Football News: Review Of The Day 13th December 2020

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Review of the Day

Contracts

Transfers

Veteran winger Filipe Morais has signed for Grimsby Town on a deal that runs until 2022.

Injury Round-Up

Teenage Bayern Munich defender Tanguy Nianzou has torn a muscle in his right thigh in training and will be ruled out for a while. The 18 year old only made his debut for the club a couple of weeks ago after injuries kept him sidelined following his signing before the season started.

Nottingham Forest's on-loan midfielder Luke Freeman, who is with the Championship team for the season from Sheffield United, has been ruled out for about a month following a hernia op.

Managerial Changes

Head of football operations for Bolton Wanderers, Tobias Phoenix, has left the club.

Disciplinary Charges

Zambia's head coach Milutin Sredojevic has denied charges of sexual assault in South Africa. The 51 year old was released on bail to present himself again to the court on 25th February.

The Ukrainian FA has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport against UEFA's decision to award Switzerland a 3-0 win after their Nations League match was cancelled due to a number of Ukraine players testing positive for CV.

The defamation case by France's head coach Didier Deschamps against Eric Cantona has been declared void, with a Paris court ruling that the complaint had not clearly defined the case for defamation. Cantona had suggested that Deschamps left out Karim Benzema and Hatem Ben Arfa from his squad for Euro 2016 was due to their African origins. Cantona said in the Guardian: "Benzema is a great player. Ben Arfa is a great player. But Deschamps, he has a really French name. Maybe he is the only one in France to have a truly French name. Ben Arfa is maybe the best player in France today. But they have some origins. I am allowed to think about that." Benzema had been dropped from the French squad after his involvement in the blackmail sex tape scandal with Mathieu Valbuena.

Moshiri Increases Toffees Shareholding

Everton's accounts have revealed record losses of £139.9m, £67.3m of that they attribute to the impact of the pandemic. Majority owner Farhad Moshiri invested a further £50m before 30th June, which took his total investment to £350m. He then invested another £50m on top of that by November. The club's board of directors are proposing to create and issue new shares, which could represent up to £250m of additional investment, to Moshiri's holding company Blue Heaven Holdings Limited. While the losses were large, Toffees can take solace in the club achieving a record commercial revenue of £76m, with the losses mainly the result of spending close to £200m on transfers, as well as £6.6m in compensation to former manager Marco Silva and his coaching staff. Everton chief executive Denise Barrett-Baxendale said: "Clearly this has been a very challenging year. Our final accounts show that a significant proportion of our losses have been directly attributable to the pandemic."

French Football TV Deal Collapses

The French football league (LFP) will need a new TV deal after their current one with Mediapro collapsed over the non-payment of about 325m euros. Mediapro are expected to pay around 100m euros to exit the deal, according to L'Equipe. While reminiscent of the collapse of ITV Digital, which nearly destroyed the lower leagues in England, it is unlikely to have the same effect in France, with both Canal+ and beIN Sports keen to take over the broadcast rights to Ligue 1.

Hummels Hits Out At Favre's Tactics

Borussia Dortmund manager Lucien Favre's job is hanging by a thread right now, following a 5-1 humiliation at home to VfB Stuttgart and his cause has not been helped by experienced defender Mats Hummels. The Dortmund centre-back has criticised Favre's match tactics on Sky Germany: "We always try to play small and small through narrow spaces and have a huge ball-loss rate. If it works, it looks like nice football. But it rarely does. That requires too much skill. A lot went wrong today. We didn't play a good first half either, but we went into the break happy to be level at 1-1. 2-1, we gave the ball away. 3-1, we gave the ball away. 4-1, we gave the ball away. We kept giving the ball away."

Written by Tris Burke December 12 2020 21:37:24