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Hello! What really went on between Liverpool’s head coach and England’s leading referee? You might want to cover your ears.
Coming up:
🤬 Slot’s F-bomb tirade
7️⃣ Arsenal hit seven
🚀 Alvarez cracker, but Real on top
😮 Legendary goalline clearance
‘I’ll F***ing Blame You’: Details of Slot row revealed — and disputed
TNT Sports
Three weeks have passed since the Merseyside derby shook the ground at Goodison Park one last time, but it might as well be an eternity. In the pandemonium, the Premier League title tilted away from Liverpool slightly. Now, a few results later, we’re talking about a procession towards it.
A measure of the scale of stress at Goodison was the aftermath of that 2-2 draw on February 12. Everton nicked a point so late that the lights were ready to go out. A VAR check of James Tarkowski’s cult-hero-creating equaliser dragged on painfully before giving the all-clear. Game over, bar the fighting.
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Abdoulaye Doucoure and Curtis Jones engaged in a tear-up at the final whistle, and both were shown red cards. Further infield, the same punishment befell Liverpool head coach Arne Slot and his assistant, Sipke Hulshoff, after choice conversations with referee Michael Oliver. It wasn’t hard to guess the tone of what was said in those moments. But now we can reveal the juicy details.
Slot — a mild and good-humoured personality more often than not — was sanctioned by the Football Association last week with a two-match touchline ban and a £70,000 ($89,000) fine. Yesterday, the FA published the written reasons for his penalty, and its reading of what went on at Goodison.
Oliver accused Slot of telling him that he “f***ing gave (Everton) everything” and “if we don’t win the league, I’ll f***ing blame you.” Slot claimed his exact words to Oliver “if we don’t win the league, I’ll have you to thank for that” but accepted the charges against him. There were, seemingly, no grounds for adopting the Jude Bellingham ‘f*** off, f*** you’ defence.
The angel on Slot’s shoulder will tell him that his sense of proportion failed him (and to his credit, he conceded he should have taken a breath). Here Liverpool are today, 13 points clear. If they don’t win the league, Slot will have to cast the blame-net further than one decision. But the heat of the moment is seriously acute, for coaches and officials. And while life has levelled out for Slot, the same cannot be said of Oliver.
Oliver out of action
Oliver was the ref who, inexplicably, failed to call a veritable kung-fu kick as a red card at the first time of asking during Saturday’s FA Cup tie between Crystal Palace and Millwall. It was VAR which examined Liam Roberts braining Jean-Phillipe Mateta, radioed Oliver and said, “Er, mate…”
Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL), the organisation which manages top-level referees in England, avoids commenting on appointments or indicating if a ref has been stood down on the basis of performance, but Oliver — the man in the middle for Bayern Munich versus Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League tonight — is missing from the Premier League’s roster this weekend.
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It might be that this is simple rotation, or an attempt to manage his load with him out in Germany mid-week. But his absence so soon after a poor oversight (a foul described by Palace chairman Steve Parish as “the most reckless challenge I’ve ever seen”) will tempt people to draw their own conclusions. All Slot would say yesterday was: “Michael’s been in the news quite a lot recently. I don’t think it helps if I add something to that now.”
Oliver is widely regarded as one of England’s most competent referees, if not the best of them. He’ll be re-activated soon. It’s that time of year, though — the business end — where neither officials nor coaches can commit transgressions without expecting to bear the cost of them. Not if they’ve got any f***ing sense.
News round-up
- Newcastle United’s Carabao Cup final dream is falling apart. Anthony Gordon is already banned. This morning, left-back Lewis Hall has been ruled out for the rest of the season. Terrible timing.
- Liverpool fans have received assurances from French police that they’ll be properly and safely marshalled during tonight’s Champions League tie against Paris Saint-Germain. It’s Liverpool’s first time back in Paris since the 2022 final, where chaos reigned.
- There’s growing pressure on Premier League clubs to keep a lid on season-ticket prices, and a number of teams have imposed a freeze for 2025-26. Not so Arsenal, who are about to bump theirs up by an average of around 3.7 per cent. Maybe that will finally pay for a No 9.
- Sections of Manchester United’s crowd intend to wear black before their league clash with Arsenal on Sunday, to symbolise the way in which the club are “slowly dying”. It’s the latest leg of a long, long battle with the Glazer family, United’s unpopular majority owners.
- Ruben Amorim is in the thick of the stagnation at Old Trafford. He’s convinced United can become Premier League champions again but he’s been pretty honest in admitting he shouldn’t assume his job as their head coach is safe long-term.
- JJ Watt won’t be resuming his NFL career (as if there was any chance at almost 36). That bet Burnley’s co-owner had with their goalkeeper James Trafford — that he’d pull the helmet back on if Burnley avoided conceding another league goal this term — went his way as Cardiff ended their run of 12 straight clean sheets.
Shooting stars: Arsenal score seven to set record, Real Madrid edge battle of bangers
TNT Sports
The season has been getting away from Arsenal, so a 7-1 obliteration of PSV last night was, let’s say, straight from the book of ‘what the doctor ordered’. A trophyless year isn’t a given, yet.
The scoreline set a record: the first time a team has scored seven goals away from home in the Champions League’s knockouts. PSV fell foul of some dubious decisions — Myles Lewis-Skelly somehow dodged a red card for a glaring second bookable offence, prompting his substitution before half-time — but their defence was a wet weekend. Asked to punch through a paper bag, Arsenal duly did. Half their team got in on the act.
The quarter-finals await, where they will face either Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid. It was lively but tight at the Bernabeu, where Real edged the first leg 2-1. Rodrygo opened the scoring with a pearler (below). Julian Alvarez’s fabulous equaliser (above) eclipsed it. Real lead at ‘half-time’ but Atletico will have home advantage in what could be a for-the-ages decider next Wednesday. Deep down, both teams should be quietly content.
TNT Sports
Catch a match
Champions League last 16 first legs (3pm/8pm and Paramount+/TNT Sports unless stated): Feyenoord vs Inter, 12.45pm/5.45pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports; Bayern Munich vs Bayer Leverkusen; Benfica vs Barcelona; Paris Saint-Germain vs Liverpool.
High risk
Benfica away in the Champions League must be giving Barcelona goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny palpitations. It was there where Szczesny got badly caught out in the league phase in January, leaving his box, colliding with a team-mate and throwing his net wide open.
He’ll cringe whenever he sees it but for Szczesny, the risk of blunders like it is large because Barca, under Hansi Flick, have taken to holding an exceptionally high defensive line, the highest in La Liga in fact (see above). Their ’keeper is intentionally active outside the penalty area and combined with an aggressive press, the point — as Szczesny’s backup Inaki Pena put it — is to “defend in the opposite half of the pitch”.
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In Spain, Barca are not alone. Last season, Las Palmas ’keeper Alvaro Valles amassed 791 touches of the ball outside his box, a sky-high tally. But the Catalans do gamble more than any other side in that respect, dragging a man such as Szczesny well beyond his comfort zone. Has he got the system licked? Or will lightning strike again in Lisbon later?
Around TAFC
- Rory Smith has compared the obsession with taking European games to the United States with the obsession over colonising Mars. I see where he’s coming from. It’s being cast as a silver bullet for the problems of a league such as Italy’s Serie A. But will it really cure them?
- San Diego FC are turning all their fire on the homophobic chanting which marred their first-ever home MLS game. CEO and co-owner Tom Penn says he was “disappointed but not super-surprised” by it, which is depressing to hear.
- That sensational scorpion kick we brought you from Lizbeth (or sometimes Jacqueline) Ovalle yesterday was worth an article in its own right. Eduardo Tansley didn’t let us down. Her finish will have very short Puskas Award odds.
- A podcast on Jose Mourinho bringing chaos to Turkey? Yes please. It’s free to listen on Apple and Spotify.
- Most clicked in yesterday’s TAFC: Umar Sadiq’s uber-skilful backheel for Valencia. Ovalle is clear but still, sweet feet.
And finally…
TNT Sports
One quick thing to say about Aston Villa: Marco Asensio is a hell of a signing for them. A late penalty from him away at Club Brugge last night, and Villa are just about through.
It was one of their more established faces, however, who stopped Brugge going 2-1 up in the second half. This Tyrone Mings goal-line clearance is, well, affirmative proof of how slenderly slender a slender margin can be. And a lunge which would have blown my left hamstring.
(Top photo: Carl Recine/Getty Images)
