@Big_Dan_Campbell, @Raylan - I’ll take today’s Athletic articles about Everton-Spurs aftermath / Coleman consoling Son and the sacking of Niko Kovac by Bayern Munich please.
@Big_Dan_Campbell
If one has little interest in soccer, is the UK edition of the athletic still worth subscribing to?
I don’t mind reading good articles about any sport, including soccer
Niko Kovac’s departure “by mutual consent” from Bayern Munich took almost as long as his 16-month spell on the bench. In truth, it has felt inevitable for quite some time.
At the end of November 2018, in the wake of a defeat by Borussia Dortmund and an embarrassing 3-3 draw at home to Fortuna Dusseldorf, the bosses at club HQ Sabener Strasse had given serious thought to the Croatian’s dismissal.
The champions were playing bland, unstructured football. There were incessant misgivings about Kovac’s limited tactical input — he notably told the team he was relying on their ‘automatisms’ from the Louis van Gaal era (2009-2011) in attack — and complaints about poor man-management emanating from the dressing room. One senior player compared the coach’s training to that of Carlo Ancelotti. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.
But then the team started winning. They beat Benfica 5-1 to save Kovac from the imminent sack and won their next 15 league games in a row to close the gap to Borussia Dortmund.
The fundamental doubts about Kovac’s ability to bring in a successful transition from the 2013 Champions League-winning side soon resurfaced, however, when a dour and hapless Bayern were humiliated 3-1 in the Allianz Arena by Liverpool in the Champions League. Asked about the manager’s future, executive chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge pointedly replied that there were no “job guarantees” at the club.
The players barely hid their frustration with Kovac’s focus on fitness and off-the-ball positioning, which they considered unbefitting for a possession style that had been honed over the best part of a decade. At other clubs, the team might have acquiesced in their coach’s rather hum-drum approach. But the bulk of this Bayern side had witnessed the immense attention to detail and relentless perfectionism of Pep Guardiola.
Others had worked with the likes of Jurgen Klopp (Mats Hummels, Philippe Coutinho), Julian Nagelsmann (Serge Gnabry, Niklas Sule) or Diego Simeone (Lucas Hernandez); all coaches with a clearly defined game-plan and a strong record of improving both players and teams. Kovac was never in the same category.
Unlike his predecessor Jupp Heynckes, he also lacked the natural authority to get his charges onside on an emotional level. The 74-year-old’s success in his fourth stint in Munich indirectly set up Kovac’s downfall. By his own admission, he was only appointed as the “B option” in spring of 2018, after Uli Hoeness’ futile attempt at convincing Heynckes to stay had seen high-calibre candidates such as Thomas Tuchel run out of patience.
Following the ignominious exit against Liverpool in Europe, Kovac lost the residue of authority he had still enjoyed in the dressing room. Ahead of the crucial home match against a faltering Dortmund, the team met privately and vowed to do anything to win the title. That still wasn’t quite enough to secure Kovac’s future, though. Potential successors were more or less discreetly sounded out in case Bayern were to lose the cup final against RB Leipzig. But they won that game, too.
Rummenigge relented. Club president Hoeness, Kovac’s champion, convinced his fellow board members that the former Bayern midfielder was due a chance to grow into the role with a new, replenished side in 2018-19. A couple of decent performances and a freakishly efficient second half in the 7-2 win over Tottenham suggested that the gamble might pay off this season, but that false dawn only brought the underlying problems into sharper focus. Before too long, Bayern’s game once more resembled a string of individual, random efforts, made worse by a lack of cover in front of an injury-ravaged back four.
Tactics aside, Kovac also proved his own worst enemy as a woeful communicator. He needlessly talked down the importance of club icon Thomas Muller (“emergency back-up”), said his players weren’t capable of playing high-tempo football of Liverpool’s ilk and spent his last days in the job fighting a desperate rearguard battle, telling the media that “they” — the team — were sadly lacking the right attitude to play more concise passes on the pitch.
A nadir was reached in the first half of the deeply unconvincing 2-1 cup win over VfL Bochum last Tuesday, when the champions proved incapable of putting any meaningful pressure on one of the poorer sides in Bundesliga 2. Saturday’s 10-man, 5-1 capitulation at Kovac’s former club Eintracht Frankfurt was “no surprise”, Manuel Neuer felt: “The writing had been on the wall.” The same goes for Kovac’s long overdue end to his ill-fated tenure.
The 48-year-old sensed that it was over for him. He offered his resignation on Sunday afternoon and Bayern duly accepted. Assistant coach Hansi Flick, who had of course been hired at the start of the season for this very contingency, will take over for the next two games against Olympiakos and Borussia Dortmund. Bayern will then carefully sound out contenders over the international break. Jose Mourinho’s chances to try out his newly acquired German skills are slim, however. The Athletic has been told that ex-RB Leipzig boss Ralf Rangnick and Ajax coach Erik ten Hag — who were both approached last season — are seen as the most viable options at the moment.
Neither is a foregone conclusion. Rangnick would have to agree to work under sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic and modify his transition-based approach; to complicate matters, the 61-year-old might also have other openings in the Premier League soon.
Ten Hag, 49, is relatively inexperienced at elite level but then again, the former Bayern youth coach would be much easier to integrate into the power structure of the club and seem a more natural fit for their passing game, too. Ominously for the Dutch champions, Ajax sporting director Marc Overmars declared last week that they would not stand in Ten Hag’s way of a return to Munich if Bayern really came calling.
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‘It was the worst thing I’ve seen in football’ – tears in both dressing rooms as horror injury rocks Everton and Spurs
It was half an hour after the final whistle and a member of Everton’s backroom staff walked up the tunnel and into the reception at Goodison Park.
He had come to take a moment, to briefly escape from the sombre atmosphere in the home dressing room.
“There are grown men crying in there,” he said, his cheeks reddening.
A nearby TV mounted on the wall was showing the injury to Andre Gomes that made the stormy 1-1 draw with Tottenham feel like something of an afterthought.
The man caught sight of it and turned the other way. “I can’t look at that again,” he said quietly.
Everton were reeling. Some players and staff had seen one of the worst things a professional footballer can witness on the pitch. They had seen their team-mate and friend so badly injured his season is surely over. They had seen his right leg unnaturally angled, his face contorted in shock and agony. He was screaming.
“He was in shock. His eyes were open so big. He was crying, shouting and screaming. I just tried to hold him and speak to him. I tried to tell him to stay calm. We couldn’t understand him. He was the one who had got the injury,” the Everton striker Cenk Tosun said.
One supporter who has a ticket in the Alex Young corporate lounge was in line with where Gomes fell. “I couldn’t stop looking at the poor guy’s face,” he said. “He was writhing in pain and then I saw his leg. I thought I was going to faint. I went into a cold sweat.
“That was it for me — I just left my seat and went back into the lounge. I must have looked ill because somebody told a first aider to come and have a word with me. It was just horrific.”
Another fan who was sitting in the Main Stand told The Athletic: “ It was the worst thing I’ve seen in football. His eyes were bulging. I won’t forget that.”
After the club’s medical team and paramedics had worked on the Portugal international on the field for about 10 minutes he was taken straight to Aintree University hospital, just over three miles away from Goodison Park. Richie Porter, an experienced member of the medical team, went with him in the ambulance.
Everton later confirmed that Gomes had suffered a fracture and dislocation to his right ankle and will have surgery today.
After leaving the pitch in tears having been sent off by referee Martin Atkinson for the challenge that preceded Gomes’ injury, Son Heung-min made his way with a member of Spurs’ backroom staff to the away dressing room. By the time the match finished about 25 minutes later, Son was still crying.
Dele Alli, who had earlier combined with Son to score Spurs’ goal, sat next to his team-mate but realised there was no point trying to speak to him. Alli told Sky Sports: “He’s crying so much he can’t even keep his head up.”
Tottenham’s captain for the day, Ben Davies, also attempted to console Son, but eventually sat back down after getting no response. A source close to Son described him as being “in shock”.
Everton’s players and staff, meanwhile, congregated in the home dressing room. They were joined by the club’s grim-faced director of football, Marcel Brands.
Soon club captain Seamus Coleman headed into the away dressing room to speak with Son. The Athletic understands Coleman, who was among the substitutes, had watched the challenge back before going in to comfort the Spurs player and felt there was no malice or intent on behalf of the South Korean.
His intervention was loaded with extra poignancy. The defender has recovered from a similarly horrific injury: a double leg break caused in a tackle by Wales’ Neil Taylor while playing for Republic of Ireland in March 2017.
He knows the deep psychological impact on both players involved in an incident like this and was understood to be anxious to make sure Son is not haunted by it. His appearance in the dressing room temporarily seemed to soothe Son’s devastation.
Coleman, as well as the Everton manager Marco Silva, reassured Son that they knew what had happened was an accident and that there had been no intent to injure Gomes. Alli’s claim afterwards that “he (Son) is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and he’d never mean to do something like that” appears to have been borne out by the reaction of Everton and their staff.
The Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino was also greatly appreciative of the way Everton responded, and did his best to comfort Son before the players left the dressing room to begin their journey back to London.
The rest of the Tottenham squad were coping as best they could at this point, including Serge Aurier, who was so upset on the pitch that he held out his hands in prayer. Images of the incident appear to show Aurier made contact with Gomes after Son’s initial challenge. The picture, below, is moments before the injury.
Son, meanwhile, was still processing the day’s events and understandably did not want to engage with anyone. He switched his phone off until the team left Goodison Park to catch a flight from Liverpool John Lennon Airport to Stansted. A source close to Son said it was distressing to watch him so upset because he is usually so positive and reserved when it comes to expressing his emotions.
As the players got ready to leave, Son was present in the dressing room but was described as looking “as though, mentally, he wasn’t in the room”. He made his way through the mixed zone to board the team coach covering his face with his hands and not even noticing the South Korean journalists who had waited to speak to him.
After arriving back in London, Son returned to the home he shares with his parents — neither of whom were at yesterday’s match. Most of his closest friends live in South Korea but Son will have no shortage of support as he tries to recover from the trauma of the incident. Spurs do not employ a full-time psychologist but the club will do all they can to help him and in Pochettino, Son has a manager who believes the well-being of his players is paramount.
As well as helping Son to recover, the next step for Spurs is to decide whether they want to appeal the red card, which was shown for “endangering the safety of a player which happened as a consequence of his initial challenge”, as the Premier League explained last night.
Pochettino described the red card afterwards as “really unfair” and said in his post-match press conferences that he did not know whether Spurs would appeal. As of last night it was confirmed that a decision had not yet been made.
During the incident, Atkinson, the referee, initially held a yellow card before showing a red when the severity of the injury became clear. He was spoken to by Coleman on the side of the pitch while Gomes was treated and will have access to one of the two sports psychologists employed by the Premier League.
It’s unlikely any of the Everton players will visit Gomes, who is a popular figure at the club, today. Coleman knows from bitter experience that the 26-year-old is likely to be on such a strong dose of painkillers and medication that he will not be ready for visitors.
Emotions were fraught around Goodison long into the night on Sunday.
Gomes is a player Everton supporters have taken to their hearts. Not just for his classy attributes as a midfielder, but for being an unstinting ambassador for the club off the pitch and for speaking so openly about the “hell” he experienced at his former club, Barcelona.
As Pochettino concluded his post-match media duties, he stood up and left his jacket on the chair he had been sitting on. It was an evening when, as gamely as everyone tried to keep calm and carry on, their minds were elsewhere.
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I don’t think it’s that good.
I find a lot of the articles are a bit too upbeat. Lots of “sources say this” as well. Some decent stuff in there but any time there’s a feature on anyone it paints them heroically.
These two fuckers wouldn’t have been much use in The Somme.
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Anything you’d recommend? Doesn’t even need to be sports related
The seabass.
3 Likes
Son is not that kind of player
It’s been terrible for 10 years I think. They turned into a site concerned about other media outlets and politics.
What’s that mate??
@Rocko, @Raylan, @Big_Dan_Campbell - I’ll take anything on Celtic’s win last night and the piece where Stuart James had behind the scenes access with Rodgers at Leicester please.
I don’t think this is a great article. Apart from thinking Celtic fans were in the Curva Nord, I don’t think he addresses the change in tempo in the second half at all really:
**
What was it to be in the Stadio Olimpico when Celtic beat Lazio on their own turf in the last minute of injury time and qualified for the Europa League latter stages with two games to spare?
It was a night of both desperate squinting and open-mouthed awe.
Squinting because of the absurd distance between the Stadio Olimpico’s stands and the pitch — so arduously far it makes Hampden Park feel cosy by comparison — that made it seem a football match in miniature form.
Open-mouthed because those ant-like players in their vibrant yellow away kit conjured up something special, backed by the thousands-strong Celtic support that illuminated the Curva Nord.
The spectre of “Celtic away in Europe”, that omnipresent fear of brittle collapses in unknown lands which has undermined so many otherwise great Celtic teams of decades past, haunted the game’s opening passages. Celtic’s switch to a 3-4-3 for the game saw Hatem Elhamed tuck in at the back post with James Forrest as the right wing-back too far wide to cover, allowing Lazio’s in-form Ciro Immobile to stab in the opener unmarked.
Celtic looked uncomfortable with their new formation early on, with Forrest and Jonny Hayes’ natural forward-thinking inclinations leaving gaps for Lazio’s own wing-backs to exploit, while central midfielders Scott Brown and Callum McGregor initially struggled to assert themselves, especially with their usual energetic foil Ryan Christie moved to the right wing.
Curiously, after their goal, Lazio stood off Celtic and the visitors grew into the game, with the back three and midfield two starting to find their passing range in breaking the lines, and the collective XI building a better understanding of their pressing strategy. Forrest’s finish for the equaliser was as emphatic as they come, and Moi Elyounoussi’s counter-pressing tackle — reminiscent of the one which prefigured his goal against Cluj — and threaded assist was just as superb.
Neil Lennon’s formation and decision to opt for natural winger Hayes over the natural left-back Greg Taylor prompted some questions before kick-off, which were exacerbated by Celtic’s poor start. Yet the way the game played out, the risk, yet again, paid off.
The formation enabled Celtic’s own wide players space to charge into, while Hayes overcame some shaky positioning with a feverish energy. Lennon’s game management, too, was excellent, with the decision to sub on midfield technician Olivier Ntcham just as Lazio were beginning to exert pressure vindicated in how well the Frechman managed to retain the ball.
When Ntcham’s dinked finish stroked the back of the net in the 95th minute, the green-and-white wall behind it sprang to life, animated and roaring. A thronging, vibrating mass, the kind of chaos where you end up six rows in front of your own seat hugging groups of complete strangers.
Elyounoussi, whose brilliantly disguised run drew the defender away from Ntcham’s own surge into space for Odsonne Edouard’s pass, summed the game up perfectly as his goalscoring team-mate sprinted away bellowing with joy. He threw his arms up in celebration, then nearly keeled over from tiredness. Nerve-wracking, exhausting, jubilant.
After years of confidence-shattering trouncings in the Champions League, the past two Europa League campaigns — this year’s in particular — have rebuilt this team’s self-belief, its composure under adversity, and its fierce hunger to win, as embodied by personalities like Brown, Edouard and Christie.
Celtic have ridden their luck in both games against Lazio, but they were competitive for every second of them. If they wavered at all, as in the opening 15 minutes in Rome last month while they adjusted to their back three, it was only fleetingly, and they recovered, settled and began imposing themselves again.
Celtic deserved to beat one of the best teams in Serie A this season, home and away. Not through pluck, or stoicism, or stubbornness, or any other adjective usually reserved for the underdog, but through technical football. Through precise vertical passing and intelligent combinations. Through inventive chance creation and clinical finishing. Through coordinated pressing and measured 18-yard-box defending. And through exceptional reaction saves from your goalkeeper, in this case Fraser Forster, because that’s as essential as every other element in any genuinely competitive side.
Hyperbole’s always tempting in the aftermath of nights like Thursday’s, caught up in football as pure theatre; the deflating prologue of an early goal conceded, the plot twist of an equaliser, the melodramatic end-to-end battling of the middle act, and the rapturous triumph of that climax.
Post-match, Lennon said the result was “just behind” beating golden-age Barcelona in the list of his greatest European achievements. The performance itself, deservedly taking six points off one of the initial favourites for the competition, underpins that such a claim, or any Celtic fan’s excitement over this group of players, isn’t hyperbole.
Lennon said that his team “keeps surprising (him) by pushing their own boundaries”. Those boundaries still appear far, far in the horizon.What was it to be in the Stadio Olimpico when Celtic beat Lazio on their own turf in the last minute of injury time and qualified for the Europa League latter stages with two games to spare?
It was a night of both desperate squinting and open-mouthed awe.
Squinting because of the absurd distance between the Stadio Olimpico’s stands and the pitch — so arduously far it makes Hampden Park feel cosy by comparison — that made it seem a football match in miniature form.
Open-mouthed because those ant-like players in their vibrant yellow away kit conjured up something special, backed by the thousands-strong Celtic support that illuminated the Curva Nord.
The spectre of “Celtic away in Europe”, that omnipresent fear of brittle collapses in unknown lands which has undermined so many otherwise great Celtic teams of decades past, haunted the game’s opening passages. Celtic’s switch to a 3-4-3 for the game saw Hatem Elhamed tuck in at the back post with James Forrest as the right wing-back too far wide to cover, allowing Lazio’s in-form Ciro Immobile to stab in the opener unmarked.
Celtic looked uncomfortable with their new formation early on, with Forrest and Jonny Hayes’ natural forward-thinking inclinations leaving gaps for Lazio’s own wing-backs to exploit, while central midfielders Scott Brown and Callum McGregor initially struggled to assert themselves, especially with their usual energetic foil Ryan Christie moved to the right wing.
Curiously, after their goal, Lazio stood off Celtic and the visitors grew into the game, with the back three and midfield two starting to find their passing range in breaking the lines, and the collective XI building a better understanding of their pressing strategy. Forrest’s finish for the equaliser was as emphatic as they come, and Moi Elyounoussi’s counter-pressing tackle — reminiscent of the one which prefigured his goal against Cluj — and threaded assist was just as superb.
Neil Lennon’s formation and decision to opt for natural winger Hayes over the natural left-back Greg Taylor prompted some questions before kick-off, which were exacerbated by Celtic’s poor start. Yet the way the game played out, the risk, yet again, paid off.
The formation enabled Celtic’s own wide players space to charge into, while Hayes overcame some shaky positioning with a feverish energy. Lennon’s game management, too, was excellent, with the decision to sub on midfield technician Olivier Ntcham just as Lazio were beginning to exert pressure vindicated in how well the Frechman managed to retain the ball.
When Ntcham’s dinked finish stroked the back of the net in the 95th minute, the green-and-white wall behind it sprang to life, animated and roaring. A thronging, vibrating mass, the kind of chaos where you end up six rows in front of your own seat hugging groups of complete strangers.
Elyounoussi, whose brilliantly disguised run drew the defender away from Ntcham’s own surge into space for Odsonne Edouard’s pass, summed the game up perfectly as his goalscoring team-mate sprinted away bellowing with joy. He threw his arms up in celebration, then nearly keeled over from tiredness. Nerve-wracking, exhausting, jubilant.
After years of confidence-shattering trouncings in the Champions League, the past two Europa League campaigns — this year’s in particular — have rebuilt this team’s self-belief, its composure under adversity, and its fierce hunger to win, as embodied by personalities like Brown, Edouard and Christie.
Celtic have ridden their luck in both games against Lazio, but they were competitive for every second of them. If they wavered at all, as in the opening 15 minutes in Rome last month while they adjusted to their back three, it was only fleetingly, and they recovered, settled and began imposing themselves again.
Celtic deserved to beat one of the best teams in Serie A this season, home and away. Not through pluck, or stoicism, or stubbornness, or any other adjective usually reserved for the underdog, but through technical football. Through precise vertical passing and intelligent combinations. Through inventive chance creation and clinical finishing. Through coordinated pressing and measured 18-yard-box defending. And through exceptional reaction saves from your goalkeeper, in this case Fraser Forster, because that’s as essential as every other element in any genuinely competitive side.
Hyperbole’s always tempting in the aftermath of nights like Thursday’s, caught up in football as pure theatre; the deflating prologue of an early goal conceded, the plot twist of an equaliser, the melodramatic end-to-end battling of the middle act, and the rapturous triumph of that climax.
Post-match, Lennon said the result was “just behind” beating golden-age Barcelona in the list of his greatest European achievements. The performance itself, deservedly taking six points off one of the initial favourites for the competition, underpins that such a claim, or any Celtic fan’s excitement over this group of players, isn’t hyperbole.
Lennon said that his team “keeps surprising (him) by pushing their own boundaries”. Those boundaries still appear far, far in the horizon.
This one on the stabbing is worse. One witness who seems to contradict other reports and then just a long list of previous attacks without any narrative or anything. He didn’t manage to get the name of the owner of the pub. Makes no effort to figure out the contradictions in numbers. Sean Cox is not fully recovered. It’s not all wrong or anything I don’t think. Just appallingly written for a “premium” website.
**
Huddled just two blocks away from the spectacular Piazza della Repubblica is the quaint Irish pub The Flann O’Brien. At 10am on Thursday morning, some 10 hours before Olivier Ntcham dinked in Celtic’s winner in their 2-1 victory over Lazio, the pub’s interior bubbles with conversation as locals sip Espresso and Celtic fans nurse their first pints of match day. Stamped train tickets crowd the wall with in-jokes and gently crude banter, while an ancient “Guinness is good for you” sign takes centre stage.
The vibe is wholesome, warm, welcoming.
There was almost no trace of the abrupt flash of violence from the night before, when a Celtic fan was stabbed by masked assailants in the street outside.
“We’ve been open since 1993 and it was the first violent incident we’ve ever had,” The Flann O’Brien’s owner tells The Athletic .
“We were packed with Scottish people,” he continues, “everyone having a good time and fun, and suddenly five apparently young people — I would say very young, no older than 20, maybe even 16,17, going by their physical build, as you couldn’t see them as they were wearing masks — showed up trying to make some trouble.”
“We both went to talk to them, as they were Italians. For us, it’s not clear if they were Lazio fans or not, they didn’t have Lazio colours or shout any chants, they were wearing masks. We talked to them, and the situation seemed to calm down, they were about to leave, and then one of the guys in masks threw a chair, and two of the Scottish lads reacted.
“There were 10 or 15 seconds of a clash, and apparently in that 15 seconds one of the attackers had a knife, and stabbed one of the Scottish men.
“The boys came just for fighting, they came to attack. One of our waiters was outside, and the young boys tried to provoke the Celtic fans, and they reacted to the provocation after the chair was thrown.”
The owner claims only one fan was stabbed, rather than the two that had been initially reported.
“Then the young guys ran away, and shortly after the police arrived — after about three or four minutes. We decided to close early. We heard the guy’s not injured too badly, which is happy news, but we feel sorry — we’ve never had anything like that happen here before.”
Local police tell The Athletic two individuals had been taken to hospital after the attack, though one had been discharged on Thursday morning in “good condition”. The Athletic understands the man discharged was Irish.
When asked for an update on the condition of the individual still in hospital, a representative of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) stated: “Our consular staff have visited a British man who has been admitted to hospital in Rome to offer him support, and are in contact with the Italian medical services.”
The Athletic understands that at time of writing, the man requires further surgery, but that his condition is not critical.
The FCO have also been in contact with Celtic about the incident.
Earlier this week, the FCO had advised fans not to wear club colours, to stay in groups and look inconspicuous, and to follow all recommendations and instructions issued by City of Rome police.
Before fans made the trip to Rome, local police announced through official Celtic channels that roughly 40 shuttle buses were arranged to take fans to and from the Stadio Olimpico, from their allocated area in Rome’s city centre, Piazzale delle Canestre. Fans were also advised to arrive at the stadium at least two hours prior to kick-off. They were informed that they might be held in the stadium for up to an hour after the final whistle, and asked to use the shuttle buses, or private taxis, to return to the city centre.
Because the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) are only responsible for international matches or overseas games featuring UK teams from two police areas, such as last season’s Champions League final, most European club fixtures are policed by the local British police force; in this case, Police Scotland.
When The Athletic approached Police Scotland for more information on the policing situation, a spokesperson responded: “Police Scotland routinely supports and receives support from foreign police forces to ensure the safety and security of fans at European and international football matches. The support Police Scotland is providing in Rome on Thursday 7th November, is that which is routinely deployed for matches overseas.”
When asked whether there was an increase in police numbers for the fixture, owing to widespread concerns of violence, the spokesperson said that Police Scotland don’t comment on numbers.
In the hour before shuttle buses began leaving for the ground, fans in the Piazzale were in good voice and the scenes resembled a normal European away day. The only source of tension was the sight of a couple of dozen local police officers camped in the background of the piazza, who kept themselves to themselves.
Fans were reluctant to speak to The Athletic on Thursday, saying that the Scottish football media were part of the problem, inflaming tensions through their reporting of incidents around the fixture at Celtic Park. This included Celtic fans unfurling a banner mocking Benito Mussolini, Italy’s former fascist dictator, who the Lazio ultras idolise.
In the period between the games in Glasgow and Rome, articles were published suggesting that the banner was provocative and could be responsible for inciting violence in the return fixture.
One fan did comment to The Athletic on this subject, saying: “It’s ridiculous that some people in the media think Celtic fans are responsible for Lazio fans’ actions.”
The incident was not a one-off. There are precedents with Lazio, with their city rivals Roma, and with Italian football at large.
In 2012 a Spurs fan was stabbed by Lazio fans before a Europa League game, while eight others were injured. As with the attack on Celtic fans, they were ambushed in a Rome city centre bar by masked men. Masked Lazio fans also clashed with police before last season’s Coppa Italia final.
In May 1984, before and after the European Cup final between Liverpool and Roma, there were multiple incidents of assaults and stabbings. According to football journalist Tony Evans, fan buses en route to the Stadio Olimpico for the final also came under fire from stones, bricks, bottles and flares thrown from cars darting between the buses.
In February 2001, multiple Liverpool fans were stabbed after a game against Roma. In March 2006, three Middlesbrough fans were stabbed after a game against Roma. On two occasions in 2007, Manchester United fans were stabbed, including five in December, after games against Roma. In May 2009, a Manchester United fan was stabbed after a game against Roma.
In April 2018 a Liverpool fan, Sean Cox, sustained a serious head injury and was left in a coma after being randomly assaulted by Roma fans outside Anfield after Liverpool’s 5-2 Champions League semi-final win. He has since recovered and he and his family are scheduled to be welcomed back at Anfield for the first time since against Manchester City this Sunday.
Dozens of Juventus fans were arrested by Amsterdam police ahead of the Turin side’s Champions League quarter-final against Ajax last season, with De Telegraaf reporting the fans were in possession of “knives, clubs, pepper spray and flares.”
In September of this year, a Liverpool fan was attacked by Napoli fans before the game at Anfield and collapsed at half-time before recovering, while in October 2013 an Arsenal fan was also hospitalised during a coordinated attack by Napoli fans on a north London restaurant, Piebury Corner.
An Inter fan died after clashes with Napoli fans last December.
This issue is endemic. Wednesday night’s assault was just the latest link in the chain.
“Have you noticed the intensity when they lose it?” Brendan Rodgers asks as we watch Hamza Choudhury chase for a ball as if his life depends on it. “They want to win it back so quickly.”
A dozen players are taking part in a possession exercise under grey skies at Leicester City’s training ground. It is just after 11am and the rain, much like Choudhury’s pressing, is relentless. So is the rat-a-tat sound of passes. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,” shouts Adam Sadler, one of Leicester’s first-team coaches, as the ball fizzes around.
One point is awarded for 12 passes in succession. Another if the ball is threaded between two of the three mannequins that are stationed a short distance apart in the middle of an area about 40 yards square. The players want to win. Badly. Demarai Gray takes a whack and is down for a little while. There is no going through the motions here.
The idea for those in possession, Rodgers explains, is to circulate the ball quickly, aided by two goalkeepers on the outside, and to penetrate by “breaking the lines, to try and play through the bodies [the mannequins], so you play forward”. The outfield players are restricted to three touches, although they rarely take that many.
On the face of it, the drill is all about retaining the ball, which has always been a cornerstone of any team that Rodgers has managed.
Yet there is also a strong defensive theme to this exercise, and that is an essential part of Rodgers’ work at Leicester that is easy to overlook, especially when the team occupying third place in the Premier League is playing with a swagger and averaging more than two goals per game at the other end of the pitch.
Leicester have the joint-best defensive record in the Premier League this season. Indeed, they have conceded only 17 goals across Rodgers’ 21 league matches in charge, at an average of 0.8 per game. To put that figure in perspective, it stood at 1.5 per game when Claude Puel was manager.
It is a huge improvement and all the more impressive bearing in mind that Leicester sold Harry Maguire, who became the world’s most expensive defender, to Manchester United in the summer, and never signed a replacement. “I think people looked at us losing our £80 million defender and thought how were we going to cope,” Rodgers says. “But my answer is that you defend with 11, not just with one player.”
That collective approach to defending is a recurrent theme during the training session. Whenever the players are without the ball they are urged to regain it as soon as possible, by pressing in numbers. “You see when Dennis [Praet] is pressing now,” Rodgers points out, “Hamza is reading it behind.”
“Synchronised pressing” is the term that Rodgers uses in his office later, when he explains why Jamie Vardy has been told he no longer needs to chase down defenders from one side of the pitch to the other. “You cannot press on your own. The team has to have one brain,” Rodgers says. “If the winger is pressing the right-back, everyone has to understand where they move in relation to that. And if the ball gets played again, where’s the next press?”
In the drill, the players are also encouraged to protect the “central area”, by stopping passes from being fed between the mannequins. The exercise is relative to a game and brings to mind the interview that James Maddison did with The Athletic earlier in the season, when the midfielder explained how Rodgers will “have you pressing opponents, shifting, stopping passes through the lines, making it really difficult for teams. He addressed that early as something I needed to work on.”
Rodgers nods when told about those comments. “James is a bit like Philippe Coutinho — they’re players who are recognised for their talent. But then to maximise that talent, in order for them to participate in the game at the highest level, they also have to be able to contribute to a press. Of course, James has his strengths, so you let him flourish with those strengths. But then we helped him with the tactical discipline. And he’s becoming very, very good at it.”
Maddison is inside in the dry today, taking part in a recovery session along with the others who started in the 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace on Sunday. Rodgers spoke to each of those players individually before coming out to training to watch the rest of his first-team squad. He never misses a session. “I’m out here every day,” he says. “Every day.”
There is one significant difference in his approach now, however, compared to four or five years ago. “When I first moved into management, I took every session, planned every session, and then everyone fitted around that,” Rodgers says. “But what I’ve learned, in particular from probably the Liverpool experience, when I went away and reflected on that… and I remember Sir Alex [Ferguson] talking about this, saying that one of the greatest traits that you can have is observation. And that’s very difficult when you’re a young manager, when you’re starting out, because you’re trying to create the model.
“What I did at Celtic, after that experience at Liverpool, was I created the vision: ‘This is how we’re going to work, these are the standards we’ll be judged on.’ Create an environment, coach a lot — every day on the pitch to impose the way, and the principles of how we want to work — and then over time I can take a step back. And by that stage, any new coaches that I inherit when I come into a club, they understand clearly how I work.
“Then the guys like Chris Davies [his long-time assistant], who is very like me, very open-minded, understands my principles and how I work, can look at the sessions and they can plan and control. But I’m always there to observe and then look really at the details, and then of course in other moments I’ll take the tactical parts of the sessions. There’s no doubt that that’s been great for me, because sometimes when you are coaching and right in the middle of it, it’s hard to see everything.”
Kelechi Iheanacho, Wes Morgan, Christian Fuchs, James Justin, Marc Albrighton, Nampalys Mendy, Daniel Amartey, Danny Ward, Eldin Jakupovic, Gray, Praet, and Choudhury are the 12 players training on this damp and cold morning. Davies, Sadler and Kolo Toure, another first-team coach, take the session.
Watching some of the slick exchanges, in particular the little one-twos in the unopposed passing exercises that are set up at the start, makes you think of that lovely goal that Vardy scored against Palace on Sunday. “That’s it, quick passes,” Rodgers says. “The idea is fast combinations, so they’re always in contact.”
Did that goal bring any wider satisfaction because of the way it came about? “For me as a coach and manager, seeing the relationship from training to the game is great,” Rodgers says. “My work is very much based on structure and improvisation, on a sliding scale. You give them the ideas but then that bit at the end is that real quality in the players that they can execute it. Vards’ touch and then Demarai’s pass back… he plays it soft so he can hit it first time; he hasn’t rattled it.”
Leicester’s training sessions are not particularly long — they last for about 70 minutes — but everything is done at a high tempo and no stone is left unturned when it comes to the level of detail in the session plans, which are discussed and finalised the day before.
For example, for the “build-up/attack” exercise that follows the possession game, the coaches know that the drill will last for 15 minutes, the exact measurements of the pitch used, the specific lines where the flat-spot markers will be positioned to cordon off a midfield area, the players who will be wearing bibs and the conditions that will be applied (three touches in your own half, all-in in the opposition half).
As well as breaking down the method, there are a list of “messages” that the coaches aim to get across during the exercise. In this case, one of the main focuses is on building securely from the back to get up the pitch by creating an overload using the “free man”. Positioning, angles and creating space are key for the three trying to break out from the back against two forwards.
Once one player is out, they join two attackers and try to score in a three-v-three at the other end. Once again, it is a case of replicating everything Leicester try to do in matches, especially when it comes to passing out from the goalkeeper.
“I’ve always seen build-up play as the opportunity, whereas lots of people and pundits see it as a risk,” Rodgers says. “It’s not a risk. If you open up the pitch and a team wants to come and press you, they’ve got to be open. So then it’s finding the space. The difference is, it’s not always the first line that you play into; it might be out to the full-backs in the second line, it might be in the space beyond. The opportunity to build is there. It’s having that range of pass and just giving them the lines of pass as options. Because no matter what anyone says to me, a long ball is a 50-50.”
The session finishes with a six-a-side that is played in an area the size of the penalty box. It is fast, intense and competitive — there are even disputes about whether a goal should have been disallowed for offside. All the while the emphasis on pressing, as well as passing, continues. “Go, Kel! Go!” Sadler shouts as Iheanacho closes down an opponent. “Now right behind him, Fuchsy.”
It takes place in a confined space for good reason. “So you have to manipulate the ball and use every line on the field to create space,” Rodgers explains. “But then you also want to take it in tight situations as well. For the attackers, we’re saying to Demarai to come off Wes and to find the space, because Wes will want the contact, because of his strength and power.”
Rodgers shows the way through to his office. There are a couple of tactics boards inside, one on the wall and a second on a stand. On another wall is a large whiteboard, scattered with small discs, almost like badges. Each one of them has a Leicester player’s face on it.
Although there is enough room for a small round table and half a dozen chairs, plus a desk and a computer, it seems safe to assume that the office Rodgers will move into at the club’s new training ground, which is due to open next year and will be one of the best in Europe, is going to be an upgrade.
Not that he is unhappy with what he has got now. Far from it, in fact. As we both pull up a chair, Rodgers tells a story about his office at Swansea City, which was at Glamorgan Health and Racquets club. Swansea didn’t have their own training ground at the time and shared changing facilities with the public. The room that Rodgers was given to hold private meetings in and make calls from was not much bigger than a broom cupboard.
“Around about mid-November, the leisure centre manager came up to me and said: ‘Brendan, will you be using the office — this area — on these dates in December?’” Rodgers recalls. “I said, ‘Well, I’ll need it all the time.’ He said: ‘It’s just that if you weren’t, we use this as Santa’s grotto.’”
Rodgers breaks into laughter. Before the Championship play-off final, which Swansea won 4-2 against Reading to win promotion to the Premier League in 2011, one of their team meetings took place in a squash court because the room they wanted to use upstairs at the leisure centre had been booked for a spin class. Rodgers smiles and shakes his head. “But Swansea was amazing,” he says. “That experience gave me everything.”
There is a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” Rodgers shouts.
“Dennis,” he says, his voice softening when he sees Praet’s face.
“Later?” Praet asks.
“Yeah, OK. But come in a minute,” Rodgers says.
“You’ve met before?” Rodgers asks as Praet comes over to shake hands. The two of us mention the interview we did six weeks ago.
“Did you see his first pass in the game at the weekend?” Rodgers asks, his face beaming. “He comes into the game, and this is the best first touch of a game that anyone can have. Did you see the chance of [Ben] Chilwell where he hit the post? Dennis has just come on, he’s looking for the pass, and he just drills it right out to the other side. Ben takes a touch and should score.”
Rodgers motions with his hand to show how the ball — a raking 40-yard diagonal pass from a free-kick that was inch perfect — pinged off Praet’s right boot.
Praet laughs. “He [Chilwell] made a long run. I said, ‘OK!’”
The two agree to chat in a bit and Praet leaves the room. Rodgers was expecting the Belgium international to drop by and he goes on to explain that Gray, who also came off the bench at Selhurst Park and made a telling contribution with that assist for Vardy, will do the same at some point. Regular dialogue with all the squad, he says, is essential.
“I like to be open with my players and have that communication,” Rodgers says. “I think what’s so important with players is that you’re clear. Clarity and purpose, I’ve found that so, so important in my management career as I’ve gone along, so that players are stable in terms of where they’re at. And the only way you do that is through conversation.
“Silence is a death sentence for a player. They’re unsure of where they stand and that can be difficult for players. Now, sometimes you’ll tell players things that they don’t want to hear. But I always think you can tell them anything; it’s how you say it to them. And rather than not talk to them and expect them to understand, it’s still important, even if the team is doing really well, that players who maybe are on the outside understand that they are very much valued and respected in their work.”
The conversation briefly returns to the training session, which finished with Rodgers walking off the pitch with his arm around Gray. I mention how Eddie Howe, Bournemouth’s manager, keeps “diaries” where he logs every training exercise. “I’ve got all my sessions from when I was a young coach, all archived at home,” Rodgers says. “So after each session we’ll…” His voice tails off as he gets up to look at a row of ring binders in the corner of the room. He picks one up, returns to the table and flicks through the sheets inside to find a tactical session.
“So, for example, this was 28th September, so before Newcastle, when we won 5-0. So we were looking at pressing organisation against their 3-4-3, who jumps to who, what zones we need to control, the compactness, and then being ready for the adjustment to 3-5-2. So that plan within.”
Pointing to a graphic showing a switch in play, Rodgers continues: “And then just adding [Fabian] Schar’s diagonal, because he’s good on them, so just being aware for the full-backs.
“Then you can see offensively how we’re going to build-up, what the long option is if we’re going to go over the press, expecting them to drop off into a 5-4-1, so how do we go through that.”
Finding a way of getting the ball to Vardy is often a good answer. Vardy got two goals that day against Newcastle and another five have followed since, taking him into double figures and making him the Premier League’s leading scorer. His form under Rodgers — 19 league goals in 21 appearances — has been sensational. It’s like a switch has been flicked.
“When I met the players when I first came in on the night of the Brighton game, I was walking around the changing room and shook all their hands. I saw him for the first time and said, ‘I’m glad you’re here.’ Because he’s everything that I want in a striker. He’s such a threat. And people know it as well. You go away at Crystal Palace at the weekend and people know that if he’s away, it’s virtually going to be a goal. The gasp in the crowd anytime he nearly gets in… to have that threat is amazing.”
While Puel never really seemed to get to grips with how to play to the strengths of Vardy, who was even left out of the team on occasions by the Frenchman, Rodgers quickly found a solution. It is one that has some parallels with the way he sought to get the best out of Luis Suarez at Liverpool, namely by narrowing down the parts of the pitch he wants his striker to occupy. “With Vards it was a case of, ‘You’re pressing in certain areas, which is going to keep you closer to goal, and you’re then playing more in a central area.’”
It sounds like Rodgers wanted Vardy to be more economical with his running. “Yeah, doing essentially what we want him to do for the team,” he adds. “Because Jamie Vardy, if you let him go, he’ll press the right-back, the left-back, the whole back four on his own. But he now knows he’s not on his own when he’s pressing, and this allows him in turn to be in positions to score. And then we have a real creative talent that finds him early or finds him from crosses.”
Leaving aside that terrific second goal, two moments in particular against Palace stand out in respect of that creative talent Rodgers talks about. Maddison provided the first with a sublime pass with the outside of his right boot that released Vardy, playing on the shoulder of the last defender, in behind. Youri Tielemans delivered the second with one of those eye-of-the-needle through balls that many players wouldn’t see, let alone be able to execute.
It is some supply line with that pair operating alongside one another, and easy to imagine one or two of the established top six clubs looking on rather enviously. “James and Youri are very penetrative with their passing, and Dennis,” Rodgers says. “They play forward. We’ve got real technicians in there. You see James’s pass at the weekend, Youri’s pass playing through. And James’s pass away at Sheffield United. Having that view to see it, that immediate switch in the transition to play the pass, is incredible.”
Rodgers puffs out his cheeks as he thinks back to the wonderful ball that Maddison played with the outside of his foot at Bramall Lane for Vardy to open the scoring. Yet watch that goal again with Leicester’s pressing in mind, and the way that Ayoze Perez persistently snaps at the heels of Chris Basham, to pinch the ball inside the centre circle, really stands out too. Three Leicester touches later and Vardy is cupping his hands to his ears in front of the Sheffield United supporters.
For Rodgers, it is important also to recognise the contribution of those at the other end of the pitch for Leicester. He believes Kasper Schmeichel’s ability is often overlooked and describes him as one of the best goalkeepers in Europe. As for Jonny Evans, Rodgers cannot speak highly enough of the central defender. He remembers seeing his countryman play superbly on his Premier League debut for Manchester United against Chelsea in 2008, and has been a fan ever since. “He’s got such a football brain. His experience and quality is of such a high level that whoever he plays beside, he will improve.”
The headline statistic is that Leicester have accumulated 40 points from 21 games under Rodgers, which is 10 more than Arsenal over that same period, 17 more than Tottenham Hotspur and 19 more than Manchester United. Leicester’s goal difference across those fixtures is +27. United’s, by way of comparison, is -7.
Rodgers listens to those point tallies and, interestingly, his mind immediately goes back to Celtic, the club where he won seven trophies and was on course for another two before he decided to swap Glasgow for Leicester in February.
“Leaving Celtic was always going to be difficult for me because of my passion for the club, so I knew to leave there I had to come into something that was going to allow real growth,” he says. “When I had the chance to come here, for some it might have been a strange choice: ‘Why would you leave a huge club like Celtic to come to Leicester City?’ But for me, there was so much potential here and that starts with the players, and then with the club in general.”
Rodgers gave two presentations after taking over as manager. One, upstairs at the training ground, to the players and the football staff who are based at Belvoir Drive, and another at the King Power Stadium for all the other employees, essentially “explaining that we wanted to have one vision and one club”.
Yet the message ran deeper than that. “The club had had a dark time, in terms of the owner [Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha] passing away, and that had been hard for everyone, for Claude here at that time and for the players,” Rodgers explains. “So for me it was a case of coming in and trying to inspire the club and the players again, and to use Khun Vichai as a real shining light. Not to block his light. He’d given so much. The sadness around his death can very easily bring a real darkness among everyone and it’s very hard to shift that.
“What I tried to do when I came in was let that light shine again and then use that as a reference, so the vision that I wanted to create, but also the incredible legacy that this guy has given the club. And could we then hook on to his values, and what he gave, and transfer that into the team?”
Results and performance so far suggest so. Re-energised under Rodgers last season, Leicester have kicked on again in this campaign. They are behind only Liverpool and Manchester City in the table, through to the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup, and look a good bet for a top-four finish right now, even if Rodgers insists that qualifying for the Champions League has not crossed his mind for a second.
Leicester face Arsenal, who are six points behind them, at the King Power Stadium on Saturday evening and it seems reasonable to ask whether the Northern Irishman would have been a far better replacement for Arsene Wenger than Unai Emery. At the very least, Arsenal would have had a clear identity on the pitch under Rodgers.
Whether every Arsenal fan would have warmed to that appointment at the time is a matter of debate. Rodgers, arguably, has never really had the respect he deserves for his coaching achievements and his capacity to improve players.
It is pointed out to him that a few weeks ago, Oliver Kay wrote an article for The Athletic , on the back of Leicester’s thumping victory over Newcastle, that started with the line: “Is it safe to praise Brendan Rodgers yet?”
Rodgers laughs as he listens to that question. But there is a serious point behind it, and it is interesting to know his thoughts on how he thinks he is perceived and if it is something that he even worries about.
“No,” Rodgers says, dismissively. “Listen, I only do my best. There obviously are now — in this society, in modern life with the internet — perceptions around you, but that’s normally from people who don’t know you. So you can never worry so much about that.
“I hope when I finish my career I’ll be respected as a coach, and people can judge me on being a coach, and what he did in terms of players’ improvement, teams’ improvement, supporters enjoying teams that I put out for them, and that is all I can ever worry about.
“I think that sometimes where there is a British coach or a British manager who has an ambition, maybe there is something that is not liked.
“But I always promise three things when I come into any club, with players and boards. I always promise my communication is open. I’ll give you quality in the work — I’ll be able to maximise your investment, improve and develop players. And I have ambition.
“But my ambition is always for the clubs that I go into to be the very best that they can be, for the players to be the very best. Of course you want to be the best. People talk about trophies and everything else, that’s great and it’s brilliant to be able to do that. But there are some coaches and managers who aren’t lucky enough to work with teams that give them the chance to do that. But that shouldn’t take away the level of coach that they are. So, for me, what’s the perception? I can’t really worry about that.”
There is certainly nothing to worry about when it comes to how Leicester supporters view him.
Some teams evolve when a new manager comes in. With Leicester under Rodgers it feels like there has been a revolution. They are unrecognisable from the team that was stumbling through games under Puel. On Sunday at Selhurst Park, there were even chants of “We’re gonna win the league” — something Leicester supporters had sung there in 2016, when they went on to do the unthinkable.
While few of those fans would genuinely believe a repeat is possible, it is clear that their team is in a really good place again. “I meet lots of supporters, not just Leicester supporters, and I think people enjoy watching our team play. There’s a real youthfulness around it, there’s an energy and a happiness in it,” Rodgers says.
“Leicester is a fantastic club. I think people look at Leicester as a club in the modern era that still has a real community feel. People know the owners. Top [Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, the chairman] is visible. Obviously with Khun Vichai, the sadness of that.
“And it’s a club where there’s a real strategy going forward. We move to a new training ground next year, and for us it was putting a strategy in place on the field that allows us to maximise the talents, make them better and look to create something. But also once you’ve done it, try to sustain it. I think for media and for supporters, it’s great they can enjoy it. But the job as the leader is to ensure that you stay focused.”
The visitors’ changing room during the half-time interval at St Mary’s last month provides an example of the driven, single-minded approach that Rodgers adopts. Leicester were 5-0 up with 45 minutes to play against a Southampton team who were down to 10 men and all but hoisting a white flag in the air. As a contest, the game was over. For Rodgers, it was only just getting started.
“I said to the players, now we’ve got to show that we’re developing on the way to being a really good team. Lesser teams will play loose, won’t be precise with their passing and will lack energy. So we’ve got to show what the top teams do, which is the hunger. So for me at half-time it was 0-0.”
By the end of the evening, Leicester had scored nine to equal the biggest ever Premier League win and record the biggest ever victory by an away side in an English top-flight match. It was brutal to watch. Southampton were humiliated, so much so that you wonder if Rodgers had any thoughts for opposite number Ralph Hasenhuttl.
“I don’t know him and I didn’t have the chance to speak to him afterwards. But of course I have empathy with every manager and especially in that situation, which is a really difficult one,” he says. “I sent Ralph a message after the weekend, before they played Manchester City. But, like I say, you’ve got to be professional.”
Time is ticking on and another knock at the door means that Gray, as well as Praet, is now waiting for his chat with the manager. We talk briefly about Liverpool and I ask whether Rodgers ever thinks about that 2013-14 season and just how close he came — three points — to ending that long wait for a title at Anfield.
“From time to time,” he says. “People will come up and talk about it. I think there was pride in the fact… if you look at the actual team and squad that we had at that time, to have nearly won the league — we jumped from eighth.
“But Liverpool was brilliant for me. It’s a great club. I learned many things when I was there. We went so close and it just wasn’t to be.”
In many ways, Celtic and now Leicester have been the beneficiaries of that Liverpool experience. Aged 46, Rodgers is older and wiser, no longer quite so hands-on when it comes to coaching but, as he has explained, better-placed than ever before to get the most out of his players and his team for taking that step back.
There is a chance for him, you sense, to achieve something special at Leicester. Maybe even to leave a legacy. “I think by the time I move on — and hopefully that won’t be for a while yet — the idea will be to have created a feeling,” Rodgers says.
“People talk about a legacy, and it’s always visual what they talk about. For me, it’s about what people feel. So with Celtic, for example, we won seven trophies and we created history there. And once they take away how I left, hopefully there’s a feeling of, ‘That was a very good team. I loved going to watch them play and how they played.’
“And for me here, it’s the same idea really. Hopefully there’s a feeling that the people are energised and inspired by watching the team.”
Not a great article, a decent article.
Not going to read it though.
Finally got around to watching Journeyman this evening. Outstanding film, visceral and utterly harrowing. Paddy Considine is one of the greats, truly under appreciated
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Why do all entries on this thread have to be so long? Surely decent journalists could get their point across in a succinct manner.
Any recommendations for a subscription online? I’m sick of watching the news on tv, and the papers are muck. All shitty bad news! But you need to know what’s going on in the world as well.
I was going to subscribe to The Week, but it’s US and UK focused, so not too sure…