Considering that it was their unsuccessful efforts to blame Liverpool fans for the chaotic, traumatic and potentially catastrophic events that preceded last season’s Big Cup final outside the Stade de France that led to them ordering a review of events in the first place, even the buck-passers in Uefa’s hierarchy of blazers can’t have been surprised when their investigators pointed the Big Finger of Blame largely in their direction yesterday.
While French police, government ministers and some local ne’er-do-wells also came in for a good shoeing, a six-month investigation concluded that Uefa bears “primary responsibility” for the omnishambles and said Liverpool fans had done absolutely nothing wrong. But considering everyone who was either there or following events on Social Media Disgrace Twitter on the night in question already knew all this, the only real surprise is that Uefa’s inquiry into their own shortcomings took so damned long.
Despite calls for his head echoing around Merseyside and other parts of the continent, the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, has shown no indication that he is about to fall on his sword any time soon. The Slovenian will no doubt be pleased by the return of this season’s Big Cup for its knockout stages, if only to provide some distraction from his own and his organisation’s current woes. Of the four English clubs in the competition, Tottenham are first off the rank and will pull up at the San Siro later this evening for the first leg of their match against Milan.
On the face of it, things don’t look too positive for Antonio Conte’s side, given their patchy form, Saturday’s hiding at Leicester and their increasing knack issues. Hugo Lloris remains sidelined, while the outstanding Rodrigo Bentancur sustained season-ending knack in the Midlands. “Playing under pressure all the time is good for some players and not for others,” said Conte, who has had a fairly horrendous time of it on and away from the touchline in recent months. “We are working on it. We want to make our players more resilient, but there are factors beyond our control like injuries to important players.”
On the plus side for Tottenham, their hosts aren’t having it all their own way either, and only last Friday ended a long run of poor results that included two domestic Cup exits and three Serie A defeats on the spin. The reigning Italian champions currently sit fifth in Serie A, 18 points off the blistering pace being set by Napoli, and also have to contend with several knack issues of their own. In tonight’s other, arguably more glamorous fixture, Paris Saint-Germain host Bayern Munich in a tie that’s impossible to call, but will hopefully end with the French side finding a new, even more hilarious way to get knocked out by the plucky German minnows.
The home dressing room at Parc des Princes is rumoured to be sundered by even more in-fighting than usual, and reports suggesting both Leo Messi and Neymar are on their way out for reasons that aren’t entirely unrelated to their increasingly spiky relationship with a certain Kylian Mbappé. Whatever the outcome of both games, here’s hoping we get some classic Big Cup knockout entertainment and that everyone going to both games gets home physically untroubled, psychologically untraumatised and safe.
It’s the Kevin Prince-Boateng derby, live from San Siro. Photograph: Paul Currie/Shutterstock
