Qatari factor – Newspaper Kommersant No. 141 (7342) of 08/05/2022

Starting today the championship of England, which in recent years, judging by the European Cup indicators, has become the strongest continental championship, looks particularly intriguing for two reasons. The first is quite serious changes experienced by some giants during the short off-season. The second is the factor of the World Cup in Qatar, which seems to have an impact on the course of the struggle for gold. Indeed, for example, its current owner, Manchester City, will have to send almost the entire main team to the tournament, risking getting it back far from the state it was in in the summer.

The next championship of England, which opens on Friday with the match between Crystal Palace and Arsenal, seems to be a delightful attraction in terms of saturation with all sorts of secrets and pitfalls. Of course, every summer one of the “top echelon” clubs, either faced with stagnation that threatens to develop into a crisis, and sometimes a real crisis, or playing ahead of the curve, for prevention, in order to avoid problems in the future, takes some drastic steps regarding the personnel component. But for them to be made not by one or two giants, but by almost all – this rarely happens. And this off-season just looks like such an exceptional case.

To a lesser extent, this thesis applies to the two flagships – Manchester City and Liverpool, who have not given gold to anyone since 2018, and last season fought for it, which ended in favor of Manchester, until the final minutes of the final round. But even here everything is not so simple. Both parted, if not with backbone, certainly pivotal, then at least very important players for them: Manchester City – with Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling, Liverpool – with Sadio Mane. The rookies (Erling Haaland and Calvin Phillips for the national champions, Dario Nunez for the silver medalists) are promising, with brilliance coming from them, but their arrival in any case means adjustments in the game philosophy related to the need to integrate new stars into the old one that worked fine without them model. And such integration is always a risk.

With the rest of the giants, it’s even more difficult. Manchester United, which failed last season, is getting used to the views and demands of coach Eric ten Hag, who moved from Holland, and those who worry about him are still worried about the future of Cristiano Ronaldo and his mood: like hints that the Portuguese will leave club, full, but they refuse to be embodied in reality. Chelsea changed the owner – Roman Abramovich to Todd Beuly, and he immediately began to refresh the application. Acquisitions – both Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly – look beautiful, but the fact is that it is still not clear who the Londoners, who got rid of the suddenly sour Romelu Lukaku, will score goals. Arsenal, which has been trying to get close to the top for a long time, has strengthened itself with a whole detachment of cool players, led by Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko. And the Tottenham campaign, as a result of which Richarlison, Yves Bissum, Clement Lenglet, Ivan Perisic found themselves in the club, was generally recognized by experts, such as the BBC and The Guardian, almost a reference, suggestive of readiness for a serious breakthrough.

However, of course, all the same, the option in which Manchester City and Liverpool will again participate in the fight for gold, without letting anyone in, seems the most likely: their base, perhaps, is much stronger than others. But an underwater pebble, there is a moment of mystery here.

The current championship is also special for the reason that its calendar has been split approximately in half by the world championship in Qatar, postponed to the end of the year. Before its start, the teams will have time to play 16 rounds. And it is easy to assume that the world championship can have a significant impact on the course of the domestic tournament, adding turbulence to it, especially on its favorites. For the first time, they will have to release a group of leading fighters to the national teams in the middle of the season, and not after it ends (usually the world championships are held in the summer). To let go not for a couple of friendly matches, but into a natural meat grinder, in which injuries, moral and physical exhaustion are absolutely normal things, praying that the fighters return back in a more or less fit condition.

And in this sense, the position of Manchester City is terrible. All of his base, except for the Norwegian Holann, are the players of the national teams that made their way to the World Cup. And, as a rule, the strongest teams – English, Belgian, Portuguese, Brazilian, Spanish. Those who will certainly go far in the championship and, in pursuit of awards, will exhaust their leaders in full.

Against the backdrop of Manchester, Liverpool are lucky. The Guinean Naby Keita, the Scot Andy Robertson, the Egyptian Mohammed Salah, key figures for the club, will not have any World Cup. This means that for them the end of the year is a month of pure rest and recovery before the continuation of the English championship. Trump, by the way, is perhaps not so modest.

Alexey Dospekhov