The Champions League is back – The Warm-Up
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Updated 10/08/2020 at 07:47 GMT
Manchester City and Bayern Munich are looking good! Juventus ... are not
Robert Lewandowski - FC Bayern
Image credit: Getty Images
MONDAY’S BIG STORIES
The Chaaaaaaaamppiiooooonnnnsssss
And we’re back. Fashionably late, as befits its status, the Gazprom Invitational is up and running and we could be heading for something historic. Of the eight teams through to the quarter-finals, fully six of them have never lifted that big beautiful trophy before. Only Barcelona and Bayern Munich would be repeat champions, and they’re playing each other next! Some club could be a couple of weeks from achieving something unprecedented …
… in front of an empty stadium, because the coronavirus isn’t just a pandemic: it’s a pandemic with a cruel sense of timing.
Favourites to break their duck are Manchester City, who eased past Real Madrid thanks to two hideous brainfades from Raphaël Varane. Perhaps he was missing Sergio Ramos alongside him. Perhaps he was distracted by the sight of Sergio Ramos clapping and barking from the stands, his top-knot and beard paired with an audacious waistcoat: an estate agent that plays washboard in a skiffle band at weekends; a small plates entrepreneur that will have his day in court; a steampunk John Terry.
However. For corona-reasons the rest of the tournament is taking place in a single city, Lisbon, across two stadiums. Which makes Atletico Madrid’s announcement of two positive tests from their travelling group rather troubling, and not just for health reasons. The only way this is going to work is if the entire continent is able to pretend, together, that finishing the tournament off mid-pandemic is basically fine. A slew of positive tests, maybe even a team withdrawal, and we might have to acknowledge that this is, on balance, a ridiculous thing to be doing.
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The old lady gets weird
Stung by their defeat at the hands and feet of Lyon, Juventus have taken swift action. Out goes Maurizio Sarri, just a few days after he won the title and got covered in shaving foam. There is a strong message here: it is possible for a manager to win a title and that not be enough. They must smash the league. They must threaten to smash the Champions League too. Juventus are being capital-S Serious.
Except they’ve appointed, as his successor, a man who hasn’t managed a single game of senior football. Not one. A man who had been manager of Juventus U23 for a mere nine days. What an impressive nine days they must have been. What wonders Andrea Pirlo must have worked.
Juve moving on from Sarri isn’t a huge surprise: they might have won the title but frequently looked brittle and unconvincing, and there was little evidence of anything approaching Sarriball emerging. Perhaps the pieces were never there, with this creaking, elderly squad.
But the appointment of Pirlo, almost sarcastically inexperienced, is the next evolution in the current fad: find an ex-player that gets the club, then stick them in the hot seat. Worked with Pep Guardiola. Worked with Zinedine Zidane, too. At the very least, watching Pirlo learn on the job should add a bit of chaos to next season’s title bid. Being a superclub can be so boring sometimes.
Knock knock knocking on the Ballon d’Or
On 20 July 2020, L’Équipe announced that the Ballon d’Or would not be awarded this season, given the whole pandemic business. In therefore sadly unrelated news, this weekend Robert Lewandowski scored his 52nd and 53rd goals of the season.
Of course, that Messi-Ronaldo duopoly would have taken a lot of breaking. Luka Modric needed a whole World Cup final to do it. But the usual suspects have had unusually suspect seasons, thanks to Barca’s ongoing headaches in La Liga and Juventus’ early exit from the Champions League. And Lewandowski has been all three Rs: relentless, remorseless, and ridiculous. Just a shame that we’ll never know.
Still, more quantitative records are within his grasp. He now has 13 goals in the Champions League, and needs just four more to equal Cristiano Ronaldo’s record of 17. If Bayern make it to the final, he’ll have three games to score them in. No more second legs this season: he’s doing this on hard mode.
It’s not a goal of mine. We have a few more games in the knockout round and I am just as happy creating goals as scoring them.
“Pity there no Golden Balloon this season, though. I’d have smashed it. Fifty goals! I’m amazing,” he didn’t add.
IN OTHER NEWS
And to think some people accused J.J. Abrams of playing it too safe with the new Star Wars films. Episode X: The Empire’s Tweaked Back, coming to a cinema near you soon.
IN THE CHANNELS
After careful consideration of the video below, we have reached the following conclusion: Neymar is pretty ridiculous...
HAT TIP
For some slightly more informed speculation on just what Juventus are up to, we turn to James Horncastle over at the Athletic (£). It’s all about playing good football, winning, and building a strong brand, apparently. And Pirlo? He just gets it.
The reasoning behind Pirlo’s ascension is as true for the first team as it was for the under-23s. Basically put, he recognises what it means to play in these colours and the standards expected of someone representing the Old Lady. Sarri, by contrast, was not always on the same wavelength. He approached the Champions League as if winning it were a “dream”. Maybe it’s harder for someone like him to visualise than it is for Pirlo, who has won it a couple of times.
COMING UP
Off to Germany for the beginning of the Europa League’s neutral venue knockouts. Inter take on Bayer Leverkusen in Düsseldorf, and Manchester United play Copenhagen in Cologne. One leg only, winners go through to the semis.
Marcus Foley will be here tomorrow to tell you it’s all going to be okay.
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