All James Horncastle posts on WhoScored.com Articles RSS

Player Focus: Andrés Iniesta - Not Quite a Hero

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Player Focus: Andrés Iniesta - Not Quite a Hero Shortly after Andrés Iniesta was named runner up for the 2010 Ballon d’Or, he granted a memorable joint interview with Xavi Hernández to El País’ Luis Martín. Xavi incidentally had also been on the podium at the award ceremony in Zurich in January 2011.Despite...

Team Focus: Why Neymar Wasn't the Priority for Barcelona

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Team Focus: Why Neymar Wasn't the Priority for Barcelona At 57 millions euros, Neymar has become the second most expensive signing in the history of Barcelona after that of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. According to club vice-president Josep Maria Bartolomeu the transfer would have been 10m euros less were it not for competition from other clubs driving up the pric...

Player Focus: Juve Switch Most Likely for Jovetic

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Player Focus: Juve Switch Most Likely for Jovetic For 71 minutes on the final day of the season, Fiorentina were in third place and set to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in four years. By obliterating Pescara 5-1, they’d put themselves in a position to seize upon any mistake Milan might make at Siena and things looked to ...

League Focus: The Most Valuable Scorers in Serie A

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League Focus: The Most Valuable Scorers in Serie A With the title race over and the season nearing its end in Serie A, a period of reflection begins. Who have been the real difference makers over the current campaign and how might you measure that? One reductive yet still quite revealing method is to look at points won as a direct result of the goal...

Player Focus: Adem Ljajić's Revenge

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Player Focus: Adem Ljajić's Revenge It's as though Adem Ljajić were in a dark room, processing the film taken from a camera, which had been used to capture a series of snapshots of his time at Fiorentina. As the pictures begin to develop it's clear he doesn't like what he sees. It was like a photograph that had come out bad, he told L...

Player Focus: Robert Lewandowski

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Player Focus: Robert Lewandowski “It’s the best feeling short of taking drugs… I’ve never taken drugs, by the way!” Jürgen Klopp joked earlier this week. BVB certainly is a trip alright. Once everyone started to come down from the high of watching Borussia Dortmund play Real Madrid on Wednesday n...

Player Focus: Arturo Vidal

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Player Focus: Arturo Vidal Here, there, Arturo Vidal was everywhere. So much so that La Gazzetta dello Sport claimed he wasn’t a footballer, but an illusionist. The pink paper’s reasoning was simple: against Lazio on Monday night, the Juventus midfielder gave the appearance he was in two places at once.Journalists...

Player Focus: Ilkay Gündoğan

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Player Focus: Ilkay Gündoğan True, it wasn't Ilkay Gündoğan's best performance. But then neither was it Borussia Dortmund's as a whole. There's one very disappointed team at the moment and one very lucky one, coach Jürgen Klopp said. I didn't expect to see this from my side – it was our worst game in the Champio...

League Focus: The Serie A Run-In

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League Focus: The Serie A Run-In The end of the season is nearly upon us in Serie A.Apart from Juventus, flush with a nine-point lead at the top of the table and poised to retain their title providing that they don't experience an unlikely post-Bayern collapse in the meantime and throw it away as controversially happened under the ...

Team Focus: Bologna Finding Form with a Settled Formation

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Team Focus: Bologna Finding Form with a Settled Formation When Giovanni Trapattoni was coach of Juventus from the mid `70s to the mid `80s, he'd often make the players with the poorest technique in his squad do training exercises with those who had the best. Imagine then that you're not yet 20. You've just joined the champions of Italy and Cup Winners' Cup...