Welcome to Row Z, The Athletic’s weekly column that shines a light on the bonkers side of the game.
From clubs to managers, players to organisations, every Friday we’ll bring you the absurdities, the greed, the contradictions, the preposterousness and the oddities of the game we all love…
Burn, baby, Burn!
It’s a bold new era for English football.
Thomas Tuchel, Champions League winner, elite manager, visionary. Cannot wait to see the progressive, dynamic group of players he’s chosen for his first England squad. It’s important to make a statement and look the future, not the past, right? But Tuchel knows that.
Knowing him, we’re probably looking at the likes of Adam Wharton — one of the most gifted, enterprising young midfielders this country has produced for many years. Or maybe creative genius Morgan Gibbs-White, who some are hailing as one of the greatest talents ever witnessed at Nottingham Forest.
In defence he’s no doubt going to call up someone like commanding Everton centre-back Jarrad Branthwaite, who could become a mainstay in the England defence.
*Checks the internet*
“Thomas Tuchel has named Jordan Henderson, Kyle Walker and Dan Burn in his first England squad.”
Oh, Thomas.
Burn and Walker in September, before the full-back moved to Milan (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
OK, nothing against the trio, especially Burn whose career arc is a great story. But by the time the World Cup comes around they will be 36, 36 and 34 respectively. Pep Guardiola has decided Walker’s best days are behind him, while Henderson might be doing well in the Netherlands but, you know, did you not see the Eredivisie’s second best team just lose 9-2 on aggregate to Arsenal?
“You have to make difficult decisions and you have to keep evolving the squad,” Gareth Southgate said when dropping Henderson before the European Championship.
“You have to make easy decisions and you have to keep regressing the squad,” said Tuchel today, probably.
Henderson has been a mainstay of the Ajax team this season (Alex Bierens de Haan/Getty Images)
Respectful insanity
You’re Oleksandr Zinchenko. You’re making just your fifth start of the season, it’s a rare chance to impress.
You’ve just scored an absolutely gorgeous goal in the sixth minute — a beautiful and rare thing because you don’t score many (four goals in 212 appearances for Manchester City and Arsenal). Your team are 8-1 up on aggregate. It’s probably one of the best goals of your entire career and a big moment for you personally after a couple of frustrating years out of the team so, go on lad. Give it the big’un. Knee slide it.
Or just refuse to celebrate, smile or show any kind of joy because you made four league starts on loan for PSV in 2016-17.
Grow up.
Ex-PSV stalwart Zinchenko declines to celebrate (Rob Newell – CameraSport via Getty Images)
Free lunch economics
Manchester United, hmm.
Look, Row Z really does try and give the club a week off but when there’s just so much material on a weekly basis, they’re pretty hard to ignore.
We’ll leave the circus tent for now and pick out a couple of lines from the many words spoken by Sir Jim Ratcliffe when he did the media rounds on Monday.
Here he was speaking to the BBC and justifying the immense cost-cutting the club is undertaking, such as making hundreds of people redundant, ditching Sir Alex Ferguson or scrapping free lunches for staff: “The simple answer is the club runs out of money at Christmas if we don’t do those things.
“What we want to do is invest in the best players in the world if we can, rather than spend it on, I’m afraid, free lunches.”
That’s right, of course. Spend money on footballers rather than keeping staff employed or happy.
Out of interest, how much money will the club save from ending free lunches? Around £1million a year. Or, in football terms, 1/36th of a Joshua Zirkzee.
Sir Jim: No free lunches on his watch (Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images)
Sticking with the lunch theme, Gary Neville essentially told Ratcliffe the idea of him eating a nice big free lunch compared to his colleagues in the office having nothing, or a bit of fruit, would be “difficult from an inequality perspective”.
Ratcliffe: “I know that’s how you feel about lunches, but we have to go to the bank down the road and we have to borrow the money to give everybody a free lunch… 95 per cent of people in the UK don’t get a free lunch.
“I don’t get a free lunch, I’ve never had a free lunch, nobody in INEOS gets a free lunch and the vast majority of people don’t get one.”
Sir Jim Ratcliffe there, estimated net worth £16billion and the 131st richest person in the world. Never had a free lunch. He’s just one of us!
Social media corner
The full time whistle has gone at Villa Park, Aston Villa have beaten Club Brugge 6-1 on aggregate and are into the Champions League quarter-finals.
Great scenes, an historic moment and you’d expect the social media admin to lap it up with a big ‘YESSSSSSSS’ post, or a celebration picture, or a ‘We’ve done it!’ type thing, yeah?
Nope, just do this weird American thing instead.
Aston Villa is delighted to announce the Club have reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League ✨
— Aston Villa (@AVFCOfficial) March 12, 2025
Poetic licence
And finally this week, our old friend Jose Mourinho continues to do Jose Mourinho things over in Turkey with Fenerbahce.
Mourinho, whose team exited the Europa League with a defeat by Rangers on penalties on Thursday night, did so without the considerable talents of former Newcastle United winger Allan Saint-Maximin, who was left out of the squad and did not travel to Glasgow.
Why? Because he’s too fat, according to Mourinho.
Saint-Maximin and Mourinho in happier times back in October (Veysel Altun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Saint-Maximin lamented being sidelined with a post on Instagram, in which he said: “It will take more than this to defeat me.
“When a lie takes the elevator, the truth takes the stairs. It takes longer but it always arrives in the end. If God is with us, who can be against us? Romans 8:31.”
Mourinho response in a press confidence was, well, biblical.
“I didn’t know Saint-Maximin was talented in poetry,” he said. “I’m not bad in that regard either. When a football player works well, works hard, trains every day, he is fit and can climb the stairs. He doesn’t need an elevator.
“However, if a player doesn’t train well, arrives late, is overweight, is not ready to play, he needs an elevator to go up. Because he gets tired quickly on the stairs.”
Never change, Jose. Never change.
(Top photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)
