Innehållsförteckning för January 2020 från World Soccer

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ANSU FATI At 17 years and 40 days, the Barcelona striker became the youngest scorer in Champions League history with his goal at Internazionale. ROBERT LEWANDOWSKI The Bayern Munich striker scored the fastest quadruple in Champions League history as his team thrashed Red Star Belgrade 6-0 in Group B. He took just 14 minutes and 31 seconds to net four goals. OLIVIER SADRAN With Toulouse’s form so poor this season, the French club’s president has offered a refund to season-ticket holders who can no longer bare to watch their side. He said: “People who no longer wish to participate in the second half of this season, no longer go to the stadium, can give their season tickets back and will be reimbursed for the second half of the season. What…

WINNERS FLAMENGO Secured a unique double by winning the Brazilian league title just days after an astonishing comeback to win the Copa Libertadores against River Plate. CELTIC Victory against Glasgow rivals Rangers in the Scottish League Cup Final saw the club win their 10th consecutive domestic trophy. BAHRAIN Won their first-ever Gulf Cup when they beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the Final. LOSERS AJAX Champions League semi-finalists last season, the Dutch side failed to get out of their group this time around and drop into the Europa League. ALEKSI ZHELYAZKOV His reward for leading Bulgarian club Ludogorets to a last-32 showdown with Internazionale in the Europa League was to be replaced as coach by Pavel Vrba. ANDROS TOWNSEND The Crystal Palace winger admitted losing £46,000 in a night by betting…

There were tales of epic journeys to and from the Copa Libertadores Final: 60-hour treks to Peru by road, flights back complicated by the inability of Lima airport to process people in time, and supporters forking out huge amounts of cash just to get to the game. This, of course, is the obvious problem with the new policy for the Libertadores decider. This year the traditional two-leg home-and-away format was replaced by a one-off game at a neutral ground, as it is with Europe’s Champions League Final. But South America is not Europe. Distances are vast, travel is expensive and income is badly distributed. A large percentage of fans were priced out of the showpiece occasion, and there were huge logistical problems for those with enough time and money to…

If there was an award for the most significant football reclamation project of 2019, prolific Norwich City and Finland striker Teemu Pukki would have to be number one on the list of nominations. Once a byword for potential gone bad, the 29-year-old suddenly and unexpectedly cracked the big time; lauded left, right and centre for his almost freakish capacity to pile up the goals for club and country. Over the past 18 months, the native of Kotka – a picturesque southern Finnish seaside town – has emerged as one of the most in-form finishers around. And the end-product statistics don’t lie. Twenty-nine goals last season as Norwich romped to the Championship title, eight more by early December this term in the Premier League, and on the scoresheet no fewer than…

In 2015, with both men enjoying great success, Jorge Jesus was asked whether he or Jose Mourinho was the best Portuguese coach. Jesus gave a typically low-key response, saying: “I’m not only the best Portuguese coach, I’m the best coach in the world. I don’t believe anyone knows more about football than me.” He has never hidden his ambition to prove it, either. Yet despite being linked to, among others, Paris Saint-Germain and Milan on the back of resurrecting the fortunes of Portuguese colossus Benfica, that big European job never came. When Jesus took charge of Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia in 2018, at 64 years of age, it appeared that his career was winding down to a nondescript conclusion. So it was a big surprise when he left before…

While the Copa America, Africa Cup of Nations and Women’s World Cup may have been the headline-grabbing international events of 2019, the most significant achievement of the year was, arguably, Qatar’s Asian Cup victory in United Arab Emirates. The tiny nation that is preparing to host the 2022 World Cup won the trophy for the first time with a young team that has made significant progress under Spanish coach Felix Sanchez Bas. In the course of the tournament they scored 19 goals and conceded just one, with Asian powerhouses such as Saudi Arabia, South Korea and, in the Final, Japan, all beaten. Sanchez Bas had spent years working with various youth teams at the Aspire Academy in Doha and knew exactly what his squad, almost half of whom were 22…

Flamengo did not just win the Brazilian championship, they smashed it, finishing 16 points clear in a league that is often referred to as the most competitive in the world. And it was not only a case of what Flamengo did; it was how they did it. Imposing themselves on games, they played a high defensive line and squeezed the opposition in their own half. With fluidity of attacking movement and lots of interesting angles for quick passes, they overwhelmed opponent after opponent. Portuguese coach Jorge Jesus, who was appointed in the middle of the year, did nothing more than apply some of the principles of contemporary top-class European football. His success, however, is a major wake-up call to the Brazilian game and its big club sides. The clearest example…

MANAGER OF THE YEAR Ange POSTECOGLOU (Yokohama F-Marinos) The Australian swept the club to its first league title since 2004 and he compared winning the title to going to the cinema, saying: “The happy ending isn’t the interesting part. I enjoy the bits where people doubt and question what I’m doing and don’t mind if things don’t go well. I know how it will end.” PLAYER OF THE YEAR Teruhito NAKAGAWA (Yokohama F-Marinos) The 27-year-old’s career was anything but stellar until this season. Loaned out to second-tier sides Machida and Fukuoka in 2016 and 2017, he has blossomed as a striker under Postecoglou. Joint-top scorer in the league, he was called up for the national team in December. BEST YOUNG PLAYER Ao TANAKA (Kawasaki Frontale) An injury to Ryota Oshima…

Congratulations to Lionel Messi, World Soccer’s World Player of the Year for 2019. It is hard to argue with Barcelona’s Argentinian superstar being the most feted footballer of the past 12 months, although it was one of the tightest votes of recent times. Credit, too, to Liverpool and Jurgen Klopp, World Team and World Manager of the Year. The European champions were emphatic winners in both categories, though their victories raise many questions about the changing nature of our sport. For the first time, this season’s Champions League knockout stage will only feature teams from the big five leagues of England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. The growing inequalities in the European club game are a theme to which we will return in greater detail in the coming months, along…

“That makes it even more bitter. We deserved to go through but we let it slip through our own hands. We have to look at ourselves” Champions League ROUND OF 16 FIRST LEGS FEBRUARY 18 Borussia Dortmund v Paris Saint-Germain Atletico Madrid v Liverpool FEBRUARY 19 Atalanta v Valencia Tottenham Hotspur v RB Leipzig FEBRUARY 25 Chelsea v Bayern Munich Napoli v Barcelona FEBRUARY 26 Real Madrid v Manchester City Lyon v Juventus SECOND LEGS MARCH 10 Valencia v Atalanta RB Leipzig v Tottenham Hotspur MARCH 11 Paris Saint-Germain v Borussia Dortmund Liverpool v Atletico Madrid MARCH 17 Manchester City v Real Madrid Juventus v Lyon MARCH 18 Bayern Munich v Chelsea Barcelona v Napoli QUARTER-FINALS DRAW: March 20 FIRST LEGS: April ⅞ SECOND LEGS: April 14/15 SEMI-FINALS DRAW: 20…

Playing the regeneration game How long is too long? At what point do players, on hearing a manager’s motivational words, begin to shrug and think we’ve heard it all before? At what point does a manager, having worked out a successful way to play, have to accept that others have begun to suss him out and that he needs to make significant changes? At what point do players, used to playing with the same team-mates in the same style, become stale? When, in football, does evolution become necessary? It was the Hungarian coach Bela Guttmann, one of the game’s great wanderers, who popularised the expression “the third year is fatal” – even though it was in his third season at Benfica that they produced probably their definitive performance under him,…

Martin HARVEY (1941-2019) A one-club man who played more than 300 games in a 13-year career with Sunderland and won 34 caps for Northern Ireland. Later managed Carlisle United and was Billy Bingham’s assistant in 1982 when Northern Ireland reached the World Cup finals. Kobi KUHN (1943-2019) Capped 63 times by Switzerland and won six league titles and five domestic cups as a midfielder with Zurich – who he later coached. Took over the national side in 2001 and was in charge until they were eliminated as co-hosts of Euro 2008. Daniel LECLERCQ (1949-2019) Known as “the Druid”, he coached Lens to their only Ligue 1 title, in 1998, having spent nine seasons with the club as a centre-half. Previously with Marseille where he was part of the squad that…

They do like a comeback on Merseyside. When Liverpool last won the World Soccer World Team of the Year award, in 2005, it was on the back of a remarkable fight back from 3-0 down at half-time to beat Milan on penalties in the Champions League Final in Istanbul. Fourteen years later, a similarly spectacular turnaround helped Liverpool to their sixth European Cup. In the semi-final first leg against Barcelona they had succumbed to an imperious Lionel Messi, whose individual brilliance probably deserved to be rewarded by a larger margin than the 3-0 scoreline. Yet back at Anfield, and roared on by a capacity crowd hoping for another miracle, Liverpool pulled off the most unlikely of reversals, capped by a winning goal from Divock Origi, who stroked home Trent Alexander-Arnold’s…

Happiness comes in three for the 19-year-old Red Bull Salzburg and Norway centre-forward whose apparently insatiable hunger for goals has made him the hottest of transfer-market properties. This season, his first full campaign as a Salzburg starter, the teenager has already notched five competitive hat-tricks for his club, including a treble in his inaugural Champions League test: a 6-2 thumping of Genk. Only two other players – Wayne Rooney of Manchester United and Real Madrid’s Raul – managed a Champions League triple at a younger age. And just to prove Genk wasn’t a fluke, Haaland continued to amass goals galore, finding the target against Napoli, Liverpool and in the return fixture with the Belgian side. Phenomenal is the only way to describe his net-busting feats in the last months of…

The past year has been an enjoyable one for players who were let go by Arsenal. Serge Gnabry established himself as a key man for Bayern Munich and Germany; Carlos Vela was voted the most valuable player in MLS following his performances for Los Angeles; and Chuba Akpom is thriving at PAOK, winning the Greek league and cup double. To that list, the name of Ismael Bennacer can be added. The 22-year-old midfielder was the player of the tournament as Algeria won the Africa Cup of Nations in Egypt. He then returned to Europe to complete a high-profile move to Milan from Empoli. Arsenal, who scouted and signed him at 18, retained the right to re-sign him via a clause in his Empoli contract, but they declined to match Milan’s…

The omens were not good for Vassilios Skouris when he was appointed president of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee. Skouris, from Greece, was handed an investigatory partner in Maria Claudia Rojas from Colombia, who was known to possess limited English, the lingua franca of international sports law. Not only that but Skouris and Rojas had been parachuted into the Swiss-centred FIFA legal matrix in place of the two men who had rid world football of the hitherto all-powerful president Sepp Blatter and his ally-turned-challenger Michel Platini, head of the world game’s richest region in Europe’s UEFA. But almost three years after the Mexico City congress at which Gianni Infantino had changed the ethics guard, 71-year-old Skouris is now gaining respect for his undertaking of this peculiar role. Commenting…

The decade was only four weeks old when Los Angeles Sol, regular-season champions of Women’s Professional Soccer (WPS), and home to Marta, the world’s best player, announced they were folding. As a symbol of where the women’s game was 10 years ago it was sadly apt. The one-year-old WPS – the second attempt to establish a professional competition in the USA, the sport’s strongest nation – was already struggling. It would fold in 2012. Across the Atlantic things were no better. UEFA had rebranded the Women’s Cup as the Champions League, but while 10,372 fans saw Turbine Potsdam beat Lyon in the Final, a more typical gate was the 724 who watched Arsenal, perennial winners of England’s FA Women’s Premier League, go out. Not that anyone knew. Media coverage of…

PLAYER OF THE SEASON Pablo MARI (Flamengo) While the front four took the plaudits, the foundation of Flamengo’s title-winning side was their Spanish centre-back. Thrown in at the deep end, he was responsible for organising the high defensive line that allowed the team to stay compact in attack. NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR MICHAEL (Goias) The little 22-year-old winger enjoyed a wonderful debut season in the top flight, throwing off a wild-child past to torment defences with incisive dribbling at pace that was rounded off with the capacity to score goals. Clearly, he is destined for bigger things. COACH OF THE SEASON Jorge JESUS (Flamengo) Despite little media support on his arrival, and with many local coaches wishing him to fail, there has never been a more convincing Brazilian title success.…

Peter Butler did not expect to be training Africa’s greatest-ever player or the country’s national president when he took the Liberia job – and most certainly not at the same time. George Weah led his country to two Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) appearances, in 1996 and 2002, before a bitter civil war engulfed Liberia. The only African player to win the FIFA World Player of the Year and Ballon d’Or awards, Weah has been Liberia’s president since January 2018 but he retains a keen interest in the game and sometimes trains with Butler’s team. The sessions are mainly to boost Weah’s profile, but Butler says the former Monaco, Paris Saint-Germain and Milan striker is “very supportive”. At the end of his own playing career as a midfielder in England,…

Asian football has often seen politics overshadow action on the pitch and it was no different during the 2019 Gulf Cup in Qatar. This time, however, it was all positive and a case of the beautiful game helping to put a chink in some barriers. If it meant that Bahrain’s first-ever triumph in the eight-team regional tournament did not quite get the international headlines it may have commanded otherwise, then so be it. Just weeks ahead of the big kick-off it was uncertain as to whether the biennial competition would even take place at all. The tournament was being staged by the 2022 World Cup hosts, but as three of the other seven teams – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates – had cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar…

2022 WORLD CUP QUALIFIERS ASIA SECTION 2nd round1 Group A Nov 14 - Male Maldives 1 (N Hassan 90+3) Philippines 2 (Ramsay 52, Strauss 68) HT: 0-0. Att: 2,700. Ref: Al Ali (Jor) Nov 14 - Dubai, UAE Syria 2 (Omari 19, Zhang Linpeng og 76) China 1 (Wu Lei 30) HT: 1-1. Att: 6,950. Ref: Kim Dae-yong (SKo) Nov 19 - Male Maldives 3 (Samooh 23, T Nicklaw og 38, Ashfaq 90+1) Guam 1 (Matkin 49) HT: 2-0. Att: 2,612. Ref: Yehia (Leb) Nov 19 - Dubai, UAE Syria 1 (Al Salama 23) Philippines 0 HT: 1-0. Att: 2,445. Ref: Arumughan (Ind) Group B Nov 14 - Amman Jordan 0 Australia 1 (Taggart 13) HT: 0-1. Att: 9,712. Ref: Fu (Chn) Nov 14 - Kuwait City Kuwait 9 (Nasser…

“I can only tell you that his behaviour was not just disrespectful to me but to all of his teammates. Nobody has the right to do what he did” Even when the Qatar World Cup fades into history, tales of the turmoil and skulduggery which surrounded FIFA’s awarding of the 2018 and 2022 finals will linger. Even now, more than nine years since that fateful December day in snowy Zurich, more icicles of insight continue to thaw out. The latest flurry emerged as FIFA’s ethics committee issued a life ban and $1million fine to Ricardo Teixeira for his complicity at the centre of the FIFAGate scandal. The penalty was academic because the former son-in-law of long-time FIFA president Joao Havelange has long since taken his leave from the presidency of…

FIFA on collision course over Russia doping Gianni Infantino is becoming a member of the International Olympic Committee just in time to weigh into the storm over Russia’s ban from international sport, which will loom over the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Games and the 2022 World Cup. FIFA does not take kindly to being ordered around by outsiders, hence the continuing resentment in Zurich at the FIFAGate assault by the FBI in 2015 and the coat-tails follow-through by the Swiss attorney-general. That circle-the-wagons stance is written into the statutes of not only FIFA but all six regional confederations and the 211 national associations, thereby prohibiting interference from governments or the police on pain of suspension. For FIFA to suspend its own is OK. For anyone else? Anathema. This is…

“I was convinced Corini was from Verona. If I had known he was from Brescia I wouldn’t have taken him on. It’s very difficult to coach in your own city” “An amazing human being, a true gentleman with an infectious smile; someone I have had the privilege to call a friend. You will never be forgotten” IN EUROPE Bottom of the Premier League, Watford appointed NIGEL PEARSON until the end of the season following the dismissal of Quique Sanchez Flores after less than 90 days in charge. EUGENIO CORINI returned as coach of Brescia, who sacked his replacement Fabio Grosso after three Serie A games. Coach of the Romania side that reached the semi-finals of the European Under-21s in June, MIREL RADOI will lead the senior side in March’s Euro…

Jamie Vardy should seriously consider his return to the international fold In football, age must surely be relative. All the more so in the case of the 32-year-old Jamie Vardy, who is scoring goals for fun with Leicester City. So surely it would make sense for him to be persuaded to change his mind about retiring from international football. Whatever his age, it’s plain he has hardly ever been in better form, with such incisive and penetrative contributions. Not that this should mean the ousting of Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane, who is also scoring frequently, and Tammy Abraham, who has been in fine fettle since his return to Chelsea. Vardy would perhaps not play alongside Kane, but he would be an impressive back-up. Strikers of the quality and goalscoring quantity…

No other figure in the history of Bayern Munich, not even Deutschland icon Franz Beckenbauer, has been as loyal to or influential on the Bavarian behemoth as the inimitable Uli Hoeness, who called time on almost half a century of service as world-class attacking midfielder, chief administrator, chairman of the supervisory board and president. Apart from a short loan spell with Nuremberg at the end of his playing career, Hoeness’ professional and personal life was all about Bayern, with eight brilliant seasons in a vintage side that won three European Cups (1974, 1975, 1976), three Bundesliga titles (1972, 1973, 1974) and the Intercontinental Cup (1976). Then, starting at the tender age of 27, followed three decades as a visionary and shrewd general manager/chief executive, after which he became a fervent…

When Jill Ellis was a little girl a Victory tour meant going to nearby Portsmouth to see the British warship HMS Victory, on which Lord Nelson died after defeating Napoleon’s navy. This year it meant taking her back-to-back Women’s World Cup winners on a celebratory tour of the United States, her adopted nation. The fifth and final match of the Victory Tour was a farewell as Ellis, 53, stepped down from coaching the US team. After 132 matches (106 wins, seven defeats) and five years on the road, she is taking a break to spend time with her wife, Betsy, and adopted 14-year-old daughter at their home near Miami. Then, she has hinted, she’ll take on another challenge, possibly in England. And there will be no shortage of suitors in…

I prefer to leave football before football leaves me,” David Villa told a press conference to announce his retirement from football at the age of 38. “I’ve been thinking for several years, when you reach 33, 34 or 35, the moment can arrive at any time in a game, in training or with an injury.” He ended his career as Spain’s all-time top scorer, with 59 goals in 98 international appearances. In a club career spanning two decades he played 764 games, scoring a staggering 381 goals for La Liga clubs Sporting Gijon, Zaragoza, Valencia, Barcelona and Atletico Madrid, followed by spells in Australia (Melbourne City), USA (New York City) and Japan (Vissel Kobe). Villa played what he thought was his last Spain game against Australia at the 2014 World…

It had been a long time coming but, in the November night sky just north of Tokyo, Al Hilal finally lifted the AFC Champions League trophy, the Saudi Arabians beating Urawa Red Diamonds, 1-0 at home and then 2-0 in Japan. It was a deserved victory, even though the crowds that lined the streets of Riyadh to hail the homecoming heroes would have turned out anyway. The television audience for the game was also swelled by thousands of students in the region who were allowed to finish school early and watch the second leg. That decision, however, was met with disapproval from authorities who felt that giving fans of one club such privileges would only lead to others wanting the same in the future. Ministry of Education spokesperson Ebtesam Al…

Yokohama F-Marinos romped to a first J1 League title in 15 years, beating the defending champions, Kawasaki Frontale 4-1 away and then clinching the crown with a 3-0 victory at home to FC Tokyo, giving them a fourth championship in total. The J.League provided another classic finale with F-Marinos only going top for the first time in their third-to-last game. There was no stopping them at the finish, though, as they wound up an 11-game unbeaten run from August to finish six points clear at the top. With former Australia coach Ange Postecoglou in his second year at the helm, F-Marinos improved all season and looked by far the best team as they charged in at the finish on a run of seven straight wins. Postecoglou instilled a fast, attacking…

GOALKEEPERS Marc-Andre TER STEGEN (Barcelona) 15 Samir HANDANOVIC (Internazionale) 4 Kasper SCHMEICHEL (Leicester City) 4 Jan OBLAK (Atletico Madrid) 3 Andre ONANA (Ajax) 2 Wojciech SZCZESNY (Juventus) 2 ADRIAN (Liverpool) 1 ALISSON (Liverpool) 1 David DE GEA (Manchester United) 1 EDERSON (Manchester City) 1 Lukas HRADECKY (Bayer Leverkusen) 1 Manuel NEUER (Bayern Munich) 1 Rui SILVA (Granada) 1 Tomas VACLIK (Sevilla) 1 DEFENDERS Virgil VAN DIJK (Liverpool) 19 Trent ALEXANDER-ARNOLD (Liverpool) 11 Andrew ROBERTSON (Liverpool) 11 Stefan DE VRIJ (Internazionale) 7 Ben CHILWELL (Leicester City) 6 Mats HUMMELS (Borussia Dortmund) 5 Caglar SOYUNCU (Leicester City) 5 Leonardo BONUCCI (Juventus) 4 Diego GODIN (Internazionale) 4 Benjamin PAVARD (Bayern Munich) 4 Sergio RAMOS (Real Madrid) 4 Milan SKRINIAR (Internazionale) 4 Serge AURIER (Tottenham Hotspur) 3 Achraf HAKIMI (Borussia Dortmund) 3 Ricardo PERREIRA…

ASIA AFC CHAMPIONS LEAGUE Final 1st leg Nov 9 Al Hilal (Sau) 1 (Carrillo 60) Urawa Red Diamonds (Jap) 0 HT: 0-0. Att: 22,549. Ref: Sabah (Irq) Al Hilal: Al Maiouf - Al Burayk, Jang, Al Bulaihi, Al Shahrani, Carrillo, Al Faraj, Otayf (Kanno 89), Al Dawsari, Giovinco (Al Abed 87), Gomis. Urawa Red Diamonds: Fukushima - Iwanami, Suzuki, Makino, Hashioka, Ewerton, Aoki, Sekine (Ugajin 85), Nagasawa (Sugimoto 75), Fabricio, Koroki. 2nd leg Nov 24 Urawa Red Diamonds 0 Al Hilal 2 (Al Dawsari 74, Gomis 90+3) HT: 0-0. Att: 58,109. Ref: Kovalenko (Uzb) Al Hilal 3-0 on agg Urawa Red Diamonds: Nishikawa - Iwanami, Suzuki, Makino, Hashioka, Ewerton, Aoki (Abe 88), Sekine, Nagasawa (Kashiwagi 63), Fabricio (Sugimoto 71), Koroki. Al Hilal: Al Maiouf - Al Burayk (Al Hafith 80),…