Vesper

THIS is why I was going bonkers when the rumour was that the KSA head-choppers were talking to Roman about buying Chels.

to link a tweet all you need to do is go to share, copy the tweet url, and paste it in here

Chelsea will pass up opportunity to land Serie A ace despite holding advantage over Napoli Chelsea are not expected to exercise a buy-back clause on Jeremie Boga this summer, despite the Sassuolo ace impressing in Serie A. https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1282927/-

I am seeing this all over, no idea if it is true, it is all over Italian news Chelsea transfer twist as Dries Mertens makes U-turn on Inter Milan decision Chelsea have been handed a transfer blow with Dries Mertens reportedly open to joining former Blues boss Antonio Conte at Inter Milan. https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1282882/Chelsea-transfer-news-Dries-Mertens-U-turn-Inter-Milan-decision-Antonio-Conte Mertens more Inter than Chelsea https://www.football-italia.net/153187/mertens-more-inter-chelsea Player not keen on joining Chelsea – Doesn’t think Blues have enough ‘power’ in PL http://sportwitness.co.uk/player-prefers-club-current-league-chelsea-switch-power-league/

Chelsea 'make decision on Jorginho, N'Golo Kante futures' By Matt Law, Football Editor | 25m https://www.sportsmole.co.uk/football/chelsea/transfer-talk/news/chelsea-make-decision-on-jorginho-ngolo-kante-futures_399534.html Chelsea will reportedly 'resist any offers' for midfield pair Jorginho and N'Golo Kante this summer. Both players have been linked with moves away from Stamford Bridge ahead of the 2020-21 campaign. Juventus are allegedly interested in bringing Jorginho back to Italy, while Real Madrid and Barcelona are believed to be admirers of Kante. However, according to ESPN, Frank Lampard's side are not prepared to listen to bids for either player during this summer's transfer window. The report adds that Chelsea 'want to be active' in the upcoming market despite the financial impact of the coronavirus outbreak, which has halted the majority of football across the globe. Lampard was unable to bring any new players to the club last summer due to a transfer ban, but the London outfit were free to do business in January after their suspension was reduced on appeal.

1 year 9 months

Friday May 15 2020 Football Nerd Can the Bundesliga's festival of attacking football continue? By Daniel Zeqiri Erling Haaland set the Bundesliga alight before the break CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES Through football's coronavirus hiatus, we are committed to providing a weekly newsletter of facts, analysis and retrospectives. If there is a topic you want us to cover please email [email protected]. Above all, stay safe. Live football returns to our screens this weekend with the resumption of the Bundesliga, which prior to sport's suspension was the most entertaining of Europe's big five leagues. Long gone are the days when German football had a reputation for being staid and defensive. The 728 Bundesliga matches this season produced an average of 3.3 goals per game, bettering the Premier League by 0.6 goals per game. Given the English game sells itself on the promise of frantic and chaotic attacking football, that is a significant deficit. Germany's failure at the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship prompted a period of introspection, and a radical redrawing of their philosophy and coaching structures. Their shift towards a more technical style - typified by players such as Toni Kroos, Mesut Özil and Mario Götze - was the guiding principle of their 2014 World Cup triumph and has made their domestic league all the more attractive. Add the pervasive influence of Pep Guardiola after his three years at Bayern Munich; Jurgen Klopp and the succession of coaches following his brand of breakneck counter-attacking; the arrival of young talents such as Jadon Sancho seeking opportunity; and a vibrant and democratic fan culture, and it is plain to see why thousands travel to Germany to experience the madness first hand. Bayern, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig, the Bundesliga's top three, have each scored in excess of 60 league goals with nine matches still to play. Across January and February, Dortmund scored 22 in five league games, led by Sancho and the freakishly good Erling Haaland. Aside from entertainment value, this Bundesliga season has also been competitive after dominant force Bayern Munich's slow start to the campaign. Just eight points separate Bayern and Bayer Leverkusen in fifth, and top and bottom are separated by 39 points. Only Spain's La Liga, where 38 points separate top and bottom, is more condensed among Europe's big five leagues. Liverpool's exceptional consistency and near-perfect season makes it difficult to assess the Premier League, where 61 points separate top and bottom. It will be intriguing to see if silent stadiums and players' lack of match sharpness dull this festival of attacking football. Fans seeking respite in dire times will hope the Bundesliga can pick up where it left off.

fuck Marina I am all out of fucks to give dingy bitch unreal her inept arse has not been cashiered, along with the rest of the board/hierarchy who deals with player scouting and buys/sales they are pure dogshit hundreds of millions shit away and the team has been so weakened as well

Marina wasa fucking CUNT to not ditch his arse before. Another board mega millions cock up. now COVID-19 devals will rape us further SO sick of it all. It is hundreds of millions of quid shit away since summer of 2017 via botched sales, botched buys, fucked up buys, fucked up contractual management, etc. I have detailed it all before, and once this next transfer window is done I shall truly survey and catalogue the utter damage.and carnage.

pass on Tagliafico <<< overrated and too short, I do want want a team of midgets, a few shorties are okie, but not 5, 6 or so Depay <<< headcase plus Giroud Free <<< we already renewed him for a year Chelsea exercise Giroud option to protect against interest from Inter Batshuayi 15m <<<< Marina turned down £35m, and was demanding an insane £45m, so even with COVID-19 cocking up the market, zero chance she sells him for a THIRD of what she was asking 5 months ago

I am not slagging him off as a player, he is just NOT worth £50-60m or so more than Telles or Gosens, nor £30-40m more than Theo Hernandez

welcome to the board

I have never been on the Chilwell bandwagon. I have been saying for ages to sell Alonso (he turns 30yo in December, this is the last year we get shit for him, but COVID-19 has fucked everything up) and especially Emerson and buy two of the following three Telles (ridiculously cheap now) Robin Gosens Theo Hernandez if we keep Alonso, and PSG gets Telles then Theo is the way to go, but I really like Gosens too, he is a younger (turns 26 July 5th) almost as tall version of Alonso, with far better pace Alaba (for the right price) is a wild card (this is the last year I will advise to buy either Alaba OR Telles as the both turn 28 this year (Telles in December, like me,Alaba on June 24, 2020) It is madness to buy fullbacks it they turn 29 or up in the year you buy them. 28 is even pushing things. Fullbacks almost all rapidly fall off once they hit 30yo and up. The exceptions are super rare Jordi Alba is the only remotely great LB over 29yo on the planet, and he has already shown a lot of signs of deline. Azpilicueta is the only decent 30yo and up RB on the planet (and look, his legs are going already, at 30).. Dani Alves was a genetic freak, but even he washed up a couple years ago, overall, and now is simply not a viable player for any even slightly big Euro club. Even he was 34 when he had his last great year (at PSG) His final year at PSG (35yo) was sub-par, and he quickly left to go play in the shit Brasil leagues. bonus youth target Rayan Aït Nouri (turns 19 on June 6th)

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE Chelsea in talks with Italian giants over £35m sale of Sarri signing https://astamfordbridgetoofar.com/2020/05/08/chelsea-in-talks-with-italian-giants-over-35m-sale-of-sarri-signing/ I call bullshit on that price btw it is fucking madness to take a £22m loss for a peak level player who is not only far from dogshit, but profoundly strengthens Juve we will sell Jorginho for 35m, but turn down the same price for dogshit Bats and Marina demands £45m! or turn down (this is even worse) £45m for dogshit Alonso and Marina demands £55m!!

he was never backed correctly, I fully will never stop believing this he was not blameless, of course, but he was, is and will be a great manager not the easiest bloke to get on with, but FFS, this is a pro game, many assholes in all major sports globally have been superb managers and head coaches we have been blessed with many great managers over the last 22 years Gianluca Vialli (1998 Football League Cup, 1998 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, 1998 UEFA Super Cup, 2000 FA Cup, 2000 FA Charity Shield) Claudio Ranieri Jose Mourinho (love/hate) Luiz Felipe Scolari Carlo Ancelotti (probably my favourite overall in terms of likeability, another bloke who got shit on here and a top 10 all time global manager ever) Rafael Benitez. (I rate the hell out of him, I know many do not) Antonio Conte. hopefully Lamps gets added to that list I refuse to put Sarri on it

I have a bridge for sale................

those two as our LB's equals capitulation if we are trying to title challenge at all and also go deep in the CL (even the 'small horse' Mou team of 2013/14 went to the CL semi-finals until we got smashed 1-3 by AM at the Bridge after drawing nil nil at AM) I am never going to back down about LB until we finally get someone that is at least 70-75% down the road to Ashley Cole level that position pretty much fucks us every year, save for the Conte title year due to his system, but even then, look at what happend the next season even in Mou's last title team, that position was oftimes a shitshow (no clue why Mou could not get good play out of Filipe Luís, who was often great at AM before and after he flopped here)

Survey results: Support for 23-team Premier League, neutral venues and opt-outs https://theathletic.com/1806660/2020/05/12/premier-league-restart-survey-23-teams-neutral-venues-and-opt-outs/ Since elite football was suspended in England in March, the game’s authorities have been discussing and debating how and when it can return. After the latest meeting of Premier League clubs yesterday, chief executive Richard Masters said they still hope to complete the season but that the prospect of “curtailment” had been discussed for the first time. In more than a month of serious, sometimes furious, debate, stakeholders from the clubs to the leagues to the players’ union and everyone in between have floated ideas ranging from declaring the season null and void to completing it as a mini-tournament at St George’s Park. At The Athletic, we wanted to know what supporters think and so, over the bank holiday weekend, we asked you for your views — and you responded in your thousands. Among the findings was support for a 23-team Premier League next season if it avoided legal battles, belief that players who opted not to play until a vaccine is discovered should not have their wages reduced, majority support for relaxing the EFL’s financial fair play rules and a close call between settling the league by points per game or declaring it null and void if it cannot be completed. Here are the full results. Thank you to everyone who took part. Please let us know what you make of the results in the comments. It feels like a lifetime ago now but the Premier League season was suspended on March 13 after the first-team squads at Chelsea, Everton and Arsenal began self-isolating, with news that Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta had tested positive for coronavirus seeming to force action. Before that announcement it had seemed likely that elite football in England was going to carry on for at least another week, with Liverpool’s game against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League going ahead on the Wednesday of that week, the night before it was announced that Arteta had tested positive. Arsenal had been due to visit Brighton & Hove Albion on the Saturday. The EFL joined the Premier League in initially suspending until April 3 but 50.2 per cent of those who responded to the survey believe that move came too late. Even so, there is a strong belief among respondents that football authorities are right to explore how the game can return — with 85.1 per cent in favour of the talks that the Premier League and EFL have been undertaking to try to plan for a return. A number of clubs, particularly those in the EFL, believe they will face greater economic consequences if they fail to begin next season than if they fail to finish this one, plus there is an argument that it is better for integrity to begin a new season under conditions — we’ll come to neutral venues — than to complete one. However, much like the official line from the Premier League, respondents to the survey are clear that it is more important to them to complete this season (62.7 per cent) than begin a new one. That raises the question: how long are you prepared to wait to do so? The Bundesliga is due to return this weekend but Germany’s management of the disease is further ahead than the UK’s. It is understood that the Premier League would like to resume by June 12, which would please most respondents, with almost half of those who answered prepared to wait only a maximum of three months, though almost 15 per cent of respondents say they would wait for more than a year. What if waiting is not enough? The Athletic has already reported that Leagues One and Two are likely to be decided without the remaining games being played. With all the logistical and legal obstacles in their way, it is possible the same fate could yet meet the Championship and even the Premier League, despite the clear resolve to complete the season. Of the thousands who responded to this survey, 39 per cent favour the season being decided on a points-per-game basis. In the case of the Premier League, the table would look like this… This method was criticised in an article here by our analytics expert Tom Worville, who explained why an analytical model of the remaining games would produce a much fairer result, however that proposal garnered only 13 per cent of the vote here, as did freezing the table as it stands, with the second most popular option being to declare the season null and void, meaning no relegation — and no title for Liverpool. If the Premier League season cannot be completed then, by an almost Brexit-like majority, respondents believe relegation should be enforced and that at least the top two should still be promoted from the Championship. At present, the bottom three in the Premier League are Bournemouth (27 points from 29 games played), Aston Villa (25 from 28) and Norwich City (21 from 29) — though it may not be as simple as that. The top three in the Championship are Leeds United (71 points), West Bromwich Albion (70) and Fulham (64) — all have played 37 games and Fulham are four points clear of Brentford. It is worth noting here that this question could have been broken down further and the method of selecting a third team to be promoted explored further but it would appear safe to conclude that the majority believe at least two clubs should be promoted even if the season is not concluded. But the opinion on whether or not relegation should be enforced from the Premier League if the season is not completed is deeply divided. This is perhaps one of the most surprising results. It speaks to the desire to recognise the efforts of the leading Championship clubs, but also the divide over whether or not it is now fair to relegate those at the bottom of the Premier League. A majority of those who responded — 52 per cent — said a 23-team Premier League would be a good idea if it avoided legal battles over promotion and relegation. The Premier League was reduced to 20 teams in 1995 and has remained that way since, with calls coming from the players’ union in recent years to reduce the number of games its members play. An additional six games — in what is already likely to be a cramped season potentially ending in a European Championship for many Premier League players — would likely prove controversial. However, as respondents to the survey indicate, it may be a price worth paying to avoid a court battle involving relegated clubs or those denied promotion. Staging all remaining games at neutral venues may be the most practical way to complete the season after the most senior police officer in English football told The Athletic that letting teams play this season’s remaining fixtures at home is an “unrealistic demand” that would put “an impracticable burden” on councils and the emergency services. The Premier League resolved to ask the government on Monday if that guidance could be reconsidered after a significant number of clubs raised concerns. It is felt that losing home advantage for critical games would ruin the integrity of the competition. Last week, the prospect was raised of removing the threat of relegation if the season was completed at neutral venues. The thousands who responded to The Athletic’s survey delivered a clear verdict on the two issues, with 74.8 per cent in favour of matches being played at neutral venues if it meant completing the Premier League season and 72.6 per cent saying relegation should still be enforced in that eventuality. Whether or not games are played at neutral venues, it now appears certain that any return would come behind closed doors. One of the great concerns for Premier League clubs is that if they fail to complete the season they could be liable to repay £762 million to broadcasters. The other significant loss would be if clubs had to pay back season-ticket monies for the remaining games of this season and, possibly, much of the next one. To allay this, it has been proposed that supporters could instead stream matches on a service such as the EFL’s iFollow. There is tension, however. Can the broadcasters and clubs find a deal that suits them both? The government is also keen for elite sport to return to raise public spirits. That would obviously have more impact if the games were free for all to watch, though that is likely to be given short shrift by the TV companies who have already paid significant sums for exclusive broadcasting rights. Unsurprisingly, those who responded to the survey were in favour of making the games free to watch (who doesn’t like free stuff?), though a significant number (29.1 per cent) said that they should be shown by those broadcasters who have paid the money. There is also a clear appetite for the game’s return, with just 14.9 per cent of respondents saying they would watch only their team in any televised behind-closed-doors games. As The Athletic explored last month, a number of players are scared and even angry at the prospect of being pushed back into action in a contact sport during a pandemic. There is no vaccine for coronavirus at present and yet the elite game in England hopes to restart. In Spain, Cadiz defender Fali has refused to train due to fears over player safety during the pandemic and there was significant support among respondents to the survey for players who do not want to play before a vaccine is found. Footballers are often criticised for their high wages, and at one stage were involved in a dispute with the government about wage cuts and deferrals, but 77.2 per cent of respondents said that clubs should accept the position of any player who does not wish to return before a vaccine is found, with 20.8 per cent saying those players should have their pay reduced and only 2 per cent believing they should be sacked. A significant number of EFL clubs are in a perilous position, with one football finance expert telling The Athletic that it could be “decimated”, and a League One chairman predicting “carnage” in July if there is no further clarity. It appears increasingly likely the season will be decided without games being completed in the EFL but a slim majority of respondents to this survey (54 per cent) said that promotion and relegation should still be enforced. There are growing calls for a salary cap to be introduced to help EFL clubs operate on reduced budgets. EFL chairman Rick Parry is in favour, though it is far from unanimous. In our survey, 59.5 per cent of respondents backed a cap, while 72 per cent said financial fair play rules should be relaxed to help clubs who are bracing themselves for significant shortfalls. Even more extreme ideas have been floated: clubs who are unable to survive a season without crowds could opt out of the league for, say, a season, then return when match-day income returns. It has not yet been put forward as an official proposal but 59 per cent of respondents asked about the idea in The Athletic’s survey were in favour, with 44 per cent saying those clubs should then be allowed to return in the same division. Please let us know in the comments what you think of the results and whether or not it has changed your mind about how football in England should return. Thank you again to everyone who took part.

Model C: Weighted points per game (WPPG) FTW

Who is Chelsea’s greatest manager? https://theathletic.com/1806033/2020/05/12/chelsea-greatest-manager-mourinho-conte-vialli/ “Until the moment they have a manager that wins four Premier Leagues for them, Judas is number one.” That was the memorable way that Jose Mourinho put forward his case to be regarded as the best manager in Chelsea’s history, back in 2017. It did not go down well with the patrons at Stamford Bridge. Mourinho’s Manchester United side had just been beaten by his first English club in an FA Cup quarter-final and the Portuguese responded to the jeers from the home supporters as he walked off the pitch afterwards in typically bullish fashion. But despite all the barbs aimed at the quality of Chelsea fans’ support over the years and a decision to now manage their fierce London rivals Tottenham Hotspur, Mourinho is right to say he stands out from the rest. It is all too easy to let events of the past few years overshadow the immense impact Mourinho had on Chelsea. Without him, their status as the most successful English club since Roman Abramovich bought them in 2003 — a tally of 16 major trophies — might never have happened. Critics will always point to the amount of money Mourinho had at his disposal when he arrived from newly-crowned Champions League winners Porto in 2004 and declared: “We have top players and I am sorry — I’m a bit arrogant — but we have a top manager. I’m European champion, so I’m not one of the bottle. I think I am a special one.” Mourinho has clarified many times that he said “a” rather than “the”, but he has been known as the self-proclaimed “special one” since that remarkable debut press conference. In fairness to the man, he lived up to that billing from the outset. Whenever there is a discussion about the greatest Premier League sides to win the title, his Chelsea vintage of that debut 2004-05 season, or even their 2005-06 successors for that matter, rarely gets a mention. Those achievements are certainly not spoken about with the same awe as the great Manchester United sides of 1998-99 and 2007-08, Arsenal’s 2003-04 Invincibles and Manchester City’s 100-point record-breakers in 2017-18. But ruling the roost in 2004-05 was still an impressive feat. Mourinho did the hardest job of all: changing Chelsea’s reputation for being just a cup side into one that could finish top of the pile. He did benefit from Claudio Ranieri putting the foundations in place. Key players John Terry, Frank Lampard, Claude Makelele, Joe Cole, Damien Duff, William Gallas and Eidur Gudjohnsen were already first-team members, while deals for Petr Cech and Arjen Robben had been secured in advance. Chelsea had been runners-up to that unbeaten Arsenal side the season before and had shown their significant threat by knocking Arsene Wenger’s team out of the Champions League quarter-finals. But there was still something missing, that little edge that separates the winners from the nearly men — there was a significant 11-point gap between first and second place in the Premier League in 2003-04. It also shouldn’t be forgotten that after defeating Arsenal in Europe, they contrived to lose to Monaco in the semis — even though the Ligue 1 outfit were reduced to 10 men for most of the first leg’s second half. There were some more key additions that summer, such as Didier Drogba, but Mourinho changed the mindset right from the start of the next season. Only last week, Terry was reminiscing about it on BeIN Sports, saying: “As a group of players, we were texting each other saying, ‘Oh no, this’ll be tough, this’ but from day one, he blew us away with his sessions. “Like all of us, you go in (to training with a new manager) and say, ‘OK, let’s see what the manager’s got’ because it’s down to them to impress the players, and he certainly did that. He did that on a personal basis, on the training field… he was special, that’s for sure.” Tactically, Chelsea could do it all under Mourinho. They could play for a 1-0 or, with Robben and Duff let off the leash, destroy opponents with devastating attacking play. Substitutions were used to have an impact on the thinking in the dressing room as much as on the opposing team — complacency was never allowed to settle in. Press conferences before and after fixtures were another tool Mourinho used to get inside peoples’ heads, whether those heads belonged to Chelsea colleagues or others. A controversial penalty awarded by Howard Webb for a Paulo Ferreira challenge on Manchester City striker Nicolas Anelka, who subsequently scored from the spot, was the only thing that stopped Chelsea matching Arsenal’s feat of going the whole league season unbeaten. Their achievement would have eclipsed Arsenal’s for many, as they drew fewer games. The “Invincibles” team ended up 12 points behind in second place, while a Manchester United side with Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney in attack were a further six points adrift. Chelsea not only retained the title the following season, but led from start to finish. There were such fears over their dominance becoming dull, one national newspaper offered prize money to the first player to score against them in the top division. Aston Villa’s Luke Moore obliged, albeit in a losing cause, in Chelsea’s seventh league fixture. With Mourinho using a siege mentality to galvanise his squad, they were still on course to win the quadruple when the 2006-07 campaign got to May. They lost out to Manchester United and Liverpool in the Premier League and Champions League (in the semi-finals, on penalties) respectively but adding the FA Cup to February’s League Cup win meant Mourinho had five pieces of silverware in three seasons. Even after leaving for the first time in September 2007, his DNA stayed on the team for years to come. While he missed out on winning the Champions League — there were three semi-finals across his two spells as coach — Mourinho took a lot of satisfaction from seeing some of “his” players have key roles in Chelsea’s 2012 triumph. The now 57-year-old’s second period in charge between summer 2013 and December 2015 isn’t as fondly remembered, which is a little surprising. His third title with the club in 2014-15 was achieved with entertaining football, certainly for the first half of the season, when Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, Oscar and Eden Hazard were combining to great effect. But people only seem to remember the manner in which he departed and how quickly things all fell apart. The unseemly row with club doctor Eva Carneiro that began during the opening league game of the 2015-16 season arguably did more damage to his reputation than being sacked with the defending champions just a point above the relegation zone. As far as the Greatest Manager accolade goes, who could knock Mourinho off his pedestal? A glance at the club’s history books means Ted Drake, their first manager to win the title in 1955, has to get a mention. So too Dave Sexton, who won the FA Cup in 1970 and the European Cup Winners’ Cup a year later. John Neal is also fondly regarded for the team assembled in the early 1980s, too, but it is the modern era where you will find most of the men that can rival Mourinho’s stature. Take Ruud Gullit, for example. The football in the 18 months under him from the start of the 1996-97 season was some of the best played by any Chelsea XI. And significantly, he ended the club’s 26-year wait for a trophy by capping his first year in charge with victory in the FA Cup final. His man-management wasn’t universally popular in the dressing room, though, with Frank Sinclair telling The Athletic it was one of the reasons the Dutchman lost his job in February 1998. Gullit’s successor Gianluca Vialli is still revered by many. In terms of trophies won, the Italian is second only to Mourinho, having picked up the League Cup, FA Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup during his two and a half years. He was also in charge for Chelsea’s first-ever Champions League campaign in 1999-2000, where they were just seven minutes away from beating Barcelona to a place in the semi-finals. The season before, Vialli’s side finished just four points adrift of treble winners Manchester United in the Premier League. Carlo Ancelotti is probably more popular than countryman Vialli, though, and he achieved something even Mourinho didn’t — steering Chelsea to the only double of league title and FA Cup in club history. Ancelotti was popular in, and outside of, west London. As current employers Everton are beginning to experience, his relaxed demeanour and smart sense of humour go down well with players and the watching world. Chelsea played with a lot more freedom when Ancelotti was at the helm. Their 2010 title winners scored a club record 103 league goals — a feat the more heralded Manchester City team of 2017-18 bettered by just three. What counts against Ancelotti is that he delivered silverware in just one of his two seasons in charge and never got beyond the quarter-finals in the Champions League. Antonio Conte can arguably lay claim to masterminding Chelsea’s most impressive title win. It was definitely the least expected. After inheriting the mess left by Mourinho from the season before, the Italian inspired the group. Once Conte changed to playing with three at the back, Chelsea won a club-record 13 league games in a row and 30 in total during 2016-17. It could have ended with another double too, but they lost to Arsenal 2-1 in the FA Cup final having played the last 20 minutes with 10 men. Despite a year of rancour behind the scenes, Conte led Chelsea back to Wembley a year later and this time oversaw a victory over Manchester United to add the FA Cup to his title win. Still, all the tantrums and failing to qualify for the Champions League via a top-four finish in that 2017-18 season goes against him. Roberto Di Matteo famously got Abramovich his white whale in the 2012 Champions League final but lasted less than a year overall, while Rafa Benitez and Maurizio Sarri were also gone within 12 months despite both delivering silverware in the Europa League. So, for all his faults, Mourinho is my undisputed No 1. Now, who’s yours?

Making Chelsea Women: spotting superstars, stellar signings and ruthless Hayes https://theathletic.com/1803292/2020/05/11/chelsea-women-emma-hayes-stoney-wsl-fa-cup/ Tony Farmer will never forget October 4, 2015. As the founder and first manager of the side now known as Chelsea Women, he was invited as a guest of honour to Wheatsheaf Park to watch the 4-0 rout of Sunderland that sealed the club’s first FA Women’s Super League (WSL) title. But there is another reason why he will always remember the date. “It was the 23rd anniversary of us playing our first competitive game in the Greater London League (in 1992),” he tells The Athletic with a laugh. “You couldn’t write it. Both games ended up 4-0.” After the match, Farmer was introduced to a jubilant Emma Hayes, bringing together the two most significant figures in the club’s remarkable success story at the moment of its greatest triumph. “If I could have picked anyone to be manager of Chelsea Women now, it would be her,” he adds. “She’s so focused, she wants to achieve and she gets it.” Chelsea Women won a WSL and Women’s FA Cup double in 2015 and repeated the feat three years later. They were on course to do it again this season despite facing stiffer competition than ever, having firmly established themselves on and off the pitch under Hayes as a club with aspirations of lasting dominance domestically and in Europe. The WSL is in limbo owing to the coronavirus pandemic, with all women’s football from the third tier and below already abandoned this season. Farmer still takes huge pride in the achievements of Chelsea Women because he knows better than anyone just how far they have come. In 1992, when he wrote to the club pitching the idea of starting a women’s team, none of this seemed vaguely possible. “Someone asked me recently, ‘Was it your dream to see Chelsea Ladies in the Champions League?’” he says. “There was no Champions League! You can’t dream about things that didn’t exist.” Chelsea, who had not run a women’s team since the 1970s, were initially sceptical. A lifelong supporter, Farmer presented the new team as a way to improve public perception of the club, but his own motivation ran deeper than PR: he had spent time coaching women at Crystal Palace and been struck by their passion for the game, as well as their work ethic. “They knew they had to be better to win people over because they were trying to break down prejudices about whether girls should even be playing football,” he says. Once he got the green light, Farmer set about recruiting – largely from another local women’s side he had been coaching, Bedfont United. “We had a very young team,” he recalls. “Most of the players were under 16, playing against players who had been playing for years.” The girls paid to play for Chelsea and trained on Friday nights. “We started off training on an old redgra (all-weather) pitch at an old community college by Feltham,” Farmer says. “It was the cheapest option and local to a lot of the players, but if you fell over you ended up with a load of grit in your knee.” Chelsea Ladies entered the third division of the Greater London League in 1992, and one of Farmer’s early priorities was to make the club’s fanbase aware of the new team. He got in touch with programme editor Neil Barnett, who made sure the women’s team was regularly featured. The exposure helped secure vital donations from supporters to contribute towards covering costs. Farmer’s new team migrated across south-west London in search of better facilities. They even played at Motspur Park, now Fulham’s training ground. But their nomadic existence didn’t adversely impact results. “We missed out on promotion by about a point, and lost in a cup in extra-time,” he says. “The next season we won the division undefeated all season, and we’d arrived.” Chelsea’s hierarchy responded by offering the women the chance to do a lap of honour around Stamford Bridge at half-time of the club’s penultimate Premiership home game of the season against Coventry. Farmer was nervous but his fears proved misplaced. “They got a standing ovation from all four sides of the stadium,” he says. “After that, they invited me in to discuss a budget for the team.” Farmer was given access to a £3,000 fund that covered pitch rental, equipment and other costs for the following season. He was even able to start a second team. While still entirely under his control, the project had been firmly brought under the Chelsea umbrella. “I couldn’t have done what I did without the club,” he admits. In their first five years, Chelsea Ladies were promoted three times, reaching the brink of the Premier League National Division – then dominated by the giants that Farmer was trying to emulate. “I wanted to build a club to challenge at the highest level, to challenge Arsenal and Doncaster Belles and the rest,” he says. Chelsea Ladies also became a prolific breeding ground for young talent. Among the prospects who went on shine at the top level of the women’s game were Fara Williams, the most-capped England player of all-time, and former England captain Casey Stoney, now Manchester United Women’s manager. Stoney was spotted by Farmer at the age of 12. “I used to pick Casey up from her house and drive her to training,” he recalls. “We were driving back one night and I said to her, ‘If you want it enough, you’ll play for England one day’. She just laughed, an embarrassed laugh, as if to say, ‘Yeah right’.” She went on to earn 130 England caps and win every domestic honour at club level in a glittering professional career, of which four years were spent at Chelsea. “She sent me a programme from her last game at Liverpool when she retired with a little message on it, saying, ‘Without you, none of this would have been possible’,” Farmer says. “As a coach, that’s all you could ever want.” Farmer stepped away from running Chelsea Ladies in 1997, but not before ticking off two more unforgettable achievements. His team played an exhibition game against Manchester United on the Stamford Bridge pitch in 1996 as part of Eurofest, an event organised by chairman Ken Bates to run alongside Euro 96. A year later he led them out at Wembley for a small-sided game ahead of the 1997 FA Cup final against Middlesbrough. “I was pinching myself walking out there,” he says. “It was like a surreal dream. The Chelsea team came out to do their usual lap of the pitch ahead of kick-off, and it was while the women’s game was going on. “We had mainly the younger players. Dennis Wise, Frank Leboeuf and Roberto Di Matteo were stood around the side of the pitch cheering when we scored a goal. Those are amazing memories.” Images from that day came flooding back into Farmer’s mind in August 2015, as he watched Chelsea beat Notts County in the first Women’s FA Cup final to be held at Wembley. “After the game I looked up at the big screen and it said ‘Chelsea Ladies, FA Cup Winners’,” he says. “That was really emotional, the realisation of how far it had come.” The 15 years between Farmer’s departure and Hayes’ arrival were not without progress for Chelsea Ladies, but any advancements were tempered by the sense that much more might be possible with greater funding and coherent planning. Long-awaited promotion to the Premier League National Division under George Michaelas in 2004-05 swiftly followed the decision to fund the team directly from Chelsea’s Football in the Community department. That meant greater resources, but it also created the impression of the women’s team as more of a charitable initiative than a sporting project to stand alongside the men’s senior side. Chelsea Ladies’ reputation for splashy signings outstripped their results in those early years. True relevance in the National Division remained elusive despite the arrivals of England internationals Stoney, goalkeeper Siobhan Chamberlain and forward Eni Aluko, as well as World Cup winning-USA star Lorrie Fair. The lack of quality infrastructure around the women’s team had a lot to do with the mediocrity. The reality of being a women’s footballer at that time has stuck with Claire Rafferty, who joined Chelsea Ladies from Millwall Lionesses in 2007. “Getting no money to be there, minimal travel expenses,” she says. “Being last on the list for the facilities. The kit didn’t fit. But it was where women’s football was at the time, and it was still a step up from where I’d come from. “When I look back now it’s crazy, comparing what the girls get now with what we got. It was very difficult to be a women’s footballer then. It was always an add-on. You’d work the whole day and then come to training. “We only trained twice a week at the time. We’d be in 8pm until 10pm on a Tuesday and Thursday and then just turn up on a Sunday with our kits in our bags. We used to train on the 3G pitch at Cobham. We weren’t taken as seriously as we are now. We weren’t a priority at the time, which is just where women’s football was. “We were actually a lot better off than a lot of teams. We were bringing in top players because the club wanted to win things. It didn’t go to plan but it was never going to be a quick fix.” Michaelas’ successor Steve Jones lured Lianne Sanderson and Anita Asante from all-conquering Arsenal in 2008 and led Chelsea Ladies to their highest National Division finish of third. Matt Beard took the reins after him and bridged the gap to the formation of the WSL, as well as leading the team to a heroic Women’s FA Cup final defeat on penalties to Birmingham in 2012. Beard did more than anyone to highlight Chelsea Ladies’ potential to break into the top echelon of the women’s game, but he left to take over at Liverpool in July 2012 unfulfilled. “We overachieved for the team we had – Matt really galvanised us,” Rafferty says. “When he left I knew it was because he’d been offered more opportunities, and that annoyed me a bit. It made me think we weren’t investing as much as we should have been. “He was really pushing for improvements in infrastructure, but he didn’t really get what he wanted. I remember him being a little bit frustrated. That was the beginning of the WSL as well, so we needed to do it. That’s why Matt ultimately went to Liverpool. I think they offered him more chance of creating a professional environment.” Hayes was uniquely qualified to succeed in the areas previous Chelsea Ladies managers could not. She followed two years assisting Vic Akers at Arsenal with a stint as head coach and director of football operations at Chicago Red Stars in Women’s Professional Soccer. When she returned from the USA in 2010, she did so with a vision for how a successful club should work at every level. It also helps that Hayes happens to be one of the most charismatic and persuasive leaders in football. “Emma came in and got the ear of the right people, and that made the difference,” Rafferty says. “She knocked down the barriers that were there and the rest is history.” Rafferty laughs as Chelsea players and their coach take ice baths in the river during a pre-season tour of Austria in August 2017. (Photo: Chelsea Football Club/Chelsea FC via Getty Images) Hayes immediately clicked with Paul Green, who was tempted from Doncaster Belles after being sold on the untapped potential of Chelsea Ladies. “Emma is very clear on what she wants,” he says. “She wants to win, and she’ll do everything she can to do it. She’s very ambitious and driven, and she doesn’t like to sit still. She still has a million ideas about how we can improve and adapt.” The revolution was far from painless. In the first season after Hayes began overhauling her squad, Chelsea Ladies finished second bottom of the WSL, but many inside the club trusted that things were changing for the better. “She got rid of about 80 per cent of the team when she came in,” Rafferty says. “It was ruthless, and we’d never been ruthless. “It had been a very friendly environment, and the mentality she brought in was exactly what the club needed on and off the pitch.” In came Katie Chapman and Gilly Flaherty from Arsenal and South Korean star Ji So-Yun to bolster an increasingly international squad that included Japan’s World Cup winner Yuki Ogimi, while Fran Kirby soon followed for a reported record fee in women’s football. “The biggest transformation for me was when Ji came in,” Rafferty says. “I know damn well that Emma would have had to promise her the world, so it made me feel that the club was going to a better place.” Chelsea Ladies only lost the WSL title to Liverpool on goal difference the following season, thanks to an agonising final-day defeat away to Manchester City. At the sombre team meal that followed, Hayes and Green were already compiling a list of players to sign to make sure it couldn’t happen again. Many of them came in: Millie Bright, Gemma Davison, Hedvig Lindahl, Niamh Fahey. In May 2018, Chelsea Ladies became Chelsea Football Club Women, with the club saying they would no longer consistently refer to the men’s side as the “first team”. The move was designed to reflect the “ever-growing status of women’s football, and Chelsea within it,” the club said. There are shades of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor in the partnership between Hayes and Green that has powered the inexorable rise of Chelsea Ladies since, which has been founded on consistently stellar recruitment. “The scouting has been through Emma and my experience in the game – mine more domestically, Emma’s more abroad with contacts,” Green says. “Sometimes we’ll be one step in front of someone else just in terms of our good network of contacts, and we’ll know if certain players are coming to the end of their contracts or are unhappy. “In the early days, we would need to sell it more than we do now. Back then the bigger leagues were USA, Sweden, Germany. Chelsea Women sells itself now in terms of how successful we’ve been, the crowds we’re getting and the profile of the game. It’s at the stage now where it’s just picking the right players that we feel we need.” When she gets into a room with a player she wants, Hayes has proven spectacularly effective at imbuing them with the same enthusiasm she has for the Chelsea project. “She made me feel like I was the best centre-back in the world,” club captain Magda Eriksson says. “She was really good, talking about the women’s game in England and how Chelsea were working. “It made me feel, ‘Wow, if there’s any place where I can develop, it’s going to be here. I’m going to get every opportunity and if I need something, they’re going to provide it’. Those weren’t just empty words from Emma; it’s been the reality. “Every summer there has been more recruitment, new focus points on how to become better as an individual and as a team. The way I’ve developed as a football player since coming to Chelsea has been immense, and it’s because I’d never been able to have these facilities and this support system around me until now.” Hayes has been every bit as relentless in pursuing improvements to Chelsea’s infrastructure. In the five years since her players became fully professional, a new complex has been built for the women at the back of the club’s Cobham training ground and the team of staff working with them has grown rapidly. Those around the manager and Green now include specialist coaches, four medical staff, two analysts, a head of performance and a part-time menstrual cycle expert. “We’ve probably got the biggest staff in the women’s game, but that basis and infrastructure is really important,” Green says. “We’ve always felt that if we can give the players as much as possible, they can be the best they can be on a daily basis. They’ve got no excuses. We’ve got one of the best set-ups in Europe, and any player who comes here is in a terrific position to learn and improve.” Given her achievements and status within women’s football, it was inevitable that Hayes would be touted as a front-runner to replace Phil Neville as England manager when he steps down next year. Everything she has said publicly in recent years, however, suggests she would turn down the job. She has built a formidable power base at Chelsea, but she also has unfinished business. Just as it once was for Roman Abramovich, the Champions League is the obsession for Hayes. “We still want to be successful domestically, but the Champions League is the holy grail,” Green says. “It’s the ambition we share across the staff and the players, and you’ve got to handle that expectation if you’re joining the club. Emma’s made no secret of her ambition, and everyone is on the same page.” “The main mission is the Champions League, and that shines through in everything else we do on a daily basis,” Eriksson adds. “We have a wall of trophies when you walk up to our building in the training ground, and to be able to put the Champions League trophy on that would be amazing.” Chelsea Women got closer than ever last season, giving Lyon – Europe’s best team for much of the last decade – all they could handle over two legs of a tight and tense Champions League semi-final. A third-place finish in the WSL deprived them of the chance to renew the burgeoning rivalry in 2019-20, but Hayes’ blockbuster acquisitions of Australia captain Sam Kerr and Germany midfielder Melanie Leupolz serve as emphatic reminders of her undimmed desire to knock the French giants off their perch. But while she waits for that next opportunity, Hayes has more than domestic success to celebrate. Chelsea Women were attracting record crowds at their new home of Kingsmeadow this season prior to the shutdown, and their Stamford Bridge showcase against Tottenham on the opening day of the WSL season provided greater exposure for a team whose support is organically growing. Chelsea Women are at the forefront of women’s football, on the pitch and off it. The reality is a more spectacular validation than Farmer could have ever hoped for but, with Hayes continuing to push forward, all the signs suggest the most glorious chapters of this story are yet to be written.

Sancho, Ampadu and three other British players to look out for in the Bundesliga https://theathletic.com/1806003/2020/05/12/bundesliga-sancho-dortmund-ampadu-leipzig-chelsea-kenny-lookman-everton/ English football is not back yet, but some English footballers are. The last few years have seen a steady stream of young players leave the Premier League for the Bundesliga in pursuit of greater first-team opportunities. It has not worked out for all of them. Some have flopped, some have come back. But when the Bundesliga restarts on Saturday, there will be an Englishman on both sides of the flagship match: Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho will be up against Jonjoe Kenny, on loan at Schalke from Everton, in the Ruhr derby. They are just two of the new generation of British youngsters who are making their way in the German game right now, and who will be on our screens long before the Premier League gets back underway… JADON SANCHO, BORUSSIA DORTMUND The young man who made everything else possible. Forward Sancho walking out of Manchester City three years ago, when he turned down more than £30,000 a week to try his luck at Dortmund, was one of the most influential decisions in the recent history of English football. It signalled to a new generation of English teenagers that they did not have to sit and wait for their chance at British clubs. They could go and seize it abroad. Sancho has been a phenomenon in Germany, impressing with his ingenuity, speed and the remarkable ball skills he learned growing up in south London. He has pushed his way into Gareth Southgate’s England team far quicker than anyone expected and was in the Bundesliga team of the season last year. Manchester United were hovering last summer, but he has decided to stay with Dortmund — for now. This season has felt like his Dortmund swansong before a summer move, but there have been just as many moments when he has shown why he is considered one of the most exciting young players in the world. He has formed a natural pairing with Erling Haaland up front and won the Bundesliga’s most recent player of the month award (for February). JONJOE KENNY, SCHALKE Perhaps the best of all the English players in this season’s Bundesliga. The Everton right-back Kenny found opportunities limited last year so decided to temporarily move to Germany to play for former Huddersfield Town manager David Wagner. And Kenny has flourished in Gelsenkirchen. He has impressed with his forward drive, his energy and his crossing, coming to terms quickly with German football as well as learning the language. He has started 23 of Schalke’s 25 Bundesliga games so far. He is a lifelong Evertonian who has played for his hometown club, so pressure is nothing new to him. But at Schalke, he has been playing for an even bigger crowd. “To perform at a good level at a big club in front of 65,000 fans in an amazing stadium can be hard,” Wagner told The Athletic last year. “For some guys, the shirt can be a little too heavy. But Jonjoe took it and he’s done very well.” Wagner has even compared Kenny to former Schalke and Bayern Munich full-back Rafinha. Schalke want to keep Kenny beyond this season’s loan, but they have been one of the worst-affected teams by the coronavirus crisis, so raising the necessary funds might be difficult. To make things even trickier, Everton may see bringing back Kenny as a cheaper alternative to buying their own on-loan right-back Djibril Sidibe, who would cost them £12 million. ADEMOLA LOOKMAN, RB LEIPZIG When Lookman returned to RB Leipzig last summer, it was a chance for the winger from south-east London to pick up where he’d left off. Lookman enjoyed a thrilling loan spell at Leipzig in the second half of the 2017-18 season, instantly fitting in with Ralph Hasenhuttl’s fast, aggressive style. No permanent deal was sorted in summer 2018, so he went back to Everton for a year, trying to impress Marco Silva, before finally moving back to Leipzig for £22 million in July. But this season it has been harder for Lookman to make the same impression. Playing under Julian Nagelsmann in a team currently just five points behind leaders Bayern Munich, he has been limited to a role as an impact sub. But when The Athletic spoke to Leipzig technical director Paul Mitchell in February, he said there was still a bright future for the 22-year-old at the club. “Ademola has come into a really, really competitive and capable squad,” Mitchell said. “Julian has high demands, technically and tactically. We have great depth, great multi-functionality, and all of us believe Ademola can have a major impact here. It’s just a learning process with Ademola. He’s still a very young man. We’re all still big believers in his talent.” RABBI MATONDO, SCHALKE Matondo has followed a similar path to Sancho, swapping the Manchester City academy for the Ruhr valley, but without the same level of instant success. Matondo started off in Cardiff City’s academy before moving to the Etihad at age 16, where he impressed with his lightning pace and skill on the wing. Like Sancho, he felt he would get more opportunities in Germany, so in January last year he signed for Schalke, pocketing Manchester City a £10 million return on their investment. “When Schalke got in touch, I wanted to see how good I actually am and how good I can actually be (at senior level),” Matondo, now 19, explained to The Athletic earlier this year. “I had watched some of the bigger games in the Bundesliga when I was in England, but I didn’t realise how aggressive and quick it was. I knew the league was good but not how good. People underestimate some of the teams here.” Domenico Tedesco, the Schalke manager who signed him, was sacked soon after, but Matondo has started to get more chances again recently under Wagner. The Wales international even started the last two games before the stoppage, against Bayern Munich and Hoffenheim. He will be desperate to pick up where he left off. ETHAN AMPADU, RB LEIPZIG Not many 19-year-olds can say they’ve been playing first-team football for nearly four years. Ampadu, who played for Exeter City at the age of 15, is one of the most highly rated teenagers in British football. After one season in League Two, he moved to Chelsea, where he impressed enough in the under-23s and a handful of senior games to earn his first Wales cap. This season, he joined RB Leipzig on loan and won more admirers with an immaculate display at centre-back in the 1-0 Champions League win away to Tottenham Hotspur in February. On the whole, however, it has been a difficult season and Ampadu has struggled for opportunities. “There’s been a lot of frustration at times,” he told The Athletic in an interview last month. “However, I’ve learned a lot through those frustrations which will only help me later in my career. I’ve not played as many games as I’d have liked to, but in the games I’ve played in, I think I’ve done reasonably well. That’ll give me confidence, but I have things to learn from.”

Your guide to the Bundesliga: Young stars, brilliant Bayern, Dortmund’s title? https://theathletic.com/1797407/2020/05/11/bundesliga-back-haaland-lewandowski-bayern-dortmund-covid/ All eyes will be on the Bundesliga this weekend as Germany’s top-flight becomes the first major European league to return during the coronavirus pandemic. Here, German football expert Raphael Honigstein — who you can read exclusively on The Athletic — highlights what to look out for as the likes of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig prepare to return to action… The Unbearable Heaviness of being Bayern Munich They are the team that cannot lose. We’re not talking minuscule probabilities here — even though seven titles in row would suggest as much — but a moral imperative. Bayern Munich are football’s Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems, never satisfied with what they have, always hustling for the next big take. They win by winning. All the time. In the Bavarian capital, lifting the league trophy isn’t the culmination of dreams and aspirations. It’s mere survival. Everything else is death. “We win to be left alone”, Thomas Muller once remarked. That’s their burden, their affliction. No club have more fans in Germany and more anti-fans who take umbrage at their relentless success, their unrefined brashness, their total self-absorption. What they do at the weekend consequently affects more people than any other side might, and explains why their travails never cease to dominate the airwaves, in a self-enhancing storm of noise and money. While for Bayern supporters it doesn’t get much better than a sense of relief (result) or quiet satisfaction (performance), everyone else can take great delight in the existential pain they experience after a 2-2 draw with Augsburg. Bayern are ever only one game away from total crisis. You might not like what you see but it’s quite impossible to look the other way. https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2286752/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/2286752 To make matters more fraught, even winning is sometimes not enough. Niko Kovac’s domestic double in his first season in charge did little to allay dressing room doubts that Bayern’s success had come despite the Croat’s best endeavours, not because of it. He was let go in November after one of the poorest first-half of the season runs of the decade. Under Hansi Flick, the team have since re-found their tactical identity as one of Europe’s most-accomplished possession sides and given neutral viewers a second compelling reason to tune in, the sense of moral hazard and potential for limitless schadenfreude aside: they’re seriously good, as good as they have been since Pep Guardiola ruled the roost four years ago. Borussia Dortmund: another shot at making history Germany’s second-biggest powerhouse have enjoyed a rare few months of relative stability. Only three years ago, the whole team narrowly escaped a financially-motivated murder attempt, and Thomas Tuchel’s reign ended in unprecedented acrimony. The following season, Dortmund chose not one but two unsuitable coaches — Peter Bosz and Peter Stoger — and 2018-19 was a spectacular implosion. Having led the league at Christmas, Lucien Favre’s men stumbled from one defensive calamity to another and finished runners-up behind Kovac’s rather humdrum Bayern. But that failure to capitalise on the serial champions’ weakness didn’t produce nearly the same fallout as it would have done in Munich if the roles had been reversed. Favre kept his job. No important member of the squad left, but half a team of top reinforcements joined: veteran defender Mats Hummels (back from Bayern), scheming midfielder Julian Brandt (Leverkusen), winger Thorgan Hazard (Gladbach), prodigy Giovanni Reyna (New York City) and teenage goal-machine Erling Haaland (Salzburg). Add the likes of Marco Reus, Achraf Hakimi, Axel Witzel and a certain Jadon Sancho to the pot and what you have is a side that can mix it with the best of them, as Barcelona, Inter and Paris Saint-Germain found out in the Champions League. The €100 million question is whether Borussia’s free-flowing, utterly mesmerising attacking game will be complemented by the requisite stability at the back over the course of the next nine games. Both individually and tactically, their defensive game has been found wanting when it really mattered, including the last two pivotal games against Bayern, which were lost 4-0 and 5-0. But they’re still well-poised to take advantage of any slip-ups down south, with four points separating them and the champions in the table. Welcoming the league leaders to an empty Signal Iduna Park in a possible title decider in just over two weeks’ time isn’t an ideal prospect but Dortmund should really take their chance to win their first championship since Jurgen Klopp’s double in 2012 this summer. Bayern, much more settled on the pitch and off it, are likely to strengthen considerably next season, courtesy of the anticipated arrival of Leroy Sane and maybe Kai Havertz, too, whereas the days of Hakimi, Sancho et al jointly gracing the pitch look sadly numbered. Their time, in other words, is now. Grandmasters and tomorrow’s superstars, today A league that prides itself on the involvement of fans and stadium experience will have to narrow its focus onto the players in the next few weeks. Luckily for the Bundesliga, the 2019-20 crop is sufficiently stellar to warrant the extra bit of attention. At Bayern, for example, we’re witnessing the emergence of young Canadian Alphonso Davies as one of the most exciting left-backs in world football. In front of him, Thiago’s passing excellence is coming to the fore once more, thanks to Flick’s more structured approach, and it’s been a joy to see Serge Gnabry grow into a seasoned performer alongside the indestructible goal fiend Robert Lewandowski. Dortmund’s aforementioned forward-line reads like a Who’s Who of 2024 Ballon d’Or candidates, while the less intricate but by no means less impressive RB Leipzig boast forwards (Timo Werner, Patrick Schick, Christopher N’Kunku), midfielders (Marcel Sabitzer, Konrad Laimer) and defenders (Ibrahima Konate and Dayoy Upamecano) who are destined for greatness at some of the world’s best clubs. Fourth-placed Borussia Monchengladbach have their own future big names in Marcus (son of Lilian) Thuram and Denis Zakaria. The Bundesliga’s monopoly on live football provides an opportunity to appreciate their otherwise more easily overlooked talent, alongside those of an increasingly fluent Bayer Leverkusen side. Kai Havertz’s status as the crown prince of German football has been reconfirmed since the winter break but he’s being helped by the fact that Bosz’s side can also rely on the pace of 20-year-old French winger Moussa Diaby and the finishing skills of Argentinian Lucas Alario. In addition, newly recruited centre-back Edmond Tapsoba (signed from Guimaraes in January) has been a revelation. Watch him to understand why the Burkina Faso international will be coveted by the elite over the next couple of years. Further down the table, striker Wout Weghorst, midfielder Xaver Schlager (both Wolfsburg) and the likes of Dennis Geiger (TSG Hoffenheim), Filip Kostic (Frankfurt), Robin Koch (Freiburg) and Milot Rashica (Bremen) will be in strong demand, COVID-19 notwithstanding. It’s been a while since Germany’s top-flight had so many players worth watching. A league of extraordinary gentleman (in masks on the touchline) The league’s objectively good top teams (see results in Europe) and a raft of exciting players haven’t appeared out of nowhere. They’re both, to varying degree, the result of some top coaches plying their trade in the Bundesliga this season. RB Leipzig’s Julian Nagelsmann, for example, is widely recognised as a generational talent who will one day fight it out with the world’s best for the most distinguished trophies. Why not watch his super-competent second act closely now then wait for the lengthy retrospective pieces when he joins a super club of your liking in two or three years’ time? Marco Rose (Gladbach) is another coach going places, proving that he can improve a team and its players with smart ideas and obsessive attention to detail. Despite a loss of momentum, David Wagner is beginning to have a similar impact at Schalke, while Bosz, Flick and Favre all have their teams playing sumptuous attacking football. All in all, we’re perhaps not quite at the level of 2014, when Guardiola, Tuchel and Klopp were around but 2020 is not far off. Circus Hertha is still in town Seeing the Bundesliga’s attention-neediest club play football hasn’t been that much fun this season. They were at best obdurate under Ante Covic and Jurgen Klinsmann and at worst quite a shambles. Things should improve under newly-installed Bruno Labbadia, who is now on his 14th different club in the Bundesliga*. But the real entertainment will once more come by way of the contrast between Hertha’s “big city” ambitions (as per investor Lars Windhorst) and the rather staid, languid tempo of progress expected. Hertha, a bit like the city they inhabit, pull off the curious trick of being strangely provincial despite their locale. Forward Salomon Kalou live-streaming dressing room handshakes and a coronavirus test of a team-mate might have been out of character for a player who’s considered rather thoughtful but it was totally Hertha. This season has already brought us the Klinsmann diaries, a sensational mix between “J’accuse” — Michael Preetz of being too comfortable, to be precise — and a coldly-phrased asset management report, outlining the prospective resale value of the squad. What’s next, you wonder. Players breaking into (the currently defunct landmark club) Berghain to stage their own corona party after a derby win against Union Berlin? Windhorst selling his stake to Mike Ashley? The Athletic’s money would be on a more mundane mess, like all COVID test tubes being sent off to the wrong lab before the first game, for example. Something’s odd is bound to happen. (*might be a slight exaggeration.) Even the worst teams are… a pretty good watch, in truth. Since 2000, every single Bundesliga game has been shown live by domestic rights holders. The plethora of full matches on offer hasn’t always done much for quality control. Some teams are simply better enjoyed off-screen. Sceptics joked that the world’s joy of seeing the Bundesliga reappear next week might have been short-lived: Fortuna Dusseldorf were due to take on Paderborn on Friday night in the first comeback game. But the league were saved from that prospect by the political authorities’ decision last week. They green-lit a return to football “in the second half of May” which, on closer reading, conveniently starts with May 16. Dusseldorf v Paderborn, a classic relegation battle six-pointer, will now play out at the same time as the somewhat more glamorous Revierderby between Dortmund and Schalke (Saturday, 3.30 pm local time). But following the basement boys for the remainder of the campaign should actually be more entertaining than usual. Paderborn, a high-pressing side assembled from lower league no names, to single out one, love to give it a go and often produce spectacular scorelines, including a 3-3 draw with Dortmund. Dusseldorf, too, are very watchable since former Manchester City cult hero Uwe Rosler replaced Friedhelm Funkel on the bench. Werder are more of an acquired taste, granted, but they, just like all the other sides in the wrong half of the pitch, at least try to play. The new normal Yes, the Bundesliga’s rush back to the pitch is motivated by money. Unlike the clubs in the Premier League, they hadn’t all been paid up for the rest of the season and without that last part of the TV rights payment (€300m) up to a third of the 36 professional clubs would have faced severe financial difficulties before too long. But the backdrop to the government’s permission is also the gradual reopening of the economy, coupled with a stark realisation: COVID-19 will continue to pose problems for all of society for many more months to come. In March, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “60 to 70 per cent” of Germans could get infected before the development of a vaccine and that the crisis could last two years. The return of the Bundesliga, a non-essential activity played out in sterile environs of the so-called ghost games, will look hasty and reckless to many. Players are rightly concerned, organised fans at best ambiguous. But there is no material prospect of the situation changing anytime before the end of the year. The same uneasy questions the league is grappling with now — the safety of players, the right protocol for testing and quarantine — will dominate the debate in all walks of life until there is a medical breakthrough. If professional football is to survive in the meantime, in Germany and elsewhere, it’ll have to strike a way to balance risks and necessities just like everybody else. Playing football under these conditions will remain a difficult prospect, even with effective mass testing in place, to be sure. The rest of the world will have the benefit of being able to learn from the Bundesliga’s successes and failings but they shouldn’t expect clear-cut answers. Watching games without fans and (genuine) noise will put our love for the game under considerable strain, in the meantime. Will it be possible as a viewer to zoom past the empty stands onto action on the pitch or will the prevailing emptiness swallow up the game as a whole? Whatever clubs will or won’t do to mitigate the drabness, it’ll look unfamiliar and strange. Before too long, however, every professional club in the world will have to think along the same lines. And it won’t make any difference whether you count the games taking place as this season or the next. The Bundesliga will provide an early snapshot of what this all will look like, with all its contradictions, moral compromises and unsatisfactory optics. It won’t be football as we know it. But that’s how it’s going to be.

Cox: Five subs mean more advantages for top sides – they must remain temporary https://theathletic.com/1805019/2020/05/11/michael-cox-five-substitutes-premier-league/ When football resumes after its coronavirus-enforced break, some aspects of the game will almost inevitably be different. Some of the changes could be as minor as scrapping pre-match handshakes, some may be as significant as completely changing football’s economic model. Some modifications will be temporary, some will be permanent. More intriguingly, some will be intended to be temporary, but end up permanent. Such changes tend to happen in times of national crisis. During the costly Napoleonic Wars, the concept of income tax was introduced throughout Britain as a temporary way to raise revenue. The country came to depend on these monies, and income tax became a fundamental part of Britain’s economy. During the First World War, in order to save energy and help the war effort, the Summer Time Act declared that Britain would put its clocks forward for an hour between May and October. With some revisions to the precise timings, the practice of British Summer Time is still in operation today. Anything involving football is unlikely to have a comparable impact. But history demonstrates that temporary measures in times of emergency are often never scrapped. This brings us to the decision of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) to change the laws regarding substitutions. When football returns — this coming weekend in the Bundesliga, possibly at some point in June for the Premier League — managers will no longer be restricted to making three substitutions. They will, for the first time, be allowed to make a fourth and fifth change within 90 minutes, too. Furthermore, for the past couple of seasons, managers have been allowed to make an additional substitution in extra time — previously, that was a fourth change. Now, it will be a sixth. And in a sport involving 11 starting players — one of whom is almost never substituted for reasons of strategy or fatigue — this feels like a fundamental change to the game. In Champions League matches, for example, 60 per cent of an outfield side might change between kick-off and the end of extra time. An entire midfield and attack can be replaced. Until now, changes to the number of permitted substitutions have generally been incremental. The first substitute in the English league came as recently as 1965. A second substitute was allowed in 1987, a third in 1994 and a fourth (in extra time) from 2018. Expanding the number of permitted players by two is unprecedented, and a game-changer for managers who want to, well, change the game. “It seems to me a positive change, and the right thing to do in a moment like this,” the president of the Italian coaches’ association, Renzo Ulivieri, said last week. “It gives coaches the chance to make the most of the whole squad. There could also be more physical problems during games in this scenario, so it’s a solution that certainly lends a helping hand.” Managers won’t be allowed to use all five substitutions to break up play — they will still only be allowed three substitution “slots”, which might cause minor controversy if a player goes down injured after a manager has made three or four substitutions at three different times. We’re considerably more likely to witness the previously rarely sighted triple substitution — or perhaps even quadruple or quintuple changes. These measures are, of course, designed to cope with the fact that footballers will be asked to play a huge number of games in a short period of time, without a traditional pre-season. It will, in theory, prevent injuries but also allow a manager to cope if injuries arise. It will, however, inevitably benefit the bigger clubs. They have greater strength in depth compared to smaller clubs, so the ability to make more changes means their resources will become more evident than ever. Leaving aside injuries and contractual situations for a minute, Pep Guardiola could, for example, start with a front five of Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Leroy Sane. He could then introduce Riyad Mahrez, Bernardo Silva, Gabriel Jesus, Ilkay Gundogan and Phil Foden in their places. Then in extra time, Rodri could replace Fernandinho. There’s a drop-off in quality, but it’s a smaller drop-off than the likes of Aston Villa or Bournemouth would face. Those teams might benefit from introducing fresh legs to help chase down City, but they would be doing so with players of a lower calibre. It’s not unrealistic to think that this change could become permanent. It’s likely to be popular with managers, who would feel more capable of influencing the game with tactical changes, and with players, who would be more likely to get some form of run-out on a match day. Intriguingly, some coronavirus-related changes in other sports are also being considered on a more permanent basis. In Australian rules football, the AFL decided to introduce shorter quarters (going from 20 minutes to 16) for the start of the 2020 season in March, hoping that shorter games would reduce fatigue and facilitate more frequent games until the inevitable suspension of the league. In the end, only one round was possible — but various pundits have suggested the change is likely to be made permanent. When the idea of shorter halves for Premier League matches was briefly floated by PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor last week — in something of a thinking-out-loud exercise about how to reduce player fatigue rather than as a particularly serious suggestion — he was widely ridiculed by supporters. Unlike the AFL, the Premier League is resuming its campaign, not starting a new one. It would be impossible to change the concept of a 90-minute match three-quarters of the way through a season. But — and it’s a small but — shorter matches would mean less chance of the stronger team coming out on top. It would mean more shocks, more upsets, more unpredictability. It could slightly redress the balance in top-level sports, where the difference between top and bottom has become increasingly stretched in recent years. Extra substitutions would also benefit bigger clubs in a wider sense. The stockpiling of players at Europe’s elite clubs has been (slightly) tempered because managers know they can only use 14 in any individual game. The more players are denied playing time, the more they’ll kick up a fuss and want to leave in search of more regular football. Similarly, being omitted from an 18-man squad entirely is an obvious sign of disrespect, a sign that it’s time to move on. If other leagues follow Spain’s decision to expand match-day squads to 23 (something that had already happened in Italy, incidentally), then there’s more opportunity to keep top players relatively happy on the fringes of the squad. However, football benefits from good players playing on a more regular basis. Spectators want to see the best players on the pitch, not on the bench, and that necessitates talent being spread throughout a club, not concentrated at half a dozen clubs. The past couple of decades have seen a lamentable increase in inequality throughout top-flight leagues. To prevent the big clubs becoming even more dominant, and football becoming more predictable, IFAB must ensure its policy of five substitutes and 23-man squads remains a brief measure brought in to help combat a specific, and hopefully short-term, health problem. The other notable revelation from the IFAB statement was its decision to allow leagues to suspend the use of VAR midway through the campaign, should they consider this necessary. This is to prevent the spread of the virus in the VAR booths — and, more generally, to reduce the number of people required for matches to take place. This is a hugely intriguing possibility for those who want VAR scrapped — full disclosure: I am very much one of those people — yet, in actual fact, this could be the perfect time for VAR to prosper. An obvious flaw in VAR is that it’s essentially made for television — little effort has been made to communicate the nature of decisions to people in the stadium. The worst thing is the increasingly familiar muted goal celebrations in the stands. Supporters are no longer sure goals will be allowed to stand. But, of course, absolutely none of this will matter for the remainder of this campaign, because matches will be played behind closed doors. Therefore, the major issue with VAR is no longer an issue, and the authorities who show such little consideration for match-going supporters no longer have to work out how to placate them. What’s more, even those of us who abhor VAR are so utterly desperate for football that we would, right now, probably accept any kind of ludicrous amendment to the sport if it meant we could watch a live match. After two months of no football, I would probably watch a game where the referee wasn’t allowed to whistle, or where goalkeepers couldn’t use their hands, or where left-backs were forced to play with their boots tied together. Or — even more ludicrous than that — if matches were temporarily halted after every goal while a team of officials at a business park miles from the stadium rewound the tape, watched an incident several times without being able to obviously prove a particular offence, before then choosing to disallow the goal, with the on-pitch referee sometimes unable to even explain to the players why the decision has been changed. In the current climate, football with VAR will no longer be compared to football without VAR. Instead, football will be compared to no football at all. And, for all its considerable problems, that’s a fight even VAR surely isn’t capable of losing.

VfL Wolfsburg