, and returned after four years at Manchester City to be converted into a right-back and become Seville’s all-time record appearance maker. “Navas is the symbol of pure Sevillismo,” Palop says. “He has also adapted very well to what was required. He is already in the history of this club, and will be there forever.” Palop believes there is a straight connection between Julen Lopetegui’s no-nonsense current side and those coached by Juande Ramos, who won back-to-back trophies, and Unai Emery when they won a historic three in a row. “Sevilla have had some moments when their identity has changed, tried to evolve a bit in other directions, other ways of playing,” says Palop, who has recently had senior coaching jobs at Segunda B sides Alcoyano and Ibiza. “And it has not worked. The club has a special character, its own quirks. When Sevilla have been decisive, it has been when they have played as they have this season: attractive attacking play, a connection between the players, but also with a lot of commitment and humility. “Everybody around the club feels identified with that, and the players are enjoying it. The players who arrive here know they can achieve their potential if they all work together, for each other.” Five times Sevilla have made it to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup/Europa League, and each year they have gone on to win the trophy. They also won the Copa del Rey in 2007 and 2010, the European Super Cup in 2006 and Spanish Supercopa in 2007, all with Palop between the posts. They have regularly qualified for the Champions League, but things have not gone nearly as well in Europe’s elite competition. Back in Palop’s time, they exited to Fenerbahce and CSKA Moscow in the round of 16, then Braga in the qualifying round in 2010-11. More recently, they have been knocked out at the group stages (2015-16) and by Leicester City in the round of 16 (2016-17). In 2017-18, their most recent Champions League campaign, they beat Manchester United for their first knockout victory since 1957-58, but fell to Bayern Munich in the quarters. “The experience in the two competitions has been different,” says Palop. “In the Europa League, Sevilla have been able to overcome very big clubs which could easily have been in the Champions League. They have less experience in the Champions League and have shown it a lot of respect, but without having that fearlessness. “It is about overcoming hurdles, situations where the team can keep advancing. If the team can make a semi-final or final of the Champions League, then they can take another leap forward, and live moments like they have in the Europa League.” A surprise hero against Wolves was goalkeeper Bono, a Montreal-born Morocco international who is on loan at Sevilla for 2019-20 from Segunda Division side Girona. An injury to first-choice Tomas Vaclik late in the Liga season gave Bono a chance, and he wrote his place in the club’s European history by saving a penalty from his former Atletico Madrid team-mate Raul Jimenez early in the game. “The penalty saved by Bono was the most critical moment,” Palop says. “Before that moment, Wolves were causing danger on the counter. Afterwards Sevilla were in control, I always believed they would find a goal and win the game. Then, just when we thought we were heading for extra time, came that cross from Ever Banega, and the header from Lucas Ocampos for 1-0. “Bono has had a difficult year but now he has a lot to win, and little to lose. Saving the penalty will give him lots of confidence for the games to come. There are moments in a competition when you can do something which will be remembered. If Sevilla win this trophy, saving that penalty will go down as a key moment, and Bono will always have that.” By any rational reckoning, United should be favourites against Sevilla, given the English club’s annual budget is about five times that of the Andalusians’. But Lopetegui’s side go into Sunday’s game unbeaten in 19 games across all competitions, the best run in the club’s entire history. Bono has kept five straight clean sheets. And, well, this is their competition. “If you stop to think, this could be one of the most important Europa Leagues they have won,” says Palop, who grew increasingly confident of Sevilla’s chances over the course of the phone conversation with The Athletic. “They have knocked out Roma, could beat Manchester United, and then in the final, maybe Inter Milan. That would be something huge for all Sevillismo. Everyone is so excited about that possibility, all the current and former players. We all really love the club, and are connected to it still, hoping they can win the trophy again.”

‘Out of this world’ Upamecano is the centre-back wanted by all of Europe https://theathletic.com/1991480/2020/08/14/upamecano-leipzig-atletico-champions-league-nagelsmann/ There was a moment, maybe 20 minutes from the end of the game, when two members of the RB Leipzig staff turned to each other and let out two expletives in almost perfect synchronicity. Dayot Upamecano had just won another duel in ice-cool fashion, gliding forward with the ball. They had seen the young French centre-back play with such authority and control in countless games before and yet couldn’t quite believe just how flawless his performance was on Thursday night. “With Upa, there are sometimes one or two moments when he loses focus, which is very normal for a 21-year-old,” one of Thursday night’s observers in the Estadio Jose Alavalade tells The Athletic. “But against Atletico, he was out of this world. The consistency and calmness he showed against one of the best sides in Europe was just phenomenal.” Ralf Rangnick, watching his former side’s 2-1 win on TV at his home in Leipzig, was less taken aback by Upamecano’s man of the match performance. “I’m only surprised that people didn’t already know how good he was before the game,” the 62-year-old says with mild disdain for the doubters. “He’s one of the best talents in the centre-back position in the world. That’s clear to see. It’s funny how some were saying that he had only done it in the Bundesliga and was still missing certain elements. There’s nothing at all missing, take it from me. Just have a look at how many 21-year-olds have featured in as many games for their clubs in a top league.” Since moving to Germany from Leipzig’s feeder club RB Salzburg in 2017, Upamecano has played 83 times in the league and 22 times in European competition. Rangnick believes that his potential is limitless: “He’s not even at his peak yet.” In a press conference earlier this week, Upamecano was careful to thank Rangnick for the role the former sporting director of the Red Bull football group had played in fostering his career. “It’s a shame we can’t work together anymore, I owe him a lot,” he told reporters. Rangnick had first spotted him playing for Valenciennes and in French youth sides aged 15. “You could immediately see his outstanding physical attributes and his pace, both over short and long distances,” Rangnick says. “But he also had very good positional sense and technique. He was exactly the kind of player we were looking for.” Rangnick travelled to Paris to meet with Upamecano’s parents, immigrants from Guinea-Bissau who lived in the small town of Evreux, Normandy, and had instilled a strong work ethic in their son. Upamecano models himself on Sergio Ramos — minus the beard — but does not share his hero’s flair for extravagance. “He, like his parents, is totally down to earth, the kind of guy who’s very close to his siblings and parents,” Ragnnick says. “He wouldn’t dream of ordering a gold steak in a restaurant or have his hairdresser flown in before a match. He’s a lovely, quiet lad, almost shy. There’s nothing negative about him.” Barcelona winger Ousmane Dembele is a close childhood friend from Evreux but it’s very much a case of “opposites attract”, a source close to the Leipzig dressing room explains. Still, signing him was not that straightforward for Rangnick. Manchester United were also keen on the player but, according to those close to the player, a deal was unlikely in part because Upamecano was not promised enough flights home to see his parents. His family were also concerned by the unclear path into the first team. Rangnick, by contrast, was able to draw upon the vertically-integrated RB system and could lay out a clearly defined progression blueprint that others such as Naby Keita had followed. Upamecano would start playing senior football immediately, at Salzburg’s little sister club Liefering in the Austrian second division, before honing his skills at Salzburg ahead of a possible move to Leipzig. Upamecano flew in for a trial at Salzburg in the summer of 2015, aged 16. Bayern Munich, one of the many European clubs that coveted his signature, weren’t prepared to give up just yet, however. An agent working with the German champions approached the Frenchman’s family upon their landing at Munich airport, to convince them to look at Bayern instead. But they said no. Salzburg signed him for €2.2 million. Following this successful apprenticeship at Liefering and Salzburg, he agreed to move to Leipzig in 2017. Legend has it that he made a lasting impression on Timo Werner and coach Ralph Hasenhuttl in his first training session. The fleet-footed forward had made a habit of dashing past defenders but was shocked to find that he couldn’t outrun the new arrival. “What’s wrong with you, Timo?” Hasenhuttl laughed on the touchline. They soon realised that there was nothing wrong with Werner but a lot right with Upamecano. His superb pace and anticipation made him a regular in his first campaign, just as Rangnick had laid out in his talks with the family. “He would have never joined Leipzig if he hadn’t been assured of game time, he’s not one of those players who get distracted by money and so on,” he says. “Playing and growing are his main concerns, and I don’t think he regrets his choice. At Leipzig, young players play. When in doubt, they have a bigger chance of playing than a similar player who is older, not the other way around.” “Everyone hates playing against him in training,” a club official laughs. Forward Yussuf Poulsen told Kicker magazine that he’s found it impossible to outmuscle Upamecano in practice sessions. “I’m relatively tall, quite physical and strong. But I can’t move him, not even two centimetres.” The question is whether other clubs can dislodge him from Saxony using more refined measures. Leipzig were convinced enough of his extraordinary talent to include staggered release clauses in his initial contract, dated until 2021. In 2018, he would have been able to leave for €100 million, one year later for €80 million, this summer for €60 million. Arsenal made a firm enquiry last season but didn’t come anywhere near the release clause. Bayern, too, were interested this spring but ultimately went for Paris Saint-Germain’s Tanguy Nianzou on a free transfer — the very teenager Leipzig had earmarked as a potential Upamecano replacement. Two weeks ago, Leipzig announced that the player’s contract had been extended until 2023. The new terms include a sizeable wage rise and a relatively modest release clause, which will only become active in 2021. There’s nothing to stop him leaving this summer, in theory, if a buyer can agree on a fee with Leipzig. But the Champions League semi-finalists fully expect him to stay for at least one more campaign after renewing his commitment. “It will be a quiet window, as far he’s concerned,” a source at the club says. Rangnick has a hard time understanding why Upamecano is yet to feature for the France senior team but maybe Didier Deschamps will finally be won over by his performances in Lisbon this month. Another masterclass like the one administered against Atletico in the meeting with PSG will surely see the hype train take up much more speed. However, his former coach is certain that Upamecano won’t lose his footing as a result. “Whoever will eventually sign him should count their lucky stars,” Rangnick says. “Upa will choose his next club just as diligently as he defends the goal.”

Nagelsmann, Tuchel and the German coaching prodigies dominating football https://theathletic.com/1998358/2020/08/18/nagelsmann-tuchel-german-managers-champions-league-semi-finals-leipzig-psg-bayern/ It only took Julian Nagelsmann 30 minutes to drive from Augsburg to the small town of Gersthofen in January 2008 but it would be the journey that changed his life. Nagelsmann, 20, was playing as a cultured centre-back for Augsburg’s reserve team in the Landesliga Sud (sixth division) at the time but to be more accurate: he wasn’t playing. A botched knee operation had left him unable to cope on the pitch. His coach Thomas Tuchel, a young managerial prodigy who had himself been an Augsburg player in his youth and had seen his career curtailed by persistent injuries, decided to use Nagelsmann’s apparent talent to read a game in a different way. “He suggested I go and scout an opposition team,” the RB Leipzig coach recalled in a biography of Tuchel by Daniel Meuren and Tobias Schachter. A nervous Nagelsmann set off to watch TSV Gersthofen with his then-girlfriend, now wife. “It was funny. She was filming the match on a small video camera and I was taking notes. Scraps of paper, a pen and a video camera — that was it. It had no resemblance to the way video analysis is conducted today.” Nagelsmann came back with a lengthy dossier, unsure if he had fulfilled Tuchel’s brief. But Tuchel was impressed with the way the player had detailed TSV’s movement with and without the ball. Nagelsmann soon retired from active duties to be appointed the official opposition scout and part of Augsburg reserves’ coaching staff. “Thomas told me I should try becoming a coach in case I couldn’t play anymore,” Nagelsmann said. “He had a feeling that I might be talented, due to the way I thought and spoke (about the game). He said I should definitely give it a go.” However, in an interview with DAZN on Monday, Tuchel refused to take credit for discovering Nagelsmann’s abilities off the pitch. It was more of a happy accident, born out of economic necessity. “Julian was always injured,” he said. “I would have preferred him to play. Our budget was so small that we told him: ‘You can’t just be injured all the time here. You have to scout opponents’. The reports that came back were remarkable for a young man. He put a lot of work into it. But he went on to have this impressive career path all by himself.” Neither man had any idea that they would meet 12 and a half years later in the semi-final of the Champions League. Tuchel’s version of the Nagelsmann origin story is very generous towards his opponent but only partially true. First, Tuchel’s extremely sophisticated coaching methods had opened Nagelsmann’s eyes to aspects of the game he had never considered before. Some of the sessions were based on the principle of “differential learning”, the intentional over-complication of processes and tasks with a view of making the actual playing of the game both easier and more purposeful. At Borussia Dortmund a few years later, Tuchel told his players to control the ball with their knee before every pass. He made defenders train with tennis balls in their hands to stop them from holding on to strikers. In training, his team would play on pitches with the corner-flag section of the pitch cut away, forcing his players to move diagonally towards goal. Nagelsmann said Tuchel’s sophisticated practice regime often left him so drained that he fell asleep on the train home from Augsburg to Munich, where he lived at the time. Tuchel also had an important hand in helping his apprentice move beyond scouting duties at Landesliga level a few months later. He tipped off Nagelsmann that TSV 1860 Munich were looking for a new under-17s coach. Nagelsmann got the job in the summer of 2008. But most importantly, Tuchel broke the managerial mould in Germany. Without his success at Mainz one year later, Nagelsmann’s stellar ascent to the top of the Bundesliga might have never happened. Mainz had appointed Tuchel, then 34, as their under-19s coach for the 2008-09 season. He led a team that featured future Premier League players Jan Kirchhoff and Andre Schurrle to the club’s first (and only) under-19s championship, playing breathtaking combination football. The seniors were also doing well that season. One year after Jurgen Klopp had tried and failed to lift them back to the first division, they won promotion under Jorn Andersen. But Andersen fell out with some of the players and the club leadership to such an extent that he became the first coach to ever be dismissed in early August, before the Bundesliga had even started. Mainz’s general manager Christian Heidel, the man who had controversially put the ageing defender Klopp in charge eight years earlier, had another one of his crackpot ideas: he promoted Tuchel to head coach. “People thought we were totally mad,” Heidel told this writer years later. “Tuchel was a nobody: a youth coach without any professional playing background.” Klopp’s miraculous work at Mainz — despite their relegation in 2007, he had taken them to the Bundesliga for the first time and galvanised the whole city to become passionate for football — had taught him that experience was vastly overrated. “The idea of a good coach, at the time, was an ex-footballer who had been on the carousel 10 or 15 years, getting hired and fired every other year,” Heidel said. “Those who didn’t have the right name never got a look in.” At 35, Tuchel was barely a couple of years older than the players he was suddenly excepted to lead into a tough battle against the drop. With his side-parting and penchant for roll necks, he looked like a student. But any concerns about a lack of authority dissipated after his first team talk. “He only spoke for a few minutes but his charisma and knowledge shone through,” Heidel said. Some of the regular visitors at the team’s open training sessions joked that Tuchel’s passing drills reminded them of “youth football” but his attention to detail soon had the team playing some fantastically exciting attacking football. “He understood the game deeply and had the ability to communicate his vision effectively,” Heidel said. “We reached a level we had never seen at this club before.” In his five years in charge, Tuchel took Mainz to the Europa League and amassed more points than any club apart from the “big four” of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Schalke, and they did so with a minuscule budget compared to those teams. Tuchel’s superb record at Mainz undoubtedly encouraged Hoffenheim to go down a similar route when they moved youth coach Nagelsmann up to the seniors in early 2016. Local paper Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung dismissed the appointment of the Bundesliga’s youngest full-time manager (28 years old) as a “public relations stunt” but were quickly forced to recant as Nagelsmann saved Hoffenheim from relegation and then led them to Europa League and Champions League in quick succession. Master and former apprentice are no longer close. There has been no falling out and relations remain cordial but they’re not friends. A source close to Nagelsmann suspects that football aside, they’re simply too different as people. While Nagelsmann comes across as jovial and easy-going, Tuchel can appear withdrawn and obsessive, just like his managerial idol Pep Guardiola. Markus Krapf, the Augsburg chief executive who hired Tuchel in 2005, says these categorisations are far too broad, however. “I remember Thomas as a really engaging, funny guy who could tell wonderful stories about his own short football career,” he tells The Athletic on the phone in the sports bar he now runs. “As far as the human side is concerned, I can only tell you very good things.” Nagelsmann is yet to win a competitive game against his former mentor. That might change on Tuesday night in Lisbon. Irrespective of the outcome of this gigantic tussle of managerial wits, it will rightly be seen as a small triumph of the German model, a system that values knowledge, empathy and the ability to help players perform beyond personal experience and status. It is true that not every promotion of a youth coach has worked quite as well as Tuchel and Nagelsmann have done in the Bundesliga. But it’s no longer seen as particularly noteworthy if clubs put their under-19s coaches in charge of the first team — especially those sides who have limited financial resources. They will now aim to take on youth coaches with a view to grooming them as first-team coaches rather than pick a big name from the carousel whenever an opening arises. It’s seen as good business practice. Hansi Flick, a former Bayern Munich player in the 1980s who now finds himself leading them in the Champions League semi-final against Lyon, doesn’t quite fit into the same category but he epitomises the idea that ability is a more relevant criterion than public profile. He had not been in charge of a first team before taking over from Niko Kovac last year but had been assistant to Joachim Low when Germany won the World Cup in 2014. On top of that, as a former sporting director at Hoffenheim during Nagelsmann’s time there and the German FA, Flick has been part of a meritocratic network of coaches and administrators that have shared ideas and helped each other hone their theories to the point that they have begun to take over the world of football. Tuchel was heavily influenced by Ralf Rangnick during the maverick coach’s tenure at second division SSV Ulm in the late 1990s and it was Rangnick who hired Nagelsmann as his own successor at Leipzig last year. Rangnick’s school of thought — football based on pressing and counter-pressing — has spawned successful coaches such as Ralph Hasenhuttl (Southampton), Roger Schmidt (PSV) and Marco Rose (Borussia Monchengladbach), who have all succeeded as relative no-names. Nagelsmann and Tuchel have come closest to perfecting the blueprint by adding intricate elements of position and possession football to it. Klopp, too, is part of this conversation. The Liverpool manager won’t make it to the final on Sunday but he’ll recognise at least one of the participants as someone who’s undergone a similar managerial journey to him: from provincial obscurity to the very top.

‘Radio Muller’ led Bayern to an 8-2 win by 16 Mullers playing Muller football https://theathletic.com/1996418/2020/08/15/thomas-muller-bayern-munich-champions-league/ 8-2 is the sort of scoreline you get in the first round of the DFB Pokal, in which Bundesliga teams often face amateur sides in rickety grounds with Portakabins for dressing rooms. Yet this was a Champions League quarter-final. Against Barcelona. A win for the ages, sublime, surreal, stupefying. UEFA’s man of the match Thomas Muller professed himself “still out of breath” from this historic demolition job during the post-match interviews but the 30-year-old quickly gathered his thoughts to explain what he had most enjoyed. It wasn’t his two goals or “the brutal dominance” that surpassed Germany’s 7-1 win over Brazil in 2014 in his estimation. It wasn’t even the notion that this result would send shockwaves of angst to the handful of possible contenders standing in the wake of Bayern’s sixth European Cup win. No, the thing that pleased Muller most was something that few observers would have noticed on Friday night. “The nicest thing of all,” he said, “was to see players who get on (as substitutes) having the same impact, the same joy, the same work ethic (as the starters).” The man of the match trophy thus belonged to the whole squad, not him, he added. Muller’s praise for Bayern’s collective endeavour points to the culture of togetherness that Hansi Flick has bred since he was appointed caretaker and then head coach in November 2019. Getting total “buy-in” from squad players and occasional starters has been one of Flick’s main achievements this campaign. A testament to his assured human touch. But that’s only half the story, the part that Muller wasn’t too humble to mention explicitly. In his admiration for the substitutes’ commitment, he was really speaking about the qualities that have made him such an exceptionally effective player over the last decade. Untiring, relentless and incredibly smart, this Bayern side followed his lead up front to take a wrecking ball to Barca’s shaky foundations and provoke the biggest collapse ever seen at this level of elite club football. It was a win won by 16 Mullers, playing Muller football, harrying and harassing the opposition high up until they fell apart. The similarity between the team and the man whose identity they channelled like never before went so far that many seasoned commentators wondered if… Bayern had actually been all that good? The very same question has been asked of Muller since he first burst onto the scene in 2009. Thin, ungainly, unflashy to the point of looking entirely ordinary, he’s the anti-superstar in the age of nutmegs memes and YouTube compilations. Millions of football fans who don’t support Bayern or Germany are still unsure of what he does and how he does it — other than that it’s invariably right. Friday night’s match was the fifth time Bayern have scored eight or more goals in a league or European game this century. The only Bayern player involved in all those routs (8-1 v St Pauli and then 9-2, 8-0 and 8-0 against Hamburger SV) — guess who? — was Thomas Muller, triggering Bayern’s ball-hunting pack from his preferred shadow striker position. Looking back on this decade of unabated Bayern domestic dominance and their international renaissance, football historians will find that it was based on the introduction of possession/position principles under Louis van Gaal, expensive star players bought with new-found riches and a precision pressing game underpinned by the legs and brains of Muller, a man born to run who has come to run the entire team. The 2013 Champions League winners were the side of fellow Bavarians Bastian Schweinsteiger and Philipp Lahm. In 2020, Muller is the last locally-born hero standing, determined to infuse his side with the club’s unforgiving “we have to be the best” ethos. Having joined the club as a 10-year-old, Muller is winning mentality incarnate. “It’s only acceptable to be No 1 at Bayern,” he told this writer a few years ago. “It’s always been like that here. I’m used to it and it’s normal for me. I’m a very competitive guy anyway. I’ve never jumped for joy coming second.” Muller grew up between two lakes in rural Bavaria, a hardcore Bayern fan who found seeing his club win the Champions League in 2001 aged 10 much more exciting than lifting the trophy and the World Cup himself as a player. Bayern is German for Bavaria, and the way he explains it, the character traits of the population and the club are overlapping. Others might consider it arrogance, but he describes “Bavarian-ness” as a feeling of strong self-confidence and deep inner happiness. “The typical Bavarian in his lederhosen is not at all ashamed to wear a piece of clothing that looks funny to the rest of the world. He feels comfortable in it, comfortable with himself. He knows where he’s from, he knows where he belongs. And he projects that to the rest of the world as well.” One of the many things Niko Kovac got wrong was to underestimate Muller’s importance, both as a leader in the dressing room and on the pitch. In the Croat’s deeper set-up without active pressing, Muller was seen as superfluous, not quick enough to play on the break, not cultured enough to circulate the ball in tight spaces. He considered Muller a mere “emergency back-up” for striker Robert Lewandowski. It’s telling that Bayern reached one of their lowest points in the last 10 years without him, disintegrating completely in their 3-1 home defeat against Liverpool last season. Muller had been suspended for a dangerous, badly mistimed tackle on Ajax’s Nicolas Tagliafico in the group stage, but Kovac probably wouldn’t have picked him anyway as he had settled upon a reactive 4-3-3 system that left no natural space for him. Muller came close to leaving the club in the wake of his marginalisation but then Flick reinstated him as the key player for Bayern’s high-line, high-tempo forward movement. It was Muller who screamed at his team-mates to press Chelsea’s build-up in the 85th minute of the first leg at Stamford Bridge. Bayern were 3-0 up at the time but he wouldn’t let the team relax. They have won every game in the Champions League since that Liverpool defeat, scoring 39 goals in nine games. It’s perhaps no coincidence that this Muller-fuelled side has looked particularly muscular since the restart, winning every one of their 13 games in all competitions. Without supporters, some sides have found it hard to generate the levels of energy and inspiration required to play their very best. But that hasn’t been an issue for Bayern at all. Executive chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge suspects that’s down to the strong prevalence of intrinsic motivation within the squad. The players have reportedly worked incredibly hard in training during the COVID-19 suspension and carried that attitude into the games. On top of that, they’re expertly self-coached. One of the sole benefits of football without crowds is the ability to listen in on the shouts and instructions, and the first thing you understand is that the “Radio Muller” nickname is well-earned. Seeing what he does, in particular, can be tricky to the untrained eye, but at least you can now hear it. He doesn’t stop talking to his team-mates, constantly firing them up, and sets the tempo and direction of the play. Before a midfielder collects the ball, Muller will have already told him where to play it next. He quite literally calls the shots and the team follows his instructions — not out of fear of dressing-room recriminations but in the knowledge that his ideas tend to be good ones. Since May, watching a Bayern match has been a bit like going for a 90-minute drive in a car that has saved the same radio station in all 11 slots. All you hear is Muller. Late on Friday, the circumstances might have been otherworldly, but the message he broadcast was the same as it’s ever been: just keep going.

Almost all of Barcelona’s squad are for sale. There’s just one problem… https://theathletic.com/1997643/2020/08/19/messi-sale-busquets-pique-koeman-suarez/ “This is the first decision within a wider restructuring of the first team, which will be agreed between the current technical secretary and the new coach,” said the Barcelona club statement announcing coach Quique Setien’s sacking on Monday. The message was clear. Barca president Josep Maria Bartomeu and his board were reacting to the biggest humiliation in the club’s history with a firm hand. Even before the new coach had been appointed — still set to be Ronald Koeman but not yet confirmed — they had decided what needed to be done. The club’s hierarchy were going to clear out those primarily responsible, including the coach they had appointed just seven months before but, most importantly, the group of ageing big names who were no longer capable of performing to the standards required. Meanwhile, the technical secretary (or sporting director) Eric Abidal and his right-hand man Ramon Planes were to remain in place to conduct this extensive transfer business, overseen from the top by Bartomeu. That all sounded nice and decisive on first reading. There is for sure a need for a deep restructuring in the Barca team — the annihilation by Bayern followed last year’s Champions League capitulation at Anfield, the previous season’s disaster at Roma, and on and on, back to the last time they won the trophy in 2015. Those whose time is now up included Luis Suarez, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique, Arturo Vidal, Jordi Alba and Ivan Rakitic. They are all past 30 now and have given great service to the club (well, except Vidal) but need to make way for a new team to emerge. Finding buyers for such high-profile players should also not be that difficult as there should always be a market for players with multiple World Cups, European Championships and Champions Leagues on their CVs, whatever the circumstances. Or maybe not. For example, Chelsea are known to be looking for a left-back this summer and have shown that, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, they have money to spend. Meanwhile, Alba, 31, is one of those who Barca are most keen to move on. But would Chelsea be up for spending a sizeable fee, or matching a current salary of around €10 million a year, for a player whose best career moment came in the Euro 2012 final when he raced clear to score for Spain? Or would they be better looking at Sergio Reguilon, 23, who just last Sunday, sliced through Manchester United’s defence to set up a goal for Sevilla in the Europa League semi-final and is available this summer for around €25 million, and with much lower wage demands? Similarly, Sergio Busquets is another who Barca’s hierarchy would like to thank for his service and move on to make room for Frenkie de Jong to take over at the base of their midfield. Busquets still has a great personal relationship with his former Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola and they share the same agent. There were even talks about a move to Manchester City in 2016 before Busquets signed his most recent Barca contract worth around €14 million a year up to 2023. But then, should City stretch their wage structure to add another holding midfielder who is now 32 and even slower than those they currently have and thereby block the development of their big summer 2019 signing Rodri, who has been earmarked to take over from Busquets in the Spain national team? Probably not. It is not as if Barca’s transfer decision-makers have not already been dealing with exactly these problems, without any clear success. They made a big effort last summer to move Rakitic on when De Jong was signed from Ajax for €75 million. The Croatian was among the players offered to Paris Saint-Germain in part-exchange for Neymar, while Manchester United, Everton, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Juventus were also reportedly interested in taking him, according to leaks to friendly Catalan reporters. The player faced down the pressure to leave and stuck to his Barca contract, which pays him circa €7.5 million net per year. Even a free transfer to former club Sevilla was impossible as it would have required Barca to actually pay him to get him off their books. Would the situation be any different now for Suarez, Vidal and Pique, who are all past their 33rd birthdays? Suarez is still one of the world’s best finishers on his day but also has a history of knee trouble and another 12 months left on a contract paying him €15 million a year. Vidal’s deal is worth around €8 million and also has another year to run. Pique offered after Friday’s game to be “the first one to leave” if it were for the good of the club but where would the proud Catalan who remains Barca’s best defender realistically move to? Previously lucrative late-career destinations such as China, the USA and the Middle East were throwing much less money around than a few years back, even before the COVID-19 pandemic cut club budgets worldwide and made moving continents a lot more problematic for everyone. The Barca transfer brains trust has been having plenty of trouble lately trying to sell younger players who are still at the peak of their market value. They signed Philippe Coutinho for €160 million from Liverpool in January 2018 before quickly realising there was no place for him in the team. All the Premier League’s biggest clubs have since been linked with the Brazilian but no potential buyer is willing to come even close to what Barca paid. So he was parked for a year on loan at Bayern, where he has not excelled either, but did come off the bench to score the German team’s seventh and eighth goals last weekend. The huge salaries which Barca have continued to pay their senior players, even as the team’s collective standard dipped alarmingly through recent years, is a big contributing factor to the serious economic problems which emerged even before the pandemic blew a further hole in their finances. The club would have needed to make significant cuts to the €500 million-plus annual wage bill even if this season had gone well on the pitch. Negotiations with the squad around temporary pay cuts during lockdown last March soured an already difficult relationship between the dressing room and the boardroom. Whatever Pique said about being willing to move on, senior players are very unlikely to want to do Bartomeu a favour by foregoing money they have been promised. Then, less than 24 hours after the confirmation Setien’s departure came another serious change of plans. It turned out Abidal was not going to stay on to oversee the squad shake-up. Instead, he was being sacked as well. The Frenchman had been under serious pressure — both for being associated with Setien’s appointment last January and especially since Messi reprimanded him on Instagram for publicly holding the players responsible for the decision to fire predecessor Ernesto Valverde. Abidal had kept a quiet public profile since then and there was some surprise that he appeared to have been entrusted with even greater responsibility in Monday’s official club statement. The confusion underlined just how difficult it will be to make the tough decisions required to rebuild the squad amid all the ongoing institutional instability at the club. Bartomeu, though, maintained things are not really so bad when he spoke on Barca TV later on Tuesday evening. The Blaugrana club chief calmly explained that Abidal had himself asked to leave — albeit without being pressed on his own club’s internal channel for the exact motives or timeline. He then said Barcelona’s problems were “sporting, but not institutional” and confirmed that a big renewal of the playing squad was now going to take place. Planes was stepping up to take as sporting director, while Koeman would be involved in transfer decisions, with the board also having some input. Even though Koeman had not yet been confirmed as coach, Bartomeu was happy to reply when asked which players he thought were “not for sale”. He started with Messi, then added Marc Andre ter Stegen, Clement Lenglet, Nelson Semedo, Ansu Fati, De Jong, Antoine Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele. Pointedly not mentioned were the veterans Pique, Busquets, Suarez, Alba, Rakitic and Vidal. Coutinho was a maybe. “The renovation of the squad will be as deep as the new project requires,” Bartomeu said. “All options are on the table. Some players have already been spoken to, in order to explain the situation, and others will be, depending on what the technical secretary and the coach agree. There must be respect for the players. We are talking of some legendary figures who deserve an honourable goodbye.” Again that all sounds very well in theory. But in the real world, it will not be so easy to choose exactly who stays and who leaves over the coming weeks, especially as Bartomeu confirmed that significant departures were necessary rather than just desirable. A drastic drop in revenues of €300 million owing to the COVID-19 crisis means the wage bill has to fall significantly to meet La Liga financial fair play rules. Other squad members can be added to the list of those who might leave, namely Samuel Umtiti, Junior Firpo, Jean-Clair Todibo, Neto, Sergi Roberto, Moussa Wague, Carles Alena and Martin Braithwaite. None of these have been impressing potential purchasers with their recent performances. A big challenge for those doing Barca’s negotiating is that they have just very publicly stated that the players they are putting on the market are no longer good enough for the top level. Given the size of the club’s financial problems, and how difficult it is going to be to find buyers for those they want to get rid of, it would be no surprise for some of the players on the “not for sale” list to suddenly be on the market were a big enough offer to arrive. Then, there remains the enigma that is Messi. The Bayern defeat was followed by more claims that the Argentine had finally had enough and was going to leave. Such rumours have surfaced quite often through recent years, especially after the European exits which keep getting more painful every year. What the 33-year-old really wants more than anything is to be part of a squad capable of winning big trophies again and The Athletic has been told recently by those close to him that leaving the Nou Camp would only ever be the very final resort. Some at Barca have privately considered the pros and cons of removing his €100 million-plus salary from the wage bill quite regularly in recent years. Yet, while nothing can be ruled out completely given the depth of the crisis at the club, his departure this summer still feels impossible. Bartomeu said during his interview on Tuesday evening that Koeman wanted Messi to stay as the “keystone” of a new team. He admitted, however, he had not spoken to the club captain since the Bayern defeat; only to his father Jorge, who said his son was “disappointed and frustrated”. A further complicating factor in the plan to completely rebuild the team is that the new La Liga season is set to start in mid-September. It is very, very unlikely for the “deep restructuring” to have been fully completed by then — especially as, presumably, the plan is to also sign a number of younger but still pretty established players beyond the already confirmed arrivals of midfielder Miralem Pjanic, and youngsters Trincao, Pedri and Matheus Fernandes. New coach Koeman still has a huge status from scoring the goal which won the club their first European Cup in 1992 but is coming into a dressing room full of players who know they have been blamed for the disastrous 2019-20 and are up for sale. Across La Liga at Real Madrid, Zinedine Zidane has successfully sidelined his unwanted galacticos Gareth Bale and James Rodriguez while keeping the team’s other big names and the club’s fans onside. Would Koeman be able to manage that with Busquets or Alba? How would Messi react if Suarez, his best mate outside his family, was furious after being made to train with the reserves? So the drama at the Nou Camp is far from over. Bartomeu and his board are asking the club’s socio members and fans to trust that the people most responsible for building a completely unbalanced and uncompetitive squad can now fix its huge structural issues in double-quick time. Monday also saw Barca set presidential elections at the club for next March. While Bartomeu cannot stand for re-election, the hope within the club hierarchy is that a new-look team having a better season on the pitch would allow for a “continuity candidate” to emerge and win that vote. That will be a lot easier said than done.

Paredes was PSG’s conductor – directing Mbappe and dictating play https://theathletic.com/2007464/2020/08/19/michael-cox-psg-champions-league-final-paredes/ Throughout their 3-0 victory over RB Leipzig in the Champions League semi-final, Paris Saint-Germain were unrecognisable from the team who struggled to get past Atalanta in the previous round. They offered more speed up front, more pressing in the opposition half and more penetration from deep in midfield. It felt like a completely different side. And, in a way, it was. There were five changes last night from the starting line-up against Atalanta six days earlier. Most obviously, Kylian Mbappe was fully back from his ankle injury in a left-sided attacking role. More crucially in terms of the result, Angel Di Maria, suspended for the quarter-final, played from the right, assisting the first and scoring the second. There was also a return for Juan Bernat, scorer of the third goal, at left-back, while Sergio Rico came in for injured goalkeeper Keylor Navas. Another newcomer, meanwhile, was Leandro Paredes in the centre of midfield — and this proved crucial in PSG’s build-up play. In the game against Atalanta, Neymar felt compelled to constantly drop deep because of the overwhelmingly defensive trio of Marquinhos, Idrissa Gueye and Ander Herrera. But the introduction of Paredes, who had come off the bench to help turn the quarter-final around, provided intelligent passing quality from deep in midfield. Neymar could stay high and receive the ball between the lines, because Paredes was both conducting the play and penetrating the Leipzig midfield. Leipzig struggled to close down Paredes. Below is a picture of the tactical battle. Leipzig are in a typical 4-1-4-1 defensive shape — this often looked more like 4-5-1 when they were more compact — while PSG are in a clear 4-3-3. Almost everyone in this picture is in precisely the role you’d expect within those formations, with the exception of Paredes, whose deep left-of-centre positioning gives PSG’s midfield an unusual format. This was typical of his positioning throughout the game, and Leipzig weren’t sure how to close Paredes down. Whenever Leipzig’s right-centre midfielder, usually Marcel Sabitzer, pushed forward to try to get to Paredes, Neymar would wander into the space he left behind him. Here, with the game less than two minutes old, is an example of how Paredes was directing the play. Again, he’s PSG’s deepest midfielder, and in this situation he wants to play a penetrative pass through the lines to Mbappe, at the bottom of the picture. But the striker doesn’t position himself correctly — he stays in the shadow of Konrad Laimer, who is blocking the pass. Paredes therefore turns the other way and passes back to Thiago Silva. But what comes next is interesting… …Paredes turns back and tells Mbappe he should have been drifting inside, into the left channel, rather than staying out wide. Evidently, he’s not afraid of bossing around PSG’s big names. When PSG’s attackers positioned themselves to receive those type of passes, Paredes was excellent at playing them. Again, in this situation against Atalanta, Neymar was dropping back to the other side of the midfield line to conduct play himself. Last night though, he was largely content staying between the opposition defence and midfield… …knowing Paredes could fire the ball in to his feet. This also serves as a good example of how Sabitzer was dragged up the pitch towards Paredes, which created an extra gap in the inside-left channel for Neymar. Paredes wasn’t merely good at playing passes in to a player between the lines — he was also excellent at convincing Leipzig he was going to do something different. After half an hour, here’s another example of him playing as PSG’s deepest midfielder. His two key team-mates here are Neymar, again positioning himself between the lines, and Silva towards the far side. As Paredes has the ball here, Leipzig are in a decent enough defensive position, their body shapes as you’d expect. That includes Dani Olmo, highlighted on the edge of the centre circle. But then Paredes opens up his body in a manner that brings to mind Sergio Busquets, tricking Leipzig into thinking he’s about to play the ball square to Silva. Look at the positioning of Olmo now — he’s facing Silva, ready to confront him. Leipzig’s deepest midfielder, Kevin Kampl, also seems to be anticipating that pass. But this is a trick, of course. Paredes instead fires the ball between Olmo and Kampl, to the feet of Neymar. This continued throughout the first half. Here’s another example, this time with Marquinhos having dropped into the defence to turn PSG into more of a 3-4-3, leaving Paredes as the deepest midfielder more literally. Paredes’s body shape continued to cause Leipzig problems. Here is a similar example from midway through the second half. As Paredes shapes to play this pass, substitute Emil Forsberg is convinced the ball is going out to Thilo Kehrer on the near side, at the bottom of the picture… …but it’s whipped behind him, to the feet of Di Maria. Look at the cut of the grass for evidence of Forsberg shifting his position — only a couple of yards, but he’s moving in precisely the wrong direction as the pass goes in behind him. Di Maria sucks in an opponent and then eventually, the ball is played out to Kehrer, with Forsberg still hopefully moving back towards Di Maria. Paredes also showed great intelligence in helping PSG press high up the pitch. In this situation, with Leipzig working the ball across their backline, he’s tracking Sabitzer. The danger is that, behind him, Olmo seemingly has space between the lines. As Leipzig play the ball across the defence to Dayot Upamecano, Paredes looks over his shoulder, realises Olmo is making a run in behind him into a dangerous position and sees the passing lane from Upamecano is open… …and therefore, as Upamecano fires a ball towards Olmo… …Paredes slides in, makes an interception, and gets PSG on the attack. And Paredes’s pressing proved crucial in the decisive second goal. With goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi playing out from the back, he’s again tracking Sabitzer high up the pitch. It’s unclear whether Gulacsi’s terrible pass was intended for Sabitzer or Kampl, but Paredes was in a position to intercept… …before sending the ball into the box, which prompted Neymar’s brilliantly subtle touch to assist scorer Di Maria. At 2-0, it felt like the game was already over before half-time. Bernat added the third just before the hour, but perhaps the most notable feature of PSG’s second-half display was Tuchel’s lack of substitutions until the 83rd minute. In fact, opposite number Julian Nagelsmann had made all five of his changes before PSG made their first, which was surely an indication that Tuchel was keeping this starting XI together for as long as possible, ahead of naming an identical side for the final on Sunday night. He may yet spring a surprise with his team selection, but after this display, you sense Paredes’s place isn’t in doubt.

Bissau to Barca: How Fati debuted at 16 with ‘perfect blend of Europe and Africa’ https://theathletic.com/1687797/2020/08/14/ansu-fati-barcelona-debut-aged-16-sevilla-real-madrid-release-clause/ Rush hour in Bissau. The traffic has crawled to a standstill. There is a blaring of horns, but then, from the side of the road, comes a drumbeat. It starts quietly but quickly spreads as men, women and children stop what they are doing and take up the beat. Spoons, bottles, buckets, tins. If it makes a noise, it can make music. And everyone — everyone — can sing. This, the taxi driver says with a laugh, is “gumbe”, the music beloved by the people of Guinea-Bissau. Within a matter of moments, frustration at congestion on the sandy, pot-holed streets has given way to a mood of celebration. Everyone is smiling. Singing along and smiling, seemingly without a care in the world. At Bandim market, there are stalls selling fruit, charcoal, textiles, hardware, hand-made goods and plenty more. Except they are not doing much actual selling, because money is scarce. This is Guinea-Bissau, which, by every metric provided by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, is one of the poorest countries on earth. The former Portuguese colony is still recovering, very slowly, from a civil war in the late 1990s and a military coup in 2003. Nearly 70 per cent of the 1.8 million population live below the poverty line. Twenty-five per cent suffer from chronic malnutrition. A visit to Bissau, the capital city, is enough to reinforce certain European stereotypes about life in this part of west Africa. But still, many of the living conditions, in corrugated shacks and mud huts, bring a sense of shock. So does the sight of dozens of vultures joining stray dogs in picking through the rubbish that is strewn on the pavements and in the wasteland between one row of shacks and the next. And yet… gumbe, smiles, palpable happiness. “Everyone is poor, with so many limitations on their daily life, but we are happy,” says Nestor Bakouri, a teacher at L’Ecole Sao Paulo. “Everywhere you see smiles.” You see football everywhere too. You don’t have to wander far in Bissau to see a patch of sand that has been converted into a pitch with makeshift goalposts. There is an abundance of kids wearing the colours of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United, Real Madrid and, especially, Barcelona (though shirts bearing the names of Michael Jordan and LeBron James also figure). Some huts, with huge television aerials on their roof, advertise upcoming matches in the Champions League, Premier League and La Liga. Outside a bar, two boys are playing table football. The wooden players have been hand-painted in the colours of Barcelona and Real Madrid. And the striking thing is that Lionel Messi, in the No 10 shirt, has dropped back into Barcelona’s midfield because alongside No 17 (Antoine Griezmann) and No 9 (Luis Suarez) in the forward line is No 31. “Ansu Fati!” one of the boys shouts, pointing at the figurine with the No 31 on its back. “Ansu Fati de Guinea-Bissau!” The words are belted out with pride. A boy from Bissau playing from Barcelona, gearing up for their Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich tonight. It seems extraordinary that any 17-year-old could have featured so regularly for Barcelona this season. In the case of Fati, born into extreme poverty here in Guinea-Bissau, it almost defies belief. After a wild-goose chase across the city of Bissau, part of which involves hanging off the back of a bus in a manner the locals insist is perfectly normal and safe, The Athletic is escorted to an area called Missira, a couple of miles west of the centre. Again, there are corrugated shacks and mud huts, with skinny goats and chickens running around outside, but there are more telegraph wires overhead here. More people have shoes or trainers on their feet. We arrive at a larger house. Unlike the majority, it is made of concrete, painted blue, with a colonial-style balustrade. There are bikes outside, laundry drying on the washing line, a few plastic chairs. On one of them, clutching a mobile phone, sits Bucar Fati, Ansu’s uncle. He is persuaded, eventually, to talk to us about his famous nephew. “When Ansu was a child, he just played football,” Bucar says through an interpreter. “It was always football, only football. Every day, every moment, playing football. His parents had to take him by force to make him come and eat. He would be crying and crying until he was playing football again. “Ansu has three brothers. His older brother, Braima, is a very good player. All the family said he could be a footballer. But Ansu was even better.” Bucar recounts how he and Ansu’s father, Bori, used to make a living selling clothes in the market. Bori, though, had broader horizons. Along with another brother, Djibril, he was determined to move to Europe in search of a better life. He would pursue his own football ambitions there and, if that failed, find a steady job and a more secure way of living for his family. Bucar would hear from his brothers at regular intervals. For a time, things weren’t going so well. Then came talk of another new start, this time in Spain, where Bori went alone at first, hoping to find work. Things were better there and so, in time, Bori’s wife Lurdes and their children followed him across the border from Portugal. Then, out of the blue, came the news Braima and Ansu were developing into such good footballers that they were wanted by Barcelona and Real Madrid. He isn’t able to shed much light on Ansu’s journey through the ranks at La Masia, the famed Barcelona academy. All he knows is that he was shocked and awe-struck when Bori got in touch last August to tell him Ansu was about to make his debut. Not for the B team or in an unofficial match, but in La Liga against Real Betis at the Nou Camp. Aged 16 years and 298 days, Ansu came on as a late substitute, becoming the youngest player to play for the club since Vicenc Martinez in 1941. In an enterprising 12-minute cameo, he looked full of confidence and almost scored. “It was a big surprise to be told he was going to play,” Bucar says. “It wasn’t something we were waiting to happen for months. We never thought that. But we were all watching. When it happened, when Ansu played for Barcelona’s first team, I was so happy. I cried and cried and cried with happiness. It was so beautiful to see him playing for that team. To think that he could play in Barcelona’s first team at 16… nobody could ever have thought that. It was a miracle.” Ansu Fati is one of those players who makes a powerful first impression. That was certainly the case for Jose Luis Perez Mena, a coach at Escuela de Futbol Peloteros, a football academy in Herrera, around 75 miles east of Seville. “It was a shock,” Perez Mena says. “I have been working in football for about 50 years and I had never seen anyone quite like this at such a young age. He was different. He had this fusion of speed, technical skill, feints, dribbles, the ability to commit opponents. “He didn’t have any football boots. To play football, he didn’t have anything. We bought sportswear and boots for him. But in terms of football ability, we just hadn’t seen anything like him.” Perez Mena and his fellow coaches were all asking the same questions. Who was this kid? Where had he come from? The answer was that Ansu’s father Bori had been drawn to the region after reading about Marinaleda, which is billed, in Dan Hancox’s book of the same name, as “the village against the world”. It is portrayed by its mayor, Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, as a communist utopia, where the farms and processing plants are communally owned, income is shared, house prices are low and the unemployment figures are far below those not just elsewhere in Andalusia but through the rest of Spain. That was the vision Bori found so seductive when he was living in Portugal. He went on his own at first, finding work building the new high-speed rail network. Eventually, his family followed. When the construction work dried up and other jobs, collecting glasses in a nightclub and picking olives, came to nothing, one of Ansu’s coaches went to the mayor to ask whether something could be done to help the Fati family. This is when the story becomes blurred. Some say Bori was at risk of being deported because he did not have the right papers to stay in Spain. One popular version of events is that Gordillo took him under his wing and employed him as his chauffeur, but the mayor has denied that. Others suggest Bori drove a rubbish-collection truck in Herrera. What is certain is that, for the first time since leaving Bissau, the family found stability in Herrera. At last, they could see a future for themselves in Europe. Almost as quickly, though, they began to be offered a vision of a different kind of future. Praise for their sons’ football talents soon developed into something more serious. The academy in Herrera had close links to La Liga club Sevilla, who invited Braima and Ansu to train with them. At Sevilla, Ansu’s talent, in particular, commanded a sense of awe from the coaching staff, who, like Perez Mena, had never seen anything like such skills in a boy of nine years old. The staff at Sevilla, not least their revered director of football Monchi, thought they had unearthed a gem. Perez Mena had other ideas, though. He felt Ansu’s talent was so extreme it merited the very best football education, so he made a call to a contact at Barcelona’s La Masia. “There were the two brothers,” Albert Puig, Barcelona’s former academy director, tells The Athletic. “Braima was 12 and Ansu was nine. Sevilla had spotted them and brought them directly in their academy. Reports started arriving on my desk that the two of them were very talented footballers, so I went to watch them. “At the time, I was equally impressed by both. Braima was a good footballer, more ‘de toque’ (a one-touch style). Ansu was alert and brave. He had started out playing street football in Africa. He was explosive and scintillating in one-on-one situations. There were a lot of Spanish clubs watching him, but Sevilla had him. I spoke with Jose Luis Perez Mena and with his father and with the mayor of the town, whom the father worked for. He seemed to be a van driver or a binman. I went three times to their village, explained everything to their father and convinced them that we could offer the best environment for his children. We all came to believe that Barcelona was the best place for the boys.” At Sevilla, they took a very different view. They were furious. So were Real Madrid, who thought Ansu would join them. “Real Madrid offered more money,” Bori recently told Cope Radio. “They offered a house for the family, everything, but when I went to Valdebebas (Real Madrid’s training ground), they didn’t have a residence for their young players. Barcelona did, so when Albert Puig persuaded me that they had the better project, we chose Barca.” It wasn’t plain sailing. “Sevilla did a strange thing,” says Puig, now coach of the Japanese club Albirex Niigata. “They didn’t allow him to play for another club under the Spanish federation for a year. But it actually worked out well. It meant that, while Braima was able to move to Barcelona and start by himself in La Masia, Ansu could have another year living at home with his parents and come up and visit every few months.” Ansu moved to Barcelona at the age of 10. His mother soon joined him there, with his father visiting at regular intervals. Some who have come from far afield, such as Andres Iniesta and Messi, have talked of their initial struggles to adapt to life at La Masia. “Yes, it can be demanding for a little European boy when you take them away from a comfortable family environment,” Puig says. “Iniesta came from a small town and it wasn’t easy to remove from that tight-knit environment. But Ansu is a child of Africa. He was used to seeing his dad only in the summer when his father was working away. The mentality was completely different. He had no adaptation problems in La Masia.” Puig praises Ansu’s parents for instilling a strong sense of discipline in the boy. “Many Spanish and European parents are extremely protective and they don’t see any weaknesses in their children,” he says. “If Braima or Ansu had a problem in school or something related to discipline, as all kids do at different times, their father always called them straight away to put them right. I remember two occasions when he went further and caught the train to speak to them. If you are a parent, you know the answer (to your children) cannot always be ‘Yes’. If a parent who is far away from La Masia says, ‘My child is perfect and the school is at fault’, you have problems. The humility of the parents was key to the childrens’ upbringing.” On the pitch, Ansu was flourishing, frequently being pushed into the higher age-group teams. He had the mix of skill, speed and, crucially, imagination that marked him out as a serious long-term prospect for Barcelona. He was receptive to coaching, willing and able to learn about the game at every stage of his development, but he retained the cutting edge and sense of devilment that had first caught the eye in Herrera a few years earlier. Beyond that, he was becoming a natural, clinical goalscorer, cutting onto his right foot and fitting the Barcelona template for that left-wing role in a 4-3-3. “In Europe, we have a problem in academies,” Puig says. “The development stage is good but in early years, we have come to penalise mistakes too much. Players at the youngest age need to be dribbling, going one against one, playing with freedom. If there are mistakes, that is OK, no problem, we just need to try again and do it better next time. In the end, we want players who can commit opponents. We need this part of their game to develop with freedom. In the past, you would have kids playing hours and hours on the streets, but this is not possible in Europe anymore. Ansu, by contrast, was able to do that as a kid growing up in Guinea-Bissau.” In 2015, still only 12 years old, he won the best player award at the MTU Cup — an indoor tournament contested by many of the best youth teams in Europe — and helped Barcelona win the Mediterranean International Cup, where they beat Real Madrid 4-2 in the final. He formed a close friendship and devastating on-pitch partnership with Japanese forward Takefusa Kubo, the pair scoring a combined 129 goals in their first year together. The Kubo-Fati partnership was brought to an abrupt an end in late 2015, however. After FIFA found Barcelona guilty of breaching of regulations in the signing of youth players, the duo were among 11 prospects temporarily released from La Masia as the club sought to comply with the sanctions. Kubo returned to Japan in 2015 and did not return to Spain until four years later, when he joined Real Madrid, who sent him on loan to Real Mallorca last season. He has made a similar move to Villarreal for the 2020-21 season. Ansu, though, was soon reintegrated. Even after suffering a fractured tibia and fibula during a youth game against city rivals Espanyol, he was back to action within six months — and looking better than ever. His determination to overcome that injury was one of many things that persuaded staff higher up the club hierarchy that this kid had the right stuff. At the start of the 2018-19 season, he made his UEFA Youth League debut as a substitute against PSV Eindhoven before coming on against Tottenham Hotspur in the same competition a fortnight later — not bad going for a boy who was still only 15. A couple of months later, having turned 16, he scored a stunning goal in the reverse fixture against PSV, breaking from inside his own half of the pitch, beating two challenges and letting fly from 25 yards. He also scored two poacher’s efforts in the semi-final against a Chelsea team featuring Tariq Lamptey, Marc Guehi, George McEachran and Billy Gilmour, who are all at least two years older than him. By this stage, he had ceased to be Barcelona’s best-kept secret. All those stellar performances in youth tournaments attracted renewed attention from Real Madrid as well as interest from Barcelona’s rivals across Europe, not least in the Premier League. There was a window of opportunity at the end of the 2018-19 season, when his contract was up for renewal, and Manchester United made serious moves to sign him as they looked to recruit more top-class talent at youth level. Having seen Dutch midfield prospect Xavi Simons depart to Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona were understandably anxious at the prospect of losing another young talent. Discussions between his father and Barcelona became tense at one stage. Bori ended up drafting in Messi’s brother and agent Rodrigo to assist with the negotiations. Eventually, a new deal was agreed, complete with a €100 million buy-out clause. That was quite a deterrent, but of course, the interest from Real Madrid, Manchester United and others will persist. “Always there have been clubs interested in Ansu,” Perez Mena says. “When he was here as a young boy, there was Sevilla, (their local rivals) Real Betis, Villarreal, Malaga, Almeria, all of those, as well as Barcelona and Real Madrid. I am a friend of his father and I know that, more recently, the English clubs have come on the scene also. He had an offer from Germany and an offer from Italy before he broke out at Barcelona. But he’s very happy at Barcelona.” As Bucar Fati says, his nephew’s breakthrough came out of the blue — out of the blaugrana, perhaps. In the summer of 2019, Ansu was preparing to continue his education under Victor Valdes in the club’s Juvenil A team, which operates at under-19 level. Then came the opportunity to spend pre-season with Barcelona’s B team, where he hoped to gain experience by playing against the likes of Castellon, Cornella and Sabadell in the Segunda Division B, the third tier of Spanish football. His long-term prospects looked brighter than those of his brother Braima, who was about to spend the season on loan to CD Calahorra, another third tier side, but the first team still seemed a long, long way off. Everything changed in the August, when an injured Lionel Messi was joined on the sidelines by Luis Suarez and Ousmane Dembele after Barcelona fell to a 1-0 defeat away to Athletic Bilbao in their opening La Liga fixture. The following week, short of options in attack, coach Ernesto Valverde called Ansu up to train with the first team in advance of the game against Betis. To the youngster’s amazement, he was included in the match-day squad, hence Bori’s excited call to his brother back home in Bissau. On 78 minutes, with Barcelona 5-1 up, Ansu was sent on. Within seconds of his introduction, he was chasing back to win possession, taking on opponents, wriggling away from two challenges in a crowded Betis penalty area before trying to tee up Arturo Vidal. Moments later, Ansu took on Alfonso Pedraza and struck a low shot just beyond the far post. “Madre mia!” screamed Simon Hanley in the commentary box. Graham Hunter, sitting alongside Hanley, could not help laughing at the teenager’s audacity. “He’s got talent, but he’s obviously lacking confidence,” Hunter said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “For heaven’s sake!” The following day, Ansu posted two pictures on Instagram: one of him struggling to suppress a smile as he waited to come on, the other of him looking euphoric as he walked through the corridors to the dressing room after the game. “Yesterday I will remember all my life,” he said. “The dream of any boy at La Masia: debut at the Camp Nou. Sharing (a dressing room) with the best players in the world was an unforgettable experience. I only have words of thanks to them for their excellent reception. “Nothing of this would have been possible without my family, without their daily and unconditional support. Thanks also to La Masia, the best soccer school in the world. To my colleagues and coaches who have taught me values that will always accompany me. I promise to continue with humility, work and feet on the ground.” Six days later, with Barcelona 1-0 down at Osasuna, he was summoned as a half-time substitute. Within six minutes, he rose highest to meet a Carles Perez cross with a perfect header, becoming Barcelona’s youngest ever goalscorer. Next, his first start, at home to Valencia, and he scored inside two minutes with an emphatic right-foot shot from Frenkie de Jong’s pass. It was fairytale stuff, incredible. At that age, even Messi was playing most of his football in the B team. The hype among the media figures that cover Barcelona was, inevitably, enormous. El Mundo Deportivo went with the headline “Ha nacido una estrella” (A star is born). Even the Madrid-based media expressed grudging admiration for what they were witnessing. “What this boy is doing is something we have to take very seriously,” said the report in AS, calling to mind the type of language that was used during the Cold War to describe disconcerting advancements from the other side of the conflict. When asked whether the hype was perhaps a little excessive, former Valencia and Spain goalkeeper Santiago Canizares offered a one-word reply: No. There have been further highlights — scoring twice in a 2-1 win over Levante, and becoming the youngest ever Champions League goalscorer (aged 17 years and 40 days) when he got the winner away to Inter Milan within 90 seconds of coming on — but it has not always been easy this season, with competition for places so intense and with both Valverde and successor Quique Setien under serious pressure to get results. He has featured more intermittently since Setien took over in January. Perhaps a little too eager to make an impression, he was sent off for a high challenge on Fernando Calero within five minutes of coming on as a substitute in the derby against Espanyol last month. “He came to talk to me afterwards,” the coach said. “He felt very bad about what happened. He was very humble.” That word humility features in almost every story you hear about Ansu Fati. It cannot be easy for a 17-year-old to keep his feet on the ground when, having come from such modest beginnings, he finds himself thrust into the spotlight, playing for Barcelona and competing with Antoine Griezmann and others for a place alongside Messi. He has been taken under Messi’s wing — not just in terms of a mentor-apprentice relationship in the dressing room but with the captain’s brother Rodrigo assisting dad Bori in managing the youngster’s off-pitch affairs. Another fresh contract was agreed in December, with his wages soaring to a reported €20,000 a week and his buy-out clause increased to an initial €170 million. There has to be a recognition that, for all the promise he has shown in his first season, Ansu is still a long way from the finished article. He was kept on the bench throughout last Saturday’s Champions League game at the Nou Camp, when Barcelona beat Napoli 3-1 to secure their quarter-finals place, and he is likely to be among the substitutes once more for that last-eight meeting with Bayern Munich in Lisbon tonight. His lack of involvement against Napoli caused a sense of bewilderment among the Catalan sporting press, given that he and midfielder Riqui Puig, 20, had been omitted from the B team’s promotion play-off against Sabadell (which they lost) at the end of last month. “Both Riqui and Ansu are ready to play,” Setien said, looking forward to the quarter-final. “And if they do play, I am sure they will be guaranteed to play well.” The talent is obvious, but these are early days. “The first thing to say is that Ansu is still very young,” Albert Puig says. “Let’s see where he is when he is 24 or 25. “But I see Ansu as a perfect blend of Europe and Africa. He has the freedom, bravery, imagination and personality of an African, but he also has the touch and the tactical skill that he has learned at La Masia. This is a very strong fusion.” In what has been described as the third era of globalisation, nationality has become a fluid concept. Born in Africa but raised in Europe, Ansu Fati could have represented three different nations. At one stage, his father declared that Ansu dreamed of playing for Portugal, but he has since taken Spanish citizenship. In October last year, he made his debut for Spain Under-21s. Guinea-Bissau, 118th in the FIFA rankings, never seemed a serious option. Back in Bissau, his uncle Bucar smiles. “Of course, it would be great to see him play for Guinea-Bissau,” he says. “But Ansu has his own choice. He should do whatever is best for him. We cannot say anything. We only support him. One day, he might win the World Cup.” Bucar is keen to point out his family does not have a monopoly on Bissau-Guinean football talent. “There have been a lot of very good players here,” he says. “If you see the local teams here, you will see many talented boys playing the same way. But they don’t have the possibilities to move to Europe. There is no opportunity, no one who can help them.” It is a familiar story in Africa. There are huge academies in Dakar and Abidjan, the capitals of Guinea-Bissau’s neighbours Senegal and Ivory Coast, but elsewhere on the continent there is top-class talent unable to develop or be nurtured due to lack of exposure to the best facilities or coaching, or to the type of scouting network that might otherwise provide a pathway to Europe. Sadio Mane, from a remote corner of Senegal, might never have made it to Europe, never mind as far as winning the Champions League and Premier League with Liverpool, had he not run away from home to chase his dream. Oseias Manga, who works for a radio station in Bissau, suggests Ansu’s success in Barcelona has gone a small way towards putting his native country on the map. “If you say ‘Guinea-Bissau’ to people in Europe, I expect most would people would think you meant the Republic of Guinea or Equatorial Guinea,” he says. “Ansu Fati is the only famous person from Guinea-Bissau. No one else. “It’s something really important for a poor country like this. To have a football player like that… wow. Before now, all the kids always referenced Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Now they reference Ansu Fati, because he’s from Guinea-Bissau like them. He’s a great player and it’s so important. Really, it’s amazing. “The first day we saw him playing for Barcelona, there was a big party. Everyone was screaming, ‘Ansu Fati, Ansu Fati, Ansu Fati!’ It was wonderful. The day he comes back to Guinea-Bissau with his family, the people will go crazy.” That day will come. If there is a temptation to wonder whether Ansu and his immediate family have forgotten their roots, Bucar is quick to state otherwise. He gets out his phone and shows the messages and photographs he has received from his nephew over the previous days — pictures from the Barcelona dressing room, pictures with Messi, pictures that are too personal to share with his 3.7 million Instagram followers. Bucar stands up and wanders around to the rear of the house. He returns with his son, Bacar, who is wearing a Barcelona shirt with — of course — the No 31 and his celebrated cousin’s name on the back. There is something else they want to point out. On closer inspection, it also bears Ansu’s signature. “That shirt is mine,” Bucar says, laughing. “But I couldn’t wear it to the market. If I did, everyone would want it.” He and his family have not yet been able to travel to Barcelona to watch his nephew play at the Nou Camp. Sitting here in Bissau, it feels like another world and, in many ways, it is. “But one day we will,” Bucar says. “That is the big dream of the family: for us all to go to Spain to see him. “From the first day we saw him on TV, playing for Barcelona, no one can sleep. For a boy from Guinea-Bissau to play football for Barcelona, it’s causing everyone to cry. Everyone is crying with happiness.” Crying and singing and dancing with happiness. In Guinea-Bissau, a world away from Barcelona, it is a way of life.

How Timo Werner will fit in at Chelsea https://theathletic.com/2004756/2020/08/19/timo-werner-position-chelsea/ In the 50th minute of their Bundesliga match at home against RB Leipzig in June, FC Koln won a free-kick in a promising position on the right flank. As he prepared to deliver the ball into a crowded penalty area, Florian Kainz would have been forgiven for paying little attention to Timo Werner, the lone man stationed in a token wall on the corner of the box. If anything, the sight of one of Europe’s most prolific goalscorers so far away from the Koln goal would have been a reassuring one. But the moment Kainz’s cross sailed over his head, Werner broke into a forward jog. As soon as he saw Leipzig goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi rise highest to claim the cross, that jog became a sprint: Gulacsi looked up and quickly fired a long diagonal kick deep into the Koln half that sent Werner — having outrun Kainz, as well as two opposition players deployed on the halfway line precisely to guard against the threat of a counter-attack — clean through on goal. Despite the 60-yard dash, the striker had the poise to bring the ball into his stride with two quick touches before whipping a low shot around Timo Horn and into the far corner. All in all, it took less than 10 seconds for the ball to travel the length of the pitch; from Gulacsi’s hands to the back of Horn’s net. The goal would not have been possible without the Leipzig goalkeeper’s sharp awareness and perfect distribution but it also showcased everything that makes Werner such an exciting addition to the Premier League — and a devastating new weapon that will sharpen Chelsea’s inconsistent attack. The question for Frank Lampard now is what is the best way to use him? Having begun his senior career as a right winger with inconsistent end product at Stuttgart, Werner found his true value at Leipzig either cutting into shooting positions from the left or playing on the shoulder of the last defender as a central striker. He was blossoming as a goalscorer prior to the appointment of Julian Nagelsmann in the summer of 2019, scoring 50 goals in 93 Bundesliga appearances in the three seasons before 2019-20. Nagelsmann, however, envisioned a shift that he believed could help take Werner’s game to the next level. “We’ve started him a bit deeper,” he explained in an interview with the official Bundesliga website earlier this season. “We don’t want him right on the last line because he needs a bit of a head start, a bit of tempo, in order to really show his pace on the pitch. “When he’s on the last line, he often finds himself static when he needs to get going but with a bit of room in front of him, he can hit top speed. And from this deeper position, he’s much more involved in our build-up play and combinations. In the last few years, all his moments have come in transition, whereas now he has his moments in combination play, too. “He’s having many more touches of the ball than in previous years and this new position has done his development good, playing in between the lines against teams who sit deep. That’s another trait he’ll need if he wants to be one of the best in Europe. There are a lot of teams who sit deep and defend deep against you and he needs that second way of being dangerous to opponents too, and he’s definitely developed that this year.” Nagelsmann achieved the tactical tweak by lining up his Leipzig team in a fluid 4-4-2 system, with Werner nominally starting up front alongside Yussuf Poulsen or Patrik Schick but encouraged to drop off to link up with the midfielders, drift wide in search of space between opposition defenders, or to try to break the offside trap as circumstances dictated, varying his attacking movement. Jose Mourinho found out about Werner’s improved combination play to his cost in February when Leipzig beat his Tottenham side 1-0 in the first leg of their Champions League round of 16 tie in north London. Faced with a deep-lying home defence, the striker dropped back, drifted infield from the left and clipped a delicate pass onto the chest of Konrad Laimer, whose control tempted Ben Davies into a mistimed challenge in the penalty area. Werner scored the penalty himself. The clearest example of Werner’s blistering acceleration being maximised in a slightly more withdrawn role came against Borussia Monchengladbach in August. Early in the second half, Poulsen latches on to a floated pass forward and lays it back towards Werner. He gets to the ball first and has a clear path to goal but there’s a long way to go and Matthias Ginter has a significant head start: Werner’s first touch is ambitious, knocking the ball far ahead into the space. But his speed across the ground ensures there’s no danger of being intercepted; he flies past Ginter, floundering from a standing start, so quickly that the Gladbach defender can’t even get close enough to attempt to foul him before he reaches the box, with Werner slotting a left-footed finish past Yann Sommer: This goal, in Leipzig’s 5-0 win over Mainz in May, shows Werner’s starting position against a set defence. As his team-mates begin to work the ball from left to right, he jogs infield from the left between the opposition lines. His target is the pocket of space highlighted but he’s in no hurry: He doesn’t need to sprint because his movement is intelligent and timed to perfection. Lukas Klostermann gets to the byline with the ball, crosses low and Werner finds himself unmarked at the near post to steer a low shot past Florian Muller with one touch: Werner developed an easy understanding with Poulsen, who fulfilled the same kind of target man facilitator role in Leipzig’s attack that Olivier Giroud has done for much of his Chelsea career. Here, in a 2-1 away win over Benfica in the Champions League in September, the two could barely be closer together as Nordi Mukiele prepares to play a pass forward — but they have a shared plan: Mukiele’s pass is rattled into the feet of Poulsen, who immediately lays it off and shields his defender. Werner doesn’t have much space but it’s enough; with his first touch, he whips a low shot under the legs of his marker, beyond Odysseas Vlachodimos and just inside the far post: Werner can be remarkably single-minded in the final third but he has also, at times, displayed great awareness of his team-mates. Here he is last season against Hertha Berlin, squaring the ball to give Poulsen an easy finish into an empty net in a situation where most strikers would have gone for goal themselves: And here he is in another scoring position against Wolfsburg in the DFB Pokal in October, under less defensive pressure, passing up a good shooting chance because he knows he can give Emil Forsberg to his left an even better one: Werner registered a career-high eight Bundesliga assists in 2019-20. His average for key passes per 90 minutes rose from 1.3 to 1.7 in the new role Nagelsmann carved out for him, while his shot-creating actions per 90 also increased from 2.9 to 3.8. By way of comparison, Kai Havertz averaged 4.3 shot-creating actions per 90 for Bayer Leverkusen. Lampard considers both Werner and Tammy Abraham important components of the Chelsea team he is building and there is plenty of reason to believe that the two forwards could function well together — though starting both regularly would make his selection decisions from a wide range of midfield options even harder, particularly if Havertz follows his countryman to Stamford Bridge. Werner could also play up front instead of Abraham. His farewell appearance for Leipzig, scoring both goals in a 2-1 away win against Augsburg on the final day of the Bundesliga season, showcased his ability to stretch an opposing defence as the focal point of attack. For his first goal, he drifts in from the left as Amadou Haidara advances with the ball in midfield, having spotted that Felix Uduokhai has dropped slightly deeper than the rest of the Augsburg line: Haidara spots the pass and Werner arcs his run to keep himself level with Uduokhai… … and once he is through on goal, Werner takes the opportunity to employ his favourite finish in one-on-one situations, taking the ball round Tomas Koubek and tapping into the empty net: For the second, he is standing on the shoulder of Uduokhai, ready to run into the space behind as Manchester City’s on-loan left-back Angelino prepares to launch a searching ball forward: Werner controls the dropping ball brilliantly on the run and shows strength to hold off Uduokhai as he manoeuvres himself into a shooting position… … he ends up with a tighter angle than is ideal but his low shot is still good enough to beat Koubek and nestle in the far corner: It’s hard not to see him tormenting Premier League defences next season if Chelsea decide to deploy him through the middle — with or without Abraham. Werner operating as a lone striker is not without its problems, however. The first is that playing him up front without Abraham or Giroud would make an already relatively small and aerially weak Chelsea side even more so. Standing at 5ft 11in, he is not short but neither is he a physical presence — of his 32 aerial duels in the Bundesliga in 2019-20, he won only eight. Chelsea’s problems finding a way to competently defend set pieces have been well documented. Lampard’s current strategy is to have either Abraham or Giroud stand with Kurt Zouma on the edge of the six-yard box and attack the incoming ball from their zones while the rest of their team-mates mark specific men. It has not been a particularly effective solution to what might be an impossible problem with current personnel, and Werner would not help matters. The other issue is that Werner’s link-up play, while improved under Nagelsmann, remains a work in progress. He is generally capable when things are kept simple; here, against Augsburg, he drops back into midfield to receive a pass from Haidara in what is clearly a rehearsed movement. Dayot Upamecano is running up the left touchline but the aim of the move is to shift possession towards the greater space on the right side of the pitch: Werner controls the ball, protects it and makes the correct pass into the feet of Dani Olmo, who is able to progress and move the team forward: But when things get a little more intricate, Werner’s technique can look a little clumsy. Here, against Koln, he shows to receive a ball to feet from Angelino, with a variety of passing options around him: Angelino’s pass is firm and instead of redirecting it to Christopher Nkunku, Werner misjudges the contact and presents the ball to the opposition: Here, against Augsburg, he shows to receive a pass out of defence from Ibrahima Konate, with the aim of laying it off to a team-mate and getting Leipzig moving towards the final third: But instead, he shanks his attempted pass badly, looping the ball back over his own midfielders and into the feet of an opposition striker. The deeper Werner drops, the less comfortable he looks. Here he is virtually on the halfway line against Fortuna Dusseldorf, shaping to receive a simple pass from Kevin Kampl: He wants to play it back to Nkunku but instead plays it straight to Dusseldorf striker Steven Skrzybski, who had already begun to react to Werner’s body shape: The most obvious alternative to playing Werner up front is to deploy him on the left, where his speed and instincts for attacking the penalty area with and without the ball could make him every bit as consistently dangerous for Chelsea as Raheem Sterling has been at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola. Werner frequently drifts out to the left even when deployed as a central attacker, as part of his efforts to evade defensive attention. Here, as Klostermann emerges from a crowd of bodies with the ball in the final minutes of Leipzig’s 8-0 win over Mainz in November, Werner is pretty much as far wide on the left as you can get. Two more central team-mates have less ground to cover to reach the penalty area for any cross: His speed changes that equation in a matter of seconds and by the time Klostermann is ready to cross, Werner is the logical option. He taps it in to complete his hat-trick: Werner loves working with the ball at his feet from the left, too. Here he is in a 5-0 away win over Schalke in February, showing for a pass from Nkunku with the intent to turn and attack the box: Nkunku’s pass finds him, he works himself into space for a shot on his right foot, and rifles the ball high over Alexander Nubel into the Schalke net: Just as crucially, Werner is also capable of fulfilling the responsibilities of a traditional winger. Here, against Hannover, he decides to run Salif Sane towards the byline rather than cutting inside: Once there, he clips a pinpoint low cross with his left foot across the six-yard box for Poulsen, who is left with the easiest of finishes: Werner is also prepared to contribute towards the team’s defensive efforts as a left winger. Here he is in the opening minutes of the Champions League win against Benfica, chasing a surging Andre Almeida deep into the Leipzig half: He harries Almeida almost up to his own corner flag, dispossesses the Benfica defender as he attempts to check back inside, and then clears the ball to a team-mate: Werner could be a viable option for Chelsea on the left of a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1. The problem for Lampard is that Christian Pulisic has made the same position his own whenever fit in 2019-20, offers a very similar blend of speed, technique and work ethic, and did plenty in the final stretch of the season to suggest he is on a genuine superstar trajectory. Chelsea will go into next season with an embarrassment of attacking options, much of it boasting either elite European pedigree or world-class potential. Lampard will need to be creative and versatile in order to maximise his team’s attacking capabilities on the pitch and create the conditions for real chemistry to grow between his new additions and his young talents. The balance — between defence and attack, between creation and control and of responsibility between the individual attackers themselves — will probably not be easy to strike. But these are good problems for Lampard to have and in Werner, he has a player capable of ripping through any defence from virtually anywhere on the pitch in seconds. This should be a fun ride.

Luka Modric admits asking not to play for Tottenham after Chelsea bid was rejected Luka Modric has opened up about his time at Tottenham Hotspur, admitting interest from Chelsea meant he asked not to play for the club https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/luka-modric-tottenham-hotspur-chelsea-22543339

buy them a pint if I ever had the chance

This getting way ahead of things, but if I was in his shoes, what would drive me is beating Messi's Ballon d'Or record, beating Pele's 3 WC's (1 away from tying it at 23yo if France win 2022), winning 3 in row WC's, destroying the all-time WC final goal scoring record (I could see him scoring 25+ given his age, as he might, IF he plays to 35 years of age, play in a mind-blowing FIVE WC Finals, the only way to get to SIX would have been if he had played as a 15 yo, or started at 16yo or 17yo and played until he was 36, or 37yo, and tbh, for non GKers, 34, 35 is the upper limit, except for 1 in 100,000 cases like CR7, as he will indeed play at 37 years of age in 2022, but I simply cannot see Mbappe playing in a WC final at 38 years of age, France is too much of a football factory for that to happen), and winning more CL's than any other player in history. (he would have to go to a team like Real (most likely to do it, as they are the grand-masters of Europe by FAR in history) or, less likely, far less (here comes the hate) Bayern to do that, or a massively rejuvenated Barca) Real are also the only team I can see Mbappe, Sancho, Håland, Camavinga (if he goes supernova like I think he can), De Ligt (or some other MONSTER CB(s) we do not know yet), Havertz (yes I know, I know, lolol), and maybe even (these two would take a massive smackdown of other global powers) Davies and TAA at over the coming 5, 6 years. Galaticos 2.0, but far younger when they bring them in probably. They really need to do that massive 1+ billion euro stadium upgrade to get revenue up to a point to do that. There will be other emergent superstars as well, that we have no clue of atm. I do not have a 10 year old to 15 year old youth player crystal ball. I fully admit that, maybe some other do, but it would be a full-time job the wrap you head even halfway (hell maybe 25%) around the global schoolboy football mise-en-scène. Technology will enable this within 10 to 15 years, I do predict though. All that is about as 'big' as I can think, football-wise, so now you see my limits.

yes, but Kimmich and Davies are the best two fullbacks in the world, and Bayern's MF is streets ahead of PSG's (and most other teams on the planet if KImmich is at DMF), other than Verratti plus Pavard should be healthy for the final at RB, so you plug in Kimmich at his now normal DMF position NEVER count out a team with both Mbappe and Neymar (if Mbappe is 100%), but multiple players on PSG are going to have to have games of their lives (or Bayern just self-destroy in a spectacular epic fail, which is extremely doubtful)

This 'Leaked' Yellow / Blue Chelsea 20-21 Kit Is Not Real... https://www.footyheadlines.com/2020/08/this-leaked-yellow-blue-chelsea-20-21.html

I like Verratti, Di Maria,, Marquinhos, and Sarabia too, but after them, yes, not the most likeable (Neymar and Icardi (due to his whore wife) play a big role for many people)

Ronald Koeman: Barcelona's president says former player will be new head coach https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/53822783

is a nice place for a holiday, although I prefer Santorini and Skiathos (best beaches) and Naxos

they damn well better start Verratti though instead of Herrera