Sports Burst - PSG's New Choker in the Pack?
Two teams on the brink of winning league titles ponder a change of the top with Mourinho and Conte waiting in the wings
By Tim Stannard
PSG continues title-clinching crisis as Thomas Tuchel rages against the locker room machine
The footballing landscape resembles a house after a two-day long kindergarten birthday party has blown through. With a jello theme.
So much mess and an impossibility of knowing where to start.
With Sports Burst's disinfectant wipes in hand, it might as well kick off with a couple of first-world footballing crises with two teams that are about to win their respective league titles but are in quite the collective kerfuffle.
Starting with the freshest hoo-ha and all is certainly not well with Thomas Tuchel and PSG. What should have been a swift Ligue 1 title clinch a couple of weeks ago and a session of forward-planning and statistical record-breaking has turned into quite the fiasco in Paris.
PSG missed a third chance to win the Ligue 1 title on Wednesday with a 3-2 defeat at Nantes meaning that winning Ligue Un now goes to a fourth attempt on Sunday against Monaco - providing Lille keep up the pressure in second.
One issue is that Tuchel may not be on speaking terms with his players by that point. "There is nothing to defend...we deserved to lose this game," fumed the German after leaving Kylian Mbappe out of the squad for general huffiness after the 5-1 Lille defeat.
An agreement had reportedly been struck for a new deal for Tuchel, despite a rough year in charge of PSG after that Champions League choke against Manchester United. These other setbacks might well have the ears of a certain Jose Mourinho pricked up. After all, sounds like the there is nothing left to lose in the locker room in terms of unity.
Are Juve Conte-ing down the days to move on from Max Allegri?
Another soon-to-be title winner could also be contemplating changing the coach at the helm. All is not well in the world of Juventus after the home defeat - and general mauling by Ajax - in the Champions League.
It had seemed that Max Allegri was set to continue with the Old Lady next season. However, if either Allegri or the club president Andrea Agnelli chooses a different path then another option is in the offing.
It would be a dynamic approach from Juve, a new broom to instill an ethos of entertaining, free-flowing football in Italy. Actually, it wouldn't.
Instead former boss, Antonio Conte would return. Sky in Italy claims that approaches have been made to the Conte camp to check on his availability this summer, however the former Chelsea man has helped out by announcing on Italian TV that he will head to a project that "convinces" him. Conte coached Juve between 2011 and 2014.
The Sports Burst live show will be attempt to cram in all these topics as well as make sense of the Champions League madness from Wednesday night.
Napoli looking for comeback inspiration against Arsenal
Speaking of madness, Sports Burst has traditionally been a little down on the Europa League but the shocks and surprises in the Champions League this week has inspired it into thinking a little more positively about the great race to find Europe's least incompetent second-tier, middling club.
The best chance of the upset is to be found in Italy with Napoli taking on an Arsenal side 2-0 down from the first leg but relying on their opponents' all-round flakiness on the road. "Courage, intelligence and heart," was what Napoli boss, Carlo Ancelotti called for in a tie that Unai Emery admits is 50-50.
Chelsea should pass through to the semis holding a 1-0 advantage over Slavia Prague in Stamford Bridge. Valencia will be feeling equally as sprightly in Mestalla 3-1 up against the local rivals of Villarreal. Eintracht Frankfurt has a bit of work to do to turn around a 4-2 deficit against visiting Benfica.