Tag Archives: manchester united

Aug 23 2015
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Apparently, Wayne Rooney Has Entered An Irreversible Decline. We’ve Been Here Before.

Manchester United has played four games this season, and captain Wayne Rooney has startedrooney bad all of them. Against Tottenham and Aston Villa, Rooney didn’t record a single shot on target. In Tuesday’s Champions League match – as Memphis Depay showed off his dance moves  in front of thousands of once skeptical, now adoring fans – Rooney patiently jogged in circles, waiting for something (a mis-hit cross, a wayward free kick, one of the six dozen long-distance shots Memphis pounded into the penalty area) to fall his way. Yesterday United drew 0-0 with Newcastle. Rooney had a goal disallowed.

The English papers have covered Rooney’s poor start with their usual brand of reactionary grandstanding and shameless myopia. In the Telegraph, Jim White argued that Rooney has lost his old aggression and enthusiasm: “For those who have watched him over the years, the fear is there is nothing temporary about his decline.”

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Jul 24 2015
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Five Years Later, Manchester United Is Finally Taking Wayne Rooney’s Advice

In October 2010, Wayne Rooney announced he was leaving Manchester United because rooney applausethe club could no longer attract star players in the transfer market. “I met with [United chief executive] David Gill last week, and he did not give me any of the assurances I was seeking about the future squad,” Rooney said. The news of Rooney’s impending departure triggered a frightening reaction: A mob of 40 fans clad in hoods and balaclavas gathered outside the gates of his Cheshire mansion, chanting insults and waving banners.

Rooney’s concerns were completely legitimate; he just wasn’t the right person to voice them. Since losing Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid, United had missed out on almost all of their top transfer targets: Franck Ribery, Karim Benzema, Wesley Sneijder. The fans who showed up at Rooney’s house were members of the Continuity Manchester Education Committee, a group of vigilante-activists who fought to prevent the Glazer family’s controversial 2005 takeover. They almost certainly shared Rooney’s apprehension about the club’s future. But Rooney – still recovering from a series of dreadful performances at the World Cup, as well as the public embarrassment of his second major sex scandal – lacked the moral authority to speak truth to the Glazers. (The tabloid rumors linking him with a big-money transfer to Manchester City didn’t help.)

Rooney eventually decided to stay at Old Trafford, thanks to the persuasive magic of a 160K-a-week contract offer. But his complaints about United’s transfer business marked a significant chapter in the club’s ongoing transition to the world of post-Sir Alex Ferguson soccer.

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Jul 14 2015
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Mourn Casillas, Blame Perez

The sight of legendary Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas sobbing into a press-conference casillasmicrophone as he bid farewell after 25 years with Real Madrid shouldn’t merely sadden Real fans nostalgic for past glories. It should send them charging to the gates of the Bernabeu, torches blazing and pitchforks aloft.

Casillas, who is on his way to Porto, is the highest-profile victim of the internecine political feuding that has consumed Real since megalomaniacal businessman Florentino Perez returned as president in 2009. In a recent tell-all interview with El Mundo, Casillas’ parents claimed that Perez had long hoped to replace Casillas, whom he allegedly considers too “short” to play in goal, with a signing of his own. “It’s been an attempt to hunt him and destroy him,” Casillas’ father said.

Perez has faced widespread criticism for his management of Casillas’ final weeks at Real. In May, after Real failed to win a single major trophy for the second time in three seasons, Casillas emphatically declared, “I can’t conceive of myself at any other club next season.” Nevertheless, Perez proceeded to conduct a very public flirtation with Manchester United keeper David de Gea, who grew up in Madrid and reportedly “dreams“ of playing at the Bernabeu. Sunday’s press conference was a half-hearted affair noticeably bereft of the fanfare that usually accompanies the departure of a club legend.

Given Casillas’ poor form, the decision to sell him seems perfectly defensible. But the years of rancor – the accusations and counter-accusations, the rumors of dressing-room unrest, the personality clashes – that precipitated his on-field decline raise uncomfortable questions about Perez’s player management.

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Jul 07 2015
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In The Shadow of Cristiano

Manchester United supporters never came up with a catchy chant to celebrate the nani ronaldopowerful long-distance shooting and intermittently successful step-overs of Portuguese international Luis Nani. But that didn’t stop fans from yelling Nani’s name. A few seasons ago, one exasperated season-ticket holder, seated close enough to the television microphones that his cheering occasionally interrupted live broadcasts, would shout “Come on, Nani, lad!” when the winger conceded possession.

United fans spent most of Nani’s Old Trafford career exhorting him to improve – to score important goals, to commit fewer fouls, to be more like Cristiano Ronaldo. After signing in 2007, Nani produced enough highlights to fill an average-length YouTube montage – the showboating against Arsenal, the back-flip celebrations, the Champions League penalty conversion – without ever establishing himself as the dominant attacking force Sir Alex Ferguson had thought he would become. Yesterday Nani, who spent last season on loan at Sporting Lisbon, left United for Turkish club Fenerbahce. No one seems to care that much.

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Jul 02 2015
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The Obsolescence of Javier Hernandez

The immediate consequence of the broken collarbone that Mexican striker Javier hernandez collarbone“Chicharito” Hernandez sustained on Wednesday is bad enough: at this month’s Concacaf Gold Cup, a regional tournament that almost always culminates in a hotly contested USA-Mexico final, Mexico will compete without its most prolific goal scorer. ESPN columnist Andrea Canales called the injury a “cruel setback” for the Mexican team, which hasn’t won any of its last seven games.

But Chicharito’s long-term prospects – his chances of securing regular first-team soccer at a top European club – look even worse. Manchester United coach Louis van Gaal has never seemed particularly interested in him, and Chicharito struggled for playing time last season during a loan spell at Real Madrid. In June, ESPN tweeted that Major League Soccer owners “are looking for a mechanism” to bring Chicharito to the United States. (One commenter suggested an airplane.)

Sebastian Giovinco’s transfer to Toronto last January showed that MLS is fast becoming a realistic option for big-name players in their mid-20s. Still, the rumors linking Chicharito to Orlando City FC, among other MLS clubs, constitute a harsh verdict on his recent form – and on his distinctive brand of old-fashioned forward play.

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Feb 16 2015
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Saying Goodbye To English Soccer’s Long-Serving Scotsmen

On Wednesday evening, when Aston Villa finally sacked manager Paul Lambert, the Paul Lambert Aston VillaPremier League lost its one remaining Scottish coach. Since the 1950s, gruff Scottish geniuses have been a fixture in English soccer, engineering memorable league campaigns and delivering pithy sound bites. Lambert, a mediocre coach with all the charisma of a wrinkled warm-up bib, has little in common with Matt Busby, Bill Shankly and Sir Alex Ferguson. But his sacking, the inevitable result of one of the longest goalless streaks in Villa’s history, carries symbolic weight. Over the last few years, as long-serving coaches like Shankly and Ferguson have become increasingly rare, what might be termed the “Scottish model” of sustained team-building, in which a visionary manager molds a squad over the course of several seasons, has given way to a new reality: a cutthroat league in which players and coaches never stay at one club for very long.

The Premier League’s growing volatility is especially pronounced at Manchester United, once a bastion of stability in the rapidly changing landscape of English soccer. In 2013, after 25 years in the Old Trafford dugout, Ferguson retired from coaching, and his final act as United manager was to anoint fellow Scotsman David Moyes as his successor. Ferguson, who saw traces of his own Glaswegian toughness in Moyes’ no-nonsense coaching philosophy, naively assumed that fans and journalists would wait patiently for the ex-Everton manager to blossom into Sir Alex 2.0. They didn’t, and less than a year later, Moyes was fired.

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Jan 11 2015
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Today in Narcissistic Goal Celebrations

It was a good day for the noble art of the narcissistic goal celebration.totti selfie

First, in the Premier League, Southampton’s Dusan Tadic flexed his abdominals – I think the medical term is “the Balotelli muscles” – after scoring in a crucial game at Old Trafford.

Then Francesco Totti took a quick selfie in front of the Curva Sud to celebrate his equalizer against Lazio. “I thought about it during the week,” Totti told Sky Sports after the game. “There is this fashion for selfies now.”

There is this fashion for selfies now. I’m torn between admiration for Totti’s ballsiness and despair at his apparently sincere embrace of selfie culture. At least he kept his shirt on.

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Nov 30 2014
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Why Isn’t Wayne Rooney Considered A Great Player?

Wayne Rooney recently earned his 100th England cap in a European Championship Manchester United v Manchester Cityqualifier at Wembley Stadium. He scored in that game, and then netted another two goals in a friendly against Scotland, putting him within reach of Bobby Charlton’s England goal-scoring record. At club level, Rooney has won five Premier League titles, a Champions League, several domestic cups, and a handful of individual awards. And yet many pundits insist that, despite his prodigious talent, he will never join the pantheon of footballing greats.

Rooney’s detractors emphasize a few key criticisms. He has repeatedly underperformed at the World Cup. He has endured long goal-scoring droughts. He can’t control his temper. He smokes cigarettes and eats unhealthy food. But the real reason Rooney hasn’t achieved greatness – or, at least, the kind of greatness pundits recognize – is the same reason he continues to be one of the most interesting players in world football.

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Nov 06 2014
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David Moyes: The Toast of Europe

Since Manchester United sacked him last April, David Moyes has been linked to a series of semi-prestigious moyes confusedcoaching jobs. For a while, Galatasaray wanted Moyes, then Inter Milan expressed interest, and now, according to The Guardian, Real Sociedad has placed him on a four-man shortlist. Curiously, Moyes – whose embarrassing, one-dimensional tactics made him the laughingstock of the Premier League – seems to have transformed from a middling British manager into a cosmopolitan football celebrity with a line of European suitors.

As a United fan, I feel it’s my duty to remind Real Sociedad chairman Jokin Aperribay about last season’s 2-0 loss to Olympiakos. And about the home defeat to Newcastle. And about the summer transfer window from hell.

I’m currently sending telepathic warning signals to Spain.

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Aug 31 2014
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The Great Manchester United Exodus Is Here. And About Time, Too.

Tomorrow is the last day of the summer transfer window, and the Great Manchester United Exodus is finally nani sportinggaining momentum. Last week, Luis Nani returned to Sporting Lisbon – though, thanks to Ed Woodward’s world-class negotiating, United still pays his wages. Earlier today, Shinji Kagawa re-signed for Borussia Dortmund. Javier Hernandez is about to complete a loan move to Real Madrid. Tom Cleverley looks set to join Aston Villa, where, hopefully, his “lack of ability and beady little eyes” won’t provoke quite so much outrage.

Woodward often delays important business until the end of the window. But I kind of doubt Arturo Vidal will leave Italian champions Juventus for a team that recently drew 0-0 with Burnley. So this year, my deadline-eve wish is rather modest. I want the long-overdue GMUE to keep rolling along.

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