Barcelona fullback Daniel Alves says he's a big fan of Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho. Alves admits while at Sevilla, he almost signed for Mourinho at Chelsea, before Barcelona stepped in. "I was about to go to Chelsea to work with Mourinho," he revealed. "It is logical there is now a rivalry, but I wish him no harm."
Does anyone even question that the whole retirement drama was the FA giving him the opportunity to save some face and that if he chose not to gracefully retire, the punishment would have been to ban him from international football?
Agree. Either that or if he didn't retire from International football, his domestic ban would of been that much more.
Well they can f*** off, I dont think we are going to him up so easily. And... apparently we are interested in signing Dortmund's Lewandowski to reinforce our striking department.
Manchester United and Arsenal are set to battle for Real Madrid defender Raul Albiol in January. The 27-year-old has been ignored by boss Jose Mourinho for the Spanish champions last three games, sparking reports the unhappy star could be on his way out of the club. United are currently facing a defensive crisis, with skipper Nemanja Vidic joining Phil Jones and Chris Smalling on the sidelines this week. Arsenal will also compete for the versatile Spain international, with unsettled Bacary Sagna likely to move on from the Emirates soon
If Albiol wasn't "happy" with his PT or his role, he could have left this summer. Instead, he signed an extension. Pure horsecrap.
LOLOLOL You'd think they'd try harder than this. z0MG Albiol didn't play 3 games!?!?!?!? He must be PISSED.
He complained about not being offered a new contract and how the club didn't have to sell Song a few weeks back. That was interpreted as him wanting to leave.
Don't bother yourself getting riled up for such nonsense. Lewandowski isn't even the level of Valencia talk much Madrid; we have no interest. As for Varane he isn't going anywhere.
Suso: Man I dislike that guy and not just for his style of play. I pray he NEVER EVER has the opportunity to even sniff our managerial role.
I know man, sucks big time. That clown Benitez steals him from us and then gets fired shortly after. FFS. How many of the people who cried foul will come and admit that? I will though, I thought it was a bad idea and that he should have stayed but it seems that we've done the best thing for him and for us. We're going to get possibly the best (judging from his start) RB in Bundesliga back in the near future and for cheap. When you think about the amounts thrown about for Dortmund's RB? Can't help but like what we've done.
Dani has been good but his defending is still suspect, minus the Rayo game Arbeloa has been pretty steady. I think he has acquitted himself pretty well in Germany so far and I was a fan of the move as a means to fastrack his development but let's wait a bit longer, especially as teams begin to "figure" him out and for better competition to gauge his progress, to declare this move a "success" or that he could've benched Arbeloa if he stayed as at this point that's still off the mark by a fair bit.
It's not like these couple of months in Germany suddenly made him a completely different player, the level he's showing now is pretty much the same one he had when we sold/loaned him out. Not first team worthy, but definitely a good 2nd choice with options to play considering Arbeloa is the first choice. Hopefully he does good and he'll be an important player for us in the future, however considering a star player of the Bundesliga was deemed 'not ready' for us that we loaned him out I'll wait with considering his sale a success in the sense of it raising us a future player until it actually happens.
Another Juve coach to stand in front of a judge, and Rossell continues to amaze me with his comments, drug test on this one please.
Terry's solicitors were trying to get the case thrown out until last week, once they had confirmation that it would go ahead then he was merely jumping before he was pushed. Capello resigned because of the pressure to not play him, with him being found guilty of racism the same thing would have happened again with Roy Hodgson so he wouldn't have played again anyway. He was also always going to get a 4 game ban for that. With the FA's panel using a 'probability of likelyness' to find someone guilty rather than the legal 'beyond reasonable doubt they have a 99.6% success rate of finding people guilty of the charges presented to them. FA rules state 2 game ban for abusive language, and a 2 game ban for bringing ethnicity into it. The panel did the maximum they could do. Suarez was given an 8 game ban as their rules state that using racist terms multiple terms doubles the final suspension time. the FA panel did everything they could. it is the FA's rulebook/fixed penalties that need to be reviewed.
So Barcelona's spokesman/general secretary Toni Freixa has now been hired by Villar to be the spokesman of the Spanish Football Federation. Like they weren't the same already