عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Sports

Premier League 2019-20 Review: Managers of the Season

Burnley Sean Dyche, Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp, Villa’s Dean Smith, Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder and Wolves’ Nuno Espírito Santo have all impressed this season. Composite: NMC Pool/Reuters; NMC Pool/AFP/Getty; Reuters
Burnley Sean Dyche, Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp, Villa’s Dean Smith, Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder and Wolves’ Nuno Espírito Santo have all impressed this season. Composite: NMC Pool/Reuters; NMC Pool/AFP/Getty; Reuters
TT
TT

Premier League 2019-20 Review: Managers of the Season

Burnley Sean Dyche, Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp, Villa’s Dean Smith, Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder and Wolves’ Nuno Espírito Santo have all impressed this season. Composite: NMC Pool/Reuters; NMC Pool/AFP/Getty; Reuters
Burnley Sean Dyche, Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp, Villa’s Dean Smith, Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder and Wolves’ Nuno Espírito Santo have all impressed this season. Composite: NMC Pool/Reuters; NMC Pool/AFP/Getty; Reuters

As the latest Premier League campaign ends, "The Guardian" has nominated some manager of the season contenders.

Jürgen Klopp
Last season Liverpool missed out on the league title by 11.7mm, this season they won it by a country mile. As with his Champions League success, Jürgen Klopp ensured that painful disappointment translated into improvement. Liverpool played with consistency and authority that no one came close to matching. They played with panache but also with relentless control, even amid the pressure of ending their 30-year title quest. Klopp used to be accused of being too emotional and idealistic. That seems ridiculous now, yet he has never lost his charisma.

Chris Wilder
Most people said Sheffield United were certainties for relegation but they were safe long before the end of the season and did not switch off, going on to challenge for European qualification. This was achieved with cleverness and style, with players who had either never played at Premier League level, or been there already and made no mark. To top it off, the Blades were terrific to watch, an intelligent and innovative team in the true sense. It was not just their overlapping center-backs that amazed. Not only were they difficult to penetrate, there were matches in which they put three goals past Chelsea, Tottenham, and Manchester United. That is not normal for a newly-promoted side.

Nuno Espírito Santo
You know the way qualifying for the Europa League is supposed to be a curse in disguise for clubs with small squads? Well, Wolves don’t know what you’re on about. Nuno Espírito Santo’s team took it all in their stride, reaching the latter stages of the Europa League while surpassing last season’s points tally in the Premier League. And what a pleasing team they are to watch thanks notably to Adama Traoré, a player who is spectacularly fulfilling his potential thanks to Nuno’s coaching. Traoré joined players such as Romain Saïss and Leander Dendoncker in learning to excel in a variety of roles under Nuno, who has formed a special bond with his players and the Wolves fans.

Dean Smith
Teams who get promoted through the play-offs are expected to struggle, especially if they lose half their squad straight away. Dean Smith had to adapt to the top flight while blending in over a dozen new arrivals, promising talents recruited at an average price of around £9.5m each, which is small beer in the Premier League saloon. Then, halfway through the campaign, he had to cope with the loss of the spine of his team, with goalkeeper Tom Heaton and main striker Wesley suffering long-term injuries and John McGinn sidelined for several months. Smith showed his skills by successfully changing his approach and tightening up a defence that had been leaky, and he helped newcomers such as Douglas Luiz and Trezeguet to grow into very good Premier League players. Before the season ended it was clear that Villa would be wise to keep Smith irrespective of whether they stayed up or went down.

Sean Dyche
Some people are bored of Burnley. Sean Dyche might be one of them, in so far as he’d like to be given the financial latitude to expand his squad and embellish his style. In the meantime, he makes sure his team keeps beating others. Burnley won more matches than ever in the Premier League this season even though they lost one of their main strikers, Ashley Barnes, to injury halfway through. They won at Old Trafford and were the only away team to take a point at Anfield. They kept more clean sheets than everyone but Liverpool and Manchester City. Players such as James Tarkowski and Nick Pope have developed into England internationals and Dwight McNeil is one of the most exciting young talents in the league. Burnley may not be fashionable, but they are going to be a force in the top flight for at least as long as they have Dyche.

(The Guardian)

Most Viewed

 
 
Sports

Macron Aims to Sidestep Political Concerns and Regain Prestige with the Paris Olympics 

Centrist presidential candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron wears boxing gloves as he campaigns in the Auguste Delaune stadium, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France. (AP)
Centrist presidential candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron wears boxing gloves as he campaigns in the Auguste Delaune stadium, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France. (AP)
TT
TT

Macron Aims to Sidestep Political Concerns and Regain Prestige with the Paris Olympics 

Centrist presidential candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron wears boxing gloves as he campaigns in the Auguste Delaune stadium, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France. (AP)
Centrist presidential candidate and French President Emmanuel Macron wears boxing gloves as he campaigns in the Auguste Delaune stadium, Thursday, April 21, 2022, in Saint-Denis, outside Paris, France. (AP)

Emmanuel Macron has pledged to make France shine during the Olympics. Weaker than ever at home after recent elections, the French president hopes the Paris Games also will help his own star glitter again.

The Olympics are the best way to convince the world to "choose France," Macron said this week, trotting out a motto geared toward boosting foreign investment in the country. "It will promote our landscapes, our facilities, our savoir-faire as well, our gastronomy."

Macron’s decision last month to call early legislative elections plunged France into a political turmoil. The vote left the National Assembly, the influential lower house of parliament, with no dominant political bloc for the first time in modern France.

The French president said ministers from his centrist alliance would keep handling the government's work in a caretaker role at least until the end of the Olympics to avoid creating "disorder" when the world has its eyes on France.

On Thursday, Macron plans to have lunch with about 40 foreign CEOs of some of the world's biggest companies, including Samsung, Tesla and Coca-Cola, aiming to reassure them about the political situation in France, his office said.

But that's not what he wants to talk about when he welcomes over 110 heads of state and government Friday for the Olympics' grandiose opening ceremony.

The Elysee Palace said Macron will express "the ambition of showcasing the entire France, its natural and cultural heritage, its art de vivre and its top-class athletes, to an audience of over 4 billion television viewers, including over 1 billion for the opening ceremony alone."

In addition, Macron and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach have championed a summit meant to encourage world leaders and international organizations to support sports-related initiatives in areas like education, health, equality, inclusion and sustainable development.

The Sport for Sustainable Development summit was to be held Thursday near the Louvre Museum and include 50 heads of state and government.

Macron, who has highlighted the sports he has played over the years — famously boxing as well as tennis — said welcoming the Olympics "was just a dream" when he first got elected in May 2017. Just four months later, Paris nabbed the Games.

Macron’s aides said he personally was involved in preparations, spending hours in meetings and making almost 70 trips across France to encourage local sports initiatives or cities to host Olympic competitions over the past seven years.

When launching the 200-day countdown for the Games, Macron urged French nationals to work out 30 minutes a day, posting a video on his social media with him looking sweaty and in sportswear next to a punching bag.

He also got involved in setting up the opening ceremony along the River Seine — even if he refused to disclose details to keep the "surprise." He backed the idea because he wanted France to see it was important to "dare changing the rules" of an event typically held in a stadium, one of Macron's aides said.

The Elysee official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the French presidency’s customary practices.

Macron said the opening ceremony will show the values France brought to the world, with a parade of athletes on boats passing near the Bastille plaza, where the French Revolution was born in 1789, to the Trocadero district, where the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Some political rivals criticized Macron’s focus on the Games, seeing it as an attempt to divert attention from voters and serve his own interests. Members of a leftist coalition have demanded the immediate right to form a government because they won the most seats at the National Assembly.

"He wants an Olympic truce ... yet we’re not tired at all, we’re able to do two things at the same time, like watching the final of the 400-meter hurdles and form a government," said Marine Tondelier, secretary general of the Green party.

Macron touts that the Paris Olympics are meant to be the greenest Games ever, with an ambitious target of halving their overall carbon footprint compared with the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Games.

That in part was tied to using existing or temporary venues instead of building new ones. Two new facilities built in Paris’ disadvantaged northern suburbs were deemed unavoidable: The Olympic Village, to house athletes and later become housing and office space, and the aquatics center.

Some environmental advocates say the Paris Games should have gone further in reducing emissions and finding more ways to make sustainability a central fan experience. Some have also questioned the climate track record of big sponsors.

"The reality is that the organization of the Olympic Games is leading to massive overbuilding on our natural and urban spaces, sacrificing biodiversity and the well-being of local residents," activist climate group Extinction Rebellion said in a statement.

A social justice group also planned protests and has warned of the negative impact of the Games on the Paris area's most marginalized people.

With projected spending of 8.9 billion euros ($9.6 billion), the Games should cost considerably less than Tokyo’s $15.4 billion on the pandemic-delayed 2021 Olympics.

When it comes to sports, Macron hopes French people will turn their focus on the athletes’ achievements, rather than political concerns.

"It’s a moment of shared fun that will be good for the country. We’re going to be enthusiastic and united again. The country needs it," he said Tuesday.

One promise remains that Macron didn’t meet yet: swimming in the Seine that was cleaned up for the Olympics.

He repeated this week he'll go, but most likely after the Games — after all, Macron has still three years until the end of his term.