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Bayern Munich making history that won't get past your email filter
TIGRES RAGGED
The tens of tens of viewers who regularly tune into the BBC’s flagship channel, Red Button, witnessed a little bit of history on Thursday night: Palmeiras striker Rony taking the worst penalty of all time. A syncopated fusion of styles that incorporated the angled approach, the stutter, the hop, bebop, modal, slap bass, the shuffle, the hustle, the mashed potato, existential pondering, avant-garde performance art, and a pause to size up the situation as though lining up a long red from baulk, it was nothing less than a jazz odyssey. It was also not very successful, and made Simone Zaza look like Trevor Francis. Congratulations to Al Ahly on winning the shootout that decided third place at the Club World Cup.
Related: Bayern beat Tigres in Club World Cup final to earn sixth trophy in nine months
Afterwards, Bayern Munich made some history themselves. By beating Tigres in the final of the aforementioned tournament, they completed the full house of all six trophies available to them in 2020, which for the purposes of football it still is, sort of. There’s a name for what they’ve done, a -tuple, but it won’t get past your prissy email filter. League, both domestic cups, Big Cup, Super Cup and now this. It’s some feat, achieved before only by peak-Pep Barcelona, and should really be getting more attention in the UK media, the disdain for the Club World Cup in some quarters being very strange. It’s almost as though we’re a miserable little island full of self-defeating insular blowhards.
This being 2020, which it still is, sort of, VAR obviously had to stick its neb in and ruin the spectacle. Joshua Kimmich scored a beauty midway through the first half, a creamy drive fit to win any world championship. However, the goal was ruled out because Robert Lewandowski was in an offside position nowhere near the goalie’s line of sight, or something. Then on 59 minutes, Lewandowski headed a deep cross into the path of Benjamin Pavard, who scored what proved to be the winner, though VAR launched an interminable inquiry, finally deciding he’d scored it in the 61st minute, or whatever. Not that Lewandowski cared too much, explaining afterwards that he’d masterminded the whole thing by telling his teammates at half-time to stop messing about and get the ball in the effing mixer. Ah the pinnacle of world sport. Well done, Bayern!
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I have to admit his post created a need to be addressed. It was a contradiction between the post and the reality. Probably the post was not even his responsibility, I don’t know? But the post was showing ‘training session great and I am ready’ and was totally wrong” – José Mourinho was not a fan of Gareth Bale’s midweek Instachat optimism. And here’s David Hytner with some further reading.
FIVER LETTERS
“Harry Pearson’s piece on foreign language sports newspapers (yesterday’s Still Want More?) took me straight back to a Barcelona bar in October 1997. All that day, unlike the Likely Lads, I wanted to know the score of the previous evening’s game Scotland had played, in which a win would guarantee us a place at the following year’s World Cup! These were the days before smartphones and I didn’t want to waste the money calling Scotland, only for my mum to be home alone and tell me: ‘I didn’t know they were playing and your dad’s out.’ So it dawned on me – spend that money on a sports paper written in a language you don’t understand, take it to a bar, spend more money on a beer and trawl through its pages until you find, at least, a results page. So I did. We beat Latvia 2-0 with Kevin Gallacher and Gordon Durie scoring. Simpler times … and much more fun” – Mark Cherrie.
“Congratulations, Fiver. In the rich vein of metaphor pedantry, you’ve essentially turned José’s tactics and man-management into Schrödinger’s Bus (yesterday’s Fiver). It’s simultaneously parked, yet running over Young Gareth at the same time. Bravo” – Mike Wilner.
“David Beckham producing a documentary on the acrimonious split between the brothers that founded Adidas and Puma called ‘World War Shoe’ sounds like an idea that Alan Partridge would have been proud of” – Noble Francis.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day prize is … Mark Cherrie.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Mikel Arteta has revealed he had to inform Arsenal about receiving online threats against his family this season. “When they go personal against me … I can take it,” he said. “When family is involved, then it’s a different story.”
Leicester will be without James Justin for the rest of the season after a scan showed the defender suffered ACL-gah against Brighton.
Meanwhile, Jürgen Klopp is considering tossing poor lamb Ozan Kabak into the path of a hungry Jamie Vardy on Saturday. “Jamie is a proper challenge in this league, the way he plays … so that’s a proper job to do,” tooted the Liverpool boss.
Ole Gunnar Solskjær has attempted to STOP (SOME) FOOTBALL by asking for Big Vase knockout games to be reduced to one leg. “When one game is at a neutral venue it’s a disadvantage, of course, for the team that doesn’t have the home game,” he blabbed.
The Liverpool v Manchester United rivalry is being used to power up protests against the military coup in Myanmar.
Bayern are leading the race to sign Dayot Upamecano at a cut-price £37.3m but Chelsea and Liverpool are hot on their heels.
And Sam Allardyce has urged his doomed West Brom to put an unbeaten run together, starting against Manchester United on Sunday. “Can the club go four, five or six games without getting beaten?” he asked, to muffled guffaws behind the Zoom mute button. “That’s the goal to start with. Stop losing, start winning and drawing and go on an undefeated run.”
STILL WANT MORE?
Part of the joy in watching Fran Kirby return to peak form at Chelsea is knowing what she has overcome, writes Jonathan Liew.
Just the 10 things to look out for in the Premier League this weekend.
Sid Lowe invites us to get comfortable while he tells the story behind Barcelona’s disastrous rejection of Luis Suárez. It’s a cracker.
Manchester City’s USA! USA!! USA!!! World Cup winner Abby Dahlkemper gets her chat on with Suzanne Wrack about her basketball prowess, staying positive in the pandemic and getting stuck into the derby.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
