Football Daily | Real Madrid’s Ballon d’Or boycott ushers in the age of the super-sulk
Published: 29 Oct 24, 16:52, Rob Smyth, (Guardian)
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Isn’t modern football just super? We’ve got superclubs, super-agents, Super Sunday, supercomputers, even – we’re not making this up – super-lawyers. And now, Real Madrid, a club that prides itself on conquering new ground, has ushered in the age of the super-sulk. Madrid effectively boycotted last night’s Ballon d’Or ceremony, no doubt setting a precedent for future club-wide tantrums, when they heard a whisper that Vinícius Júnior wasn’t going to win the big prize.
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Sporting confirm Manchester United approach for Rúben Amorim and line up replacement
Published: 29 Oct 24, 14:54, Marcus Christenson, (Guardian)
- Club release statement to market commission
- Reserve team coach João Pereira ready to take over
Sporting have confirmed that Manchester United have made an approach for their head coach, Rúben Amorim. In a statement to the Securities Market Commission (CMVM) in Lisbon on Tuesday they said the Premier League club “had expressed an interest” in hiring the 39-year-old and that United are prepared to pay the release clause of €10m (£8.3m).
Earlier in the day, United’s hopes of appointing Amorim increased with Sporting agreeing a deal with João Pereira to take over from the 39-year-old should he leave.
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‘It’s a long month’: Doncaster’s Grant McCann on running 192 miles to tackle prostate cancer
Published: 29 Oct 24, 14:00, Ben Fisher, (Guardian)
Manager reflects on the unexpected joys of running 10km a day for the annual Prostate United challenge
“I tell you what’s really nice when you’re running around Doncaster in the mornings,” says Grant McCann, “when you hear people beeping car horns at you, waving out the window.” Those snippets of encouragement are priceless pick-me-ups on the month-long annual Prostate United challenge, which entails running, walking or cycling every day to raise money and awareness for Prostate Cancer UK. McCann, his Doncaster Rovers coaching staff, club staff and supporters will finish at the club’s stadium on Thursday afternoon.
“We’ve managed to get more than 60 people involved in the Doncaster page this year – everyone is doing something,” the manager says. “It has brought the whole club together with the camaraderie around the place.”
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Diogo Jota will not return for Liverpool before late November, reveals Arne Slot
Published: 29 Oct 24, 13:25, Andy Hunter, (Guardian)
- Coach puts no timeframe on Federico Chiesa’s return
- Slot worried about forward options with busy schedule
Arne Slot has said he is worried about his forward options for Liverpool’s demanding schedule with Diogo Jota ruled out until after the next international break and no timescale placed on Federico Chiesa’s return.
Liverpool will be without the two strikers again when they visit Brighton in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday. Jota has missed the past two games and will be absent for at least another four with the rib injury sustained when Chelsea’s defender Tosin Adarabioyo fell on him in at Anfield nine days ago.
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What’s next for Manchester United after Erik ten Hag era ends? – Football Weekly
Published: 29 Oct 24, 12:55, Presented by Max Rushden with Barry Glendenning, Ali Maxwell, Sanny Rudravajala and Andy Mitten. Produced by Joel Grove and our executive producer is Phil Maynard., (Guardian)
Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Ali Maxwell, Sanny Rudravajala and Andy Mittento discuss Erik ten Hag’s departure
Rate, review, share on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Audioboom, Mixcloud, Acast and Stitcher, and join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter and email.
On the podcast today: Andy Mitten from United We Stand joins us for part one to dissect Erik Ten Hag’s tenure at Manchester United. Where did it all go wrong and where do they go from here?
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Rodri and Bonmatí win Ballons d’Or as Real Madrid boycott ceremony – video
Published: 29 Oct 24, 12:09, (Guardian)
Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí have been named winners of the 2024 Ballon d’Or at football’s annual awards ceremony in Paris. Bonmatí retained her 2023 title while Rodri won it for the first time following an extraordinary year’s work when the Manchester City and Spain midfielder became a Premier League and European champion, also winning the Club World Cup. The Real Madrid forward, Vinícius Júnior, had been hot favourite to win the award but they cancelled their plans to attend on learning he had been pipped to the prize. Their boycott meant nobody was on hand to pick up the award for men’s club of the year.
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New Manchester United manager to get limited January transfer budget
Published: 29 Oct 24, 11:50, Jamie Jackson and Jacob Steinberg, (Guardian)
- Rúben Amorim has indicated he wants to take the job
- Books need balancing if more lavish spending targeted
Rúben Amorim or whoever succeeds Erik ten Hag as Manchester United’s manager will have a limited budget to strengthen the squad in January.
After Ten Hag was backed in the summer with a £200m spend on five players – Joshua Zirkzee, Leny Yoro, Matthijs de Ligt, Noussair Mazraoui and Manuel Ugarte – there is only modest finance to try to turn around the side’s fortunes in the winter window.
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David Squires on … Arteta’s Halloween outfit and the United merry-go-round
Published: 29 Oct 24, 11:00, David Squires, (Guardian)
Our resident cartoonist on the weekend’s Premier League action and the latest developments at Old Trafford
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Rodri’s Ballon d’Or is an act of justice for an unsung category of footballer | Sid Lowe
Published: 29 Oct 24, 10:45, Sid Lowe, (Guardian)
Real Madrid were angry that Vinícius Júnior missed out but crowning the Spain midfielder marks a shift in thinking
When Rodrigo Hernández was a student, living in a hall of residence and reading business at university in Castellón, he was, to use his own words, “the lame one who never did anything”. He might go for dinner, sure, might briefly stop by the bar, but he would never do any of the after-hours stuff. Most of his class couldn’t understand it, until they saw him playing for Villarreal. He was 19, he hadn’t said anything and they didn’t know he was a footballer; now, at 28, he has been voted the best in the world, the first Spanish man to win the Ballon d’Or since Luis Suárez, 64 years ago.
On a dramatic day dominated by cries of injustice, this was in its way an act of justice: to Rodri himself but beyond than that to a kind of player and person, to an idea, a concept; to collectivism embodied by an individual, maybe even football itself. To Spain too, even if it wasn’t received that way at home where Real Madrid’s refusal to fly to Paris when they found out that Vinícius Júnior would not be the winner, set the tone and hung heavy, overshadowing everything. A national success, Rodri joining Aitana Bonmatí, was not really celebrated as one, certainly not with unanimity.
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‘Undisputed icon’: Therese Sjögran joins City as women’s director of football
Published: 29 Oct 24, 10:20, Tom Garry, (Guardian)
- Sjögran leaves same post at Rosengård to take job
- She won 214 Sweden caps as a midfielder
Manchester City have appointed the former Sweden midfielder Therese Sjögran as their women’s director of football. The 47-year-old is the Women’s Super League leaders’ replacement for the former Denmark and Switzerland head coach Nils Nielsen, who left in June.
Sjögran will be in charge of recruitment “across the women’s and girls’ pathway”and of coach and player development, the club said. She will begin on 1 December and report to the managing director, Charlotte O’Neill.
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Taking Manchester United job would be an enormous risk for Rúben Amorim | Jonathan Wilson
Published: 29 Oct 24, 08:00, Jonathan Wilson, (Guardian)
Club’s preferred candidate has a stellar reputation but rebuilding incoherent squad and culture is an almighty task
At least there isn’t a recent example of Manchester United gazumping Manchester City to sign a 30-something Portuguese and it turning into an expensive farrago. The Sporting manager, Rúben Amorim, had been heavily touted to join City next summer should Pep Guardiola decide to stand down, particularly after the club’s director of football, Hugo Viana, was named as the successor to Txiki Begiristain at the Etihad Stadium.
On Monday, though, Amorim emerged as the preferred candidate to replace Erik ten Hag after the Dutchman was dismissed.
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‘I want to inspire’: Jackline Juma on historic manager’s job in men’s Kenyan Premier League
Published: 29 Oct 24, 08:00, John Duerden, (Guardian)
Division’s first female coach discusses the reaction from the club’s players and fans and why she is not feeling pressure
“I can say so far so good,” Jackline Juma says, two and a half months after becoming the first female coach of a men’s team in the Kenyan Premier League. Results have been mixed after five points from five games but there are signs of progress that FC Talanta are on course to achieve her first target: avoiding a repeat of last season’s relegation battle, when the Nairobi club survived by a point. Really though, the 38-year-old wants a top-six finish in the 18-team league.
There is, of course, a bigger picture. Being a female coach of a top-tier professional men’s team could be a gamechanger if it goes well, but what if it doesn’t? “I don’t feel the pressure of being a representative female coach,” Juma says. “The chances of failing are possible; all coaches know that. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose but when you do [lose] it must be a learning process. I do not feel pressure as I know I am capable.”
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Data is a powerful tool, but it will never replace what makes football beautiful | Jason Stockwood
Published: 29 Oct 24, 08:00, Jason Stockwood, (Guardian)
Good use of data will help minimise risk in sport, but you have to remember that if the people and culture aren’t aligned, it still won’t work
Early in my career, I worked for IAC, the company behind match.com, where we were trying to revolutionise the way people met, connected and fell in love using the internet. At the time, it was a bold, slightly surreal mission: using algorithms to predict compatibility and connection in something as deeply personal as love. But today as much as 60% of people start their relationships online.
Behind the scenes, we weren’t just innovating relationships, we were pioneering ways of doing business. One of the core innovations that emerged from this period was the concept of Lifetime Value models (LTV for short). These models would predict how much a customer was worth to a company over time. You’d calculate the cost of acquiring a customer, figure out how to convert them into a paying user, then use algorithms to determine how to keep them. Today, this is foundational in how internet businesses operate. Crucially, it shaped my worldview.
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‘Injuries are no excuse’: Merino says Arsenal will never give up on title race
Published: 28 Oct 24, 22:30, Ed Aarons, (Guardian)
- Gunners four points behind City with growing injury list
- ‘The message is simple – this team is not going to give up’
Mikel Merino has said that Arsenal must not use their mounting injury list as an excuse for their dip in form and insisted that they will never give up on the title race.
The draw against Liverpool on Sunday left Mikel Arteta’s side four points behind the leaders Manchester City, with Arsenal still waiting to discover whether issues that forced off the defenders Gabriel Magalhães and Jurrien Timber will keep them sidelined.
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Rodri and Bonmatí scoop Ballons d’Or as Real Madrid boycott big awards night
Published: 28 Oct 24, 22:28, Nick Ames, (Guardian)
- Manchester City midfielder earns men’s top honour
- Favourite Vinícius Júnior coming second riles Madrid
Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí have been named winners of the 2024 Ballon d’Or at football’s annual awards ceremony in Paris, their trophies handed out at the end of a bizarre day in which Real Madrid’s delegation opted not to attend.
In Rodri’s case the award crowned an extraordinary year’s work in which the influential Manchester City and Spain midfielder became a Premier League and European champion, also winning the Club World Cup.
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Ballon d’Or 2024: Rodri and Aitana Bonmatí win the top awards – live updates
Published: 28 Oct 24, 22:05, Niall McVeigh, (Guardian)
Another early arrival at the ceremony is Marcel Desailly. As good an excuse as any to recommend Jonathan Liew’s interview with the France, Milan and Chelsea legend.
Men’s live ranking
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What took Manchester United so long to sack Ten Hag? More ruthlessness is needed
Published: 28 Oct 24, 21:22, Jacob Steinberg, (Guardian)
Club had chance to make a clean break but kicked the can down the road, which has only set them back further
They got there in the end. In an entirely predictable turn of events Manchester United have finally found the gumption to follow through on a decision that was made a long time ago. They have sacked Erik ten Hag, who can have no complaints after another dreadful sequence of results, but the question for Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s sprawling executive team is why it has taken so long when they had the opportunity to make a clean break last summer.
United had decided that Ten Hag’s time was up before the FA Cup final against Manchester City last season. The outcome of that game was not supposed to make a difference. The message was that even a 4-0 win would not save the Dutchman. United, who had finished in eighth in the league, were talking to multiple managers about taking over and there was no denial when the story was put to them a day before the final.
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Ten Hag saga is a major black eye for Ineos at a time when United’s brand is dying | Barney Ronay
Published: 28 Oct 24, 21:16, Barney Ronay, (Guardian)
Manchester United cannot afford to carry on being this version of a football club: the history boys, a fading heritage exhibition
Well, that’s finally happened then. On, now, to the next glorious two-year plan. The last few months of Erik Ten Hag’s time at Manchester United have felt at times like a throwback to the dog days of the Soviet Union, when the Secretary of the Central Committee always seemed to be either dead or dying, wheeled out grudgingly to oversee a parade every three months, the human face of this vast, dying red bureaucracy basically a corpse in a coat propped up in front of some missiles.
As of Monday afternoon we finally have clarity. The latest man in black is no more. That frowning bald Dutchman with a way of standing on the Old Trafford touchline that conveyed a strangely tender kind of pathos, a man to whom the world is simply doing things, will now receive the large payoff governed by an utterly insane two-year contract signed this summer, at a point when he was already clearly just a pair of legs in a suit.
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Rúben Amorim in talks over Manchester United job after Ten Hag exit
Published: 28 Oct 24, 20:47, Jamie Jackson, Jacob Steinberg and Will Unwin, (Guardian)
- United hope to unveil Sporting head coach next week
- Ten Hag sacked by United following West Ham defeat
Manchester United were closing in on Rúben Amorim’s appointment as the club’s new manager on Monday night after Erik ten Hag was sacked earlier in the day.
Amorim, the Sporting manager, had been thought to be minded to stay at the Portuguese champions because of a desire to claim a second title in succession, the club having last achieved this 70 years ago.
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‘You stand for certain values’: what Van Nistelrooy will bring to United as interim coach | Bart Vlietstra
Published: 28 Oct 24, 19:56, Bart Vlietstra, (Guardian)
Despite his inexperience the Dutchman has strong ideals learned from some of the greatest managers
Björn van der Doelen says he can easily tell the state of mind of his former PSV teammate and the new Manchester United interim coach Ruud van Nistelrooy. “Sometimes I see the old Ruud on the sidelines,” says the midfielder, who played for PSV between 1994 and 2001. “His chin goes up. I know then that he doesn’t like it at all, he’s boiling inside and he’d rather run on to the pitch.
“When he was a player, he would get angry for a while when his chin went up. Now that he’s older, he seems calmer. Now that chin quickly goes down again.”
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