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Football News: Review Of The Day 5th November 2018

Review Of The Day 5th November 2018
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Review of the Day

 

Sterling No Longer Scared

Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has said Raheem Sterling's improvement is down to his mentality having improved and fear vanishing. Pep said: "The first season, he was scared, he was looking, who is the guy I am going to pass the ball to? We spoke about that and said 'try to score goals'. Now you have the feeling, where is the goal and go over there. I have the feeling he is now enjoying scoring goals and making assists. He is becoming a winning player. He is stable and is focused on what he has to do to become a better player. He is more mature now than he was when we first met at the club. He believes more in himself. Hopefully he can be more ambitious and think he can improve. He is 23 and he can be a better player. He is a top player but still is so young to be considered the world's best. He is in incredible form, he is sharp, fast, clever, fighting, decisive, he can play both sides and can play in the middle and receive the ball between the lines and commit the centre-backs with a lot of aggressiveness. It was an incredible performance but still with the young guys like him and Leroy [Sane] I would feel he can improve. Still he loses simple balls, like the Tottenham game, when he made an amazing assist in the first few minutes but then lost a lot of balls."

 

Rooney To Get England Farewell

Maybe I am just cynical, but this story makes me want to vomit, that DC United's former Manchester United and Everton forward Wayne Rooney is to come out of international retirement to play a farewell game for England. The fact that earning a cap for your country should be a great honour and reserved for players at their peak is no longer relevant, now it is to be handed out to players for charity games etc. In essence England are holding a testimonial for Rooney's foundation but are going to count it as a genuine competitive game. How on earth can they be giving out caps for this? There are far too many pointless internationals as it is, you only have to look at Rooney's caps of which 45 of his 119 have been in non-competitive games. However this is taking it to a new level.

 

Sarri Questions Morata Despite Double

Alvaro Morata scored a double for Chelsea in a 3-1 win over Crystal Palace but still found manager Maurizio Sarri questioning his ability to be Chelsea's main striker. Sarri said, when asked if Morata can go on and be the main striker at the Blues, "I don't know. I think potentially he can. He has to improve more in personality and in confidence because sometimes he's a little bit fragile."

 

Poch Tells Trippier To Remember He Is A Full Back

After Kieran Trippier made a horrendous error, attempting a nutmeg just outside his own box, which led to a Wolverhampton Wanderers goal on Saturday, Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino has criticised his right back. Pochettino said: "The disappointment is massive to concede two cheap actions like we conceded. I don't talk about the action of the penalty - we need to go a little bit before. You are going to see or have the answer. We provide [Kieran] with the platform to go forward because we create the system and dynamic to put him in the best position to play. In a different situation, I think he is a full-back, not a winger. It's like no different full-back in the world. When you are in possession and go forward, you need to be strong too when you are in a defensive situation. We always compensate. If you watch the game, Moussa Sissoko compensates that situation. If we put a player high, it is because in behind we have compensated the situation to give the time to go back. Kieran needs to improve in the defensive situation because in the last few games you have seen that we conceded a few actions. But like him, all the players need to improve in the defensive situation. We need to be more aggressive. Against Barcelona, Manchester City and now, we conceded very poor goals. For me, football is about when you don't have the ball. The great teams like Manchester City, who won the Premier League last season, or Barcelona or Real Madrid, when they don't have the ball they fight like the most humble player. That is the balance which is important to generate or create in a team if you want to be close to winning titles."

 

VDV Announces Retirement

Former Netherlands international Rafael van der Vaart has announced his retirement from playing football at the age of 35. The playmaker played for Ajax, Hamburg, Spurs, Real Madrid and Real Betis in a glittering career but has suffered injury problems this season for Esbjerg forcing him into retirement.

 

And Finally

Real Madrid are just taking the piss now. They have installed TVs in their urinals. No really, they have. They are copying fellow La Liga side Leganes, who already have them installed for some reason.

Speaking of taking the piss, Gordon Strachan often tells the story of his time at Manchester United when the drinking culture was so strong that no one had realised Paul McGrath was an alcoholic as he was not even one of the bigger drinkers at the club! When the team went to Bermuda for a training camp, they were allowed to go out for a couple of beers, 36 hours later and the training session had to be cancelled as a bunch of drunken Man Utd players were staggering about running into palm trees.

Raphael Varane nearly blew his chance to sign for Real Madrid back in 2011. The young defender was studying for his exams when he got a phone call, after a few questions from the other end, the stressed youngster told the caller he was busy and hung up. The problem was that the caller was Zinedine Zidane, who was calling to find out if he was interested in joining Madrid.

And finally Peter Crouch has a lot of anecdotes to choose from but the most famous is probably when he was asked by a reporter, after signing for Liverpool, what he would been if he failed to make it as a professional footballer. "Probably a virgin," quipped Crouch, with good reason if his success with women while at Liverpool is anything to go by. He was sat at the bar with Jamie Carragher and saw a hot Spanish-looking woman smile at him. Thinking his luck must be in, he nudged Carragher and told him he was going to go over and try chatting her up. Carragher, on having the woman pointed out to him burst out laughing and started calling over the rest of the team to see this. So Crouch tells the entire squad he is going over to chat her up. Unfortunately for Crouch, she was simply smiling at him because she recognised him as one of her husband's team-mates, as she was Xabi Alonso's wife!

Written by Tris Burke November 05 2018 05:31:11

 

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