What you missed while CERN was preserving antimatter…
- UEFA Champions League roundup (team in bold advances to the final): Barcelona 1-1 Real Madrid.
- Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup play-in roundup: Portland 0-1 San Jose (aet).
- Jack Warner was unanimously re-elected as CONCACAF president; Warner ran unopposed.
- David Beckham is interested in managing Great Britain for the 2012 Olympics.
- Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll were both named to England’s provisional squad for the European U-21 Championship.
- Cristiano Ronaldo has slammed the officiating in Real Madrid’s draw with Barcelona. More impressively, Jose Mourinho’s mouth didn’t even move while Ronaldo was talking.
- With an eye on this weekend’s match against Chelsea, Sir Alex Ferguson is planning on resting several key players against Schalke. I don’t see anything that could possibly go wrong with that.
- The FA won’t charge Sir Alex Ferguson for his most recent referee rant.
- Manchester United will raise ticket prices £1 per match next season.
- John Terry is the best captain Chelsea has ever had. Just ask him.
- Arsenal have confirmed a 6.5% price hike to their ticket prices.
- Manchester City will let captain Carlos Tevez leave in the summer transfer window for £50 million.
- Liverpool winger Maxi Rodriguez wouldn’t mind playing a bit part at Anfield next season; Rodriguez has scored four goals in the last two games.
- Liverpool have parted ways with promising Australian keeper Dean Bouzanis.
- Randy Lerner’s right hand man believes that the Aston Villa board should take the blame for Villa’s poor season.
- Sulley Muntari is too expensive for Sunderland.
- West Ham captain Scott Parker “broke down” in training and is taking a course of injections to gain fitness for West Ham’s march towards relegation. If Scott Parker were a horse, it sounds like they would have shot him yesterday.
- Norwich secured their promotion to the Premier League on Monday (and if I wasn’t spending my day trying to figure out what “Logon process has failed to create the security options dialog” meant, I would’ve told you that yesterday).
- Leeds United chairman Ken Bates is now Leeds United owner Ken Bates. It’s possible that this isn’t a new development.
- Juventus wants to keep Alberto Aquilani, but they don’t want to pay the release clause they negotiated to have inserted into his loan contract from Liverpool.
- Roma midfielders Daniele De Rossi and Simone Perotta will miss the rest of the season as punishment for their violent conduct against Bari on Sunday.
- Rennes goalkeeper Nicolas Douchez has agreed to a three-year contract with PSG. Some might call that a Douchez move.
- After failing to qualify for the Clausura quarterfinals, Pachuca decided the best course of action would be to put their entire first team squad up for sale.
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Emerging scandal in France where Laurent Blanc is being accused of setting race/origin quotas on the youth system and senior side. The alleged aim was to prevent dual nationality players from being trained in France only to leave to play for another country. It’d be a shame if this turns out to be true as I really like Blanc and Les Bleus were just getting their act together.
http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/news/_/id/6471057/france-begins-racism-inquiry-youth-programs
I hope it isn’t true, but the French press don’t usually miss the mark and they’ve been on this. Like the FFF need another scandal right now? I’d just forgotten the World Cup ignorance.
Barca and Real are like siblings and this whole stretch of matches is like a long car ride. What the hell did you expect? Did you think it was going to be all smiles and sharing the Nintendo DS? No. Did it go places it didn’t need to? Yes. Calderon says Mourinho shamed Real and on this one, he’s partly right. Barca have their part in it for their utter arrogance. I hope Man U v Barca for the final and I also hope (god help me for saying this) Man U level them by 4 or 5 and bring them back to Earth. As for Real, I wonder after the ugliness if Jose will get another year to do it again. And one also wonders: Why the hell was Ozul off the pitch so long? When he plays, they are a different club…a better club.
Congrats to ex-Bhoy Lambert for taking Norwich up. I hope they stay up. One wonders if QPR will be getting smacked back into the playoff places due to their player registration issue. Again, I hope Cardiff go up so we can stop #^#%$ hearing about their poor luck.
Villa. I like Lerner, like Houllier, and like a lot of the squad. It is clearly NOT working there though. Send Houllier off, tweak the squad, and go from there. As for who to come in and fix the leaks, I have no idea. I am, however, tired of the same faces rotating through. Be nice to see someone new get a shot.
Benitez at Villa could be very, very interesting.
FACT!
From what i’ve read it seems that the general consensus is that QPR will be looking at a points deduction anywhere from 10-30. Of course we won’t know for sure until friday, which means that saturday’s Leeds/QPR match could well be for who gets the last spot in the playoffs… should be a corker!
I like Leeds, but I cannot STAND Ken Bates arrogant ass. I want them back in the Prem and hopefully he’ll pull a Chelsea and sell out to someone who’ll sort the club out en masse. Seems to be his thing.