Tag: Luis Enrique

Chelsea turn back time as Frank Lampard appointed caretaker manager

For a limited time only, Lampard is back at Stamford Bridge

They say you can’t go home again, but if you’re Frank Lampard, you can at least stop by for a prolonged visit.

The former England midfielder has been appointed Chelsea’s caretaker manager, returning to the club where he spent around 15 years as a player and coach.

“We are delighted to welcome Frank back to Stamford Bridge,” co-controlling owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali said in a statement.

“Frank is a Premier League Hall of Famer and a legend at this club. As we continue our thorough and exhaustive process for a permanent head coach, we want to provide the club and our fans with a clear and stable plan for the remainder of the season. We want to give ourselves every chance of success and Frank has all of the characteristics and qualities we need to drive us to the finish line.”

Chelsea found themselves with a managerial opening after dismissing Graham Potter just seven months after hiring him to replace Thomas Tuchel. It doesn’t take a particularly robust memory to recall that Tuchel was himself sacked back in September as Boehly seemed to believe that cleaning house was essential after buying the club last summer.

Lampard will be the fourth person to act as Chelsea’s manager this season, following Bruno Saltor’s one-game role as an interim boss saw the Blues and Liverpool battle to a scoreless draw on Tuesday.

Lampard will hold the role through the end of the season, with Chelsea reportedly considering a list of candidates that includes Julian Nagelsmann (jobless after being shockingly fired by Bayern Munich), Mauricio Pochettino, Sporting CP manager Rúben Amorim, Eintracht Frankfurt’s Oliver Glasner and former Spain boss Luis Enrique.

Chelsea’s roughly one-and-a-half season run under Lampard from July 2019 to January 2021 was a decidedly mixed experience. In 2019-20, Lampard guided Chelsea to a fourth-place finish in the Premier League, an FA Cup final, and to advancement out of a potentially difficult Champions League group.

However, they were 33 points behind the Liverpool side that won the league, lost that FA Cup final to Arsenal, and crashed out of the League Cup (to Manchester United) and Champions League (after a 7-1 thrashing by Bayern Munich) earlier than the club had hoped.

The following season started off well enough, with just one Premier League loss in their first 11 matches and an emphatic first-place finish in their Champions League group. The wheels would fall off in December, though, with Chelsea taking just seven points from his final eight league matches in charge.

Lampard’s struggles would end up in sharp relief after his successor Thomas Tuchel would lead the Blues to a Champions League trophy and a climb back into the top four.

Opportunity for Pulisic

Chelsea were clearly hit-or-miss under Lampard, even if we’re being generous, but one player who thrived for at least part of his time in charge is Christian Pulisic.

In the 2019-20 season, his first following several seasons with Borussia Dortmund, Pulisic produced 11 goals and 10 assists. That made him Chelsea’s most prolific set-up man, and only Tammy Abraham scored more goals for the club.

That represents Pulisic’s best season as a professional, and his time in London since has largely been a pursuit of that kind of form and consistent place in a given manager’s team. Even under Lampard, it must be said that the 2020-21 campaign saw Pulisic score just two goals in 17 appearances across all competitions.

Still, a new manager is always an opportunity, and Pulisic will be looking to force his way back into more regular minutes. Whether his long-term future is with Chelsea or not, it’s a big moment for the U.S. men’s national team attacker.

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Niclas Fullkrug spares Germany’s blushes, but they’re still in World Cup trouble

Germany’s still, just barely, alive in Group E

Add Germany to the list of teams facing a must-win scenario entering the final set of games at the World Cup.

They played to a 1-1 draw with Spain on Sunday, and normally that’s a respectable outcome in a game between two traditional powers. It’s just that due to Germany’s shock 2-1 loss to Japan in their Group E opener, the three-time champions are now left needing a win and some help to avoid repeating their embarrassing 2018 group stage exit.

Spain and Germany played the kind of tactically astute game the world would expect out of them, leading to a first half that came down to some close calls. Antonio Rüdiger saw his 40th minute goal called back for offside, while Spain carved out some promising opportunities that just needed a better finish.

Luis Enrique turned to his bench looking for that final piece of skill, and got it from Álvaro Morata just over an hour into the match. Jordi Alba got up the touchline before delivering a low, near-post cross that the Atlético Madrid striker cleverly stabbed home, using the outside of his foot to squeeze a shot between Manuel Neuer and and the post.

Spain controlled long spells after taking the lead, though a Jamal Musiala miss served as a warning that they weren’t out of danger. With Hansi Flick essentially throwing five men up on their front line and Germany looking increasingly desperate, the equalizer finally arrived in the 83rd minute.

Lukas Klostermann surged up the right flank before squaring to Leroy Sané. The Bayern Munich midfielder drew two Spanish defenders before attempting to slip Musiala through, but between Sané’s pass being behind the run and the presence of Rodri, the chance looked like it would vanish.

Instead, Musiala’s attempt to drag play wide bounced conveniently into the path of Niclas Füllkrug, and the Werder Bremen striker — who, at age 29, stepped onto the field with just one international goal (scored in a pre-tournament warm-up against Oman) to his name — justified Flick’s faith, powering a shot past Unai Simon.

Germany made an ultimately unsuccessful push for a last-gasp winner, and for good reason: the draw doesn’t really do them a ton of good.

To get out of Group E, they must beat Costa Rica on Thursday, and they also need Spain to avoid defeat against Japan. In the event of a draw in that latter contest, the scorelines involved would be critical, as Germany will begin the day behind Japan on goal difference (0 to minus-1).

Barring a German stumble or a blowout win — Costa Rica has, of course, already been crushed once in this World Cup — it’s going to be an extraordinarily tight finish. A 1-1 draw for Japan and a 1-0 win for Germany, for example, would see Japan advance based on the third tiebreaker, their head-to-head win when the two met at Khalifa International Stadium.

Distressingly for Germany, the pattern playing out is like a cover version of what happened to them at Russia 2018. In that edition of the World Cup, Germany opened the tournament by being stunned by non-UEFA/CONMEBOL opposition (Mexico filling the role of Japan), and followed it up with a comeback against a European foe (a 2-1 win over Sweden). Game three was supposedly against the group’s weakest team, but South Korea struck twice in the game’s dying moments to win 2-0, sending Germany packing after just three games.

Costa Rica is seen as the minnow in Group E, and if Germany can’t do better this time around, they’ll be facing intense scrutiny as they fly home far earlier than anyone expected.

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Now streaming on Twitch: Luis Enrique, the most interesting coach at the World Cup

At the World Cup, most coaches avoid the public eye at all costs. Luis Enrique embraces it

AL-RAYAN, Qatar – There was a brief pause, surely because FIFA’s Spanish-to-English translator was weighing how best to interpret for mixed company the vulgar term Luis Enrique had just applied to himself in the midst of the Spanish national team’s official press conference.

The translator went with “stupid,” though Spanish-based media made clear that the coach’s wry word choice, “gilipollas,” is quite a bit stronger than that – more like “a––––––” or “idiot.”“You might find it interesting that I do so much better when I’m managing problems, I’m that much of a gilipollas,” he said, prompting laughter among the journalists present. “Don’t laugh. I feel more at ease when I’m in the face of adversity, when I have to lift the mood of my players, to bring everything you’ve got inside, make the most of my roots and my origins.“As a coach I’ve had very successful moments, but when I perform at my best, it’s when I’m in the face of adversity and hardship. These couple of weeks have gone so well. But my essence, when I give my best, is against hardship.”Just another entertaining moment in the life of perhaps the most interesting coach at Qatar 2022.Over the past week, Spain’s manager has also posted topless thirst traps on his Instagram, joked about pregnancy scares from the star attacker on his team, Ferran Torres, who’s dating his daughter, Sira Martinez, and drawn hundreds of thousands of viewers to his regular Twitch livestreams.

There, among other things, he’s discussed orgies and the sex lives of himself and his players, and mocked himself as “an old geezer who doesn’t know how to work the Bluetooth on his headphones,” despite the rather obvious fact that he’s one of the most technology-savvy coaches in the game.

Luis Enrique allows his players to ride electric scooters to and from training rather than pack in and out of a cramped team bus, for example, and uses wireless microphones attached to GPS monitor vests to communicate with his players during training while stationed up in towers to give himself a tactical viewpoint.

(Photo by JAVIER SORIANO / AFP)
Oh, and his team also destroyed Costa Rica 7-0 in their first group-stage match, the most lopsided result of the tournament so far.All this makes the former Real Madrid and Barcelona midfielder fairly revolutionary given the cautious, defensive norms of his profession, especially at this event, where the pressures are enormous and his colleagues usually regard the public eye as a dangerous intrusion that could reveal secrets and wreck their carefully-constructed plans.Luis Enrique isn’t breaking injury news or giving away his starting XIs ahead of time, and he’s clearly not lost any of the intensity he’s famous for both as a player and manager. But he does use Twitch — something he began just ahead of the World Cup, cheekily announcing, “streamers of the world, get out of the way! I’m heading downhill and I’ve got no brakes!” — to field questions from fans and offer glimpses inside Spain’s daily routine in Qatar.
He’s not ducking the hot topics, either: One viewer asked him about his players having sex at the tournament, which is not an irrelevant matter, considering that some World Cup coaches over the years have banned their squads from indulging, occasionally even keeping their romantic partners away from their camps.“It’s something I consider totally normal,” said Luis Enrique. “I mean, if you’re at an orgy the night before a match, it’s not ideal. But hey. With the clubs, they are at home and I have zero worries if they do it or not. If they do it, it is because it is going well for them.“With common sense, each one with their own wife or with whomever he wants.”Some might see this as a bit too much information, especially in an environment where even the slightest derivation from the norm can draw intense scrutiny. Some pundits and even other teams’ coaches, for example, suggested that the German national team’s covered-mouths gesture in protest of FIFA and Qatari censorship before their match against Japan had some effect on the final result, a 2-1 upset win for the Samurai Blue.But the Spanish seem to be bought in on their coach’s way of working. In fact, their players themselves are often among those six-figure Twitch audiences.“We enjoy, like the most part of the people who are watching this,” said midfielder Dani Olmo on Saturday. “I think he has hundreds of thousands of viewers, spectators. Yeah, It’s funny, but you also learn, because he’s talking about everything, but also every meeting, every speech he has with us, you learn something.

“So it will be good also for the people, for our fans who are following us, so they can see how he is more personally. So it’s good.”

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