Football News: Review Of The Day 3rd December 2018

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Review of the Day

GMS Recovering Well

Aberdeen winger Gary Mackay-Steven is recovering in hospital after being knocked unconscious in the first half of their Scottish League Cup final defeat when he clashed heads with Celtic's Dedryck Boyata. The game was stopped for 6 minutes while he received treatement on the pitch before being stretchered off after being revived. Dons manager Derek McInnes said: "He's getting some tests done but he's conscious, he's up talking and all rest of it. We're obviously concerned about him but he was concussed so obviously will miss the next game. He had started the match really well, so we missed his performance but thankfully he's okay."

UEFA To Introduce New Version Of Cup-Winners Cup

UEFA are to return to 3 European club competitions from 2021 with the introduction of the 'Europa League 2'. The Europa League itself is to be halved in size, from 64 to 32 teams and will be joined on Thursday nights by the new competition. It means that only teams from the 15 highest ranked nations will be playing in the Europa League, while lower ranked teams will end up in the new competition. The 2 competitions will have the same format going forward: eight groups of four teams with the winners going into the last 16. Before the round of 16 there will be a play-off round for the teams who finish second in the group and those who finish 3rd in the higher competition. The winning team will qualify for next season's Europa League.

Euro 2020 Qualifying Groups Drawn

The groups for the Euro 2020 qualifiers have been drawn and Northern Ireland look to have lucked out completely with both Netherlands and Germany in Group C with them.
Group A: England, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Kosovo.
Group B: Portugal, Ukraine, Serbia, Lithuania, Luxembourg.
Group C: Netherlands, Germany, Northern Ireland, Estonia, Belarus.
Group D: Switzerland, Denmark, Republic of Ireland, Georgia, Gibraltar.
Group E: Croatia, Wales, Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan.
Group F: Spain, Sweden, Norway, Romania, Faroe Islands, Malta.
Group G: Poland, Austria, Israel, Slovenia, Macedonia, Latvia.
Group H: France, Iceland, Turkey, Albania, Moldova, Andorra.
Group I: Belgium, Russia, Scotland, Cyprus, Kazakhstan, San Marino.
Group J: Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Finland, Greece, Armenia, Liechtenstein.

Spurs To Ban Banana Skin Thrower

Tottenham Hotspur have confirmed that their supporter who threw a banana skin onto the pitch following a goal being scored by Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the North London derby is to be banned. 5 other people were arrested, along with the person who threw the banana skin, for public order offences, including at least 2 Arsenal fans who lit smoke canisters during the match.

Robben To Leave Bayern

Netherlands winger Arjen Robben has announced that he will be moving away from Bayern Munich next summer after 10 years, 7 Bundesliga titles and 1 Champions League. The 34 year old has also said he will be playing on. Robben said: "I can say that this is my last year and it is good like that. The club moves on and I may move on. It is the end of a very good and long period. I won't stop completely yet."

Former Prem Player Released

AEK Athens have released their much-travelled midfielder Astrit Ajdarevic. The 28 year old Swede has been on the books of Liverpool, Leicester City, Hereford United and Charlton Athletic during a career which has taken in England, Sweden and Belgium before he moved to Greece to join AEK.

And Finally....

Monday is upon us again, so it is time for the weekly 'And finally' with this week's theme being derbies:

Ahead of a derby game between the big two Moscow sides, Dynamo Moscow and Torpedo Moscow, two of the players, Igor Chislenko of Dynamo and Torpedo's superstar Valery Voronin headed off to Sochi, the Russian holiday resort. The pair had a George Best-Frank Worthington kind of holiday and missed the plane back, and so missed the derby. Despite Dynamo winning 1-0 manager Konstantin Beskov was furious with Chislenko and was ready to offload him, until his team-mates pointed out that he has kept Voronin out of the game and that is why they won.

As it was the Merseyside Derby last night, we will avoid mention of Paddy Kenny after his love child's horrendous error handed victory to Liverpool, and instead go back to a goal celebration as contentious as Jurgen Klopp's last night seems to be. Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler used to take dog's abuse from Everton fans throughout his career, with some incredibly nasty and vile insults that turned his whole family from blues to reds, however his response cost him a £60,000 fine. Fowler scored a goal in the derby and immediately dropped down to the ground on the goal-line and pretended to snort the white line. Not even Gerrard Houllier's claim that he was merely copying "a Cameroonian grass-eating celebration" of Rigobert Song's saved him from punishment. I will not even mention Luis Suarez's dive in front of David Moyes after the Scot accused him of being a diver. Well other than this mention I mean...

It was a derby match that saw Alex Ferguson hit rock bottom in his time as a Manchester United manager. It was September 1989 and Fergie had yet to win over the fans and had to watch his team get thrashed 5-1 by bitter local rivals City. United fans chanted "Fergie out" as he walked off the pitch and he called it the more embarrassing defeat of his managerial career and says after the game he just went home, got into bed and put the pillow over his head. Where did it all go wrong??

It certainly went wrong for Manchester City in November 2000, even though Fergie was in Cape Town to attend his son's wedding during the Derby, one of only 2 matches he missed in his time with the Red Devils. Beckham scored the only goal after 95 seconds and even though it was just Steve McClaren on the bench, Utd held on to win. The date had originally been set aside for internationals when the wedding was planned, only for the fixtures to be moved around later. The other game he missed? A Carling Cup tie v Sunderland, when he was scouting a young goalkeeper playing in Spain called David de Gea, whatever happened to that lad? Oh and United won, 5-2, without him, meaning he had a better win ratio when he was not in attendance!

Derby rivalries can travel all around the world, as Steve Howey recalled once. The former Newcastle United defender had a brother Lee who had played for Sunderland. Steve was in Lagos, Nigeria to do some coaching and was taken to the British Embassy for a function while there. As he waited outside he was serenaded with a rendition of "Lee Howey, Lee Howey, Lee Howey, your brother is a c***!"

It was a Manchester derby that saw Mario Balotelli unveil his "Why Always Me?" t-shirt after he opened the scoring. That is something he can no longer do as the message would be years out-of-date by the time he scores his next goal!
'Oh Balotelli he's a striker...
He's good at darts, has an allergy to grass
But when he plays, he's f***ing class.
He drives around Moss Side with a wallet full of cash
Can't put on his vest, but when he does he is the best
Goes into schools, tells teachers all the rules
Sets fire to his gaff with rockets from his bath
He doesn't give a f***, he just did it for a laugh
Runs back to his house for a suitcase full of cash.'

The oddest derby is probably the Bungay derby which took place in Bungay, Suffolk between 2 teams of players all with the surname Bungay.

While not really a major derby, the QPR-Fulham game a few years ago is still essentially a London local derby. QPR midfielder Adel Taarabt stormed out of the stadium during the game and then spent his entire journey home, with minders of course as no self-respecting footballer goes anywhere without them these days, stopping passers by to ask what the score was. Rangers lost 6-0 and were relegated at the end of the season.

During one derby between Ipswich Town and Norwich City an Ipswich fan tweeted pictures of a hole in his ceiling he had caused when he jumped up in celebration and punched it. The goalscorer Paul Anderson paid for the damage caused!

Possibly the most famous of all derby stories has to be the international derby between Honduras and El Salvador which started a war! Honduras hosted El Salvador and won 1-0 in a 1969 World Cup qualifier with a last minute goal. The fans, unsurprisingly went even more wild than Klopp last night, fights broke out around the stadium, which ended up being torched. The media of both nations stirred up more animosity by abusing each other in the build up to the second leg in El Salvador. The insanity got worse as the team hotel of the Honduras team was set ablaze with the team inside during the night. While the players escaped unhurt, they were left shocked and disorientated and lost the second leg, leading to more chaos and riots in the streets. It was so bad that the hospitals had never had so many casualties to attend to. On the 14th July the military got involved and a full-fledged war took place between the 2 countries after the El Salvadoran Air force dropped bombs on Honduras while the army attacked along the main road between the two nations. After 100 hours of bloodshed, in which 6000 died, 12,000 were wounded and 50,000 lost their homes, El Salvador's armed forces ran out of fuel and ammunition. So much for the beautiful game.

Written by Tris Burke December 03 2018 06:34:59