Cosmos & Cantona, Olympic Diack, summer football & the Russians are targetted for transfers
Quote of the day: Id have expected Gerard Houllier to have had the decency to pick up the phone but thats not been the case. I would have thought that, out of respect, maybe he would say were interested in buying your striker in order to give me a chance to do something. I did have the utmost respect for Mr Houllier but I havent had a call. We are disappointed. If youre telling me we gave them permission to speak to Darren at 8pm on Sunday and the deal is done and dusted on Tuesday, well, I wont insult your intelligence. The way it was done has left a sour taste. Theres been a lot said about tapping up but its happened so quickly its taken the breath away. Steve Bruce.
Runner-up: You are dead, you are finished. There is no way to come back with any proposal as far as my generation is concerned. As far as this, it will be finished. There will be no credibility of a great country like Britain. This country, this city saying they are not able to have a stadium with athletics? They would have made a big lie to us my colleague who made the presentation a big lie. Is it a betrayal? Yes, absolutely. Lamine Diack, the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The perspective quote of the day: This is not the SS. Its not like the war when we couldnt speak. If you want to say everything then you can say it. But it is important that [Balotelli] shows his talent and, for his future, its important that he improves. Roberto Mancini.
Todays overview: Its the usual Friday mixed bag across the paper divide, beginning with Paul Hayward and Jim White questioning Eric Cantonas latest career move.
Next, and eating up the largest slice of column inches, is the boring saga about the Olympic Stadium. Todays angle focuses on someone ! called D iack bashing Spurs bid, while Henry Winter and Harry Redknapp both ask what happens if West ham are relegated.
Harry Pearson delivers an excellent read on how players refer to money in football, while Steven Howard tears strips off Steve Bruce on the issue of loyalty.
Other issues discussed include what King Kenny can learn from Leonardo, the future of Hargreaves, and the secret plans to turn football into a summer sport.
Finally in the transfers its mooted that a couple of Premier League Russians could be on the move.
Jim White also questions Cantonas decision to join the Cosmos. This is the operation Cantona is joining: it has no stadium, no league status and has not been engaged in a competitive match since 1985. Plus, though they now have a director of football, the club presently have no players. Estimates suggest the minimum investment required to secure a franchise in US Major League Soccer will be somewhere north of 300 million. You could buy a Premier League club for that.
Olympic ! Diack: For a while now the papers have been trying to raise readers interest in the battle between Spurs and West Ham to move into the Olympic Stadium. In truth the story barely interests the two sets of fans, but today its given a shot in the arm thanks to someone called Lamine Diack and a series of ridiculous, idle threats.
Owen Gibson and Matt Scott join forces to announce Britains sporting reputation will be dead if Tottenham Hotspur take over the Olympic Stadium and remove the athletics track Diack said the London organisers would be guilty of a big lie in reference to the bid-book promise that the track would be retained and the former culture secretary Tessa Jowells vow to the IOC that the stadium would be a purpose-built home for athletics for years to come.
The Telegraph however offer some supports for Spurs bid. Spurs propose to transform the stadium into a football-only venue and redevelop the Crystal Palace athletics stadium Tottenham director Sir Keith Mills has stressed their bid for the Olympics Stadium would not leave London without an athletics track, following the criticism from Diack. However, Mills is not convinced a multi-purpose athletics and football stadium would be the right option from a financial point of view.
Also supporting the Spurs bid in a back-handed manner was Henry Winter. There is also a strong case for waiting a couple months to see if West Ham will be relegated. They boast a loyal following but the prospect of needing to get back into the Premier League wit! hin two years, assuming a stadium refit in time for 2013-14, is far from guaranteed. Nothing would be worse for West Ham than being a Championship side with 30,000 in a stadium built for 60,000.
Peeping behind the curtain, Paul Kelso gets to the heart of the Olympic Stadium problem. The Olympic Stadium was built on the myth that a facility with a fixed athletics track was viable without football, or significant public subsidy. From the outset, the transformation of the main stadium from an 80,000-seat arena to a 25,000-capacity permanent athletics facility was an article of faith for key members of the bid The problem was that no one ever established how it would be paid for With no viable business plan and the politicians unwilling to back their rhetoric about legacy with public funds, the OPLC has had no choice but to turn to football, and a decision that, whatever happens, will be unsatisfactory.
Money, Money, Football: Harry Pearsen supplies a superb, sarcastic op-ed in which he discovers how footballers are never motivated by money. It is a well-known fact that if there is one thing that it is never about in football, its the money. No, what the footballers actually want is to feel wanted, to be shown respect and have the club demonstrate that its ambition matches my own In football, money is not money: it is the lingua franca of love, the Swahili of self-respect and the pidgin of people searching for an alliterative synonym for aim but cant remember where they put that bloody thesaurus.
Staying with the topic of loyalty in football, Steven Howard reads the riot act to Steve Bruce over his Darren Bent complaints. Hang on a minute. Is this the same Bruce whose managerial career has been a story of jumping from one ship to another to better himself? The man who spent just 11 months at Sheffield United before joining Huddersfield. The man who, on being sacked there, rewarded Wigan for their generosity in rescuing him by moving on to Crystal Palace after just TWO MONTHS. The man who then walked out on Palace for Birmingham just FIVE MONTHS later, despite chairman Simon Jordan seeking a High Court injunction to keep him.
Leonardo & King Kenny: James Lawton outlines lessons Dalglish should learn from Leonardos upturn of Inter. While Kenny Dalglish has brought in a truckload of optimism to Anfield, as Leonardo plainly has to the Inter dressing room, it is no good if it cannot be injected into a quorum of players demonstrably fit for purpose Leonardo inherited a squad of high-achieving players and reacted with respect! . If Liv erpool and Dalglish are to achieve anything this season, they need such a balance and a lot faster than you find on any evolutionary scale.
Hamstrung Hargreaves: Wait. Could Owen Hargreaves finally be ready to return to football. Course not! (sadly)
Daniel Taylor gives the latest disappointing update on footballs biggest sicknote. Owen Hargreaves is facing the prospect of being left out of Manchester Uniteds squad for the Champions Leagues knockout stages amid growing concerns about the midfielders future at Old Trafford The 25-man squad has to be submitted to Uefa by 1 February and if the luckless Hargreaves is omitted it will only increase the sense that a player who turned 30 today is unlikely to be offered a new contract to replace his present deal, which expires in June.
Mark Ogden hints at a possible transfer for Hargreaves. Vancouver Whitecaps, the MLS team part-owned by Hargreavess close friend, Steve Nash, have been linked with a move for the Canada-born midfielder when his contract expires, but their interest is understood to be little more than tentative at this stage.
The Guardian detail Fifa has quash! ed talk of a winter World Cup in 2022, saying it has no plans to change the international calendar and that any switch of dates would have to be proposed by the Qatari hosts The statement appeared to mark a U-turn by footballs governing body as the Fifa president Sepp Blatter said this month that he expected the tournament to be staged in the winter.
Throwing a major spanner in the works though was Sam Wallace, who unveils secrets reports to turn football into a summer sport. The plans first emerged yesterday in a report in Germanys Bild newspaper which claims to have leaked documents detailing radical proposals being drawn up by Platini, and believed to have the backing of Fifa president Sepp Blatter, to force major change on the European game. Fifa and Uefa want the big European leagues to fall in line with a worldwide model which would see the domestic league season running from mid-March to the end of October. The plans propose playing World Cup or European Championship qualifying games from November to mid-December and using the time until mid-January for the players to rest.
The Transfers: The Guardian deliver the non-breaking news that Niko Kranjcar may leave Spurs on loan this winter, while linking Sunderland with Ricardo Fuller, Stephane Sessegnon and Charles NZogbia. The broadsheet also continues to bang on about Liverpool so-far unsuccessful pursuit of Luis Suarez.
The Telegraph announce that Everton have signed 17-year-old Sporting Lisbon youngster Eric Dier on loan.
Moving into the lesser likely tabloid rumours of the Daily Mail, its claimed that Zenit may move for Andrey Arshavin, Pepe Reina will not be leaving Liverpool, while Blackburn are chasing Roman Riquelme.
The Mirror say Sunderland are leading the chase for Roman Pavlyuchenko, Fulham are close to snapping up Chelsea starlet Gael Kakuta on loan, while John Carew should move to Stoke on loan. The Sun round things off saying that We! st Ham w ill sign Demba Ba, while Manchester City are set to swoop for Gregory van der Wiel.
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