Innehållsförteckning för Summer 2015 från World Soccer

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How do you deal with a front three of Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar? It must be the first question any coach who comes up against Barcelona asks, but it is one to which, at the moment, it seems there is no answer. Bayern Munich’s former Barca boss, Pep Guardiola, looking at his former side before their semi-final meeting, effectively decided not to bother. He played three man-markers at the back and pressed high into midfield, remembering, perhaps, how Marcelo Bielsa’s Athletic Bilbao had unsettled his Barca. Maybe, he seems to have reasoned, unused as they are to being pressed, Barca’s midfield could be shaken by having done to them what they had habitually done to others. A handful of through balls from Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic and…

Viktoria Plzen’s third league title in five years was put into perspective by the loss of midfielder Daniel Kolar’s wife, Tereza, to cancer in December, and defender Marian Cisovsky’s ongoing struggle with serious illness. Unable to play since April last year, 35-year-old Cisovsky joined his teammates for an emotional celebration on the pitch as they won the championship with two games to spare. “I am a hard man, but I had tears in my eyes because of Marian,” said coach Miroslav Koubek of the Slovakian who is reported to be suffering from motor neurone disease. “If I could swap the title I have been waiting for 32 years, for his health, I would do it immediately.” It was a tragic backdrop to what would otherwise have been a deeply satisfying…

How do you solve a problem like Paris? No, this isn’t one of those churlish, Michel Platini-inspired rants about the evils of Arab money ruining football. Let’s face it, anyone who saw Paris Saint-Germain play before the Qatari money arrived would have known they were already making a very tidy job of ruining football without anyone else’s interference. They were hopeless. But all the same, when one team is now so ludicrously superior to any other, questions have to be asked about where domestic football is heading in France. Under coach Laurent Blanc, PSG won not only the treble, but a never-beforedone quadruple, picking up the trail of silverware back in August last year. As 2013-14 Ligue 1 champions, they faced French Cup winners Guingamp in the Champions Trophy, a…

While it was a season to remember for many of the country’s smaller clubs, most of Holland’s top sides will hope to erase all memory of the 59th edition of the Eredivisie. The exception to this rule, however, was PSV, who won the title for the first time in seven years. Much of their success was down to the bond between Memphis Depay and Georginio Wijnaldum who, after a highly successful World Cup together, both decided against moving abroad and opted to stay in Eindhoven for the 2014-15 season. That decision paid off handsomely, with Depay scoring 22 goals before earning a ¤25million transfer to Manchester United. Club skipper Wijnaldum was maybe less spectacular but just as vital in keeping his team-mates focused on the ultimate goal. Right from the…

With Benfica’s treblewinning team of the previous season brutally dismembered in the transfer market, and bitter rivals Porto spending big to bolster their squad, few gave Jorge Jesus’ side much hope of retaining their league title. But nine months down the line and Benfica have their first back-to-back titles in 31 years. Making light of the loss of players of the calibre of Jan Oblak, Ezequiel Garay and Enzo Perez, the charismatic Jesus moulded a side that got their noses in front early on and never let go of top spot. But in contrast to his previous five years at Benfica, Jesus’ side this time relied far less on individual talent and far more on a united front. “This squad may not have the quality of the last few years…

Lies, damned lies and statistics. When it comes to the Scottish Premiership of 2014-15, don’t be too fooled by the numbers. While the final table may show a 17-point gap between champions Celtic and Aberdeen, that owed much to the northeast club taking just one point from their last four games once Celtic had sealed the title – something no second-placed side had ever done. After the traditional games on January 1, Aberdeen actually held a one-point lead over the Glasgow club and were dreaming of a first title in 30 years, since the days when Alex Ferguson was manager. When Aberdeen went to Celtic Park in early March, the sides were level on points – even if Celtic had games in hand. However, a 4-0 victory for Celtic halted…

One of the most exciting seasons for the past decade or so helped consign match-fixing concerns to the past. Unfortunately, the latest domestic campaign was still overshadowed by frightening events off the pitch. Teams such as Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Galatasaray are used to having stones and fireworks thrown at their bus on the way to and from games, but the fact a gun was fired at the Fener vehicle as the team returned from a match at Caykur Rizespor sent shockwaves through the country. The unknown attacker – who has yet to be caught – shot and wounded the driver. The league programme was suspended for a week while Turkish football considered the implications of such an action. Although such a traumatic incident cannot have failed to impact upon the…

MAY 25, 2005, ATATURK STADIUM, ISTANBUL: UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL It is still highly debatable whether Liverpool’s remarkable achievement in turning around a 3-0 half-time deficit to draw 3-3 was down to tactical genius or sheer luck. Either way, the 120 minutes plus penalties that became known as “the wonder of Istanbul” have gone down in history. As Keir Radnedge wrote in World Soccer: “Liverpool’s fifth Champions Cup was secured by one of the most stirring comebacks in the history of Europe’s most prestigious club event. “This was not so much a match of two halves as a match of two days. Kick-off was at 9.45pm local time. Shevchenko’s lacklustre concluding penalty was saved by Jerzy Dudek way past midnight. Thus on May 25 Milan had it won but come…

2015 EUROPA LEAGUE FINAL MAY 27, NATIONAL STADIUM, WARSAW Dnipro 2 (Kalinic 7, Rotan 44) Sevilla 3 (Krychowiak 28, Bacca 31, 73) HT: 2-2. Ref: Atkinson (Eng). Att: 45,000 Dnipro: Boyko; Fedetskyi, Douglas, Cheberyachko, Matos; Kankava (Shakhov 85), Fedorchuk (Bezus 68), Matheus, Rotan, Konoplyanka; Kalinic (Seleznyov 78) Booked: Kankava, Bezus, Kalinic, Rotan, Matos Sevilla: Rico; Vidal, Carrico, Kolodziejczak, Tremoulinas; Mbia, Krychowiak; Reyes (Coke 59), Banega (Iborra 89), Vitolo; Bacca (Gameiro 82) Booked: Krychowiak, Carrico, Bacca The Europa League has had a chequered history since the UEFA Cup morphed into the current competition in 2009. While English clubs have struggled with the midweek format, others elsewhere have failed to see beyond the figures that make it the poor relation – in terms of both prize money and TV audiences – of…

The land of Hans Christian Andersen loves a fairy tale, none more so than the national side’s famous triumph at the 1992 European Championship. This year, the country has gloried in the success of Midtjylland, who captured their first Superliga title with the rigorous appliance of science. Formed 16 years ago from a merger between Ikast FS and Herning Fremad, the minnows have been transformed by innovative coach Glen Riddersholm and a “Moneyball” approach to transfers. The club’s majority shareholder is Matthew Benham, a former hedge-fund manager and professional gambler who also owns English second-tier side Brentford. And with no star names in their ranks, Midtjylland shrugged off the challenge of Denmark’s major clubs Copenhagen and Brondby to secure the title with three games to spare. “We look to be…

As Bayern Munich coach extraordinaire Pep Guardiola will surely confirm, even winning a championship is sometimes not enough in the pressurised environs of the Bavarian masters. When Bayern clinched the Bundesliga title in late April, the 25th championship in the club’s history, there was much for the Spaniard to be satisfied with. His team were victorious in 24 of their 30 games up until that point and had only twice tasted defeat. Their intoxicating brew of collective harmony, fluidity, imagination, defensive rigour and utter consistency had proved far too potent for most of the league. And taking into account the 11 players they had on World Cup duty in Brazil, their energy and hunger was, at times, remarkable. The statistics and the raft of Bundesliga records tell their own story…

Two days after Juventus’ 3-1 loss to Barcelona, club president Andrea Agnelli met the media to offer his reflection on what has been a momentous season for the club. In the process, he not only offered an accurate summary of the Champions League Final but – and arguably more importantly – he also suggested that, the game in Berlin notwithstanding, all is not well with football in Italy. “If Juventus managed to make the Final of the Champions League, and Fiorentina and Napoli the semi-finals of the Europa League, that was no thanks to the ‘sistema Italia’ but rather thanks only to the good work of the three clubs involved,” said Agnelli. “The [Italian] federation needs to develop a sports vision of the game and to hand the game back…

Steaua may have won a recordextending 26th championship, but the Bucharest giants did their very best to throw it away, surrendering a 13-point lead going into the winter break before snatching the title on the last day of the season. Having sold three key players in January – Lucian Sanmartean, Lukasz Szukala and Claudiu Keseru – Steaua allowed promoted Targu Mures to claw back the deficit and overtake them. Tipped for relegation last summer and with players going unpaid for months, the club from the northern city defied all expectations and only missed out on a shock celebration after losing their last two games. “We didn’t expect such an outcome for this season. It’s absolutely incredible,” says Targu Mures’ deputy mayor, Claudiu Maior. “We were left without money for salaries…

Xavi Hernandez’s last three matches for Barcelona all finished the same way: with him lifting a trophy. The man who has played more games for the club than anyone else – and arguably the most important footballer in Spain’s history as the ideologue behind the most successful generation there has been – departed European football after exactly 900 games for club and country. He did so having won 28 senior trophies: 25 for his club, plus two European Championships and the World Cup. The final three trophies arrived in the space of a fortnight. On Saturday, May 23, he lifted the league title trophy; the following Saturday it was the Copa del Rey; and the Saturday after that he raised the European Cup in Berlin. Victory over Atletico Madrid clinched…

War in the south east of the country, following Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, meant that football in Ukraine was not without its problems last season. The first victims of the huge instability were SC Tavriya and FC Sevastopol, with both teams more or less dying after the Crimean occupation. Somehow they managed to finish the 2013-14 campaign before being allowed to register for the third tier of the Russian league structure under new names. However, after pressure from UEFA, they lost even that highly disputable status and are now little more than amateur sides. Of the remaining 14 teams that contested the latest Ukrainian Premier League, four had to uproot themselves and take shelter elsewhere. Defending champions Shakhtar Donetsk, Metalurh Donetsk, Olympik Donetsk and Chornomorets Odessa based themselves…

HOW IT WORKS Every month, journalists from each member of the European Sports Media group select their first Xl based on the best individual performances from Europe’s top competitions. For details of how each ESM member voted, visit worldsoccer.com/esm11 SEASON RANKINGS Cumulative votes through the season ESM – EUROPEAN SPORTS MEDIA The members of ESM are: A Bola (Portugal), Elf (Holland), Fanatik (Turkey), Frankfurter Allegmeine Zeitung (Germany), Goal News (Greece), Kicker (Germany), Marca (Spain), Nemzeti Sport (Hungary), So Foot (France), Sport (Belgium), Sport Express (Russia), De Telegraaf (Holland), TIPSbladet (Denmark), World Soccer (England). More details of votes at worldsoccer.com/votes FINAL STANDINGS…

“This is the World Cup of fraud. Today we are issuing FIFA with a red card” Richard Weber of the Internal revenue Service May 27, 2015, will go down in FIFA’s history as the day which unveiled the worst corruption scandal in the world federation’s history; a scandal which not only swallowed up individuals but laid bare a rotten culture at the heart of the pinnacle of the people’s game. Not least among the scandalised elements was that those FIFA staff undertaking valuable work around the world – using football as a tool for education, health and social welfare – were tarred by the sins of a ruling clique, some of whose members had long mined the system for personal gold. And it all fell apart on the eve of…

2015 CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FINAL JUNE 6, OLYMPIASTADION, BERLIN Juventus 1 (Morata 55) Barcelona 3 (Rakitic 4, Suarez 67, Neymar 90+6) HT: 1-0 Att: 40,442 Ref: Cakir (Tur) Juventus: Buffon; Lichtsteiner, Barzagli, Bonucci, Evra (Coman 89); Marchisio, Pirlo, Pogba, Vidal (Pereyra 79); Tevez, Morata (Llorente 85) Booked: Pogba, Vidal Barcelona: Ter Stegen; Alves, Pique, Mascherano, Alba; Rakitic (Mathieu 90+1), Busquets, Iniesta (Xavi 78); Messi, Suarez (Pedro 90+6), Neymar Booked: Suarez The game in Spain stands head and shoulders above the rest of Europe in football’s international club competitions in the second decade of the new century. The national team won the 2010 World Cup, in between a 2008 and 2010 European Championship double, and the clubs have carried the flag forward. Barcelona (now twice) and Real Madrid have won half of…

The annual Gent Festival attracts two million visitors and lasts for 10 days. After the city’s football club won the title for the first time, the celebrations lasted for a similar period. On the Sunday evening a few days after they had clinched the league crown with a 2-0 victory over Standard, an estimated 125,000 fans watched their heroes parade the trophy along the Leie river on a flotilla of boats. Gent had not been expected to mount a challenge and their unexpected success was primarily down to one man: coach Hein Vanhaezebrouck. Little-known outside his homeland, Vanhaezebrouck was born in Kortrijk but his family moved to Lauwe, not far from the border with France, when he was six months old. And he was expected to follow in the footsteps…

From October onwards, there was barely a point in the season when Chelsea’s title ever looked in doubt. After a stirring first half of the campaign, they were in cruise control after Christmas, grinding out results without ever playing spectacularly. Manager Jose Mourinho’s first season back in England had been a hit-and-miss affair, but last summer, buoyed by new arrivals in the transfer market, he felt his side were well placed for a title challenge. And so it proved. Chelsea hit the ground running with four consecutive Premier League wins, scoring 15 goals (including seven for new signing Diego Costa), and did not look back from there on. Only a late equaliser from old boy Frank Lampard, playing for Manchester City before heading off to Major League Soccer, prevented Chelsea…

Oympiakos’ fifth successive championship was their 42nd in total and their 17th in the last 19 years, and they ended the season by adding the Greek Cup for a 27th time to complete a 17th domestic double. But a dark shadow has been cast over the country’s most successful and best supported side, with accusations that their 3-0 win against Veria in January 2013 was fixed. According to testimony before prosecutor Aristidis Korreas – given by Veria’s coach at the time, Dimitris Kalaitzidis, and the team’s former player Nikos Georgeas, who now plays for AEK – Veria players were ordered to lose by that score in a deal arranged by Olympiakos owner Evangelos Marinakis. This was the first time Olympiakos have been mentioned in the Greek judicial authorities ongoing investigations…

It’s not often that a losing team receive more attention than the winners, but all the talk in Poland at the end of the season concentrated on Legia Warsaw’s demise rather than Lech Poznan’s first title since 2010. Champions for the past two years, and with a £20million budget that is double that of Lech, Legia began the campaign with Champions League ambitions and their sights set on a domestic treble. Early problems became clear, however, as their Norwegian coach, Henning Berg, introduced a squad rotation system. Keeping his strongest side for the European qualifier with Irish amateurs St Patrick’s Athletic, Berg’s team were humbled 3-2 by Zawisza Bydgoszcz in their own stadium in the Super Cup. Disaster then struck in the Champions League when, after getting past St Pats…

Having wasted their nine-point spring advantage during the previous campaign, Zenit made certain that there would be no such mistake this time round, wrapping up the league title with two games to spare. Russia’s richest club were led to victory by the tournament’s top scorer Hulk, who managed 15 goals in 28 games, but he was assisted greatly by two important new arrivals in St Petersburg. Argentinian defender Ezequiel Garay cemented Zenit’s back line while Spanish midfielder Javi Garcia broke play up in front of them. With this being Zenit’s fourth Russian title (after successes in 2004, 2007 and 2010), to go with their Soviet league title in 1984, the club now has the right to wear a star on their shirts. Having profited from Zenit’s slip last time out,…

Basle’s sixth Super League title in a row was the first of that half dozen to be won under a coach with no previous connection to the club and who wasn’t either German or Swiss. Ambitious yet likeable, and considerably less dour than many of his fellow Portuguese bosses, Paulo Sousa quickly set about implementing his philosophy on joining last summer, even if it meant ruffling a few feathers along the way. Early on he baffled supporters with some of his formations, switching players around and leaving captain Marco Streller on the bench for important games. One of his most controversial decisions was to substitute Fabian Schar after only 36 minutes into a 3-1 defeat at Grasshoppers, leaving the defender clearly humiliated and close to tears. Sousa’s failure to learn…

NEXT SEASON’S BOOTS NEW BALANCE NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK A new football range from the running-shoe specialists. RRP to be confirmed NIKE SILVER SCREEN Left to right: Tiempo, Magista, Mercurial, Hypervenom – all in silver. RRP from £44.99 ADIDAS BIG-GAME PERFORMERS The X15 boot (left), made its debut in the Champions League Final, along with the ACE15 (below right) along with the Messi15 (below left). RRP from £50 OUT IN PAPERBACK THIS MONTH THIRTY-ONE NIL James Montague World Soccer contributor Montague embarks on a football odyssey, following some of the world’s smallest teams through the 2014 World Cup qualifying campaign. Winner of the Football Book of the Year award. RRP £12.99 BOBBY MOORE: THE MAN IN FULL Matt Dickinson Hugely revealing biog of England’s World Cup-winning captain. Diligently researched…