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Team Focus: Bologna Finding Form with a Settled Formation

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Team Focus: Bologna Finding Form with a Settled Formation When Giovanni Trapattoni was coach of Juventus from the mid `70s to the mid `80s, he'd often make the players with the poorest technique in his squad do training exercises with those who had the best. Imagine then that you're not yet 20. You've just joined the champions of Italy and Cup Winners' Cup...

Team Focus: Schalke's Counter-Attacking Game

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Team Focus: Schalke's Counter-Attacking Game What with football being a winter sport, it is hardly reasonable to place any blame on a poor run through the coldest months of the year on the weather. Nor, in a league from which a month's winter break is taken, can it be put down to tiring legs and fatigue. Whilst an explanation might be hard to ...

Team Focus: Fiorentina Building Toward a Title Challenge Next Season

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Team Focus: Fiorentina Building Toward a Title Challenge Next Season Pre-match warm-ups often reveal a great deal about a side’s playing style; if you’d lived under a rock for the past five years and were unsure about Barcelona’s strategy, for example, a small taster of one of their ‘rondo’ sessions would explain everything concisely.Fio...

Team Focus: Delio Rossi's Sampdoria

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Team Focus: Delio Rossi's Sampdoria Delio Rossi keeps insisting: I'm not Padre Pio. No kidding. Holier than thou he most certainly is not. Transgressions, yes, he's had a few, from fighting Adem Ljajic in the dug-out at Fiorentina, an incident that led to his dismissal, to sticking his middle finger up at Roma centre-back Nicolas Burd...

Team Focus: Espanyol Benefitting from Aguirre's Direct Approach

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Team Focus: Espanyol Benefitting from Aguirre's Direct Approach At the end of November it wasn't just the weather that was beginning to look bleak in Barcelona, but Espanyol's hopes of staying in La Liga too. 13 games had been played in the league, from which Mauricio Pochettino’s men had managed just two wins, and following a 2-0 home defeat to Getafe new...

Team Focus: Could Saint Etienne Qualify for the Champions League?

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Team Focus: Could Saint Etienne Qualify for the Champions League? It's fair to say that PSG aren't romping to success in Ligue 1 as many expected, which is undoubtedly a positive for the league’s reputation. The Parisians have lost to lowly Sochuax and Reims in recent weeks and while Ancelotti's side stutter one team is charging up the table at quite a pace....

Team Focus: The Worrying Lack of Progress at Chelsea

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Team Focus: The Worrying Lack of Progress at Chelsea Rafa Benitez has been fighting an uphill battle at Stamford Bridge ever since his appointment as interim manager back in November, his affiliation with Liverpool simply too much for many fans to overcome. Results echoed these problems, with away performances and results significantly better than in ...

Team Focus: Milan's Allegri a Contender for Coach of the Year?

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Team Focus: Milan's Allegri a Contender for Coach of the Year? Oops, he did it again. Discretion, it seems, is not a word in Silvio Berlusconi's vocabulary. Regardless of who's around he'll say what's on his mind. Whether anyone in the vicinity has a tape recorder or a video camera is an afterthought. And so it was that when asked about Milan while on the polit...

Team Focus: Cabaye's the Limit for Newcastle's Frenchmen

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Team Focus: Cabaye's the Limit for Newcastle's Frenchmen Newcastle's French revolution was strengthened on Tuesday night after three new Ligue 1 signings made debuts for the club in the vital 2-1 win at Villa Park. The victory was their first away from home in all competitions this season, spanning over 17 matches, and put distance between themselves and ...

Team Focus: Zeman's Roma

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Team Focus: Zeman's Roma Contrary to popular opinion, the concept of defending is not anathema to Zdenek Zeman. He isn't against it per se. It's nothing personal, the great man insists. It's just why make a priority of it, when it's not what most people watch a game for? In that sense, Zeman's outlook on football is quite d...