The Weekly Take, Issue 178: First Test Passed - but What Next?

Arguably the standout fixture of this season's Champions League group stage just took place with Paris Saint-Germain hosting Manchester City - a rematch of a semifinal from last season.

PSG took all three points after winning 2-0. Idrissa Gueye opened the scoring for the French club in the eighth minute. Then, in the 74th minute, the moment for which all PSG fans had been waiting finally arrived: Lionel Messi scored his first goal for the club since signing from Barcelona in the off-season. In doing so, Messi snapped a somewhat unexpected goal drought which started as soon as he arrived at PSG.

Some might point to PSG's victory as a sign of things to come this season. They claim that the version of PSG we saw against City is PSG at its full potential - a team which should be the prohibitive favourite to land a first Champions League title in the club's history.

However, I would urge caution regarding this viewpoint. For one thing, this current Manchester City team, while certainly no slouches, do not appear to be genuine Champions League contenders. They undoubtedly have a very solid squad, but on the whole, are about a half-tier behind the four teams with the best chance to win it all: Chelsea, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, and PSG. As I alluded to in an earlier post, I strongly believe that City will go on to rue their heavy expenditure on Jack Grealish during the off-season. That same amount of money could easily have been used to further strengthen their team in other ways.

In addition (and this is a point I have brought up time and again), it's difficult, if not almost impossible, to rely on this PSG team during clutch situations. Almost every time PSG have found themselves in a high-stakes Champions League match over the past decade, they have come up short. Incredibly, the more favoured they are to win, the worse they seem to do.

PSG's struggles under pressure have been made evident again and again. For seven consecutive seasons, they failed to advance beyond the tournament's quarterfinals. They also choked away commanding leads against Barcelona and Manchester United in 2017 and 2019 respectively; both of these took place in the round of 16. Just last season, they capitulated against City in what many thought would have been a hotly-contested semifinal.

Messi's arrival at the Parc de Princes has raised expectations in the French capital to a whole new level. More than ever, the general sentiment at the club and among its fans is "Champions League or bust". However, considering how PSG have historically performed when the pressure has been at its highest, there is every reason to believe that they will once again fold under the weight of this pressure.

Just to pile on even more pressure, Messi was not the only big-name arrival during the off-season. Now that Gianluigi Donnarumma, Achraf Hakimi, and Sergio Ramos are all at the club, PSG are a genuine "superteam". They clearly have the personnel to win it all, but the question remains - do they have the mentality?

Before anyone says "but Messi and Ramos have delivered in big matches before", remember - there's just something about PSG which seems to "poison" the mentality of everyone who joins. Just look at Kylian Mbappé, for example. When he was just 19, he amazed the world with a series of outstanding performances on the biggest stage and brightest lights of all - the World Cup. A few months later, he made his PSG debut. Since then, he has never been able to recapture that same magic in high-leverage situations.

The textbook example of this problem is Neymar. Underperformance under pressure was never one of the Brazilian's trademark characteristics during his Barça days. This all changed after he signed for PSG for a record-breaking transfer fee in 2017. At this point, so often has Neymar choked that it's arguably fair to question if he even has a net positive effect on the team when the pressure is at its highest.

If PSG once again flatter to deceive, as I believe they eventually will, the fallout will be ugly indeed. Even at this early stage of the season, the stakes have never been higher - only time will tell if this season, they will finally right the wrongs of past years.

The Weekly Take, Issue 177: This Season's Most Underrated Team

What if I were to tell you that there is a team which in just this season alone might make the leap from not even being Champions League participants to winning a major domestic league for the first time in over two decades?

There is, in fact, such a team, and not only that - despite being very much improved from last season and overcoming a slow start by recording a key victory over their bitter rivals, absolutely nobody is taking their league title chances seriously. However, as the season progresses, I believe that it will become evident - overlooking this team will prove to be a grave mistake.

The team I'm talking about is Lazio, who just beat city rivals Roma 3-2 during the latest Serie A matchday. This most recent iteration of the Derby della Capitale saw I Biancocelesti emerge victorious despite Roma's greater control of the match. Although Roma shot twice as often as Lazio did, took nine corners to Lazio's one, and generally dictated the match's tempo, a resolute Lazio claimed all three points thanks to goals scored by Sergej Milinković-Savić, Pedro, and Felipe Anderson.

Although Lazio may currently lie just sixth in Serie A, seven points behind league leaders Napoli, it's still early days - only six of the 38 matchdays have gone by. This is a team which could absolutely bridge that gap and mount a serious challenge for their first Scudetto since 2000.

Just like the team as a whole, Milinković-Savić, Lazio's best player is one who continues to be underrated despite the fact that he may soon make the leap to elite status. A fundamentally sound central midfielder who is a true two-way player, Milinković-Savić returned to the Stadio Olimpico for a seventh season despite off-season interest from Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Liverpool. Given his career trajectory thus far, it isn't out of the question that the Serb might emerge as one of the world's best midfielders this season and lead Lazio to new heights.

During the off-season, Lazio made some very savvy acquisitions which, once again, went under almost everyone's radar. Felipe Anderson came back to the club at which he had previously spent five years; he has fit in seamlessly since his return from three years at West Ham - it almost feels as though he never left. Lazio also picked up Albanian full-back Elseid Hysaj from Napoli on a free transfer. Hysaj has been solid for Lazio since his arrival. If the wheels eventually begin to fall off for Napoli, releasing Hysaj may prove to be a move which they will regret.

Lazio even made a major upgrade in the dugout. In June, they replaced Simone Inzaghi with the perpetually underrated yet often luckless Maurizio Sarri. As Lazio's new head coach, Sarri will undoubtedly have a point to prove, especially to Juventus. Just over a year ago, Juve shockingly fired Sarri even though he led them to yet another Scudetto. He is a coach whose relative lack of silverware belies his actual skill. No matter where Sarri has coached, his teams have almost always overachieved. It would be no surprise if this were to be true of Lazio as well.

Perhaps the biggest factor working in Lazio's favour, however, is the sudden decline of their Serie A rivals. Inter Milan and Juventus both lost their respective best players to second stints at their former Premier League clubs. The effects of these departures are obvious; without Romelu Lukaku and Cristiano Ronaldo, Inter and Juve do not even look close to the teams they were last season. AC Milan also lost their best player in June when Gianluigi Donnarumma signed for Paris Saint-Germain on a free transfer.

When you look at the five other clubs which could realistically win the Scudetto this season, all of them are flawed in some way be it in players, coaching, ownership and front office, or perhaps even a combination of the preceding. Though this is true of Lazio as well, the fact that there is no obvious leading contender to win this season's league title means that they realistically to have a chance to break their drought this season.

The glory days of Pavel Nedvěd, Alessandro Nesta, Marcelo Salas, and Sven-Göran Eriksson may long have passed, but now a new generation could be set to take its place in club history.

The Weekly Take, Issue 176: A Dozen Matches from GOAT Status

This season's Champions League is now underway, and perhaps the most anticipated fixture of the tournament's first matchday saw Inter Milan host Real Madrid. Real left the San Siro with all three points after winning 1-0. Rodrygo's late goal proved to make the difference.

Real's victory came in spite of the fact that Inter had the majority of the goalscoring opportunities. However, Los Merengues held firm throughout the onslaught, then took full advantage of their chance to snatch the win when it came.

This Champions League season could potentially have historic ramifications for Real. If they go on to win it all, one person at the Santiago Bernabéu will end the season as the greatest of all time.

I'm not talking about a player. The person I'm referring to is Real head coach Carlo Ancelotti, who returned to the Spanish capital this past off-season for his second stint at the club.

At the moment, I currently rank Ancelotti fourth all-time behind José Mourinho, Rinus Michels, and Helenio Herrera. However, another Champions League title would catapult the man from Emilia-Romagna ahead of all three and become, in my opinion, the unquestionable GOAT.

Ancelotti already has three Champions League title to his name: two with AC Milan in 2003 and 2007 as well as one with Real in 2014. It's difficult to overstate just what a fourth title would do for his reputation. If Real were to win the Champions League, Ancelotti would have four Champions League titles and stand alone as the all-time record holder. Even more remarkably, he would have won those four titles over a 19-year span.

Let that figure sink in. Nineteen years. That is unheard of. It would be an achievement which would likely never be repeated.

To put it into perspective, consider the three coaches who I currently rank ahead of Ancelotti. Mourinho won his first Champions League title in 2004. It has been 17 years since; he now struggles to keep pace with the tactical evolution which has taken place in recent years.

Nineteen years after Michels led Ajax to the 1971 European Cup, he was a year removed from an eighth-place finish in the Bundesliga with Bayer Leverkusen. Herrera, meanwhile, retired from coaching in 1981; this was 17 years after his first European Cup title.

Ancelotti isn't only defined by his longevity; his consistency is also absolutely astonishing. In addition to his three Champions League titles, he has reached the semifinals of Europe's leading club competition on four further occasions. These seven runs to the semis or better were achieved at the helm of four different clubs over 16 years, proving that Ancelotti is truly a coach who can extract outstanding results out of any squad and with just about any set of tactics, his blip at Everton notwithstanding.

If Ancelotti were to deliver a Champions League title to Real, it would easily rank as the greatest achievement of his legendary coaching career. Real are not among the favourites to win this season's tournament. Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, and reigning champions Chelsea are all seen as more likely to claim the title. One of the main reasons why I currently rank Mourinho as the greatest ever is the fact that he won both his Champions League titles as the coach of an underdog team. For Ancelotti to emulate the legendary Portuguese coach combined with everything else he has already done would end the GOAT debate.

In the more than two decades since Ancelotti first emerged as one of the best coaches on the in the world, the football landscape and metagame have changed numerous times. The fact that he has been able to remain so successful this entire time in spite of all these changes is a testament to his strategic genius and his immense knowledge of the players at his disposal and their strengths. Yet, in spite of all of this, Ancelotti continues to remain underrated by many fans as well as the media.

A victorious Champions League run this season would likely change that. Though it might not make Ancelotti the consensus pick for greatest football coach of all time, it would likely put him much closer to that status than most would think.

The Weekly Take, Issue 175: One Man Makes All the Difference

This past off-season, former Bayern Munich head coach Hansi Flick left the club to take over at the helm of Germany's national team. Much to the dismay of every other club within the Bundesliga (especially RB Leipzig) as well as Bayern's fellow Champions League title contenders, Bayern would soon bring in Flick's Leipzig counterpart Julian Nagelsmann, a coach with remarkable tactical nous and in-game decision-making skills belying his relative inexperience.

In a Bundesliga match during the most recent matchday which saw Nagelsmann's current club face off against his former one, the effect of the Bavarian coach's presence in the dugout was evident. Bayern had absolutely no trouble notching a 4-1 away victory against Leipzig in a match which saw last season's Bundesliga champions gain what should prove to be a vital three points against last season's league runners-up.

It was obvious from the beginning that Nagelsmann's successor Jesse Marsch was clearly overmatched. From a tactical perspective, as might have been expected, Nagelsmann proved why even at just 34 years old, he is already regarded as one of the world's best coaches. Nagelsmann already seems as though he has been in charge at Bayern for years.

Nagelsmann's track record speaks for itself. Having been coaching for just over five years, he has led both Hoffenheim and Leipzig to impressive results over that time. He rose to prominence after leading an unfancied Hoffenheim team to back-to-back top-four league finishes in the 2016-17 and 2017-18 seasons, then followed that up by clearly establishing Leipzig as the second-best team in Germany behind Bayern. He even took Leipzig on an unexpected Champions League semifinal run in the 2019-20 season which included an impressive upset victory over Atlético Madrid in the quarterfinals.

This is the first time in Nagelsmann's coaching career that his team is the favourite - not only in the Bundesliga, but also in the Champions League. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Bayern's acquisition of Nagelsmann makes them the favourite to win a second Champions League title in three years. Though Flick is not an incompetent coach by any means, Nagelsmann is quite simply on another level - he might very well rise to the "pantheon" level of coaches someday.

Where Nagelsmann truly excels can be seen in the phrase "the sum of the parts is greater than the whole". When you look at the players he had at Hoffenheim and Leipzig, no one would have expected him to lead both clubs to the results which he did. Now that he is at a loaded Bayern team boasting the likes of Dayot Upamecano, Manuel Neuer, Leroy Sané, Alphonso Davies, and of course, Robert Lewandowski, the potential which his squad now has is almost incomprehensibly high - if he could extract such success out of a more limited squad, imagine what he could do with what he has to work with now.

On top of that, Nagelsmann will bring even more tactical flexibility to Bayern. During his time at Leipzig, Nagelsmann was known to rotate formations, switching between three and four at the back or sometimes even playing without a true centre-forward. This once again reflects well on Nagelsmann because it shows he can and will adapt his setup to specifically counter the opposing team - something the vast majority of coaches do not do.

Many coaches in charge of star names for the first time might sometimes struggle with managing the personalities and egos within the locker room. Fortunately for Nagelsmann, this will not be a problem at Bayern. This is a squad which truly buys into the team-first approach from Lewandowski all the way down to the end-of-the-bench backups. Thus, Nagelsmann can expect to avoid any internal drama which could threaten to derail an elite club's season.

Due to his comparative lack of coaching experience, there is something of a reluctance to acknowledge Nagelsmann as one of the world's best coaches. However, everything seems to have aligned in such a way that Nagelsmann will never have a better chance to win a Bundesliga-Champions League double and enter that top tier where he truly belongs.

This season, Nagelsmann could hardly be in a more enviable position. He not only has a great chance to lead Bayern to another Champions League title; but reputation-wise, he also has so little to lose and so much to gain.

The Weekly Take, Issue 174: A Potentially Derailing Incident

A much-anticipated CONMEBOL qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup between arch-rivals Brazil and Argentina ended in shambolic scenes. The match was abandoned after Brazilian police entered the field to arrest four of Argentina's players. These players allegedly falsified information on documents pertaining to Covid-19.

Giovani Lo Celso, Emiliano Buendía, Emiliano Martínez, and Cristian Romero had allegedly claimed to have arrived in São Paulo from Venezuela without mentioning that they had also been in the UK, a country on Brazil's "red list". All four players are based in the Premier League.

The fact that Lo Celso and Romero were involved should certainly be a cause for concern at their club Tottenham Hotspur. The current Premier League leaders have confirmed that they intend to fine both players for their respective offenses. However, this incident was exactly what Tottenham did not need after a tumultuous off-season which almost saw star striker Harry Kane leave for Manchester City.

Although neither of the two players involved are regular starters for Tottenham, this is exactly the type of incident which can destabilize the team and distract them as they continue their quest for a top-four Premier League finish - just what they don't need at this early stage of the season. Last season, the North London club finished seventh in the league; it was their worst league finish since 2009. If they do not have a bounce-back campaign this season, the next off-season might see Kane finally depart Tottenham Hotspur Stadium after what would be 11 years at the club.

During the next transfer window in January, it might also be in Tottenham's best interest to ship Lo Celso out if possible. Not only is the midfielder from Rosario not a key part of the squad; he has also once again proven himself to be a complete knucklehead. This recent incident was Lo Celso's second violation of Covid-19 regulations. Last December, Lo Celso was one of three Tottenham players who found themselves in trouble after having attended a Christmas party; an act which contravened lockdown regulations in force in the UK at the time. If Tottenham can find another club willing to overlook Lo Celso's baggage, they should seek to make a deal as soon as possible.

This incident may also prove to be a major distraction to Argentina's national team. Fresh off winning the Copa América, the Albiceleste are currently second in the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying standings. They cannot afford to be thrown off by recent events because a slump might see them slide out of the top four; only four of the 10 teams in the qualifiers will advance to the tournament in Qatar next year.

Should Argentina finish fifth, they will enter a two-legged playoff against a team from a different continent. Though Argentina will undoubtedly be favoured to beat that other team, anything can happen over just 180 minutes.

Another significant matter for Argentina has to be the fate of goalkeeper Martínez. The Aston Villa player was the breakout star of Argentina's victorious Copa América run. He was selected as the tournament's best goalkeeper just a month after making his national team debut. Within just a few short months, Martínez has firmly established himself as Argentina's first-choice goalkeeper. To put into perspective just how meteoric his rise has been, Martínez had never been a first-choice goalkeeper at any point during his career until the beginning of the 2020-21 Premier League season. Martínez was almost 28 at the time.

Thus, the incident at the Neo Química Arena has left Argentina head coach Lionel Scaloni in a major quandary. None of Argentina's other goalkeepers are even close to the level of Martínez. In addition, the increased scrutiny will add even more pressure to the team's upcoming matches. It would therefore not be all that surprising if they were to drop cheap points in their next few matches, causing them to lose ground in the chase to claim a World Cup spot.

Both Argentina and Tottenham now find their campaigns at a crossroads due to the sheer irresponsibility of their players. How both teams respond to this latest turn of events will play a major role in determining the eventual final outcomes of their World Cup qualifying matches and Premier League and UEFA Conference League seasons respectively.