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A Quintuple-header of Matches Today: Euro U21 & Gold Cup Semis, Copa Libertadores Final

June 22, 2011 — by Suman

Soccer-TV — Anyone up for watching five matches today?

We’re nearing the end of the lull between the end of the European club season and the start of the major international tourney of this summer (Copa America, which starts a week from Friday)–but the three remaining competitions we’ve been tracking converge today, yielding up five matches to watch: the semifinal matches in both the UEFA U21 European Champions and the CONCACAF Gold Cup, and the 2nd leg of the Copa Libertadores final between Santos and Peñarol. Here’s today’s schedule:

All Times U.S. Eastern Daylight Time (UTC−4) (Local Times in parentheses)

UEFA U21 European Championships Semifinals (fixtures via here)

22 June 2011 12:00 (18:00)	Spain	Semi-final 2 12:00 (18:00)	Belarus	Viborg Stadion, Viborg Referee: Markus Strömbergsson (Sweden)
		Preview

22 June 2011 15:00 (21:00)	Switzerland	Semi-final 1 15:00 (21:00)	Czech Republic	Herning Stadium, Herning Referee: Robert Schörgenhofer (Austria)

(Both these matches will be broadcast live in the US on ESPN Deportes and also available for streaming on ESPN3.com.)

Spain is the clear favorite and the team to watch (in order to see young Spanish stars like Javi Martínez (Athletic Bilbao); Juan Mata (Valencia); Adrián López (Deportivo La Coruña); and the Barcelona trio of Jeffrén, Bojan Krkić, and Thiago Alcântara (although looks Barcelona is selling Bojan to AS Roma, and both Jeffrén and Thiago have been mentioned in transfer rumors as well).

In any case, it should be a cakewalk for Spain today against surprise qualifiers Belarus (who advanced out of Group A ahead of Iceland and hosts Denmark based on goal difference). We don’t know much about the Swiss or Czech squads, but the names that came up on “players to watch” lists and tournament previews were Czech strikers Libor Kozák (Lazio) and Tomas Pekhart (Slavia Prague; previously with Tottenham Hotspur), and Swiss(-Albanian/Yugoslav) midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri (FC Basel).

CONCACAF Gold Cup Semifinals (fixtures via here):

June 22, 2011 19:00 (18:00 UTC−5)	United States	v	Panama	Reliant Stadium, Houston
				Reliant Stadium, Houston

June 22, 2011 22:00 (21:00 UTC−5)	Honduras	v	Mexico	Reliant Stadium, Houston

(The USA-Panama game will be shown live on FSC; both games will be on Univision and available for streaming on UnivisionFutbol.com.)

The USMNT seemed to finally get its act together on Sunday, defeating Jamaica 2-0 in the quarterfinals, following decidedly lackluster performances in the group stage: close wins against Canada and Guadeloupe on either side of a shock loss to Panama. Let’s see if Bob Bradley can get his tactics right and his players motivated to beat Panama this time around–and hang on to his job at least a little longer.

In the other semi, Honduras squeaked by Costa Rica on PKs last Saturday at the New Meadowlands, while Mexico surprisingly needed two second half goals to get by Guatemala. Prior to that, though, Mexico had been blowing the competition out of the water, and that could likely happen again tonight in Houston.

Copa Libertadore Final – Second leg (fixture via here)

June 22, 2011 20:50 (21:50 UTC−3)	Santos	v	Peñarol	Estádio Paulo Machado de Carvalho (Pacaembu), São Paulo Referee: Sergio Pezzota (Argentina)

(This match will be shown live on Fox Deportes.)

We watched the first leg match in Montevideo last Wednesday (after following our friend’s journey back to Montevideo over the preceding two days). Even though it ended as a scoreless draw, it was rather exciting and eventful, with missed chances for both sides. Here is Jonathan Wilson on that match (read the whole column for a typically Wilsonian detailed tactical analysis):

Commentary

Meathead’s ManU-centric Recap of England-Spain U21

June 14, 2011 — by Suman

Welbeck-deGea — Welbeck & De Gea: Opponents on Sunday, Teammates in the Future

We posted on Sunday ahead of the Spain-England Euro U21 Championships matchup, which ended up in a surprising 1-1 draw–a very good result for England. We got this recap of the game from a longtime ManU supporter that many of know as Meathead (aka @tetedeviande–most recent tweet: “Wesley Sneijder would be a welcome addition to Utd, if for no other reason than Yolanthe Cabau“):

Barcelona may have had their way with Man United, but United boy Danny Welbeck notched yesterday for the England U21s vs Spain!!!! He showed great calm in front of goal. Love that kid. Bojan wasn’t in the Spanish lineup, but Thiago and Jeffren were, as was Herrera, who scored with a hand ball. Spain is really talented, and they play a lot like Barca. They also had Juan Mata and Javi Martinez in the side, both of whom are already budding superstars. That said, England, despite the gulf in quality, never quit. Smalling was the player of the game for England. He was immense both defending and in possession. Jones was not as good, but has real promise. De Gea made some huge saves, and he looks the real thing. All in, United had five players on the pitch, if you include De Gea and Jones. Welbeck scored the equalizer, and I just love that kid. He is big, fast, strong, and arrogant as hell. Cleverly looks a good talent as well, though was a bit out of place on the wing.

Books Commentary History

Scattershot Politics: Sport and Its Serpentine Political Meanings

June 14, 2011 — by Ryan — 1

[Editor’s note: We welcome back contributing writer and longtime friend Ryan Reft. He’s kindly allowed us to repost this essay from his groupblog Tropics of Meta. For some of his past contributions to CultFootball see here, here and here.]

Over the past fifteen to twenty years, historians have increasingly emphasized the role of sports as both a driver and reflection of society. The recent Bill Simmons-inspired and ESPN-produced 30 for 30 documentary series tackled a number of difficult subjects via sport. In “The Two Escobars“, directors Jeff and Michael Zimbalist travelled through 1980s Columbia, following the lives of Pablo (international drug dealer/murder/local philanthropist) and Andres Escobar (captain of Columbia’s 1994 World Cup team murdered in a nightclub alteration several months later). The two unrelated protagonists encapsulated the travails of late 20th century Columbia. Drug money filtered into the nation’s soccer infrastructure, boosting its competitive success but also adding layers of complexity and violence to a nation already struggling with decades of conflict. Writing for the Onion’s AV Club, Todd VanDerWerff summarized its importance similarly: “The film’s portrayal of Colombia as a nation that made its compromises and learned to live with the hell they unleashed is also particularly good, as the story of the two men at the center slowly radiates outward to encompass more and more of the nation’s society.”

This is not a wholly unusual conclusion for the series. In “Pony Exce$$,” director Thaddeus Matula explored the corruption and ultimate destruction of Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) then dominant football program as booster money flowed in from the oil wealth that defined the Southwest US in the 1980s. Though the Southwestern Conference consisted of eight schools (Baylor, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Arkansas, and Texas Christian University), Dallas served as a hub for numerous successful graduates of each school. As several observers note in the documentary, football rivalries crackled in the board room meetings of Dallas high rises as alumni from all schools engaged in recruiting practices that seemed to define the decade.

Likewise, Billy Corben’s film,“The U” about the dominance and bravado of Miami University’s 1980s football teams reflects similar themes. Miami’s football team served to unite a divided city behind a collection of local talent that also rewrote the rules of the game. Miami’s players excelled spectacularly on the field but stoked controversy with their trash talk and exuberance. If oil money shaped SMU, Miami’s notoriously tough African American neighborhoods, embraced by Miami’s first successful coach Howard Schnellenberger, came to symbolize “The U’s” power. Along with cultural productions like Scarface, Miami Vice and the notorious Two Live Crew, players like Michael Irvin challenged college football and its fans. Unlike “Pony Exce$$”, “The U” reveals the racial undertones that marked some of the criticism faced by the Miami program. When teamed with Steve James’ masterful “No Crossover: The Trial of Allen Iverson” and the recent “Fab Five” film about the innovative early 1990s Michigan basketball team, “The U” reveals so much more about American life than just college football. Race, money, and a changing cultural landscape collided. As one writer observed, James’ movie looks at Allen Iverson “more as a phenomenon, a human inkblot whose polarizing effect on people often says more about them than it does about him. They see whatever they want to see, and that may or may not be the truth.” In essence, all these films and others in the 30 for 30 series function to elevate sports to a level of political and social importance that might have been derided in early decades.

“Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and pace of modulating reality and engendering dreams. It is a matter of not only of plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but of a modulation of producing influences in accordance with the eternal spectrum of human desires and the progress in fulfilling them. The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present conceptions of time and pace. It will be both a means of knowledge and a means of action.” – Ivan Chtcheglov, Forumulary for a New Urbanism, 1953

Writing in 1953, nineteen year old architect and devotee of the Situationist movement, Ivan Chtcheglov published his sweeping indictment of mid-century urban planning. For Chtcheglov, the architecture of cities past reflected the dead life of capitalist production. City dwellers had been hypnotized by the built environment, thus, focusing exclusively on capitalist accumulation to the extent that when “presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal.” One can see parallels with sport, most clearly in the above examples regarding SMU and the Escobars. The excess capital of drug and oil money created a vehicle for the egos and dreams of ruling classes that were then imposed. (To be fair, soccer teams as several interviewees in The Two Escobar note, serve as great money laundering devices. One might suggest the same of Enron and other corporate entities in recent years.)

For Americans, sports provided both meaningless entertainment and incredible important cultural moments of resistance. Dave Zirin documents athlete resistance of the twentieth century in his 2005 work, What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. To Zirin’s credit, What’s My Name, Fool? gathers countless examples of political acts by athletes across the sports spectrum, engaging in issues of race, gender, and class. For example, Zirin traces the complicated politics of Jackie Robinson who, despite his bravery in desegregating MLB, came to be unfairly seen by radical Black nationalists of the late 1960s as a sell out. Some have described Zirin as sort of Howard Zinn of spors journalism. Perhaps. He does look at major historical events like the 1968 Mexico City Olympic protest by Tommy Smith and John Carlos, in which both athletes upheld closed black gloved fists. Zirin explores many facets of the event that had gone unnoticed. Unfortunately, while Zirin collects valuable stories worth reflection, he too often veers in the direction of soap box oratory. Moreover, Zirin seems to feel the need to conclude paragraphs with zingers. For example, how about this gem regarding the failure of several WNBA sports franchises: “while some franchises found success, others have folded faster than a rib joint in Tel Aviv.” (186) When discussing Allen Iverson, Zirin notes Iverson’s role as an anti-corporate anti-hero summarizing his nickname may have been A.I. but “there was nothing artificial about him.” (163) Nuance is not the most prominent feature of What’s My Name, Fool. Still, even if the equivalent of street corner radical, Zirin contributes something to our knowledge of American culture and sport.

If baseball and to a lesser extent American football and basketball have served as venues for political expression, predictably, football occupies a similar position for Europeans. In How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, Franklin Foer traipses through countries around the world, but predominantly Europe, exploring the meanings and processes that manifest themselves in the sport. Throughout How Soccer Explains the World one thing becomes clear, the political complexity of football and more generally, sport, radiates in countless directions. When Foer presents Barcelona’s “bourgeois nationalism” as a model for 21st century cosmopolitanism, he goes so far as to claim that it “redeems the concept of nationalism.” (198) For Foer, Barca never demonizes opponents the way supporters at Red Star (Belgrade- the subject of a previous chapter, one that found soccer fan bases and clubs of the former Yugoslavia as germs for the paramilitary organizations of the Balkan wars in the 1990s) have. Instead, Barca illustrates that “fans can love a club and a country with passion and without turning into a thug or terrorist.” (197)

A central aspect of Barca’s identity rests on its foundational myth, its role as a means of Catalan resistance toward the post Spanish Civil War fascist Franco regime. According to this myth, Camp Nou, Barca’s legendary stadium, enabled Catalan fans to express themselves in ways forbidden by Franco. Camp Nou allowed for political and social subversiveness. “Its fans like to brag that their stadium gave them a space to vent their outrage against the regime,” writes Foer. “Emboldened by 100,000 people chanting in unison, safety in numbers, fans seized the opportunity to scream things that could never be said, even furtively, on the street or in the café.” (204) Yet, as Foer acknowledges, there is another way to view Barca’s history. More likely, Franco saw Camp Nou and Barca as harmless outlets for his repressed populations. Unlike the Basque region and its terrorist/separatist movement ETA, Catalonia never developed any similar liberation fronts.

Commentary Schedule United States

CONCACAF Gold Cup 101: An Infographic by US Soccer

June 7, 2011 — by Suman — 1

The CONCACAF Gold Cup started on Sunday, with four games already in the books. The USMNT kicks off its campaign tonight, taking on Canada at Ford Field in downtown Detroit (8pmET on FSC). US Soccer has produced an infographic with just about everything you need to know about “the region’s most important international tournament” (click to view a larger version):

InfoGraphic2011GoldCup(Adu) — Gold Cup 101

Commentary News

Two Seleção friendlies, a farewell to Ronaldo, preparations for Copa América 2011, and the accompanying roster intrigue

June 2, 2011 — by Mark

The Brazilian national team will play two friendlies in Brazil over the next week. First, on Saturday in Goiânia, a rematch of the quarter-final game with Holland that ended Brazil’s campaign in last year’s World Cup. And then on the following Tuessday, Ronaldo’s farewell game, against Romania, held at the Pacaembu stadium in São Paulo.

Ronaldo at World Cup 2002 — This man really had quite a career. The Seleção has important business to do, but Ronaldo deserves his send-off

On the 19^th of May, Brazil coach Mano Menezes announced the roster for those games and gave us a decent idea of the team he’ll use for the upcoming Copa América in Argentina. The list includes 28 players for the two friendlies, plus Ronaldo, who will only play for some part of the first half of the second friendly. The plan is for Ronaldo not to be a starter in that game, but to come on as a substitute some time before the first half ends. There will be some kind of celebration at halftime, and then Ronaldo’s time with the Seleção will be over. Another player will take his place in the second half of the Romania friendly, and the Seleção’s post-Ronaldo era will officially begin.

Commentary Preview

The Element of Suicide, Or What Must Go Right For Manchester United To Win

May 25, 2011 — by Adam

[Editors’ note: We welcome back Adam Novy for a preview of this Saturday’s little match in London–Manchester United versus FC Barcelona, meeting at Wembley for the 2011 UEFA Champions League final.]

Javier-Hernandez-Alex-Ferguson — Suicidal tendencies?

Manchester United is a cunning team who play a vintage 4-4-2 formation and, when focused, do well controlling games against big teams, as with their three recent wins against Chelsea, a side who always used to kill them. While Barcelona my be slightly overrated by a droolingly uncritical press who’ve made them poster kids for liberal self-congratulation despite their racist players, they play the best and most attractive football of any club in memory, and have five or six of the best position players in the world, including Leo Messi, who’s in a class by himself. To beat Barcelona, Utd will need a number of things to go their way, and, if any single one of them doesn’t, they will lose. (You should probably be told, gentle reader, that I’m a Man Utd fan.) It’s not impossible for Utd to pull this off, but it’s highly unlikely.

Here is a list of things Utd need to do to win:

Squeeze Out Service To Messi

Lionel Messi is almost impossible to stop, except when he plays for Argentina, when he never gets the ball in dangerous places and has almost no influence at all. Germany contained him without sweating, and, to do the same, Utd will need to keep the ball from getting to him in the box. Because he moves back and forth and side-to-side, Utd will cede possession if he’s far from the goal, but try to angle him away if he’s in the area. Also, once he gets the ball, he’ll need to be smothered. He cannot be allowed to pass to open teammates.

Commentary

End of the World Thoughts

May 19, 2011 — by John Lally

Following on from my end of the season thoughts, and given that posters and flyers all over NYC are declaring Doomsday this Saturday, around 6pm, I thought I should sum up the best and worst of the entire history of football, dating back to when I started watching and including only games that I have seen.

untitled — Doomsday comes 6 days too late to save West Ham

Best player (Spurs)

Has to be David Ginola. Far and away the most entertaining player I’ve ever seen in a Spurs shirt, every time he got the ball the whole crowd would hold their collective breath to see what would come next.

Best player (non-Spurs)

Has to go to Cristiano Ronaldo; he would torment defenders, infuriate the crowd with his playacting antics, but normally end up scoring or setting up goals and lead his side to victory. His showboating was fantastic, until you had to watch Gary Doherty be the last line of defence between Ronaldo and the Spurs goal.

Best Player I wish I’d seen live

Zinedine Zidane, just beating out Messi, and with the added wish that I had appreciated him while he was still playing. The best player in a France team I couldn’t support due to an unnervingly high number of Arsenal players in it, Zidane lead them to victory in the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000 tournaments. Skilled, majestic, arrogant, Zidane had it all – then ended his career by headbutting Materazzi. Brilliant.

Worst Player (Spurs)

Unfortunately, there is a lot of competition for this but, top of the heap, or bottom of the pile, is Grzegorz Rasiak. He was signed right as the transfer window closed in August of 2005, and left in February 2006, but not before Spurs fans got incredibly frustrated with his lack of ability and effort – culminating in us having to implore him just to “JUMP!” in a league game at Fulham. Absolutely rubbish.

Worst Player (non-Spurs)

This goes to nobody, as Tottenham always seem to bring out the best in opposition players. In a build up to a game, if a player is mentioned as not having scored in x number of matches, or the team is without a win in so long, you can guarantee Spurs will conspire to break that streak.

Best Stadium

I have been lucky enough to go to quite a few different stadiums and I’d rank them into three different categories:

The Good: Newcastle, Man City (City of Manchester Stadium), Arsenal (Highbury), Braga, Fulham, Bolton, Burnley, Leyton Orient, Old Wembley

The Average/Boring: Blackburn, Wigan, West Brom, Charlton, Oxford (Manor), Leicester, QPR, Swindon, Nottingham Forest, Oldham, Slavia Prague, NY Red Bulls

The Ugly: Cheltenham (Lower league granted, but so are Leyton Orient), Chelsea (How about a stadium where I can see from every seat?), Southampton (Bad infrastructure surrounding a boring new ground) and Portsmouth (How about a roof? You didn’t know it might rain?)

The winner: Well call me biased, but it has to go to White Hart Lane. Inconveniently located nowhere near an Underground station, bad food options and not a big enough capacity, but undoubtedly – home.

WHL — The view from my old seat at the Lane

Best Game

Remember, remember the 5th of November…2006, Spurs 2 Chelsea 1. Tottenham’s last league win over Chelsea had come a year before Harold Camping’s last prediction of when Judgement Day was to be (he claimed September 6th, 1994, followed by realising he’d failed to carry the 1 or something). The game was a close fought battle, saw John Terry sent off, and was won with a great Aaron Lennon goal. The only disappointment, no journalist asked the question of the Chelsea captain “So, what DID you say to Ledley King?”

Worst game

There’s a whole slew of 4-0 defeats to Manchester United or Blackburn that could take this, but I think it will have to go to the 1-0 loss at Southampton in 2004. As mentioned, the stadium was appalling, it took ages to get out of it afterwards, Spurs played terribly and then we still had a long drive home.

Most annoying aspect of Doomsday being day before end of the Premier League Season

Not being able to see Spurs beat Birmingham and send them and Stephen Carr down to the Championship…still have not forgiven him for saying he wanted to play for a “big club” when he moved to Newcastle.

Manager who is most likely to believe he will be Raptured

Arsene Wenger

Best International Tournament

I really enjoyed Italia ’90 until England’s penalty loss to Germany. I really enjoyed Euro ’96 until England’s penalty loss to Germany…etc and so forth. I think the best overall would be World Cup 2002, mainly because I got to watch it after I’d finished with University and before work began, but it was a really entertaining tournament also. Even watching the final on a small television in my cousins’ kitchen in the middle of nowhere, Northern California, at 4am, did not dampen my enjoyment of it. I really enjoyed World Cup 2010 too, something that was made much easier by my supporting of England ending in 2006 at the exact same moment that John Terry was made captain (for reason, see the aformentioned unasked question)

Best Goal (Spurs)

1. Ginola vs Barnsley (March 1999):

2. Kanoute vs Everton (October 2003)

3. Defoe vs Arsenal (November 2004, might have been top had we not lost the game)

Best Goal (Non-Spurs)

Way too many to choose from but this one from Argentina against Serbia in the 2006 World Cup stands out above all others:

Most Random place to watch an embarassing Spurs defeat

A second floor bar in Port El Kantaoui, Tunisia, for Spurs’ loss to Grimsby in the League Cup in September 2005.

My Favourite Spurs XI

Thorstvedt, Carr (before he left), Mabbutt, King, Tarricco, Anderton, Hoddle, Van der Vaart, Ginola, Defoe, Klinsmann

So that’s it, good luck with Doomsday and all that. One day next week, I’ll give my thoughts on Sunday’s games and the countdown to the next predicted End-of-the-World-Which-Won’t-Actually-Happen on December 21st 2012.

Commentary Maps Preview Schedule

Matches Today: Intra-Portuguese Europa League final, Copa Libertadores quarters

May 18, 2011 — by Suman — 1

We lamented a bit last week over the close of the (European) club season, with most of the big leagues decided (and after the weekend, France (Lille) and the Netherlands (Ajax) also crowning champions). So what else is a CultFootball fan to look to, aside from the upcoming Champions League final (10 days away!)? Well, just today there are three tasty matches to watch.

First, there’s the Europa League final taking place in Dublin between two Liga Sagres sides–the nearly Invincible Porto against Sporting Braga. And later in the day, two Copa Libertadores quarterfinal 2nd leg matches– Brazilians Santos hosts Colombian Once Caldas (Santos having won the 1st leg 1-0 on the road), and Paraguayan side Libertad hosts Argentine Vélez Sársfield in Asunción (Vélez Sársfield won the 1st leg 3-0 in Buenos Aires).

(US TV coverage is as follows: the Europa League final is at 2:15pm ET live on DirectTV and rebroadcast on GolTV in the evening. The Copa Libertadores matches will be on Fox Deportes.)

Regarding the Europa League final, here is the Guardian’s Sachin Nakrani intra-Portuguese

The first European final to be played between two teams situated less than 50km apart is noticeable for the sporting chasm that exists between them. Porto, two-times winners of the European Cup and 25-times winners of their domestic championship, face a club whose proudest moment in their 90-year history came last season, when they finished second in the Primeira Liga.

That changes in Dublin on Wednesday evening, however, as Braga look to defy the odds again and win their first European trophy (second if anyone is counting the 2008 Intertoto Cup). Few give them a chance against André Villas Boas’s rampant champions, but within a squad whose home ground is built in a quarry there is a belief that they can unearth a golden moment for themselves.

Not sure where Porto and Braga are located? Neither were we:

View Larger Map

Porto in particular is worth watching. They’ve had a remarkable season: they won the Liga Sagres going away, going undefeated in the process (27 wins, 3 draws, 0 losses). They were also undefeated in their Europa League group, and marched through the knockout phase, beating a couple Spanish and a couple Moscow clubs along the way: Sevilla, CSKA Moscow, Spartak Moscow, Villareal. (Braga dropped down from the Champions League after finishing third in their group behind Shakhtar Donetsk and Arsenal, although they did defeat Arsenal 2-1 at home in November. In the Europa knockout phase, they beat Polish Lech Poznan, before upsetting Liverpool, then Dynamo Kyiv and finally another Portuguese power, Benfica, in the semis.)

Porto-squad — Another squad of Invincibles?

For today’s match, keep your eye on the handful of rising stars on their squad, quite a few of whom are South American: the Brazilians Fernando and Hulk (yes, the Hulk); Colombians Falcao and James Rodríguez; Argentine midfielders Fernando Belluschi and Nicolás Otamendi; Uruguayan defenders Fucile and Álvaro Pereira. They also have a few Portuguese internationals (midfielder João Moutinho, winger Silvestre Varela, the Cape Verdean-born defender Rolando).

And of course there’s 33-year old first-year manager Andre Villas Boas–who everyone is hyping up as another Special One.

Here is the Guardian’s Dominic Fifield posting yesterday on Villas Boas:

His coaching career is not yet two years old but already his reputation precedes him. The domestic Primeira Liga title is his. This club’s first European trophy since 2004 and the Portuguese Cup could both have been hoisted by Sunday. These days he spends his time attempting to shrug off constant comparisons with Mourinho, the mentor under whom he cut his teeth but with whom he no longer speaks, and the links with Chelsea, Juventus and Roma which refuse to go away.

And here is Michael Cox (aka Mr ZonalMarking) contributing a column on Villas Boas to ESPN.com:

The similarities are clear — like Mourinho, Villas Boas is young, Portuguese, had no professional playing career to speak of, and is making his name at Porto. He is effectively Mourinho’s protégé, having worked under him at Porto, Chelsea and Inter.

Of course, Cox blesses us with detailed tactical notes on Villas Boas’s squad:

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