The Warm-Up: Erling Braut Haaland is absolutely ridiculous
/dnl.eurosport.com/sd/img/placeholder/eurosport_logo_1x1.png){kind=logo}
Updated 19/02/2020 at 09:23 GMT
The Champions League returned with grit in Madrid and goals in Germany.
Erling Braut Haaland
Image credit: Getty Images
WEDNESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Haaland of hope and glory
We were promised a goalfest. And for more than an hour, it looked as though we were all going home unhappy. Borussia Dortmund’s kids and PSG’s galacticos were bouncing off one another, nothing was quite coming together, and it was all very frustrating … until Erling Braut Haaland sniffed a loose ball in the penalty area, stuck out his leg, and kicked the knockout stages of the Champions League into gear.
There is no thrill quite like that of watching a young and supreme talent step onto the biggest stage, look around, and decide: yes, this belongs to me. We’ve seen it recently with Kylian Mbappé, now an old man at 21; we saw it years ago with Wayne Rooney. And now Haaland, just 19. You feel Haaland vs. Mbappé might become a bit of a thing.
His first was a nice piece of instinctive striker’s work, beating the sleepy PSG defence to a deflected ball in the six-yard box. His second was out of this world, cheating on FIFA, football-as-percussion, football-as-violence. You’ve seen it already, but it’s never getting old. Look at this thing. Listen to this thing. Ka-thunk.
The tie as a whole is nicely balanced. PSG looked a little flat, but they have their away goal, and they have a couple of weeks to get a bit more game time in Neymar’s legs. But Dortmund, it appears, are currently in possession of the future. And the future is now. And it’s a nine-foot tall galumphing manchild with pure unfiltered Gazprom in his veins.
The house of king Saúl
Atlético Madrid aren’t having a vintage season, by the high standards Diego Simeone has created and maintained, but this was a delightfully vintage performance. At one end, a stolen early goal from Saúl Ñíguez, who loves a big goal in a big game the way the Warm-Up loves pint after pint of cool refreshing Gazprom.
At the other end: nothing. Nothing at all, with a great and terrible intensity.
Liverpool, currently 25 points clear of the entire nation of England and already qualified for next season’s Champions League, had 73% of the ball and managed precisely zero shots on target. Their much vaunted front three made little impression on Atleti’s well organised back line, and nor did super-sub Divock Origi. To a side accustomed to Premier League defences simply fainting at the sight of them, it must have been quite frustrating.
But it’s a game of four halves. And the next two happen at Anfield, which we can safely assume will be up for the game. Presumably Liverpool’s fans will be doing that thing where they all line the road beforehand, with flags and smoke and shouting. Get the blood pumping. Get in the opposition’s heads. Get them rattled … oh wow.
What a wonderful game football is. “Big game tonight. Let’s set the city on fire.”
On me arm, Son
Last weekend, Son Heung-min had a very strange game against Aston Villa. Okay, so he scored. Twice. But apart from the goals (yes, yes), he just didn’t look right. A weak shot here, a misplaced pass there. For such a wonderful player, it was an extremely un-wonderful 90 minutes. (Except for those goals.)
Well, maybe now we know a little bit of the reason why. Spurs today announced that Son picked up a fractured arm at some point during the Villa game, and will be going under the knife to have things put right. The club’s official website put his likely absence at “a number of weeks”, but Jose Mourinho is feeling less optimistic:
I’m not going to count on him again this season. […] We are going to miss him. The club wrote a nice statement. If I was the one to write the statement, I would write different.
Mourinho went on to add that Spurs’ striker situation “couldn’t be worse”. With Harry Kane already out until April, it looks like it’ll be Lucas Moura and Stephen Bergwijn up top for the foreseeable. Exciting youngster Troy Parrott is apparently not ready for the first team. A cynic might suggest that very few exciting youngsters have ever been ready for a Mourinho first team.
Still, maybe there’s another solution. Thinking about what a striker needs to do, there’s already somebody at the club who might be able to step in. Good in the air. Two-footed (sort of). Got a firm shot on him (probably). And most importantly, has recently developed a knack for making goals happen. Up you come, Jan Vertonghen. Give ’em hell.
IN OTHER NEWS
Here’s Peter Drury explaining, rather sweetly, why even crap games of football are important:
HEROES AND ZEROES
HERO: Layvin Kurzawa
For his bustling run against Dortmund, which took him past three defenders - one of them the considerable frame of Axel Witsel; one of them twice - and turned a nothing moment for PSG into a genuinely dangerous opportunity. However…
ZERO: Layvin Kurzawa
…the pass at the end wasn’t quite what he was looking for.
HAT TIP
Football throws the word “hero” around with careless abandon, but every now and then a player truly deserves the epithet. One such was Manchester United’s Harry Gregg, who repeatedly went back to a burning airplane on an icy afternoon in Munich, and who died earlier this week at the age of 87. Brian Glanville wrote The Guardian obituary:
[Gregg] had been back in goal just 13 days after the disaster, playing against Sheffield Wednesday in an earlier round of the FA Cup, and he soldiered on that season despite suffering severe headaches. Finally he asked to see a neurosurgeon, who told him he had a fractured skull.
COMING UP
Another round of tasty, toasty Champions League fixtures this evening. Strikerless Tottenham take on Red Bull Leizpig, but never mind that: Italian dreamboats Atalanta are on the other side, taking on Valencia. Meanwhile in the Premier League, City play West Ham.
Ben Snowball will be here tomorrow to bring you all the exclusive gossip from the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, including a full review of the cheese room.
Scan me
Share this article