Holding Midfield
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With Patrik Berger this week having to deny reports that he narrowly avoided the doomed Germanwings plane, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on one of the Czech’s finest moments: his late cameo in the FA Cup final of Liverpool’s treble-winning season. With Wembley being rebuilt, the match was held outside of England for the first time, in Cardiff’s Millenium stadium. However, a greater sign of the times was that, for the first time, both managers had been born outside of Britain. 2001 was something of a transition phase for English clubs. Foreign players had been steadily coming to the Premier League for several years now, but, with managers like Arsene Wenger and Gerard Houllier following them, England was starting to play catch up on the ground lost during their ban from European competition. It would be several more years until the English top flight re-established its pre-Heysel dominance, yet the methods were starting to take effect. For example, both teams lined up in 4-4-2s, but they weren’t the open shapes that English football was built on. Wenger had pulled back the centre midfielders to open up space between the lines for the forwards ahead of them […]
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