It is the training drill that helped transform Raheem Sterling from a zippy winger who narrowly reached double figures each season into a back-post assassin who was among the most lethal goalscoring wingers in Europe. The change happened in the 2017-18 season, Pep Guardiola’s second in charge of Manchester City, the club Sterling returns to…
When Aitana Bonmati won the Ballon d’Or last year, it brought a global spotlight to a player whose genius was crying out to be recognised. Even now, it would be hard to argue that there is a better female footballer on the planet. Over the past 16 months, Bonmati has won the Champions League twice…
It seems unlikely that north London denizen TS Eliot was an Arsenal fan, but his poetry suggests otherwise. “April is the cruellest month,” begins The Waste Land. “I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,” laments The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. “This is the way the challenge ends; not with a bang but…
The celebration was almost as glorious as the goal itself. The fuzz of chest hair, the twirling shirt, the body swerve to evade the Manchester United fans who had run on the pitch in their euphoria. On Sunday, it is 25 years since Patrick Vieira, a genuine great of Arsenal’s midfield, played a wayward pass…
The Premier League remains a European outlier this season. Everywhere you look around the continent, title races have become virtual processions. Paris Saint-Germain are 10 points clear in France’s Ligue 1, Bayer Leverkusen are 16 ahead and one win away from winning the German Bundesliga title, while PSV Eindhoven have a nine-point cushion at the…
An important thing to remember about Andre Villas-Boas is that he had ridiculously good hair. You don’t spend a record-shattering €15 million (£12.9; $16.3m) fee to sign a rookie manager away from Porto unless you’re pretty sure you know what you’re getting, and one thing Chelsea knew for certain, back in the heady days of…
Football arguably doesn’t need anything extra to feed its collective sense of self-importance, but the idea that it can cause new life to be created will certainly do it. You might remember a rather dramatic game in the National League towards the end of last season when Wrexham and Notts County faced each other in…
Welcome to The Briefing, where every Monday during this season The Athletic will discuss three of the biggest questions to arise from the weekend’s football. This was the round when Newcastle snatched victory from the clamped-shut jaws of defeat against West Ham, Liverpool went top of the league after an early scare against Brighton, Manchester United went 1-0…
More than 40 members of Ukraine’s national-team party were spread around the centre circle of Wroclaw’s Tarczynski Arena. Players, coaches and backroom staff locked their gaze on the 30,000 spectators sporting blue and yellow as they revved up their version of the Viking thunderclap. Iceland, the architects of that celebration during the 2016 European Championship,…
This is the first article in a six-part series looking at some of European football’s most innovative up-and-coming managers. Thiago Motta knows a thing or two about success. When your CV includes two La Liga titles, one Serie A title, five Ligue 1 titles and two Champions League winners medals, you tend to command instant…
