Manchester City and Liverpool manage one decent half of football - The Warm-Up
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Updated 09/11/2020 at 09:41 GMT
Manchester City and Liverpool struggle through a bizarre match in which both sides manage just one decent half of football, the upcoming international break is causing havoc already, and Real Madrid have gone completely surreal. Oh, and Alessandro Del Piero was once very, very good at playing football.
Liverpool's English defender Trent Alexander-Arnold (C) sits on the ground after picking up an injury during the English Premier League football match between Manchester City and Liverpool at the Etihad Stadium
Image credit: Getty Images
MONDAY'S BIG STORIES
One Half Of Tremendous Barclays
For 45 minutes, this was the game we were all hoping for. Liverpool answered the "Jota or Firmino" question with a joyous "Both!" and started in a 4-4-2, which their ambition quickly alchemised into a rattling 4-2-4. For 20 minutes they pulled City all over the place, and if their goal came thanks to a penalty, it was just reward.
And then City, who are quite a good football team, adjusted. Kevin De Bruyne took control of the midfield, and their first decent passing move ended with Gabriel Jesus pulling off the Accidental Bergkamp. 1-1. And then a penalty for handball, but a proper one: one that might have been given back in the good old days, when the rules were simpler and milk came in glass bottles and children could work up chimneys if they really wanted to. De Bruyne missed it, for some reason.
And then! And then. And then … nothing much, really. The second half began slowly and got worse. Passes missed their target; crosses drifted behind; free-kicks disappeared over the bar. Trent Alexander-Arnold limped off: a muscle injury, of course. Mo Salah and Andy Robertson took turns wincing and walking stiffly.
It's November. It's early November. And the two strongest teams in the country can only manage one decent half of football before the legs seize up and the lungs start to burn and the muscles go twang. After the game, Jurgen Klopp came out swinging against the schedule.
Usually in the season we all have a November and December. This year the October is like a December, the November is like a November and the December is still like a December.
Both managers also lamented the loss of the five-substitutes rule (though, oddly, Guardiola only used one change during the game). Still, at least everybody gets a weekend off now … [checks notes] oh no, sorry, there are internationals.
Football's insistence on cramming an entire season into a sharply reduced time frame is admirable, if you think it's motivated by a desire to assert normality in the face of surpassing strangeness. Less so, if you reckon it's mostly the TV deals. But either way, it's probably time to start worrying that everybody's going to be utterly knackered well before the end is in sight. And then: the Euros!
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Grounded
Anyway, about that international break.
At the time of writing, six clubs — Fiorentina, Sassuolo, Genoa, Roma, Lazio and Inter — are affected, and their players won't be going anywhere for 10 days. This could well rise: all it takes is one positive test within a team bubble, and health authorities will ground the lot of them.
The Warm-Up is, generally speaking, extremely pro-international football. But even we struggle to see the sense in pressing ahead with things in the current circumstances, with the second wave threatening to crash across Europe and governments threatening — or actively implementing — new measures in response.
We're not going to pretend to have any great medical knowledge here. But if your programme for keeping the game going involves the creation and maintenance of theoretically secure bubbles, then enthusiastically popping them all once every couple of months doesn't quite add up. And the Italian FA saw this coming. Roberto Mancini — who is himself currently isolating after a positive test — named a squad of 41 for the upcoming matches. That might not be enough.
Elsewhere, new restrictions on travel from Denmark mean that England's upcoming opponents Iceland, who are playing the Danes earlier in the break, may not be allowed to enter the country at all. Premier League teams may not release their Danish players, given they'd have to isolate on their return.
Watch this space. And, er, cross your fingers.
Surreal Madrid
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One of the Warm-Up's favourite jokes goes as follows: "Here are the football results. Real Madrid: one, Surreal Madrid: fish." Obviously this joke usually has no purchase on reality, as Madrid usually win, but every now and then things go pleasantly weird.
That's more penalties in one game than Madrid conceded in the entire of last season.
Carlos Soler scored all three for a kind of brutalist hat-trick, and honestly, we've never felt more affection for VAR and the new handball rules. Chaos and the humbling of the mighty, that's what we're here for. And just look at the table: Madrid in fourth. Barcelona in eighth. And Real Sociedad on top of the pile.
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IN OTHER NEWS
There is perhaps no purer form of comedy than a person, who should not be falling over, falling over. So thank you to Kieran Tierney, and thank you and thank you again, for this. Whatever it is.
RETRO CORNER
Happy birthday to Alessandro Del Piero. A perfect excuse to make yourself a cup of tea and settle down with the highlights of Italy's semi-final against Germany from 2006, one of the truly great World Cup games of the modern era.
HAT TIP
Over to the New York Times today, where Rory Smith brings us the story of Bodø/Glimt, the underdogs who are on the verge of sealing the Norwegian title thanks, in part, to hiring a former fighter pilot named Bjorn Mannsverk as the team's mental coach.
He was not a soccer fan — Mannsverk found the first few games he watched "boring," though he insisted he enjoys soccer much more now. As a member of Norway’s air force, he had discovered the benefits of mental training and mindfulness, and he accepted the challenge of trying to introduce his methods to sports. "I only had two rules," he said. "It all had to be voluntary. And I would not be the club’s agent. I would not tell the players they should be more happy or that they should work harder."
COMING UP
The big leagues are all closed down ahead of next week's international break, but never fear: Oxford City and Northampton Town are here to complete the first round of the FA Cup.
Marcus Foley, very much the Alessandro Del Piero of early morning soccer columns, will be with you tomorrow.
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