After the FA Cup 4th round dominated the football news over the weekend, today attention firmly turns to the potential bids and movers on transfer deadline day. Premier League clubs have just a matter of hours to complete their business and finalise their squads for this season.
The biggest transfer story of the day is the possible move of Fernando Torres from Liverpool to Chelsea. Whether this deal will be completed we’ll have to wait and see, but Chelsea aren’t the only Premier League club dipping their feet in the transfer market. Tottenham gaffer Harry Redknapp is on the lookout for a striker, while Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger is still on the trail of Southampton starlet Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.
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Huddersfield players hit out at Fábregas – Guardian
Redknapp cool on Carroll and Aguero bids – Daily Telegraph
Scrap the window! LMA chief Bevan claims majority want it removed – Daily Mail
Houllier ready to take Michael – Sun
Johnson blow may force Mancini’s hand – Guardian
Crock Sam faces three weeks out – Sun
Wenger trying to rush through Chamberlain deal – Mirror
United’s Lindegaard determined not to be left ‘picking his nose’ on sidelines – Daily Mail
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Keane so happy to be a Hammer – Sun
Chelsea prepare to smash record to land Torres – Daily Telegraph
The Premier League match at Upton Park on Sunday between West Ham and Birmingham City wasn’t a great one for the Hammers as Avram Gran’t men fell to a 1-0 defeat to keep them in the relegation zone. However, if you went to that match then you may be rewarded for your support of West Ham. FootballFanCast.com was advertising in Premier League stadia during a live TV match for the first time and to mark this occasion we are running a special competition just for West Ham fans.
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Corinthians outclassed Gremio Prudente in a 4-0 rout to rise to the top of Brazil’s Campeonato Paulista.A Fabio Santos penalty helped the home side at Estadio Municipal Paulo Machado de Carvalho on their way to victory, with Liedson making it two in the 19th minute.Dentinho scored a third in the 28th minute before Liedson’s second completed the rout in the 85th minute.Santos wasted a valuable chance to rise to second on the table when they were held 1-1 at home to Sao Bernardo.Former Manchester City and Galatasaray midfielder Elano netted a 43rd minute penalty, but Raul earned a point for the visitors at the Estadio Urbano Caldeira with a 68th minute goal.Mogi Mirim’s Ze Roberto scored in the 16th minute to help his side to a 1-0 away victory against Americana at the Estadio Decio Vitta.Oeste beat Linense 1-0 at the Estadio dos Amaros, with Anselmo Ramon scoring the winner in the 13th minute.And Ponte Preta accounted for second from bottom Santo Andre 2-0 away at the Estadio Bruno Jose Daniel.
Carlo Ancelotti has warned new defender David Luiz he needs to calm down as he battles to overcome injury and face Blackpool on Monday.The defender became a Chelsea hero when he scored against Manchester United in Tuesday’s 2-1 Premier League victory – and somehow managed to avoid getting sent off after giving the likes of Wayne Rooney and Javier Hernandez a real battering.Referee Martin Atkinson’s decision not to hand the centre-back a second yellow card infuriated United boss Sir Alex Ferguson, who now faces disciplinary action for his post-match outburst.And Ancelotti has warned the 23-million-pound signing, who also picked up a hamstring injury after racing around against United, he needs to take things a bit easier in future.”He has to know English football. He has to be more calm on the pitch. Obviously he’s showed fantastic ability and quality. He has to improve, but he will because he’ll have more experience and knowledge about English football. He can change his behaviour on the pitch,” Ancelotti said.”He’s showing fantastic ability offensively, obviously. He’s able to pass the ball and move in front without problems. He’s able to shoot at goal. But defensively, he can improve.”The Chelsea manager is hopeful his new signing will recover in time to face Blackpool on Monday but he may need a late fitness test.”Until now, he’s not been able to train. I hope he will train tomorrow,” Ancelotti said of Luiz. “Mikel, too, had a knee problem in the warm-up before the game against United. He had a scan yesterday, but everything was ok. I hope, also, that he can train tomorrow. The other players are fine.”Chelsea go into the match at Blackpool as huge favourites, not least because of the huge difference in financial muscle between the two clubs – after all the 50 million pounds Chelsea paid for Fernando Torres would probably be enough to buy Blackpool lock, stock and barrel. “I know, I know – but it doesn’t mean anything. Obviously, when you have the money you can have important players, top players. But the difference in football is teamwork. If you are able to reach teamwork levels with fantastic players, you can win the most important titles in the world. The most important thing is to have that teamwork,” he said. Chelsea must decide whether to recall Didier Drogba after he was left on the bench two games in a row. But Ancelotti is expected to stick with Torres even though the former Liverpool man is still waiting for his first goal in a blue shirt.”Everyone here isn’t afraid or worried because he hasn’t scored. Everyone is looking at his performances. He played a very good game – he didn’t score, obviously, and it’s important for the strikers to score,” he said. “But not for us. I’m asking him to have good movement for the team and to have combinations with the other strikers. He’s doing very well.”
Marseille’s title chase took another twist as the visiting French champions triumphed 2-0 at Stade Rennes in Friday’s lone Ligue 1 fixture.Star striker Loic Remy and Argentinean midfielder Lucho Gonzalez got on the scoresheet in either half for Marseille, who remain third but close the gap between themselves and second-placed Rennes to a single point.League leaders Lille are even on points with Renne, but will have the opportunity to open up a three-point buffer when they host Valenciennes on Sunday.Marseille, beaten 2-1 at home by Lille last weekend, resumed their push for back-to-back league titles when Remy brought his tally to nine goals for the season in the 24th minute.Andre Ayew picked out the French international with his cross and Remy powered a diving header beyond Rennes goalkeeper Nicolas Douchez.Lucho had an easy finish following the good work of substitute Jordan Ayew – younger brother of Andre – in the 80th minute.The Ghanaian striker beat his mark to a looped through ball deep in the area and pulled back his cross for Lucho to poke past Douchez.
Jose Mourinho insists Real Madrid are fully committed to winning the capital city derby against Atletico Madrid on Saturday.Real beat Lyon 3-0 in the Champions League on Wednesday to reach the last eight of the competition for the first time since 2004. Star man Cristiano Ronaldo was forced to withdraw after 70 minutes of the European tie and is in doubt for the Madrid derby. But despite prioritising the Lyon clash, Mourinho has no intention of disappointing the Real faithful by losing to Atletico in their much-anticipated La Liga encounter. “The respect we have for fans doesn’t allow us to joke around in the derby,” Mourinho said.”We will give our all at the Calderon and we’ll see if that’s enough. We will try to showcase our quality. We are very motivated because it will be a very important match.””Games preceding a Champions League match are difficult because you risk losing focus.” “Games following a Champions League match are different and usually tinged by physical and psychological exhaustion. They are equally dangerous.” “The derby will be tough because we’ll face a great team, but it will also be easier to play because everyone will give their all.””Cristiano would be fitter to play if the derby took place on Sunday. It’s only natural he’s not in top form after missing so many training sessions and playing 70 minutes against Lyon. Playing him would be a risk.”Following Friday’s Champions League draw in Switzerland, Real will now meet English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur over two legs in April. Mourinho welcomed the opportunity to face English opposition in the quarter-finals and is already expecting a physical encounter against the Premier League side. “I’m happy to face Tottenham because it will give me the chance to return to London and play at an English stadium again,” he said. “I know how English teams think and I know their character; how they give blood, sweat and tears in every minute of every game.” “They defeated Inter Milan and eliminated AC Milan. They are having a great run in the Premiership and they’ve got a great coach.”
An 80th-minute equalising penalty sent Monterrey through to the CONCACAF Champions League final at the expense of Cruz Azul on Wednesday.For much of the game, however, the result did not appear to be heading the 2010 Mexican Apertura champion’s way.
Fellow Mexican outfit Cruz Azul had scored a crucial away goal in a 2-1 loss in the first leg of the tie on March 16, and looked favourite to make the final after midfielder Cesar Villaluz scored in the 23rd minute of the second leg.
But the away side was awarded a penalty in the 80th minute after Chile defender Walter Ponce committed a foul.
Ironically, it was Ponce’s international team-mate Humberto Suazo who duly converted, sending Monterrey 3-2 up and into the final, where their opponents will be Major League Soccer club Real Salt Lake.
Real Salt Lake are the first side from the US to reach the final of CONCACAF continental competition since 2000, when LA Galaxy won the Champions’ Cup.
Everton manager David Moyes is disappointed with the way his club’s season has gone.Their respectable seventh place in the table masks a poor start to the season where it took them eight games to register their first league victory.
But Everton have won two of their last three away matches and are looking to finish the season strongly with another win when they travel to Wigan Athletic on Saturday.
“We were disappointed with the first six months or so of the season but the players have picked up and we are in a position where more people would have thought we might be,” Moyes said.
“I’ve said from the start of the season I think we have a really good squad of players.”
“But I definitely hoped we would have done a little better.”
“I have given some young lads a game and that has given the team something extra.”
“We have tried not to complain too much about injuries and get on with it.”
“To be fair to the lads they have knuckled down and got the results.”
Wigan are struggling at the wrong end of the table and will be battling for their lives with just four games left to drag themselves out of the Premier League relegation zone.
But Everton have faced other struggling clubs Blackburn Rovers and Wolves recently so Moyes is confident his players will be able to cope.
“They are quite similar to Wolves who we played a few weeks ago.”
“Roberto Martinez has them playing a good style of football and we will have to deal with that.”
“He is doing a brilliant job with the resources available.”
“Roberto wants to play good football and all managers want to win so I am sure he would take not playing that well and still winning.”
“We all would take that but if you can do it by playing well too then that is even better.”
“We have played a lot of teams in their situation recently.”
Defender Johnny Heitinga (hamstring) is a doubt. Forwards Louis Saha (ankle) and Marouane Fellaini (ankle) will be missing.
Movies. Movies are great aren’t they? A wise man once said; “Men like films where lots of people die very quickly and women like films where one person dies very slowly”. Failing this of course, sports films can often do the trick for men in lieu of a decent body count per minute ratio. Except that is, if they’re football films. Football films are almost all universally rubbish. If they’re actually about football.
American sports fans can get stuck in to a wide variety of over dramatic cheesy waffle. Their homegrown sports are ready made for it. Ostensibly, a lot of American sports are geared more towards entertainment than sport anyway. Cheerleaders, hot dogs, silly mascots. All things football has tried to appropriate with varying degrees of cringe worthy success, and all aimed at making it more of a “day out”. Even the multi point scoring “something must be happening at all times or else our bums’ll fall off” logistics are cater made for the all action brainless blockbuster treatment. In fact almost all sports are so inherently dramatic and possessive of rich narratives that it’d be hard to find one you couldn’t make into a suitable movie of the week starring Ted Danson’s hair and Sean Maguire.
Of course, most sports dramas don’t depend largely on the sports themselves. In football films, the good ones don’t at all. Fever Pitch or Looking For Eric for example are both great films, that succeed entirely by virtue of at no point having any of the main characters be footballers.
When they are, the main bulk is usually taken up by the heart warming life story of some dashingly hansom yet brooding individual and their struggle to find time for their passion whilst working 3 jobs as a single parent and looking after their crippled black lesbian transsexual brother on life support …or something. The sports action usually comes as a climax and will almost always involve someone scoring something in the last seconds of play, often from a daringly maverick tactic of some sort that’s “never been done before” or has, but with disastrous consequences.
My point, if I have one, is that these clichés seem to work in almost all sports films, but football/soccer ones. The jaded football fan will yawn at such dramatics on the silver screen. Not because it’s so implausible that the young renegade with a heart of gold can come on with 5 minutes to go and score a hat-trick against the club that killed his parents, but because the drama can never be as potent or emotive as it is in real time.
Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s film about South Africa’s stirring 1995 Rugby World Cup victory staring Matt Damon as François Pienaar and Morgan Freeman as Morgan Freeman in a hat, is a good example of it working for another sport. The political and social backdrop was the main focus, with the Rugby itself being ramped up dramatically with slow motion, music, and all sorts of other manipulative jiggery pokery that works because Rugby can be made more emotional with the use of such tactics. Take for example England’s 2006 World Cup win. Johnny Wilkinson won it with the last kick of the game. It couldn’t possibly have gotten any more dramatic than that, and yet if you watch a replay of that moment, you can see a plethora of England fans behind the sticks, joyfully standing up with their arms raised aloft, already in mid “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” in a sort of “Yes! My 8 year old son has just won the 100 meters at his school sports day” type celebration. The level of euphoria differed from person to person of course, but that kind of fist pumping is the general reaction you get from the climatic moments in most sports.
Now imagine, if you will, that Wilkinson had been Beckham, and old golden balls had converted a last minute free kick in the football World Cup final to send England to glory. Finding just one person in the crowd even able to stand up with their arms aloft amidst the melee of flying legs, arms, cups, wallets, phones and teeth would be a monumental achievement. The reaction would be seismic.
Because football makes us wait for it’s scores, the emotional out pouring that results from a particularly dramatic late goal trumps anything in any other sport on the planet. Even most players themselves say the sensation can’t ever be topped in life itself, so it’s hardly going to be achieved by a slow motion hero shot of Shia LaBoeuf.
You could make quite passably adequate films of both Manchester United and Liverpool’s ‘99 and ‘05 European Cup final wins. Both would seem ludicrously over the top to someone without knowledge of the games themselves but those with that knowledge, would never be able to top the feeling of actually watching it. United’s almost identical 5 goal comebacks against Spurs in 2001 and 2009 would seem appallingly Disney on the big screen, as would Kiko Macheda’s debut winner for the reds, or Deportivo’s four goal comeback against Milan in 2004. I could reel off hundreds of these, because football’s scripts are weirder, odder and more unbelievable than any hack writer could possibly come up with.
And this is why football can never be made into a good film, as long as the narrative focuses on the action. Because football is too good for film. But it won’t stop them trying. Here are some of the more notable efforts.
Goal: The Dream Begins – A young Mexican immigrant gardener is spotted having a kick about by a kind hearted gruff Scottish football scout and rescued from his harsh, dangerous life in lush, affluent, sunny Los Angeles and taken to the hallowed heavenly promise land of Newcastle upon Tyne to fulfill his destiny of becoming the 345th Messiah at St James Park. Complete with bizarre wistful hero shots of Kieron Dyer and Titus Bramble, the film also treats us to an awkward cameo from Becks, and a bar scene to match anything written by Tarantino as Raul and Zidane impart their guru like wisdom to our young hero, by telling him “hey, you look good, keep it up”…or something equally inspiring. The most interesting thing about this terrible film is that the actors were constantly positioned in full kit along the touchline at Newcastle games, and instructed to run on the field to celebrate any actual Toon Army goals in order to achieve the quite commendably realistic action sequences. This is all rendered useless however, as Anna Friel failed to get her kit off.
When Saturday Comes – Sean Bean lives out his own personal fantasy by playing a tough, maverick Sunday league player inexplicably scouted and signed by his boyhood love Sheffield United. After drinking, swearing, shagging, fighting and occasionally doing a passable impersonation of someone who can just about play football, Bean is brought on to face the evil Manchester United who, in contrast to the efforts of the Goal team, are portrayed here by fat, balding middle aged extra’s in ill fitting kits. Inspired by Sean’s natural skill and mullet, the Blades come back from 2-1 down to triumph 3-2, thanks to two goals from our hero, one from the penalty spot, which I do sort of have a problem with realism wise. No one would let a trainee on their debut take a penalty would they?
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Escape to Victory – Pele, Bobby Moore, Ossie Ardiles and Sylvester Stallone fight the Nazi’s with the help of Michael Caine and Ipswich Town. This is quite possibly the most fantastical football film ever made and is so ludicrous that it’s actually quite good. The highlight being Sly Stallone’s slow motion penalty save at the climax, which is the most pointlessly over the top save seen since Bruce Grobbelaar hung up his tash. The ball is basically hit straight at him, as he’s so small anywhere near the corners would’ve been too much of an ask, but the very fact he actually catches it, in a completely non goalkeeper-like way and a bit like he’s handling a hot egg, makes it’s surrealism all the better. The only football film with any football in it that deserves the status classic.
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You can follow Oscar on Twitter here; http://twitter.com/oscarpyejeary, where you can remind him of some other, equally appalling attempts to make films about football.
Porto head coach Andre Villas Boas insists he will be staying at the club, despite reports of interest from English Premier League side Chelsea.The 33-year-old has enjoyed an impressive first season at Porto, winning the Liga Sagres title and leading his side to the Europa League final against fellow Portuguese outfit Braga in Dublin on May 18 – the first ever European final between two Portuguese teams.
He secured the league championship with five games to spare, and Porto only need to avoid defeat in the final game of the season on Saturday against Maritimo to go through the entire league campaign unbeaten.
They can complete a treble if they beat Braga in Dublin and Vitoria Guimaraes in the Taca de Portugal final on May 22.
Braga coach Domingos Paciencia has already announced he will be leaving the club at season end and is hotly tipped to join Sporting Lisbon.
But despite speculation linking him with a big-money move overseas, Villas Boas has declared he is keen to remain at Porto next season.
“I don’t think this news conference is aimed at discussing the future, the futures of both coaches. Domingos Paciencia chose to speak about it, very well,” Villas Boas said.
“My future, as you know, is completely linked to Porto.”
Porto born-and-bred, Villas Boas owes much of this season’s success to strikers Hulk and Radamel Falcao.
Colombian Falcao has hit 37 goals and is the Europa League’s top scorer with 17, while Brazilian Hulk leads the Primeira Liga standings with 23.
Like their coach, both have been linked with top European clubs but they insist Porto is where they want to play.
“I have two more years on the contract with the club and if I am saying goodbye, it’s only because it’s the end of the season,” Falcao said.
“On June 30, I will be training again. In my mind, I am only thinking of winning these two competitions we have ahead.”
Similarly, Hulk said he has no intentions of moving on in the off season.
“The Europa League final won’t be my last game for the club,” the Brazilian said.
“I still have three years on the contract with Porto. It will be an unprecedented final, for us it’s an important European title that could stay with us and the club for life, so we will do our best to win this title.”
Porto last won European football’s second competition in 2003 – when it was known as the UEFA Cup – under Jose Mourinho, and Villas Boas said he was looking forward to what he expects will be a tough game.
“It is going to be a one-off game, I mean finals are like that, you can approach them in various ways,” Villas Boas said.
“Being the first Portuguese final it brings something special to the game. Both teams know each other very well but anything can happen in the game.”
“I think it has nothing to do with what happened in the league, because leagues are completely different, and it’s a challenge that is very difficult for us.”