Chelsea are reportedly prepared to pay £30 million to sign AC Milan centre-back Alessio Romagnoli this summer, according to reports in Italy.
Italian source CalcioMercato (h/t Metro'sWill Giles) claimed the Blues see 21-year-old Romagnoli as a replacement for outgoing skipper John Terry. But as the report also noted, Chelsea can expect to face strong competition for the young Rossoneri star. Praise hasn't been in short supply for Romagnoli during recent seasons. Milan chief Sinisa Mihajlovic compared him to former Italy stalwart at the back, Alessandro Nesta, in 2014, according to EuroScout (via Yahoo Sport Italia, h/t ESPN FC's Michael Yokhin): "Alessio is like Alessandro Nesta, but more technical."
Romagnoli has been compared with former Milan linchpin Nesta.
The player's greater technical aptitude is no doubt connected
to his time spent at another position earlier in his career, a phase of
his development Yokhin also detailed: "However, during his first
few years in the academy, Romagnoli played in central midfield—which is
why his technical skills are much better compared to the average
centre-back."
Having a ball-playing central defender with pace would be a welcome
boost for a Chelsea team that have aged at the back. Terry has seen his
best days as a player, while 30-year-old Gary Cahill has always lacked
pace as well as confidence in possession.
French youngster Kurt Zouma has the qualities a refreshed Blues
defence needs, namely pace and aerial power. But the 21-year-old is
currently recovering from a serious knee injury. Still, Chelsea have already made plans for the future. The signing of Matt Miazga from New York Red Bulls
is proof of that. But the Stamford Bridge club still needs a more
ready-made young defender, one good enough to start next season. Romagnoli has the potential and talent to be that player. But he isn't the only youthful defender on the Chelsea radar.
Arsene Wenger would use Olivier Giroud as a goalkeeper in an emergency, the Arsenal boss has revealed.
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger has revealed Olivier Giroud would likely end up wearing the goalkeeper gloves in an emergency.
Petr Cech has been superb for Arsenal this season, but Wenger feels France striker Giroud could go in between the sticks if the former Chelsea keeper got sent off and he had used all his substitutes. "Who
would go in goal if we got a goalkeeper sent off? That would give me a
big problem, because I haven't thought about it. Usually it's the
central defenders or the strikers," Wenger told Arsenal's
official website. "I had George Weah at Monaco
and he was a fantastic goalkeeper in training. Maybe a guy who has
played basketball in his youth would be good, he would be used to using
his hands. "In our team I don't know what I would do, it was more
of a problem before when you didn’t have a substitute goalkeeper. It
can still happen late in a game though. I would have to make an
instinctive decision, maybe it would be Giroud."
Wenger has been delighted with Cech's impact at Emirates Stadium, adding: "The peak age for a goalkeeper is 28 to 36 or 37.
"That is where you can absorb the bullets, you have the experience and you still have the physical quality to perform.
"For
a footballer it is always important to have that balance between
experience and physical potential. Unfortunately we need our body to
express what we know. Our body allows us to perform more in a
goalkeeper's position compared to a striker's.
"Experience
is probably the most important quality for a goalkeeper. The problem is
that to get the experience, you need the quality, it’s a vicious circle
You need to play.
"Cech
played when he was very young, and [Gianluigi] Buffon too was playing at
17. They had the luck to get into the first team, to gather the
experience and be good enough to stay there."
Berlin (AFP) - Wolfsburg are desperate to stop history
repeating itself when they host Bundesliga leaders Bayern Munich on
Saturday following Robert Lewandowski's historic five-gaul haul in the reverse fixture.
The Poland striker came off the bench and sent
Bundesliga records tumbling with his nine-minute blitz single-handedly
propelling Bayern to a 5-1 thrashing of Wolfsburg at Munich's Allianz
Arena last September. Injury and illness mean Wolfsburg have 12
players either ruled out or struggling to be fit to face Pep Guardiola's
league leaders at the Volkswagen Arena. Bayern are eight points clear of second-placed Borussia Dortmund -- and a massive 28 ahead of eighth-placed Wolfsburg.
Between them Lewandowski and fellow Bayern forward Thomas Mueller have scored a combined tally of 39 Bundesliga goals -- more than the entire Wolfsburg team.
Wolfsburg's ex-Bayern defender Dante says the only way to stop Lewandowski is to cut off his supply.
"If we defend as a team and the ball doesn't come to him, then he can't really do anything," said the Brazilian.
Schalke's Johannes Geis scores a goal during their German first division Bundesliga match agains …
"We have to really get things going and be up for the game. "We have to go into each one-on-one with real passion and every pass must hit the target."
Four days after their 2-2 draw at Juventus in the Champions League, Guardiola is set to rotate his Bayern squad, especially with defenders Holger Badstuber, Jerome Boateng and Javi Martinez all sidelined.
Winger Franck Ribery
could start his first Bundesliga game for a year, while Wolfsburg coach
Dieter Hecking could be down to his third-choice goalkeeper with Diego Benaglio injured and Koen Casteels recovering from flu. On Sunday evening, Dortmund host rejuvented strugglers Hoffenheim. Thomas
Tuchel's side is a force to be reckoned with and are unbeaten this
season at their Signal Iduna Park stadium having picked up 28 points
from a possible 30 at home.
Bayern Munich's Thomas Mueller (L) fights for the ball with Hoffenheim's Jiloan Hamad during …
Second-from-bottom
Hoffenheim earned fresh hope in the relegation battle when they claimed a
3-2 win over Mainz last weekend under their 28-year-old coach Julian
Nagelsmann.
Dortmund will be without Greek centre-back Sokratis, who is sidelined for three weeks with a groin injury, and Neven Subotic is set to take his place.
Hertha
Berlin are at Cologne on Friday night hoping to end their run of five
league games without a win despite staying third in the table.
Hertha coach Pal Dardai will be counting on Ivory Coast striker Salomon Kalou to add to his tally of eight goals scored away from home, the most on the road for any Bundesliga player.
Bayer Leverkusen will not have coach Roger Schmidt on their bench for Sunday's match at Mainz.
The
48-year-old is banned for three league games, and was fined 20,000
euros ($22,031), for refusing a referee's order to leave the touchline
during last Sunday's 1-0 league defeat at home to Dortmund.
Mainz
are up to seventh in the table and are unbeaten in their last five home
games, while Leverkusen's defeat to Dortmund broke their six-game
unbeaten run.
Fixtures (all times 1430 GMT unless stated): Friday Cologne v Hertha Berlin (1930)
Saturday
Wolfsburg v Bayern Munich, Hamburg v Ingolstadt, Stuttgart v Hanover, Werder Bremen v Darmstadt
Sunday
Augsburg
v Borussia Moenchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund v Hoffenheim (1630),
Mainz v Bayer Leverkusen (1630) E. Frankfurt v Schalke (1830)
Nigeria’s budget for
2016 has not had an easy ride since it was first proposed, amid great
fanfare, by President Muhammadu Buhari in December 2015. The West African giant is facing a number of economic challenges, including a slump in global oil prices and calls for its currency—the Nigerian naira—to be devalued to deal with falling foreign exchange revenues. Buhari was elected partly on an anti-corruption ticket and has made tackling graft a key priority of his administration, with a number of high-profile arrests
taking place during his tenure. Yet two months into 2016, Nigeria is
yet to approve its fiscal plan for the year and the budget issue risks
undermining the president’s battle against corruption. Subscribe now - Free phone/tablet charger worth over $60Newsweek looks at how the budget went from a symbol of change to a laughing stock in five steps. Step 1: Buhari’s Record Budget is Delivered In December 2015, President Buhari announced his first budget since he was elected in March that year. And it was ambitious. Buhari
declared that a record 6.1 trillion naira ($30.6 billion) would be
spent on the economy and infrastructure in 2016, a 20 percent increase
on the previous year. Buhari said Nigeria’s deficit was expected to
double to 2.2 trillion naira ($11 billion), but that this would be
covered by raising 900 billion naira ($4.5 billion) in overseas funding
on top of 984 billion naira ($4.9 billion) borrowed domestically. The
president’s budget also predicted that of expected revenues of 3.9
trillion naira ($19.6 billion), just 820 billion naira ($4.1 billion)
would come from oil, despite petroleum exports constituting almost 92 percent
of the total value of Nigerian exports. In a break with tradition,
Buhari proudly delivered his budget to the National Assembly in December
22: the task was usually left to the finance minister under the
previous administration of Goodluck Jonathan. Step 2: O Budget, Where Art Thou? The
first chinks in the shining armor of the budget began to show in early
January, when hundreds of hard copies of the document went missing from the Nigerian Senate, the upper house of the National Assembly. As
well as causing national embarrassment, the unfortunate incident led to
the Senate accusing one of Buhari’s aides of quietly withdrawing the
budget in order to iron out discrepancies, with senators refusing to debate the budget until it was presented in its original, undoctored form. The issue of the missing copies fell by the wayside when Buhari sent amendments to the budget on January 19, but the fiasco had hinted at more mayhem and mischief to come. Step 3: A Well-Padded Budget Following
the sideshow of copies going missing, the budget really began to
unravel in early February. An analysis by Nigerian news site Premium Times
found a number of dubious allocations: these included a 3.8 billion
naira ($19 million) allocation for the State House Medical Center, which
treats just a few patients including the president and his family,
while just 2.7 billion naira ($13.6 million) was allocated for the
constructions of hospitals across the 180 million-strong country. Furthermore,
almost 5 billion naira ($25 million) was allocated for the office of
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo to spend on books—more than many of
Nigeria’s state universities—while 22 billion naira ($111 million) was
set aside to pay rent at the State House, occupied by Buhari, with
spectators baffled about who the rent was going to. Oluseun Onigbinde, co-founder of Nigerian transparency group BudgIT, said that the discrepancies
in the budget—which also included 795 million naira ($4 million) set
aside to update the website of one unnamed ministry—were “a disservice
to the idea that this government has come to represent change.”
Step 4: Rats Sniffing Around the Budget Now
the fiasco was really getting into full swing. Nigerian Health Minister
Isaac Adewole, speaking to the Senate Committee on Health on February
8, disowned his ministry from the controversial budget proposals. “This
was not what we submitted. We’ll submit another one. We don’t want
anything foreign to creep into that budget,” said Adewole. The minister also disassociated himself from the massive State House Clinic budget, saying the president’s private clinic did not come under
the health ministry and adding, “I hope it’s not the same rats that
changed things in our budget that changed it [the State House Clinic
allocation].” All this talk of rats and a “budget mafia” of
anonymous civil servants padding the financial plan has severely delayed
the budget’s implementation. On February 9, the National Assembly postponed a vote
on the budget from February 25 to an unspecified date in the future,
with those in charge of the budget citing the need for more time to
prepare a final and, hopefully, foolproof edition. Step 5: Budget Chief Gets the Bullet With
two months of wrangling over the budget, it was perhaps inevitable that
heads would roll. The Nigerian presidency announced on February 15 that
Yahaya Gusau, the director general of Nigeria’s budget office, would be replaced with immediate effect
by former banker Tijjani Abdullahi. No reason was given for Gusau’s
abrupt departure, but it is hard to believe it is not linked to the
comedic turn of events that have occurred over the past few months. Buhari admitted on Tuesday that the saga had been “embarrassing and disappointing”
and that those responsible for padding the budget would not be allowed
to go unpunished. It remains to be seen, however, whether the president
and his government’s anti-corruption pledge can recover from this
damaging turn of events.
North Korea’s first lady, Ri Sol Ju, shown here at a 2012
performance with Kim Jong Un, is rarely seen in public but she is often
carrying an expensive French purse. Photo by KCNA
SEOUL, Feb. 25 (UPI) --North Korea's first lady Ri Sol Ju is rarely seen in public, but according to a recent report, the wife of leader Kim Jong Un is not well liked. Ri is best known for her love of luxury goods that suggest she leads a lavish lifestyle, Asia Press reported Wednesday. North Korean reporters who went undercover to gather opinions about
life in the secluded country said Ri gets bad ratings for her choices at
a time when many North Koreans say their standard of living has
worsened since Kim came to power. North Koreans who were interviewed anonymously called Kim a "rookie" and "fearsome." But they reserved their most negative remarks for Ri, who, according
to the report is 26 years old and traveled to South Korea in 2005 with a
North Korean cheerleading squad during the Asian Athletics Championship
in Incheon. Some North Koreans complained that they were irritated with her debut
on state media, where she was touted as "Respectable Comrade Ri Sol
Ju." One male worker in the North Korean province of Yanggangdo said the
title was undeserved, adding, "What did she do to earn such praise? And
why does she carry a moneybag everywhere she goes? Is she giving out
money?" Ri is often seen with an expensive French purse on her arm. For decades, North Korea's socialist economy precluded the need for
most citizens to carry cash for purchases, but eyewitnesses have said
that is changing, especially in Pyongyang, where women are starting to
follow or start fashion trends. Others criticized Ri's attire, which often includes a short skirt.
Kim's mother, Ko Yong Hui, wore military uniforms when she accompanied
her husband on inspections, they said. North Korea's elite live a life apart from the vast majority of the
population, and Ri's choice of clothes could be a sign the wealth gap in
the country is not only increasing but also being tolerated. Top officials who fall ill are often treated outside the country, where better medical care is available. Yonhap reported Hwang Pyong So of the Korean People's Army, known also as Pyongyang's third most powerful official, has been missing because he is receiving treatment at a hospital in Singapore for a back problem.
Nigerian and Cameroonian troops have rescued 1,890 people held
captive by Boko Haram militia at various locations within the past two
weeks, an acting spokesman of the Nigerian army said.
“Those rescued include 800 Nigerian refugees that crossed to Cameroon
that were brought back to Banki town in Nigeria,” Sani Kukasheka Usman
said in an e-mailed statement late Thursday.
Attacks by the Nigerian Islamist-militant group Boko Haram have
forced 2.2 million people to flee their homes, according to the African
Union. The group has killed thousands of people during a six-year
campaign to establish Islamic law in Africa’s biggest economy and the
violence has spilled over into neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
It's a material reminder that
Martins has moved a lot, and not been shy about trying new things. He's
already in an elite cohort of players who have scored in Serie A, the
Premier League, La Liga and Bundesliga. Just for good measure he's added
the Russian Premier League, MLS and, soon enough, the Chinese Super
League. Martins has played in a World Cup and been a part of Nigeria's national team off and on since 2004.
He is not someone who allows himself to get comfortable in any one place. Martins confirmed as much in his farewell message
to Sounders fans last week, saying "I've grown to appreciate the
feeling I get when entering environments where I'm not a proven
footballer."
Martins is, in an almost
literal sense, a collector of clubs. Or to put it another, perhaps less
flattering, way: He's a hired gun. For a time, he was the Sounders'
hired gun, dutifully putting on a show, scoring goals and generally
being a delightful person to watch do his job.
But make no mistake, Martins
was doing a job. It's a job that has taken him to nine clubs in a
16-year professional career. It's a job that's not compelled him to
spend more than three years with any club over the last 10. It's a job
where the best performers often push themselves outside their comfort
zones. It's a job that has usually taken him to the highest bidder.
That should not diminish his
achievements as he officially joins Shanghai Shenhua of the CSL. Like
all professional athletes, Martins has a finite amount of time in which
he can be paid handsomely to do his job, and he'd be a fool not to
maximize that potential.
Various reports have suggested
the Sounders will clear about $2 million from a transfer fee and that
Martins will clear about $6.6 million -- about triple of what he'd have
made after taxes with the Sounders. While the timing of the move was
hardly ideal, it's hard to blame Martins for collecting. Even if the
reports are accurate that he's signed a nine-month deal, he'll be a
32-year-old free agent at the end of it and surely be able to find at
least one more team who's willing to put aside any concerns over his
long-term commitment for the potential to sign someone who has never
failed to produce when healthy.
That's the one thing he's done
at every stop, and he lived up to any possible on-field expectations we
could have had for him. No, he didn't bring the Sounders a MLS Cup, but
he was the best player on a Supporters' Shield-US Open Cup double in 2014 and goes down in history as one of the best Designated Player signings in league history.
Even during his first year in
Seattle, when injuries severely cut into his playing time and limited
him to just one goal over the final three-and-a-half months, Martins
scored eight goals and provided a glimpse of what kind of player the
Sounders had signed.
Martins had other-worldly
balance, made the ball move in magical ways, was an underrated passer
and conjured goals from absolutely nothing. He was quite unlike any
player in MLS, past or present. He was the kind of player you tell your
kids about watching.
Whether or not he considered
it "just a job," it should be said that no one seemed to get more joy
out of seeing the ball hit the back of the net than Martins, whether it
was his goal, his assist or another teammate's. As much as his backflip
celebration, that grin that splashed across his face was one of his
signatures.
It was tempting to interpret
that happiness as a sign he had finally found a home in a place where
40,000 fans routinely lost their minds on his behalf. But it wasn't
realistic. No matter how much we sang his name and made him feel welcome
-- and I don't doubt his sincerity when he says "Seattle will always
have a special place in my heart" -- it was destined to be a temporary
situation. If you'd like a nice way of putting it, Martins has
wanderlust in his heart and there's no reason to think he'll stop moving
until the job offers stop.
It's worth remembering the
circumstances surrounding Martins' arrival in Seattle, too. He was
playing for La Liga's Levante and they were in the midst of a decent
Europa League run. Martins was their leading scorer, maybe even their
best player (sound familiar?). But Martins had come there on a discount,
was outperforming his contract and was looking for a raise. The
Sounders, who were still looking for a Fredy Montero replacement, were
happy to oblige.
Levante wasn't particularly
interested in selling, though, and weren't even willing to negotiate.
Right on queue, Martins begged out of training with a supposed injury
and then started making his case about desiring a transfer in the press.
After much wrangling and under threat of legal action, Martins
eventually agreed to pay his own buyout clause -- in between the first
and second legs of a Europa League Round of 16 encounter, no less --
clearing the way for the Sounders to sign him.
In the span of nine days, Martins went from playing for Levante (March 7) to paying his buyout (March 11) to arriving in Seattle (March 15) to making his debut (March 16).
The Sounders understood what
they were getting into. Martins was a player who would score goals, make
a team better, but expect to be compensated accordingly. And if he
wasn't, he'd have no problem making life difficult. Whether or not he
was under contract did not make much of a difference.
Every offseason there were
rumors about a transfer, with seemingly every mid- to lower-table
Premier League team supposedly interested at one time or another.
Nothing came of any of those
rumors, but it's not hard to imagine the Sounders growing tired of them
anyway. When a deal finally came to fruition, the Sounders surely knew
that standing in Martins' way of a potential transfer was not a good
soccer move. I seriously doubt the Sounders welcomed its timing, but I
also don't think they were particularly interested in trying to get
Martins to change his mind.
Maybe they should have.
Martins was arguably the best player in Sounders history, replacing him
will be no small task and finding an improvement is hardly guaranteed.
They are surely collectively less talented today than they were a few weeks ago. As good as Jordan Morris
may be, as improved as Nelson Valdez looks with a full offseason, even
if Clint Dempsey can actually get better in a redesigned role, there's
still reason to think letting Martins walk now will leave the Sounders
worse, at least in the short term.
At the same time, the Sounders
knew Martins had his heart set on some redecorating. This way, they got
a bit of money and the ability to replace him. At least in theory.
