{"id":8589,"date":"2023-10-23T16:53:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T15:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8589"},"modified":"2023-10-24T23:44:29","modified_gmt":"2023-10-24T22:44:29","slug":"a-night-for-hard-centres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8589","title":{"rendered":"A Night for Hard Centres"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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And so to the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan, the compact and intimidating home of Sevilla FC, for our third group stage game in this season’s Champions League.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Boca Juniors’ iconic ground<\/em> on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, with which the near-43,000-seat, refurbished 1950s Sevilla stadium shares a nickname, La Bombonera<\/em>, ‘the chocolate box’, the pitch is FIFA’s minimum allowed size, 106 x 68 metres (or 115 x 74 yards in old money). Steeply banked stands start close to the touchlines and reinforce the sense of confinement. They appear to hang over the pitch, especially the long, high-roofed stand that runs the length of one side and forms the open lid of the chocolate box, ready to unleash an avalanche of white-clad Sevilla ultras after every home goal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have visited once before, in November 2007, also for a Champions League group game that we lost 3-1, having won at the Emirates. We had already qualified for the knock-out rounds, and injuries forced a makeshift XI. At full strength, Sevilla duly got the point they needed to qualify too, but the three let them top the group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A defeat against the other strong team in Group H, particularly given the make-up of the team, is not something I’ll be losing sleep over,\u2019 the Guv’nor wrote with his habitual common sense, even as the sky fell in other corners of the Goonerverse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sevilla fell at the first knock-out hurdle, eliminated by Fenerbahce. The Europa League and its predecessor, the UEFA Cup, is more their thing. They have won it a record seven times, including last season and three times under Unai Emery, subsequently of this parish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vic Brits abroad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The presence of British expatriates among Europe’s mercantile classes in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras left an indelible mark on European football. Inter Milan, Genoa, Honved, Standard Liege, Athletic Bilbao, Bordeaux and even Bayern Munich are among the clubs where British expats played prominent roles in their founding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sevilla FC was founded in 1890 by Scots for the most part. Reputedly, the idea for a football club was born during a Burns Supper in 1890. Edward Farquharson Johnston, co-owner of a shipping line that carried Seville oranges to the marmalade factories of Dundee and the British vice-consul in the city, was the club’s first president, an office he occupied in parallel with the presidency of the Sevilla Pigeon-shooting Society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only nearby Huelva, now playing in the third tier of Spanish football and also founded by Scots, two engineers working in the local mines, is older, if by barely a month. In March 1890, the two teams contested the first club match in Spain. Sevilla won the game, played under FA rules, 2-0. Johnston refereed. No pigeons are known to have died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the by, the Scots also played a pivotal role in the history of marmalade, turning it from a paste-like preserve into a jam-like spread and moving it from the dinner to the breakfast table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sevilla has only been out of the top tier of La Liga for seven seasons since getting there in the 1930s. In the two decades since its last promotion, it has established itself as a top-half team, challenging, if not eclipsing, the giants of Barcelona and Madrid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This season got off to a stuttering start under Jos\u00e9 Luis Mendilibar, appointed manager in March, with Sevilla at risk of relegation for the first time this century. Despite winning the Europa League in May, he got the tin-tack just before the interlull, with the team having won only two league games and drawn both their CL matches. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mendilibar was an old-school coach with long success in getting a tune out of average players and keeping minnow La Liga clubs in mid-table security; the Europa Cup was his first trophy in three decades of coaching. However, his formula of doing the basics well and having his players run through brick walls for him came up short with the quality of players at his disposal in Sevilla. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His replacement, Uruguayan Diego Alonso, 48, has elite experience and is a more modern manager. He likes his teams to press high, be aggressive in transitions, play with quick interchanges and dominate through possession (sound familiar?). At his introductory press conference, he almost sounded like Arteta: ‘We have to focus\u2026and take it game by game to develop our idea and our game. Preparation is even more important; you have to prepare well to play well and be ready for everything that comes.’ Only the ‘for sure’ was missing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alonso will be more familiar to followers of the game in the Americas than in Europe. He was most recently in charge of the Uruguay national side, turning around a team on the brink of failing to qualify for the Qatar World Cup. He quit after Uruguay did not progress from the group stage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At club level, he has managed in his home country, Paraguay, Mexico and the United States, where he was Inter Miami’s first coach. He had the most success in Mexico, being the first manager to win the CONCACAF Champions League with two clubs, Pachuca and Monterrey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While this is the 48-year-old’s first coaching job in Europe, he played for several Spanish clubs. He was part of the Atletico Madrid side that won promotion from La Liga 2 in 2002 and was the division’s top scorer. A peripatetic playing career included his homeland, Argentina, Mexico and China. His uncle, Daniel, played a handful of games for Sevilla in the mid-1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alonso has had one game in charge at his new club, a visit from Real Madrid on Saturday evening, hardly the debut a manager would wish for. Nonetheless, Sevilla considered the 1-1 draw two points dropped rather than one gained, having outplayed the league leaders for long spells with a high-energy performance. Hopefully, that takes care of the new manager bounce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old Familiar Faces<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There may be some familiar faces on show against us, none less so than Sergio Ramos, the veteran Real Madrid and Spain centre-back, now 37 and back at his boyhood club. Ex-blue Manc right-back Jesus Navas, who played in the 2007 game, is another 37-year-old World Cup winner who has similarly returned to his Andalusian roots. He is club captain. Ex-red Manc Adnan Januzaj and ex-Spud Erik Lamela, lately returned from injury, are younger but will also be familiar names, as is Boubakary Soumare, on loan from Leicester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alonso has plenty more talent at his disposal: top-scorer this season, Youssef En-Nesyri, is a much-capped Moroccan striker; wingers Dodi Lukebakio and Lucas Ocampo are Belgian and Argentine internationals; attacking midfielder Ivan Rakitic has 106 Croatian caps; DM, Djibril Sow, newly arrived from Eintracht Frankfurt, is a Swiss international. Nemanja Gudelj has more than 50 caps for Serbia. His rival to partner Ramos at centre-back, 23-year-old Lo\u00efc Bade, was William Saliba’s cover in the French side at the 2021 U-21 Euros. Left-back Marcos Acu\u00f1a has more than 50 Argentina caps. \u00d8rjan Nyland is Norway’s first-choice keeper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many South American coaches, Alonso favours 4-4-2. However, he mutated Mendilibar’s preferred 4-2-3-1 into a 4-3-3 against Madrid, with Sow and Soumare starting as a double pivot ahead of an experienced back four all over 30. Expect something similar against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arteta will likely play a strong side after the setback in Lens. Defeat could leave us bottom of the group at the halfway stage if PSV wins at Lens and facing a mountain to climb. A point is the bare minimum, but we need to take all three to get back on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although I write ahead of Arteta’s pre-match press conference, we seem to have come through the Chelsea game unscathed. I fancy Havertz for Jorginho will be our only change. Tomi for Zinchenko and Ramsdale for Raya are possibilities, but what do I know?. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d8degaard, Rice, Havertz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Jesus, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘Holic Pound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will be a tough match on a cramped pitch in a daunting atmosphere. Sevilla will be difficult to stretch and smother. They don’t often lose European home games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the current scandals around player betting, I will eschew the usual survey of the odds on offer. Suffice it to say, I expect our away defence to rediscover their hard centres at La Bombonera after the ooey-gooey errors at the Bus Stop and the team to deliver a classic if hard-fought 1-0 to the Arsenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, far and wide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so to the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan, the compact and intimidating home of Sevilla FC, for our third group stage game in this season’s Champions League. Like Boca Juniors’ iconic ground on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, with which the near-43,000-seat, refurbished 1950s Sevilla stadium shares a nickname, La Bombonera, ‘the chocolate box’, the pitch is FIFA’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8589"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8609,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8589\/revisions\/8609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}