Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
Looking dapper in his suit and confident in his speech and body language, Andre Villa-Boas was the body double of the man that English football first met a year ago in another part of London.
Then his demeanour gradually changed of course, as Chelsea slipped further and further behind their rivals for the Premier League title, and more and more questions were being asked of a manager who was the same age as some of his players. Players who had won medals while AVB was at Stamford Bridge in a much more junior role under Jose Mourinho. Dapper was replaced by grouchy and defensive. And then, suddenly, he was gone.
Yet it was easy to see why Totterham chairman Daniel Levy had dispensed with Harry Redknapp, one of the most proven campaigners in the game, and brought in this particular young man. The club is putting the finishing touches on a new training facility in Enfield that appears to be on a par to the one created by Roman Abramovich's millions across the city in Cobham.
Seventy-three acres, 15 grass pitches, a covered swimming pool and hydrotherapy suite, specialist rehabilitation suites for injured players and a "compressed air" gymnasium: it is the set-up of a club that wants to go places.
So too does Luka Modric, though, and the Croatia play-maker – the man Villas-Boas was so keen to sign for Chelsea a year ago – represents challenge No 1 for the new man.
Except that it doesn't really. As under Redknapp, it is Levy who holds the key to any deal. "At the moment, it is in the hands of the chairman to accept the right proposition," Villas-Boas said. "That is nothing new."
At the moment everything else is, however, and only time will tell whether Villas-Boas can maintain his confident disposition to the end of a campaign this time.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments