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The "Where should I put this?" Thread;; Strange stories from the crazy world of football.
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Topic Started: 25 Sep 2012, 05:56 PM (237,938 Views)
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modest mouse
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22 Apr 2018, 06:16 PM
Post #8721
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Retired and now a BT Sports pundit
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https://twitter.com/TheSportsman/status/988070499090599937
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drks
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23 Apr 2018, 03:50 PM
Post #8722
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I see Tyler Blackett hasn't improved...
https://twitter.com/FLeagueWorld/status/988427966089752577?s=20
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Masterplanner
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23 Apr 2018, 03:54 PM
Post #8723
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- drks
- 23 Apr 2018, 03:50 PM
I don't know........... those stats are better than anything he ever produced in the hoops
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drks
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23 Apr 2018, 03:58 PM
Post #8724
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That 1 tackle might be the first he ever recorded.
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JamesM
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23 Apr 2018, 04:07 PM
Post #8725
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Napoli's goal last night caused earth tremors in the Naples area.
https://twitter.com/manu250484/status/988428307568975872
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littlegmbhoy
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23 Apr 2018, 04:17 PM
Post #8726
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- drks
- 23 Apr 2018, 03:50 PM
One of life's mystery's...how the fook he became a football player!
One of the top 5 worst Celtic players Ive ever seen in Hoops.
Should have gone into athletics.
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Monsieur Nailz
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23 Apr 2018, 08:19 PM
Post #8727
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Sid Lowe in the Guardian on Iniesta leaving Barca
Spoiler: click to toggle There were two minutes to go in the final, his final, when Andrés Iniesta began the long walk goodbye.
Slowly, swallowing hard, eyes red, he made his way across the pitch, team-mates coming to embrace him as he went, and all around the Metropolitano supporters got to their feet, applauding. They stood in the Barcelona end and they stood in the Sevilla end too. Iniesta’s name rolled around, accompanying him until he ducked out of sight, taking a seat on the bench. He sat there for a little while, tears forcing their way through, and then he got up again and went to collect the Copa del Rey, alone.
It was the 34th title of his career and a 35th will follow, but it was this one that felt like it marked the end: the last waltz. As he climbed up to collect the trophy, down on the grass Barcelona’s players waited for him, much as they had waited for him when, 51 minutes into his 670th game for Barcelona, he scored the fourth goal, ensuring that this would always be his night: the Iniesta Final.
Collecting Lionel Messi’s pass, with a gentle shift of the hips, just a hint of a pause, he stepped past David Soria and rolled the ball in. He jumped into the air and at some point in that leap, sadness crept into the celebration, nostalgia flooding the stadium. They knew what this meant.
Any doubt disappeared when they saw the Barcelona’s players’ reaction, more eloquent than anything they could have said. “There were a lot of emotions in that goal,” Iniesta admitted afterwards. “Lots of emotions, lots of feelings, lots of years. I really wanted this final to go well and I’m happy.” The normal huddle broke up and then, almost one by one, they waited for Iniesta, a moment each. Eyes closed, Messi held him in an embrace that may become the image of the final, maybe even a generation; he held on just that little bit longer, like he didn’t want to let go.
There was something in that. In good times and bad Messi looks for Iniesta, and in bad times above all. It is in those moments when he seeks security, assurance, that he most wants the Spaniard at his side. “I know how difficult it is to do what he does,” Messi says in Iniesta’s book, The Artist.
“On the pitch I like him to be near me, especially when the game takes a turn for the worse, when things are difficult. That’s when I say to him: ‘come closer’. He takes control and responsibility.”
It is a simple solution, successful for well over a decade and expressed on Saturday night, like a portrait of their era, Barcelona producing a performance that may have been as good as any since Wembley 2011. And yet time waits for no man, not even the man who sometimes seemed able to control it. You can slow the clock, but not stop it and when Messi looks for Iniesta next season, he will no longer be there; he’ll be 5,000 miles away. 22 years after arriving, 18 after meeting Messi, 16 since his debut, Iniesta is leaving Barcelona; he’s leaving Spain too, for China. An announcement is expected this week.
At 33, a starter in 24 of 33 league games and eight of 10 in the Champions League, on course to win a league and cup double, it may have come too soon. That, certainly, was the conclusion drawn after Saturday night. China looks incongruous. The headline on the front of AS on Sunday morning said it all: “Iniesta, don’t go!” But the appeals for him to stay, while they express that hope that he might yet change his mind, will also reinforce his belief that this is the right time to go. The right way, too: remember me like this.
Although Iniesta wouldn’t say so, something broke last year, and while a momentary fix was found, a “lifetime” contract signed and his role renewed, he didn’t want to leave too late, a long goodbye from the bench. Nor did he ever want to face the club he joined aged 12.
Iniesta described that day in September 1996 when he arrived at La Masia as the worst of his life. José Bermúdez, another resident, remembered him as “pale, tiny and sad, delicate and sensitive”. Iniesta couldn’t stop crying. A few hundred metres away in the Hotel Rallye, nor could his parents. His father, José Antonio, couldn’t sleep and the same went for Andrés’s grandfather. Together, they planned to go and get him, take him home. Mari, Iniesta’s mum, stopped them. “Let him try,” she insisted. So, they did.
They took him to school the next morning and then headed home to La Mancha. Iniesta felt abandoned when they weren’t there to pick him up that afternoon. Victor Valdés was there at the start. “His success was forged through silent tears,” Valdés says. It is some success: 34 titles, soon to be 35, his departure accompanied by another double. There have been two trebles as well, and the World Cup and the European Championship, twice in a row. Which makes it sound almost as easy as his football makes it look, but it hasn’t been.
Iniesta does not use the word depression but he has spoken eloquently about the “dark place” he was in after the 2010 World Cup, how he felt in “freefall”. He went into the 2009 Champions League final with a hole in his thigh, ordered not to shoot. He reached the World Cup struggling with injury, running around hotel corridors in the middle of the night, unseen by team-mates, trying to prove his fitness to himself. It says something that Vicente Del Bosque said he would wait for him, as long as it took; it says something too that when he suffered an injury 17 days before the 2009 final, Pep Guardiola insisted: “He plays.”
He played, the way only Iniesta could, the way that became symbolic of a generation: arguably the best that football in Spain, maybe anywhere, has seen. “An era departs with him,” said AS’s match report. “A style, too. A way of playing and a way of life.” After Rome, Alex Ferguson talked about how “he and Xavi get you on that carrousel” and he experienced that again at Wembley in 2011, an era-defining display revived on Saturday.
In South Africa, he scored the winning goal, 116 minutes into the final, peeling off his shirt to reveal a vest underneath. “Dani Jarque, always with us,” it said, written by the physio Hugo before kick-off for Iniesta to wear in honour of the Espanyol captain, his friend, who had passed away after a sudden unexpected heart attack. Jarque’s wife Jessica watched the match on TV, her first in a year since his death. “Seconds before the goal, I knew it was coming. I started to cry before you scored,” she told Iniesta. As the ball sat up, he said he heard “the silence”.
And then he scored. The goal.
“Iniesta is leaving us,” ran one headline last week; the key word was “us”.
Iniesta is applauded at every stadium in Spain, but it is not just because of that goal and it is not just Spain. It happened in Turin and Lisbon too, and at the Santiago Bernabéu. On Saturday, it happened again; it was not the first time but it felt like the last, a touch of melancholy. It is not just him, it is what he represents. “The last emperor,” Marca called him. “How happy he made us. Something in your soul dies when a friend goes; nothing will ever be the same,” one editorial read last week – and that too was in Madrid.
Iniesta belongs to everybody, like some shared treasure, held close but enjoyed together. Luis Enrique called him “world heritage”. When the goal went in on Saturday, on Cadena Ser radio the commentator joined those chanting his name. “The scriptwriter has done it; this final needed this moment,” Lluis Flaquer said. “Iniesta! Iniesta! Iniesta! We can’t leave here without joining in the chant, which is the chant of all football lovers, dedicated to a universal manchego.”
It is the player and the person, the way he is, that helps explain that. He is every man’s in part because he is everyman: there’s a normality about him which is not entirely normal in football, and he is universally admired. “He’s an amazingly good person; someone kicks him and he’s the one who says sorry,” Samuel Eto’o insists. Sergio Ramos disagrees: “You can’t kick him; it’s Andrés,” he says.
After Spain defeated Croatia at Euro 2012, Ivan Rakitic, still not the club-mate he would become said: “We can play against all of them, but against Iniesta it is different. He is another level again. He has everything: he’s so fast, he thinks so quickly, he’s in control.” That day, Fernando Torres noted: “When he has the ball, it’s like everything else stops, like the camera is going in slow motion. I’ve known him for 15 years and he’s never, ever had a bad game.” On Saturday, Vicenzo Montella described him as an “extra-terrestrial”.
Sometimes, though, it’s more than words. Some years ago now, Iniesta was recording a video, explaining to the camera as he walked through the move where he shifts the ball from one foot to another and back again. He came to the defender, a fellow Barcelona player, and went past him. Swish, swish, and he was gone. He was “walking” everyone through it but it still happened so fast as to be almost imperceptible. There was something of that in Saturday’s goal; the ball doesn’t even change direction much; the defender does, as if Iniesta is controlling him too. That day, there were only five or six people there but there was an audible gasp – from professional players.
“Bloody hell,” one spat out.
There is work behind it but Iniesta believes it’s intuitive. “What I did at 12, I still do now,” he says. What he does delights; it also creates a sense of quiet awe, even among those for whom football holds fewer secrets. Vicente Del Bosque says it is like he is watching the game from the stands while still on the pitch, a player of “uncommon intelligence and awareness”. Paco Seirulo, fitness coach at Barcelona, talked about his “mastery of the relationship between space and time.” When Louis Van Gaal gave him his debut, he said: “There’s the pitch. It’s yours. Play.” He played. And play is the word.
The day that Iniesta was first invited to train, Luis Enrique was sent to pick him up at the gate because otherwise the security guard, Antonio, wouldn’t have let him past. Luis Enrique later called him “Harry Potter” but doesn’t recall it, despite Pep Guardiola urging team-mates: “Remember this day, the day you first played with Andrés.” Guardiola knew; he’d been encouraged by his brother Pere to see Iniesta a few years before. As he left, he came across a friend. “I’ve just seen something incredible,” he said. That day, Guardiola also famously told Xavi: “You’re going to retire me. This lad is going to retire us all.” Now, after 670 games, Iniesta is going too. He goes like this, playing his way.
“He’s a phenomenon, a force of nature: no one plays like him and no one can compare to him,” wrote Xavi, the man who was closer to him than any other, who with Iniesta defined a generation. “Sometimes I get the feeling that Andrés doesn’t realise how important he is: one day he’ll retire and we’ll see the magnitude of what he has done.” He surely knows now, as that day draws closer: he saw it on Saturday. “It’s emotional to see the affection and respect people have for me,” he said.
There is not long left, they know. Soon, maybe too soon, Lionel Messi will look across and see an empty space. They all will.
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Jimmy_Quinn's_Hattrick
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23 Apr 2018, 10:26 PM
Post #8728
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Infantino has called an emergency general meeting over a $25 billion offer for the Club World Cup.
"In lengthy letter sent to members of the governing FIFA Council last week, Infantino called for a special meeting with leaders of soccer’s six regional bodies as soon as this week to discuss new details of the offer for control of a new quadrennial 24-team club tournament along the lines of the World Cup, FIFAs’s $5 billion cash cow, and a proposed league for national teams."
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Fly Pelican
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23 Apr 2018, 10:49 PM
Post #8729
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- Monsieur Nailz
- 23 Apr 2018, 08:19 PM
Sid Lowe in the Guardian on Iniesta leaving BarcaSpoiler: click to toggle There were two minutes to go in the final, his final, when Andrés Iniesta began the long walk goodbye.
Slowly, swallowing hard, eyes red, he made his way across the pitch, team-mates coming to embrace him as he went, and all around the Metropolitano supporters got to their feet, applauding. They stood in the Barcelona end and they stood in the Sevilla end too. Iniesta’s name rolled around, accompanying him until he ducked out of sight, taking a seat on the bench. He sat there for a little while, tears forcing their way through, and then he got up again and went to collect the Copa del Rey, alone.
It was the 34th title of his career and a 35th will follow, but it was this one that felt like it marked the end: the last waltz. As he climbed up to collect the trophy, down on the grass Barcelona’s players waited for him, much as they had waited for him when, 51 minutes into his 670th game for Barcelona, he scored the fourth goal, ensuring that this would always be his night: the Iniesta Final.
Collecting Lionel Messi’s pass, with a gentle shift of the hips, just a hint of a pause, he stepped past David Soria and rolled the ball in. He jumped into the air and at some point in that leap, sadness crept into the celebration, nostalgia flooding the stadium. They knew what this meant.
Any doubt disappeared when they saw the Barcelona’s players’ reaction, more eloquent than anything they could have said. “There were a lot of emotions in that goal,” Iniesta admitted afterwards. “Lots of emotions, lots of feelings, lots of years. I really wanted this final to go well and I’m happy.” The normal huddle broke up and then, almost one by one, they waited for Iniesta, a moment each. Eyes closed, Messi held him in an embrace that may become the image of the final, maybe even a generation; he held on just that little bit longer, like he didn’t want to let go.
There was something in that. In good times and bad Messi looks for Iniesta, and in bad times above all. It is in those moments when he seeks security, assurance, that he most wants the Spaniard at his side. “I know how difficult it is to do what he does,” Messi says in Iniesta’s book, The Artist.
“On the pitch I like him to be near me, especially when the game takes a turn for the worse, when things are difficult. That’s when I say to him: ‘come closer’. He takes control and responsibility.”
It is a simple solution, successful for well over a decade and expressed on Saturday night, like a portrait of their era, Barcelona producing a performance that may have been as good as any since Wembley 2011. And yet time waits for no man, not even the man who sometimes seemed able to control it. You can slow the clock, but not stop it and when Messi looks for Iniesta next season, he will no longer be there; he’ll be 5,000 miles away. 22 years after arriving, 18 after meeting Messi, 16 since his debut, Iniesta is leaving Barcelona; he’s leaving Spain too, for China. An announcement is expected this week.
At 33, a starter in 24 of 33 league games and eight of 10 in the Champions League, on course to win a league and cup double, it may have come too soon. That, certainly, was the conclusion drawn after Saturday night. China looks incongruous. The headline on the front of AS on Sunday morning said it all: “Iniesta, don’t go!” But the appeals for him to stay, while they express that hope that he might yet change his mind, will also reinforce his belief that this is the right time to go. The right way, too: remember me like this.
Although Iniesta wouldn’t say so, something broke last year, and while a momentary fix was found, a “lifetime” contract signed and his role renewed, he didn’t want to leave too late, a long goodbye from the bench. Nor did he ever want to face the club he joined aged 12.
Iniesta described that day in September 1996 when he arrived at La Masia as the worst of his life. José Bermúdez, another resident, remembered him as “pale, tiny and sad, delicate and sensitive”. Iniesta couldn’t stop crying. A few hundred metres away in the Hotel Rallye, nor could his parents. His father, José Antonio, couldn’t sleep and the same went for Andrés’s grandfather. Together, they planned to go and get him, take him home. Mari, Iniesta’s mum, stopped them. “Let him try,” she insisted. So, they did.
They took him to school the next morning and then headed home to La Mancha. Iniesta felt abandoned when they weren’t there to pick him up that afternoon. Victor Valdés was there at the start. “His success was forged through silent tears,” Valdés says. It is some success: 34 titles, soon to be 35, his departure accompanied by another double. There have been two trebles as well, and the World Cup and the European Championship, twice in a row. Which makes it sound almost as easy as his football makes it look, but it hasn’t been.
Iniesta does not use the word depression but he has spoken eloquently about the “dark place” he was in after the 2010 World Cup, how he felt in “freefall”. He went into the 2009 Champions League final with a hole in his thigh, ordered not to shoot. He reached the World Cup struggling with injury, running around hotel corridors in the middle of the night, unseen by team-mates, trying to prove his fitness to himself. It says something that Vicente Del Bosque said he would wait for him, as long as it took; it says something too that when he suffered an injury 17 days before the 2009 final, Pep Guardiola insisted: “He plays.”
He played, the way only Iniesta could, the way that became symbolic of a generation: arguably the best that football in Spain, maybe anywhere, has seen. “An era departs with him,” said AS’s match report. “A style, too. A way of playing and a way of life.” After Rome, Alex Ferguson talked about how “he and Xavi get you on that carrousel” and he experienced that again at Wembley in 2011, an era-defining display revived on Saturday.
In South Africa, he scored the winning goal, 116 minutes into the final, peeling off his shirt to reveal a vest underneath. “Dani Jarque, always with us,” it said, written by the physio Hugo before kick-off for Iniesta to wear in honour of the Espanyol captain, his friend, who had passed away after a sudden unexpected heart attack. Jarque’s wife Jessica watched the match on TV, her first in a year since his death. “Seconds before the goal, I knew it was coming. I started to cry before you scored,” she told Iniesta. As the ball sat up, he said he heard “the silence”.
And then he scored. The goal.
“Iniesta is leaving us,” ran one headline last week; the key word was “us”.
Iniesta is applauded at every stadium in Spain, but it is not just because of that goal and it is not just Spain. It happened in Turin and Lisbon too, and at the Santiago Bernabéu. On Saturday, it happened again; it was not the first time but it felt like the last, a touch of melancholy. It is not just him, it is what he represents. “The last emperor,” Marca called him. “How happy he made us. Something in your soul dies when a friend goes; nothing will ever be the same,” one editorial read last week – and that too was in Madrid.
Iniesta belongs to everybody, like some shared treasure, held close but enjoyed together. Luis Enrique called him “world heritage”. When the goal went in on Saturday, on Cadena Ser radio the commentator joined those chanting his name. “The scriptwriter has done it; this final needed this moment,” Lluis Flaquer said. “Iniesta! Iniesta! Iniesta! We can’t leave here without joining in the chant, which is the chant of all football lovers, dedicated to a universal manchego.”
It is the player and the person, the way he is, that helps explain that. He is every man’s in part because he is everyman: there’s a normality about him which is not entirely normal in football, and he is universally admired. “He’s an amazingly good person; someone kicks him and he’s the one who says sorry,” Samuel Eto’o insists. Sergio Ramos disagrees: “You can’t kick him; it’s Andrés,” he says.
After Spain defeated Croatia at Euro 2012, Ivan Rakitic, still not the club-mate he would become said: “We can play against all of them, but against Iniesta it is different. He is another level again. He has everything: he’s so fast, he thinks so quickly, he’s in control.” That day, Fernando Torres noted: “When he has the ball, it’s like everything else stops, like the camera is going in slow motion. I’ve known him for 15 years and he’s never, ever had a bad game.” On Saturday, Vicenzo Montella described him as an “extra-terrestrial”.
Sometimes, though, it’s more than words. Some years ago now, Iniesta was recording a video, explaining to the camera as he walked through the move where he shifts the ball from one foot to another and back again. He came to the defender, a fellow Barcelona player, and went past him. Swish, swish, and he was gone. He was “walking” everyone through it but it still happened so fast as to be almost imperceptible. There was something of that in Saturday’s goal; the ball doesn’t even change direction much; the defender does, as if Iniesta is controlling him too. That day, there were only five or six people there but there was an audible gasp – from professional players.
“Bloody hell,” one spat out.
There is work behind it but Iniesta believes it’s intuitive. “What I did at 12, I still do now,” he says. What he does delights; it also creates a sense of quiet awe, even among those for whom football holds fewer secrets. Vicente Del Bosque says it is like he is watching the game from the stands while still on the pitch, a player of “uncommon intelligence and awareness”. Paco Seirulo, fitness coach at Barcelona, talked about his “mastery of the relationship between space and time.” When Louis Van Gaal gave him his debut, he said: “There’s the pitch. It’s yours. Play.” He played. And play is the word.
The day that Iniesta was first invited to train, Luis Enrique was sent to pick him up at the gate because otherwise the security guard, Antonio, wouldn’t have let him past. Luis Enrique later called him “Harry Potter” but doesn’t recall it, despite Pep Guardiola urging team-mates: “Remember this day, the day you first played with Andrés.” Guardiola knew; he’d been encouraged by his brother Pere to see Iniesta a few years before. As he left, he came across a friend. “I’ve just seen something incredible,” he said. That day, Guardiola also famously told Xavi: “You’re going to retire me. This lad is going to retire us all.” Now, after 670 games, Iniesta is going too. He goes like this, playing his way.
“He’s a phenomenon, a force of nature: no one plays like him and no one can compare to him,” wrote Xavi, the man who was closer to him than any other, who with Iniesta defined a generation. “Sometimes I get the feeling that Andrés doesn’t realise how important he is: one day he’ll retire and we’ll see the magnitude of what he has done.” He surely knows now, as that day draws closer: he saw it on Saturday. “It’s emotional to see the affection and respect people have for me,” he said.
There is not long left, they know. Soon, maybe too soon, Lionel Messi will look across and see an empty space. They all will. I wish I'd seen him live in a game we weren't involved in. When Celtic play, I'm not paying any attention to the other team no matter how good they are. It would have been good to see him and Xavi as a neutral to appreciate them.
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dtic
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23 Apr 2018, 11:11 PM
Post #8730
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- Hellas67
- 20 Apr 2018, 10:16 PM
- dtic
- 15 Apr 2018, 08:36 AM
- barrybhoy
- 13 Apr 2018, 03:56 PM
I was in Endinburgh on the day & actually saw the real bus go past at Haymarket, on the way up Dalry Rd. The streets were mobbed, people 
I lived in a flat in on Queensferry Street, 100mtrs down from Ryan's Bar at the West End with my two Jambo pals and went with them to see the parade...as the bus passes us there was just a lot of polite applause and a few cheers even though the streets were teeming with Jambos (who still can't fill their feckin midden, but win a cup and there's 70,000 in the streets), and as I was was on a two week piss up due to splitting up with my first love as we drew with Dunfermline, then clinching the league and then seeing the Huns end the season without a trophy for the first time in over 10 years I took it upon myself to give out a huge H-E-A-R-T-S and all the placid jambos joined in and gave it big licks until the bus got to Tynie I still like to remind my mates that the atmosphere at the West End was shampooe until a Tim had to get the sing song started, much to their shame
I seem to remember being out the night before, with a jambo mate. Think we ended up in L'attache. Was a decent atmosphere that night, due to them winning the cup. I was just pleased to see rangers get humped.
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Danny Ghirl 67
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24 Apr 2018, 12:17 AM
Post #8731
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First name on the team-sheet
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- Monsieur Nailz
- 23 Apr 2018, 08:19 PM
Sid Lowe in the Guardian on Iniesta leaving BarcaSpoiler: click to toggle There were two minutes to go in the final, his final, when Andrés Iniesta began the long walk goodbye.
Slowly, swallowing hard, eyes red, he made his way across the pitch, team-mates coming to embrace him as he went, and all around the Metropolitano supporters got to their feet, applauding. They stood in the Barcelona end and they stood in the Sevilla end too. Iniesta’s name rolled around, accompanying him until he ducked out of sight, taking a seat on the bench. He sat there for a little while, tears forcing their way through, and then he got up again and went to collect the Copa del Rey, alone.
It was the 34th title of his career and a 35th will follow, but it was this one that felt like it marked the end: the last waltz. As he climbed up to collect the trophy, down on the grass Barcelona’s players waited for him, much as they had waited for him when, 51 minutes into his 670th game for Barcelona, he scored the fourth goal, ensuring that this would always be his night: the Iniesta Final.
Collecting Lionel Messi’s pass, with a gentle shift of the hips, just a hint of a pause, he stepped past David Soria and rolled the ball in. He jumped into the air and at some point in that leap, sadness crept into the celebration, nostalgia flooding the stadium. They knew what this meant.
Any doubt disappeared when they saw the Barcelona’s players’ reaction, more eloquent than anything they could have said. “There were a lot of emotions in that goal,” Iniesta admitted afterwards. “Lots of emotions, lots of feelings, lots of years. I really wanted this final to go well and I’m happy.” The normal huddle broke up and then, almost one by one, they waited for Iniesta, a moment each. Eyes closed, Messi held him in an embrace that may become the image of the final, maybe even a generation; he held on just that little bit longer, like he didn’t want to let go.
There was something in that. In good times and bad Messi looks for Iniesta, and in bad times above all. It is in those moments when he seeks security, assurance, that he most wants the Spaniard at his side. “I know how difficult it is to do what he does,” Messi says in Iniesta’s book, The Artist.
“On the pitch I like him to be near me, especially when the game takes a turn for the worse, when things are difficult. That’s when I say to him: ‘come closer’. He takes control and responsibility.”
It is a simple solution, successful for well over a decade and expressed on Saturday night, like a portrait of their era, Barcelona producing a performance that may have been as good as any since Wembley 2011. And yet time waits for no man, not even the man who sometimes seemed able to control it. You can slow the clock, but not stop it and when Messi looks for Iniesta next season, he will no longer be there; he’ll be 5,000 miles away. 22 years after arriving, 18 after meeting Messi, 16 since his debut, Iniesta is leaving Barcelona; he’s leaving Spain too, for China. An announcement is expected this week.
At 33, a starter in 24 of 33 league games and eight of 10 in the Champions League, on course to win a league and cup double, it may have come too soon. That, certainly, was the conclusion drawn after Saturday night. China looks incongruous. The headline on the front of AS on Sunday morning said it all: “Iniesta, don’t go!” But the appeals for him to stay, while they express that hope that he might yet change his mind, will also reinforce his belief that this is the right time to go. The right way, too: remember me like this.
Although Iniesta wouldn’t say so, something broke last year, and while a momentary fix was found, a “lifetime” contract signed and his role renewed, he didn’t want to leave too late, a long goodbye from the bench. Nor did he ever want to face the club he joined aged 12.
Iniesta described that day in September 1996 when he arrived at La Masia as the worst of his life. José Bermúdez, another resident, remembered him as “pale, tiny and sad, delicate and sensitive”. Iniesta couldn’t stop crying. A few hundred metres away in the Hotel Rallye, nor could his parents. His father, José Antonio, couldn’t sleep and the same went for Andrés’s grandfather. Together, they planned to go and get him, take him home. Mari, Iniesta’s mum, stopped them. “Let him try,” she insisted. So, they did.
They took him to school the next morning and then headed home to La Mancha. Iniesta felt abandoned when they weren’t there to pick him up that afternoon. Victor Valdés was there at the start. “His success was forged through silent tears,” Valdés says. It is some success: 34 titles, soon to be 35, his departure accompanied by another double. There have been two trebles as well, and the World Cup and the European Championship, twice in a row. Which makes it sound almost as easy as his football makes it look, but it hasn’t been.
Iniesta does not use the word depression but he has spoken eloquently about the “dark place” he was in after the 2010 World Cup, how he felt in “freefall”. He went into the 2009 Champions League final with a hole in his thigh, ordered not to shoot. He reached the World Cup struggling with injury, running around hotel corridors in the middle of the night, unseen by team-mates, trying to prove his fitness to himself. It says something that Vicente Del Bosque said he would wait for him, as long as it took; it says something too that when he suffered an injury 17 days before the 2009 final, Pep Guardiola insisted: “He plays.”
He played, the way only Iniesta could, the way that became symbolic of a generation: arguably the best that football in Spain, maybe anywhere, has seen. “An era departs with him,” said AS’s match report. “A style, too. A way of playing and a way of life.” After Rome, Alex Ferguson talked about how “he and Xavi get you on that carrousel” and he experienced that again at Wembley in 2011, an era-defining display revived on Saturday.
In South Africa, he scored the winning goal, 116 minutes into the final, peeling off his shirt to reveal a vest underneath. “Dani Jarque, always with us,” it said, written by the physio Hugo before kick-off for Iniesta to wear in honour of the Espanyol captain, his friend, who had passed away after a sudden unexpected heart attack. Jarque’s wife Jessica watched the match on TV, her first in a year since his death. “Seconds before the goal, I knew it was coming. I started to cry before you scored,” she told Iniesta. As the ball sat up, he said he heard “the silence”.
And then he scored. The goal.
“Iniesta is leaving us,” ran one headline last week; the key word was “us”.
Iniesta is applauded at every stadium in Spain, but it is not just because of that goal and it is not just Spain. It happened in Turin and Lisbon too, and at the Santiago Bernabéu. On Saturday, it happened again; it was not the first time but it felt like the last, a touch of melancholy. It is not just him, it is what he represents. “The last emperor,” Marca called him. “How happy he made us. Something in your soul dies when a friend goes; nothing will ever be the same,” one editorial read last week – and that too was in Madrid.
Iniesta belongs to everybody, like some shared treasure, held close but enjoyed together. Luis Enrique called him “world heritage”. When the goal went in on Saturday, on Cadena Ser radio the commentator joined those chanting his name. “The scriptwriter has done it; this final needed this moment,” Lluis Flaquer said. “Iniesta! Iniesta! Iniesta! We can’t leave here without joining in the chant, which is the chant of all football lovers, dedicated to a universal manchego.”
It is the player and the person, the way he is, that helps explain that. He is every man’s in part because he is everyman: there’s a normality about him which is not entirely normal in football, and he is universally admired. “He’s an amazingly good person; someone kicks him and he’s the one who says sorry,” Samuel Eto’o insists. Sergio Ramos disagrees: “You can’t kick him; it’s Andrés,” he says.
After Spain defeated Croatia at Euro 2012, Ivan Rakitic, still not the club-mate he would become said: “We can play against all of them, but against Iniesta it is different. He is another level again. He has everything: he’s so fast, he thinks so quickly, he’s in control.” That day, Fernando Torres noted: “When he has the ball, it’s like everything else stops, like the camera is going in slow motion. I’ve known him for 15 years and he’s never, ever had a bad game.” On Saturday, Vicenzo Montella described him as an “extra-terrestrial”.
Sometimes, though, it’s more than words. Some years ago now, Iniesta was recording a video, explaining to the camera as he walked through the move where he shifts the ball from one foot to another and back again. He came to the defender, a fellow Barcelona player, and went past him. Swish, swish, and he was gone. He was “walking” everyone through it but it still happened so fast as to be almost imperceptible. There was something of that in Saturday’s goal; the ball doesn’t even change direction much; the defender does, as if Iniesta is controlling him too. That day, there were only five or six people there but there was an audible gasp – from professional players.
“Bloody hell,” one spat out.
There is work behind it but Iniesta believes it’s intuitive. “What I did at 12, I still do now,” he says. What he does delights; it also creates a sense of quiet awe, even among those for whom football holds fewer secrets. Vicente Del Bosque says it is like he is watching the game from the stands while still on the pitch, a player of “uncommon intelligence and awareness”. Paco Seirulo, fitness coach at Barcelona, talked about his “mastery of the relationship between space and time.” When Louis Van Gaal gave him his debut, he said: “There’s the pitch. It’s yours. Play.” He played. And play is the word.
The day that Iniesta was first invited to train, Luis Enrique was sent to pick him up at the gate because otherwise the security guard, Antonio, wouldn’t have let him past. Luis Enrique later called him “Harry Potter” but doesn’t recall it, despite Pep Guardiola urging team-mates: “Remember this day, the day you first played with Andrés.” Guardiola knew; he’d been encouraged by his brother Pere to see Iniesta a few years before. As he left, he came across a friend. “I’ve just seen something incredible,” he said. That day, Guardiola also famously told Xavi: “You’re going to retire me. This lad is going to retire us all.” Now, after 670 games, Iniesta is going too. He goes like this, playing his way.
“He’s a phenomenon, a force of nature: no one plays like him and no one can compare to him,” wrote Xavi, the man who was closer to him than any other, who with Iniesta defined a generation. “Sometimes I get the feeling that Andrés doesn’t realise how important he is: one day he’ll retire and we’ll see the magnitude of what he has done.” He surely knows now, as that day draws closer: he saw it on Saturday. “It’s emotional to see the affection and respect people have for me,” he said.
There is not long left, they know. Soon, maybe too soon, Lionel Messi will look across and see an empty space. They all will. Possibly the best, complete footballer I've ever seen, in action, and consistently
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justinjest
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24 Apr 2018, 11:43 AM
Post #8732
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- Danny Ghirl 67
- 24 Apr 2018, 12:17 AM
- Monsieur Nailz
- 23 Apr 2018, 08:19 PM
Sid Lowe in the Guardian on Iniesta leaving BarcaSpoiler: click to toggle There were two minutes to go in the final, his final, when Andrés Iniesta began the long walk goodbye.
Slowly, swallowing hard, eyes red, he made his way across the pitch, team-mates coming to embrace him as he went, and all around the Metropolitano supporters got to their feet, applauding. They stood in the Barcelona end and they stood in the Sevilla end too. Iniesta’s name rolled around, accompanying him until he ducked out of sight, taking a seat on the bench. He sat there for a little while, tears forcing their way through, and then he got up again and went to collect the Copa del Rey, alone.
It was the 34th title of his career and a 35th will follow, but it was this one that felt like it marked the end: the last waltz. As he climbed up to collect the trophy, down on the grass Barcelona’s players waited for him, much as they had waited for him when, 51 minutes into his 670th game for Barcelona, he scored the fourth goal, ensuring that this would always be his night: the Iniesta Final.
Collecting Lionel Messi’s pass, with a gentle shift of the hips, just a hint of a pause, he stepped past David Soria and rolled the ball in. He jumped into the air and at some point in that leap, sadness crept into the celebration, nostalgia flooding the stadium. They knew what this meant.
Any doubt disappeared when they saw the Barcelona’s players’ reaction, more eloquent than anything they could have said. “There were a lot of emotions in that goal,” Iniesta admitted afterwards. “Lots of emotions, lots of feelings, lots of years. I really wanted this final to go well and I’m happy.” The normal huddle broke up and then, almost one by one, they waited for Iniesta, a moment each. Eyes closed, Messi held him in an embrace that may become the image of the final, maybe even a generation; he held on just that little bit longer, like he didn’t want to let go.
There was something in that. In good times and bad Messi looks for Iniesta, and in bad times above all. It is in those moments when he seeks security, assurance, that he most wants the Spaniard at his side. “I know how difficult it is to do what he does,” Messi says in Iniesta’s book, The Artist.
“On the pitch I like him to be near me, especially when the game takes a turn for the worse, when things are difficult. That’s when I say to him: ‘come closer’. He takes control and responsibility.”
It is a simple solution, successful for well over a decade and expressed on Saturday night, like a portrait of their era, Barcelona producing a performance that may have been as good as any since Wembley 2011. And yet time waits for no man, not even the man who sometimes seemed able to control it. You can slow the clock, but not stop it and when Messi looks for Iniesta next season, he will no longer be there; he’ll be 5,000 miles away. 22 years after arriving, 18 after meeting Messi, 16 since his debut, Iniesta is leaving Barcelona; he’s leaving Spain too, for China. An announcement is expected this week.
At 33, a starter in 24 of 33 league games and eight of 10 in the Champions League, on course to win a league and cup double, it may have come too soon. That, certainly, was the conclusion drawn after Saturday night. China looks incongruous. The headline on the front of AS on Sunday morning said it all: “Iniesta, don’t go!” But the appeals for him to stay, while they express that hope that he might yet change his mind, will also reinforce his belief that this is the right time to go. The right way, too: remember me like this.
Although Iniesta wouldn’t say so, something broke last year, and while a momentary fix was found, a “lifetime” contract signed and his role renewed, he didn’t want to leave too late, a long goodbye from the bench. Nor did he ever want to face the club he joined aged 12.
Iniesta described that day in September 1996 when he arrived at La Masia as the worst of his life. José Bermúdez, another resident, remembered him as “pale, tiny and sad, delicate and sensitive”. Iniesta couldn’t stop crying. A few hundred metres away in the Hotel Rallye, nor could his parents. His father, José Antonio, couldn’t sleep and the same went for Andrés’s grandfather. Together, they planned to go and get him, take him home. Mari, Iniesta’s mum, stopped them. “Let him try,” she insisted. So, they did.
They took him to school the next morning and then headed home to La Mancha. Iniesta felt abandoned when they weren’t there to pick him up that afternoon. Victor Valdés was there at the start. “His success was forged through silent tears,” Valdés says. It is some success: 34 titles, soon to be 35, his departure accompanied by another double. There have been two trebles as well, and the World Cup and the European Championship, twice in a row. Which makes it sound almost as easy as his football makes it look, but it hasn’t been.
Iniesta does not use the word depression but he has spoken eloquently about the “dark place” he was in after the 2010 World Cup, how he felt in “freefall”. He went into the 2009 Champions League final with a hole in his thigh, ordered not to shoot. He reached the World Cup struggling with injury, running around hotel corridors in the middle of the night, unseen by team-mates, trying to prove his fitness to himself. It says something that Vicente Del Bosque said he would wait for him, as long as it took; it says something too that when he suffered an injury 17 days before the 2009 final, Pep Guardiola insisted: “He plays.”
He played, the way only Iniesta could, the way that became symbolic of a generation: arguably the best that football in Spain, maybe anywhere, has seen. “An era departs with him,” said AS’s match report. “A style, too. A way of playing and a way of life.” After Rome, Alex Ferguson talked about how “he and Xavi get you on that carrousel” and he experienced that again at Wembley in 2011, an era-defining display revived on Saturday.
In South Africa, he scored the winning goal, 116 minutes into the final, peeling off his shirt to reveal a vest underneath. “Dani Jarque, always with us,” it said, written by the physio Hugo before kick-off for Iniesta to wear in honour of the Espanyol captain, his friend, who had passed away after a sudden unexpected heart attack. Jarque’s wife Jessica watched the match on TV, her first in a year since his death. “Seconds before the goal, I knew it was coming. I started to cry before you scored,” she told Iniesta. As the ball sat up, he said he heard “the silence”.
And then he scored. The goal.
“Iniesta is leaving us,” ran one headline last week; the key word was “us”.
Iniesta is applauded at every stadium in Spain, but it is not just because of that goal and it is not just Spain. It happened in Turin and Lisbon too, and at the Santiago Bernabéu. On Saturday, it happened again; it was not the first time but it felt like the last, a touch of melancholy. It is not just him, it is what he represents. “The last emperor,” Marca called him. “How happy he made us. Something in your soul dies when a friend goes; nothing will ever be the same,” one editorial read last week – and that too was in Madrid.
Iniesta belongs to everybody, like some shared treasure, held close but enjoyed together. Luis Enrique called him “world heritage”. When the goal went in on Saturday, on Cadena Ser radio the commentator joined those chanting his name. “The scriptwriter has done it; this final needed this moment,” Lluis Flaquer said. “Iniesta! Iniesta! Iniesta! We can’t leave here without joining in the chant, which is the chant of all football lovers, dedicated to a universal manchego.”
It is the player and the person, the way he is, that helps explain that. He is every man’s in part because he is everyman: there’s a normality about him which is not entirely normal in football, and he is universally admired. “He’s an amazingly good person; someone kicks him and he’s the one who says sorry,” Samuel Eto’o insists. Sergio Ramos disagrees: “You can’t kick him; it’s Andrés,” he says.
After Spain defeated Croatia at Euro 2012, Ivan Rakitic, still not the club-mate he would become said: “We can play against all of them, but against Iniesta it is different. He is another level again. He has everything: he’s so fast, he thinks so quickly, he’s in control.” That day, Fernando Torres noted: “When he has the ball, it’s like everything else stops, like the camera is going in slow motion. I’ve known him for 15 years and he’s never, ever had a bad game.” On Saturday, Vicenzo Montella described him as an “extra-terrestrial”.
Sometimes, though, it’s more than words. Some years ago now, Iniesta was recording a video, explaining to the camera as he walked through the move where he shifts the ball from one foot to another and back again. He came to the defender, a fellow Barcelona player, and went past him. Swish, swish, and he was gone. He was “walking” everyone through it but it still happened so fast as to be almost imperceptible. There was something of that in Saturday’s goal; the ball doesn’t even change direction much; the defender does, as if Iniesta is controlling him too. That day, there were only five or six people there but there was an audible gasp – from professional players.
“Bloody hell,” one spat out.
There is work behind it but Iniesta believes it’s intuitive. “What I did at 12, I still do now,” he says. What he does delights; it also creates a sense of quiet awe, even among those for whom football holds fewer secrets. Vicente Del Bosque says it is like he is watching the game from the stands while still on the pitch, a player of “uncommon intelligence and awareness”. Paco Seirulo, fitness coach at Barcelona, talked about his “mastery of the relationship between space and time.” When Louis Van Gaal gave him his debut, he said: “There’s the pitch. It’s yours. Play.” He played. And play is the word.
The day that Iniesta was first invited to train, Luis Enrique was sent to pick him up at the gate because otherwise the security guard, Antonio, wouldn’t have let him past. Luis Enrique later called him “Harry Potter” but doesn’t recall it, despite Pep Guardiola urging team-mates: “Remember this day, the day you first played with Andrés.” Guardiola knew; he’d been encouraged by his brother Pere to see Iniesta a few years before. As he left, he came across a friend. “I’ve just seen something incredible,” he said. That day, Guardiola also famously told Xavi: “You’re going to retire me. This lad is going to retire us all.” Now, after 670 games, Iniesta is going too. He goes like this, playing his way.
“He’s a phenomenon, a force of nature: no one plays like him and no one can compare to him,” wrote Xavi, the man who was closer to him than any other, who with Iniesta defined a generation. “Sometimes I get the feeling that Andrés doesn’t realise how important he is: one day he’ll retire and we’ll see the magnitude of what he has done.” He surely knows now, as that day draws closer: he saw it on Saturday. “It’s emotional to see the affection and respect people have for me,” he said.
There is not long left, they know. Soon, maybe too soon, Lionel Messi will look across and see an empty space. They all will.
Possibly the best, complete footballer I've ever seen, in action, and consistently when Barcelona were at their peak, Iniesta had the highest buy-out clause in the team (Messi included)
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Hoops_in_Paris
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24 Apr 2018, 07:18 PM
Post #8733
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crazy diamond
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Nantes and France legend Henri Michel has passed away today. He was a kind of Kenny Dalglish for Nantes, and as a manager, he made France play their best football in the 1986 World Cup. Sadly, he was unfairly treated later and spent nearly three decades managing all over the world.
At 18, he played with Nantes against the Celtic side that would make history in Lisbon.
One of my favourites players when I was a kid.
RIP
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Forza
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24 Apr 2018, 07:28 PM
Post #8734
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UEFA bans Panathinaikos from European football for three years due to unpaid bills.
Erm...
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surreybhoy
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24 Apr 2018, 10:11 PM
Post #8735
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Not sure if someone has already posted this. Apologies if so.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/43877716
Leeds going to Myanmar on a ‘post’ season tour.

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Bawman
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25 Apr 2018, 01:32 AM
Post #8736
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shocking and heartbreaking
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Gothamcelt
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25 Apr 2018, 03:57 PM
Post #8737
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Retired and now a BT Sports pundit
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Though this was quite an interesting read.
Anthony Martial's stunted development is the real cost of the Alexis Sanchez signing for Manchester United, writes Adam Bate.
Spoiler: click to toggle The significance of Alexis Sanchez's man of the match performance at Wembley on Saturday was lost on nobody. It was that trademark combination of tenacity and quality that did for Tottenham. This was what Jose Mourinho and Manchester United were buying in January - a player who can be relied upon to make the difference in the big games. That is why Sanchez can expect to be in the team again for the visit of old club Arsenal on Sunday. It would be no surprise if he delivered the decisive blow then too. But there is still room for a tinge of regret about the fact that Anthony Martial, the man he has replaced, is expected to be sat on the bench. Perhaps he is even heading for an Old Trafford exit. For all the focus on Sanchez's salary, this could be the true cost of his acquisition. Martial had been in the form of his life at the time of the Chilean's arrival. Just two days prior to the deal's conclusion, he had netted the only goal of the game against Burnley - scoring in a third consecutive Premier League game for the first time in his career. For Martial's many admirers, this was what they had been waiting to see. A cult hero among a section of the club's supporter base, the belief was that his burgeoning talents were being overlooked by those on the outside. When one potential Manchester United line-up shown on Sky Sports depicted Sanchez displacing Martial, there was outrage. It was unthinkable. And yet that is precisely how it has worked out. Sanchez made his United debut on the left wing in a 2-0 defeat against Tottenham with Martial immediately moved to the right. The Frenchman's next start came in another away defeat, this time at Newcastle, and once again he was deployed on the right. Soon after, he was dropped. Momentum was lost. The result is that, three months into Sanchez's Old Trafford career, Martial has made the fewest Premier League appearance of the club's six main attacking options in this period. Sanchez has his left-wing spot but Jesse Lingard and Juan Mata have also enjoyed more minutes on the pitch too. Martial's record still stands up. Sanchez has scored two goals in his nine Premier League appearances for United so far, but Martial managed more than that in the three games prior to his arrival. And while he has not found the net since then, he still boasts the best minutes-per-goal ratio of anyone at the club this season, including Romelu Lukaku. It is an indication of what might be achievable given an extended run, but he is yet to start more than six consecutive Premier League games under Mourinho. Restored to the line-up for the recent win at Bournemouth, Martial completed twice as many dribbles and created twice as many chances as any team-mate. He was still an unused substitute at Wembley. Hopes that it will work out for him at Old Trafford are fading. "I am sorry but at the moment I cannot say anything else about it," Philippe Lamboley, Martial's representative, told the Italian media recently when asked directly whether the player would be staying. There have been reports that he is being touted elsewhere. It appears an exit strategy is being drawn up. Mourinho has long been clear that he does not want players at his club who do not want to be there. Back in September, he spoke of Martial's improved "mood" and "body language" but if the perception is that he has reacted negatively to the challenge laid down by Sanchez's introduction to the squad that may only reaffirm the manager's concerns. The problem is that Mourinho has been here before. This was how he framed Kevin De Bruyne's Chelsea exit - pointing to a player who was unwilling to fight for his place. That De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah have since emerged as the country's outstanding performers has become a source of easy criticism of Mourinho, but there is an unfortunate trend. De Bruyne was 22 years and 172 days old when he made his final appearance under Mourinho at Chelsea. The following season, Salah was 22 years and 223 days old when he was selected by the same manager for the last time. Both men, it has since emerged, were on the very cusp of elevating their game. They were dispensed with at just the wrong time. On the day of the FA Cup final against Chelsea, Martial will be 22 years and 165 days old. Could history repeat? It would surely be a mistake if so. "Anthony Martial is a far better player than I was at that age," said Thierry Henry earlier this season. "He can become a world-class player." The fear for United is that this potential could be realised elsewhere. Mourinho has always insisted that he knows Martial has the necessary talent. "We just want consistency," he added. But that consistency tends to come with age and experience, a natural consequence of a maturation process that takes time. As Henry suggests, with the right encouragement it is possible to improve greatly in the coming years. United's preference for the finished project is understandable. The desire to challenge rivals Manchester City is urgent and the belief is that Sanchez, who turns 30 later this year, can deliver in the here and now. But surely it will take more than off-the-peg acquisitions to close the gap on Pep Guardiola's expensively-assembled squad. Such is City's wealth that it is only by nurturing talent and maximising potential that United's ambitions can be realised. Creating the next superstar will be just as pivotal to the club's success as buying the current one - and much cheaper too. Synergy should be prioritised over star names. Exponential improvement as well as consistency of output. Sanchez could well be the hero of the hour against Arsenal at Old Trafford this weekend but there is still time for Martial to become the hero of the decade at the same venue. Whether or not there is still time for him to convince the Manchester United manager of this possibility, could yet be the biggest long-term consequence of Sanchez's signature. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/sport/news/hidden-cost-of-sanchez/ar-AAwiO9a?ocid=spartanntp
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Gothamcelt
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25 Apr 2018, 04:03 PM
Post #8738
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Retired and now a BT Sports pundit
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- Bawman
- 25 Apr 2018, 01:32 AM
That's a good read as well.
12,917 days in the House of the Beautiful Sleeping Athlete, and all because of a bad knee and a chance meeting.
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Tommo
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26 Apr 2018, 08:36 PM
Post #8739
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Anyone know what time training finishes at lennoxtown? Wanting to stand outside to wait for the players so I can get my shirt signed
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El Toro
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27 Apr 2018, 01:19 PM
Post #8740
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First name on the team-sheet
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Iniesta to leave Barcelona at the end of the season after 22 years.
Really done well to carve out such a career for himself there for a player of such limited technical ability...
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