The Warm-Up: Chinese club bids £260m for Cristiano Ronaldo, with £85m annual wages
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Updated 30/12/2016 at 08:20 GMT
Okay, this is getting silly now. It's Tom Adams with Friday's Warm-Up, which has details of an astronomical offer from China for Cristiano Ronaldo.
Ronaldo avec son 4e Ballon d'Or
Image credit: AFP
FRIDAY'S BIG HEADLINES
Record offer for Ronaldo
Hands up everyone who saw this coming. In news that will likely surprise no one, after a few days of breathless coverage about the world record wage Carlos Tevez is reportedly receiving at Shanghai Shenhua, £615,000 a week (!), Cristiano Ronaldo's bruised ego has responded.
In an attempt to remind everyone who the real alpha male is around these parts, Ronaldo's agent Jorge Mendes has been busy revealing details of an astronomical offer Ronaldo apparently received, and rejected, from an unnamed Chinese club.
"From China, they've offered €300m (£265m!!) to Real Madrid and more than €100m (£85m!!!) per year to the player," Mendes said. "But money is not everything; the Spanish club is his life."
An admirable sentiment from the representative of a player who spends his free time flogging CR7 blankets ("The official blanket of CR7 fandemonium") and showing off his "new beast" on Instagram.
A wage well in excess of £1m a week is obviously completely immoral and illogical but if Shanghai really are paying Tevez half that then perhaps an £85m annual offer to Ronaldo is now the market rate for arguably the best player of all time. There's a sentence you never thought you'd type. We are just unsurprised that Mendes was so keen to get this news out there...
A bad news day
Now, we know that the time between Christmas and New Year can be a bit of a black hole when it comes to news - well, aside from some heartbreaking celebrity deaths this year - but even so, Friday's sports pages are remarkably bare. Let's just have a look at what's leading the agenda in the papers.
1. Shriek! As Harry Kane says Spurs can win the league
2. Prepare the smelling salts! As Dietmar Hamann rates Jurgen Klopp
3. Question the very basis of reality! As Chris Coleman's wife tweets something
Oh, it's slim pickings today, alright.
Klopp's praise for Pep
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Dortmund's head coach Juergen Klopp (R) and Bayern Munich's Spanish head coach Pep Guardiola
Image credit: AFP
And so to the second round of matches this festive period. On New Year's Eve, half of Merseyside's party plans have been put back an hour or two by the late kick-off between Liverpool and Manchester City, which gets going at 5.30pm and won't finish until almost 7.30pm, by which time plenty of nights out will already be in full flow. That barely gives you four hours to prepare for Jools Holland.
It's the first meeting of Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola since their series of intense duels as the managers of Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, of which Klopp won four and lost four to emerge with a pretty respectable record. In his press conference yesterday, he spoke of his admiration for his rival.
He came here with open eyes. He could have had easier jobs in easier leagues, that is for sure. He could have gone anywhere but he wanted to come here. He was probably 100% aware of the big challenge. He knew he had a wonderful squad at Barcelona and a wonderful squad at Bayern but he had big influence on the way they played football. If you go to Barcelona as a new manager they will tell you: ‘By the way, don’t forget, we play like Pep Guardiola played.’ That’s the biggest influence you can have. Bayern loved the years he was there. He is a fantastic manager.
It's all a bit 'peace on earth and goodwill to all men' for The Warm-Up's liking. But whatever floats your boat.
IN OTHER NEWS
Full credit to Atalanta star Papu Gomez for not only refusing to take it easy on his young son and sticking in a two-footed reducer on the poor lad during a kickabout on the beach, but posting it on social media too.
IN THE CHANNELS
ESPN have landed an interview with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and there's a few of those classic Zlatan lines, including crediting himself as the inspiration for Henrikh Mkhitaryan's improved form. Read the full thing here.
HAT TIP
At that age it’s the same every morning: you wake up, you have to go to school, you go to take your pyjamas off. But this time my arms did not respond. I woke up and went to take my shirt off, but my arms just stayed hanging like this.
It doesn't really feel like there's much room for another Footballer of the Year award but The Guardian have a good concept for their new prize, ensuring it won't just be shared between Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Cagliari's Fabio Pisacane is the first recipient of an award "given to a player who has done something truly remarkable, whether by overcoming adversity, helping others or setting a sporting example by acting with exceptional honesty."
When you read his life story - growing up amid the Camorra wars in Naples, how he obtained various physical scars, becoming a national hero and pariah for reporting matchfixing and surviving the condition which nearly killed him - it's hard to argue that he doesn't deserve it.
COMING UP
There's a prelude to Saturday's rather more packed schedule tonight with Everton taking on Hull as they try to cling onto the coat tails of the top six. That one is live on Sky Sports 1 at 8pm.
Adam Hurrey will still be humming Auld Lang Syne and trying to piece together his New Year's Eve when he brings you Monday's Warm-Up.
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