11 minute read
LAST WORD
KALVIN PHILLIPS
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Tammy Abraham (24) October 2
Club: Roma Nation: England
KALVIN PHILLIPS
OCTOBER
Adriana Leon (29) October 2
WORD SEARCHUse the Word Bank to Find all 30 Words
WORD BANK
CAPTAIN CAREER COMBATIVE CONTRACT DEBUT DEFENSIVE DYNAMIC ENGLISH FANS FOOTBALL GOALS INTERNATIONAL LEEDS MATCHES MIDFIELDER NATIONAL PASSING PERFORMACE PROFESSIONAL REPRESENT SEASON SENIOR TEAM THREELIONS TOURNAMENT TRAINING WORLDCUP WORTLEY YELLOW lub: West Ham United Nation: Canada
HE STILL HAS IT
David Beckham has posted a video on Instagram where he showed o some nifty football skills-in a suit and a tie! The former Real Madrid and Manchester United star juggled the ball exquisitely wearing a complete formal attire. Proves that when you master the art, you can do it anywhere, anyhow!
ON YER BIKE !
Zlatan Ibrahimovic has recently reposted the video of him hitching a ride on a motorcycle last year to get to the Sanremo music festival. He captioned the video writing, ‘’Do I have to save you next year too?’’ jokingly insisting the event was a success because of his attendance.
SOCIAL MEDIAROUND-UP
THERE AT LAST
Manuel Locatelli finally completed his long-awaited transfer from Sassuolo to Juventus, and his new club decided to spice up his arrival video with the addition of one of the most famous persons on social media-Khaby Lame. Khaby Lame became a TikTok sensation by simply pointing at people who complicate matters, whilst showing the audience how to pull it o in an over-simplified manner – all in a playful way. The Senegalese-born man is based in Italy, and had already appeared in videos with Alessandro Del Piero and Paulo Dybala. Apparently, signing Locatelli was the simplest and most e ective way to enhance the Old Lady’s midfield.
EUROS ✓ WEDDING ✓
Instagram - https://www. instagram.com/p/CRZNOOCo4Ho/ Marco Verratti had himself quite the summer. After winning the Euro’s with Italy, the Italian then got married to his beautiful wife Jessica Aidi.
CARLI LLOYD RETIRES
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CarliLloyd/ status/1427754610064822276 USWNT legend Carli Lloyd announced on Twitter that she will be hanging up her boots at the end of the current season. She retires a two-time World Cup champion, twotime Gold medalist, and two-time FIFA Player of the Year.
Club: O. Lyon Nation: United States •Born in Brazil, she moved to the United States with her family in 2011, at the age of 12, in order to pursue a career in football. When Marcus was asked to be a judge poetry at a school for children with hearing loss, he studied sign language so he could introduce himself to the contestants
Tamires Cassia Dias de Britto (34) October 10
Club: Corinthians Nation: Brazil
Ianis Hagi (23) October 22
Club: Rangers Nation: Romania
Federico Chiesa (24) October 25
Club: Juventus Nation: Italy
Marcus Rashford (24) October 31
Club: Manchester United Nation: England
KEEN ON POST GAME BOOZING
Roy Keane has revealed his guilt over lying to Sir Alex Ferguson about his 5am drinking sessions - and then using them as motivation. The duo spent 12 years together at Old Tra ord and certainly endured a fractious relationship despite their on-field success. But Keane, captain between 1997 and 2005, often went out boozing to switch o from the pressures of football - and would sometimes even go out the night before training. Speaking to Gary Neville on Sky Bet's The Overlap, the Irishman opened up about hiding his alcohol habits from his boss and how they spurred him to deliver on the pitch.
Arsenal have vowed to find and ban the person responsible for throwing a bottle at Chelsea star Reece James. The England star ran to the corner flag after scoring in the 35th minute as the Blues cruised to a 2-0 victory over the hapless Gunners. But the celebrations proved to be too much for one frustrated fan. And he/she disgracefully threw a bottle from the stands on to the pitch at James. Fortunately, the 21-year-old wasn't hurt in the incident.
IDIOT "FANS" STRIKE AGAIN
NUMBER 30
Twitter - https://twitter. com/StephenCurry30/ status/1425243515307450372 NBA star Steph Curry praised Messi for his good taste after choosing number 30 at PSG. Curry wears the same number at the Golden State Warriors.
PRESIDENT MESSI
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/p/ CSZbs6yjx9x/ Not surprising to see the hype in Paris of Messi’s arrival, but perhaps what is a bit surprising, was the escort he received as he headed for his medicals. It was like a president was driving through the city.
STAY IN THE GAME!
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LAST WORD FOOTBALL RULED BY PSEUDOCURRENCY
IT’S FITTING THAT SO MANY CLUBS ARE NOW SPONSORED BY CRYPTOCURRENCY, AS SUSY CAMPANALE WORRIES THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS BUILT ON MONEY THAT DOESN’T REALLY EXIST.
It is truly di cult sometimes to find sympathy for anyone involved in modern football. Club Presidents are one minute begging the Government for help to get through the pandemic after 18 months of empty stadiums, the next spending €100m on players like Jack Grealish who are, let’s be frank here, not exactly multiple Ballon d’Or winners. Lionel Messi can stand sobbing at a podium, dabbing his eyes as he says goodbye to his beloved Barcelona after 21 years, then smile as he joins the most soulless club on the planet, Paris Saint-Germain. I am not naïve, I know that the age of the one-club man was over a long time ago and was an implausible ideal even at the best of times. I realise that the sport is now an industry that pumps out billions and needs to keep the money merry-go-round in constant swing. I am not the Inter fans who in a day went from adoring Romelu Lukaku to calling him a ‘sellout traitor’ for leaving them for Chelsea, the club he had always wanted to prove a point at. That doesn’t necessarily mean I have to like what the game has become either. All that out-pouring of anger and righteous indignation aimed at the European Super League project and what we end up with is ultimately not that much di erent. There are still only a handful of clubs, and that group is getting smaller all the time, who can a ord the top stars. Everyone else is relegated to the role of talent scout, finding and developing new players to then sell them on at the increasingly ridiculous fees the band of back-stabbing brothers are prepared to pay. In a way, this allows the football eco-system to work beautifully, as the smaller clubs can keep fleecing the giants for more and more insane transfers, sitting back and enjoying the bidding wars while putting money aside for improved stadiums and youth academies. The problem is when the group of big spenders gets so reduced that the whole system starts to collapse. You can’t have a bidding war of one or two parties; it is unsustainable. There is also the fear that clubs like PSG can become a black hole in the transfer market, sucking all the greatest talent in and leaving nothing for the rest. This is the part of the issue that concerns me the least. After all, Paris Saint-Germain have been trying to buy their way to the Champions League for years now and got no closer to achieving it. They still haven’t realised that building football’s Harlem Globetrotters won’t work because the Globetrotters never played competitive games. They were an exhibition team, purely there to put on a show. No pressing, aggression or tactical nous required. You might get away with that in some sports, but football is definitely not one of them. No, the real worry I have is that we’re only scratching the surface of what is really going on in the world of football and finance. Barcelona announced they have debts of €1.35bn and very little of it has to do with the e ects of the pandemic. This is decades of astonishing financial mismanagement and Financial Fair Play evidently did very little to regulate any of it. All UEFA achieved with FFP was to clip the wings of clubs who wanted to build and allow others to become that horrible phrase we’ve heard a lot over the years in other areas of life: too big to fail. I am afraid the whole system is built on a massive deck of cards that could buckle at any moment. It’s oddly fitting that so many cryptocurrencies are now sponsoring football clubs, because they too are dealing in money that doesn’t entirely exist. Chievo Verona went bankrupt this summer, not long after a scandal showed they were trading players with massive transfer valuations who never saw the pitch beyond Serie C. If you don’t think there’s a lot more of that going on elsewhere, then you had better buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Chievo’s is a cautionary tale in and of itself of the dangers of an over-inflated economy with nothing to sustain it, but a glance at the current status of the wider transfer market should be cause for concern for others. It feels as if clubs have agreed to be part of this massive scheme where they decide the valuation of money, they trade it, they print it and create it. Transfers aren’t cryptocurrency, they are pseudocurrency, the prices set by the entirely interdependent market who have it in all their interests to pump up valuations and share the spoils between them. In one fell swoop, it was calculated that Messi’s departure wiped €137m o Barcelona’s brand value. Meanwhile, some wag decided to pick up the tissue Leo used to wipe his eyes in that press conference and try selling it for €1m. They may as well, money is seemingly meaningless in football now.
It feels as if all the clubs have agreed to be part of this massive scheme where they decide the valuation of money, they trade it, they print it and create it
TOP: Lionel Messi’s departure reportedly wiped €137m o Barcelona’s brand valuel
BELOW: PSG are trying to create the Harlem Globetrotters of football, but it doesn’t work in competitive sport
Financial Fair Play achieved very little if debts could spiral so out of control
Never backs down from a fight.
Never backs down from a fight.
