The opening shots of the 2010/2011 Champions League campaign are fired this week with tricky assignments lying in wait for Inter Milan and the main pretenders to the Italian holders coveted crown.
Group stage action gets under way on Tuesday with Inter away to Dutch champions FC Twente in what promises to be a rigorous examination of their capability to become the first back-to-back winners since AC Milan in 1989-90.
Inter, with Rafael Benitez succeeding Jose Mourinho in the San Siro hotseat, received an early season bodyblow last month when coming unstuck 2-0 to Atletico Madrid in the European SuperCup in Monaco.
After that former Liverpool boss Benitez will be looking for a firm statement of intent from his new team in a Group A that also comprises competition…
Cristiano Ronaldo s decision to leave Real Madrid for Juventus should be appreciated , Andre Villas-Boas said as the Marseille coach backed the star to win the Ballon d Or.
Barcelona star Lionel Messi is tipped to win the award for a record sixth time in Paris on Monday.
Ronaldo is also a five-time winner of the prize, but has not been as prolific since joining Juve from Madrid in 2018.
However, Villas-Boas backed his fellow Portuguese, although he labelled both Ronaldo and Messi as extraterrestrials.
It s difficult I am Portuguese so of course I support Ronaldo more, he said.
Cristiano took a risk by leaving the best team in the world, with more titles in the world. That kind of risk should be appreciated. Playing in Italy and scoring goals is …
French daily newspaper La Provence is reporting that Jeremy Morel s future at Stade Velodrome is in doubt.
Marseille look set to stay without star players Andre-Pierre Gignac and Andre Ayew, who will be out of contract in the summer, but Jeremy Morel is another footballer who has less than a year left on his current deal and has yet to be offered a contract extension.
La Provence has learned that the 30-year-old is ready to hear what OM has to offer, but he will also listen to other proposals before making a decision on his future.
Jeremy Morel joined Marseille from Lorient in the summer of 2011 and has since featured in 102 Ligue 1 matches, scoring 1 goal.
The left-back has been utilised as a left stopper in Marcelo Bielsa s three-man defence this seas…
Adil Rami has been called up to the France squad following a thigh injury sustained by Raphael Varane, the French Football Federation (FFF) has announced.
Real Madrid announced on Sunday Varane had suffered a grade two muscle tear in his left thigh, but no timeframe on his recovery was supplied by the club.
The injury will reportedly keep him out of Saturday s Champions League final against rivals Atletico Madrid in Milan.
France coach Didier Deschamps has subsequently summoned Rami in a move that does not bode well for Varane s chances of competing in the European Championship on home soil.
24 Raphaël Varane has played France s last 24 games, best current run. Snag.
— OptaJean (@OptaJean)
However, no decision on the 23-year-old s pla…
Louis van Gaal has taken aim at former employers Manchester United by describing them as a commercial club whose priority is money.
The 66-year-old spent two seasons in charge at Old Trafford before he was replaced by Jose Mourinho in May 2016.
Van Gaal successfully got United back into the Champions League in 2014-15 following their dismal campaign under David Moyes, while he also won the FA Cup in 2015-16, but a failure to finish in the top four that season and an increasingly dour brand of football saw a number of fans turn on the Dutchman.
The former Netherlands boss made no secret of feeling let down by United bosses when he was dismissed and has now accused them of being too concerned with their commercial appeal, unlike another of his former clubs, Bayern …
With opening day just days away, it's time to look at the payrolls and salary breakdowns for every MLB team. There are familiar faces near the top and bottom of the list, but a new franchise claims the spending crown for the first time in 15 years. The Associated Press has compiled these numbers based on publicly and privately reported salaries, prorated bonuses, and deferred money. Cash transactions and buyouts are reflected in the team payroll figures, so they will differ from the sum of players' salaries listed at bottom.. These numbers are not exact, because precise contracts are closely guarded secrets. But this is as good as we're going to get. For the first time since 1998, the Yankees no longer top baseball. That honor goes to the Dodgers in a runaway—with an …
data-mm-id=”_gudpkqvnq”>Andy Dufrense posited that hope was the best of all things but that's only because he lived out his days in a beachfront paradise. He probably would have had a different take if crawling through a tunnel of feces resulted in nothing more than being caught and thrown in the hole for months on end. So with that in mind, and the increasingly bold handwriting on the wall growing in font size so even those mostly blind to reality are beginning to understand that there may not be sports for a long, long time, let's consider this question.If things continue to go south and we're robbed of 95 percent of all competitive sports for, say, more than a year, will we wish that the process had been more callous? Will we wonder if things had been better if societ…
According to reports, Chelsea are planning to meet with Xavi Hernandez following his exit from Barcelona, with Ipswich Town s Kieran McKenna out of the running.
sacked Mauricio Pochettino last week despite the club s strong end to the season.
The Blues were the fourth-best team in the Premier League after the turn of the year and qualified for Europe despite lingering in mid-table for much of the campaign.
The list of underwhelming candidates in the frame to replace Pochettino has made the decision all the more confusing.
Ipswich manager McKenna quickly emerged as the frontrunner but a report from David Ornstein of The Athletic on Sunday evening claimed that .
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