Pretty much the only sport that I watch anymore (with the exception of the few Olympic sports that are actually broadcast as competitions rather than fabulist jingoistic propaganda) is soccer, or whatever you choose to call it. I caught the bug as a kid as two of the UHF channels that we got were 14, which was Univision, and 26, which was the catch-all “international” channel, which would show Chinese/Japanese/Korean shows at various points and more importantly, RAI broadcasts of Serie A. For somebody who was borderline obsessed with the heraldry and symbolism of sport, soccer was fascinating, with the teams often using city seals hundreds of years old as their logo, and the fans, full of chanting, singing, and waving banners, were intoxicatingly exotic.
Catching matches these days is so much easier than it used to be, it’s ridiculous. I’ve got subscriptions to fubo.tv, which broadcasts league play from England, Spain, Germany, France, Turkey, and Mexico, as well as some Champions League (a tournament of European teams that qualified via finishing high in their domestic leagues the previous year), and the equivalent South American competitions, the Copa Libratadores and the Copa Sudamericana. I also use ESPN+, which gets me the Italian and Dutch leagues as well as some of the second-tier European cup competitions and oddities like the Indian league (or at least one of them, that whole situation is impressively confusing).
I’m just going to yammer in this thread about matches that I’ve watched or big things that have happened in the sport, hopefully it’s entertaining and/or other people feel compelled to jump in.
Today the early match in the English Premier League was Chelsea vs. Tottenham (the general convention in soccer is that the home team is listed first). There’s a ton of history and stories associated with this matchup, I’ll try and start at the highest level and work my way down. First, this is a London derby (“derby” is essentially any rivalry, generally two teams from the same general area/town) between two teams that really don’t like each other (a bit of a cliche, still, some derbies are more fierce than others). Chelsea are from the West End and have a bit of a nasty association with the far-right, although they have a fair amount of black supporters and players and last time these two teams played, it was one of their players, Antonio Rüdiger, who accused Tottenham fans of racially abusing him with monkey noises during the game. Tottenham Hotspur are from North London, and have a somewhat odd association with the Jewish population of the city, with the team’s supporters often referring to themselves as “the Yids” (regardless of whether they’re Jewish or not) and there has been anti-Semitic chanting from opposition fans directed at them over the years.
In terms of this year’s league, the question of who will win is pretty over – the English league, like the vast majority of soccer leagues worldwide, is decided over a season where each team plays every other team twice, home and away, with 3 points for a win and 1 for a tie. The benefit of this system is that it’s very hard to argue that the best team doesn’t tend to win, although it does lead to situations like this year, where Liverpool, having one of the best-ever seasons in the history of the league, is 22 points ahead of the second-place team. That said, there’s still a lot to play for, as the top four teams in the English league qualify for the Champions League next season, which means a ridiculous amount of television and prize money, which is increasingly necessary for the “big teams” to operate financially. Additionally, Manchester City, last year’s champions and current second-place team, have been spectacularly banned from the next two Champion’s League competitions for financial irregularities and while this is under appeal, this would mean the team that finishes fifth would also get a CL spot. Appropriately enough, Chelsea and Spurs are 4th and 5th, respectively, separated by a single point.
There’s also a lot of shared history with the coaches, Tottenham being coached by Jose Mourinho, who was twice a league-winning coach of Chelsea, where one of his star players was Frank Lampard, now the first-year head coach of Chelsea. Both clubs are in a transition phase, with Chelsea having had a recent transfer ban (essentially, no buying of new players) forcing them to play a bunch of their young English players who would otherwise be loaned out to smaller clubs to develop and Spurs, after having reached the final of the Champions League last year, sacked their old coach, Mauricio Pocchetino, after a horrible start to the season, with the ever-pragmatic Mourinho getting them successfully back up the table in short order.
Today they lined up very similarly, Chelsea as a 3-4-3 and Spurs as a 3-5-2 (Defenders - Midfielders - Forwards):
Both sides were somewhat patchwork, Spurs most notably having no healthy out-and-out forwards and thus forced to play two attack-minded midfielders in advanced positions, as well as a midfielder still working his way into playing form (Ndombele) and a player more comfortable at centerback or fullback at right wingback (Taganga). Chelsea are without their top forward, teenager Tammy Abraham, and instead started Olivier “Stupid Sexy” Giroud up top. They’ve also usually played with attacking wingers this year and instead opted to field Mount and Barkley, who are both naturally central players, in what used to be called the inside-left and inside-right positions.
Looking at the lineups, it would seem that Spurs, with their extra man in the middle of the field, would be able to dominate play there. However, it didn’t work out that way as Mourinho likes his teams to play deep and compact, and then hit quickly on the break. Plus, both Barkley and Mount dropped deeper and centrally over the course of the game, effectively creating a 4-3 overload for Chelsea, which combined with Spurs playing on the counter, allowed Chelsea to dominated possession of the ball.
And they did well with it, with a beautiful deep pass from Jorginho springing Giroud early and after his shot was saved and Barkley’s follow-up rebounded off the bar, Giroud smashed home a fine left-footed strike to the near-post. This was a huge problem for Tottenham, who was relying on hitting on the counter-attack with Chelsea coming forward to try and win an important game at home. Now that Chelsea had the lead, they could sit back, play more conservatively, and hold the ball, forcing Spurs to come forward themselves. This resulted in an excellent sequence of play early in the second half where a Giroud flick-on fell to Mount, who dribbled into a great position before passing to Barkley, who made an excellent first-touch pass to Alonso, who drilled a fine finish into the low and far corner of the net.
Really, the most interesting thing about the middle part of the game was how Giovanni Lo Celso managed to stay on the field. First, he kicked out at Mason Mount while lying on the ground, then stamped on Azpilecueta’s shin in the second half, and put his studs into Kovacic’s thigh, with none of these receiving even a yellow card. The stamp was the most farcical, as it was a clear red-card offense, and after the referee missed it, they went to VAR – Video Assistant Referee, i.e. another official in a video booth watching footage of the game, who, after a ludicrous couple of minutes standing around with nothing happening, announced no card and play to continue, only to have the Premier League issue a statement 20 minutes later, with the game still going, that both the ref on the field and VAR had screwed up and in fact, it should have been a red card. Hilariously, Lo Celso was then shown an extremely soft yellow near the end of the game, which caused the crowd to loudly and sarcastically applaud the referee. From the resulting free-kick, Alonso hit the crossbar, which then set up a nervy finish when Lamela, on as a sub for Spurs, hit a shot that deflected off a defender and past Caballero in the Chelsea goal.
Thankfully justice was served and Chelsea was able to come out with a deserved win, with their double deep-lying pivot of Kovacic and Jorginho especially effective. Really, there’s a ton that happened in this game, as well as other various stories (Caballero over Kepa for the keeper position, Dele Alli being left on the bench until late for Spurs, Spurs seeming to become even dirtier under Mourinho) that I’m leaving out for the sake of this not being a complete novel. That’s really what’s interesting to me about sport, how like other games, there’s emergent narratives that come out of play.
