15, May 2020
Football and the virus: Liverpool’s Klopp pokes fun at Neville over lockdown rants 0
Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has joked that his biggest lesson from the coronavirus lockdown is just how outspoken former Manchester United defender Gary Neville can be.
In his role as a television pundit, Neville has vented on a range of issues related to the Premier League and the health crisis.
The former England international has criticised Premier League chiefs for being slow to give updates on their restart plans.
He also took issue with the government’s call for players to take wage cuts during the pandemic and let rip on a host of other subjects.
Klopp could not resist a good-natured jibe at Neville when asked what his lockdown experience had been like.
“I didn’t learn a lot in lockdown, other than Gary Neville has an opinion about absolutely everything. It is incredible,” Klopp told the BBC’s Football Focus programme.
Liverpool were two wins away from winning the English title for the first time in 30 years when the Premier League was postponed on March 13.
The league hopes to resume in mid-June and players are already returning to training while observing strict social-distancing rules.
Klopp has been in touch with Liverpool’s squad, but he admitted it had been hard to go so long without seeing them in person.
“I am quite proud how we as a society have dealt with it,” he said. “We are not perfect. We will always make mistakes but I think we have learned how connected we are to each other.
“I miss the boys the most because we created a group where all the people at Melwood (training ground) have a really good relationship and we became friends over the last four-and-a-half years.
“We saw each other with Zoom and other calls but it is still not the same. Going back to Melwood and doing the things we usually do is something I really miss.”
Source: AFP
20, May 2020
How Roger Milla confounded the sceptics 0
When Cameroon’s president demanded a soon-to-be 38-year-old striker’s inclusion in the World Cup squad it was seen as a new low for African football.
The game on the continent had long been dogged by the fatuous interventions of powerful politicians, but messing with selection for the sport’s global showpiece event seemed harebrained in the extreme.
President Paul Biya had watched Roger Milla, who celebrates his 68th birthday on May 20, play a charity game a few weeks before and insisted his inclusion in the squad for the 1990 finals in Italy.
Milla was days away from turning 38, earning retirement money playing on the French island of Reunion and long past his heyday, which included competing at the 1982 World Cup, playing in three Africa Cup of Nations finals and scoring more than 100 Ligue 1 goals for Bastia, St Etienne and Montpellier.
“I got a call from the president who said he thought I should play. I was in no position to argue,” Milla said.
Biya’s order turned out to be a fortuitous masterstroke, even though Milla himself was unsure whether he would cut it.
“I knew that if I got into shape I’d have a chance to make an impact,” he said. “When I returned to the national side I got a warm welcome from the younger players. But the older ones had ganged up against me and were not so happy to see me.”
Just weeks later, however, that had all changed as the veteran forward captured international imagination, no more so than when wiggling his hips in a provocative assault on the corner flag as he celebrated a goal in Cameroon’s unlikely march to the World Cup quarterfinals.
The dance is better remembered than the breakaway goal against Colombia as Cameroon’s Indomitable Lions went further at the tournament than any African team had been before, eventually losing to England in extra time in a tense quarterfinal.
“We just really wanted to have fun, but that we achieved new things for African football made it special,” Milla added.
In all, he scored four goals at Italia 90 and extended his record as the tournament’s oldest goalscorer when he netted one more at the World Cup in the US four years later.
By then Milla had become a symbol for a continent, with his exploits after emerging from semiretirement earning him the accolade as the best African footballer of the 20th century.
Source: Reuters