⚽︎Friday, Nov. 10: The Battle of Rome Is Now a Personal Managerial Beef
José Mourinho and Maurizio Sarri are getting into it (again) ahead of the Derby della Capitale.
You might have noticed a new addition to THE FOOTBALL WEEKEND this week when we dropped the first episode of Match Report! It’s a Monday morning podcast breaking down the biggest matches of the weekend past. Joining me as co-host is Manny Xclusive, who’s on a brilliant show called Pass the Meerkat and is also a talent agent over in London. Catch us every Monday morning as we digest the drama and the goals and the VAR mishaps.
But for now, it’s The Football Weekend featuring Chelsea-Man City, Lazio-Roma, and El Gran Derbi in Seville.
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THE HEADLINES
➟ Disaster in Denmark! Manchester United started off well enough in Copenhagen on Wednesday night, with Rasmus Højlund at the double on home soil before the madness struck. 2-0. But Marcus Rashford was shown a soft red card on 42 minutes, and suddenly the match went haywire: FC København equalized in the ninth minute of first-half stoppage time, but United were awarded a penalty for a very soft handball that Bruno Fernandes converted. It looked like they could squeeze out a win away from home in Europe. That is, until the Danish side struck twice in five minutes to send Erik ten Hag to his ninth defeat of the season—and, surely, to the very edge of the Moon Door. What might have been the killer blow to his United career was an 87th-minute strike from a 17-year-old named Roony (Bardghji).
➟ Liverpool caught an L as well on their Europa League trip to Toulouse. They had a late equalizer disallowed after VAR found a handball from Alexis Mac Allister in the buildup. The decision has been met with outrage, but he controlled the ball with his arm. A straightforward handball.
➟ Emi Martinez won the Yashin trophy nearly two weeks back, and the same week flubbed an attempt to palm one over the bar and sent it into his own net. It’s harsh to harp on it, but surely nobody is saying this man is the world’s best keeper? Yes, he won the World Cup with Argentina and made some big saves, but let’s get real. This only highlights how much the quadrennial tournament is overemphasized at that grand old award ceremony.
➟ The ball was in play for just 43% of the match time in Tottenham-Chelsea, according to OptaJoe, thanks in no small part to endless VAR reviews. The officials seemed shook, aware of all the mistakes recently, and decided to really take their time. It’s not the first incident of Endless VAR this season, and most VAR reviews materially impact the atmosphere in the stadium and the game itself in a negative way. All we do is talk about the referees now. For Christ’s sake, they have them on the television programs. It’s like they’re all trolling us for engagement. Whatever happened to the notion that the best referees are the ones you don’t notice? They’re like students at the Milford School. SKY Sports should tell Mike Dean to find gainful employment elsewhere, and—as Manny and I declared this week, however hopelessly—VAR should be scrapped.
➟ It was a big week for fan protest in the Group of Death, particularly the monetary variety. Milan fans roasted former keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma as “Dollaruma” on his return to the San Siro with PSG. It was rough treatment for the academy kid they believe betrayed them for large sacks of nation-state cash in Paris, a more personal beef than we saw from the faithful at Borussia Dortmund. They threw faux moneybags and gold bars on the pitch as they hosted Newcastle Tuesday, but not to needle their opponents. It was a protest against UEFA’s massive overhaul of the Champions League format beginning next season.
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SATURDAY
WOLVES vs TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
7:30am ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 12:30pm GMT on TNT Sports 1
TFW has been ruthless in assessing Tottenham’s title chances, in that I’ve said for weeks that once things shake out this season, they’ll be battling for fourth place. But even as an Arsenal fan I can’t celebrate their fall from the top of the pyramid—if indeed that’s in the mail—amid the kind of injury crisis that Spurs now face: James Maddison went off injured in Monday’s loss to Chelsea, Tottenham’s first league defeat of the season, and so did Micky van de Ven.
That’s their star creative force and a very promising centerback whose electric pace has allowed Ange Postecoglu’s side to play such a high line. Eric Dier doesn’t have that, or much trust from the Spurs faithful, and he won’t have a partner for this one, either: Cristian Romero was sent off against Chelsea, as was left back Destiny Udogie. Oh, and Richarlison just told ESPN Brazil that he’ll shortly have surgery on a persistent pelvic injury. Who, exactly, is going to be out there playing for Tottenham Hotspur?
Wolves have a key miss of their own, in fairness: Pedro Neto will be out until after the coming international break. The Portuguese winger is one of the more exciting players in the league, the guy who stretches out defenses and makes things happen for this team, so it’s hard not to fear for players like Hwang Hee-chan (who’s caught fire in recent weeks) and Matheus Cunha in his absence. The Wanderers have been robbed by the referees two weeks in a row, and Gary O’Neil will be hoping his team’s sturdy performances will finally be rewarded here. If ever there were a time to play Spurs, and all that…
SEVILLA vs REAL BETIS
12:30 ET on ESPN+ / 5:30 GMT on Viaplay
El Gran Derbi. Sevilla put in a truly lackluster performance on their trip to London in midweek as they scarcely laid a glove on Arsenal. In the lead-up, some in the Spanish press were suggesting they should really concentrate on this game. It’s certainly more winnable for them, but their domestic form this season is horrid, enough to warrant the replacement of José Luis Mendilibar—who led Sevilla to yet another Europa League title on May 31—in October. Diego Alonso has them playing physical stuff when they apply themselves, with a legitimate aerial threat. But they’re still mired in 14th, four points off the relegation zone. They’ve drawn an astonishing four straight in the league dating back to September 29.
Betis are a different proposition entirely. They won just the fourth trophy in their tumultuous 116 years with the Copa del Rey in 2022—their rivals have 15 major trophies—but they’re cooking these days. They sit sixth in La Liga and top of their Europa League group through the goalscoring of Willian José and the compact dynamism of Isco, the former Real Madrid midfielder. More recently, he spent four months at Sevilla before he was dishonorably discharged, a swift end to an unhappy marriage. He spent the rest of the 2022-23 season in the clubless wilderness. Now he’s got eight man of the match awards in 12 league matches, mesmerizing defenders with his five-a-side-style dribbling trickery. He accepts the ball in tight midfield spaces and takes the responsibility to drive his team into the attacking third. It’s a chance for Isco’s revenge, now in the colors of Sevilla’s bitter crosstown enemy.
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MORE HEADLINES
➟ Erling Haaland has 39 goals in 34 Champions League appearances, which puts him ahead of names like Gerd Müller, Antoine Griezmann, Samuel Eto’o, Wayne Rooney, and Kaká on the all-time list. He’s 23 years old.
➟ Vincent Kompany doesn’t get the same attention as other struggling managers, perhaps because of his previous stint as a Premier League-winning player. (That didn’t help Super Frank Lampard much, to be fair.) The Belgian’s Burnley have won one match, drawn one, and lost nine, scoring just eight goals—the fewest in the division—and conceding 27. It’s not often someone gets sacked for losing away at Arsenal, where the Clarets are headed on Saturday, but Kompany is surely approaching the brink.
➟ John Kennedy scored the winner last weekend as Fluminense secured their first-ever Copa Liberatores, the South American Champions League. The 35th president was sent off two minutes later, in the 101st. Boca Juniors’ Frank Fabra was also given his marching orders for an attempted slap seven minutes into the time added on to the first half of extra time. Yeah, you read that right. VAR is doing crazy things to stoppage time these days.
➟ Asked to reflect on the tragic situation with Luis Diaz’s father—who’s now been released—John Obi Mikel offered a story about the time a kidnapper held a gun to his own father’s head. Mikel says he paid the kidnappers, but his then-employer at Chelsea, Roman Abramovich, offered a different option: he could “send people over” to sort it out. When the midfielder asked how that would happen, the Russian oligarch waved him off: “Don’t worry about that.”
➟ Time to swing one leg over the Arsenal Hobby Horse and declare that the first 17 minutes of the Arsenal-Sevilla match were just the latest example of how Bukayo Saka is systematically failed by match officials. There were two fouls on him that constituted yellow cards in the early going, but neither was penalized. Pretty much anybody can get away with kicking the young genius through the first two-thirds of the match, and as we saw at Newcastle last weekend, being able to foul your opponent with impunity is a significant advantage.
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THE FPL STOCK MARKET
↗️Tyrick Mitchell (£4.6m): Assuming you already have Joachim Andersen, Mitchell is another way to get exposure to this stout Roy Hodgson defense. It’s a very friendly fixture list for Crystal Palace over the next four games, and if you need a cheap keeper, Sam Johnstone (£4.6) is also a play.
↗️ Takehiro Tomiyasu (£4.5m), Gabriel (£4.8m) & William Saliba (£5.2): Arsenal have a phenomenal defensive record, and their defenders are well-priced. Their upcoming fixtures are Burnley, Brentford, Wolves, and Luton, though keep in mind that Tomiyasu doesn’t always start games.
↘️ Aston Villa defenders: Unai Emery’s team are struggling to keep clean sheets. Matty Cash (£5.2m) could be justified because he gets forward, but Villa have Tottenham, City, and Arsenal among their next five games.
↗️Jeremy Doku (£6.6m) & Bernardo Silva (£6.3m): You always run the risk of rotation with Pep Guardiola, especially in the attacking midfield areas, but these two are coming into some form along with City more generally.
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SUNDAY
WEST HAM vs NOTTINGHAM FOREST
9:00am ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 2:00pm GMT on SKY Sports
It’s got to be said that Morgan Gibbs-White was fantastic last week against the Villa, breaking out the silky touches in tight areas and firing up the engine to carry the ball—and Forest—up the field. The #10 hasn’t always set the league alight since his transfer from Wolves two summers ago, but now he’s got a flying winger in Anthony Elanga to hit when Forest get into their vertical game. At their best, they go back to front fast, with Taiwo Awoniyi arriving in the box at the right time to get on the end of a low cross in behind a line of defenders wheezing as they run back towards their own goal.
David Moyes will studiously avoid this scenario if possible, as West Ham are also a team that would prefer to stay compact and do something on the break. His team were uncharacteristically poor in defending aerial balls last time out against Brentford, when Lucas Pacquetá and Edson Álvarez were suspended. They’ll be back for this one. Mohammed Kudus played in a central attacking midfield role there and smashed in an acrobatic volley to open the scoring. He was a threat in the box throughout, though Michail Antonio made a hash of a chance to make it 3-1 in a reminder that this team does not have a reliable out-and-out goalscorer. Well, they’ve got Jarrod Bowen, who is among the best in the league at that kind of thing from midfield. This one could be end-to-end in the second half.
CHELSEA vs MANCHESTER CITY
11:30am ET on NBC Sports (USA) / 4:30pm GMT on SKY Sports
On Monday, Chelsea were about as bad as you can be while winning 4-1. There was a brief spell towards the end of the first half where they strung some nice passing patterns together and looked truly threatening, but it wasn’t until Tottenham had another man sent off—and kept on playing an absurdly high line—that Chelsea were suddenly in behind them constantly, peppering chances at Nicolas Jackson to score. He finished about half of them, and in the process became perhaps the first player in history to harm his striking reputation while scoring a hat trick.
The West Londoners are a bizarre outfit at the moment. £1 billion spent in 15 months, only to sit 10th in the league. 39-year-old Thiago Silva is their best defender, and none of their young protostarlets have blasted into life. The midfield partnership of £107 million Enzo Fernández and £115 million Moisés Caicedo is theoretically formidable, but while Chelsea have had a lot of the ball—they’re second in the league for possession percentage across 11 matches—they don’t often look particularly threatening.
They probably had their best showing of the season against Arsenal, but even then the two goals were a penalty and a flukey mishit lob from Mykhailo Mudryk. They need someone with more creative nous than Conor Gallagher offers, and they need a goalscorer to the point that Mauricio Pochettino could go for a False 9 here. Whomever he picks, at various points they’ll all need to sit in and defend for their lives.
Manchester City are now the league’s top scorers after dismantling Bournemouth last weekend, and the star there was Jérémy Doku with a goal and four (4) assists. Chelsea’s Reece James will try to contain him if the Belgian dribbling trickster is deployed on the left, and he might have the athleticism to do so. But then there’s Bernardo Silva ghosting in from the right to exchange positions with central players, or maybe it’ll be Phil Foden. There’s Julián Álvarez, who was the best player in the division up until the last couple weeks, playing in behind a certain Erling Haaland. Doku might not even start the match if Jack Grealish is preferred. At some point, it’s kind of a joke, and that’s before you get to the towering back five of Rodri plus whichever large and quick defenders are sent out for this one.
We can run through the scenarios where Chelsea might grind out a result here: they sit in deep and use Sterling’s pace in behind to strike at City, say, or they press high and—with some luck—win the ball in the attacking third. But the truth is that it’s just hard to see it happening in any context. Stamford Bridge is not the fortress it once was, to say the least, and Chelsea have lost their last six against City in all competitions. Maybe Cole Palmer can get one over on the club that readily let him go this summer when Todd Boehly fired the money cannon. If past is prologue, he’ll do it from the penalty spot.
LAZIO vs ROMA
12:00pm ET on Paramount+ / 5:00pm GMT on TNT Sports 2
Maurizio Sarri has been complaining about the placement of this fixture in the calendar, and in the process has ignited a beef with José Mourinho. In fairness, that’s never hard to do, and this constitutes more of a re-ignition after their squabbles in the Premier League while managing Chelsea and Manchester United.
“If you tell me if it's intelligent to put the derby in the week in which we play in Europe, I'll tell you I don't think it's the height of intelligence on the part of the league,” Sarri moaned after Lazio defeated Feyenoord in the Champions League on Tuesday. “Roma can afford a friendly on Thursday, and we played a war tonight. There is a fundamental difference.” He was referencing Roma’s Europa League clash with Slavia Praha, and Mourinho did not take kindly to the insinuation. “Slavia Prague are the ones who should be feeling offended by his comments, not me,” the Roma manager said. “I always have respect towards my rivals,” he added, questioning Sarri’s mentality. “Maybe [that’s] the difference between a coach with 26 titles and another who has only won a few.”
It’s another layer of animosity for a match that probably doesn’t need much more. This is the Derby della Capitale, the battle of Rome, with just one point separating Roma in 7th from Lazio in 10th. This fixture has turned ugly before, particularly with S.S. Lazio’s particular issues in the fanbase. Clashes in the stands have required the intervention of police. Some players’ interactions with those fans, like Paolo Di Canio’s salute, have been cause for concern amid the general sense that Lazio’s eagle mascot means something a bit more to some around the club. For others, it’s surely just a thrill to see “Olympia” fly across the pitch pregame, though even the bird’s trainer has gotten himself involved.
But this match has also featured some fantastic players through the years: Francesco Totti and Daniele De Rossi, of course, but also Alessandro Nesta, who started his career with Lazio after his father—a fan of Le Aquile—ensured he turned down an offer from Roma’s youth setup. There was Simone Inzaghi, brother of Pippo and now the high-flying manager of Internazionale. Hernan Crespo represented Lazio in this fixture, and Cafu wore the Roma shirt. Vincenzo Montella, Pavel Nedvěd, Gabriel Batistuta, Giuseppe Favalli, Carlo Ancelotti, Giorgio Chinaglia, Amedeo Amadei, Roberto Mancini, Miroslav Klose—they all played their football in the Eternal City representing one of these two sides.
The team sheets aren’t quite so glamorous these days, although Romelu Lukaku has lately been bulldozing defenses for Roma. He’s got nine goals in 12 matches, but he saw his penalty saved last time out against Lecce. He was partnered up top in that one by Paulo Dybala, the impishly creative Argentine technician. Houssem Aouar, a summer signing from Lyon, was stringing things together well, and his midfield partner Renato Sanches is a bit of a reclamation project with significant upside. Evan Ndicka was an in-demand centerback during the transfer window who’s slotted into a back three for Mourinho alongside Diego Llorente—on loan from Leeds—and Gianluca Mancini.
For Lazio, the Spaniard Luis Alberto is the creative engine at #10 along with wide playmaker Felipe Anderson. Daichi Kamada is in the engine room alongside one of Matías Vecino or Matteo Guendouzi. Alessio Romagnoli is the rock at centerback, and Ciro Immobile is the steady servant up front. He scored the lone goal in midweek to take the Eagles one step closer to climbing out of Group E. That was the match that had Sarri all agitated ahead of this one. “It seems to me that it's people from outside football who don't realize what the derby is,” he said. It’s not clear when exactly he’d allow this match to take place, and by the way, Roma’s midweek fixture was two days closer to this one than Lazio’s was. (They lost, 2-0, to Slavia Praha.) At the highest level, you play three times a week.
Then again, last season it was Mourinho complaining about the schedule. “Obviously, I am not happy that we played today with many players who will also have to be there on Sunday,” he said after a Europa League match in March. "Meanwhile, tonight Lazio are home smoking cigarettes with Sarri.” It was a dig at his enemy’s famous habit, a year after the Roman mural of Mourinho on a vespa was updated to include a figure of Sarri blowing smoke in his face. The action here could be on the sideline as well as the pitch.⚽︎
Another day another example of Mexes erasure