Cultured Football #66
As I was wondering what to write this week to kick off Cultured Football, the news that Newcastle United - a club that DEFINITELY ISN’T OWNED BY THE STATE OF SAUDI ARABIA - will next season be wearing a green and white away kit which - DEFINITELY INCIDENTALLY - are also the colours of the Saudi Flag. Oh, glorious, glorious (modern) football.
PS - If you REALLY want a green and white football shirt, check out this week’s And Another Thing segment.
The new era of Crystal Palace and the Premier League
By Mark Thompson for Remarkable
This one is from back in December but seeing that Patrick Vieira is among those nominated for the Premier League Manager of the Year, think it is worth going over how he has changed Crystal Palace.
8 minute read
Why free-kick vanishing spray is football’s great modern invention
By John Earls for When Saturday Comes (via The Guardian)
The most genius innovations are usually the simplest ones. Certainly, that the case with refereeing where the ability to show players where they had to stand in free kicks fixed one of the most annoying problems (and timewasters). All hail the vanishing spray!
3 minute read
How a Former Car Salesman Gave Klopp and Tucher Their Big Break in Management
By Terry Duffelen for The Sound of Football Blog
These days, that of FSV Mainz 05 is fairly well established Bundesliga club, even if one that typically frequents to bottom half of the table. That wasn’t the case for much of their history. Matters changed when then chairman Christian Heidel opted to give a veteran player by the name of Jurgen Klopp his first job in management. That in itself would be enough to build most people’s reputation but Heidel followed it up by making another bet on a young coach, Thomas Tuchel. This is how it all happened.
7 minute read
How Schalke 'reinvented' themselves to get back to the Bundesliga
By Matt Ford for DW
When a miserable season ended in relegation from the Bundesliga, the belief was that Schalke 04 would struggle to recover. Not only had they been woefully inept on the pitch but financial problems off it threatened to swallow them. Instead, one year on and their return to the top flight of German football has been confirmed and their financial worries seem a bit more manageable. For one of the German game’s traditional giants the future seems a little bit brighter than it did before.
8 minute read
Europe’s Best Coaches
By Charlie Walker for the Daily Mail
As seasons all across Europe start to come to an end, club who haven’t been particularly satisfied by how they went begin looking at how to improve. Which, often, means looking for a new manager. For those where this is the case, it probably pays to look beyond the usual names and focus on a group of young managers who have been proven to truly improve their clubs.
5 minute read
And Another Thing…
I hadn’t heard of Vermont Green FC before this week and I’m guessing that neither had you. But this new club that will debut this year in the USL League Two certainly knows how to announce itself by launching this beautiful set of kits.
What’s more, they are made from 100% recycled materials. These are very much in the, ‘here, take my money’ category!
Last Week’s Most Read
By Grace Robertson for Grace on Football
“Klopp and Guardiola are both rewriting the rules of modern football. For this to work, my gut instinct is still that we’ll need to see a little more player turnover than we’ve witnessed so far. That is slowly underway at both clubs.” Great piece on two of the defining managers of game.