Vesper

Inside Leroy Sane’s transfer (and the bad blood between Bayern and Man City) https://theathletic.com/1906940/2020/07/03/sane-bayern-city-munich-manchester-leroy-guardiola-hoeness-soriano/ The latest apology came on Thursday night. Leroy Sane was not yet a Bayern Munich player but there were already pictures of him in the famous red shirt all over social media, so it was sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic’s turn, picking up the phone and calling Txiki Begiristain to assure the Manchester City director of football that they had not intended for it to be this way. It was only last summer that City CEO Ferran Soriano had written a formal letter to his Bayern counterparts, expressing his club’s dismay at the public courting of Sane via the media, leading the Germans’ then-president Uli Hoeness to express his regret. Twelve months on Sane is, at last, a Bayern player after the clubs managed to put their vast differences aside and agree a deal that could rise to €60 million. It is the first time that City have lost one of their star players against their wishes since their takeover in 2008, and they have done so to perhaps the most vocal critics of their ownership model throughout the last decade. Roberto Mancini first threatened to have it out with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 2010. The fact that Sane will not play for City again, despite not being able to start his Bayern career until next season, makes clear just how keen both he and City were to bring this saga to a close. The now-deposed back-to-back Premier League champions had wanted to keep him, offering him a new contract two years ago and keeping that deal on the table even after he suffered knee ligament damage last August, at a time when Bayern decided to wait and see. But Sane’s mind had long been made up. He and manager Pep Guardiola had become exasperated with each other over the past two years (Sane believed he should be playing more, Guardiola believed he needed to do much more to earn it), the winger and his partner had grown to dislike Manchester, and despite differences between his parents and his partner, there was a common desire to move to Munich, where he will earn considerably more money than he did at City. There is also the sporting project offered at Bayern and everything that means to a top German player. While City indicated that they would be willing to let him go on a free if Bayern didn’t match their valuation this summer, sources in Germany believe the reality is somewhat different. When Sane made it clear to City in June that he would be happy to wait a year and leave for nothing, the club were supposedly spooked and decided to strike a deal with Bayern as soon as possible. As is often the case with transfers like this, particularly between two clubs with as little common ground as City and Bayern, there are two versions. Transfer fee, wages and the whys and wherefores are all up for debate. When Guardiola revealed, bluntly, at a press conference just two weeks ago that Sane “does not want to extend his contract” and that he would be leaving City either this summer or next, it was designed to serve as a line in the sand. Everything was out in the open, everybody knew Sane’s intentions and, if you looked closely enough, how City felt about it. Yet few expected everything to be resolved within a fortnight. Given the depth of ill-feeling towards each other, it is a wonder they managed to agree on anything at all. Some of the facts are straightforward. Over the past two weeks, the clubs’ sporting directors — Salihamidzic and Begiristain — conducted talks in a “very cordial, businesslike manner”, according to a source close to the negotiations. A sporting director’s job description demands that business comes first, so relationships with the game’s most influential figures must be maintained. As a result, the two men were able to reach a satisfactory conclusion, despite the strong feelings of some of their colleagues. Everything ended amicably between City and Bayern. The risk of another injury scuppering the move for a second time was a factor in the immediacy of the deal, but City were in a hurry to let Sane go anyway. They insist he would not have played much for the club for the rest of this season, as Guardiola felt he was not committed. There was no element of rushing a deal through before the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling on City’s appeal against their two-year Champions League ban, as has been speculated. Due to COVID-enforced changes to Financial Fair Play rules, club accounts for 2020 and 2021 will be grouped together and averaged out, so there is no difference between June, July or even December. The only sense of significance regarding the timing comes from the Bayern end. Salihamidzic became an official member of the club’s board on Wednesday, July 1, and the fact he managed to thrash out deals for Sane and Tanguy Kouassi — an 18-year-old defender who has joined on a free from Paris Saint-Germain — the day before added to the sense he had pulled off a huge coup. Sources close to Bayern believe their capture of Kouassi on a free transfer, which blindsided PSG and left their coach Thomas Tuchel fuming, reinforced for City the real possibility of losing Sane for nothing. Salihamidzic was pointedly praised by CEO Rummenigge for “successfully concluding” a transfer saga that had occupied Bayern’s minds for well over a year. It was Salihamidzic, a former midfielder for the club, who had championed Sane’s signing early on and he was able to convince the board and then-new coach Hansi Flick the winger was a better fit for Bayern than Timo Werner. The RB Leipzig striker had already provisionally agreed terms with Bayern in spring 2019 but then became disillusioned over their inertia in pushing through a deal that summer. Generally speaking, it is common for two clubs to both try to claim the high ground over a big transfer, and there is certainly an element of that here. Such inter-club politics also helps explain the initial discrepancy in Sane’s reported wages. City sources indicate that he will be on a monster €22 million per year (more than €430,000 per week) at the Allianz Arena. At the Bayern end, it’s said to be “only” €17 million (not including signing-on fee), which has come down — due to the pandemic — from the €20 million he initially agreed with them last summer. Bayern have not disputed City’s figures that the deal is worth €49 million plus €11 million in add-ons, however. City believe they have got a great deal for Sane because they recouped €60 million for a player with one year left on his contract amid the uncertainty of the global pandemic and so soon after a serious knee injury, with all the doubts those can bring. Bayern, in turn, believe they have pulled off a masterstroke by getting a key player for considerably less than the €120-€150 million fee that had been mooted by City in August. By playing him in the Community Shield, the game where he got injured, City lost out on an extra €70 million or so, plus the €8 million they have paid him in wages while he was recuperating. City had been working to extend Sane’s contract since summer 2018 to try to avoid exactly this type of situation. It was around that time that Chelsea considered making a move. Despite the tensions between City and Bayern, a move to London would surely have been a less palatable option for the top brass in Manchester. Marina Granovskaia, Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s most trusted deal-maker, is a major admirer of the 24-year-old and seriously considered putting a move in place, but ultimately felt it would have been too complicated to pull off. Indeed, it was not always easy for Bayern or even City to conduct talks with the player. Sane was initially represented by his parents and the first contact between the clubs was through Giovanni Branchini, an Italian agent who has done plenty of business with both teams in the past. But last summer, Sane joined David Beckham’s agency before Beckham — the owner of new MLS franchise Inter Miami — quickly had to recuse himself due to US soccer regulations. After that, he moved to LIAN Sports, which ruffled a few feathers at Bayern but ultimately landed him an impressive contract. While Begiristain and Salihamidzic were able to reach a conclusion that surely suits all parties, despite all the crowing, it is unlikely to bring an end to the mutual antipathy between City and Bayern. That bad feeling goes all the way back to City’s 2008 takeover and Bayern’s three most powerful executives — Rummenigge, Hoeness and former president Franz Beckenbauer — making it clear, right from the start, that they were not prepared to sit back and quietly watch them try to get a place at football’s top table. One specific comment gets to the heart of this conflict more than any other. City brought in lawyers on one occasion when Hoeness reportedly claimed that every time Guardiola wanted a player costing over €100 million, he would put together some video clips and the transfer would be waved through before “the Sheikh raises the price of oil to recoup the money”. A highly placed source at City described it privately as “the remark of a smug, arrogant egotist”. As it turned out, that quote had been mistranslated. Hoeness did not suggest the Sheikh manipulates oil markets (which is potentially libellous) but that he simply sells more — “he opens up the gas tap a few millimetres more, and he’s even again”. Of course, the sentiment is very similar. City believe it is a case of old money versus new, while Bayern protest it is not so much the source of the Manchester club’s money, but that the supply of it is theoretically infinite. While they have dedicated themselves to forging hugely lucrative commercial partnerships, they feel City are state-owned and that they distort the market. Senior Bayern sources also insist there is no personal animosity towards City and their owners but they’ve come to understand that the English club’s Abu Dhabi-based backers see it that way. Indeed, City believe several comments over the years have strayed close to xenophobia. City had also deemed it hypocritical, to some extent, that during the public courting of Sane last summer, Bayern’s then-manager Nico Kovac also said they had to “fight against states and billionaires” in the transfer market, naming Abu Dhabi, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Qatar were commercial partners for Bayern at the time, and still are. Those public comments about Sane — Kovac saying he was “confident” a deal would get done and various Bayern players welcoming the move — are another sore point. Although the final negotiations were civilised, City feel Bayern’s strategy only strengthened the player’s resolve to leave. However, it must be said that he had already indicated his desire to do so, which is precisely why the public comments started. Soriano wrote to Bayern and, to their credit, Hoeness and Kovac apologised publicly, although the latter’s contrition was not exactly fulsome. He said of his earlier comments: “I always speak the truth. What I said was absolutely right and is verified.” City feel it is another example of Bayern lacking class, while Bayern see it as par for the course at top clubs, especially once there is already an agreement over personal terms (as there was in this case). Clubs in continental Europe are generally more accepting of this than their English counterparts. Although City have never responded publicly, they were unimpressed by what they perceived to be aggressive tactics in the pursuit of Sane — but not necessarily surprised, given they experienced something similar with Jerome Boateng in the past. In the case of Boateng, Bayern opened up with an £8 million offer for a player City valued nearer £18 million. City’s opinion was that it was a derisory offer. They did not make that public, however, whereas Bayern seemed outraged not to get their way and turned on City in the media. A compromise was eventually reached for the defender at around £13 million, and senior City officials still look back on that with disdain to this day. Relations suffered previously when Guardiola was Bayern’s manager and the Bundesliga club, along with everybody else in football, knew it was City’s intention to one day to lure him to the Etihad, although Beckenbauer once claimed he had no concerns about losing Guardiola because the Catalan would not go to “a club like Manchester City”. Guardiola and Hoeness remain friends and have dined together in Munich in recent years, while Bayern have often discussed the possibility of City being thrown out of the Champions League for FFP breaches — and they may soon get their wish. City have found it increasingly offensive that Rummenigge and Hoeness have felt authorised to preach to them about the rights and wrongs of how to run a football club, given Hoeness received a three-year prison sentence in 2014 for fraud offences relating to the concealing of £22.4 million from tax inspectors, a year after Rummenigge accepted a €249,000 fine for not paying tax on two Rolex watches presented to him in Qatar. Credit to the sporting directors for getting the Sane deal over the line, despite all that.

Honigstein: How to fix the broken Bundesliga https://theathletic.com/1919044/2020/07/13/honigstein-broken-bundesliga-bayern-munich/ West Germany coach Sepp Herberger once famously summed up football’s core appeal. “People go to the stadium because they don’t know how the game will turn out,” the 1954 World Cup winner said. For decades, this has essentially rung true. In 2020 though, things are doubly different. People can’t go to the stadiums but they do know how the game will turn out: it ends with Bayern Munich winning. Always. The Bavarians secured an eighth consecutive title in 2019-20, their 29th championship in 51 years. Their 4-2 win over Bayer Leverkusen then delivered a 20th DFB Pokal win, their 11th this century. Bayern deserve praise for their voracious appetite and mostly excellent use of their considerable resources. But as 11 Freunde contributor and Steilcast pod regular Christoph Biermann put it so succinctly, their dominance is a sure-tell sign of “a broken league”. How did it come to this? With an annual income of £670 million in 2018-19, Bayern have become simply too big to fail, or, if you want, the competition are just too meek to take advantage. Even appointing the wrong manager in Niko Kovac and playing 16 months of largely dysfunctional football wasn’t sufficiently bad enough to miss out on domestic silverware. The Bundesliga behemoth’s sporting hegemony is a direct result of their relative financial might. They made £233 million more than their nearest rivals Borussia Dortmund (£437 million turnover) last season, £429 million more than third-placed RB Leipzig (£241 million) and £480 million more than Borussia Monchengladbach (£190 million) who finished in fourth in 2019-20. Augsburg, last season’s lowest-placed survivors in 15th spot, are a whopping £578 million worse off. The imbalance is clear to see but ways out of this lopsided state of affairs are much harder to find. Possible solutions fall into two categories — you can either attempt to level down, curtailing Bayern’s advantage, or level up, by generating more money for the teams below. Neither are anything like straightforward. So how do you plug the gap? One way, without addressing the thorny issue of money itself, would be to render the bigger mismatches meaningless and shift the focus on to games between sides that are more evenly matched. You could do so by introducing play-offs. Michael Reschke, now technical director at Schalke, mooted the idea a couple of years ago as a means of adding more excitement to the title race. A best-of-five series between Bayern and Dortmund in late May would certainly be entertaining but it would also dramatically diminish the appeal of the regular season and pose the big logistical problem of fitting in the extra games, unless the number of teams in the league was reduced. Play-offs also wouldn’t change the basic fact that Bayern are huge favourites to win the league against sides with two-thirds or a third of their income, at best. The change to the structure of the competition would be drastic; the real benefit in terms competitiveness doubtful. What about salary caps or a luxury tax? Salary caps would require a change of European law and near-global adoption in order not to put Bundesliga clubs at a unique disadvantage. But even if those hurdles could be overcome, there’s a good chance that wealthy clubs would no doubt still find “creative” ways of paying top money to their best players, via sponsorships from related companies or a very generous bonus structure, to name but the legal methods. A luxury tax? You could tax Bayern, say, on any wages beyond £180 million and redistribute the money to the other teams. To go by this year’s figures, that would result in £120 million of extra income for the rest of the league. Dortmund would be taxed £4.5 million themselves. Redistributing income directly from the top earners to the needier would be a very popular move — taking money from the rich to give it to the poor always is — but just like a salary cap, it would require a European-wide adoption to pass the tests of legality and fairness. Bayern can’t be the only club in the Champions League to lose a sixth of their income in that way. It wouldn’t be in the league’s interest, either. Why would penalising Bayern financially hinder the Bundesliga as a whole? “Munich’s monopolisation of trophies does have a chilling effect on the Bundesliga’s international TV rights and will also be detrimental on national TV rights in the medium term,” industry expert Kay Dammholz, of Sass Media, explains but hobbling Bayern financially would still do more harm than good to the league as a whole. In order to understand why that’s the case, it’s necessary to look at the reasons why people abroad watch German football. Robert Lewandowski and Bayern Munich celebrate at a town hall reception last week (Photo: A Beier/Getty Images for FC Bayern) An unpublished study by the league into the appeal of foreign competitions to global audiences found that the number one reason to tune in were “clubs and superstars” — in other words, recognisable brands. “Quality of football”, as measured by the teams’ performances in European competition, comes second, and an “exciting championship” is third. Much to the Bundesliga’s frustration, “match ambience” (fans, stadiums) sits only in fourth. If you consider that their domestic market is largely saturated — attendance is, under normal conditions, high and TV rights are stable — then any substantial growth will have to come from internationalisation. Taking the top club (and Dortmund) down a peg is, therefore, the last thing the league wants to do. “We don’t win by making Bayern smaller,” a Bundesliga official tells The Athletic. “They, along with Dortmund, are the main drivers of international engagement. There are other interesting stories — like the first-ever Berlin derby between Hertha and Union in the top flight — and we do well in certain markets such as the US and Japan because we have many of their players but it still comes down to the big clubs, how they do well in the Champions League.” Increased domestic competitiveness would certainly be good for the “product” but it must not come at the cost of hurting the top sides. Recent history is very instructive in that regard. In the noughties, Bayern’s dominance had not yet reached today’s totalitarian level. Surprises were still possible. In the seven years between 2002 and 2009, the Bundesliga had six different champions in Bayern, Dortmund, Werder Bremen, VfB Stuttgart and VfL Wolfsburg. Unfortunately, nobody outside Germany paid much attention, as the “cheap and cheerful” (The Guardian) league was considered poor in sporting terms and bereft of stars with international visibility. International TV rights brought in only £9-£18 million annually, a measly fraction of the £230 million the Premier League was raking in from foreign channels at the time. Today, there’s far less mobility at the top but more people than ever are watching because they recognise Bayern and Dortmund as sides of international stature or want to watch their native players. The Bundesliga’s annual income from international TV rights is currently worth £224 million, roughly a fifth of the Premier League’s. Growth has come on the back of Bayern’s reemergence as a European superpower and Dortmund’s ascent to the number two position, not despite it. “What we need are more Bayerns and Dortmunds: clubs good enough to compete in Europe and attract global audiences,” the league official says. So the Bundesliga needs more outside investment, then? German fans don’t think along those lines. They would love their clubs to be as wealthy and powerful as Bayern, of course, but they’re not prepared to accept the external investment that could make that happen rather quickly. The Bundesliga’s fabled “50+1” rule — a stipulation that the majority of a club’s voting shares must remain with the supporters — acts as an effective bar to takeovers by individuals or companies. Growth must be organic, with clubs generating their own income. Borussia Monchengladbach’s comeback as a force in German football shows that it can be done but the speed of progress is glacial by international comparison and the pitfalls are plentiful. Two or three wrong coaching appointments coupled with a few misguided big transfers and you’re back to square one — or worse. Just ask VfB Stuttgart, Werder Bremen or Hamburger SV. There are exceptions. Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen are owned by corporations for historic reasons, Hoffenheim have a benefactor in billionaire Dietmar Hopp, RB Leipzig are controlled by Red Bull and Hertha BSC will see a £335 million investment by financier Lars Windhorst in return for 66 per cent of the club’s subsidiary company that encompasses the senior football team. But the overwhelming majority of fans of traditional powerhouses such as Hamburg(now in Bundesliga 2), Stuttgart, Schalke or Bremen still abhor the idea of selling to an oligarch or local sugar daddy, even if it meant overnight elite status, a la Manchester City. They want to stick with the democratic control structures. Keeping it their club is much more important to them than silverware. “When a club is sold, it loses part of its soul and identity,” says Jan-Henrik Gruszecki, a fan-activist who is working on a number of reform proposals with supporters’ group Unsere Kurve. “It’s like having a really good friend you’ve stuck with through good and bad times suddenly winning the lottery and becoming a completely different person, and no longer interested in you.” But how else can clubs make more money if an oligarch isn’t going to come along and help? As long as those purist sentiments persist, so will the dynamic that sees Bayern and Dortmund grow further apart from the field. One of the unintended side effects of the 50+1 rule is that it forces clubs to maximise commercial income. In order not to sell themselves, they must flog everything else, by way of merchandising or sponsorship. But not everybody can. “The exponential growth of commercial income for the elite teams has been the real differentiator in recent years, more so than TV money,” says Yannick Ramcke, founder of the well-respected Off The Field Business blog and business development manager at onefootball.com. Bayern, for example, made £175 million from sponsorship and marketing activities last season, close to three times the money they received from the Bundesliga’s national television rights, £60 million. Due to the relatively low value of domestic rights (£1 billion per year, 20 per cent of which is passed on to Bundesliga 2), Champions League money acts to distort the competitive balance even further. Bayern received £73 million from UEFA last year, despite exiting at the last-16 stage. The Bundesliga could lobby UEFA to pay out revenue more evenly among participating leagues but due to the top teams’ position of power, it’s a no-starter. Europe’s elite are forever pressuring the federation into maximising income for them, dangling the sword of a super league without UEFA’s involvement over their heads. So no more money from UEFA. What about addressing the imbalance in domestic TV revenue? This would seem a more promising avenue. Unlike the Premier League, the Bundesliga does not publish the exact breakdown of payouts to clubs, which is in itself rather indicative of some pretty damning inequity. Kicker magazine and others are forced to calculate the numbers themselves every year, taking into account a complex system that weighs historic achievements. For this season, the domestic breakdown works out at £60 million for Bayern and £23 million for 18th-placed Paderborn. Broadcast rebates and loss of income from COVID-19 excluded, this is a ratio of 1:2.5. Once you add the money received from international TV rights, however, things get totally out of kilter. Instead of distributing the £224 million evenly among its 18 members, the Bundesliga’s weighted system favours the biggest sides to an extent that feels unconscionable. Bayern received £40 million from the foreign rights pot, Dortmund £28 million, but Paderborn only £2.7 million. The net effect is that the overall ratio stretches to 1:4. “It used to be 1:2.3, 10 years ago,” Mainz board member Jan Lehmann told Sponsors magazine. “Clubs like ours don’t demand radical change but a return to the proven way things worked in the past.” An even distribution of international money would provide just around £12.5 million for each club and see Bayern and Dortmund lose out on £28 million and £16 million respectively: not enough to seriously hamper their chances in Europe. There’s no good reason not do that, even if the overall dynamic won’t be too much affected. What’s the nuclear option? If the Bundesliga is to hold on to its traditional club structures and increase competitiveness without clipping Bayern’s and Dortmund’s wings too much, there’s only one drastic option as long as TV revenue is static: the number of clubs in the Bundesliga has to be smaller. Reducing the league to, say 14 teams, would pit more evenly-matched teams against each other in more meaningful games. Sticking with £100 million for the team finishing in first place would increase the average sum for other sides from the current £52 million to £70 million — a huge jump of 34 per cent that would help with domestic, as well as international competitiveness. That’s if German broadcasters are prepared to pay out the same money without the four worst teams being a part of the league any longer. In the season just gone, that would have meant doing without Paderborn, Fortuna Dusseldorf, Werder Bremen and Mainz. Ramcke believes the value of rights wouldn’t be overly affected in a negative sense. “The biggest sides are the by far the most important drivers of revenue, whereas the production of the smaller sides’ live games is more a burden to broadcasters than an asset,” he says, adding that the Champions League has shown that scarcity and relevance, combined with much higher quality games, can offset the reduction of games available for rights holders. Four fewer home matches would mean less income from gate receipts, to be sure. But those losses, up to £3.5 million per game per team, are mostly offset by the increase in TV revenue. In addition, freeing up eight kick-off slots in the calendar could be used to move more rounds of the Champions League to a more lucrative weekend schedule, help Bundesliga teams grow their brands during off-season trips abroad, see the introduction of two-legged DFB Pokal fixtures or even that of a league cup that would generate additional income for Bundesliga 2 and third-division sides. Europe’s biggest country reducing the number of teams in its top league does appear counter-intuitive and will be guaranteed to face stiff resistance from sides worrying about relegation and their chances of promotion from Bundesliga 2. Gruszecki disagrees with the notion, unsurprisingly. “We shouldn’t think about reducing the league but work towards making an 18-team league more competitive.” But increasing the concentration of wealth in the upper-middle really is the most logical way of countering the concentration of wealth at the top without allowing for billionaire takeovers or harming the chances of German clubs to be competitive in Europe, which is so vital for the league’s international standing. If Bayern aren’t to win the next nine leagues in a row, the only chance is to strengthen the sides best-placed to thwart them. (Top photo: Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

Cadiz, the club and city where the rules are different, finally return to La Liga https://theathletic.com/1921020/2020/07/14/cervera-la-liga-cadiz-promotion/ The scenes were startling on Saturday evening as 2,000 yellow-clad fans noisily gathered in the narrow streets around Cadiz’s Ramon de Carranza stadium to welcome the team bus ahead of their Segunda Division game against Fuenlabrada. Showing a clear disregard for a call from city mayor and big Cadiz fan Jose Maria Gonzalez “not to play with COVID-19”, some supporters could not stay away, knowing that even a point would clinch their club’s promotion back to Spain’s top flight for the first time in 15 years. An unexpected 1-0 loss to play-offs chasing Fuenlabrada put the celebrations on ice though, and fans who had gone to bars and houses in the city to watch the game melted back into the heat of the night. But 24 hours later, the party could properly begin after third-placed Real Zaragoza’s own 4-2 defeat against relegation candidates Real Oviedo confirmed Cadiz’s promotion with two games to spare. Elsewhere in Spain, there was concern at the lack of social distancing, but general joy at the return of one of La Liga’s most colourful clubs to La Liga. Although formed in 1910, Cadiz’s biggest contribution to football over the decades was the summer Carranza Trophy tournament, where many of the biggest Spanish and South American clubs would come for some relaxing pre-season fun, before more serious commercial considerations of recent years sent them on tours to the US and Far East. Cadiz’s own most successful era came in the late 1980s and early 90s, when El Salvador international Jorge Alberto “Magico” Gonzalez was widely admired for his on-pitch skills and off-pitch antics. Relegation from the top flight in 2006 was a much more serious affair for Cadiz, especially when followed two years later by a further fall to the third-tier Segunda B. Six seasons in semi-pro “hell” almost saw the club go out of business. The 2014 arrival of current president Manuel Vizcaino coincided with an upturn in fortunes, though they were still in Segunda B when Real Madrid visited in December 2015 for a Copa del Rey tie. That evening saw Cadiz supporters’ reputation as the wittiest in Spain reconfirmed. Chants of “(Rafa) Benitez, look at Twitter” rang around the stadium as news circulated online that Real were about to be thrown out of the competition for fielding ineligible winger Denis Cheryshev that night. Vizcaino’s rebuilding of Cadiz has not been without its own controversies, with a legal battle for control of the club with former Granada president Quique Pina still to be resolved. In 2018, ex-Granada sporting director Juan Carlos Cordero was replaced by Oscar Arias, who brought with him the recruitment skills and processes learned working under (Cadiz-born) Monchi at Andalusian neighbours Sevilla. However, the key appointment of recent years was coach Alvaro Cervera, who, within two months of his arrival in April 2016, had delivered promotion back to the Segunda. Cervera has ended a 15-year top-flight exile for Cadiz (Photo by Irina R.H. / AFP7 / Europa Press Sports via Getty Images) Cervera was born in Equatorial Guinea in west Africa, grew up on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, then moved to the Spanish mainland, where he came through as a forward with Racing Santander. He also played in the top flight for Valencia and Mallorca, and won four Spain caps in the early 1990s. His coaching career has been mostly in the second and third tiers at clubs such as Castellon, Alicante, Real Union and Recreativo de Huelva. His only top-flight experience to date among almost 500 games as a manager was with former club Santander, where he was hired midway through the 2011-12 season with the team in a desperate situation amid an institutional crisis. Unable to save them from relegation, with the team picking up just three points, all from draws, in his 13 games, Cervera landed in hospital at one point for what was reported as stress. There was also controversy when he accused his own players of not trying hard enough after a loss to relegation rivals Zaragoza. He was sacked from his next job in the Segunda with Tenerife after almost three years, before Cadiz decided to take him on when they needed help getting out of the third tier. His excellent work there has now finally gained him another chance to succeed at Primera level at age 54. Well used to succeeding against the odds, Cervera has been nicknamed “El Simeone del Cadiz”, after Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone, and has described his team’s gameplan as “rob and run” — winning the ball high up the pitch, and going straight for the opposition goal. “You thought you had the game under control, then the final score shows you they did,” said Las Palmas and former West Bromwich Albion coach Pepe Mel, after his better footballing side lost 2-0 at the Carranza in October. Cadiz’s steady progress through recent years has been achieved without spending much money — they have made a profit each summer while down in Segunda. Last summer they paid out just €700,000 in total, while selling homegrown striker Manu Vallejo to top-flight Valencia (where he has barely played) for €5.5 million. Their €9 million wage bill places them 10th among the 22 clubs in the second tier. Many of the team’s key players have also taken their own roundabout routes to this point. Their 41-year-old captain and goalkeeper Alberto Cifuentes has never played in La Liga and joined from Polish club Piast Gliwice in 2015, when Cadiz were still in Segunda B. Their current players with the most top-flight experience are former Sevilla, Getafe and Las Palmas centre-back Juan Cala, 30, and ex-Atletico Madrid, Schalke and Watford midfielder Jose Manuel Jurado, 34. Maybe the most talented squad member is Alex Fernandez, the 27-year-old brother of Real Madrid’s Nacho. Twelve goals from midfield make the former Real Madrid youth teamer and one-time Reading loanee Cadiz’s top scorer this season. “We are a team of grafters,” Fernandez told Radio Marca from the team’s promotion party on Sunday evening. “We love working, and that has been the key.” Former Barcelona B striker Anthony “Choco” Lozano has nine goals while on loan from Manchester City-owned Segunda rivals Girona, who decided they would not need the Honduras international to get promoted this season but are still not certain of even making the play-offs. With the practical game plan required to get out of the Segunda refined over four years of mostly gradual progress, 2019-20 did seem to be going perfectly on the pitch. Cervera’s team won 10 of their first 12 league games, and have spent the entire campaign in the two automatic promotion spots. The biggest threat to them going up was mid-March’s shutdown due to the pandemic opening up the possibility of the season being called off with no promotion or relegation. There were also fears within the squad, voiced by defender Fali, who at first refused to return to training and said he might even retire from the professional game if resuming the season posed a risk to his health. However, he and all his team-mates did fall into line, along with everyone else in Spanish football. Recent months brought further sad news, with Cadiz’s most famous non-local fan, Michael Robinson, passing away in April after a long battle with cancer. City mayor Gonzalez has even suggested that the Carranza be renamed after the former Liverpool striker and respected Spanish football pundit and journalist, who connected so well with the club and the city. “Cadiz has a spirit,” Blackpool-raised Robinson told Jot Down magazine in 2011. “It is the only western city where capitalism is not the law. To be rich is even a disadvantage. The rules of life are different.” Cadiz’s rise through recent years could also be described as a rebellion against the usual rules, while current social norms were put aside again on Sunday evening when supporters spilled onto the streets of the Mediterranean port city to celebrate promotion together. Club president Vizcaino has already promised the 10,000 club members who have attended every Segunda home game this season that their season ticket will be renewed for free for 2020-21 (assuming the COVID-19 situation in Spain improves to the point where supporters are allowed into stadiums again). The club have also recently renewed Cervera’s contract up until 2024, while during Sunday night’s celebrations Vizcaino announced Spain international former Sevilla, Manchester City and Valencia striker Alvaro Negredo, soon to turn 35, would join them for next season. It would not be Cadiz if there were not still some challenges to overcome — these still include an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport over a FIFA transfer ban imposed for re-signing centre-back Mamadou M’Baye from Watford (another club with Quique Pina links) last summer. That is a reminder there is still plenty of work to be done at Cadiz, on and off the pitch. But for now the celebrations are likely to last long beyond the end of this season, and well into the next one.

De Roon: ‘The coach doesn’t let us go back or wide, only forward. It’s intense’ https://theathletic.com/1907710/2020/07/05/marten-de-roon-atalanta-serie-a-freescoring/ Marten de Roon never thought he would miss the Teesside weather until now. “Honestly, playing the game at the moment it would probably be a bit better in the UK,” he says. The former Middlesbrough midfielder, whose self-deprecating posts on social media make him a must-follow, has just finished a morning training session in Zingonia. Atalanta are working-out as early as they can before the summer sun starts to burn at peak temperatures, and it’s just as well too. Sessions here can be brutal. Atalanta don’t slow down even when match day approaches. “For the manager, you can train quite intense the day before,” De Roon tells The Athletic. “You don’t go very low in your intensity. I think that’s a big difference.” Part of what has made Atalanta one of the most enthralling teams to watch in Europe over the last few years is undoubtedly their ability to come back from behind as if it were no sweat. Two-nil down to title-chasing Lazio last week, the team turned it around in the second half and made a 3-2 win look comfortable. In all, they have claimed a jaw-dropping 22 points from losing positions this season. This lot never seem down and out. When Atalanta come to play, the games are infinite. The addition of Jens Bangsbo to Gian Piero Gasperini’s staff in October 2018 has enabled the team to go harder for longer. The Danish strength and conditioning coach, who served under Carlo Ancelotti and Marcello Lippi at Juventus around the time Gasperini started his own coaching career with the Old Lady’s youth teams, has powered Atalanta up with weights, squats and lots and lots of running. “What you see with a lot of different teams is that they’re very good probably for the first 60-70 minutes and then the last 20 minutes they suffer,” De Roon says. “For 70 minutes we’re maybe on the same level as them. But the last 20 minutes we can keep the same (intensity).” As such, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a great surprise to learn that the largest share of Atalanta’s goals (22 per cent) this season have arrived in the final quarter of an hour. “A lot of people say the training is hard but it’s always full of games, full of competing,” De Roon adds. “And then when you see the results and you also feel during the games stronger than your opponent, especially in the final minutes, you have such a good feeling and that gives you more and more energy to go more.” When De Roon returned to Bergamo after a season with Middlesbrough — the €13.5 million Atalanta paid was a club record at the time — the surroundings were the same but the vibe completely different. The team he left were relegation battlers who went into every season with survival as the aim. The one he rejoined in 2016 were audacious and dared to dream. Atalanta had just finished fourth, back when fourth wasn’t enough to earn Champions League qualification. For context the club’s highest top-flight finish up until then was fifth back in 1948 and, as is the way of modern football, the vultures were already circling the team’s break-out stars. Inter had already picked off Roberto Gagliardini in the January. Milan swooped for Franck Kessie. It left Atalanta needing to reconstruct their midfield, which led them to bring back De Roon. The change in mentality under Gasperini could not have been more pronounced from the Atalanta he knew under his predecessor, the old-school Edy Reja. “When you went away from home in my first spell it was like, ‘Don’t lose. A draw is OK’. Gasperini changed the mindset to winning. It doesn’t matter who we are playing against, you have to try to win. If it’s Juventus away, Napoli away, of course it will be harder to win those games than if you play against the teams down the bottom but the mindset has to be that you can always win, that you always want to win.” And Atalanta have won against all the top sides in Gasperini’s four years at the Gewiss Stadium. The restart has brought that to the fore again with Thursday night’s victory over Coppa Italia winners Napoli — a club-record seventh straight in the top flight. It came hot on the heels of Atalanta inflicting a first league defeat on Lazio since September when they even overcame a De Roon own goal. “The manager wants the maximum in every training session,” he says, “the maximum quality. There are not a lot of sessions where it’s freedom and fun. Of course we have fun but it doesn’t come for free.” De Roon needed “two or three months” to adapt not just to the workload and intensity of training but an entirely new way of interpreting the midfield role under Gasperini. Although signed to play the exact same position he’d performed for the club in the past, De Roon effectively had to start over and re-learn what it means to be a middle man. “It was new. It was strange,” the 29-year-old explains. “I thought I knew it all but with him it was too different.” What follows is a great insight into how Atalanta operate. “We play a lot of times with two midfield players,” De Roon says. “Over the last few years, that’s been me and Remo Freuler. Normally as a midfielder you’re used to playing in the centre of the field, so if the ball is on the left you come across from the middle to help out. But in Gasperini’s concept the two midfielders (in a 3-4-2-1/3-4-3) stay quite wide to leave a lot of space for the forwards. “I’ll give you an example. Papu Gomez and Josip Ilicic start wide on the left or the right and come inside to find space in the middle. When they do that, the wing-backs in our system push up. They start to go in front. So in that moment the opponent’s left defender probably follows Ilicic inside and our right defender goes into the space that is open.” When De Roon says “our right defender” he is thinking of the centre-back on that side, Rafael Toloi, every bit as much as wing-backs Hans Hateboer and Timothy Castagne. “As a midfielder, you stay quite wide. If you lose the ball, you’re in a good position, so I think that’s a big difference.” Thursday’s goals against Napoli offer a perfect illustration. Look at De Roon’s positioning here, as Gomez releases Castagne to cross for Mario Pasalic’s opener. See how he’s in an area of the pitch where he can cover for his wing-back or for Toloi as the Brazilian joins in the attack. Atalanta’s second goal originates from yet another piece of build-up down the right flank, with Toloi, Pasalic and Castagne combining to outnumber Napoli on that side. A series of quick one-twos ends with centre-back Toloi racking up his sixth league assist of the campaign as he helps the ball along for a late, blind-side run from Robin Gosens, who is out-of-shot in the below grab. The left wing-back is now in double figures for goals in all competitions this season. De Roon’s positional sense enables Atalanta to play with the handbrake off and takes reference points away from their opponents. His comfort in that zone has also allowed Gasperini to be more aggressive when chasing games. As we saw in August when Atalanta came back from 2-0 down to win another game 3-2 — this time against SPAL — Gasperini will not hesitate to replace a centre-back with an attacking midfielder if his team are behind. Losing 2-1 at the Paolo Mazza, he makes an audacious double change five minutes short of the hour mark, swapping veteran defender Andrea Masiello for the highly technical Ukrainian playmaker Ruslan Malinovskiy, not to mention the equally bold switch of Freuler for lethal sub Luis Muriel. The cool thing here is De Roon drops into Atalanta’s back three. Yet Gasperini does not want him to act as a centre-back. As you can see from the action in Ferrara, he is using De Roon’s instincts to ratchet up the pressure on SPAL even more. The position he adopts is nominally that of a defender but his vocation is to remain as intrepid as he was before the tactical change which, in conjunction with the introductions of Muriel and Malinovskiy, really turns the screw on the home side. Observe here how he sets Hateboer up to cross for Duvan Zapata. “He wants me to play as a midfielder,” De Roon explains. “I’m the lowest midfielder. Gasperini always says, ‘I want my midfielders and attackers to have the ball and now I have a midfielder who plays as a defender but like a midfielder with the ball’. ‘I like it’, he says. ‘I like it because I have an advantage that instead of one of my defenders going forward or playing passes, I have a midfielder there who can change positions with the other midfielder a little bit easier’. “For him, it’s like an extra midfielder who is used to playing (the ball and the positional game) a bit more forward than a defender. He doesn’t see it as, ‘Now you play as a defender’.” When I suggest Gasperini’s total football is as Dutch as De Roon, he counters: “Tactically, he is Italian because Italian coaches are stronger or very strong in this regard as they grew up with all the tactical stuff. He is a little bit Dutch in the total football because he expects defenders to attack and midfielders to attack and attackers to defend. What for me is really different with the Dutch mentality though is that, in Holland, we play a lot of possession. We want to keep the ball. “Now, of course, he loves possession (Atalanta average 58 per cent of the ball, the third-highest figure in Serie A) but he hates possession for possession’s sake. He hates it. He wants to go forward. His first mindset is to go forward. He hates a ball wide, he hates a ball back. Honestly in training, where you can make mistakes, he wants you to play forward, always. He doesn’t want you to play back, even if you make a mistake, because if you go backwards the other team has an opportunity to press us, to go forward and everything. They’re the ones who have to go backwards. We have to go forward. So I think that’s a big difference with the Dutch mentality where possession is sometimes the main thing you know. But that’s not Gasperini’s mentality. He wants to go. He wants to score goals. That’s why we score so many.” Atalanta’s attacking threat makes them an absurd outlier in terms of their expected goals (xG) per 90 minutes, with a league-leading 2.15. The other reason is Atalanta’s delightful trident (and wicked change-up from the bench in Muriel, Malinovskiy and Pasalic). “Papu and Ilicic are both players who can beat a man. They’re our creators,” De Roon says. “You know, in moments of difficulty they can beat two or three guys or have an amazing play and score or give an assist (Gomez, known to all as Papu, has 15 of the latter in Serie A this season). The pair of them draw the attention of the defenders. That’s why others have spaces. “Zapata is often one-against-one because defenders don’t want to have Ilicic or Papu one-against-one. They double or triple up on them which means he’s often on his own and with his physical ability and everything he scores a lot.” The Colombian’s hat-trick goal in the 7-2 win over Lecce — one of three games in which Atalanta have put seven past a Serie A team this season — is a case in point. Notice how a swarm of defenders suddenly converge on the slaloming Ilicic. Then Papu. Then Ilicic again, before he hooks the ball over to a wide-open Zapata for a tap-in. No team has scored more goals at this stage of a Serie A season since Fiorentina in the late 1950s and, if Atalanta keep this up, they are projected to end the campaign with 107 in the league. The unprecedented numbers and scintillating play have sparked a provocative debate in Italy about whether or not they should consider the league season something of a disappointment because they are not in the title race. Some pundits wonder if a more measured approach would have got Atalanta closer to Juventus and Lazio. But De Roon doesn’t agree and believes we should never lose sight of just how much this club are punching above their weight. “The way we play has got us where we are,” he says. “We talk a lot about it. Also, we are not all bought for €30 million or €40 million. We are learning. There are a lot of young players who, three years ago, were playing in Holland and elsewhere and now they are competing with the best. “It’s easy to say, ‘If they play like this they can play for the Scudetto’. We can beat anyone. But we’re also a team that if it is not happening we cannot go back to a very stable system or a boring kind of playing style and then try to win one-zero. It’s in our veins now to try to attack, to play our style. It’s difficult to compare with teams like Juve and Inter, who pay €80 million, €100 million or €120 million for players, when our wage bill is €36 million and 13th in the league. Our goal from the beginning of the season was to try to end up again in the Champions League and even that is not easy with teams like Milan and Roma, who have a bigger budget and everything.” Atalanta’s payroll is around 30 per cent of what those two clubs pay their players. They are also the only Italian side to have already booked their place in next month’s Champions League quarter-finals. It’s a remarkable achievement when you recall they had zero points after the first three games of the group stage. Reflecting on how the team got to grips with the competition, De Roon says: “The first thing is the pace. It’s not like you can say, ‘OK, let’s slow down for five or 10 minutes’, because then they punish you. That’s the difference between playing your own competition (Serie A) and playing Champions League. Of course, you have to be concentrated for 90 minutes and everything in Serie A but sometimes if you’re 1-0 or 2-0 up, you can let the tempo down a little bit. Do that for five or 10 minutes in the Champions League and you’re behind or they pull level. Nobody can switch off for 30 seconds.” Nobody, in the competition’s present format, had qualified from the position Atalanta found themselves in either. “(Manchester) City at home (a 1-1 draw) gave us a little bit of confidence,” De Roon recalls. “The two draws between Shakhtar (Donetsk) and Dinamo (Zagreb) gave us hope too. That was very important. The only thing we could do was win twice and even then we were still dependent on City (winning their final group game in Zagreb), otherwise we were out. We said to each other, ‘Let’s go for it. We’re growing in the Champions League. We’re adapting’. We couldn’t go out with zero points. It was Atalanta’s first time in the Champions League. Now we’re in the final stages. It’s something unbelievable. The impact that it had on the city also, the people here.” As one of the worst-hit places in the world during the pandemic — Bergamo suffered more than 6,000 deaths — De Roon and his team-mates are striving to do as much as they can to give their city a lift. Now that qualification for next season’s Champions League is close to being wrapped up, Gasperini has set the team the target of breaking the club record points total Atalanta set in his first season (72). Attention will then shift to the eight-team Champions League tournament in Lisbon. The question is: Can they win it now the format has been temporarily changed from two legs to one-off ties? “Errrrr… I cannot say nothing,” De Roon says. “There are stronger teams than us with more quality but for us it’s an advantage that it’s one game. I would say if you draw Bayern Munich and have to play two games against them, it’s going to be very difficult. But when it’s one game, well, if you have a good day and the other team has a bad day, you have a chance to win. It’s quarter-final, semi-final, final. So it’s three games against the best teams in the world. But you know what we always say to each other? ‘We go there, we go play and we will see how it goes’. “Anything can happen.”

After 15 managers and five owners at Leeds – is football’s biggest comeback on? https://theathletic.com/1925195/2020/07/15/after-15-managers-and-five-owners-at-leeds-is-footballs-biggest-comeback-on/ In the beginning was the Yorkshire Consortium and for as long as that random collective held together, it played God. The group took no blame for Leeds United’s relegation in 2004 — too late to the party to do much about it after their March takeover — but a motley crew of local businessmen, devoid of specialist football acumen, is where the story of the EFL years starts. It bought Leeds in the week I joined the Yorkshire Evening Post, its members’ faces splashed on the front page one morning beneath the headline “Brave New World”. That was one way of putting it. Gerald Krasner, the insolvency expert who led that consortium and now has the task of guiding Wigan Athletic out of administration, held a press conference a few hours later in the conference suite at Elland Road. He explained in detail how Leeds could be brought to heel in the Premier League, despite their debts and a horrendously low league position. Those debts, Krasner insisted, were manageable with Premier League income. The situation shouldn’t be fatal. A question piped up from the back of the hall. “What if you go down?” Krasner thought about this and answered smoothly. “If we go down, we’ve got a plan for that too,” he said. That road is mapped out. Except nobody really had a plan for Leeds in the Championship; not a credible method of realigning accounts which exposed liabilities of more than £100 million. In any event, the Yorkshire Consortium involved marriages of convenience. It served up champagne in the boardroom and one of its members, Simon Morris, liked to use the astroturf pitches at the club’s training ground for his own kickabouts, showing up in a T-shirt with “The Boss” written on it. The consortium lived the life of football club owners until the music stopped. Krasner welcomes Bates to Leeds in 2005 (Photo: Paul Gilham/Getty Images) “That group deserved a bit of credit for cutting the debt,” one former Leeds director told The Athletic. “They did actually get the figures down and that needed to be done, or the club was dead. But in terms of understanding football, forget it. It (the consortium) had a limited shelf life because those personalities together in one room was never going to work for long. They came together almost by default because the club was so desperate for someone to take it on.” That, for almost 20 years, has been Leeds’ fate: an entity of perceived but unattainable value, passed around between men who fancied it and engulfing players and managers who served as lightning rods for disillusionment on the terraces. I took a phone call once from a coach who was losing the will to live as Leeds became tangled in a messy takeover (takeovers at Leeds had a habit of being messy). “I know we’ve been shit,” he said. “I know the results aren’t good enough. I have to do better. But you want to try keeping it going when nobody seems to be in charge. We’re out here on our own.” Leeds stewed in an angry environment, a club deprived of satisfaction. Ambition was comatose and the mind was sedated. They sold season tickets by the thousands because it was Saturday afternoon and what else were you going to do on a Saturday afternoon? Away allocations sold without fail because, as one supporter joked while Leeds were trying to avoid getting relegated back to League One in 2014-15, it’s a top day out either side of the football. The club clung to the flimsy promise of an awakening, something more credible than the Yorkshire Consortium’s brave new world. And now here they are on the verge of the Premier League, four points shy of promotion with three games to play and with Marcelo Bielsa driving them forward. Is one of English football’s biggest comebacks finally on? January 2005. Ken Bates is hosting a fans’ forum at Elland Road, which is not to say he is there to listen to them. The Yorkshire Consortium is moving on and Bates, as the face of an off-shore entity called the Forward Sports Fund, has taken over the boardroom. Leeds’ debts are lower now than a year earlier but not inconsiderable. Before taking its leave, the Yorkshire Consortium sold Elland Road and the Thorp Arch training ground to help repay the loans it took out to buy Leeds in the first place. Much of the family silver was gone. Supporters who try to address Bates at length, spelling out the decline of the past three years, are cut short. “I’m not being funny,” Bates says to one of them. “Just ask your question.” It’s a change of tone, as it was always likely to be with Bates. For a while, officials at Leeds wore haunted looks as the press and public pressed for answers and blood. There’s a bemused atmosphere in the room as Bates, for so long the face of Chelsea, tells the gathering in front of him he has no intention of ruling by committee. “We’ll have a lorra lorra laughs,” he says at the end, reprising TV presenter Cilla Black’s catchphrase. The crowd aren’t holding their breath. Who knows what sort of life Bates craved but it was hard to shake the feeling he was at his happiest when he was on the warpath. I went to interview him in 2011, at a time when Leeds’ transfer policy was under attack, and asked him if he was aware of the clamour for him to change tack or sell up and leave. “Water off a duck’s back,” he replied. “I’m going nowhere. In fact, I plan to walk behind you at your funeral.” I was 30 then, and Bates was well into his eighties. You would never bet against him outliving you. But where did the appetite for conflict come from? What was the appeal? He gave up control of Leeds in 2012 but only when Andrea Radrizzani purchased the club four years later did Bates fade from view, no longer interested in being on the scene. His battles swung from sacking Kevin Blackwell for alleged gross misconduct (Blackwell was accused of letting news of an unexpected tax bill which landed at Elland Road slip to the media) to a libel case involving Melvyn Levi, a member of the Yorkshire Consortium. We arrived in the press room one Saturday lunchtime in 2007 to find Leeds’ media officials using black markers to redact a line of text in Bates’ programme notes. As their dispute intensified, Bates had chosen to publish Levi’s home address in his column. Levi in turn sought a court injunction. By then it was going horribly wrong on the pitch, too. On the eve of the 2006-07 season, Blackwell warned Bates during a meal at Elland Road that a substandard squad might lead to relegation to the third tier. Bates’ wife, Suzannah, was so annoyed by the suggestion that she got up from the table and left. But Blackwell wasn’t wrong. The EFL years, for those of us at close hand, built up a picture of what life on the inside of Leeds could do to a manager. Slowly, it strips away the bulletproof shell coaches try to display. Whether you rated Gary McAllister or not, you would have sympathised with the sight of him in the tunnel at Tranmere Rovers on December 6, 2008, exhausted by results, visibly drained and crossing his fingers that the imminent transfer window would cure some of the deficiencies in this team. “If we get to January, we’ll be fine,” he said. “I know what we need to do.” He didn’t make it as far as Christmas. McAllister was worn down by the problems at Leeds as manager (Photo: Christopher Lee/Getty Images) Uwe Rosler felt the weight of the job so much that he admitted to struggling to sleep at night. Brian McDermott felt like his dismissal was death by a thousand cuts and the final time I spoke to him before he was sacked, he was with his ill mother in hospital. Even Neil Warnock, a manager I crossed swords with, reached the point of phoning to say that actually, his time was up and Leeds would be better off looking for someone else. And so it went on. Paul Heckingbottom called from a family holiday in Greece, wondering if he still had a job (he was yet to cotton on to the fact Leeds were courting Bielsa). John Carver got in touch after a 5-1 defeat at Luton to hold his hands up and bow out as caretaker but to make sure he spoke his mind about certain players. Darko Milanic’s steely “See you” as he wrapped up his farewell press conference was the last we heard of him after 32 days as manager. It is evident in hindsight that some of the appointments were misjudged. But when the sword fell, the impact was never anything less than savage. In 2011, I sat at the back of a pre-season Q&A in Stirling as Simon Grayson, in the middle of a painful summer transfer window, tried to keep the peace as fans got into his ribs about the absence of significant signings. It had got so bad that at one stage I was randomly asked by a club official if I had a number for Barry Ferguson (Ferguson, like me, was Scottish, you see). When Grayson was asked about an injury to his striker, Davide Somma, he told the crowd that he was still waiting for a full diagnosis. At that precise instant, Somma tweeted to confirm he had ruptured an ACL and would be out for six months. “Oh, Simon was pissed about that,” Somma recalled and Leeds’ players were banned from social media the next day. Little by little, Grayson lost his grip. Dennis Wise and Garry Monk were the only coaches to quit Elland Road on their own terms. One of the indictments of Leeds’ 16 seasons in the EFL is that so few of their managers thrived in a way that tempted chairmen in higher divisions to poach them. Wise’s 15 months in the dugout extinguished his managerial appetite completely. This was a man who could cut you to strips; a man who, after a summer in which Bates and the Yorkshire Evening Post were at odds over his repurchase of the club through administration, turned up at the first press conference before the 2007-08 season with a huge pile of newspaper cuttings, photocopied for him specially. The first headline read “United Home In Disgrace”, a reference to Leeds’ summer tour of Germany which ended with two red cards against Energie Cottbus. Wise came after me, calling the negative coverage of Bates “rubbish”. Wise was appointed manager by Bates but lost his passion for the job and departed for Newcastle (Photo: Paul Gilham/Getty Images) He liked to take on journalists and he liked to fight his corner. Wise set a very early trend for video analysis by bringing a laptop into the press area at Ipswich Town after his captain, Kevin Nicholls, was sent off for elbowing Danny Haynes. Wise wasn’t having it. “This is what we’re up against, chaps,” he would say. “It’s not right and it’s cost us.” He sat in one media briefing at Thorp Arch and went round the writers in front of him, one by one, saying: “I don’t trust you, I don’t trust you, I don’t trust you and I don’t trust you.” But by the last game of his reign, the fire had gone. He took difficult questions without complaint and smiled at times when he would normally have given you the death stare. There was a bigger plan between Wise and Bates, a plan to get out of League One and take it from there, but the work had taken a pound of flesh. Newcastle were offering him a director’s position for far more money and significantly fewer hours. If there is one abiding memory of Wise, it is of him being sent to the stands towards the end of a 1-1 draw at Gillingham in September 2007. He appeared in the press box and spent the closing minutes screaming down his phone at his assistant, Gus Poyet, until Gillingham equalised in added time and Wise dropped his Blackberry. As it smashed on the ground he stood there looking at it, subdued and past the point of caring. The job at Elland Road would leave him feeling like that too. In some of Leeds’ more directionless seasons, their players were made to look like a supporting cast for the drama around them. Convention says that footballers should be happy to sign for Leeds United or feel privileged to step through the door but Elland Road can be a maze of politics, too complex and indecipherable to understand or thrive in. Richard Naylor, who captained the club to promotion from League One in 2010, described the post-relegation environment as “always a bit tense, like everyone’s waiting for the next thing to fight about.” Failure bred resentment and resentment needed more than a scratch of the surface. Sean Gregan had been at Leeds for less than six months in 2004 when he was abused at Elland Road as he and his family tried to get into their car. “It makes you wonder if it’s all worth it,” Gregan said. Even those players who coped and looked good enough so often left unfulfilled. Gregan shows his frustration in the Championship play-off final loss to Watford in 2006 (Photo: Barrington Coombs – PA Images via Getty Images) The demise of Leeds impinged on them, much as some in the dressing room were responsible for the atmosphere. Wise identified a clique in the squad left to him by Blackwell and took all of 60 seconds to tell Gregan and club captain Paul Butler they would be gone before long. He ran into trouble with Shaun Derry too, removing him from view by sending him on loan to Crystal Palace and then discovering that Derry was unwilling to cut his loan short at a point when Wise needed a midfielder urgently. A voicemail from Derry left on Wise’s phone told him the bad news. Some of what goes on at Elland Road bemuses the players and gives them stories to tell, like owner Massimo Cellino walking into the kitchen and cooking tomato pasta for the team meal before a 1-0 win over Bournemouth in 2015. It was not the nutritional intake Leeds were used to but most of the players ate the food without complaining, apart from one who asked quite openly: “Where’s my fucking chicken?” But some of what happens is personal and painful. Nicholls — Wise’s hardman skipper, at least in theory — became so unhappy that he was said to have withdrawn in the mornings before training, avoiding speaking to anyone. In 2007, Derry had the finger pointed at him after Wise’s line-up was leaked to Palace before a game between the teams at Elland Road. Derry was innocent and believed that Wise knew as much but the midfielder resented Wise’s failure to say so publicly. “To this day it sticks in my throat,” Derry said as he left on a permanent transfer back to Palace. “I couldn’t forgive him for the ‘mole in the camp’ episode.” The same indifference was apparent in 2014 when Leeds’ players and coaching staff were paid late as owners GFH pulled up the drawbridge amid a delay in selling the club to Cellino. One Thursday morning, the salaries failed to drop. No one from Elland Road even thought to warm them in advance. GFH, more than any other owner, represent the distance Leeds found between themselves and footballing sensibility. Other than the unrealistic notion that flipping the club quickly might make the Bahraini bank some money, it seemed to have no idea why it got involved. Today, it does not even seem to know when it got involved. GFH recently published a “history of achievements” in which it referenced its purchase of Leeds in 2008. The deal was actually done four years later. One journalist tells the story of handing a business card to Salem Patel on the day of GFH’s introductory press conference and asking the new Leeds’ director to keep in touch. Not long after, his card was found dumped on a nearby table. GFH liked to spin and spin, to vet questions before interviews and roll out shiny press releases but push on the issues and its mind went blank. An example of how much that regime crossed its fingers was the discovery of a gypsy charm bag accidentally left behind in one of the executive offices at Elland Road. Leeds, for too long, were built for underperformance. And underperformance is what they got on the pitch. They were two goals from eclipsing their worst ever defeat when they were thrashed 6-0 by Sheffield Wednesday under McDermott in January 2014. GFH considered sacking him at half-time that day and, from then on, told McDermott to submit his intended line-ups in advance. Even when the club got it together, there was a horrible habit of falling at the last: in the play-offs four times and then under Monk, who had a top-six spot in his grasp with four games to play three years ago. A seventh-placed finish after three points from the last 15 available led to three weeks of briefing and counter-briefing in which Monk’s camp told you he wanted an improved contract and Leeds questioned whether he wanted to stay at all. Before Bielsa, only Grayson was able to stop the tide from rolling over him completely. Promotion to the Championship in 2009-10 was something the club should never have aspired to but was all they had to show for the 14 years before Bielsa’s appointment. Midway through May 2018, I was contacted by a colleague at an American news outlet. Leeds were saying nothing about the future of Paul Heckingbottom but their silence was taken as an admission that his position as manager, after a 13th place finish, was very vulnerable if not untenable. “They’re trying to hire Marcelo Bielsa,” I was told. “It could be a disaster but it wouldn’t be the first at Leeds.” A month later, the appointment came to pass. The perception of going for Bielsa as a reckless gamble reminds you of how little most of us knew about him. If you concentrated on the fiery moments of his career, the risks involved spoke for themselves but it is only when you observe him in the flesh that you appreciate the contrast between Bielsa and the individuals who had failed to push Leeds on. There is no winging it and no pretence about his ability to do his job. You never look at Bielsa and find yourself asking how he was able to fool so many people. What would he have made of GFH, Bates or Cellino? How would he have reacted to the club’s habit of drawing cash from players they should have been trying to keep? How sad would he be if he picked through the detailed history of Leeds United since 2004? Football is supposed to inspire the people. On the day the Yorkshire Consortium did its deal to acquire the club, Krasner said something that stuck in my head. “The club is off life support,” he insisted. “The club is now solvent and we look forward to retaining our Premier League status.” How little anyone knew and how much they know now. How hard it all is to believe. The effect of an existential crisis was that Leeds United, for more than a decade, did nothing more than seek to exist. On the brink of promotion, just four points away, Bielsa has reminded them how it feels to live. (Main image: Leeds fans after their 2006 Championship play-off final defeat to Watford, the closest they have come to a return to the Premier League, until now. Photo: Barrington Coombs – PA Images via Getty Images)

Meet Roberto De Zerbi – master of beating the press Guardiola tunes in to watch https://theathletic.com/1927757/2020/07/15/roberto-de-zerbi-sassuolo-pep-guardiola-how-to-beat-the-press/ During one of the autumn international breaks last season, Pep Guardiola flew to Trento in northern Italy and appeared on a panel with Carlo Ancelotti and, one of his great influences, Arrigo Sacchi. They wanted to know whether his opinion of Italian football had changed since he left Brescia as a player all those years ago. Is the game in Serie A evolving, or is the style of football the same as always? “You see Sassuolo at the moment,” the Manchester City manager said, “and they give me the impression that it’s actually very expansive.” As Guardiola uttered those words, I happened to be in Sassuolo for an interview with Kevin-Prince Boateng and, while I expected he would have one or two positive things to say about the set-up, I was still taken aback by the glowing reference he gave the team’s new coach, Roberto De Zerbi. Boateng had only been working with him a couple of months but came across as the most excited he’d ever been as a footballer. He put De Zerbi above the other top coaches he’s worked under over the course of his career, which is saying something as Boateng has played for Jurgen Klopp and Massimiliano Allegri. His move to Barcelona that January, a real head-scratcher for most fans, came about in part because of the manner in which De Zerbi used him and the principles his teams play with, which undoubtedly share a couple of similarities with those adopted in Catalonia. As I waited for Boateng to arrive — I turned up way too early — the small talk I engaged in with staff was just as positive. They thought Sassuolo were on to something, again. Down the years, this small club have established a considerable reputation for discovering the next big thing in Italian coaching. At the very least they know how to spot talent in the dugout. Allegri passed through here, as did Stefano Pioli and Eusebio Di Francesco, who got them promoted and then into Europe. None of them, though, were able to generate the same level of hype at this stage of their careers as De Zerbi, who has attracted a cult of devoted tactics bloggers and YouTube videographers ever since he started coaching Foggia in Italy’s third division — even attracting the attention of our friends at Tifo. Some pundits have turned their noses up and sneered at his rise to prominence, asking: What has he ever achieved? Why all the fuss? Foggia lost the play-off final to Rino Gattuso’s Pisa. Palermo sacked him after seven straight defeats. De Zerbi didn’t win a game at Benevento until the 10th time of asking. To look at his record in those crude terms is unfair, though. De Zerbi brought joy to Foggia. You probably have to go back to the days of Zemanlandia to find as entertaining a team at the Zaccheria. Palermo were entering a death spiral under the most trigger-happy owner the game has ever seen, while Benevento turned to De Zerbi to save face. They were on course to go down in history as the worst team ever to play in Serie A when he replaced Marco Baroni. At the start of December 2017, Benevento had no points. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Then their goalkeeper, the legend that is Alberto Brignoli, scored and finally got them up and running against Gattuso’s Milan. Flash forward to Sandro and Bacary Sagna arriving in January and De Zerbi very nearly pulled off a miracle. His ideas more than his results continued to capture the imagination, and the curiosity around what he might be able to do in a more stable environment was piqued when Sassuolo offered him the chance to stay in the top flight last season. It feels like a perfect match. Don’t get me wrong, De Zerbi still has his sceptics. After a fast start to his first year at the Mapei Stadium — five wins in his first seven matches — expectations rocketed and Sassuolo couldn’t match them. The team raised their game against the top sides, upsetting Inter and running Juventus close, but largely flattered to deceive. They went from contending for a place in the Europa League to almost getting sucked into a relegation battle. It was bittersweet, not that it stopped De Zerbi from entering Roma’s thoughts as a replacement for caretaker coach Claudio Ranieri. One of the many reasons behind his appeal, beyond the style of Sassuolo’s play, is his proven track record of improving players whatever their age. We’ve already mentioned how Boateng suddenly found himself doing keepy-uppies at the Nou Camp, but Stefano Sensi (Inter) and Merih Demiral (Juventus) also earned big moves on the back of working with De Zerbi. The 41-year-old’s doubters have dwindled over the course of this season. Sassuolo have caught fire since the re-start, winning four straight games. They are also unbeaten in six and have helped tonight’s opponents Juventus move closer to a ninth consecutive title by taking four points off Lazio and Inter. As grateful as Maurizio Sarri must be for the favours Sassuolo have done his misfiring team since the return to play, he also knows that if the Old Lady isn’t careful in Reggio Emilia she may come a cropper too. Until Atalanta’s escapades at the weekend, Sassuolo were the only team to stop Juventus at the Allianz Stadium this season, and given the state of grace they find themselves in at the moment it wouldn’t come as too great a surprise if a repeat is on the cards. Sassuolo have the league’s fifth-best attack. Hamed Traore and Manuel Locatelli are two of the finest midfield prospects in the division. Each member of De Zerbi’s three-pronged forward line is in double figures. Francesco Caputo is, once again, the most prolific Italian player in Serie A. Jeremie Boga stands out as the best dribbler and, as De Zerbi frequently reminds us, Domenico Berardi is one of a select group of players born in 1994 or later to have scored at least 50 goals in any of the top five European leagues. Sassuolo merit consideration as the best team to watch after Atalanta, with much of their entertainment value deriving from the courage of their innovative coach. De Zerbi is renowned for playing out from the back, no matter the opponent, no matter the pressure. This is why Guardiola’s a big fan and occasionally catches Sassuolo games in what limited spare time he has available to him. De Zerbi’s detractors claim there is narcissism in the sophisticated schemes he draws up to beat the press and play through opponents. They write them off as vanity projects designed to show everyone how clever he is. Naturally, De Zerbi rejects that and justifies his insistence on passing it out from the back on the deep-rooted conviction that it’s actually advantageous to his team and the development of his players. De Zerbi used to be an attacking midfielder. For him, the game was fun when the ball was in his possession, not when his other team had it. As he sees it, if you like playing football why wait for a second ball, a flick-on or a ricochet when you can already start from the back? That way, you’re in control and if you lure an opponent on to you, there’s space in behind for you to attack. It’s another sign of Italian football’s evolution. In the past, teams in Serie A gambled on absorbing pressure, regaining possession deep and then countering into the same space, often with a quick combination or by hoofing it into an area for a striker to chase after. They controlled the space, not the ball. De Zerbi does the opposite, attracting adversaries high up the pitch with deep possession and then turning their press against them to devastating effect. The more intense it is, the more vertical Sassuolo go. Take the reverse fixture against Juventus as an example. As Sassuolo pass from right to left, drawing Juventus on to them, Locatelli is going to drift out of the box to a position in front of his full-back Georgios Kyriakopoulos, where he’ll be open to continue the team’s progression up the pitch. In the end, the Greek plays the ball up to Caputo, who comes short, bringing three Juventus players with him, and has the option to lay it off to either Locatelli or Filip Duricic. He chooses the Serb, who shifts it inside to Traore… And Sassuolo all of a sudden have Juventus on their heels and a five v four. Another variation on this theme — and there are countless examples — came against Roma. De Zerbi’s goalkeeping coach proposed this particular pattern of play, with Sassuolo’s full-backs high and wide and the team’s tandem in midfield, Pedro Obiang and Locatelli, stationed on the edge of the penalty area. Goalkeeper Andrea Consigli entices Roma to press centre-back Gianmarco Ferrari, who pauses and then goes back across goal to his partner Filippo Romagna. A swarm of white shirts descend on the youngster but he’s comfortable under the pressure and finds Obiang, whose attempt to release Jeremy Toljan unfortunately misses the mark. More successful was this clever move on Cagliari’s visit to the Mapei Stadium in December. The Sardinians were initially reluctant to press Sassuolo, so De Zerbi’s players went backwards to go forwards. Using their teenage goalkeeper Stefano Turati, the Neroverdi encouraged Cagliari out of their shell. A quick triangle from Turati to Locatelli to centre-back Marlon inveigles the visitors into thinking Sassuolo are planning to develop the play on the left. Six players flock towards the ball only for Francesco Magnanelli to switch it to the other side, where Toljan plays a neat one-two with Berardi, springing a four v four which ends with the German pulling the ball back for Duricic to score. Beautiful to watch, but there is an aim as well as an aesthetic. The strategy is holistic in that it goes beyond setting Sassuolo up to hurt teams and score goals. Playing out from the back should improve a player’s technique, it encourages them to take responsibility, and when a move like this comes off it boosts self-esteem. As you can imagine, confidence at Sassuolo at the moment is through the roof. They are nine points better off than they were at this stage of last season. Only Napoli and Juventus have a higher pass completion rate, and if you want an idea of the creativity running through this team a stunning 93 per cent of their 59 goals have come from open play. De Zerbi’s contract was up in June and for a while it looked as though he’d be off, amid speculation Fiorentina were considering him as a successor to Beppe Iachini. Some of the players expected him to move on. Instead, De Zerbi has agreed to stay for another year and the hope is the team’s stars will stick around too. “Our strategy is to build not destroy,” chief executive Giovanni Carnevali told DAZN. It’s a welcome piece of news. Some feared Sassuolo’s fairytale was nearing the end. The team faded after Di Francesco left for Roma and the core of his team — Simone Zaza, Matteo Politano, Lorenzo Pellegrini and Francesco Acerbi — departed. More recently, the deaths of the club’s patron Giorgio Squinzi and his wife left the future looking uncertain. But Sassuolo now appear stronger than ever and have a state-of-the-art training ground to go with their avant-garde coach. It’s amazing to think seven years have passed since De Zerbi travelled to Munich to observe Guardiola as he trained Bayern. Now, some of the leading coaches in Europe believe they have something to learn from him.

Jude Bellingham: How Dortmund beat Manchester United to another rising star https://theathletic.com/1928429/2020/07/15/jude-bellingham-borussia-dortmund-transfer-manchester-united-birmingham-city/ Not many were aware of it at the time, but May 16, 2020 brought Borussia Dortmund’s biggest win of the season. They beat local rivals Schalke 4-0 in the first game of the Bundesliga restart but, perhaps more importantly, they also won the race for the signature of one of the game’s most in-demand talents. Jude Bellingham hadn’t yet signed his three-year contract at Dortmund but in the aftermath of the emphatic derby win, they received incontrovertible proof that his mind was now made up. He sent them a photo of himself watching the game on BT Sport at home in the Midlands, wearing a Dortmund shirt. Dortmund head scout Markus Pilawa and his team had started scouting the midfielder at Birmingham City well over three years ago. But they weren’t the only ones. Bellingham was put on a monthly watchlist by Manchester United as early as August 2017, and assistant manager Mike Phelan personally watched Birmingham’s match against West Bromwich Albion seven months ago. He was impressed. Scouting reports had Bellingham, who turned 17 in June, down as a cross between Dele Alli and Jermaine Jenas. Those of another vintage said he reminded them of Bryan Robson. Bellingham and his father Mark, a sergeant with West Midlands Police, were long used to such lofty comparisons, as well as to approaches from potential suitors. At 14, Jude visited all the top clubs’ academies but the family’s ambition was very clear. They wanted him to become the youngest player to ever play for Birmingham in the first team: no detours via under-23 sides or loan spells. Bellingham signs a contract at Birmingham in July 2019. (Photo: @judebellingham via Instagram) Birmingham have lost some good young players and the suggestion is that they could have been managed better — Chem Campbell being a case in point. Sold for a mere £44,000 in 2015, the 17-year-old made his first-team debut for Wolverhampton Wanderers nine months ago. Others, too, have either left the club or not reached their full potential, citing a lack of care and attention. But Mark Bellingham ensured his son would be looked after properly. Kristjaan Speakman, who last summer was promoted from academy manager to de facto technical director at Birmingham, developed a close relationship with the Bellinghams — whose younger son, Jobe, 15, also plays for the club’s academy — and told managers of Jude’s potential as far back as 2016. Sources close to the club believe former Birmingham boss Garry Monk felt pressure from the hierarchy to play the elder Bellingham. He included him in first-team training around Christmas in 2018, but Monk was advocating a more gradual introduction during this season. The Athletic understands that the disagreement partially contributed to Monk’s sacking last year. Encouraged by the club, Monk’s successor and former assistant Pep Clotet gave the cultured midfielder a platform to shine. In the meantime, Dortmund were playing a well-honed long game that had helped them secure the services of “high-potential players” (as sporting director Michael Zorc puts it) and exciting prodigies such as Jadon Sancho, Giovanni Reyna and Erling Haaland. The club regularly reached out to Jude and actively attempted “to turn him into a bit of a BVB supporter”, as one source puts it. Bellingham was sent shirts and invited on a tour of Signal Iduna Park and the training ground before the winter break. In addition, the club put together a mood video, depicting the sensation of playing in front of the Yellow Wall, Europe’s biggest standing terrace. Dortmund’s emotional appeal was underlined by hard facts: the specially produced clip also detailed the successful transition of Sancho and others to Bundesliga football as teenagers. By February, Dortmund felt reasonably confident that they could convince the youngster that North Rhine-Westphalia was the best place to advance his career. Their rivals weren’t prepared to give up the hunt, however. Bayern Munich’s sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic and chief scout Marco Neppe met with the Bellingham family to plead the case for the German champions. Closer to home, Manchester City made a tentative approach, and Manchester United were rolling out the red carpet, as well as a couple of stars: Sir Alex Ferguson and Eric Cantona were mobilised to present the club in all its glory during the player’s visit in early March. United’s vice-chairman Ed Woodward and chief negotiator Matt Judge led the negotiations with Mark Bellingham. United came close to agreeing personal terms with the teenager that day. A deal worth £25 million was lined up with Birmingham, who had earlier quoted United double that sum, somewhat tongue in cheek. Bellingham was still on a scholarship contract and therefore potentially able to walk away before signing for another club. His family and his club, however, had already agreed that Birmingham would be adequately compensated, considering he could soon be worth £100 million if he continues to thrive. Birmingham were believed to have told the EFL they would sell Bellingham this summer to come into line with domestic profit and sustainability rules and avoid further sanctions after the latest investigation into their finances. In the end, however, the pull of Dortmund — a club that is guaranteed Champions League football and is dedicated to harnessing young talent — proved too strong. United were initially surprised when news of Bellingham’s move broke in Germany earlier this month. “I can’t see why he is making the decision so soon. Imagine if United win the Europa League and FA Cup, qualify for the Champions League — is that not a more attractive option than Borussia Dortmund?” somebody close to the club wondered. Another source insists that Bellingham would have had a chance at making the United first team immediately, not just the under-23s, citing Mason Greenwood and Brandon Williams as evidence from the current campaign. Going back further, the big-money teenager-to-superstar template was set by a certain Cristiano Ronaldo. But the prospect of following in the more contemporary footsteps of Sancho, a player who arrived as a Manchester City academy graduate in 2017 and is set to return to the red half of Manchester for £110 million this summer or for a little less next year, ultimately proved too tempting. “The best way to get into the starting XI at United is to play for Dortmund first,” an international recruitment expert tells The Athletic. Dortmund are understood to have agreed wages of around €3 million (£2.7 million), more than United were prepared to pay initially. United saw Bellingham as a player for the next 10 years, so had to factor that into the financials at this stage of his career. Birmingham will receive a transfer fee of £20 million and a sizeable portion of any sell-on fee, The Athletic has been told. There is no release clause in his contract, which will run until 2023 in line with FIFA regulations. Minors cannot sign for more than three years but Dortmund are expected to offer him improved terms and an extension once he turns 18 next June. Dortmund don’t see him starting straight away but the detailed career plan they have developed does encompass a gradual increase in game time. They’re hopeful that he can establish himself as Axel Witsel’s partner in central midfield by the end of 2020-21. Mo Dahoud and Thomas Delaney are accomplished players, but there is a vacancy for a more technical player to roam between the boxes. There’s excited talk of Bellingham being “the next Ilkay Gundogan” but, if he fulfils his promise, he’ll be even more: England’s second-most exciting foreign-based player and a future role model who’ll pave the way for more Bellinghams to grace the Bundesliga in their formative years.

What ‘vindicated’ Guardiola really meant when he came out swinging https://theathletic.com/1928020/2020/07/15/pep-guardiola-cas-manchester-city The press conference is not Pep Guardiola’s natural habitat, but on Tuesday he delivered a masterclass in how to get a message across. Several messages, in fact. Manchester City fans — and indeed his employers at the club — will be delighted with the 25 minutes that were set aside, nominally, to discuss Wednesday’s home game against Bournemouth. Of course, every single question related to the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s decision to overturn City’s ban from the Champions League. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp had already declared, “I am happy that City can play in the Champions League but I don’t think it was a good day for football yesterday, to be honest”, before expanding on why he wants Financial Fair Play rules to stay. Jose Mourinho had also had his say. “If Manchester City is not guilty of it, to be punished by some million is a disgrace,” said the Tottenham boss at his own pre-match press conference. “If you’re not guilty, you’re not punished. In the other way, if you’re guilty you should be banned. In any case, it’s a disaster.” Guardiola seemed to have his answers prepared, and he took the opportunity to call out some old rivals and quite possibly some new ones. The Catalan responded to some of City’s noisiest critics — like La Liga president Javier Tebas and former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger — and rounded on those he accused of “whispering”, including direct references to Liverpool, Manchester United and the other “top eight” clubs. For the first time, though, Guardiola made comments which will strike a chord with the club’s supporters, who have long claimed that Europe’s top clubs act as the established elite and are desperate to shut City out. No senior City employee has spoken in such striking terms before. Sometimes, Guardiola’s points can fail to clear the language barrier, or at least the sarcasm barrier. When he has responded or goaded certain clubs or figures in the past, such as Real Madrid, it has been hard to know whether he even meant to ruffle some feathers in the first place. Here though, there were no doubts. Guardiola’s most memorable soundbites are often born out of defiance — “What’s tackles?” he famously claimed after a defeat at Leicester in his debut season — but they are few and far between and you would have to collate four years’ worth of press conferences to get nearly half an hour’s worth of sarcastic comments and stubborn rebuttals. Until Tuesday, that is, when he sat down to get several years’ worth of frustration off his chest. Not everybody will agree with what he said, or indeed how he said it, but there can be no doubt about what he, or the club who pay his wages, feel about their rivals at home and abroad. Here is what he said, who he addressed and what it meant… How do you feel about the CAS decision? Guardiola: I’m incredibly happy for the decision. It shows that everything people said about the club was not true. We will defend on the pitch what we won on the pitch. Guardiola actually appeared quite subdued, even grumpy. His first answer was short and sweet, but it set the tone for the rest of the press conference, where he would talk much more expansively and specifically. Firstly, he tried to put the focus back on the achievements of his players on the pitch. Remember that he told them the day after City were banned from the Champions League in February that they should “show people that you are talent — not money.” Jose Mourinho branded the decision “disgraceful”… Guardiola: Jose and other managers should know that we were damaged; we should be apologised to because, as I’ve said many times, if we did something wrong we will accept the decision from UEFA and CAS because we did something wrong. This is something Guardiola has said repeatedly but with City’s ban overturned he had no reason for contrition. He rounded on those members of the Premier League’s top 10 — all but Sheffield United and City themselves — who collectively urged UEFA in March to ensure the ban would stand for next season, insinuating that City would move to delay their appeal and ensure they could play in Europe in 2020-21. Guardiola: We don’t expect Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea or Wolves and the other clubs to defend us but we have the right to defend ourselves when we believe what we have done is correct, and three judges — independent judges — said this. Today is a good day. Yesterday was a good day for football, because we play by the same FFP rules as all the clubs in Europe. If we had broken FFP, we would have been banned but we have to defend ourselves because we were right and three judges gave us the reason. People said we were cheating and lying many times and the presumption of innocence was not there. After, when we were proved right, we were incredibly happy because we can again defend what we have done on the pitch. Later, Guardiola was asked directly about those eight clubs. He nodded his head intently and had clearly worked out what he was going to say before the question had finished (Look out for the emphasis on the second mention of Liverpool). Guardiola: The first point, for all these clubs — Arsenal, Chelsea, Leicester, Wolves, Manchester United, Tottenham, Liverpool, Liverpool!, Burnley… I understand they want the five positions for the Champions League. I can understand. What they ask is that they didn’t want us to delay the process for the next season, so we could play in the Champions League. (But) we were so clear, we said, “Yeah, we completely agree with you, eight clubs, we want the resolution from CAS as soon as possible to clarify this.” Because I said all the time in my press conferences, if we did something wrong and we needed to be banned we will be banned and we will accept it. So I completely agreed with these eight clubs to go to CAS and make their resolution. And the resolution is there, so that’s why they must be happy. They must be happy because we didn’t break the rules. We played the same rules as all the clubs in the Premier League and UEFA — so that’s why. So next time before they (go) and make phone calls, they can call our chairman or CEO and say, “Guys, all these clubs, this is what we are going to do.” We were on the same page. So unfortunately just four teams can play in the Champions League next season, not the five. That is an emphatic sign-off, almost lording it over those clubs that there is no extra position available for another English side in the Champions League, which he believes was the driving factor behind their letter. And the emphasis on Liverpool was delivered with what is probably best described as mock surprise. The other clubs, Guardiola believes, wanted City banned because it would make it easier for them to qualify for the Champions League via fifth place. Liverpool, of course, had no such concerns and, as Klopp pointed out, City not playing in Europe next season would only have harmed Liverpool’s chances of retaining the Premier League title. Guardiola poses the question — so why did they want City banned? What about your contract? This is a classic of Guardiola press conferences: answering a question that wasn’t asked. He insists the time to discuss his future will come but quickly pivoted to settling some scores with Wenger — whom he addressed directly — and Manchester United, who matched Leicester’s asking price for Harry Maguire last season when City decided not to pay it. Guardiola: This club is incredibly solid with Pep and without Pep. So don’t be troubled. This club had success before my arrival here, with (Roberto) Mancini and with (Manuel) Pellegrini, they won a lot of titles and they played really good football. So without me, when I leave — I don’t know when that will be — the structure of the club wants to grow and to be solid, this is the most important thing. And they have incredible players, incredible players, this is the reason why. We have that and we want to keep it, we have to reinforce as much as we can because we wanted… …and here he goes… We have a lot of money, but we wanted Alexis Sanchez and we could not afford it. We wanted Harry Maguire and we could not afford it. We could not pay like United paid. So we have money, but the other clubs have money too. We spend in the last decade more than we did in the past, yes, but 20, 25, 30 years ago, Arsene Wenger — the guy who defends perfectly Financial Fair Play… so Arsene, you know that Manchester City was correct with what we have done — spent a lot of money to be there. United with Sir Alex Ferguson spent a lot of money to be there. All the clubs, if you want to be on top, all the clubs (spend); if you don’t, it’s more difficult. Because being a good manager, like I am, I’m not good enough without good players. No way. I am humble enough to accept that without my players I am nothing, zero, that’s why I need my players, and for that I need clubs who are financially strong — like a lot of clubs — to do it. Do you expect rivals to stop criticising City after CAS’s verdict? Guardiola: It would be nice, but I don’t think so. What happened in recent years, how many times people came to our club to whisper about us. I would love it to finish, I would like to say to these kinds of people, “Look into our eyes and say something face to face,” and then go to the pitch and play on the pitch and after, if they beat us, don’t hesitate, I will shake their hands and we will congratulate them. But they lost off the pitch. They have to go on the pitch and try to beat us. I said many times here, if we did something wrong we accept our ban from FIFA, UEFA, Premier League, FA. But we can defend ourselves — I guess — and yesterday was a great day for football, not a bad day for football, because it showed that we play by the same rules that all the elite clubs in the Premier League and Europe play by. If it was the opposite we could not play in the Champions League next season but we can play it next season because what we have done is right. It was proper. That’s why they have to accept it, go on the pitch and play against us there. This was the first time in his press conference that he talked about clubs “whispering”, and harks back to his chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak’s end-of-season interview 12 months ago. City were still under investigation by UEFA and also faced the possibility of a transfer ban from FIFA, which was later dismissed. The City chairman said: “The football world is very small and word comes around very quickly so, you know, when someone somewhere in a leading position in any club says something, or briefs something, guess what? We know about it.” With City feeling “vindicated” — as CEO Ferran Soriano’s Monday email to staff read — Guardiola was in no mood for reconciliation. Will you extend your contract? The 49-year-old insisted Monday’s verdict does not change too much and that there is still plenty of time to discuss it, but he did drop in a touch more defiance. Guardiola: Some people here in England suggested that we should play in League Two… (If we did) I would stay here. Javier Tebas suggested CAS was not fit to hear City’s appeal… Guardiola: He’s another one. This guy, Senor Tebas, must be so jealous of English football. He’s an incredible legal expert from what I see, maybe next time I’ll ask him which court and judges we have to go to. He has to be worried and concerned about La Liga and focus on there, but normally with these kinds of people when the sentence is good for him it is perfect — as has happened many times in Spain — but when it is against him, the problem is for the other ones. We will be in the Champions League next season, Senor Tebas, because what we did, we did it properly. This was Guardiola at his sarcastic, settling-old-scores best. That slightly subdued start to the press conference was well and truly behind him now. Tebas is a long-time critic of City’s spending and the source of their funding yet, as Guardiola referenced, has not had much to say about Barcelona’s and Real Madrid’s various run-ins with the footballing authorities. Yet when Guardiola was fined by the FA in 2018 for wearing a yellow ribbon in support of Catalonia’s politicians, Tebas said he was “in favour” of the decision. It also brings to mind Guardiola’s criticism of former club Barcelona in February, when he warned them not to “talk too loud” after their chairman thanked UEFA for banning City, and added, somewhat menacingly, that he hoped the two sides can meet on the pitch — which could happen in this season’s Champions League semi-finals. Do City get respect? Guardiola: This club tried for the whole history, at Maine Road or with our heroes like Colin Bell or Mike Summerbee, the legends that we have had, including Joe Hart in recent years, we have done our best to do it on the pitch. What this club has done in the last decade has been done on the pitch. I know that for elite clubs — especially Liverpool, United, Arsenal — it is uncomfortable us being here, but they have to understand we deserve to be with them, competing with them. We want to go on the pitch competing with them and try to achieve the things that they have achieved in the past, decades ago. We deserve to be stronger year by year. We try. There are incredible people working in this organisation, working incredibly hard to make this club better and make our fans proud. We don’t have to ask permission to be there, we deserve to be there. When we lose, I will shake the hand of my opponents and colleagues, as we have done — sometimes unfairly in the Champions League and Premier League — and congratulate them as all the time we have done. It’s as simple as that. So, guys — accept it. We want to be here, and we tried. On the pitch, we play as much as possible. Sometimes we win, sometimes not, but they have to understand it. If they don’t agree, just knock on the door for our chairman or our CEO and talk, don’t go from behind and have seven, eight, nine clubs whispering and going from behind. Go and do it on the pitch, not behind, because this is not a club for 10 years. In these 10 years, this club has made a step forward. We have invested a lot of money — like a lot of clubs — but in these 10 years we did the right thing because if not, we would be banned. And we are not banned, because we followed the FFP rules, the rules that UEFA and FIFA have decided to do. If not, we would be banned and could not play. We play because we have done things properly, in the right way. That’s why we follow the UEFA rules. They dictate what we have to do, and we do it. People have to understand right now that we are here to try to compete on the pitch and at the same level as the elite clubs in the Premier League but in Europe too. We can be here. This is the first time anybody at City has publicly addressed the common suggestion from supporters that Europe’s top clubs — the established elite — do not want City at the table, and that they have tried to get them kicked out. “Guys — accept it” is a message that will delight the club’s fans, and sums up the mood around the club this week. It is not the first time, however, that Guardiola has referred to the “unfair” refereeing/VAR decisions his side have experienced in recent years. The deliberate emphasis on “sometimes unfairly” was indicative of his mood on the day: he was out to make several points and did not want any subtleties to be missed. Will City now do their talking on the pitch? Guardiola: Yeah, like we have done every game in every competition (in) the last three or four years. We will respect our opponents and try to beat them on the pitch. People cannot forget, we were damaged. Our prestige and reputation was damaged with accusations that now we have shown were not true. That’s why they have to be happy, or should at least accept — because we should complain and we haven’t, so the other ones shouldn’t say much more than this. Again, for all their defiant statements against UEFA in the past year or so, City have not spoken out against other clubs as much as they would perhaps have liked. Guardiola’s assertion that City “should complain and we haven’t” makes it clear the club have chosen not to make public comments — for example in their ongoing feud with Bayern Munich. Are rival Premier League clubs jealous of City’s spending? Guardiola may have rounded on City’s rivals, but he was not about to let the wording of the question slide: he has said for many years now that City spend similarly to other top clubs and that those clubs needed a period of spending to establish themselves as the elite, a word on which he put great emphasis in this answer. Guardiola: Listen, a lot of clubs invest. United, Arsenal, in periods before they won all the leagues, they invested more money than the other ones. When Chelsea started to win Premier Leagues, they invested more money than the other ones. I’m a good manager but I don’t win titles if I don’t have good players and good players are expensive. But all the clubs spend a lot of money. Barcelona spend a lot of money, (Real) Madrid spend a lot of money, English teams spend a lot of money. But if we build the club in the last decade to compete with the elite of the Premier League or Champions League, we need to invest. We invested by creating incredible facilities here in the training ground and we do it, and we make mistakes, of course we make mistakes, but we do it. We can spend as much money as our chairman or our owners want, but always, always in the Financial Fair Play rules and we showed it, we were there. In the last decade — FIFA, UEFA — we were exonerated for something we were accused of, all the time. That is the reality. We can be there, like all the clubs, but always on the pitch. When we won here, guys, it was on the pitch. All the good things we have done, all the bad things we have done, it was on the pitch, in the grass, in the green, there. We win, we want to be congratulated. They beat us, we are going to congratulate them. Has all this brought you closer to the club? Guardiola: I love this club. I love because I know the people here and I’m working for a long time. We have our history. I don’t know if it’s better or worse, it doesn’t matter, it’s our history. I love it. I like it. I like to work with the people I’m working with, I like it. When we do something wrong, I’m the first to say we have to apologise or have to accept the punishment or whatever, the big statements, they can do it. But it was not the case. It was not the case. I don’t want to apologise for anything. I’m sorry, guys. Manchester City don’t have (to) apologise because the three independent judges decided we have done everything properly. It’s clear. More than clear, it’s impossible. So, of course I’m going to defend my club, and I’m critical of my club. Internally, when I don’t like something, I say to my chairman. My chairman is not happy with me because we are 21 points behind Liverpool. He’s not happy with me, but we discuss internally to try and do better next season, to convince them — but always on the pitch. And the people who say something, go ahead and tell us here face to face, not behind. “Sorry, guys” is a go-to line when Guardiola is in defiant mood. When his style was questioned after a defeat by Barcelona in 2016, he said, “I’ve won 21 trophies in seven years. Sorry, guys.” And when those questions kept coming after elimination from the Champions League by Monaco later that season, he pointed out: “I think ‘exceptional’ for all the managers around the world is that sometimes during the season they win a title. That is the normal situation all around the world. Exceptional is my career, I’m sorry, that is exceptional.” Proof that he can drop the humility when he believes he and his club are called into question unfairly. How do you feel about Mourinho and Klopp criticising the CAS decision? Guardiola: All I say is that all of them (have) their opinions, for Jurgen and Jose, but I tell Jose and Jurgen that today was a good day for football. A very good day. It was clear what happened. And that’s nice. Funnily enough, there were no questions about the Bournemouth game.

Listening to Chelsea is a reminder that this promising team needs leaders https://theathletic.com/1929401/2020/07/15/chelsea-lampard-norwich-azpilicueta-kepa-jorginho Frank Lampard set his Chelsea players a challenge against Norwich that went beyond moving three points closer to Champions League qualification. “You can be as quiet as you want off the pitch – we have some quiet players who keep themselves to themselves – but they must come out of that on the pitch,” he insisted on Monday. “They must demand the ball, otherwise the game can pass you by. They must have character to talk to people around them.” When the response came later in the day, it wasn’t accompanied by pointing fingers and bellowing lungs. It wasn’t even on the pitch, but rather in the Stamford Bridge tunnel immediately prior to kick-off. As they waited to walk out, Christian Pulisic and Olivier Giroud were deep in tactical conversation, illustrating their points with arcing arm gestures that closely resembled the cross and header between them that would break Norwich’s stubborn resistance with the final act of the first half. The exchange was captured by Chelsea’s in-house media team, who later posted it on their social channels with a winking emoji and the words: “It was all part of the brief!” It wasn’t quite the ostentatious display of character Lampard is demanding from his team, but it looks increasingly like the form of personality he will have to accept from this group of players. There was no collective raising of the volume on the pitch against Norwich in response to their head coach’s words, only more low-key tactical conversations like the one shared by Giroud and Pulisic. This, as Lampard himself admitted on Monday, is a team to whom screaming and shouting does not come naturally; they are closer in character to the late-Arsene Wenger era Arsenal crop that Graeme Souness so brutally described in 2015 as “a team of son-in-laws” than the dominant, powerful Chelsea sides that form the basis of Lampard’s legacy at Stamford Bridge. Even club captain Cesar Azpilicueta is an immaculate ambassador for Chelsea precisely because he is so nice. He primarily leads by consistently solid example, his rare on-pitch pep talks generally consisting of a few sharp claps and a “Come on, guys!” He made a point of going up to every other Chelsea player before kick-off last night to offer a high-five and some words of encouragement. So too did Jorginho, his vice-captain, who is required to take a greater share of responsibility by virtue of his position at the base of midfield, if nothing else. He could be heard directing his defenders on where to pass, as well as coordinating Chelsea’s press by urging Pulisic, Giroud and Willian whenever it was their turn to harass Norwich defenders. But if playing in an empty Stamford Bridge has taught us anything new about the Chelsea that Lampard has inherited, it’s that Kepa Arrizabalaga is the most vocal player at the club. That in itself isn’t hugely unusual; the stereotype of the permanently irate goalkeeper relentlessly berating his defenders – Peter Schmeichel always comes to mind – is well established in English football. Kepa did all the standard things against Norwich, instructing his back four when to drop and when to push up and alerting them to unmarked opposition runners (he often did so in his native Spanish to countrymen Azpilicueta and Marcos Alonso, using words like “abierto!” (open) and “arriba!” (up). He did more than that, though, even pointing out to Chelsea’s midfielders when there was an opportunity to switch the play to the opposite flank, and shouting at the far away front three to press high whenever Norwich moved the ball into their zone of influence. This is logical, because a goalkeeper can see the whole pitch at all times, but also a little surprising because their role is so different to any other position in the team that they are almost playing a different sport. It is jarring to try to reconcile the frequency and assertiveness of Kepa’s instructions to those in front of him on the pitch with the uncertainty over his own job that has led Lampard to question his viability as Chelsea’s long-term No 1. It was also hard to tell in real time against Norwich how much his team-mates actually heeded his suggestions. Chelsea played so quietly on Tuesday that it was never hard to pick out Lampard’s voice from the technical area. His message was simple, underscored by frequent shouts of, “Quick! Quick! Quick!”, “Pass! Pass! Pass!” and “Forward!” Every time Norwich’s low block frustrated his team in a turgid first half, he leaned back at the knees, as if each retreat constituted a personal blow. At both drinks breaks he did all of the talking, emphasising the need for more incision in Chelsea’s possession as his players took on liquids. “We had 10 to 15 minutes in the second half where we got sloppy and slow again,” he said after the match. “Passed back on ourselves. It is a trait that comes back in our game but we got out of that and finished (the match) well.” Lampard is not going to get this Chelsea squad to become more vocal than their natural dispositions dictate. Then-manager Antonio Conte identified a creeping dearth of leadership among the club’s players as far back as 2016, and the fickle mentality of his players became a recurring riddle that his successor and Lampard’s predecessor Maurizio Sarri could never fully understand, let alone solve. Improvement in this area is more likely to come from the transfer market than from within; signing West Ham’s England international Declan Rice might well be a move in the right direction, but not enough on its own. Without a true “leader of men” among them, Chelsea’s players will need to lean on their other qualities in order to secure that top-four finish over their final two games. They are technically talented and tactically smart enough to figure out problems between them on the pitch. They also have enough recent trophy experience to know how to win when it matters – especially when, as against Norwich, Lampard leaves virtually all of his dynamic academy graduates on the bench in favour of veterans. It isn’t quite what Lampard is looking for, but it will have to do for now, and it might just be good enough to get Chelsea where they need to be at the end of this rollercoaster season.

he had a fairly blääää game in the loss to spuds, he had a horrid pass out that they were lucky spuds did not score on, and also was caught napping to point on the header that won the game but he has played better than Kepa since Leno went down

time for a Real Madrid breakdown lol and not so easy as they have SO many players out on loan and in limbo I mark all the potential sales in bold GK, they have no backup now, other than a youth with HUGE potential, but only is 21yo, in Andriy Lunin (I think he might, might be special, but too early yet) CB they need some help here I would say, not completely sure they make moves this summer, but in 2021 they simpl have to Sergio Ramos may leave next summer on a free and is now getting close to too old (turns 35 in 8 months) to be a full time great starter (has perhaps one year left, maybe two, as he is one of those rare genetic freaks) they have the best or 2nd best CB on the planet in Varane, but then a big drop as Éder Militão has been a semi bust and Nacho is shit, Jesús Vallejo they will dump (Wolves sent him back already from loan, he was so poor) LB they need help, Marcelo is washed up, and ZZ doesn't really truly fancy Ferland Mendy (who I think has not been nearly as bad as the Spanish press says) and for some reason, they want to sell Sergio Reguilón, who I actually rate a bit (he has been on loan and played great at Sevilla) RB Also need help, as after Carvajal, they have pretty muc close to semi-shit, zero clue why they sold WC or near WC Achraf Hakimi, as they only have the double bust Álvaro Odriozola (a bust both at RM and Bayern, who refused to buy him after the loan) as backup DMF they have the best (or 2nd best) DMF on the planet in Casemiro, but zero backup, literally nothing, which I think is madness CMF 2 WC players, Federico Valverde and Federico Valverde, but then not much as Luka Modric is done pretty much as a WC player due to age (turns 35 in around 7 weeks) and Dani Ceballos is being sold to Are for £23m AMF super overload Isco, James Rodríguez , Reinier , Martin Ødegaard,(on loan at Real Sociedad, where he has been superb) and Óscar Rodríguez (out on loan just turned 22yo 2 weeks ago, the best, statistically speaking, free kick taker this year in a Big 5 league) they surely will liquidate some LW Overload as well Eden Hazard , Vinícius Júnior , Marco Asensio,, and Brahim Díaz RW Overload again, but not the same talent as at LW Rodrygo, Gareth Bale, Lucas Vázquez, Takefusa Kubo, and Alberto Soro CF, it is Benzema, then a huge drop off, with the meh (so far) Luka Jovic, then multiple dregs, Mariano Díaz,, Borja Mayoral, and Dani Gómez bottom line they need (some of this assumes they sell players they do not rate) backup GK (if they do not roll with Lunin) one CB one LB one RB (backup) one DMF (desperately, as if Casemiro goes down, they have fuckall) one CMF and a good CF to spell Benzema, if they flush Jovic

the main problem is that Sancho is £30m or so more and there goes our LB

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek she has a brother (I think its a bloke, lol)

der Kloppmeister is a beer man 'I was heavily drunk': Jurgen Klopp reveals he drank so much after winning league title with Dortmund that he has no memories of the celebrations https://tribuna.com/en/liverpoolfc/news/2020-05-01-i-was-heavily-drunk-jurgen-klopp-reveals-he-drank-so-much-after-winning-league-title-with/ although he might make an exception for this wine

lol at Sky Sports a documentary on George Weah they said when he joined Chels in 2000 on a 6 month loan that he joined a team already loaded with superstar firepower such as Gianfranco Zola ,Tore Andre Flo, and CHRIS SUTTON roflmaooooooooooooo

Klopp surely must be worried, they are on a 5 month, 14 game overall shit run if not for us choking on pens in the Super Cup and them scraping out an extra time win against a meh Flamengo squad, they would have ended up with ONE trophy out of a possible seven (granted, the biggest one (for them), the league) they are not getting any younger (only 3more years max that front three is a prime, peak force) and they have fuckall for depth in so many areas

i said it two or so weeks ago and now it is even more true the dippers have went off the rails its now 5 months 6 wins 6 losses 2 draws, and 3 of their wins were 1 goal squeakers against shit 22 points dropped in 14 games they beat zero teams of quality and were smashed 3 times (4 times if you count AM thrashing them 4 2 on aggregate)

no time like that game for us to put paid to the challenge

Arteta could be a monster if he is backed with his style of players (and quality) he deffo has that baby Pep swagger rolling

we owe Dyche and the lads goons 10 cases of alcopops

I only put it out there today because many were acting like it is likely clinched with no more points even needed I am maths and probabilities driven

not even tenth grade it is primary school addition and subtraction 60 apples plus 4 apples lolol

if we finish on 63 and Leicester go 1 win, one draw, one loss (or better) they finish on 63 (or more) and do through on GD or on points the exact same for Manure and if we draw v victimpool or wolves and lose the other we are on 64 then it only takes a win and two draws for Manure and Leicester to BOTH top us the skulduggery possibility is we draw with the dippers or lose to the dippers and both Manure and Leicester come into the final game on 63 (or more points) or even on 62 and we go down BIG in the first 45 minutes to Wolves (if we lose to the dippers this works even if Manure and Leicester come in only 62 each) a draw puts both through if we have 63 and they are on 62, OR if we are on 64 and they are on 63 coming in if we are smashed in the first half v wolves, they both will know a draw puts BOTH through in either scenario again, if we lose both games (and are wiped out by HT v wolves), then as long as one of them has 62 and the other the same or even more (probably manure) then a draw still puts them both through (due to GD at worst or on points at worst) they could park the bus by mutual agreement if they both come in on 63 or more they would not even have to draw, if we are thrashed by wolves at HT (or the just beaten by FT) provided we already lost to the dippers

I just googled it I had no clue, I DETEST pro wrestling hate it with a burning passion of a thousand suns sorry

I only said it was mathematically not over in reality, the worst we can do is 5th in 99% of the simulations and unfortunately the chances of that (5th) are still much higher than the 'oh, we do not even need a single more point' crew are banging on about