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Hello! Big Ange’s second-season promise? Never in doubt.
On the way:
🏆 Tottenham reign in Spain
👀 Pulisic Gold Cup shock
🗣️ Slot’s title win, in his words
🤝 Flick signs new Barca deal
Promise kept: Postecoglou delivers trophy in second season — the ultimate mic drop?
(Getty Images)
Has ever a finish been more suited to the occasion? Brennan Johnson’s first touch going backwards, a freak deflection off Luke Shaw’s arm keeping the chance alive, and the tip of Johnson’s toe scraping it into the net? It wasn’t so much ‘Hang it in the Louvre’ as hang it in the loo.
But goals a hundred times more gorgeous have been worth a hundred times less than the one that tipped the balance of last night’s Europa League final (below). Tottenham Hotspur have their £100million ($134m) pass to the Champions League, and their first cup since 2008. Ange Postecoglou wins a trophy in his second year — which he said he would, and which he has at every club he’s coached. If this is the end for him at Spurs, it’s a red-hot mic drop.
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Manchester United? They’re left with nothing other than abject fear about what comes next. In a game so riddled by anxiety that parts of it moved in slow motion, they exhibited all the failings of a hideous season. Trailing 1-0, nothing summed it up so well as Harry Maguire masquerading as a forward again, a Hail Mary that can only work so often.
Perhaps United will reflect that years of spending on players like Maguire is why they keep having to throw Maguire up front.
But anyway, Tottenham first. Is Postecoglou really for the chop after doing what so many other managers at Spurs couldn’t? His sacking was the assumed direction of travel before last night but rarely is a coach’s status so skewed. Tottenham are 17th in the Premier League but off to the Champions League — and bizarrely, his board would have seen a trophy and qualification as entirely fair objectives. After weeks of speculation about his future, he has returned serve with interest.
At certain junctures, Postecoglou has sounded beaten or resigned to his fate. As he took stock in Bilbao, he started to dig his heels in. “I don’t feel like I’ve completed the job yet,” he said. “We’re still building. But that decision’s not in my hands.” You don’t envy the person who has to take it.
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‘I will not quit’
Tactically, Postecoglou went pragmatic in Bilbao and proved a point. Opting for Richarlison and his nuisance tendencies over Son Heung-min sustained a knackering defensive effort. Spurs didn’t flake and they didn’t buckle. When they needed it, Micky van de Ven came up with the mother of all goalline clearances (below) to stop Rasmus Hojlund heading in an equaliser.
Ruben Amorim, the picture of job-taker’s remorse, called it wrong. Hojlund was a lumbering presence up front. Alejandro Garnacho on the bench deprived United of pace and creativity until Amorim threw him on. We assumed Amorim’s position was safe whatever the outcome of the final but afterwards, he cast doubt on it himself, saying: “If the board and fans feel I’m not the right guy, I will go in the next day without any conversation about compensation — but I will not quit.”
TNT Sports
Tough decisions ahead
In layman’s terms, Amorim’s record is a joke: 15 wins from 41 matches. And the consequences of the result in Spain will hurt. United were begging for an influx of Champions League funds. Defeat changes who they can sign and what they can spend over the summer, which isn’t going to help ignite the Amorim era. It isn’t going to help the Old Trafford debt pile either.
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Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the face of United’s minority shareholder INEOS, made an awkward appearance on the podium at full time, drained of blood as his club collected runners-up medals and Spurs laid hands on the Europa League trophy. Laurie Whitwell reports that Ratcliffe and Avram Glazer were booed at a staff party, a resounding vote of no confidence.
Difficult decisions lie ahead in Manchester and north London. Spurs have the luxury of making theirs to the sound of champagne corks popping.
News round-up
Pulisic out: USMNT star will miss Gold Cup in blow for Pochettino
Big, if not wholly unexpected, news out of the United States: Christian Pulisic will miss the Concacaf Gold Cup. Our sources say he’s absent from the USMNT’s 26-man squad, which should be confirmed in the next few hours.
I say not wholly unexpected because Pulisic has been flogged from pillar to post this season. Only last week, our United States writers were wondering whether injuries and a long, hard year at Milan might call for some R&R. Lo, it came to pass — and for what it’s worth, his Milan team-mate Yunus Musah is also giving the tournament a swerve.
Physically, it probably makes sense but Paul Tenorio doesn’t think the USMNT captain sitting out the Gold Cup is a great look. It weakens Mauricio Pochettino’s hand at a time when he’s trying to bring his team to heel. Pochettino is creeping towards a year in post as head coach — and the pieces just will not fall into place.
Great eight: Slot picks decisive moments of Liverpool title win
(Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
Arne Slot is an inscrutable guy. Aside from pinning Michael Oliver to a wall (metaphorically) at Goodison Park, he has done a solid job of not getting rattled — and an even better job of making Jurgen Klopp’s big shoes look like a pair of well-fitted slip-ons.
What better way to get inside the head of Liverpool’s head coach, then, than by sending The Athletic’s James Pearce to show him eight carefully-picked images of the players, games and moments that took Slot to a Premier League title at his first attempt? James stepped up, and this is what Slot had to say:
🗣️ On September’s 3-0 win at Manchester United: “Some Dutch media asked me: ‘What was the game where you won the players over?’. I think it was this game. United would be expecting Dominik Szoboszlai on the right. But he’s going to play on the left. It was a day when the players thought: ‘Oh, what he’s trying to tell us works’.”
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🗣️ On Mohamed Salah’s record-breaking year: “(These) standards he’s probably not going to live up to in the upcoming two seasons (NB: Salah’s new contract runs to 2027). I hope he can but it’s not even necessary. Even if he scores and assists a few less, it will still be a great season.”
🗣️ On the pivotal comeback win at Brighton & Hove Albion in November: “I don’t think it helps to be 15 to 20 times angry at half-time over a season. You have to save these moments for when it really matters. There was no need to be (against Brighton). It was smarter to adjust than be angry.”
Levels of insight like this are always forthcoming from a coach, and I’ve only scratched the surface of their chat. Enjoy it in all its glory.
Pitching in: How Bielsa helped protect ‘Wortley Wembley’
The city of Leeds is awash with murals, many of them lionising Marcelo Bielsa. My favourite is the tour de force on the wall of a pet shop near Leeds United’s stadium, depicting him as Christ the Redeemer (above).
It’s an appropriate likeness since Bielsa was pivotal in helping the owner of that shop, Aaron Lambert, fight an attempt by the council to turn over an adjacent football pitch to property developers. The patch of grass, known as ‘Wortley Wembley’, has history. It’s been there since the 1800s and former Leeds stars played on it as kids, including the uniquely mercurial David Batty.
On behalf of a campaign group, Lambert wrote to Bielsa, who replied offering his support and badgered Leeds to take a stand. Beren Cross found out about a £50,000 deal put together by the club that has protected the pitch for the foreseeable future, and potentially for centuries. To butcher a proverb, if Bielsa is for you, who in that corner of England could possibly be against you?
Catch a match
German Bundesliga relegation play-off final first leg: Heidenheim vs Elversberg, 2.30pm ET/7.30pm BST — ESPN+ (U.S. only).
And finally…
Let’s leave the last word to Tottenham. If you know much about them, you’ll know that they’re the origin of the term ‘Spursy’ — the habit of falling apart whenever success flutters its eyelashes at them. In Bilbao, they turned the adjective on its head, much to the delight of their social media team. How long they’ve waited to send a tweet like this.
Spursy. pic.twitter.com/1EcuG4oDfh
— Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) May 21, 2025
(Top photo: Andrew Milligan/PA Images via Getty Images)
