News & Reports

Also included in this page is the "thoughts section". Italian Soccer Vs English Soccer.

News that took place from Aug-Sept

Frank Sinclair is sold to Leicester City for 2 million pounds.
Michael Duberry, Dan Petrescu, Frank Sinclair, Dmitri Kharine and Paul Hughes might be sold to other clubs. They are even considering offers for young players like 19-year-old Jody Morris. Vialli is forced to sell these players after his huge spending spree costing him 12 million pounds in transfer fees. Brian Laudrup arrived on a free transfer from Rangers but has added 2 million to the wage bill. Vialli started to balance the books by selling Mark Hughes to Southampton for 750,000 and inviting bids for Frank Leboeuf. Duberry is valued at around 4 million with Sinclair and Petrescu at around 1.5million.

De Boer twins are determined to leave Ajax but a Dutch ruling said that they have to abide by the contract. Apparently, the twins signed a contract in March 97, extending their contracts to 2002. However, the brothers insisted that the club extend their contracts to 2004. The contract said the brothers could not seek a dissolution until July 2001. Less than a year, Ronald said that he wanted to leave and Frank was dropping hints about him doing the same. They reached an agreement whereby the younger twin, Ronald would be allowed to leave while Frank stayed on. An offer by Arsenal for Ronald was turned down and apparently, the agreement was off.
Patrick Kluivert has ruled out a move to any Premier League club.

Former Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit is set to take over at English Premier League Newcastle United, replacing Kenny Dalglish. He is to fly in to Newcastle to sign a US$1.64 million a year contract.
Whoa! he's coming back! Isn't that great! Newcastle is now a team to watch out for! But there would be a revamp of the whole team. The whole team would be changed........Shearer might just leave? Maybe not.......but others would have to go. And more foreigners would be expected in Newcastle.
Ruud Gullit has taken over and there would certainly be a revamp to the whole thing. Shearer might just have to leave.......if you did notice, i wrote that Shearer might have to leave when i last updated updated the page (that was when it was announced that Gullit is to take over as manager.) A few days after that, there were rumors (or so they say) that Parma (i'm not to sure which team) wants to buy Shearer. Maybe he does need to leave.......after all it's Gullit who said that Shearer wasn't worth 15 million pounds when Newcastle bought him. 

Chelsea's World Cup defender, Dan Petrescu looks on his way to Dutch giants, Ajax in a 2.5million pounds deal. Chelsea player-boss Vialli has told the versatile 29-year-old that he was not guaranteed a place in the starting XI following the signing of full-back Albert Ferrer and the return of fitness of Gustavo Poyet.

Arsenal skipper, Tony Adams will retire at the end of the season unless a nagging ankle injury clears up. The England defender has to take anti-inflammatory tablets before matches and he is worried that the side-effects may cause permanent damage. Said the 31-year-old Adams: "If I find I have to take them before every game this season, then I will have to give a lot of thought to carrying on next season.

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                                         Thoughts
The real hub of soccer is in Italy and not in England. Many would think otherwise, especially supporters of the English league. The reason for this is because the media here have concentrated their coverage of sports news or matches on the English League so much so that people have come to think of England as the ultimate place for soccer. I initially thought this was so (that England is the place of soccer).
But things changed after I watched a match between Inter Milan and Udinese. I have watched only one match involving Serie A teams and yet I have only praise for it The game was a fast one, with equally fast players displaying good if not excellent skills. It was a really entertaining match! (That's why I talked about switching to watch the Serie A matches as I won't have time to watch both league matches!)
The English are also bias against Asian Players. This is so unlike the Italians who have made room for players like Hidetoshi Nakata from Japan and etc. It is in Italy where on of the world's best players are. Players like Ronaldo ( we shouldn't perhaps take into account his showing at the finals, should we?), Marcelo Salas etc. And so, the real soccer universe is Italy and not England.

With the new season starting on August 15, and so many foreigners in the English game, it is certainly something to look forward to. But like Arsene Wenger has said, having so many of them in the English game would kill off young talents. The figure is alarming, 103 out of the 220 Premiership players likely to start the new season is English, with Chelsea being able to field a whole team of foreigners.

                                                                           
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