Benfica 4-3 Juventus: Roger Schmidt’s side really are the Robin Hood of European football – The Warm-Up

WEDNESDAY’S BIG STORIES

Natural Justice

Did you hear? Juventus were back. Juventus were going to be ok. Juventus had sorted themselves out and won a football match. Two football matches! One right after the other, Torino and then Empoli. The Old Lady was back in her favourite rocking chair. Watch out world!

It took Benfica 45 minutes to completely destroy such optimism, and 90 to knock them out of the Champions League. Don’t be fooled by the relatively close final scoreline, or Juventus’ late flurry of pressure and goals. That came only once the game had disintegrated into a test of nerve that both sides ultimately failed. Before that, when it was a football match, Juventus got filleted.

Indeed, they were so bad that you can point the blame almost anywhere, and you’ll probably have at least half a point. Maybe you want to blame the rotten luck that has sidelined almost all Juventus’ summer signings, or that big Chiesa-shaped hole in the whole endeavour. Or the precipitous, alarming decline of Leonardo Bonucci and Juan Cuadrado, both hooked on the hour. João Mário overwhelmed the left side of Juventus’ defence, while Rafa Silva made mincemeat of the wonky back three. But ultimately, as with any team that ends up looking less than the sum of its parts, all roads lead back to the coach.

Juventus, under Andrea Agnelli, do not sack managers in the middle of a season. Luigi Delneri got his full term, and so did Maurizio Sarri and Andrea Pirlo. Perhaps this is a question of principles; perhaps, too, an awareness that these things do take time, that teams can suddenly click, apparently from nowhere, but actually in fact due to the slow accumulation of work and trust on the training ground.

But then Juventus, under Andrea Agnelli, generally manage to get out of their Champions League group. The last time they didn’t was 2013/14, when they finished behind Real Madrid and Galatasaray, and that felt very much an oddity, given that they were halfway through steamrolling Serie A. This exit, by contrast, feels absolutely appropriate: Juve’s domestic struggles and their European humiliation complement each other perfectly. Why wouldn’t a side currently eighth in Serie A finish behind the league leaders in France and Portugal?

The question is even more pressing given the nature of Juventus’ late flurry. On came the kids and suddenly there was energy, endeavour; suddenly Benfica were wobbling. You couldn’t call it a totally convincing comeback that just ran out of time, not with the chances Benfica missed to kill the game. But it did provoke two thoughts, one quickly after the other. First, look at these exciting youngsters coming through at Juventus. Second, do the club really want them coming through under Allegri?

There are three clubs still actively and overtly working towards a European Super League. Juventus have now been knocked out of the Champions League, and another – Barcelona – will almost certainly be eliminated this evening. Real Madrid’s ongoing competence means we can’t exactly talk about a curse, which is a shame, but this does at least serve to expose the workings.

The point of a Super League is to ensure that if Juventus do, by some inexplicable quirk of fate, find themselves to be less good at football than Benfica, then this doesn’t lead to them losing money or losing glamour fixtures. It is, therefore, explicitly anti-football: it divorces progress in the game from the consequences of playing the game. Accordingly, Juventus getting knocked out by Benfica isn’t just funny, it’s ideologically correct: anti-anti-football. All power to Benfica. Barcelona last season, Juventus this… truly, they are the Robin Hood of European football.

Tactical Innovations

Early days, but Graham Potter might be Chelsea’s most generally likeable manager since Claudio Ranieri. For fans of the club there’s the nice-looking football, the general positivity that has followed his appointment, and this unbeaten run – now at nine. The rest of get us to admire his rollnecks and nod along to his sensible quotes, and twice a week we get to look at a Chelsea teamsheet and play a fun game of Guess The Formation.

“He can’t have picked Sterling and Pulisic as wing-backs. That would be ridiculous,” thought the Warm-Up, shortly before it became clear that he had, in fact, done exactly that. He may never do so again – apparently he was trying to target Fizzy Pop Salzburg’s unusually narrow 4-2-3-1. But perhaps Chelsea fans can take this willingness to experiment as an encouraging sign, even if it didn’t always look entirely solid at the back.

After all, Potter’s been given one of European football’s plum jobs not on the back of a pile of trophies, as is traditional, but instead on vibes. It would be all too easy to play it safe for the first little while. Keep things calm, keep things consistent, keep all your players in their normal positions. Don’t pick two wingers at wing-back and leave Jorginho to cover the entire back three. At least, don’t do that in a Champions League game that you probably need to win.

But that would be boring, and that would be cowardly. Here is a manager with enough confidence in himself – enough confidence in his position – to try the weird stuff. How it all shakes out in the long term remains to be seen, but for the moment, there’s nothing standing between the wilder flights of Potter’s magnetic board and the Chelsea teamsheet. And that promises to be fun for everyone.

IN OTHER NEWS

Having watched this miss quite a few times, we’ve decided that the sudden change of pace is what really elevates it. The game was being played at a hundred miles an hour, and Mykhaylo Mudryk was moving faster than anyone. Then the ball slaps into Danylo Sikan’s foot… and suddenly everything slows down. Empires rise and fall. Galaxies are born and die. The universe bangs, expands, shrinks, crunches, is gone. And there he is still, staring at the ball, stuck, stunned. And it rolls, and it rolls, and it rolls…

Although it would probably be unfair to post that clip without also offering up Shakhtar’s equaliser, the latest remarkable moment in what has been, given the circumstances, a remarkable campaign. Somebody is going to pay an awful lot of money for Mudryk, and he might just be worth every eurocent. Look at the length on the kneeslide. Elite.

HAT TIP

“[Mourinho] really wanted me. He told me that I was his number one choice to come in. He even said to me that if the chairman came to him and said that he could only have one signing in the summer, I was the only one he wanted. … I let him down. People think he was bad for me, but it was the other way around. He put a lot of faith in me and I didn’t really perform. I just didn’t play well, I just didn’t grasp it … I don’t know. I just wasn’t able to get going there at the start.”

Even more interesting are his reflections on the ‘coldness’ that comes with being a professional footballer. “Being a footballer every day, I think, has made me cold in certain aspects. In family life, I’m just emotionless at times. In football, you have to stay so level that I take that across into family life at times. That’s not really a great thing. … It probably stems from bad times. You know when you’re having bad times in the Premier League and the scrutiny is high, you literally don’t want to go out. You are just miserable. And in the Premier League, you can be on that slippery slope for a while because it’s so hard.”

RETRO HAT TIP

“The energy slips, things drift; everything does, everyone does. Some support you but you feel the atmosphere, relationships [shift]. And that transmits to the pitch. Losing leads against Palace and Wolves reflected our emotional state: we weren’t right. It wasn’t working. I told the players: ‘I don’t see the team I want.’ That commitment and unity wasn’t there any more. That’s when I see I’m on my own. The club left me alone, and there was no solution.”

But here’s how he finishes, a cheerier note: “If there’s a good project in England, if someone wants me and is prepared to get behind me … In England that identification with your team brings the game alive. It’s deeper there, like a church. I was born in San Sebastián and my team is Real Sociedad. That feeling is in my heart and that’s what you find in England. It’s marvellous, the loveliest thing there is.”

COMING UP

Men’s and women’s Champions League tonight. In the former, Barcelona need a win against Bayern Munich in the former – although with Inter kicking off early, they may already be out – while Real Madrid vs. PSG is the stand-out game in the latter.

Marcus Foley will be here tomorrow with all the fun of the fair.