The Warm-Up: Mahrez wants to leave Leicester, but is a year late
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Published 31/05/2017 at 07:28 GMT
Plus: Gareth Bale needs to learn to lie, and Berbatov makes you an offer you can't refuse
Riyad Mahrez of Leicester City looks on during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Leicester City at Etihad Stadium
Image credit: Getty Images
WEDNESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Mahrez wants to leave Leicester
There comes a day in everyone’s life when they decide that it’s time to move on. Sure, we’ve had some laughs, some fun, maybe we’ve achieved a little something. But it’s now time to try something different, for a new challenge, to blow off the old cobwebs and maybe take yourself out of your comfort zone.
That’s what Riyad Mahrez has decided, telling Leicester that it’s been great, we’ve certainly enjoyed ourselves, but the time has come for better things.
“Out of the huge admiration and respect I hold for Leicester City I wanted to be totally honest and transparent with them and have therefore informed the club I feel now is the time for me to move on,” Mahrez said.
“I had a good discussion with the chairman last summer and we agreed at that time I would stay for another year in order to help the club as best as I could following the transition of winning the title and in the Champions League. However, I am fiercely ambitious and feel now is the time to move on to a new experience.”
You do wonder if Mahrez has made a mess of this a little. Thanks to a downturn in form, for both himself and Leicester, he’s nowhere near as attractive a proposition as he was a year ago. Presumably Mahrez wants to go to the very top, but who is going to pay the hefty fee that Leicester will want after the season he’s had? He may well be haunted by regret for the remainder of his career.
Bale ‘not 100%’ for the final
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Gareth Bale of Real Madrid
Image credit: Getty Images
They say that if an actor is asked if he or she can ride a horse, they should answer ‘yes’, and figure it out later. On a similar theme, if a footballer is asked whether he is 100% fit in the lead up to the biggest club game in the world, being held in your home country, when there’s already a little doubt about your starting place, you say ‘yes’.
Gareth Bale didn’t quite take that advice ahead of Real Madrid’s encounter with Juventus in Cardiff on Saturday. Bale, recovering from a calf problem and the residual impact of ankle surgery earlier in the season, also might not be Zinedine Zidane’s first choice to make the starting XI for the game, with Isco lurking ready to take his place.
“I’m not 100 percent,” Bale roared. “I haven’t played in six or seven weeks. I had my ankle operation, which still hasn’t really recovered. I’d been in a lot of pain in training and have taken tablets to get through games.
“Obviously, any surgery is difficult, but in the middle of a season it’s always that bit more difficult. You want to come back as soon as possible. In hindsight, I should have stayed out a bit longer and let it heal and strengthen. But obviously that wasn’t the case. I’ll live and I’ll learn.”
Next time someone asks you a question, give the answer your boss wants to hear.
AGUERO STAYING AT MANCHESTER CITY
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Sergio Aguero
Image credit: Reuters
The rise and rise of Gabriel Jesus has made people question many things. How can a 19-year-old be so absurdly composed, when at that age most of us were learning the hard way that booze which is fluorescent is not necessarily good for your health, for example?
It’s also made some wonder whether Sergio Aguero will be doing one from Manchester City, as Pep Guardiola clearly isn’t entirely convinced by the player who has scored about a billion goals for City in the last five years or so.
But, he’s staying, according to City’s top man. “I’ve read a lot of the speculation on this and it’s ridiculous,” chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said. “He is one of the best players in the world. He is an absolute must.”
That seems to be that then. Still, Khaldoon did also say that finishing third and not winning anything else wasn’t a disappointment, so make of that what you will.
IN OTHER NEWS
Berba makes you an offer you can’t refuse
What do you do when you’ve got an all-star charity match to promote, you’ve got a camera and a suit but you’ve also got to take care of your seven-year-old daughter? Well, in Dimitar Berbatov’s case, you make said seven-year-old act out a scene from the Godfather to try selling tickets to the game in Bulgaria on June 14. You’ll note, with interest, that in lieu of a cat, Berba seems to be stroking his Golden Boot. Which, astonishingly, is not a euphemism.
RETRO CORNER
Continuing our look at the great Champions League finals of yore, here’s the 1994 edition, when everyone expected Barcelona’s ‘Dream Team’ to run away with it, but they were instead blown away by AC Milan.
HAT TIP
We live in a popular culture that isn’t dumbed down, it’s just dumb; there’s no further down to go. We have an extraordinary tabloid press, whose outpourings are designed not to enervate or stimulate, but merely to generate attention. Quality of content is unimportant; quantity of content is everything. Populist journalism was once simple, powerful writing, but now it is merely lightweight puffery, mixed with what appears to be a deliberate and mendacious provocation of the stupid, the upset and the unwell, in order to garner more clicks from their reaction. And nowhere is this more evident than in tabloid football reporting.
On Football365, John Nicholson wonders if English footballers are just a little too dim to do well.
COMING UP
Big stuff on the horizon. Who wouldn’t want to watch Italy play San Marino in a big local derby grudge match, for example? England’s under-20s also play in their World Cup, against Costa Rica, while the grim business of relegation playoffs continue in Italy and Germany.
Tomorrow’s Warm-Up will be brought to you by flamboyance’s Jack Lang, who will never leave you wanting for a flourish.
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