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DerbyshireFox

UEFA Champions League 20/21

By DerbyshireFox, in General Football and Sport

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Raj

Raj

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Koke said:

Who do people want to win tonight? 

 

Leaning towards Man City as they have more players I like.

Yep Man City for me.

Never won it and be nice for Aguero to sign off.

 

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StanSP

StanSP

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https://www.skysports.com/football/story-telling/11095/12318848/riyad-mahrez-and-ngolo-kante-from-paris-via-leicester-the-parallel-lives-of-champions-league-stars

 

Very long article and interview with King, great read about Mahrez and Kante.

 

Quote

 

When Manchester City face Chelsea in the Champions League final, a scan of the field for the key figures in the biggest match in European club football is likely to reveal two obvious candidates. They were the undoubted stars of their respective semi-final victories.

Riyad Mahrez was City’s man of the match in their away win against Paris Saint-Germain. He scored the winning goal in that first leg before netting both goals in the second. These were the high points in what has been by far his best season for the club.

N’Golo Kante was magnificent in Madrid. Like Mahrez, he was man of the match in the first leg before saving his best for the second, when he was the catalyst for both Chelsea goals. Thirteen-time champions Real Madrid were made to look sluggish in his presence.

The pair are linked, of course, in more ways than one. Born just one month and only a handful of miles apart in Paris in 1991, they later became Leicester team-mates upon their arrival in English football, heroes of an unlikely title win.

And yet, the sight of them still lighting up the biggest games in football five years on is perhaps an indication that Leicester's success was not quite as unlikely as it once appeared. Something that Andy King, their team-mate that season, now points out.

“They had unbelievable seasons,” King tells Sky Sports.

“It was not just their outstanding performances but it was where they came from in the lower leagues of France. Nobody had really heard of them and now they are both global superstars.

“Maybe it should not be quite so surprising that Leicester won the Premier League."

It was Mahrez who was the first to arrive.

There was little fanfare when he turned up at Leicester’s training ground in January 2014, a spindly figure just shy of his 23rd birthday. His efforts in France’s second tier with Le Havre had certainly not been enough to register with his new colleagues in the Championship.

“I remember before the first training session when everybody was like, ‘Geez, I don’t know if he is going to be ready to play in England. Look how small and skinny he is.’ That was just from looking at his physique, we did not know anything about him.”

It needed only a matter of minutes for King and the rest to reassess.

“After session one, everybody was saying, ‘Wow, this guys is unbelievable, where have they plucked him from?’ He was a joke from the first day that he came in.

“He flip-flapped someone. I won’t name names because I don’t want to hang him out to dry. But you just had to burst out laughing. I had never seen that in a training session before.

“Did I know he would win three Premier League titles and maybe the Champions League? No. But he was always going to be a top player. You could see it from the first session.

“He had that ability, that natural talent. Probably stuff that would have been coached out of him, to be honest, if he had been picked up by Paris Saint-Germain just with the way that the academy system wants people to play. He had that rawness, those cage-football skills.

“His feet are some of the best in Europe. His first touch is magic. It is like the ball is stuck to his foot. I don’t know if it is something that he learned as a kid but he has always had that since the first day. The ball is his friend isn’t it? He is so delicate with it.

“His speed, his skill, he is stronger than he looks, Riyad. He is wiry and he knows how to use his body. Because he is so well balanced, he can be really hard to shift off the ball.

“He was obviously confident and he improved his English to fit into the group. The lads took to him straight away. We could see what an asset he was going to be for us.”

Mahrez was eased in. In fact, he was on the bench with King away to Leeds United before making his debut. King came on. Mahrez did not.

“Nigel Pearson is a really good man-manager. He probably thought that was not the best game to introduce him into.”

But it did not take too long before the Algerian was making an impact. The equaliser against Blackpool in March stands out. “It was what we now know as trademark Riyad Mahrez. He cut in from the right and bent one into the far corner with his left foot. Wow.”

Upon promotion to the Premier League, these glimpses began to increase in frequency as the campaign wore on. “You need goals,” explains King. “That is what newly-promoted teams struggle with a bit. They are the hardest thing to come by. That X factor.

“But we always had a chance with him in the team to produce that bit of magic or get the goals to get us the wins. He actually got moved into a number 10 position when we changed to a 3-5-2 at the end of the season. That was when he really excelled. He was unplayable at times and that is when everyone started to sit up and take notice of him.”

By the summer of 2015, Mahrez was a different proposition entirely, scoring four goals in Leicester’s first three games of the season. He never looked back from there.

“He started like a house on fire which gave him real confidence.”

A new role helped, a 4-4-2 formation under Claudio Ranieri that relied on Marc Albrighton shuttling inside from the left of midfield to allow Mahrez to roam further forward.

“Riyad could almost cheat a little bit. I am not saying he did not work hard because he did, but you could almost leave him out there because you knew Marc would tuck in to make it a midfield three on the other side. It worked brilliantly. The lads knew that if they worked hard he would produce those match-winning moments. He did it time and time again.”

One special moment for King was a goal that he himself scored against West Brom that March. It came after a delightful cushioned pass from Mahrez, bringing the ball down out of the sky with ease.

“He doesn’t usually pass it in those situations, to be honest. But he sees pictures. He can see the final pass as well. He is the complete package. That is why he gets the goals and assists.”

By that stage, Leicester were a formidable side and that owed much to the diminutive figure now feverishly patrolling their midfield. Kante, a £5.6m summer signing from Caen, had turned up at Leicester’s training ground to be met by a similarly underwhelmed response.

“The first impression of N’Golo? Who is this little lad who keeps walking around the training ground? He was there a couple of days before signing. I don’t know whether he did not want to sign or if it was that there was talk Claudio wanted to sign somebody else.

“He was in for a couple of days, in the physio room or you would see him at lunch in his normal clothes with his agent. You would come back the next day and he was there again but he still had not signed. You were like, ‘Is he our player?’ Nobody knew anything of him.

“It took him half an hour on the pitch to show that we had a serious player on our hands.”

You will have seen the memes and heard all the jokes by now. The Kante twins in midfield. Jorginho in the holding role with Kante to his left and Kante to his right. The line about 70 per cent of the planet being covered by water and the rest by N’Golo Kante.

It almost serves to dehumanise him, more machine than man.

King knows better than most what it feels like to play alongside him in midfield. “He is an absolute joy. It means you can concentrate on other things because you know that anything out of possession he is going to be able to deal with it.”

But while he acknowledges the extraordinary running capacity of his former team-mate, King believes that in the rush to credit this aspect of his game, Kante’s intelligence is overlooked.

“He is an unbelievable athlete, don’t get me wrong. He is very fast which is why he gets so many second balls, he closes down so well.

“But his reading of the game is so much better than what he gets credit for. He senses danger. He knows where people are going to go. His anticipation, it is outstanding and that is why it looks like he is doing so much running.

“He obviously does a lot of work. The way that he covers so much ground, it is like having two players, but it is not just because he is an athlete. He is very, very intelligent. That goes unnoticed. People just say that he runs a lot. There is a lot more to it than that.

“Most people when they win possession with a tackle it ricochets off for a throw-in or a corner. He would tackle and the ball would stay on his foot.

“He could block a cross from two metres but instead of hitting it, the ball stays by his foot and all of a sudden he is sprinting away with it. He is an unbelievable player.

“I have never seen anyone like him.”

King remembers Kante fondly as a person too.

“He is the most humble guy you could ever wish to meet,” he adds.

“Everyone in the changing room loved him. He is very quiet but that is not to say that he did not get involved. He would play Mario Kart on the coach and he absolutely loved it. He was like a silent assassin. He would sit there and smile but he used to win all the time.

“He tried hard with his English and that has really improved. The lads loved him but not just because of what he gave us on the pitch but as a guy as well.”

It is why there was little opprobrium at his exit after just one season. King stayed at Leicester over a decade to secure his status as a club icon. Kante managed it quicker.

It must be nice to be a legend off the back of one season, he has outdone me with that,” he jokes. “I think the lads understood why he wanted to go at the time and he won back-to-back Premier League titles. He will always be thought of in high regard at Leicester.

“What a career. He has turned out to be a serial winner.”

With both men now 30, there has been an evolution in their games.

“N’Golo has improved a lot, to be honest. At Leicester, he was probably safer in possession. You watch him at Chelsea now and he has got everything. He is box to box. It is unfair to pigeonhole him as a defensive midfielder. He has got so much more than that.

“When you can win the ball back as high up the pitch as he can, why would you restrict him to just winning the ball back in his own half? If you win the ball back closer to the opposition goal then you have more chance of scoring. That is one of his biggest strengths.”

As for Mahrez, he has become a more complete player under Pep Guardiola.

“I am pleased to see how well he has done this year. It probably took him a season or two to get into his stride at Manchester City. He was going into a completely new system and a completely different style of football. He is now producing those match-winning performances that we saw at Leicester for Manchester City. It is a testament to him.

“I think he is at the stage now where people are happy to give him a yard so he won’t go by them. They almost think, ‘Don’t embarrass me and I will let you have it.’

“He is at that level now where nobody wants to get close to him. They would rather that than rush in which is what they used to do when he would flick it and make a fool of them. He has earned that respect now with his years of performing at such a high level.”

One of the two will add a Champions League winners’ medal to their collection on Saturday.

“They fully deserve that. They are both humble guys. Lads who work really hard, not only great players but good people.

"Everyone who played with them is delighted for them.”

 

 

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fazzyfox

fazzyfox

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Pep fears Chelsea are looking to do a Villareal, OK that was 1-1 not 0-0, but strangle life out of the game and gamble on pens hence the attacking line up. Don't run out of time by getting best use out of the first half as well as the second.

 

See Chelsea have given a debut to a new young left back, Spaniard I think, Juan Kerr, that's what everyone shouts when he's on screen anyway. Looking for Mahrez to give him twisted blood by the end of the night.

 

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