- United Players off to France 2016
- Klopp to the Kop, Big Sam to the North East
- Blatter and Platini Red Carded
With no domestic football being played in the last week, there was still enough news happening in the football world to fill up a few lines in our weekly round-up.
We start with the news that United keeper Victor Valdes has become an outcast at the club. After being told that he’s not part of this season’s squad, he’s now seemingly on the way out with Newcastle showing an interest after their own number one Tim Krul got injured with Holland.
One player that hasn’t given up on his United career is Bebe. Yes, the Benfica player, on loan to Rayo Vallecano this season, still believes that he has a future at United. Maybe he thinks the fans are talking about him when they go on about bringing the Portuguese legend back? In any case, the club better keep that no.33 hook empty, just in case.
Looking at countries who featured internationally this weekend, Rooney, Jones and Smalling will all be going to France for Euro 2016, as will our Deutscher Fussball Meister Bastian Schweinsteiger; the Spanish contingent of De Gea, Mata, and hopefully Herrera; Paddy McNair, Fellaini, Darmian and Martial. We look forward to seeing how they fare during the tournament after a tough season helping United do well in all competitions.
Talking about Fellaini, his country Belgium is now at the top in the FIFA rankings list, so we can be proud of our bush-haired giant being part of the ‘best’ international team in the whole world!
Straight on to FIFA, where the waters are getting murkier every week, and Blatter and company are running out of places to hide their dirty money. In fact Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini have both been suspended for ninety days by the ethics committee. While Platini insists that he was owed the £1.3m paid to him by Blatter for work he did NINE years earlier, there are still question marks as to why it took so long, and more so because the money changed hands at the same time that Platini said that he wouldn’t contest the FIFA presidential elections.
For someone my age, it’s slightly sad to see a man we remember as one of the best footballers in the world of our generation (he won the European footballer of the year award three times and was the Ronaldo to Maradona’s Messi) being reduced to being another greedy bighead who couldn’t turn away from the dirty millions FIFA and UEFA seem to make every year.
Back to the Premier League, we now know that Jurgen Klopp has moved to L’pool. While it doesn’t take a genius to realise that this should be a good move for the eighteen times league winners (two less than United) as he’s clearly better than Brendan Rodgers, we can’t wait for the media to compare statistics when things don’t go as well as they’ll be expecting, same as they did with our own Van Gaal and his predecessor David Moyes. We won’t hold our breath though as if Klopp’s initial press conference was a sign of things to come, the media might have found someone else whose behind they’ll lick willingly, possibly even ‘pushing’ someone like Jose Mourinho aside to do so. They even lapped up ‘the normal one’ comment, forgetting that the same three words had been used by Avram Grant at Chelsea when he took over from Jose Mourinho in 2007.
Another team that has announced a new manager in the past week is Sunderland, who have now turned to Sam Allardyce to save them from the dreaded relegation. Big Sam will be Ellis Short’s eight’ manager since he took over the club in 2008, and though he’s well known to save clubs in desperate situations, he’ll have his work cut out to make sure that they stay in the Premier League next season. I doubt they would be missed much if they do go down.
Looking ahead, United now have another two tough away games coming up. They first travel to Everton on Saturday (3pm UK time), a place where they’ve lost their last three games. We’ll be hoping that the team will be up for it, and captain Rooney has a decent game against his former club, something that unfortunately rarely happens.
United then travel to Russia where they face CSKA Moscow on Wednesday (7:45pm UK time). Though it won’t be easy, we will be hoping for another three points in the quest to make it into the last sixteen of the Champions League. COME ON UNITED!!!