Back Page Football: A Century of Newspaper Coverage

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It’s impossible to keep this up season after season. The new stuff, added with caffeine, puts so much pressure on the cardio (vascular) system. Now you put into that painkillers or even anti-biotics (if they’re ill), it’s a minefield.” But even with Dutch know-how, he has learned from cycling expertise that they now need to cycle off. Push more and you risk healthy young men suffering from cardiac arrest. I’ve gone into this before and nothing has changed. The Parisian crowd, at the 1924 Olympics, were enthralled by the skills of the South American team. Uruguay, unlike their opponents, played a short passing game. Gabriel Hanot, a French journalist, summed up the spectators’ appreciation, writing: ‘They created a beautiful football, elegant but at the same time varied, rapid, powerful, effective’. In an excerpt taken from David Goldblatt’s book, The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, Hanot was less kind towards English footballers. ‘Before these fine athletes, who are to the English professionals like Arab thoroughbreds next to farm horses, the Swiss were disconcerted’.

Would Liverpool fans have called a halt to super-dosing on caffeine and other substances if it meant their beloved club didn’t end 30 years of chasing the dragon? Would they hell! The response each time I asked a fan was – well, they know what they’re doing or that it was the player’s choice. Like the vast majority of football journalists, they don’t particularly care.

So far, the Whites have only added two players to a squad that was relegated last season. Additionally, Leeds have also let eight first-team players leave the club. It is a situation that has caused understandable consternation among sections of their fanbase but the reality is that the players who are going to drive Leeds to promotion are still in the building. Teams themselves had been trying to build their customer and fan base further in the early 1990s. Manchester United were one of the top sides in the country and have been run as a global powerhouse to this day. It was clear that there was an opportunity to develop the league on a commercial basis which was not happening under the previous regime. The whole of Chelsea’s squad must take collective responsibility for the clubs failings, but it is Mourinho who the board decided to root out, not the individuals who so badly let him down.

It is questionable if the owners had ever heard the names of the towns let alone the meaning of their football clubs, before they made their investments. Their treatment of managers, the whole manner of their administration, is of course an absolute disgrace but the biggest scandal of all is that such people are allowed to take over so much of the English game.Similarly to above, all of the features of the software allow a manager to see just how hard their own players are working – and perhaps respond to all those post-match radio calls from fans saying their team didn’t break sweat. Modern Football’s reliance on sponsorship, and TV money, means there is simply no time for gradual success, owners demand instant results or managers face being shown the door. Initially, Guardiola brought Rodri in as a successor to Fernandinho, but now he stands as a significant upgrade over the Brazilian. The former Atletico Madrid player exhibits flawless skills in every aspect of his game, and City can count themselves fortunate to have him in their ranks. 3. Julian Alvarez – Manchester City Julian Alvarez impressed everyone last season, netting 17 goals in 23 starts for City. However, his remarkable efforts seemed overshadowed by Haaland’s record-breaking performance as the team clinched the treble. During the 2018/19 season 3.2 billion people watched the league which is more than what the second most popular league, La Liga in Spain, manage. They recorded around 2.5 million viewers in 2019-20 with fans tuning in to see teams like Barcelona and Real Madrid.

The rise of foreign ownership in the Premier League has certainly seen the abandonment of more traditional practices, with the likes of Roman Abramovich wielding the axe on a regular basis. It is expected that football will become more popular in Canada over the next five years, despite current conditions. With the country being one of the World Cup hosts, soccer fans from all corners of the globe will be able to come and enjoy matches there. Bottom lines Ruthless Roman’ has certainly garnered a reputation as one of the league’s most ruthless owners, with Chelsea having had 14 managers during the Russian’s 14-year tenure, and is somewhat symbolic of what is wrong with the modern game. One key contributor to their success is Erling Haaland, who continues to shine brightly. However, it’s not just him; the entire team is in great form, and other players are staking their claim for the spotlight.

My initial intention was to form this section into bullet points, but the nature of Prozone means that this is not possible. The system is so advanced that it really should take a dissertation to describe it, but I’ll do my best in this short section. Flores is not the only victim, Gary Monk has long been talked about as a rare breed of young emerging British managerial talent, someone who had done much to take Swansea forward, but as soon as his side hit a rough patch of form, he was disposed with. It was not meant to be this way for Rooney. After his outstanding performances at Euro 2004 he became the great hope. A boy who played like a man, Rooney was raw, powerful, boundlessly energetic, possessing the fighting spirit English fans yearn for, but with the skillset of a South American.

The fixture between Uruguay and England on Thursday in Sao Paulo is set to be the pivotal fixture in Group D. Both sides lost their opening games so another defeat for either will spell the end of their campaign. But, after admitting that expectations were high and he would take full responsibility if they failed, Southgate experimented with a couple formations and variants in international friendlies and UEFA Nation League matches coming into Euro 2020. And during the tournament, England would rotate between three formations depending on the opponent. The 4-3-3We have to be alarmed. The economic power of football is immense. You get people turning up with banker’s guarantees who are not interested in football and then they lose interest in the clubs and leave. What happens to the clubs then? There is always a danger that these people will just one day leave. Something is very wrong here and I don’t know how it can be stopped. Even Jose Mourinho, undoubtedly one of the greatest managers of his generation, was let go by Chelsea after a poor start to season, just a few months after delivering Chelsea their first league title in four seasons.