Ras' Football World

 Inter ended the 2021-22 season with two trophies in the trophy cabinet and nearly a clean sweep of domestic honours but had to relinquish the Scudetto they won last season to neighbours, AC Milan on the last day. Inter ended a long, excruciating wait of 11 years to win the Scudetto last season but we couldn’t enjoy the triumph for long as days after, Antonio Conte left by mutual consent. There was plenty of news report as well that our owners, the Suning Group was broke and had to balance their books which meant selling key players. The first painful sale the club made was of Achraf Hakimi. We thought that would be the only one. Later during pre-season, another bombshell was dropped when Romelu Lukaku was sold. This time it was because the player wanted to challenge himself again in the Premier League for a club that is dear to his heart. During Euro 2020, Christian Eriksen suffered a cardiac arrest and would not be able to play in Serie A with an implantable cardioverter-defibril...

I watched Inter vs Liverpool without much hope of Inter being able to win the tie and advance to the next stage of the Champions League. I watched it to support the team from afar on a sofa chair in Singapore in the wee hours of Thursday morning. All I asked for was for my team to give a good account of themselves and not let themselves down. Based on what I saw, I would say they did give a good account of themselves in a tie where we are not favourites to win and advance to the next round. But I also feel that this is not the real Inter, not the one that we see weekly in Serie A. Arguably, a draw would have been the fair result but we are sat here mulling over a defeat and what-ifs. Inter dealt with the threat of facing Liverpool’s famed strike trio of Sadio Mane, Diogo Jota and Mohamed Salah well – Mane was substituted during the game and Jota was brought off at half-time. In the first half, I felt we were a bit nervous and cautious. We kept playing the ball back towards our goal...

Ole Gunnar Solksjaer lived to see another day as a Manchester United thanks to his old team-mate, Cristiano Ronaldo. I don’t feel he would have been sacked had we lost to Atalanta early this morning, the pressure on him would have just increased. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDd7LBIprIQ Reception Of The Fans At The Stretford End Solksjaer walked out to songs sang in the adulation of him this morning and that left me puzzled. Since this slump of results, the loudest voice and most articles have been on how he is inept and incapable of leading United to glory on social media. The fan base was being forcibly divided into Ole In or Ole Out and it appeared to me that Ole Out was winning. What I saw this morning showed that the fans at Old Trafford and in the Stretford End believed in him. Manchester United fans that go to stadiums to watch United play have been very kind and patient, unlike the vitriol you see online. You would rarely hear the team being booed off the pitch or the ma...

I would call the result early this morning as a get out of jail result. Encounters between Manchester United and Villareal in the Champions League have all ended in 0-0 draws and I remember in every match, we have found it tough to break them down and score. We played each other as recently as last season’s Europa League final which also ended as a draw. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljTZtMDSVig Great Villareal Performance Manchester United got off to a strong, purposeful start, trying to press high and playing with energy but slowly that faded. Villareal started carving us open and created chance after chance denied time and again by David De Gea. The performance was reminiscent of that on Saturday against Aston Villa. In possession, as usual, we looked clueless on how to get past the organised Villareal team. In possession, Villareal was everything United were not, neat, tidy, attacking with pace and verve. Before recording my latest episode on my podcast show, Back Passt With ...

It feels like Inter are cursed to struggle and score goals in the Champions League. Two games played and 0 goals scored but yet are the top scorers in Serie A. Another game against Shakhtar Donestk and another goalless draw. To be honest, it's more our doing than a curse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-xT_xg7mfE Difference Between This Season & Last The difference between this match and the two matches we played last season was that Shakhtar played better this morning compared to last season. They passed the ball better, kept possession longer and threatened more. They had good technical and fast players and made good use of them. Roberto De Zerbi used his in-depth knowledge of Inter to set his team up tactically to dominate us. Poor Performance From Inter Inter played better in the first half than we did in the second but overall, a poor performance. In the second half, we struggled to keep possession, hardly mustered anything going forward and couldn’t pass the bal...

 It’s nice to qualify for the Champions League; the prestige and honour of being the best or one of the best four teams in your country playing amongst others of equal standing. Then there are the memories of glorious Champions League nights of the past as well. For the club, it is financially beneficial if a club is involved in the Champions League as well. After a long period of absence, Inter has been qualifying for the Champions League for the past three seasons now but have disappointingly exited the tournament in the group stage in all three seasons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFKNJiTSBTE Another Defeat To Real Madrid We started this campaign against Real Madrid as champions of Italy at home in the San Siro. The last time we played them at the same venue, we were beaten and outplayed with 10 men for large periods of the game. Like in that match, I felt Real Madrid was no longer the power that they were and can be beaten. They had experience on their side from having ...

It appears Cristiano Ronaldo or no Cristiano Ronaldo, the Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde Manchester United refuses to go away. We slumped to our first defeat in the season in our maiden Champions League match this season. You can’t win them all and at some point during the season, a team will lose, a fact that I can accept. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6IxCiumYYk Great Start We got off to a great start early in the game when Cristiano Ronaldo converted a great assist from Bruno Fernandes; it was our first real attempt on goal. On a counter-attack after scoring the first goal, Ronaldo nearly made it 2-0. That was as good as it got for us in an attacking sense. We had a shout at a penalty in the second half when Ronaldo raced clear of the Young Boys defender, Ali Camara appeared to nudge him in his back. Turning Point The turning point in the game came in the 35 th minute of the match when Aaron Wan-Bissaka was sent off. I will not criticise Wan-Bissaka for getting sent off as he made a genui...

The curtains for European club football 2020-21 came down this morning. Kudos to Chelsea Football Club for securing their second Champions League title. Manchester City continues a curious statistic whereby debutants in Champions League finals have not been champions for twenty-one years dating back to when Valencia lost 3-0 to Real Madrid. Ruthless Abramovich I remember when Chelsea legend, Frank Lampard was surprisingly sacked mid-season. My Chelsea-supporting friend was perplexed and was complimentary of Manchester United keeping faith in Ole Gunnar Solksjaer. With hindsight now, that decision to sack Lampard and replace him with Thomas Tuchel seems very wise indeed. It reflects the ruthless European style nature of management at Chelsea under Roman Abramovich. There is no room for patience and no time for a manager to patiently build a team. The pro of this approach is that it will guarantee the club continued success and they will not go long without winning silverware. The la...

  Europe Over in the Champions League, we were drawn in the same group as last season’s finalists, Paris-Saint Germain (PSG) and semi-finalists, RB Leipzig. We got off to a great start in the Champions League. Two wins out of two, both we played well from start to end, getting our tactics spot on. We looked odds on favourites to qualify as we faced tournament debutants Istanbul Basaksehir in our next two matches. We proceeded to produce one of our worst performances of the season against the Turkish side in Istanbul. We made up for it in a convincing manner at Old Trafford and had to get one point from our last two matches against PSG and Leipzig to qualify. We should have beaten PSG at Old Trafford but didn’t take our chances and were punished by the Parisians. All was not lost, one point away to Leipzig would do it but we failed to turn up and lost. From a promising position, we crashed out of the Champions League signalling our mental fragility and lack of winning mentality. I f...

There has been no blog entry from me for some time because I have been busy. Just as when I wanted to write something to analyse Manchester United’s wins over Tottenham Hotspur, Granada and Burnley as well as Inter’s draw against Napoli, the football world was turned upside down with the announcement of the European Super League. If you are a football/soccer fan, you cannot escape it. The news and its backlash are all over social media. While this League only lasted 48 or 72 hours depending on your geographical position, it continues to gather attention. Embarrassment & Disappointment On my part, as a Manchester United and Inter fan, it is embarrassing and immensely disappointing to find out that both my clubs were part of the 12 football clubs that had agreed to join this Super League. I felt on Monday like football had died, a passion that I had carried with me for 30 years this year has been wiped out in just one instant. It sounds dramatic but I thought to myself, “How woul...

For the third season in a row, Inter exited from the Champions League at the group stage. But by far, this has been the MOST disappointing, frustrating and under-whelming campaign of all three. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t1eWtoGsCg VAR Decisions Against Us Granted that we were not in an “easy” group but I don’t feel we were inferior to any of our opponents including Real Madrid. After exiting the tournament, Antonio Conte spoke about VAR decisions going against us and yes that played a part. Real Madrid’s first goal in their 3-2 win in Madrid should not have stood for a push on Achraf Hakimi. We should have got a penalty in the away game against Shakthar Donestk when Romelu Lukaku was held back. But blaming that is clutching at straws. Costly Errors We made costly individual mistakes to allow Borussia Monchengladbach to come back into the game and take the lead at San Siro. We were completely dominant before that. The culprit, Arturo Vidal is one of Conte’s much-vaunted sig...

2005-06 vs Benfica, 2011-12 vs FC Basel and 2015-16 vs VfL Wolfsburg. These were the Champions League matches that Manchester United needed to get a positive result in to qualify for the knockout stages and failed to do so. Now added to this list of ignominious defeats and disappointing exits from Europe’s elite club competition, 2020-21 vs RB Leipzig. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axTUw9IOEKo Tough Group United was in the same group as the mega-rich, perennial champions of France, Paris Saint-Germain and a controversial but upcoming German club, RB Leipzig. Both teams were semi-finalists in last season’s Champions League with the French club finishing runners-up. It was a tough group to be part of but we started the campaign like a dream. We beat both PSG and Leipzig comfortably and with some style. We looked odds on favourites to qualify before our return fixtures against both these clubs. Where It Went Wrong? Where it all went wrong from a promising position was in an unfate...

 I will start this article by quoting my pre-game tweet “Today’s game will be a test of our maturity. I feel because of our recent wins n the last 2 results against PSG, the team (manager and players) will take it easy and forget that PSG has many top quality players. N we will lose. Such is our maturity n consistency #MUFC”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0-fzB-qek8 Change Of Tide In The First Half At the start of the game, my prophecy was coming true for the reason stated above. We were sloppy in possession and control of the ball. We were left chasing shadows and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) took the lead. I saw this coming but it was still uncomfortable viewing. I was squirming in my seat, urging on Solksjaer to make a tactical change and revert to a back three. I was very concerned at the odds of us holding off the waves of PSG attack. We weathered the storm and slowly increased our possession share in the game. We were patiently probing without giving the PSG backline much...

 Inter lived to see another day in European competition this season. We beat Borussia Monchengladbach this morning to record our first win in this season’s Champions League campaign. It was a nail-biting and nervy conclusion to the match but a huge relief at full-time. More on the match later. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNffficKDI0 Irritation From Defeats to Real Before Inter took on the pitch, news came through that Shakthar Donestk had completed a double over Real Madrid. It was an irritating result because we have just lost twice to the Spanish giants. Over two games against Real, I felt that we didn’t do enough to beat them. We didn’t believe enough and were not brave enough. Had we done so, we would have at least got one win from two matches against them. We were a little unlucky too that the first Real goal in the first match stood despite a foul on Achraf Hakimi in its build-up. Then we had only ourselves to be blamed for not taking our chances and getting caught ou...

Today is a sombre day for the world of football. Diego Maradona, the Argentine legend passed away hours before Inter’s critical Champions League match against Real Madrid. Inter angered, frustrated and disappointed its legions of fans worldwide by imploding in that said match. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9YXS78wFAA Preview We were narrowly edged out in our previous encounter with Real but the performance was promising. Had we been clinical, we might have been the victors. This is not a vintage Real Madrid team, nothing like the ones that won three consecutive Champions League titles. To make matters worse, they were without two key players, captain Sergio Ramos and main striker, Karim Benzema. These factors combined should give us confidence in getting our Champions League campaign on track with a win. Worst Performance Of The Season Instead, we produced our worst performance this season. If the 60 minutes against Torino on Sunday was bad, this was worse. While it took us ...