Latest news with #JonDahlTomasson
New York Times
6 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Celtic make approach for Nordsjaelland midfielder Benjamin Nygren
Celtic have made an official approach to Nordsjaelland for their midfielder Benjamin Nygren. The 23-year-old has six months remaining on his contract and has interest from clubs in the top five leagues, but Celtic hope that by moving fast they will be able to persuade the Sweden international to move to Scotland. Danish club Nordsjaelland are understood to be open to a sale at the right price. Nygren had previous spells in Belgium and the Netherlands before joining Nordsjaelland in January 2022. His main position is as an attacking midfielder, but he can also play on both wings and as a centre-forward. After progressing through his nation's youth ranks, he was given his senior Sweden debut in March by Jon Dahl Tomasson and scored in both of Sweden's international friendlies in June – victories against Hungary (June 6) and Algeria (June 10). Advertisement Nygren scored a hat-trick for Nordsjaelland against Fenerbache in the Conference League last season. Since moving to the Danish club in 2022, he has scored 35 goals and provided eight assists in 107 games. Last season, he scored 16 goals and provided four assists as his side finished fifth in the Danish Superliga.
New York Times
27-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Why failing in the Premier League doesn't make you a bad player
Some peculiar occurrences took place 20 years ago when Liverpool beat Milan to win Europe's premier football competition. The 'miracle of Istanbul' they call it. People watched stunned at the incredible sight. Yes, that's right, Jon Dahl Tomasson played in the Champions League final. OK, let's nip this in the bud straight away, we mean no disrespect to Tomasson, who enjoyed a hugely successful career with Denmark, Feyenoord and Milan. Advertisement But fans of Newcastle United would have had a different perspective on him when they watched Carlo Ancelotti turn to the Dane in Istanbul to replace Hernan Crespo with the score at 3-3. Tomasson had scored just four times in 35 appearances in England, only lasting one season (1997-98) before moving back to the Eredivisie. To see him seven years later playing for one of the world's biggest clubs was a bit of a head scratcher. But he was by no means the first, nor the last, to fall short in the Premier League and yet still reach the pinnacle of the sport in another country. Joselu earned a winners' medal for Real Madrid last year after scoring twice against against Bayern Munich in the semi-finals, having tanked at Stoke City and Newcastle. Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting also struggled for goals at Stoke but reached the Champions League final with Bayern in 2020. Stefan Savic (Manchester City), Fernando Llorente (Tottenham Hotspur) and Marco Materazzi back in the 1990s with Everton barely did a thing in England but played in the Champions League final elsewhere. If you were being cheeky, you'd add Jadon Sancho to the list. This weekend, three more head-scratchers will perform on Europe's biggest stage when Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Matteo Darmian and Vitinha feature for Inter and Paris Saint-Germain. None of them left a lasting mark on the Premier League, yet one or two of them will lift the Champions League trophy on Saturday night. Perhaps it is harsh to say Mkhitaryan didn't leave a lasting mark. He scored a scorpion kick against Sunderland in 2016 shortly after joining Manchester United, then played a central role as the club won what remains their most prestigious trophy of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era, the 2017 Europa League. Yet so much more was expected of the Armenian when he moved from Borussia Dortmund in a £26million deal ($35.3m at current rates). Advertisement Jose Mourinho was Mkhitaryan's manager for his 18 months at Old Trafford and it is Mourinho's reaction to that epic Sunderland goal that offers one of the reasons the pair never truly synced. 'All his career, he's scored beautiful goals,' Mourinho said. 'In this moment, there's goals, defensive work, creativity.' Defensive work. It was certainly an issue to begin with; Mkhitaryan was hauled off at half-time on his full league debut with United 2-0 down at home to Manchester City in September and didn't start again until December. 'I had a hard time, but after the first two or three months there, I had a good time,' Mkhitaryan later told The Athletic of his spell at United. Mkhitaryan worked his way into the team after Christmas and scored six goals in the Europa League run, including the second in the final against Ajax. He didn't enjoy the Premier League as much, contributing four goals and one assist in his 24 appearances that season. In 2017-18, Mourinho had dropped him by November, citing work rate as an issue. 'He started the season very well and after that, step by step, he was disappearing,' Mourinho said. 'His performance levels in goalscoring and assists, pressing, recovering the ball high up the pitch, bringing the team with him as a No 10, were decreasing. Everybody works to have a chance. It's as simple as that.' If Mkhitaryan wasn't the right player for Mourinho, then it seemed Mourinho also wasn't the right manager for Mkhitaryan. 'I'd missed playing offensively,' he said a couple of months after leaving United for Arsenal in a swap deal that saw Alexis Sanchez move to Old Trafford. Mkhitaryan's time at the Emirates also lasted 18 months and again included reaching a Europa League final, although he didn't play in the defeat to Chelsea due to Armenia's fraught relationship with host country Azerbaijan. Advertisement His output for Arsenal was slightly better than at United, starting with three assists on his home debut against Everton but, as at United, he remained inconsistent. A loan to Roma followed in 2019-20. He scored nine goals in his 22 league games in his first season (initially a loan) and stayed until 2022 when he was sold by, yep, that man Mourinho. Now 36, the Armenian is enjoying one of the best seasons of his career, thriving in the deeper central midfield role he was moved into by manager Simone Inzaghi. 'Mkhitaryan is a super-intelligent player, always at the service of the team,' Inzaghi said recently. 'I am very happy to coach him.' At Inter, he's an all-round, rotating midfielder full of pressing, through balls, positive passes and, yes, tackles. Even Mourinho might pick him now. Darmian is another player enjoying an Indian summer at the end of his career and, like Mkhitaryan, is set to appear in his second Champions League final in three seasons. In the 2023 final defeat against Manchester City, Mkhitaryan came on as a substitute, while Darmian, who had started the match, was taken off. But those roles may be reversed this time with Mkhitaryan a likely starter and Darmian competing for a wing-back spot with Denzel Dumfries — although the Italian does also sometimes start as a right-sided centre-back. Darmian, aged 35, is the yin to Dumfries' yang. He's solid and reliable, whereas the Dutchman is full of zip and goals and assists, but Darmian is a better defender. When you see who is picked, it's a fair idea of Inzaghi's game plan. In five years at Inter, Darmian, a fan of the Nerazzurri as a boy who came up through the academy at rivals Milan, has won two Serie A titles, two Coppas Italia and has now reached two Champions League finals. He won stuff at United, too, but his contribution to a Europa League, FA Cup and League Cup was far less prominent than his work at Inter. If you were to recall something noteworthy from his four years at Old Trafford, you might think of the revelation that United's chef had to boil him two eggs because he was incapable of doing it himself. After being signed by Louis van Gaal, it had all started so well for the Italian (on the pitch, not in the kitchen), who was the club's player of the month in August 2015 having just made a £12million move from Torino. 'I remember my first game for United being an incredible emotion, I felt like a child,' he later said. 'Old Trafford is something fantastic, there's a reason that it's called the theatre of dreams.' Advertisement It was all downhill from there. 'Van Gaal was an obsessive about rules,' Darmian also later said. 'He was the one who wanted me at United. One of the first days in Manchester he took me aside and said: 'You are here thanks to me. You have my confidence, you will compete with (Antonio) Valencia, know that the name doesn't matter to me'. It was like that.' Van Gaal, having left many of the squad exasperated with his obsessive methods, left in 2016 but his replacement Mourinho didn't take a shine to Darmian, who had played 28 times in the Premier League under Van Gaal but then just made 18 league appearances in 2016-17, eight the season after that and just six in his final campaign at the club. Having started as first-choice right-back, the versatile Darmian often played at left-back with Valencia the almost permanent fixture at right-back, then later Ashley Young. This lack of game time also saw Darmian frozen out the Italian setup; he didn't receive a cap from 2017 until his recall in 2023. He played 92 times for Manchester United in total, leaving for Parma in 2019 where he rebuilt his reputation before that big move to Inter. Why didn't it happen for him at Old Trafford? Injuries played a part, especially towards the end, but Darmian's lack of physicality was an issue, so too his infrequent contributions in attack. He became a forgotten man, but fans appreciated his professionalism despite a lack of playing time, a trait lost on too many Man United players in recent years. If it wasn't for English commentators incessantly reminding viewers on every occasion Vitinha touches the ball in a PSG shirt that he once played for Wolves, you might not remember that, yes, he once played for Wolves. You would certainly be hard pressed to recall anything he did of note in a gold and black shirt. It's even difficult for Wolves supporters to conjure up memories, save for his one standout moment (and his only goal), a 30-yarder against, of all teams, non-League Chorley in the FA Cup in 2021. Advertisement Wolves — and you'll have to set your faces to stunned here, readers — took a chance on a young Portuguese loan player from the Jorge Mendes stable in 2020. Vitinha was 20 years old and hadn't really broken through at Porto, so off he went to Wolves for a season-long trial, joining eight Portuguese players (including Ruben Neves, Pedro Neto and Rui Patricio), a Portuguese head coach in Nuno Espirito Santo and plenty of Portuguese staff. A home from home, then, but this being the season of Covid-19, it wasn't easy for young Vitinha to settle, certainly on the pitch, where his path to regular starts in midfield was blocked by Neves and Joao Moutinho. The first three months of the season saw Vitinha restricted to just 53 minutes of Premier League football across seven substitute appearances. His first start came in December against Manchester United when Nuno began to tinker with his fabled 3-4-3 formation, allowing room for a No 10 in a 4-2-3-1. Enter Vitinha, who was technically supreme, but found wanting in an attacking position ill-suited to what we see him excelling at with PSG — metronomic passing, dictating the tempo of the game and controlling central midfield in his incessantly busy style. Not that Nuno wasn't aware of where Vitinha's attributes were best suited. He believed at the time that Vitinha had the potential, once he filled out, to be an even better central midfielder than Moutinho, but with, well, Moutinho still around, there was just no room. 'He has a lot of things to improve on his game in terms of physicality and duels — the aspects that normally require time to adapt,' Nuno said during the season. There was more game time in the second half of the season, including three successive starts in the final month, but just as Vitinha began to get used to the Premier League, the campaign was done. Advertisement So too was Nuno, who left the club in May 2021, jeopardising the chances of Wolves taking up Vitinha's option from Porto. Nuno would have pushed to make the £17m move happen, but his successor Bruno Lage was less keen. Lage even turned down the same deal the following January, once Vitinha had broken into the Porto team. One for Wolves to regret, then, but there were no regrets from Vitinha, who later said of his time at Molineux: 'I grew a lot, including off the pitch — the things I had to learn on what it's like to be in a club, outside of your country, outside your comfort zone. If I could go back, I wouldn't change anything.' From a bench player at Wolves to the beating heart of PSG and Portugal's midfield in four years. Oh, and a Champions League final on Saturday. Quite a journey. (Illustration: Eamonn Dalton/The Athletic; Marco Luzzani,)
BBC News
25-03-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
I like how Northern Ireland play - Sweden boss Tomasson
International Friendly: Sweden v Northern IrelandVenue: Strawberry Arena, Stockholm Date: Tuesday, 25 March Kick-off: 18:00 GMTCoverage: Watch live on BBC iPlayer and BBC Two NI, listen on BBC Sounds and live text commentary & in-play clips on the BBC Sport website Jon Dahl Tomasson says he expects a response from Sweden against Northern Ireland after Saturday's surprise defeat in Korac hit a first-half winner as Sweden were shocked by the side who will be in Northern Ireland's World Cup qualifying group in by Newcastle United striker Alexander Isak and Nottingham Forest's Anthony Elanga, Sweden will be a stern test for Northern Ireland, who drew 1-1 with Switzerland on Friday, despite their result in Luxembourg."It was a very disappointing performance," said Tomasson, who became Sweden manager in February 2024 after leaving Blackburn Rovers."I couldn't recognise my team in Luxembourg."Now we are playing Northern Ireland, who are a really good team. They won their Nations League group, like we did, and they are on a good run."Tomasson says that Michael O'Neill's Northern Ireland "are a solid team" and he expects a good game in Stockholm, which will be live on BBC iPlayer and BBC Two NI. from 17:45 GMT."I have to admit I like it when I see the team play," the former Newcastle United and Denmark striker added."They are a difficult team to play against. Every game is important, so we will look forward to it."
