Watch the Throne

Luke Williams

Description

Watch the Throne: The Tactics Behind the Premier League's European Champions, 1999-2019 lifts the lid on the tactics used by Premier League clubs on their respective journeys to Champions League glory. Beginning with Manchester United in 1999 and concluding with Liverpool's 2019 triumph, Watch the Throne provides detailed analysis of how Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool overcame their opposition to claim the ultimate prize in European club football. While United's 1999 victory was an outlier, Liverpool's win in 2005 began a period of domination for Premier League clubs, with eight English finalists in eight seasons from 2004/05 to 2011/12. Changes in tactical trends saw the absence of Premier League finalists between the 2012/13 and 2016/17 seasons as Spanish, German and French sides briefly overtook their Premier League rivals, before an all-English 2019 final between Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur marked the technical and tactical recovery of the world's wealthiest football league.

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 26 avril 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785319266
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Luke Williams, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785317705
eBook ISBN 9781785319266
---
eBook Conversion by www.eBookPartnership.com
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1: Manchester United 1998/99
1. Quarter-final - Manchester United 3 Inter Milan 1 (aggregate)
2. Semi-final - Manchester United 4 Juventus 3 (aggregate)
3. Final - Manchester United 2 Bayern Munich 1, 26 May 1999
Part 2: Liverpool 2004/05
4. Quarter-final - Liverpool 2 Juventus 1 (aggregate)
5. Semi-final - Liverpool 1 Chelsea 0 (aggregate)
6. Final - Liverpool 3 AC Milan 3; Liverpool win 3-2 on penalties, 25 May 2005
Part 3: Manchester United 2007/08
7. Quarter-final - Manchester United 3 Roma 0 (aggregate)
8. Semi-final - Manchester United 1 Barcelona 0 (aggregate)
9. Manchester United 1 Chelsea 1; Manchester United win 6-5 on penalties, 21 May 2008
Part 4: Chelsea 2011/12
10. Round of 16 - Chelsea 5 Napoli 4 (aggregate)
11. Semi-final - Chelsea 3 Barcelona 2 (aggregate)
12. Final - Bayern Munich 1 Chelsea 1; Chelsea win 4-3 on penalties, 19 May 2012
Part 5: Liverpool 2018/19
13. Round of 16 - Liverpool 3 Bayern Munich 1 (aggregate)
14. Semi-final - Liverpool 4 Barcelona 3 (aggregate)
15. Final - Liverpool 2 Tottenham Hotspur 0, 1 June 2019
Photos
Acknowledgements
I know that it is a clich , but this book would not have come into fruition without the help and dedication of some very important people.
Firstly, thank you to my family. Thank you to my father, Ben, for sharing all of football s highs and lows with me (and giving me my first coaching role as his assistant manager when I was ten!) and for his proofreading, but also for being an inspirational role model every single day. Thank you to my mother, Nia, for her undying love and support and of course for her underrated levels of football wisdom! She is the strongest person that I know. Thank you to my brother, Josh, for being the person who I learned to love playing football with, and with whom I have also shared some wonderful match-going experiences.
Thank you to my girlfriend, Gemma, who also helped proofread this book. But more than that, she is a daily source of inspiration for me and I will always cherish her support. My thanks also go to Carole and Steve Brough for their support and for letting me spend hours on end analysing these matches in their study!
Of course, I am extremely grateful to Paul Camillin, Jane Camillin and Graham Hales from Pitch Publishing for their roles in bringing this book to life. Also, thank you to Duncan Olner from Olner Design for his brilliant work on the cover design.
Introduction
The UEFA Champions League is the most prestigious club competition in the world s most popular sport. Even during an era when the Beautiful Game has sometimes felt impurified by hyper-commercialisation and corporate interests, the Champions League has still blessed us with some of the greatest matches that we have ever seen - nights that have changed lives, inspired millions and granted legendary status to those on the winning side of history. Personally, I feel extremely privileged to be able to say that the Champions League has given me some of the best times of my life, visiting new places and sharing priceless experiences with those who share my unadulterated passion for football.
There are many people who excellently recall their European adventures, describing famous nights from the perspectives of those on the pitch or in the stands. I do not claim to be one of them. Instead, this book focusses on those who guided their teams to glory - those who formulated the game plans that gave us mere mortals the experiences that we will never forget. This book will analyse the matches that took Premier League teams and their managers to their Holy Grail, from Manchester United in 1998/99 to Liverpool in 2018/19, discussing the tactics that helped these teams to become the champions of Europe.
Some theoretical elements will be provided, but the beauty of talking tactics is that everything is open to individual interpretation. This is my take on how Ferguson, Ben tez, Di Matteo and Klopp won European football s biggest prize and I simply hope that it inspires you to consider your own view from a tactical perspective too. I hope to add tactical context to the fixtures that made these managers legends of the continental game, celebrating the incredible level of detail required to win matches at the highest level.
The games took place across a 20-year period that saw notable changes to the sport we love, many of which these managers had to adapt to and embrace in order to achieve success. I sincerely hope that the tactics that took these managers to victory provide you with the same fascination that they do myself, and I hope that you will feel inspired to continue seeing a game through a more tactical lens in the future.
Part 1
Manchester United 1998/99
Manchester United dominated English football in the 1990s, winning four Premier League titles in six seasons. However, at the start of the 1998/99 campaign their position as England s standout side was under threat. While Blackburn Rovers journey to the title in 1994/95 was anomalous, in 1997/98 Ars ne Wenger guided Arsenal to a spectacular double that saw them beat United to the title by a single point before winning the FA Cup. It was a mightily impressive performance from the London outfit in Wenger s first full term in the job and the Frenchman was determined to sustain this success.
Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United since 1986, was under pressure to deliver a response and re-establish his team s domestic superiority. While this would be his initial priority, United supporters also hoped to see more from their side in European competition. After winning the UEFA Cup Winners Cup in 1991, United had hoped to consistently challenge for honours on the continental stage but had so far fallen short in every season since. Between the 1991/92 and 1995/96 seasons they failed to survive in Europe beyond Christmas. In 1996/97 they harboured hopes of glory until they were beaten home and away by Borussia Dortmund in the semi-final stage of the Champions League, and in 1997/98 they fell to Monaco on away goals in the quarter-final.
In the summer of 1998 United spent over 27m on three major signings: defender Jaap Stam, midfielder Jesper Blomqvist and forward Dwight Yorke. The team received another boost as captain Roy Keane returned for the new season after spending the best part of a year out with a cruciate ligament injury. United s squad looked fresh and ready to pursue new heights in the 1998/99 campaign.
With the Champions League s expansion now requiring England s runners-up to navigate a qualifying round before entering the group stage, Ferguson s side defeated KS d 2-0 at Old Trafford before playing out a goalless draw in Poland a fortnight later. They then came through that season s Group of Death unbeaten by drawing home and away with both Bayern Munich and Barcelona and brushing aside Br ndby of Denmark. In that season s format, the six group winners were joined in the quarter-final by the two best runners-up. United were the second-best runner-up. In contrast, Arsenal failed to make it through a group consisting of Dynamo Kyiv, Lens and Panathinaikos.
By March 1999 United were flying, unbeaten in all competitions for almost three months despite losing assistant manager Brian Kidd to Blackburn Rovers (he was initially replaced by Jimmy Ryan, then Steve McClaren). Every time they looked beaten in a match, they somehow survived - week after week. Hope was growing among supporters that a historic treble of the league, FA Cup and the Champions League was actually possible, something that would require ending United s 31-year wait for European club football s biggest prize.
Chapter 1
Quarter-final - Manchester United 3 Inter Milan 1 (aggregate)
First leg: Manchester United 2 Inter Milan 0, 3 March 1999
To progress beyond the quarter-final stage, Manchester United would have to do what so many teams across the continent struggled to do throughout the 1990s - defeat Italian opposition. Serie A was indisputably Europe s best league for the duration of this decade, emphasised by the fact that it had provided a finalist for every single European Cup/Champions League Final between 1992 and 1998. Furthermore, every UEFA Cup Final between 1990 and 1998 featured at least one Italian side. United s 1999 quarter-final opponents, Inter Milan, had won the UEFA Cup in 1998 with a brilliant 3-0 victory over compatriots Lazio. Although 1998/99 was proving to be a tough season for them domestically, their European form had not faltered and they attained the joint-highest points total in the group stage despite facing holders Real Madrid (who finished second and qualified as the best runner-up). For United, this was a huge test.
Not only was this quarter-final a meeting between two giant clubs aiming for European glory, it was also the first meeting between David Beckham