From conductors to metronomes, football lexicon has made a return to classical music references. Plus, the lowdown on next week’s sport on TV
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By targeting the Moroccan midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi, Manchester City have shown themselves keen to acquire a player who, according to the BBC website, “functions as a deep-lying conductor”. That’s an ambition, and a metaphor, worth thinking about.
Meanwhile, at the Community Shield last week, the hot topic for punditry was “metronomes” – specifically whether Bruno Guimarães can be the metronome Arsenal apparently need in place of Martín Zubimendi, and whether, with Rodri gone, Elliot Anderson is the suitable player to occupy that role for Manchester City as the season develops.
Can we infer, then, that classical music is back as a key shaping force for Premier League football in 2026-27? Big shift, if true. The serious concert repertoire’s influence on the game has been virtually non-existent since the early days of 4-4-2 brought us the concept of the “midfield quartet”. (Note the respectful nod in that term to the artistry expected in that area of the pitch. As David Woodhouse and John Leigh pointed out in their unimprovable 2004 reference work, Football Lexicon, it was always, by contrast, a “back four”, never a “defensive quartet”, which would have been just wrong.)
But that was years ago and quartets rarely get a mention in football now. So what will the elite level of the English game looking to classical music mean for the fixtures we’re about to see?
True, many fans will perhaps struggle to get excited at the prospect of their club signing a metronome. The idea of paying £60 to watch someone provide a mechanically generated pulse in the background for everyone else to practise to… well, it may not automatically set the heart on fire. Maybe “midfield anchor” wasn’t the most thrilling of metaphors either, but at least it evoked something weighty, possibly rugged, and which might occasionally prove itself useful in a storm. Also, an anchor wasn’t necessarily something you last saw on top of the piano at a music teacher’s house, or only in exceptional circumstances.
The arrival of a conductor, on the other hand, feels like something fans and players alike can get behind – or in front of, in the case of the players. But what of this notion, per Bouaddi, that a conductor can be “deep-lying”? That’s not going to work, is it? You don’t need to have spent much time around orchestras to appreciate that there’s no point putting your conductor anywhere other than at the front where everyone can see them. Playing them further back, just off the cellos, or possibly in the channels between the brass and the woodwind, has got chaos written all over it.
Also, isn’t a conductor by definition someone who doesn’t play? Surely what Arsenal are hoping Guimarães can be is a first violinist – taking the big solos when they come up and basically acting as the conductor’s eyes and ears on the pitch.
But there are so many unknowns right now. Nine clubs – the highest number in the Premier League’s history – are going into the new campaign with freshly appointed managers whose views on first violinists, and on classical music generally, have yet to become clear.
Will they broadly favour the conventional set-up, with first violins to the conductor’s right and seconds either alongside or tucked in just behind? Or will some of them want to go antiphonal, with first violins on the left, seconds on the right, which has always been big when facing German opposition – your Beethovens, your Brahmses, your Mendelssohns?
And what about the tricky divisi split, introducing the rarely seen third violin section – tactically astute when facing Shostakovich and actually obligatory on a cold Tuesday night against Pachelbel.
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Something for Xabi Alonso to consider? His Chelsea squad certainly has enough violinists for it. Actually, they have enough violinists for four or five sections, and for everyone else’s sections, too. But, unfortunately, they don’t seem to have any cellists or percussionists, and also no decent goalkeeper, and, frankly, no amount of reorganisation elsewhere in the orchestra is going to get you around that omission.
Still, it is a big season ahead, for them and for the classical influences. We’re all ears.
Pogačar seeks to complete Tour set
Slovenian Tadej Pogačar came third at the La Vuelta a España in 2019 but has avoided Spain since to focus on the Tour de France. He has won that five times, and the Giro d’Italia in 2024, and now returns to seek the full set. The three-week race began yesterday with a time trial in Monaco and it has stages in France and Andorra before crossing the Pyrenees on Wednesday (TNT Sports 1, 1.30pm). By then, Pogačar may already be in the red jersey.
British athletes have exceeded the nine gold medals that they won at the European Championships this month only once. They claimed 12 in Zurich in 2014 and several of the new track heroes will head there for the Diamond League (Thursday, BBC iPlayer, 7pm). Amy Hunt, with four European golds, will be tested in the 100m against the world and Olympic champions, Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Julien Alfred. The 800m could be enthralling as Keely Hodgkinson, the Olympic champion, has been beaten twice this year by Audrey Werro, who will be on her home track. Lilian Odira, the world champion; Georgia Hunter Bell, the Commonwealth Games champion; and Dutch flyer Femke Broeders-Bol are also expected to be in the field.
Queens in midweek invites Roger Federer out of retirement for the exhibition match titled “An Icon Returns to New York”. Federer, who won five successive US Open titles from 2004, will play John McEnroe, Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick (Wednesday, Sky Sports Main Event, 1am).
Meanwhile, several British players hope to qualify and join Cameron Norrie, Arthur Fery, Katie Boulter and Jan Choinski at the US Open, the season’s last major (from tomorrow, Sky Sports Tennis, 4pm). They include Jacob Fearnley and Sonay Kartal, whose ranking has slumped due to injury. Jack Draper, who has endured an even more frustrating sequence of injuries, withdrew from qualifying on Friday.
After Hearts were beaten 6-0 on aggregate by Sturm Graz in the second qualifying round for the Champions League, Celtic also faced an Austrian banana skin in the playoff round. The Scottish champions beat LASK, from Linz, 3-0 at Celtic Park on Wednesday to give them some breathing space going into the second leg (Tuesday, Amazon Prime, 8pm).
Finally, which member of the England cricket set-up is on the honours board at Lord’s for his exploits against Pakistan? Marcus North, the national selector, took six wickets there for Australia in a neutral Test in 2010. Those he has chosen have fewer happy memories to draw on for the second Test since Pakistan won there, fairly comfortably, in 2016 and 2018 (from Thursday, Sky Sports Cricket, 11am).