Football's most operatic week

It may be cliché, but what a week we've seen in football. There have been more twists, subplots and stories than your average season of The Wire, passing everywhere from England, through France and Italy to the Iberian peninsula. To wit, we catalogue (briefly) the past ten days in football:

1. Chelsea defeated Barcelona (away from home, with the winning goal from a most unlikely source) in the Champions League semi-final, attaining some semblance of closure after four years railing against any and all authority figures. We bear audio witness to someone giving Gary Neville and unexpected and immensely painful wedgie.

 2. Speculation immediately mounts about the future of Barcelona manager Pep Guardiola, who announces three days later that he is taking a sabbatical.

3. Meanwhile, archetypal black-hat villain Jose Mourinho and his Real Madrid team are too knocked out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage, failing to overcome the Teutonic genetic predisposition of excelling in penalty shoot-outs.

4. Real then proceeded to claim the Spanish league title, their first in four years; Barcelona take scant solace in Lionel Messi breaking Gerd Muller's 39-year old European goalscoring record.

5. All the while, we witnessed attempts by simply everyone to leverage the tension inherently built up tension by Monday's City/United match, the most keenly anticipated derby since ... well ... the last one, billed hyperbolically as the “Match of the Century”.

6. On Saturday, Southampton achieved their second successive promotion and re-enter the Premiership after years in the wilderness (or at least, the third tier of English football). The rebirth of this iconic club came in the wake of administration, rumours of liquidation and away matches at Hereford.

7. Sunday left us appreciating Fabrice Muamba, who returned to a football match for the first time since his kayfabe and therefore extremely frightening cardiac arrest against Tottenham six weeks ago. Unfortunately, his Bolton Wanderers teammates couldn't rustle up a win for him – the Trotters were stuffed 4-1 by those same Spurs.

8. At the same time – still anticipating, with an ever-increasing sense of dread, the “Match of the Century” – Roy Hodgson ran-in to a one-sided contest to decide the manager of the English football team. The English FA decided that Harry Redknapp wasn't worth the cost, heartache and repeated demands to sign Lukas Podolski from ... err ... Germany. English tabloids reacted in their usual classy manner.

9. A minnow, third division club FC Quevilly, took on Lyon in the French Cup final. The result, unlike the contestants or scoreline, was predictable.

10. The same day (what a day!) saw a ghost whistle disrupt play in the decisive clash in Serie A between Champions League chasing Lazio and Udinese, allowing Udinese to score a crucial goal.

11. The much-vaunted Manchester Derby ended as many predicted – with a City victory – and once and for all reminding those in the halls of power (ie. Sky Sports, Fox Soccer Channel, ESPN etc) that the prophetic moniker “Game of the Century”, by the properties of mutual exclusion, guarantees a match which doesn't at all live up to the hype.

12. Two days after the derby-to-end-all-derbies (we can only hope), one of the odder occurrences in European football occurred when Fiorentina boss Delio Rossi attacked one of his own players, Adem Ljajic. He was, of course, promptly fired.

13. Finally, to conclude a tiring week, Newcastle United striker Papiss Demba Cisse scored two astounding goals as the Magpies maintained its challenge for Champions League football next season.

There's a defining but unspoken principal in almost all entertainment that we appreciate the consciously unresolved, but enjoy it more when resolution comes. Audiences like to be left hanging – at least for a while. This principal underlies stand-up comedy, TV story arcs and jazz improvisation among many others. The past ten days have provided almost all the twists football can offer; we've also seen some climactic moments.

It would tempt fate to suggest the season has no more surprises, but after a week like this it's hard to see from where they will come.

The Hodgson exorcism, commenced

Let's be honest, Roy Hodgson's Liverpool career was probably never going to be a really long one. After steering Fulham to the Europa League final last year, his stock was as high as it was ever likely to be and given the traumatic last six months of the Rafa Benitez, then-Anfield execs Martin Broughton and Christian Purslow thought the controlled, effective manner of Hodgson would present a stark, much needed contrast to the mayhem that characterised the final, Hitler's bunker-style days of Benitez.

Unfortunately Hodgson wasn't so much handicapped from day one but never had any legs to stand on: by the club's impending sale, by player - and especially fan - resistance to his preferred style of play, by a lack of funds to buy "Liverpool quality" players, by Fernando Torres' inability to recapture his consistent excellent form of seasons past ... the list goes on. It was a matter of time before Roy was given his cards. His appalling away record - about as appealing as rat sorbet - brought with him from the Cottagers, must have counted against him nearly as much as the protests. It probably also didn't help that many middling Scouse efforts, Roy chose to announce them as their "best performances yet" which meant his credibility both in the dressing room and with The Kop began to waver early in the season.

It's also no surprise that Kenny Dalglish replaces him. "Our Ken" has been angling for a return to managing the Anfield mob for months now. By sniffing around like a beagle on heat, strategically-not-denying-interest and at times actively promoting it like a poor vaudevillian, he's excited the fans dreaming of a end to the tenures of Rafa and Roy. False hope, probably, but hope is a saleable asset in sports. When approached to help in the search for the new Liverpool boss, Dalglish made sure his name was top of the list. His return shouldn't inspire blind confidence in the Mersey faithful though, as his last spell as manager - though successful - ended twenty years ago and he hasn't managed for ten years. He does, however, remain a Liverpool icon and as such perhaps the board had that in mind when dismissing Hodgson in time for Dalglish to make his second manaagerial bow for Liverpool against Manchester United, rallying fans and players alike for their FA Cup clash against their great rivals.

Dalglish returns as caretaker manager, the man thrown to the Premier League wolves to save the Scouser's season. If he gets Torres, Gerrard etc back into touch then, given his status as a club legend, there's every chance he will have secured himself the position for the foxreseeable future.

The first step on Liverpool's new path to glory is on Sunday as they take on United in the FA Cup, a path sure to be long and eventful.

Fulham FC: The Good, The Bad and the Ego

Roy Hodgson is now an honorary Scouser. Mark Hughes is returned from the living Dead. The King is dead, long live the King.

Hughes returns to football management after six months in the near-wilderness. Apart from being linked with jobs as far apart as Turkey, the Cote d'Ivoire and West Ham, his choice of taking over a Fulham squad coming off probably the most successful year in its history is in itself laudable and curious. Even following a long Europa League campaign where the Cottagers were defeated in the final by a (probably) superior Atletico Madrid, Fulham remains a smallish club with ambitions and finances far-removed from Hughes' last position.

Perhaps he has decided his best move is overachieving with a small- or mid-market club but doesn this put Hughes in a quandary? He's come from unlimited resources, and apparently has rebuffed interest from several interested parties simply because he was once the manager of a “big club” and wanted a job in keeping with his results and reputation. He's had money and therefore had no interest in slumming it at his next role which is sort of admirable, but if it's your club being rebuffed it can leave a sour taste in the mouth. It's now no secret, Mark Hughes has an ego, for better or worse.

I say for better. Surely at a Fulham FC coming from some moderate success yet needing some squad renewal, ego is a good thing? If as has been intimated Hughes is so sure of himself then his first task is to ensure some of that rubs off onto his charges. A manager with a well-developed sense of ego tends to engender one of three moods in his squad: inspiration, alienation or a weird bastard child of the both. Hughes is well known to be quite soft-spoken, at least softly-spoken enough so as not to be abrasive, but if his methods and results differ too greatly from those of Hodgson (another mild-mannered gaffer) he risks the senior players upping and leaving.

The fine line that Hughes must tread is that of empowering his playesr while getting them to buy into his methods. If you told me that this could be done by either an egomaniac or a serf, I'd pick the Kevin Pietersen clone any time: as success breeds success, if done correctly self-belief breeds self-belief. Hodgson mastered this excellently; Hughes has both the wherewithal and the ability to instil this into his squad as witnessed by his tenure at Blackburn. In that small market he squeezed the best out of potential topliners Roque Santa Cruz and Morten Gamst Pedersen, as well as from players previously viewed as plodders like Jason Roberts. He has form for getting the most from his charges, and that in itself is a big tick for a smaller-market manager. Given the limited funding, the other thing a smaller market manager must do this without alienating his roster. If he can get all the players looking in one direction he will have success because he followed the formula: buy in + empowerment + discipline (which comes from the respect gained by empowering the players) = results.