Tag: Andy Brassell

ANDY BRASSELL: Has The UEFA Club Comp Revamp Worked?

May 19, 2025
Previews and Predictions

Ahead of the three intriguing finals, we find ourselves reviewing a new era for UEFA club competition.

It started with a revamp few understood – or few cared to understand. Now we’re approaching the moment of truth in the 2024-25 season it feels as though the new UEFA Champions League format has been in place forever and, while there have been few complaints, the effects continue to be felt, not just within the competition itself, but within its sister tournaments, the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League.

If the all-new singular league phase created high tension and a greater sense of jeopardy towards its conclusion, the addition of the playoff round to bridge the gap to the knockouts was where fans were really rewarded. Manchester City’s epic tussle with Real Madrid CF, Bayern Munich’s narrow escape against Celtic FC, and SL Benfica’s struggle with AS Monaco were all prime edge-of-your-seat UEFA Champions League dramas. There were shocks too as PSV Eindhoven disposed of Juventus, Feyenoord dumped AC Milan out and Club Brugge eliminated an excellent Atalanta BC side – underpinning the notion that the re-rub of the competition has at least shaken things up in the short-term.  

That sense of change has continued throughout the knockouts. Even though Paris Saint-Germain and Internazionale are hardly strangers to a UEFA Champions League final, it feels inherently like there is a freshness to this year’s showpiece in Munich. 

PSG have been, by consensus, the best team in the competition, despite a tepid start to their league phase campaign. This columnist witnessed first-hand the moment their fluid football clicked into place away at Salzburg just before Christmas. Finally, post-Mbappé, Neymar Jr and Messi, PSG have begun to get neutrals on-side.  

Yet, as they proved by beating the most exciting FC Barcelona side in a generation, Inter are not to be underestimated. Their ability to roll with the punches and hang tough under extreme pressure is unfathomable. And, at the other end of the pitch, Lautaro Martínez, despite a punishing workload for club and country in the last two years, is the UCL’s top scorer among players remaining in the tournament. 

Away from the UEFA Champions League final, the English are coming (one of PSG’s 2024-25 highlights is besting four of the Premier League’s so-called finest). 

Normally having three teams from one country spread across the three UEFA finals would suggest that nation has a certain level of European dominance, but let’s not jump the gun on the basis of one singular season, albeit an eventful and potentially revealing one.

The UEFA Champions League doesn’t exist in a bubble. Its revamp has had one particularly big effect on the UEFA Europa League – that no longer do we get ‘lucky losers’ parachuting into the competition having finished third in a four-team group stage. Many have petitioned for this for years and would say the adjustment is fairer. But has it made the competition better?

Only time will tell if this season is an anomaly rather than the new normal, but the shift in the UEFA Europa League’s final stages could not be any more sharply underlined than by the fact its final will be contested not just by two Premier League teams, but by Premier League teams who occupy 16th and 17th in their domestic standings. The UEFA Europa League is a great competition that has in recent seasons built its reputation on thrilling knockouts.

That hasn’t quite been the same this term. Though, if Manchester United’s breathless 5-4 aggregate win over Olympique Lyonnais in the quarter-finals lives on in the mind of everyone who saw it (it certainly will in mine), it doesn’t hide the fact that the quality of this knockout stage has not been up to that of recent years.

United have been propped-up (and not just in that game) by the mighty Bruno Fernandes, the best player left in the competition. Yet Tottenham Hotspur are more than capable – if maddeningly inconsistent – and it would be a great denouement to Son Heung-min’s incredible time in North London if he’s fit enough to be as much of the decisive player as United hope Fernandes will be.

Chelsea FC are, to an extent, in the same boat as the other two English clubs in the UEFA finals. Almost overpowered in comparison to their competitors and expected to saunter home, especially having included Cole Palmer in the UEFA Conference League squad post-Christmas. It has been clear from September that they are the overwhelming favourites for this trophy but now, at the final hurdle, at least they have worthy opposition to contend with. The semi-final victory against ACF Fiorentina, and how Real Betis celebrated it, was everything European club competition should be. 

Betis come equipped with their best team in years and even if their 2025 surge looks to have to come too late to get them a UEFA Champions League spot via their standing in La Liga, they would quickly dismiss that as a disappointment if the season ended with the club’s first ever European silverware.

How this will pave the way to the next few years of UEFA club competition remains to be seen. The logjam of quality at the top of the Premier League, with Newcastle United and Aston Villa joining the previously ring-fenced English UEFA Champions League places, might mean that English teams further dominate the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Conference League in years to come, almost by default.

The counterpoint is that Italy and France have also developed incredibly competitive races for European places. It feels as if even with the extra competition, tickets to ride in Europe are maybe even more precious than ever. Either way, it doesn’t feel like the traditional powers of recent seasons are going to be able to monopolise the UEFA Champions League over the next few years. The field is as open as these three finals promise to be.


ANDY BRASSELL: George Weah on the Ballon d’Or, Wenger and THAT solo goal

March 26, 2025
Signing Sessions

We have to ask this first. “For me, it’s the best goal I ever scored in my career,” says George Weah, and it is good to have one of the immutable truths of football confirmed first-hand. We are talking, of course, about his solo effort for AC Milan on the first day of the 1996/97 Serie A season against Hellas Verona, a goal which has no equal in the modern game.

You know the one, Weah charging coast-to-coast from one penalty box to the other on what one of his teammates that day, the great Zvonimir Boban, described as an “incredible” run, before smashing home to seal a Rossoneri win.

It is a goal that gets greater every time you watch the footage and, remarkably, it still tends to be the first thing you think of when you think of Weah. Remarkably, because the Liberian centre-forward piled up landmarks throughout a stellar, near-two-decade career in the professional game, the peak of which encompassed 13 years as one of the most feared strikers in European football.

Even if it was more typical of the time, it feels astonishing viewed from a modern perspective that Weah was 21-years-old before he was brought to Europe. Today he is of no doubt of the major outside-protagonist who put him on the road to success. “God bless Arsène Wenger for making this career work out,” he emphasises, without any prompting. The legendary French coach leant heavily on African talent to build his AS Monaco teams but Weah is insistent that Wenger’s human side made it all work.

“[I thank him] for welcoming me personally,” he continues, “as a father figure. He made me what I was in my career. He’s the brain behind the talent. He was the angel that God sent to rescue me. I say that because I had the talent, but nobody thought that talent would be shown to the rest of the world. Thank God for Arsène Wenger.” After four prolific seasons in the Principality – and despite fulfilling a dream – it turned out Wenger and AS Monaco was only the beginning.

In 1992 Weah headed north to Paris Saint-Germain, and over three wildly successful campaigns he made all of his – and PSG’s – craziest dreams come true. There was only the second Ligue 1 title in the club’s history in 1994 among four trophies but it was really all the European nights that lit the French capital’s passion for football like never before. Coach Luis Fernández surrounded the striker with great players (Rai, Alain Roche, David Ginola) who thrilled the Parc des Princes.

Weah credits iconic French manager Arsène Wenger for “making this career work out.”

But Weah reached new heights on a personal level, being the UEFA Champions League’s top scorer in 1994/95 on PSG’s way to the semi-finals and on his way to becoming the first African Ballon d’Or winner. He seems to enjoy talking about perhaps his second most famous goal, the solo winner for PSG at Bayern Munich’s Olympiastadion in the autumn of 1994, even more as he swishes his right hand in a slalom motion, complete with a ‘whoosh!’ every time he goes past a defender, much to the delight of everyone in the room.

There was a bit of extra motivation. “I remember Lothar Matthäus saying ”George Weah’s not one of the best,” he smiles, “so I had to show them. But I was frustrated when I got there because I was on the bench. [The coaching staff] told me I was going to finish the game, so I had to show what I could do. The first ball I got, I had to display my dazzle, so [Matthäus] could know. He was among those guys, the defenders [I beat]. I love him; Lothar is a great defender, but George Weah is a better attacker. He was just against one of the greatest number nines in the world, which is what I was.”

Despite his individual feats, Weah firmly believes his collective efforts won him the ultimate prize. “I think the Ballon d’Or, at the time when I won,” he reflects, “was about everything, not just scoring goals. I was one of the strikers who was about team play. I made other players score. In my mind it was never about being the top scorer. I wanted my team to win championships. And that’s why the goals I scored were about my team winning titles – 1-0s, 1-1s, 2-1s. I scored goals that brought victory.”

He leaps forward to his second Scudetto at Milan, in his final season at the club. “A game that I remember is against Juventus,” he recalls of the third-last game of the season, with Sven-Göran Eriksson’s star-studded SS Lazio breathing down Milanese necks. “We saw that Lazio were already leading. We came back [from half-time], I scored the two goals and we went one point ahead. I was a masked man! When the team needed a goal to win, that’s the kind of goal I scored.” As he speaks, the light in the room goes off. Weah clenches his fists and it comes back on, to laughter. “I make things happen!” he chuckles.

While Weah is more than confident in his own qualities as a player – “I was fast, strong and had technique” – he is also at pains to point out his industry. Describing that goal against Verona again, he talks of it being the result of “struggle” and “applied effort,” not just inspiration. “First of all I just tried to take the ball out of the [Milan] area,” he admits, “and then I saw the opportunity to move forward. And then I saw the way through.” Then, and always, it was about appetite. “You can see I was fighting,” he continues. “I fought for that goal. When I came home, I ate three steaks.”

The finish, Weah concedes, was the most enjoyable part. “The best part of the whole action was when I pushed the ball one last time and lifted my head to see the corner [of the goal].” The rest is history. Yet still, all these years on, he remains amazed by his own composure. “After struggling through, falling… who does that?” We all know the answer to that one: George Weah does.

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ANDY BRASSELL: World′s Best XI

November 29, 2024
Discounts and Sales

World football expert ANDY BRASSELL talks through our selections for the World’s Best XI, introducing some of the incredible icons whose shirts are 50% OFF on Icons.com throughout our Black Friday sales event.

From Gianluigi Buffon to Cafu, Zinedine Zidane and, of course, Lionel Messi, Andy takes us through each icon and why they’re a part of our World’s Best XI sale.

Get 50% OFF each player in our World’s Best XI sale on Icons.com until Monday December 9th with regular substitutions adding new icons and more amazing savings!


ANDY BRASSELL: What To Watch On Matchday One Of The New UEFA Champions League

September 17, 2024
Previews and Predictions

The newly-reformatted UEFA Champions League is here! Who better to guide you through the first matchday of a new era for European football’s biggest and brightest club competition than continental football expert ANDY BRASSELL, here to take you through the main focal points of the first week of action.

HUGE MATCH-UPS

There have been two main stages to the build-up to this year’s reformatted UEFA Champions League; pre-draw, in which many were confused by what the big, new, all-in-one league phase would look like, and post-draw, in which many of the original naysayers were now drooling with anticipation over some of the big fixtures.


And we have them from the get-go this week. AC Milan v Liverpool FC, Manchester City v Internazionale and AS Monaco v FC Barcelona are all outstanding matches with the potential to get this fresh era off to an absolute flier. With the UEFA Champions League restarting in bold fashion with fixtures over a three- day window rather than two, each one of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday has its huge, must-watch game.


Wednesday’s centrepiece between City and Inter is probably the ultimate pick, a rerun of the 2023 Final and one containing two of Europe’s best sides who have every right to believe in their chances of going deep into this season’s campaign. The Italian champions have a far better team now than the one that got to Istanbul in 2023; in fact they were improved last season too, and still managed to drop the ball against Atlético Madrid in the Round of 16. With City feeling a bit mugged-off by Real Madrid CF last season, both sides have scores to settle.

HANDBRAKE OFF

We were used to a degree of caution in the UEFA Champions League group stages as teams managed workload and resources and played it safe to ensure they finished in the top two. Maybe a best practice approach to this new megagroup will emerge at some point, but it is unlikely to do so this season, and it certainly won’t in the opening weeks.


Why? Quite simply there is no way of knowing yet how many points a team needs to make it into the top eight (and thus directly into the last 16) or, for those below-elite clubs with slightly lesser aims, into the top 24 to make it into the playoffs for the first knockout round.


It might be that, for instance, somewhere around the 16-point mark from the eight games gets top eight – and you bet your last pound/euro that the biggest clubs will do everything they can to get two midweek
matchdays of rest – while around nine should earn teams a playoff spot. For now, though, we just can’t know. And neither can the clubs.


So from Paris Saint-Germain or Real Madrid CF to Brest or Sturm Graz, the only option is to go for it. The biggest clubs can’t play conservatively with that tangible prize of a couple of games off lying ahead of them. The smaller clubs know a couple of good results will keep them in the mix for post-January involvement. So whether your aim is to top the class or to scrape a passmark, being aggressive and positive is probably the only way to do it, which has to be good news for the watching public.

NEW SIGNINGS WITH POINTS TO PROVE

Generally European clubs are counting the pennies more closely than in a long while but a few clubs have been determined to change their squads profoundly this summer, and have often traded furiously to that end. Juventus (who start against PSV Eindhoven on Tuesday) are one giant who has used the summer to get rid of players as well as bring them in and present an exciting new squad for this return to the UEFA Champions League.


It is the biggest stage and for that reason the new boys will be keen to take their opportunities to show their new clubs that they did the right thing in signing them. Michael Olise’s European debut is hotly anticipated, having already conquered swathes of France fans on his first senior squad call-up earlier this month. FC Bayern Munich (who play Dinamo Zagreb) have a rich history of wide players and the Hammersmith-born man scored his first goal for the club in their 6-1 demolition of Holstein Kiel this weekend.


The summer’s biggest signing was Julián Alvarez, who arrived at Atlético looking a little jaded (hardly surprising given he played nearly 80 games in a last season for Manchester City and Argentina that lasted 11 months) but he has started to find an extra gear in recent weeks, scoring in a win against Chile for Argentina and then getting his first Atleti goal to seal a win against Valencia CF on Sunday night. Diego Simeone’s team host RB Leipzig and Alvarez may well be in the starting lineup.


Douglas Luiz is another overworked player who could do with finding some inspiration this week. The Brazilian made a first start for Juventus since joining from Aston Villa in the goalless draw at Empoli this weekend, and he received some criticism for his display. As with Alvarez, it is a little unfair after he arrived straight from a summer playing in the Copa América. Juve were prepared to push the boat out for him so he could give Kenan Yıldız, Teun Koopmeiners and Nico González the space to flex their creative muscles, so Douglas Luiz will be even more vital – arguably – in a UEFA Champions League context as the Serie A side look to return to the top table in style.

ICON OF THE MATCHWEEK: Vinícius Júnior (Real Madrid CF)

The brilliant Brazilian was on the scoresheet again at the weekend, netting the vital penalty opener at Real Sociedad in a hard-fought win. Much has been made of the relationship between Vini and Kylian Mbappé and how they might tactically fit; with them both being renowned for outstanding movement and having played significant parts of last season in a front two and as a central striker respectively, the flexibility they will give Carlo Ancelotti is significant.


This week, however, they land together in Real Madrid CF’s natural habitat, in the arena in which they will be judged ahead of all others. VfB Stuttgart, last season’s surprise Bundesliga runners-up, arrive at the Bernabéu and will prove a test.


Sebastian Hoeness’ team are not shy; they play attacking, possession-based football and this, combined with a habitually narrow midfield shape, should mean that Vini will find more space on the left flank than he would be likely to in your average La Liga game. VfB Stuttgart will come to spoil a Madrid party and, inadvertently, might give Vini and Mbappé the chance to party themselves.