The most striking feature of the Brazil squad picked by Carlos Dunga for the Copa America was the dire lack of strikers of real quality. For sure there was still plenty of attacking flair in his selection – Philippe Coutinho, Douglas Costa, Oscar, Willian – yet once Neymar announced that he was opting to go for Olympic gold rather than the continental title, Dunga had effectively run out of top quality strikers. That the thirty […]
In football as in history, it is the story of the victors which is glorified while that of the defeated is, at best, forgotten. So it is that Seville’s five successes in the Europa League has seen them being put forward as the model of a club that achieves success despite constantly selling its best players whilst Benfica, twice losing finalists of this same competition, are overlooked. Yet Benfica have remained competitive – arguably doing […]
Overused (and, often, misunderstood) when it was first imported from baseball, it has since become unusual to hear of Moneyball in football. Clubs’ use of statistics in making decisions over players is no longer the novelty that it once was and so the desire to talk about it has greatly diminished. It is clear, however, that those clubs with ambitions of making it among the elite but do not have the financial wherewithal to buy […]
He is remembered mostly for one moment of brilliance; a flurry of step overs that turned defenders from actors to spectators before he proceeded to fire a ferocious shot into the roof of the net. Amantino Mancini’s goal against Lyon is a natural inclusion whenever a highlights reel of the best goals of the Champions League is compiled and that moment of genius has granted him immortality. That goal, however, is also Mancini’s curse. It […]
Countless articles have been written about the make-up of great players but, ultimately, the essential qualities are three. The first, most obvious one, is talent. Regardless of what he has going for him, no player will ever manage to get to the highest level if they cannot play football. This is not necessarily limited to the ability to go past players, which is where thoughts most frequently turn to when the word talent is mentioned, […]
There’s a video on YouTube which shows Liverpool and Brazil midfielder Philipe Coutinho getting hold of the ball, slaloming past three defenders and then slamming it past the goalkeeper. It is a wonderful expression of skill and technical mastery; the fluidity of execution breathtaking. In this video, shown below, Coutinho isn’t in a Liverpool shirt. Nor is he playing for any of his previous European clubs; Inter and Espanyol. Indeed, he isn’t even on […]
Despite all the barriers that FIFA and UEFA try to put up to prevent big clubs from stockpiling players, it is unlikely that they will ever be successful. The potential economic benefit is quite simply too large for rich (mainly) European sides not to try and benefit. They easily afford spending a couple of millions on a handful of prospects in the hope that one of them either comes good or can be sold on. […]
Goalkeepers are different. So wrote Brian Glanville and, as on most occasions, the wise man of football writing was right. You have to be different to be a goalkeeper. Your basic purpose – that of stopping goals from being scored – means that you are the only one allowed to break one of the most basic rules of the game, that of playing with your hand rather than your feet. But there’s more; goalkeepers are […]
For some reason, when people think about footballers they assume that they are different; that their talent arms them with more than a simple ability to control a ball better than the rest of us. It is (partly, at least) why so much is made when players slip up. People don’t expect footballers to want to go out partying, to want to smoke, to give in to temptation of any kind….they’re footballers, the luckiest people […]
Goals have a miraculous tendency for clearing any criticism that had preceded them; they’re the perfect antidote to any negative (and forcefully put forward) observations. Goals have lifted Eder from one club to another as his never faltering strike rate attracted ever bigger clubs until, this season he was asked to prove his worth at the highest stage of Italian football. And a goal is how he answered his latest round of critics, those who […]