The Warm-Up: Marouane Fellaini ends his Manchester United career in 19 seconds
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Published 28/04/2017 at 07:03 GMT
Marouane Fellaini managed to get a booking and then a read card for head-butting Sergio Aguero in Thursday night's derby between Manchester United and Manchester City in the time it took you to read this sentence (well, almost).
Marouane Fellaini
Image credit: Getty Images
FRIDAY'S BIG HEADLINES
The bigger they come, the harder they Fell
Praise be for Marouane Fellaini. Only 19 seconds of last night's Manchester derby was anywhere near remotely entertaining and it was all thanks to him as, in one sensational passage of play, Fellaini was booked for a foul on Sergio Aguero, immediately chased after the striker and tripped him following the restart, and then head-butted the City man for good measure.
“Marouane says that it’s a red card because it’s Marouane," said Jose Mourinho. "He is frustrated. He says that with another player it would probably not be a red card." Which is true, based on the fact that The Warm-Up cannot conceive of another player doing anything so transparently ridiculous.
Otherwise it was a pretty horrendous game. Mourinho didn't so much park the bus as deliver a whole fleet of brand new Routemasters and plonk them on City's double yellow lines. It was the kind of night which had people reaching for the words 'Mourinho masterclass', as though having the most expensive squad in football history and playing like West Brom was some kind of masterstroke. The worst unbeaten run in history, now 24 games, continues to underwhelm the world.
Mourinho's cautious, safety-first approach produced nothing of note, so Fellaini's complete abandonment of those principles when he shoved his nutt into Aguero finally gave us all something to talk about. Mostly which club he will be packed off to in the summer. Our money's on Zenit St Petersburg.
Gerrard: No Ronaldos please
Yesterday morning, Liverpool confirmed that Steven Gerrard has been promoted and will manage the club's Under-18 team next season. Yesterday evening, he outlined his vision of football for Liverpool's young hopefuls.
There is a showboating mentality through academies. My teams will be physical. A lot of kids think they have to do 10 lollipops or Cruyff turns to look good or stand out. We all love a bit of skill and talent but the other side of the game is huge. I have to try and prepare these players for careers in the game. Not all of them will play for Liverpool’s first team but I feel if I can help them to compete in the other side of the game it will help their careers. Maybe it [showboating] comes from computer games, I don’t know. There are a lot of skilful players that young players try and emulate – probably too much instead of playing to their own strengths. They try and model their game on players like Ronaldo whereas you have to look at yourself and say: ‘What have I got? What are my strengths? How can I improve my weaknesses and become a player in my own right?’
Right, modelling your game on one of the best players of all time, whose work rate is legendary, and possibly unmatched by any player ever, would... be bad?
More FIFA scandal
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Zurich, SwitzerlandFIFA President Sepp Blatter announces Qatar as the host nation for the FIFA World Cup 2022, in Zurich December 2, 2010
Image credit: Reuters
Are you sitting down somewhere comfortable with a strong whisky to hand? Good, because we have some shocking news for you: apparently the French authorities think there might have been something whiffy about the World Cup votes in 2018 and 2022!
Sepp Blatter has apparently been interviewed as a witness in a new investigation which brings up FIFA's hat-trick, running alongside US and Swiss probes, while, according to AP, "France's financial prosecutor services (PNF) opened the investigation on grounds of private corruption, criminal association, influence peddling, and benefiting from influence peddling relating to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, which were awarded to Russia and Qatar respectively."
Huge if true.
IN OTHER NEWS
The Warm-Up always thought one of the best perks of the England job, besides having the newspapers pry into every aspect of your private life and camp on your lawn, would be the ability to cherry-pick which football matches you wanted to watch across the country. So with a glamorous Thursday night Manchester derby taking place, Gareth Southgate was of course at... Headingley to watch the Super League match between Leeds and Huddersfield.
If Fabio Capello had done this he'd have been absolutely savaged. Mind you, Southgate clearly had the right idea, giving a swerve to one of the worst matches of the season.
HEROES AND ZEROS
Hero: Whoever did this
"'Remember when' is the lowest form of conversation," said New Jersey waste management executive Anthony Soprano a few years ago. His thoughts on what the lowest form of internet banter might be were not recorded, though The Warm-Up would suggest Wiki-vandalism. It's usually rubbish, but this... well this is just something else.
Zeros: Whoever did this
Piggybacking on a man's work crisis to flog whatever it is you're trying to flog? Nah.
RETRO CORNER
The Warm-Up still has trouble computing just how iconic Lionel Messi's celebration was after winning the Clasico at the weekend: arms outstretched, presenting his No. 10 shirt to the crowd at the Bernabeu like he was Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. It was simple but utterly brilliant. And seven years ago, there was an equally iconic celebration in a match involving Barcelona, although this time Messi was on the receiving end. Take it away, Jose...
COMING UP
Brighton will be crowned winners of the Championship tonight if Newcastle lose away to Cardiff, though having already secured promotion, and this week had their offices raided as part of an HMRC probe into fraud, Newcastle could be forgiven for having let their focus slip a bit. That's on Sky Sports 1 at 7:45pm. BT are showing Atalanta v Juventus and Bayer Leverkusen v Schalke in a couple of decent European offerings.
Adam Hurrey is still busy working his way through every bowl of ramen in Japan so Jack Lang's back, back again, Lang is back (on Monday), tell a friend.
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