Georginio Wijnaldum celebrates scoring his side's third goal of the game during Liverpool's UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg with Barcelona. Peter Byrne
good reads
'That' Liverpool-Barcelona match report, Philly's falling star and the week's best sportswriting
1. Football is a game of systems and tactics. Football is a game of formbooks and numbers. Football is a game hopelessly rigged in favour of those with existing advantage. That’s all true, but equally you can’t line up this Barcelona team against this Liverpool team – no Salah, no Firmino, dealt a hammer blow in the Premier League less than 24 hours earlier – and argue a four-goal disparity between them. You can’t analyse that final goal on Wyscout. And you can’t explain how Barcelona – the best team in the world, with perhaps the best player ever to draw breath – can capitulate as comprehensively as this.
The weeks ahead will be full of hustle and bustle. There’s a Premier League title to be won and lost. There’s Madrid, there’s Ajax or Tottenham, there’s hours of scrabbling around on Expedia and Skyscanner and WhatsApp trying to find a bed or a floor to kip on. But when the curtain comes down on this season, and for many years to come, Liverpool fans will bond over the belief and the disbelief of this night. “The Barcelona game,” they’ll say, and that’ll be all they need to say. A night when Anfield heaved with the heft of the impossible, when a crowd of thousands and an audience of millions lost itself in the mad, dangerous intoxication of football.
2.Son is as low-key off the pitch as he is explosive on it, preferring to spend his free time relaxing at home and listening to music.
Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-min celebrates after the final whistle in Amsterdam. Adam Davy
Adam Davy
He lives a quiet life in London, sharing a three-bedroom apartment with his parents in affluent Hampstead in the city’s northwest.
He has previously dated Korean pop stars Bang Min-ah and Yoo So-young but has said that he would be happy to put off marriage until after his retirement.
There is no shortage of interest in his private life back home in South Korea, though, where his feats with Tottenham and the national team have turned him into a megastar.
“If you’re watching football on Korean TV, when it gets to an ad break, every single advert has a picture of his face in it somehow,” says Steve Price, a British football writer based in Seoul.
“There are adverts for ice cream, skin care, energy drinks, noodles … He’s everywhere. If you go to a subway station, probably a quarter of the adverts have his face on them.
“There are journalists whose job is just to cover Son Heung-min. They go to all of Spurs’ games and just write about what he does in them.”
3.Sentimentality, personal relationships, and friendships never came into it. That separation and purported apathy is challenging and becomes draining. It was for me at least.
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Eamonn Fitzmaurice won't miss plenty of aspects of inter-county management. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
In 2013 in my first Munster final as manager, we took the decision to drop Kieran Donaghy.
I arranged to meet Kieran in Tralee on Tuesday to give him the news face to face prior to giving everyone else the team that evening.
I can still see him bouncing into the hotel in typically energetic fashion, ordering a pint of water and sitting down expecting a discussion about his role the following Sunday.
He was completely blindsided by the news and was obviously gutted missing out on starting a huge game against Cork in Killarney.
He quickly dealt with it in a typically positive fashion, we moved on and we won the match the following weekend. Those scenarios were repeated again and again over the years and became less and less enjoyable.
4.If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, then one thing is for certain: That tree is not Joel Embiid. Few athletes have been seen falling by more people, more frequently.
Joel Embiid (R) spends a lot of his time on the floor. SIPA USA / PA Images
SIPA USA / PA Images / PA Images
Each game is a virtual meteor shower for the Sixers’ falling star.
It has gotten to the point that teammates barely register his tumbles. Says Butler, when asked about Embiid’s falls, “With Joel, it’s kind of like what D-Wade said: ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight.’”
The folks working the baselines are equally unfazed. “I remember he stepped on my foot one game earlier this year trying to keep his balance. We’ve just kind of come to expect [the close calls]; it comes with the territory at this point,” says cameraman Charles Bailey, who works home games at the Wells Fargo Center.
It’s another thing altogether for Sixers fans, who have their limits on just how much they can take of seeing their star knocked down.
“I’ve been a season-ticket holder 43 years, and he falls more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” says Duane Sophia, a native of Lititz, Pennsylvania, as he watches Embiid warm up before a game. “He falls hard all the time, and you’re always worried that he’s going to hurt something.”
5.How English is it, this great English football moment? On the face of it not very much. Eight of 88 starting players in this week’s four semi-finals were English. Nine were Brazilians. Twelve were Spanish. None of the eight managers were English. No Englishman scored a goal in the Champions League semi-finals.
English clubs will square off in both major European finals. Imago / PA Images
Imago / PA Images / PA Images
Ajax play a characteristically Dutch game, Liverpool a modern German game, Spurs a kind of Bielsa style. Barcelona play Catalan Cruyff-ball. Chelsea play whatever kind of Neapolitan thing it is Chelsea play. Even the four English home legs were played in grounds owned by assorted Americans, a Russian and a man who lives in the Cayman Islands.
The only notably domestic aspect to all this is the staging, the geography, and the expertly monetised fan culture. Otherwise the English presence, on the pitch or in the boardroom, is negligible.
For now it is time to bask in the light of this shared body of work. And to enjoy the fact that to call this a Great English Football Moment is in itself an agreeable definition of the word “English”: a paean to shared qualities, cultural crossover and the flushing away not the ramping up of national boundaries.
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'That' Liverpool-Barcelona match report, Philly's falling star and the week's best sportswriting
1. Football is a game of systems and tactics. Football is a game of formbooks and numbers. Football is a game hopelessly rigged in favour of those with existing advantage. That’s all true, but equally you can’t line up this Barcelona team against this Liverpool team – no Salah, no Firmino, dealt a hammer blow in the Premier League less than 24 hours earlier – and argue a four-goal disparity between them. You can’t analyse that final goal on Wyscout. And you can’t explain how Barcelona – the best team in the world, with perhaps the best player ever to draw breath – can capitulate as comprehensively as this.
The weeks ahead will be full of hustle and bustle. There’s a Premier League title to be won and lost. There’s Madrid, there’s Ajax or Tottenham, there’s hours of scrabbling around on Expedia and Skyscanner and WhatsApp trying to find a bed or a floor to kip on. But when the curtain comes down on this season, and for many years to come, Liverpool fans will bond over the belief and the disbelief of this night. “The Barcelona game,” they’ll say, and that’ll be all they need to say. A night when Anfield heaved with the heft of the impossible, when a crowd of thousands and an audience of millions lost itself in the mad, dangerous intoxication of football.
At Anfield to witness a miracle, The Independent’s Jonathan Liew pens one of the most widely celebrated match reports in modern times.
2. Son is as low-key off the pitch as he is explosive on it, preferring to spend his free time relaxing at home and listening to music.
He lives a quiet life in London, sharing a three-bedroom apartment with his parents in affluent Hampstead in the city’s northwest.
He has previously dated Korean pop stars Bang Min-ah and Yoo So-young but has said that he would be happy to put off marriage until after his retirement.
There is no shortage of interest in his private life back home in South Korea, though, where his feats with Tottenham and the national team have turned him into a megastar.
“If you’re watching football on Korean TV, when it gets to an ad break, every single advert has a picture of his face in it somehow,” says Steve Price, a British football writer based in Seoul.
“There are adverts for ice cream, skin care, energy drinks, noodles … He’s everywhere. If you go to a subway station, probably a quarter of the adverts have his face on them.
“There are journalists whose job is just to cover Son Heung-min. They go to all of Spurs’ games and just write about what he does in them.”
Writing in Bleacher Report, Tom Williams profiles Spurs’ unassuming international sensation, Heung-Min Son.
3. Sentimentality, personal relationships, and friendships never came into it. That separation and purported apathy is challenging and becomes draining. It was for me at least.
In 2013 in my first Munster final as manager, we took the decision to drop Kieran Donaghy.
I arranged to meet Kieran in Tralee on Tuesday to give him the news face to face prior to giving everyone else the team that evening.
I can still see him bouncing into the hotel in typically energetic fashion, ordering a pint of water and sitting down expecting a discussion about his role the following Sunday.
He was completely blindsided by the news and was obviously gutted missing out on starting a huge game against Cork in Killarney.
He quickly dealt with it in a typically positive fashion, we moved on and we won the match the following weekend. Those scenarios were repeated again and again over the years and became less and less enjoyable.
Writing in the Irish Examiner, former Kerry manager Éamonn Fitzmaurice lifts the lid on life as an inter-county boss.
4. If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, then one thing is for certain: That tree is not Joel Embiid. Few athletes have been seen falling by more people, more frequently.
Each game is a virtual meteor shower for the Sixers’ falling star.
It has gotten to the point that teammates barely register his tumbles. Says Butler, when asked about Embiid’s falls, “With Joel, it’s kind of like what D-Wade said: ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight.’”
The folks working the baselines are equally unfazed. “I remember he stepped on my foot one game earlier this year trying to keep his balance. We’ve just kind of come to expect [the close calls]; it comes with the territory at this point,” says cameraman Charles Bailey, who works home games at the Wells Fargo Center.
It’s another thing altogether for Sixers fans, who have their limits on just how much they can take of seeing their star knocked down.
“I’ve been a season-ticket holder 43 years, and he falls more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” says Duane Sophia, a native of Lititz, Pennsylvania, as he watches Embiid warm up before a game. “He falls hard all the time, and you’re always worried that he’s going to hurt something.”
ESPN’s Chris Herring attempts to discover why Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid falls down so often.
5. How English is it, this great English football moment? On the face of it not very much. Eight of 88 starting players in this week’s four semi-finals were English. Nine were Brazilians. Twelve were Spanish. None of the eight managers were English. No Englishman scored a goal in the Champions League semi-finals.
Ajax play a characteristically Dutch game, Liverpool a modern German game, Spurs a kind of Bielsa style. Barcelona play Catalan Cruyff-ball. Chelsea play whatever kind of Neapolitan thing it is Chelsea play. Even the four English home legs were played in grounds owned by assorted Americans, a Russian and a man who lives in the Cayman Islands.
The only notably domestic aspect to all this is the staging, the geography, and the expertly monetised fan culture. Otherwise the English presence, on the pitch or in the boardroom, is negligible.
For now it is time to bask in the light of this shared body of work. And to enjoy the fact that to call this a Great English Football Moment is in itself an agreeable definition of the word “English”: a paean to shared qualities, cultural crossover and the flushing away not the ramping up of national boundaries.
Barney Ronay ponders just how English this Great English Football Moment truly is in The Guardian.
Gavan Casey, Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman tee up Saturday’s Champions Cup final and look at the backroom problems in Munster.:
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good reads