⚽︎Friday, September 22: 110 Years of Hatred at the North London Derby
⚽︎Friday, September 22: 110 Years of Hatred at the North London Derby
Plus: Champions League takeaways, on-pitch violence, and a revolution at goalkeeper?
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It’s more like The Football Sunday this week, as three big matches are all kicking off on the Lord’s day of rest. But before all that, we were just treated to the opening round of Europe’s most super league…..
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THE NORTH LONDON DERBY ARSENAL-TOTTENHAM
EL DERBI: ATLÉTICO MADRID-REAL MADRID
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DRAMA & INTRIGUE IN THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Newcastle got themselves a great point at the San Siro on Tuesday, battling to a nil-nil draw against mighty Milan, but they were comprehensively outclassed. They’ll need to make St. James’ Park a fortress when Milan and PSG and Dortmund come to town if they’re to have any chance of escaping the Group F of Death, because they will struggle to pick up too many points in Paris or in front of Dortmund’s Yellow Wall. What trips those will be for the Toon Army, though, at least if their festivities around the Navigli in Milan this week are any indication.
Could João Félix help return Barcelona to Champions League contention this season? It was only Antwerp, but the Catalonians tore their victims apart like the old days, when Xavi was in midfield rather than the dugout. Their new loan signing was at the heart of it.
In a major win for the Goalkeepers’ Union, Lazio glovesman Ivan Provedel came up for a corner and ghosted through the once-vaunted Atlético Madrid defense to smash home a headed equalizer in stoppage time. Despite his stone-faced celebration, it’s surely the highlight of his professional career, and he was carried around as a hero afterwards.
Rodri is setting the standard for midfield play in Europe. The allegedly defensive midfielder scored quite a goal to win this competition for Man City in June, and on Tuesday he picked up the ball, meandered into the penalty area, and curled one around two Red Star Belgrade defenders to kill the game. Scoring goals isn’t even his job, though it is the main gig for Julián Álvarez, and the young Argentine continues to deliver. His footwork to round the keeper in midweek was top-notch.
The bad stuff continues to flow for Manchester United. A 4-3 defeat was flattering to them as late goals betrayed Bayern Munich’s domination at the Allianz Arena. United keeper André Onana’s early howler did not help, and he’s now conceded 14 goals in 5 games. Bayern’s young attacking midfield star Jamal Musiala was stylin’ on ‘em.
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THE NORTH LONDON DERBY: ARSENAL—TOTTENHAM
Sunday 9:00am ET on Peacock / 2pm GMT on SKY Sports Main Event
In 1922, Arsenal manager Leslie Knighton, captain Bill Blyth and goalkeeper Steve Dunn were hauled before a Football Association commission, arriving in three-piece suits and top hats for the hearing. Tottenham Hotspur's Jimmy Seed, Bert Bliss and Alex Lindsay were there, too. They were summoned following a “vicious and bitter” match between the two sides featuring two red cards and a series of violent fouls. A punch was thrown, and at one point Dunn reportedly grabbed hold of the referee and shook him “like a man demented”—and somehow stayed on the pitch. It was a landmark exhibition of the tribal hatred that had grown between the two factions following Arsenal’s move across the River Thames to Tottenham’s North London neighborhood in 1913.
The vicious bitterness has hardly faded in the 101 years since that match. Anyone who dared cross the divide—George Graham as manager, Sol Campbell as towering centerback—was branded an irredeemable Judas Iscariot. For most of that century, Arsenal were the superior side, the 13-time champions of England. Tottenham have been waiting for their third title since 1961. Over the last decade, though, Spurs have had the better of things, finishing above Arsenal in the league six years in a row (their longest run since those glorious 60s) and snatching Champions League invitations off their rivals in the process. They reveled in it, but now the red side of North London has risen once again.
They’ve risen on a vastly improved transfer strategy and manager Mikel Arteta’s semi-crazed innovation. Inverted wingers are old news—now it’s about inverted fullbacks, a stratagem that emerged at Manchester City while Arteta was working as an assistant coach to Pep Guardiola. Oleksandr Zinchenko is nominally a left back who moves into midfield when Arsenal are in possession to become a deep playmaker alongside Declan Rice, who has proven over the last few matches why he was worth north of £100 million this summer. He is one of the world’s premier ball-winners, and he’s the key piece of the wall Arsenal will build to trap their opponents in their own third of the field and send wave after wave of red shirts barreling at them.
They are dominating matches this season in terms of possession and territory, and their high-octane attack is beginning to fire up. With Kevin De Bruyne’s injury, Martin Ødegaard is the most lethal midfield goalscorer in the Premier League right now. (Check out his strike in the Champions League on Wednesday. Low, hard, and true.) Bukayo Saka is registering goals and assists nearly every match, and even Gabriel Jesus—whose finishing has been maligned in the past—is scoring. But for the purist (or at least for TFW) Leandro Trossard has been one of the most delightfully devastating players in the league over the last four years at Brighton and Arsenal, and now he’s getting a run of games with Gabriel Martinelli’s injury. Trossard is an expert technician, fully two-footed, with brilliant vision and timing to arrive in the box and smash the ball into any of the goal’s four corners. Unlike most of Arsenal’s young team, he’s a 28-year-old in his absolute prime.
ARSENAL-141 | DRAW+325 | SPURS+338
Cristian Romero will lead Tottenham’s efforts to stop the Arsenal attack from centerback, where he’s returned to the kind of form that saw him rated as one of the league’s best two seasons ago. The deep midfield partnership of Yves Bissouma and Pape Sarr has beefed up the Spurs spine, but August manager-of-the-month Ange Postecoglou is steering a swashbuckling ship, and this group is at its best pouring forward with one- and two-touch play. Son Heung-min is back near the top of his game after taking the armband off Harry Kane following the legend’s departure to Bayern Munich, and even Richarlison got on the scoresheet last week with a late equalizer—just his second in 32 Premier League games for Spurs.
But the real fun in the Lilywhite shirts is supplied by two schemers in advanced midfield. James Maddison is enjoying a glorious start to the season in a throwback trequartista role, popping up in the half spaces between the opponent’s midfield and backline to string the play together and set up chances for himself and the flying forwards. Then there’s Dejan Kulusevski, an exceedingly clever player who uses his vision and trickery rather than any extraordinary pace or power to cause problems from the wing. He had the (very) late winner last time out against Sheffield United in a game that showed Spurs’ new fighting spirit (and their vulnerability to a sucker punch). This will be a test of Tottenham’s commitment to playing open, attacking football away from home. PSV—admittedly an inferior side to Spurs—came to the Emirates Stadium this week and quickly found out how devastating the punishment can be from Mikel Arteta’s young guns.
No matter what, you can expect a highly technical bar fight. As the Manchester and Liverpool derbies have grown less competitive, the North London edition has become the premier rivalry match in the English game. Only El Clásico in Spain surpasses this combination of quality and spite.
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A REVOLUTION AT GOALKEEPER?
Speaking of Mikel Arteta’s innovations, his newest may be his most radical. Aaron Ramsdale helped Arsenal challenge for the title and return to the Champions League over the last year, earning a nomination for the Yachine Trophy for the world’s standout goalkeeper. But as the transfer window was creaking closed, the North Londoners went out and signed another keeper, David Raya, who is no backup. In fact, the Spaniard’s advanced statistics at Brentford suggest he is a better goalkeeper than Ramsdale, though Arteta has insisted it’s not a sign-and-replace scenario. He’s signed Raya to create competition at goalkeeper just like what he has at any other position in the squad, he said, and he maintains both Raya and Ramsdale will get games this season. And then there was this quote:
I'm a really young manager, I've been in the job three and a half years. I have few regrets, but one of them is that on two occasions, I felt after 60 minutes and 85 minutes of two games in this period to change the goalkeeper in that moment.
I didn't do it, I didn't have the courage to do it. But I'm able to take a winger or striker and put a centre-back on to play a back five to hold on to a result. We drew those games, and I was so unhappy.
It’s an extraordinary view of the goalkeeping position, a potential revolution. Roberto De Zerbi has been mixing and matching keepers at Brighton as well, but he’s never mentioned anything about subbing your keeper. (It’s unheard of outside of a penalty shootout scenario.) There’s been far less baying from the commentariat about De Zerbi’s switches, and a big factor is surely that Ramsdale’s been dropped just as he’s making his case he should be England’s #1. He’s capable of the spectacular and of a mistake, but it was his ability with his feet that saw him replace Bernd Leno a few years back. That revolution—where the keeper is an 11th outfield player, a genuine option to receive and distribute the ball who creates overloads to break a press—has gone into hyperdrive since.
Peter Schmeichel and Jamie Carragher had a debate in midweek around whether Arteta is giving himself a problem by introducing competition at goalkeeper, though they were really having a debate about whether keeper is a position unlike any other. If Arsenal do introduce a real 2-keeper setup, they’d be the first top European team to do so outside a brief period at Barcelona a few years back. The period is usually brief: one guy wins the contest, and the other leaves.
Right now, the smart money’s on Raya. It’s a matter of marginal gains: his distribution is just a bit better, and so is his command of his penalty area when claiming high balls and crosses. Even his save statistics are a little more solid. For Ramsdale, it could prove to be a lesson in just how ruthless this business is at the highest level. Unless, of course, he plays against Spurs on Sunday.
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LE CLASSIQUE: PARIS—MARSEILLE
Sunday 2:45pm ET on beIN Sports / 7:45pm GMT on TNT Sports 1 (Discovery+)
Coming into this season, it was PSG who were the team in turmoil. Lionel Messi fled town this summer after a nasty rebellion from the Parisian ultras at the end of last term, and Neymar dashed to the semi-retirement of Saudi. Kylian Mbappé seemed poised to flee, too, though he’s stayed on in the end and will do Mbappé things in the league and the Champions League. Their centerback pairing of Marquinhos and Milan Škriniar offers physicality and composed passing, and rightback Achraf Hakimi is one of those More Than a Fullbacks that are popping up all over the top-level European game.
Ousmane Dembélé and Randal Kolo Muani are the new guys replacing the departed big names, but the excitement is in midfield. Manuel Ugarte was one of the world’s most in-demand holding midfielders this summer, and he looked assured in the midweek victory over Dortmund. Vitinha was the silky star of the show there and looks one of the top midfield prospects in Europe. The 23-year-old Portuguese was popping up all over the place to link play together for PSG, including in the box, where he set up Hakimi with a lovely one-two.
PSG-149 | DRAW+316 | OM+354
The Turmoil Team of the moment, it seems, is Marseille. Head coach Marcelino is out the door amid what the club has called a “deplorable situation” with Olympique’s famously volatile fans. The Spaniard told L’Equipe that his staff had been subject to “severe threats, insults, and slander” and “intimidation and individual attacks” in meetings earlier this week, such that he felt it was impossible to continue in the role. He arrived on June 23. Four directors of the club reportedly offered to resign. It’s a volcanic situation that’s threatened to blow since Marseille crashed out of the Champions League at the qualifying stage when they lost a two-legged tie to Greek side Panathinaikos on penalties.
It’s been “one hell of a storm” according to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a summer arrival who’s trying to write a new chapter in his career in the South of France after some sad days at Chelsea. He had two goals in the 3-3 midweek madness against Ajax in the Europa League, and he looked his old lethal self with a sliding near-post finish. There was a time when Auba was among the premier marksmen in world football, a frightening sight for any defense, and perhaps he still has a few more tricks up his sleeve. Marseille defended atrociously in Amsterdam, however, and they’ll need to tighten up before they go to Paris.
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To honor the legacy of violent on-pitch behavior in the North London Derby, here’s a real hatchet job out of Honduras this week. André Orellana unleashed a flying kick—studs everywhere—and took out two guys in the process:
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EL DERBI: ATLÉTICO MADRID-REAL MADRID
Sunday 3:00pm ET on ESPN+ / 8:00pm GMT on Viaplay
Diego Simeone will mark 12 years coaching Atléti in December, but he’s not in his finest period at the helm. His team took a 3-0 hiding from Valencia last weekend and then threw away two points in midweek by conceding at the death to a keeper. Earlier results this season were rosier—a 7-0 thrashing of Rayo Vallecano helps—but it all feels some way from the magic of those mid-2010s teams who beat out Real and Barcelona for the league (once) and nearly got one over on Real in two Champions League finals. In 2014, they lost in extra time. Two years later, they lost on penalties.
That was all rooted in Simeone’s impenetrable defensive schemes, but Valencia cut Atlético open with ease a week ago. 34-year-old Cesar Azpilicueta struggled at right back, and Axel Witsel got roasted for the second. The better stories are farther forward, where Antoine Griezmann has returned to the fold. He’s not at the level he once was—the one just below the Messis and Ronaldos—but he remains an incredibly skilled and inventive player. Sadly, Thomas Lemar won’t be streaking down the wing. He ruptured his achilles this week and is out for the season.
ATLÉTI+179 | DRAW+236 | REAL+152
As far as Real Madrid, you ought to know the story by now: Jude Bellingham is That Guy. He scored a 94th-minute winner to dispatch a gutsy Union Berlin side at the Bernabéu, his sixth in six games this season, and he’s got a habit of scoring stoppage-time winners. It was hard work for Real against Union, just as it was against Real Sociedad last week when they had to battle back from 1-0 down. They can’t afford to be as sloppy here. With Vinicius Junior out, Rodrygo and Joselu provide the forward threat, but always spare some time to watch the midfield. Luka Modrić is a generational genius and seemingly eternal at 38 years old, while Toni Kroos isn’t too far behind him in stature. They don’t always start together anymore, but enjoy them while you can.
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THE FANTASY NOTEBOOK
If FPL is a stock market, you want to buy before the share price moves:
↗️Jérémy Doku
↗️Pedro Neto
↘️Marcus Rashford
However, it’s not always that straightforward when you’re picking your squad. For one thing, I already have the maximum three Man City players, so I’d have to do some surgery to buy shares in Doku (£6.5), the dribbling machine. Neto (£5.5) is finally fit and looks back at his clever best, but Wolves have Man City next week. Rashford (£8.9) is having a bad time along with everyone else at Man United, but they’ve got a really nice run of fixtures coming up. Is this really the time to sell?
Instead, I’ve sold shares in Raheem Sterling (£7.2). He’s in a godawful Chelsea team and has only produced a significant return in one match out of five. (Granted, it was 19 points, and he’ll surely pay me back for this with a hat trick.) In comes Jarrod Bowen (£7.1), who’s scored in three matchweeks. I fancy him to strike on the counterattack against Liverpool this weekend. Otherwise, things are mostly the same for a squad that finally finished above-average last round. Thank God for Julián Álvarez (£6.9).⚽︎