The China national team head coach has explained why he chose not to manage in England and discussed his friendship with a Manchester United legend.

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Marcello Lippi has revealed that one reason he turned down a job offer from Tottenham was because he didn’t think he could speak English well enough.

The Italian enjoyed a friendship with Sir Alex Ferguson that formed when the Scotsman was in charge of Manchester United and Lippi was head coach at Juventus.

He has admitted that Spurs approached him at the time but that he rejected their proposal, partly due to his love for the Bianconeri and partly due to his lack of confidence in his English.

“Yes, I was very close to Tottenham when I was coaching Juventus,” Lippi said to the Daily Mail.

“They were very nice to me by contacting my son Davide. But I didn’t feel like leaving Turin and Juventus. For me, Juve was like Manchester United for Ferguson: a unique club that I loved to bits.

“’I didn’t speak English well and that was also a reason I declined. Someone told me that Ferguson also didn’t speak English well because he was Scottish!”

Lippi also expressed his admiration for former United midfielders Roy Keane and Paul Scholes, revealing that he was close to signing the former at one point before the deal fell through.

“I loved [Roy] Keane. He was very close to moving to Juventus but then failed to negotiate. I also loved [Paul] Scholes. He would have liked it anywhere and always played.”

The Italian also wished current Red Devils boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer well in his quest to restore United to their former glory.

“[Ole Gunnar] Solskjaer was very good as a player and I hope he will do very well as a coach. He deserves it.”

Lippi discussed the bond he shared with the legendary Red Devils coach and says the pair’s love of wine brought them together.

“He was almost like a brother to me. We exchanged many gifts. I brought him the Turin gianduiotti [chocolate] for his grandchildren but he ate them in the end.

“Even the wine, the good one from my Tuscany. He loved sending me the Matrioskas, the Russian ones, with boxes in the boxes containing his 1971 Whiskey Maccallan. One day I have to call Alex and ask him for another box.

“We used to send wine suggestions by mobile phone. He was in love with a wine he called ‘Tigno’. In reality it was called ‘Tignanello’ but he was convinced it was wrong. We made a bet and called the sommelier of that restaurant. I won!”

Source – Goal.com

Former Barcelona and Inter Milan forward Samuel Eto’o has announced his retirement from football at the age of 38.

Samuel Eto’o, who won the Champions League three times, has announced his retirement. Koji Watanabe/Getty Images

The three-time Champions League winner’s last club was Qatar SC, where he had been playing from 2018 and he retires as Cameroon’s leading goal scorer with 56.

He announced his retirement on Instragram with a picture of himself alongside the words: “The end. Towards a new challenge. Thank you all, big love.”

Eto’o moved to Europe in 1997, when he was signed by Real Madrid. However, he was sent on loan three times and made just three senior appearances before joining Real Mallorca on a permanent deal in 2000.

Four years later, he moved to Barcelona, where he was part of one of the best attacks in the world alongside Ronaldinho, as the Catalans won back-to-back La Liga titles as well as the Champions League in 2006, where Eto’o scored the equaliser in a 2-1 final win over Arsenal in Paris.

Eto’o remained an important part of the Barca side in Pep Guardiola’s first season in management in 2008-09 and again scored in the Champions League final, this time in a 2-0 victory over Manchester United, to complete a Treble, having already won La Liga and the Copa del Rey.

That summer, he left to join Inter as part of a deal which saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic move to Camp Nou and Eto’o was part of another Treble-winning side — the only player in history to achieve this feat in consecutive years — and the third player to win back-to-back Champions League titles with two different clubs.

In 2011, he joined Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala, before moving to Chelsea for the 2013-14 season, where he was reunited with Jose Mourinho, his manager at Inter.

Eto’o spent the first half of the 2014-15 campaign at Everton before joining Sampdoria in January. At the end of the season, he moved to Turkish side Antalyaspor, where he spent three years. In 2017, he joined Konyaspor before finishing his career in Qatar.

He won two Africa Cup of Nations titles with Cameroon as well as the Olympic Gold Medal in 2000 and was voted the African Player of the Year on four occasions.

Source – ESPN

To get to the top of the international pecking order, the Three Lions must resist the urge to become a Red Devils-style counter-punching team.

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Too good for the bad teams, too bad for the good teams. That has long been England’s status in the international pecking order. The game on Saturday night against Bulgaria might well be another opportunity for Gareth Southgate’s team to rack up five or more goals but, in reality, it will do very little to prepare them for the bigger challenges coming down the line.

England over the past two or three years have not been the kind of team to slip up. They win, and win handsomely, against teams they are expected to beat, especially at home. At Wembley back in the spring they had far too much for the Czech Republic with Raheem Sterling scoring a hat-trick in a 5-0 win. A few days later they went to Podgorica and took Montenegro apart.

Bulgaria have played a match against each of those two countries in this phase of Euro 2020 qualification and won neither. Added into the bargain are a pair of winless matches against Kosovo, including a home defeat in June. They are unlikely to trouble England in London at the weekend and will instead try to resist as best they can until the inevitable happens.

The problem for England is that these types of matches are inadequate. They can of course play a certain way against the Bulgarias, the Montenegros and the Czech Republics of this world but it’s another thing altogether when the bigger teams have to be faced. It’s there that England revert to type, struggle to retain the ball and struggle too to eradicate the individual errors that blighted their UEFA Nations League semi-final against The Netherlands in Guimaraes.

There is now a prevalent football identity across the England national teams – from youths to seniors – and it’s implemented to good effect most of the time. Under Gareth Southgate, England have developed a definitive style of play; they use the ball from the back, playing through defence and midfield until an opportunity to spring the likes of Sterling or Marcus Rashford materialises. It works, as evidenced by the sheer number of goals they get against lesser lights.

There is, however, another battle to be had against more illustrious opponents; the battle is for the right to own the ball and to impose the will. That’s where England can still fall down. Look at their decisive losses over the past few years – in the World Cup against Croatia and in the Nations League against The Netherlands – and you’ll see England fail to retain the ball, to play their natural game. The ball comes back time and again until such an occasion that England concede cheaply or else are otherwise undone.

When push comes to shove England can’t dominate the ball against the likes of Croatia and The Netherlands. They find themselves ill at ease because their mode of operation is to have the ball, not simply to resist. When they have to, errors occur or quite simply the frequency of the opportunities ceded to the opposition begins to tell.

Their best result over the last year was achieved against the odds and against the run of play. The 3-2 win in Seville against Spain last October was got on the break. The game followed the kind of pattern we have become accustomed to when watching England play the big teams. On the balance of play, Spain were unlucky to get nothing from the fixture.

Taken on its own merits, the game demonstrated that England in those situations are not that dissimilar to Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s Manchester United. With Sterling and Rashford, not to mention Jadon Sancho, they are well equipped for counter-attack football. United’s opening-day defeat of Chelsea at Old Trafford was earned in similar circumstances. The difference is that the smaller teams are quite happy to give the ball to United in the knowledge that they won’t do anything with it. England on the other hand will cut you to ribbons.

But they are going to have to learn if these bigger challenges are going to be surmounted. There is little point in playing one way against certain teams and another in different surroundings, particularly for a team like England who have a DNA running right through all their teams. The only solution is by trying to get more confident in those matches against the top teams, more comfortable, more familiar in testing environments.

They have got to carry on and implement that style of play no matter what, with a focus on eliminating errors and ensuring that chances stick whenever they come. For now, they should enjoy fixtures like the one upcoming. It’s a chance to boost confidence and to score goals. This group won’t trouble England at all, but they will need to already have one eye on the finals next summer when tougher challenges are in store.

Source – Goal.com

Olympic gold-medalist runner Caster Semenya has signed with South African football club JVW Girls.

Caster Semenya’s athletics career has been put on hold while she appeals a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to uphold the IAAF’s testosterone limit. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images

Semenya announced the news on Twitter on Friday, with a picture of her holding the team’s shirt next to the caption: “Happy to announce my signing with @jvwgirlsfootball for 2020 season. Looking forward to this journey.”

The middle-distance runner — who won gold at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, as well as the 2009 and 2017 world championships — is in the midst of an appeal against the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which recently decided to uphold the International Association of Athletics Federations’ testosterone limit.

The court’s ruling means Semenya, 28, must take hormone blockers if she wishes to continue her career as an athlete.

In the meantime, the South African will play for JVW, a football club founded by South Africa women’s captain Janine van Wyk. The club, which competes in the Sasol league, serves primarily as an academy for girls.

Semenya told the club’s website: “I am grateful for this opportunity, and I appreciate the love and support I already get from the team.

“I am looking forward to this new journey and hopefully I can contribute as much as I can to the club.”

Van Wyk, who recently departed JVW to sign for Danish side Fortuna Hjorring, said: “I am extremely elated to have such an iconic athlete join my football club.

“I am absolutely honoured that out — of all the other women’s clubs around the world — she has chosen JVW as the club where she would like to start showcasing her football skills.

“I welcomed her at her first training with the team on Tuesday and was impressed to see that she definitely has all the fundamentals.

“I look forward to her working with Coach Ciara and our First Team where I am sure she will sharpen up and get ready to play in 2020.”

Source – ESPN

The Belgian won the Golden Glove at the World Cup in 2018, but his time at the Santiago Bernabeu has been far from impressive.

With Real Madrid‘s No.1 jersey vacant last week following Keylor Navas’ departure to Paris Saint-Germain, it’s perhaps fitting that Thibaut Courtois has remained with the No.13 on his back.

Not once in Courtois’ senior club career has he worn the No.1 shirt – instead preferring to stick with the superstitiously unlucky number he inherited at Atletico Madrid in 2011.

Now into his second season at his former club’s local rivals, the fact the Belgian still doesn’t have the No.1 on his back is symbolic of the increasingly shaky nature of his current spot between the sticks.

Having conceded in his past 11 La Liga games, Courtois is on his longest ever league run without a clean sheet – conceding 16 goals across that span.

In Real’s most recent match against Villarreal, the 27-year-old was somewhat culpable for both goals in a 2-2 draw as he only managed to parry initial shots which were quickly slotted past him.

It was a performance that fans at the Santiago Bernabeu have begun to expect, with the club’s faithful quickly losing patience with a player who arrived back in Madrid as arguably the world’s best goalkeeper.

Starring for Belgium at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, making a tournament-high 27 saves and keeping three clean sheets, Courtois was unsurprisingly awarded the prestigious Golden Glove.

Following four solid seasons at Chelsea, where he won the Premier League’s Golden Glove in 2016-17, he was inevitably lured back to Madrid and signed a six-year deal with Real in August 2018.

Initially struggling to dethrone Navas in goal, Courtois did eventually secure his place as Real’s first-choice keeper but has failed to truly cement it with a number of shaky performances and even attracted the now unwanted comparison to a ‘Belgian Joe Hart’.

Though not helped by a club that was in crisis last season, Courtois’ statistics so far at the Santiago Bernabeu make for concerning reading.

Across his 30 appearances in La Liga to date for Real, he has conceded 40 goals, kept eight clean sheets and boasts a save percentage of just 65 – compared to the 70 and 72 per cent save success rates he enjoyed at Chelsea and Atletico respectively.

In all competitions last season, Courtois conceded 1.37 goals each game – a far cry from the 0.81 he let in while playing under an admittedly more defensive Diego Simeone.

While forced to make marginally more saves each game with Zinedine Zidane’s side, his performances between the sticks have simply failed to inspire much confidence, with his coach not afraid to mix things up last season.

“Keylor – I like him but I like Courtois as well,” Zidane said in March after playing Navas instead of Courtois against Celta Vigo.

“Thibaut has shown that he is a great goalkeeper but I want Keylor to feel important too. Madrid need two, three, four great keepers. So the coach always has the problem.

“You cannot contest four, five or six competitions with just one great goalkeeper.”

Though Navas has moved on from Real, Courtois faces fresh competition from Alphonse Areola – a player not content to play back-up and arriving in Madrid with a mandate from France boss Didier Deschamps that he must be playing.

“We will see in time if I have a problem,” Deschamps said recently.

“It is always better if goalkeepers have playing time. The situation is now complicated a little bit. If he does not play at all it can become problematic, but we will see at our next squad gathering in October.”

Having previously impressed in Spain with Villarreal, the 26-year-old was largely preferred over Gianluigi Buffon for the No.1 spot at PSG last season to prove he is no second-choice keeper.

After being urged to make a loan move to Real by Zidane, Areola arrives back in La Liga ready to pounce should Courtois continue to struggle in goal, with the Belgian boldly declaring in pre-season the starting spot was his to lose.

“I think it is clear who is the No.1 now. I feel stronger than ever,” Courtois told Het Nieuwsblad.

“I have trained hard and I am fit. At the end of last summer my percentage of body fat was 8.8 per cent and I came back after the summer with it at 8.1 per cent. I feel good and I hope to carry on like this.”

While he may have trimmed some fat, Courtois simply must start cutting out his mistakes between the sticks, otherwise 2018’s best goalkeeper could soon find himself stuck on the bench and in serious crisis.

Source – Goal.com

The Catalan side are trying to convince their star player to renew his deal but he could walk away at the end of every season.

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Lionel Messi may be contracted to Barcelona until 2021, but the Argentine star has the option to walk away at the end of this season.

The five-time Ballon d’Or winner signed his current deal with the Catalan club in November 2017, though president Josep Maria Bartomeu has been talking up his inevitable renewal for months.

However, Messi has not put his signature on a new contract so far, and Bartomeu may be getting nervous as the club’s star player has no obligation to stay for another two years.

El Pais has reported thanks to a clause in his deal, which Goal can confirm, Messi has the unilateral right to walk away from Camp Nou after turning 32.

The attacker celebrated his 32nd birthday in June, meaning he could have opted to end his almost 20-year association with the Blaugrana.

The clause means Messi can decide to terminate his contract every June 30, though he is not the first player the club have given that right.

Barca legends Carles Puyol, Andres Iniesta and Xavi were all afforded the luxury of being allowed to call time on their careers every year at the same age.

Messi did not want to tax the club’s economy and did not wish to be bound to any renewal, and the club agreed to continue by mutual agreement, with the star attacker having the option to depart at age 32.

However, Ernesto Valverde’s team will be hoping that, like Puyol, Iniesta and Xavi, Messi will remain well beyond this season as the global icon shows little sign of slowing down.

The Barca and Argentina captain has been kept out of action this season due to an injury he picked up during the summer, but he chipped in with an incredible 51 goals in 50 games in all competitions at club level last term.

And Bartomeu confirmed in February that they are still trying to persuade him to commit to the club for even longer.

“Messi’s contract is up in two years but, given how he is playing, we will have him for many more years,” Bartomeu said.

“Leo is intelligent, he knows how to measure things. If he feels good, he will tell us.

“When he decides, we will renew his deal. Messi is the best player in history.”

Messi has been perennially linked with a return to his homeland, however, as he has admitted that he wants to play for his boyhood club, Newell’s Old Boys, before the end of his career.

“I would love that but it won’t be easy, for all that it means going back to Argentina,” Messi said in March.

“I must think about the kids and Thiago is starting to become a big boy, so he takes decisions together with us.

“Of course I would like to play for Newell’s but I really don’t know what is going to happen.”

Source – Goal.com

Africa’s road to the 2022 World Cup kicked off on Wednesday 4 September with eight first-round, first-leg matches across the continent.

Kaiansu Kei Kamara © Getty Images

Hull City defender Angus MacDonald has vowed to fight his new challenge “head on” after being diagnosed with the early stages of bowel cancer.

MacDonald was sidelined for almost all of the 2018/19 season after being diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis in November 2018.

The centre-half started his career with Reading and joined Hull from Barnsley in January 2018, and he has made 15 appearances for the club.

MacDonald took to social media to write a heart-felt Instagram message to his followers, which read: “This is not an easy post to write but life isn’t always an easy road to navigate.

Angus MacDonald signed for Hull in January 2018Getty Images

“The news broke today from my club that I have been diagnosed with Bowel Cancer.

“After a year on the sidelines and recently getting back into full training, returning to the pitch felt closer than ever, so this news has come as a complete shock and is hard to take and fully process.

“However, I’m blessed to have fantastic family and friends and some very good people around me to help me get through this, as well as amazing team mates and staff at the club who have been with me all the way through the past year.

In a statement released by the Championship club on Wednesday, it details that the 26-year-old’s “physical and mental well-being are our number one priority at this moment in time”.

Olivier Giroud is put under pressure by MacDonald during an FA Cup match in 2018Getty Images

“Angus has shown great strength of character in the way he has reacted to this news,” they said in a statement.

“The whole Tigers family join together in showing Angus continued love and will support him in his recovery.”

MacDonald previously suffered from a blood clot on the lung at the age of 15, but made a full recovery.

The player’s girlfriend is English singer, songwriter and actress Alexandra Burke, and he had put on a lavish 31st birthday party for her only last week.

Source – Eurosport

A knock-out clash in France over two decades ago could have gone very differently if the midfielder had kept a lid on his emotions.

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Former England striker Michael Owen has revealed that he still harbours resentment towards his old Three Lions team-mate David Beckham after the latter was sent off in a crunch clash with Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.

England were drawing 2-2 with a side captained by Diego Simeone, having reached the last-16 of the showpiece event in France. With the match finely poised, Beckham was given his marching orders early in the second half for an immature swipe at Simeone.

And Owen, as detailed in his new book ‘Reboot’, currently being serialised by the Mirror, still wonders what could have been if ‘Becks’ had kept his emotions in check on that fateful day.

“I’ll start by saying that David and I always got on well on a personal level. He was obviously a very talented player,” said the ex-Liverpool forward.

“I always admired him massively because I always felt that nobody, I repeat, nobody, worked harder than David to maximise the talent he did have.

“But after that World Cup in France, few would argue that his and my paths were different. I became the darling of English football for a period of time whereas he became the villain.

“The general feeling in the dressing room immediately after the match was that there was nothing to say about him getting sent off. What could any of us have said to him that would have changed anything? The damage was done.

“Whether I thought his actions lost us the game or not didn’t matter. For me, at that time, it was about hierarchy and standing. I was just a junior member of that squad. I was really just a kid.

“But… sitting here now, with the benefit of hindsight and perspective, I feel that what David did probably wasn’t a red card offence in the first place. While it was clearly pre-meditated, it was immature and petulant more than it was violent. But for me, that almost makes it worse.

“All I can say is that, as I sit here now writing this book, knowing how lucky a player is to appear in one World Cup, never mind more than one, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that what David did that day hadn’t let every single one of that England team down.

“Did he deserve the abuse he got afterwards? Certainly not. What human being needs to see his or her effigy being burned?

“But David let us down, and I still hold some resentment about it today.”

Source – Goal.com

The French defender is ruled out for around three months, leaving Pep Guardiola short of options in the centre of his defence.

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Aymeric Laporte looks set to be out for the rest of 2019 after undergoing knee surgery, dealing a significant blow to Manchester City.

The 25-year-old was sent to Barcelona to see trusted specialist Dr Ramon Cugat and, following tests, the surgeon operated on the defender’s cartilage and meniscus damage.

Laporte has at least not ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament, which was first feared when he fell to the ground in agony after a clumsy challenge on Brighton‘s Adam Webster in the 4-0 victory on Saturday.

But an absence of at least three months will have a sizeable impact on Pep Guardiola’s squad as City bid to become the first side to win three successive Premier League titles since 2009.

Guardiola had described Laporte as “the best left-sided centre-back in Europe” ahead of the Brighton game.

Indeed, such is the esteem that the Frenchman is held in, Laporte is the only transfer target that Guardiola has ever returned to after initially being turned down.

City first tried to sign him in the summer of 2016 before he finally joined from Athletic for a fee of £57 million (€65m/$74m) in January 2018.

Since then he has played in every Champions League match – other than a trip to Basel shortly after arriving – and has made more Premier League starts for the club than any other outfield player.

He will, thus, not be easy to replace.

Frustratingly for Guardiola, his squad was already one man short of the four centre backs he would have preferred to have right now.

Vincent Kompany left at the end of last season after 10 years with the club to take over as player-manager at Anderlecht. The veteran wasn’t replaced, leaving City with just two other senior centre-backs in Nicolas Otamendi and John Stones – the latter will return from his own injury after the international break.

Pep does have some exciting youngsters emerging from the Academy in Eric Garcia and Taylor Harwood-Bellis. Highly-rated Spain under-19 international Garcia impressed in three appearances in last season’s Carabao Cup, while Harwood-Bellis stood out on the pre-season tour to the Far East.

One or both could feature in the Carabao Cup clash at Preston later this month but Guardiola will want more experience in the Premier League.

City had looked at signing a fourth centre back in the summer but opted not to meet Leicester’s asking price for England defender Harry Maguire, who moved to United for £80m (€88m/$97m) instead. They also decided against bidding for Dutchman Matthijs De Ligt – the client of agent Mino Raiola – who transferred to Juventus.

Midfielder Fernandinho was identified as City’s fourth-choice option with Guardiola spotting his potential to play in that position.

The Catalan has said that the Brazilian could play in 10 different positions and he became a viable centre-back alternative after deputising in the role in the 3-1 victory over Arsenal last season.

Following the club record signing of Rodri from Atletico Madrid in the summer, City now have two recognised holding midfielders and Fernandinho is able to be used as cover for both positions.

But replacing Laporte will not be easy.

Defensively he has been consistently outstanding, the one exception being two bad mistakes in last season’s Champions League defeat to Tottenham.

So uncharacteristic were his errors that Guardiola put them in the same category as Sergio Aguero’s tight offside call – spotted by VAR – and Fernando Llorente’s “handball” winner when describing City’s lack of fortune on that night.

But it’s not only his defensive qualities that make him a key figure in Guardiola’s setup.

Laporte is crucial to City’s attacking style, particularly against sides that defend with a low block.

Only Liverpool‘s Virgil van Dijk made more passes out of defence last season – and he was named UEFA Men’s Player of the Year last week.

Laporte shifts possession quickly, driving balls out to the right wing to change the emphasis of the attack or firing balls into David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne in between the lines in order to build up momentum.

While opponents will still find it difficult to create opportunities against a side that will continue to dominate possession, his passing ability could be difficult to replace.

Fernandinho is a more natural and dynamic passer – although he lacks Laporte’s aerial quality – and when Ilkay Gundogan played just ahead of him in that win against the Gunners, City dominated the game with speedy and intelligent passing.

Otamendi, who could have left in the summer had Kompany not departed first, will become an even more key figure.

He actually holds the Premier League record for most passes in a season as a defender – 3,074 in City’s ‘Centurion’ campaign.

But some opponents have tried to isolate him on the ball, as his occasionally slow passing is seen as a perceived weakness.

Stones, meanwhile, has built a reputation for his ball-playing skills. But he too can be prone to lapses, such as his mistake for England that cost them in the Nations League defeat to the Netherlands in the summer.

Guardiola has been full of praise for the former Everton defender but for the past two seasons, Stones has been out of the picture for the crucial second half of the season.

While City are reluctant to put a timescale on the length of Laporte’s absence, they hope to have him back for the run-in this term.

Coping without him until then will not be straightforward for Guardiola.

Source – Goal.com