The Footy Mumble: Racism returns, no room service for England!
England beat Serbia 1-0 in their U-21 Euro qualifier in Krusevac, and although the 90 minutes on the pitch provided great entertainment, the succeeding events completely overshadowed it.
Starting things off were the Serbian fans who rewarded Connor Wickham’s goal with a shower of missiles in the form of bottles and other items.
Following it up were the Serbian players and officials who started arguing with the English contingent. And after some racial abuse by the home fans again towards black English players, including Danny Rose, a few headbutts and punches too were thrown into the mix towards the England officials by the Serbian officials themselves.
In today’s transfer roundup, Manchester City continue to make headlines as usual as the British media now links them with bids for Danielle de Rossi and, wait for it…. Sergio Busquets!
While Rossi will cost them £30 million, and Busquets double, at £60 million, that won’t matter much to City, will it? After all, they only have Yaya Toure, Javi Garcia, Jack Rodwell, Gareth Barry and James Milner in that position for now.
And the red half of Manchester will be happy too, not because they will be buying a midfielder themselves but because the club seems to have found another potential buyer for Nani.
The Portuguese has been in woeful form this season, and after training ground bust-ups and contract wrangling, the club seems to have given up on the winger.
Although Zenit offered £25 million for the winger earlier this summer, Nani’s wage demands dashed any hopes of United selling him.
Now United fans will be hoping Milan end their suffering and take the Portuguese a long way away of Manchester.
Germany’s winning streak in the 2014 WC qualifiers finally came to end, after Sweden made an incredible comeback from 4-0 down to draw 4-4, with all four of their goals coming in the last 28 minutes of the match.
After a Klose brace, and goals from Mertesacker and Ozil within an hour, Germany seemed set for victory. But Ibrahamovic scored, followed soon by Lustig and Elmander, before Rasmus Elm equalised in stoppage time to gather an unlikely point from the game.
Spain, who took on France, also had their 24-match winning run ended after drawing 1-1. Although dominating for much of the game as expected, Spain could not stop Olivier Giroud from equalising, which was surprising, considering he was an 88th minute substitute and had barely 3 touches of the ball before scoring.
Fernando Torres has revealed he lost his ‘love for football’ after struggling to make it to the Chelsea starting XI last season.
With a partnership with Drogba failing to bloom and the burden of a £50 million price tag, Torres cut a sorry figure last season after struggling to score goals.
Speaking to Spanish paper El Pais, Torres said, “Halfway through last season, I distanced myself from the values I had grown up with,” he said. “In the past, I had team-mates who didn’t care if the team won or lost because they were not playing.
“I never wanted to be like that – but one day I discovered that I was like them, that it didn’t matter if Chelsea won or lost. I wasn’t part of the group.”
Torres has been in good form this season, however, with 6 goals in 12 games.
That the English F.A has imposed a new code for its footballers, with stringent new rules and punishments is nothing new. After the recent tweet controversies, it seems justified too.
But as usual, there are a couple of laughable ones too, as these shown below will indicate:
1. Not use room service.
2. Only use a sensible amount of time playing video or computer games.
No room service? We are still trying to find the logic behind that. Video games are understandable though, with these new rules probably the next step in the F.A’s attempts to stamp out ‘simulation’.