Reuters Soccer Blog

Soccer Break Friday – Clasico fever rises

Only one day to go now until Real Madrid face Barcelona in La Liga for the first of four ‘clasicos’ between Saturday and May 3. Excited? You will be now…

Barcelona destroyed their fierce domestic rivals 5-0 in November, and although the gap at the top of La Liga remains difficult for Real to peg back, they looked a very difficult team to beat against Tottenham Hotspur in the Champions League quarter-finals.

So, Real to narrow the gap, Barcelona to cut through Jose Mourinho’s men, or an edgy draw?

A former Real player David Beckham knows all about the drama of Barcelona meetings, and the England man is in the news in the MLS. Here’s a wrap of other games. Oh and here’s another Beckham story, it appears Fulham aren’t the only ones making statues of famous people.

On Thursday it was Portugal’s night in the Europa League, where three team progressed to the semi-finals. Villarreal took the fourth spot for a truly Iberian domination of Europe’s second tier competition.

This weekend in England there’s the FA Cup semi-finals and Manchester City’s time is surely now. Lose to Man Utd and manager Roberto Mancini could face a nervous wait to see whether he retains his job for next season. Triumph and they will face either Stoke City or Bolton Wanderers in the final, which you would have to fancy them to win.

One fan hoping for a Bolton victory has flown in from Australia, read more here.

Patience not always a virtue in Hodgson’s case

The Liverpool owners’ decision to use this weekend’s break for the FA Cup as a chance to sit back and ponder the club’s future under Roy Hodgson is a rare patient act in the hasty world of soccer but it might not end up doing the manager any favours.

The Anfield club, just four points clear of the Premier League relegation zone, face rivals Manchester United at Old Trafford in the third round of the Cup on Sunday after another week of speculation and supporter unrest surrounding Hodgson’s future.

Even with the ‘magic’ of the FA Cup, a win against league leaders United seems unlikely on current form, and a defeat to their bitter rivals who could field a slightly weakened side, would only rub salt into already very sore wounds on Merseyside.

A defeat to United does not go down well even when Liverpool are fighting for the title or Champions League places, but when they are faltering in mid-table, a loss would add further ammunition to the club’s unhappy fans.

Hodgson’s decision to dodge Friday’s media briefing was met scornfully by some, but it could prove a decent move as the manager does his best to keep any further criticism of him and his players at bay before Sunday’s showdown.

Having appeared to patiently wait for the FA Cup to pass before making any managerial decision, a Liverpool win could be Hodgson’s only hope for salvation.

Nervous managers lack Christmas cheer after Allardyce axe

The festive season is upon us but, just like turkeys, Premier League managers will be getting a bit twitchy after two of their brotherhood fell to the axe in the past week.

The fact that both victims were ruthlessly dispatched with their sides doing reasonably well will only add to the sense of trepidation.

First Chris Hughton was sacked by Newcastle United despite winning promotion last term and steering the Magpies into the top half of the table.

Then on Monday Sam Allardyce was booted out by Blackburn Rovers despite winning four of his previous seven league matches — a decision Alex Ferguson described as “absolutely ridiculous.”

The New Year could well see the managerial revolving door spinning off its hinges as club owners start calculating the cost of relegation out of the top flight.

Avram Grant seems very vulnerable at bottom club West Ham United, particularly with the likes of Allardyce and former Ajax and Tottenham Hotspur boss Martin Jol now out of work — both would be attractive propositions for the east London club’s owners should they decide to make a change.

Mark Hughes at Fulham is another manager desperately in need of some Christmas cheer. His side are only out of the bottom three on goal difference — a stark contrast to last season when they thrived under Roy Hodgson.

Comolli appointment a step into the sabermetrics unknown for Liverpool

The appointment of Damien Comolli as Liverpool’s director of football strategy represents a step into the unknown for the Anfield club, with statistical analysis likely to replace the traditional eye for talent in the transfer market.

Comolli, like the club’s new owner John Henry, is a devotee of sabermetrics, a form of sporting number crunching used to judge the value of players.

The approach, developed in America, replaces the traditional intuition of coaches with complicated algorithms and aims to unearth rough diamonds plying their trade outside of the limelight.

What this means for Roy Hodgson is unclear.

The Liverpool manager insists his fingers have not been loosened from the levers of power, but a club statement clearly spelled out that the Frenchman’s remit covered scouting, player recruitment and player development.

When asked to imagine the possibility of a confrontation with Comolli, Hodgson told reporters: “I can’t imagine it happening, but who knows? Maybe it will and if that day comes, God forbid, I will deal with it. But I’m not going to be spending any time concerning myself with it at the moment.”

Comolli’s appointment does, however, represent a change in direction for a club who have always placed absolute authority in the hands of their managers.

Politics plays its part at the African Nations Cup

Being in Cabinda for the African Nations Cup should have been fun. At first, it was not, to say the least. The Togo team bus came under fire, with the assistant coach and a press officer being shot to death by a group of separatists as they were on their way to Cabinda from Pointe Noire, Congo.

It was only after long talks and multiple changes of minds that the Sparrowhawks decided to leave the Angolan northern enclave to fly back home and mourn their dead.

We would get calls from players saying they wanted to leave — that was on Saturday. Calls from the same players saying they wanted to stay after all — that was on Sunday.

Eventually, the prime minister got the last word, urging the Togo team to come back home. Until the last minute, some players tried to stay in Angola.

A plane sent by Togo touched down at Cabinda airport but it took off to Lome with the players on board only 10 hours later.

Angolan and Togolese officials locked themselves in a Cabinda airport office for hours as the host nation did all it could to try and persuade Togo to stay.

Coyle’s Bolton move is another footballing mystery – or is it?

One day perhaps we’ll understand how Wes Brown has amassed 21 England caps and maybe someone will eventually explain how Robinho is worth 35 million pounds but I don’t think I’ll ever comprehend the reason for Owen Coyle planning to ditch Burnley and go to Bolton Wanderers.

Coyle turned down the Celtic job last year because he wanted to go with Burnley into the Premier League and said only last week that he was “privileged to be building something special” at the club.

Yet within a heartbeat of Bolton sacking Gary Megson, wheels began turning to get Coyle in as his replacement.

As a former striker with Bolton in the early 1990s he said the club has a “special place in my heart” but it seems a bizarre move.

Both clubs are likely to spend the rest of the season fighting against relegation and while Bolton have probably got the deeper resources on and off the pitch, they are hardly Manchester United.

Coyle has built a reputation as an intelligent manager who develops passing teams who play the game “in the right way” and it was always unlikely to be too long before one of the league’s “bigger clubs” came calling.

Mancini is a results man

It may be good entertainment but new Manchester City boss Roberto Mancini will not have enjoyed watching their 4-3 win over Sunderland on Saturday.

The uncomfortable nature of his appointment, with Mark Hughes taking charge of the game knowing he was sacked, will be a minor thought to the Italian now he has seen the challenge ahead of him.

Mancini won three Serie A titles at Inter Milan largely because of a miserly defence. City’s backline must now prepare themselves for some hard work on the training ground.

His Inter side was far from pretty, often relying on long balls up to Zlatan ibrahimovic, but it was mightily effective and Jose Mourinho is now reaping the rewards at the san Siro.

Quite how City’s plethora of forwards will fit into Mancini’s pragmatic approach is anyone’s guess. Perhaps in his year away from the game he has decided to play a more expansive style but with the club’s owners showing how ruthless they are by ditching Hughes so early, Mancini does not have time to leak goals and play an open game.

The 45-year-old has shown he is vulnerable to pressure. His bizarre resignation after Inter lost to Liverpool in the Champions League last 16 in 2008 is proof of that. He changed his mind but was sacked anyway by Inter owner Massimo Moratti, who believed his coach had lost his bottle.

A neighbour remembers modest Bill Shankly

It is 50 years this week since Bill Shankly first arrived at Anfield, when Liverpool were languishing in the second division, writes Martin Roberts.

The Scotsman soon turned them into a team feared across Europe, and set up a managerial system with enough momentum to carry on after his shock 1974 resignation and make the club the most successful in English footballing history.

For those of us who used to bump into Shankly as his neighbours, however, the anniversary is about far more than hero-worship or nostalgia brought on by cringing defeats prompted by beach balls.

Nor is it simply a yearning for a time when Shankly’s Red Army used to pound the opposition and amass silverware, season in, season out.

Shankly evokes a not-too-distant but very different time when a manager at the top of the game would be content to live in a modest semi, drive a Ford Capri and feel guilty if the team’s followers saw a draw in return for paying two pounds at the turnstiles.

He lived among his supporters and was a good neighbour, true to his upbringing in a closely-knit coal-mining village.

Clough film is enjoyable but a clear piece of fiction

Michael Sheen has successfully impersonated Tony Blair on television and in the film “The Queen” followed by a less convincing portrait of David Frost in “Frost/Nixon”.

He can now be viewed in British cinemas playing charasmatic English soccer manager Brian Clough during his 44 nightmare days at Leeds United in the film based on the 2006 novel “The Damned United”.

As always Sheen gets the accent spot on and the mannerisms seem accurate in a production gentler in tone than David Peace’s novel, praised by one reviewer as “probably the best novel ever written about sport”.

The period detail – England in 1974 — is acutely observed and the football scenes merge appropriately grainy television footage of the time with inevitably less convincing shots of actors playing footballers to suspend skilfully enough the disbelief of all but the most critical audiences.

All in all, the film is an enjoyable romp through the era of power cuts, militant unions, soaring inflation, good pop music and appalling fashion sense at a time when footballers still formed part of the local community.

So why the pervading unease over the portrayal of the best manager of his time during his ill-fated venture at Elland Road?

Clough’s widow Barbara and her family have expressed their horror at both book and film. Johnny Giles, the Irish midfielder depicted as a key participant in Clough’s downfall at Leeds, read the book and did not like what he saw.

La Volpe opens his mouth and puts his foot in it

Mexico’s recent tribulations — four coaches in the last three years, two defeats to Honduras in five months, an even more humiliating loss in Jamaica — have left many supporters with a certain nostalgia for former coach Ricardo La Volpe.

Gruff and outspoken, La Volpe brought almost unprecedented stability between 2002 and 2006 as he actually completed the four-year cycle between World Cups. He made Mexico one of the world’s most tactically versatile teams, boldly drafted in numerous young players and enjoyed competitive wins over both Brazil and Argentina.

Now coach of Mexican club Atlas, La Volpe is still producing the goods and has taken the unfashionable side on an impressive nine-match unbeaten run which has included a 1-0 win away to their more powerful neighbours Guadalajara.

Yet, not for the first time, La Volpe has threatened to undo his good work on the field with his comments off it. Tact is not his strong point, as he proved once again with a stunning public attack on his squad.

“We don’t have any players who can tip the balance of a match,” he complained, adding that if the players did not understand his tactics — a criticism which has been levelled at him in the past — then they should leave. (more…)