The mercurial Argentine has collected the sixth Ballon d’Or of his remarkable career and hopes to have “many more years” before hanging up his boots.

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Lionel Messi has admitted on the back of his sixth Ballon d’Or triumph that “retirement is approaching”, but the Argentine hopes to enjoy “many more years” at the top and says Barcelona have nothing to worry about when it comes to his future.

That will comes as a relief to those at Camp Nou, with it having already been revealed that an all-time great has an exit clause in his current contract.

There has been no suggestion that it will be triggered, with Messi continuing to be a talismanic presence for the reigning La Liga champions.

His efforts have once again seen him recognised as the finest player on the planet, with the 32-year-old now boasting one more Golden Ball than eternal rival Cristiano Ronaldo, and there has been no sign of him slowing down.

Messi is, however, aware that he is closer to the end of his career than the start, with there an acceptance that the day will come when he is forced to hang up his boots and bring an iconic era in modern football to a close.

He told reporters at a star-studded Ballon d’Or ceremony in Paris: “I’m aware of how old I am.

“And I enjoy these moments so much because I know that retirement is approaching. Time flies.”

Messi was quick to counter those comments by reiterating that he has no plans to walk away from football any time soon.

He added: “I hope, God willing, that I keep playing for many more year.

“I’m now 32, though, and will be 33 at the end of the season, so, as I said, everything depends on how I feel physically.

“Right now I feel better than ever on a physical and a personal level, and I hope I can go on for a lot longer.”

Barcelona will be desperate to see a man who has recorded 614 goals in 733 appearances for the club play on for several more seasons, with Messi seeking to calm any fears regarding his contract and the small print which would allow him to leave Catalunya at the end of the season.

He said when quizzed on that situation: “Barca know me and know there’s no type of problem with these issues.

“[My commitment] goes beyond a contract. What I feel for this club is [worth] more than any signature on a piece of paper, so there’s no issue.”

Source – Goal.com

Though it was suggested that his unusual living situation contributed to his unhappiness at Old Trafford, the new Tottenham boss strongly disagrees.

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Jose Mourinho has explained why he lived at the Lowry Hotel during his time as Manchester United manager ahead of his return to Old Trafford on Wednesday evening.

Having taken over from Mauricio Pochettino as Tottenham coach last month, Mourinho now faces a reunion with the club which sacked him late last year. Ahead of the game he was asked about his unusual living situation in Manchester, with inherited wisdom suggesting that it had contributed to his unhappiness while working at the Theatre of Dreams.

Mourinho strongly disagreed, however, and was quick to debunk that theory. “You know how I would be unhappy? I would be unhappy if I was in a house on my own,” he said.

“I would have to clean, I don’t want. I would have to iron, I don’t know how to. I would have to cook, I would cook fried eggs and sausages. That’s the only thing I can do.

“I would be very unhappy. I lived in an amazing apartment, it was not a room. It was mine all the time. It was not like after one week I had to leave.

“No, it was mine. I left everything there, I had my television, my books, my computer. It was a flat, with ‘Bring me a caffe latte, please’ or ‘I don’t want to go down for dinner, bring my dinner up’.

“I was watching football or doing work with one of my assistants and I would ask: ‘Bring us food’.

“I had everything, if I was in an apartment alone it would be much more difficult. I was fine, more than fine.”

Mourinho takes Spurs to Old Trafford on the back of consecutive Premier League wins against West Ham and Bournemouth, results which have lifted his side up to sixth. United, meanwhile, have drawn their last two league games against Sheffield United and Aston Villa, leaving them 10th in the table and looking very vulnerable indeed.

Reflecting on his time at Old Trafford, Mourinho insisted that he had no regrets. “I learned and I think I am a better coach now than I was th  Goal.com en,” he said.

Source – Goal.com

The federation’s president says that politicians must be held to a higher standard when it comes to discrimination.

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UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has accused British Prime Minister Boris Johnson of fuelling racism.

Ceferin’s claim comes in the wake of a number of racist incidents at football matches throughout Europe.

In October, Johnson called on UEFA to show more toughness when it comes to issues of racism in football in the aftermath of an incident involving England’s national team.

The Three Lions were subjected to racist chanting while playing a Euro 2020 qualifier in Bulgaria, with the hosts subsequently ordered by UEFA to play their next home international match behind closed doors with a second fixture potentially to follow should the behaviour of fans not improve.

Additionally, the Bulgarian FA was hit with a €75,000 (£65,000/$83,000) fine for the racist behaviour of their supporters during the 6-0 defeat.

Johnson, who assumed office in July to succeed Theresa May, has come under fire for refusing to apologise for describing Muslim women wearing the burqa as looking “like letter boxes” while adding that he believed it was “ridiculous” people chose to wear them in public.

Recently, the Prime Minister was reminded of past comments he’d made regarding describing people of colour as “tribal warriors” with “watermelon smiles” and “flag-waving pickaninnies” in a column, but refused to apologise when asked if he’d personally contributed to rising racism in Britain, saying: “I defend my right to speak out”.

But Ceferin says that he believes that Johnson’s words have fuelled incidents of racism and that it’s up to politicians to set a better example.

“When a politician that calls women with burqas ‘post boxes’ or ‘mailboxes’ then says publicly that he condemns UEFA – do you reply to that? Do you believe it’s honest? Come on,” Ceferin told the Mirror.

“The situation in Europe is more and more tense. When you see high[-ranking] politicians, Prime Ministers – when you see presidents of Republics who are racists, who were sexist, you see that something is wrong.

“Because if you see an idiot from the streets shouting you say: ‘Okay, put him in prison’ and that’s it.

“But when politicians start speaking they are not punished. And we have that in Europe a lot more and more and more and more.”

Source – Goal.com

The Barcelona idol continues to reach new heights on the pitch, and his consistent brilliance means he has few equals at the top of world football.

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Perhaps it is fitting that Lionel Messi’s sixth Ballon d’Or, marking him out as the most successful player in the history of the prestigious award, comes in the wake of two superlative, match-winning performances in the space of four days.

At least it would be, were it not for the fact that Messi’s heroics against Borussia Dortmund and Atletico Madrid are so commonplace as to be taken almost for granted.

Amid the grumblings over whether the brilliant Argentine really ‘deserves’ this latest recognition over his peers, then, some perspective is needed: if the Ballon d’Or were truly decided on pure talent and excellence on the football pitch Messi would boast far more than six in his overflowing trophy collection.

A friend since childhood of Messi’s as they grew up together in Rosario, Argentina midfielder Ever Banega was one of the first to suffer his talents in the city’s infant football circuit. The Sevilla man lined up for Alianza, while Messi was already a local superstar at Grandoli. “Alianza’s junior derby was against Grandoli,” he recalled to Ole in a 2007 interview, when he was coming through the ranks at Boca Juniors and Messi was beginning to conquer all-comers at Barca.

“We faced each other in several games, but thankfully he left pretty soon because he always destroyed us. You could already see he was a phenomenon.”

That phenomenon has gone on to redefine what is possible on a football pitch. Previous greats are synonymous with one or perhaps two seasons when the world seemed to bow at their feet: think Ronaldo in his sparkling single Barca term in 1996-97; Zinedine Zidane in 1998; Diego Maradona leading Napoli and Argentina to glory in the late 80s.

What Messi has achieved is that same level of dominance, but extended without fail for more than a decade. Hauls of 40 or even 50 goals a season are accepted as the norm for the little No.10, outrageous individual strikes and impossible assists archived as just one more for the collection. No player on the planet can match the Argentine with the ball at his feet, a fact that has been underlined recently by the relative decline of his closest and, in truth, only possible rival, Cristiano Ronaldo.

Ronaldo, of course, is in turn the primary reason why the Argentine’s Ballon d’Or haul is not touching double figures in 2019. Haughty, difficult, egocentric but hugely effective on the pitch, the Portuguese systematically closed the gap on Messi over the past four years – aided, it must be said, by a lobbying machine unprecedented in football history spearheaded by Real Madrid – with his heroics first and foremost in the Champions League, the competition that has come to wield an absurdly exaggerated weighting on individual awards.

It is in fact the highest praise imaginable to say of the Juventus striker that he was the only player who got close to challenging Messi’s hegemony among the elite of world football. At 34, Ronaldo’s star is beginning to wane, his impact in Turin falling short of those glory days with Real Madrid that delivered an incredible four Champions Leagues in five years.

There are possible candidates to pick up the mantle and push Messi for the right to be called the planet’s best, most notably Kylian Mbappe; but right now the sparkling Paris Saint-Germain forward is yet to repeat the type of brilliance week-in, week-out which has earned Messi a legitimate claim as the greatest player not just of his generation, but of any generation.

Monday’s Ballon d’Or triumph redresses in part the ridiculous situation the award’s organisers suffered 12 months ago, when Messi was relegated to fifth place while Luka Modric took the plaudits.

Towering for Madrid and influential for Croatia on their enthralling run to the World Cup final, the midfielder was a more than worthy candidate to break Messi and Ronaldo’s stranglehold on individual honours.

But, in the same vein, his mediocre 2018-19 while Messi helped himself to 51 goals in 50 matches and yet another Liga title with Barca only further demonstrated how far he stands ahead of his peers.

Perhaps Liverpool enforcer Virgil van Dijk will feel aggrieved to have missed out this time round. Nobody, though, can seriously begrudge Messi this latest crown, which rightfully puts him ahead of Ronaldo as the stand-out star of our times.

A true wizard of the beautiful game from those first steps destroying his Rosario rivals with Grandoli, we should not argue over how much he deserves the Ballon d’Or in 2019; rather, only marvel that he does not win the award every year.

Source – Goal.com

The Portuguese picked up the individual prize after winning the league in his first season in Italy with the Bianconeri.

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Juventus forward Cristiano Ronaldo was crowned Serie A‘s best player at an awards ceremony in Milan on Monday night.

The Portugal international scored 26 goals in his debut season in Italy and helped Juventus towards another domestic title.

In the league, he scored 21 times in 31 appearances, finishing fourth in the top-scoring charts, with veteran striker Fabio Quagliarella of Sampdoria collecting the golden boot award.

A jury comprising of fellow Serie A players, coaches, referees, journalists, and current and former technical commissioners all agreed that Ronaldo was the league’s best last season.

The Italian title was the third different league crown of Ronaldo’s career, having also won La Liga with Real Madrid and the Premier League with Manchester United.

Juventus’ quest to win the league yet again this season isn’t going as well as planned, however, with Inter currently a point above them at the summit of the table.

Ronaldo has managed six goals in his 11 Serie A appearances this term and will be expected to propel his side to another league title and possibly victory in the Champions League.

Away from Juventus, Ronaldo has been in fine form for Portugal, winning his second international trophy with his national team in the Nations League, and recently moved onto 99 goals for his country.

Only one player – Ali Daei of Iran – has ever scored a century of goals for their nation, and Ronaldo looks set to join the exclusive club in the new year.

The Juventus forward was absent from the Ballon d’Or ceremony as he claimed his prize, finishing third in the voting of that particular gong, behind Virgil van Dijk in second and Lionel Messi in first.

Ronaldo had been tied with Messi on five Ballons d’Or after claiming his fifth award in 2017, but the Argentine has set a new record, moving ahead of him with six.

Source – Goal.com

Mexico forward Javier Hernandez has refused to rule out playing in Major League Soccer later in his career.

Javier ‘Chicharito’ Hernandez has one goal for Sevilla in La Liga. David Aliaga/MB Media/Getty Images

Hernandez — also known as “Chicharito” — moved to Sevilla in the summer following a spell in the Premier League with West Ham.

“Yes, definitely,” he told the LA Times when asked if he had thought about continuing his career in the U.S. “Look, I am always thinking about my future. I want to be as open as I can to any opportunity.

“MLS is a league that is improving. It is an opportunity. Every league is an opportunity.”

Hernandez left Mexico in 2010 when he joined Manchester United from Guadalajara and became an instant hit with 20 goals in his first season en route to a Premier League title.

He helped United win another title two years later but left to join Real Madrid on loan for the 2014-15 campaign where he won the FIFA Club World Cup before moving to Bayer Leverkusen permanently.

After two seasons in Germany, he moved back to England with West Ham. He joined Sevilla in the summer and has scored one goal in seven La Liga appearances.

Hernandez, 31, is Mexico’s all-time leading scorer with 52 goals in 109 appearances.

Source – ESPN

Cristiano Ronaldo scored his first Juventus goal since October to rescue a 2-2 Serie A draw against Sassuolo in Turin on Sunday, as the Italian champions dropped points for only third time this season.

Cristiano Ronaldo ended his goal drought as Juventus were held by Sassuolo. Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images

Leonardo Bonucci fired Juve into the lead in the first half, but an exquisite finish from Sassuolo winger Jeremie Boga levelled the scores just three minutes later before Francesco Caputo put the visitors in front after the break following a defensive mix-up and an error by keeper Gianluigi Buffon.

Ronaldo netted from the penalty spot midway through the second half to end his four-match goal drought in all competitions and deny Sassuolo their first ever win in this fixture.

Juventus remain in first place on 36 points, but Inter Milan can move one point ahead of them by beating SPAL later on Sunday.

“We put ourselves in difficulty, we lost our heads in the first half,” Juve coach Maurizio Sarri told Sky Italia.

“Every time we lost the ball we were wide open. After going behind we played at a good level for 40 minutes and could have even won the match.

“The games after a Champions League week are always difficult because of a lack of energy.”

The home side were heavy favourites ahead of kickoff, as Sassuolo had failed to pick up a single point in their six previous trips to the Allianz Stadium and the champions had won every home game under Sarri.

Juventus got off to the perfect start when Bonucci drilled a low shot into the bottom corner from outside the box, but the visitors were soon level when Boga dinked a delicate finish past Buffon.

Juve were made to pay for individual errors early in the second half, as Matthijs de Ligt‘s clearance fell to Caputo on the edge of the area and the striker’s volley squirmed through Buffon’s body and into the net.

Sassuolo had 18-year-old debutant Stefano Turati to thank for keeping them in front when the goalkeeper acrobatically turned over a dipping Ronaldo free kick, before the he rounded the goalkeeper to score, only to be denied by the offside flag.

Ronaldo had a golden chance to score his first club goal in more than a month when Filippo Romagna tripped Paulo Dybala to concede a penalty, and the 34-year-old made no mistake by blasting a powerful shot into the bottom corner from 12 yards.

Juventus pushed for the winner as Turati made another excellent save from a Dybala shot and Ronaldo flashed a stoppage-time header wide of the target, but Sassuolo held on to end a seven-match losing run against the Turin giants.

Source – Goal.com

Once a darling of the hometown masses after emerging as a teenager, the striker’s reputation is in ruins after taking a stake in rival Swedish club.

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Barely a month ago, the great and the good of Malmo assembled outside the main football stadium to pay homage to the local boy done good. The unveiling of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s statue, which measures 3.5 metres and weighs 500kg, was attended by hundreds where Ibra was cited as an inspiration by the city’s political high rollers.

One controversial investment and bombastic press interview later, the statue has been vandalised, ‘Judas’ has been daubed on Ibrahimovic’s home in Stockholm with the incident reported to the police as a suspected hate crime by Zlatan himself.

“Zlatan has burned his bridges with Malmo with a nuclear bomb. He is radioactive here right now. The fans are taking this very personally,” Kaveh Hosseinpour, vice president of the Malmo FF supporters club, tells Goal.

Hosseinpour says that when he heard that Ibra was buying a 25 per cent stake in Hammarby he, at first, thought it was April 1. But it was when the striker told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Hammarby has “the greatest potential to become the biggest in Scandinavia” that the blood pressure of the Malmo faithful really began to rise.

Pledging to knock Sweden’s most successful club, as well as the one that gave Ibrahimovic his own break, off their perch has not gone down well.

“He said that the fans in Malmo will always love him and that they will understand. It just shows how out of touch he is. But that is Zlatan for you; he can do whatever he wants,” says Hosseinpour.

At the heart of the matter is the affection and elevated status that was afforded to Ibrahimovic in his native city before the saga of this past week. Much like the four members of The Beatles, Zlatan is known by his first name the world over and has truly put Malmo on the map.

The Malmo municipality erected a giant screen in the city’s main square for fans when he returned home to play a Champions League for Paris Saint-Germain against Malmo FF in 2015. Even the city’s main newspaper, Sydsvenskan, has had a dedicated Zlatan section on its website for more than a decade. Zlatan could do no wrong in his home city.

That was until the events of the past week. Much like the banner that Barcelona’s fans unfurled for Luis Figo when he switched to Real Madrid (“We hate you so much because we loved you so much”) Zlatan’s former devoted followers have fallen out of love hard, and the breakup hasbeen brutal.

“He has been flirting with us for years by suggesting that he would come back and play for Malmo. This is like your high school crush that you have always dreamed of getting back together with only to find out that she cheated on you and has kids with someone else. This is betrayal,” says Hosseinpour.

At 38 and with his playing days almost over, Ibrahimovic is focusing more and more on his business interests. The investment in Hammarby, who finished level on points in third place with Malmo in the Swedish Allsvenskan in 2019, is an extension of his relationship with American firm AEG.

Flick around the channels on Swedish television and you will see Zlatan endorsing Samsung, Volvo and even the Swedish state-owned pharmaceutical retailer, Apoteket. He has an estimated net worth of £110 million but suffered a rare blow last year when his self-styled clothing firm A-Z closed down after it racked up losses of £18m.

Identifying a good business opportunity is one thing but gauging the public mood is quite another. Veteran Swedish football journalist, Michael Ljungberg, has covered the Malmo FF beat for more than 40 years and first interviewed Ibrahimovic when he was emerging in the youth teams at 16 years of age.

“Zlatan has never given a damn about how people will react. He’s a football genius but a very complex person. He was totally unaware of what the reaction would be but if you look at his career he has made controversial decisions like going from Juventus to Inter and then later to Milan,” Ljungberg tells Goal.

He adds, “What he said has caused outrage and his reputation has been damaged forever. He’ll be remembered as a great player but the magic has been broken. I don’t believe that you should raise a statue to a living person as it can have consequences later on.”

As for the statue, it remains outside the MFF stadium albeit daubed with graffiti and surrounded by security barriers. Whether it stays there remains to be seen with many fans saying it would be peculiar to pass a statue of someone who owns a rival club when Hammarby next come to town.

The saga has enraged Malmo and gripped Sweden but some like acclaimed local filmmaker Fredrik Gertten, who made the film Becoming Zlatan, are already growing tired of it. “I’m so bored of it and not interested in talking about it. Let’s talk about real things instead,” said Gertten when quizzed by Goal for a comment.

It is unlikely the debate will die down anytime soon. And Zlatan wouldn’t have it any other way. After all, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Source – Goal.com

The Red Devils face Tottenham and Manchester City over the next week and head into those demanding fixtures on the back of another poor performance.

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This week Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will either convince the doubters that they are wrong to question his position as Manchester United manager or he will prove them right once and for all and demonstrate he is not up to the task.

There are massive matches around the corner – against a Jose Mourinho-led Tottenham at Old Trafford on Wednesday before a short trip to the other side of Manchester for the derby on Saturday against City.

Each will have a bearing not only on United’s ambitions to contest the Champions League places in the Premier League – already a near-impossibility given their ninth-place vantage point after Sunday’s 2-2 home draw with Aston Villa – but on Solskjaer’s grip on power.

To stand a chance of being the long-term solution he is going to have to make his team not only avoid defeat in those matches but also to play well, to demonstrate that he has some kind of positive influence over how they play. Right now they are not playing well, week to week, game to game, minute to minute.

And far from standing up to Spurs and City, they are struggling in the arguments with the Premier League’s lesser lights, a cohort to which now they must surely belong. Their peers are Newcastle and Bournemouth, Sheffield United and Villa; those are the kind of clubs who would be satisfied with a mid-table finish but who nonetheless can strip points from the once-mighty Manchester United with nothing more than a solid game plan and a bit of courage.

Mourinho’s down-talk of the club when he was in charge had been seen at the time as a means to protect his own work from scrutiny and to preserve his reputation. But he was right. This is a disaster. It wasn’t all Mourinho’s fault, nor is it all Solskjaer’s, but there is little question that there are better managers out there and not least the man sacked by Spurs to make way for Mourinho – Mauricio Pochettino.

How is it that Manchester United can be outperformed, usually away but now at home too, by clubs with cheaper players? That question is answerable only by the manager. The buck stops with him, performance-wise. Yet again United were second-best and made to look inferior and this time it was by a newly-promoted team with one of the worst away records in the division.

In Jack Grealish, Aston Villa have the kind of playmaker that United are crying out for, a true No.10 with diamonds in his boots. His opener was world class but still owed plenty to the failings in the United ranks. The only solutions United had for his talent were fouls.

But why was he permitted to turn so easily by Andreas Pereira? How come Aaron Wan-Bissaka did not come to his team-mate’s aid? Where is the evidence of coaching, of scouting, of knowledge of what Grealish likes to do?

Villa were stroking it around during the first half in particular, with United unable to prevent the one-twos and forward runs. The visitors even survived the loss of winger Anwar El Ghazi, who had set up their first goal.

In contrast United were again disjointed. Their forwards could neither hold up the ball nor turn. Their lack of a true centre-forward is exposed in games like this. Anthony Martial cannot effectively do the heavy lifting, like a Wesley can at the other end. Marcus Rashford even somehow contrived to miss the header that eventually got United level, hitting the post when it was easier to score.

It could have been much, much worse for United had Grealish not been narrowly judged to be offside in the run-up to a successful strike at goal by Douglas Luiz. They didn’t deserve their equaliser but the goal which made it 2-1 came during their best spell of play. They capitalised on Villa’s tiredness and pinned them back.

There was, however, scant evidence on the day of any sort of ability to make goals from open play. They will be thankful that Dean Smith’s team were so inattentive to short corners. Villa, though, had tricks in that regard of their own. Tyrone Mings, at fault in the build-up to the first United goal, thudded a shot home on the turn. It was nothing more than they deserved.

But here we are, a few days away now from two showdowns which will define Solskjaer’s tenure. He’s in charge of a team that can hardly score from open play at home against Aston Villa, a team who had to this point lost every away match this season except one. It’s just not good enough.

Solskjaer’s United have the uncanny ability to make every team they play look good. It’s Mourinho and City around the corner. We could well have reached the endgame.

Source – Goal.com