The Warm-Up: No Zlatan Ibrahimovic for Spurs, promises Jose Mourinho, endearing himself to fans
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Updated 26/11/2019 at 09:30 GMT
If there was one sign that Jose would be going full Jose, it would have been to sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Thankfully for Spurs fans, he isn't doing that...
Jose Mourinho, Tottenham head coach
Image credit: Getty Images
TUESDAY’S BIG STORIES
Jose helps himself by saying Spurs don’t want Zlatan
Here’s the thing about Jose Mourinho at Tottenham: he might win some games, but will the people actually like him? Sure, they might like those wins, but will he alienate the fans before they get a chance to actually warm to him? There will have been plenty trying to convince themselves that this is all a really good idea, that they will love and admire their new manager nearly as much as they did the last guy, but will victories be enough to do that?
He’s already started. Started telling the Spurs fans that what they thought was success wasn’t actually success at all and that he, the big daddy, the trophy machine, Dr Winning, is here to save them.
Sure, you can see what he’s trying to do, and what he’s trying to say. But he might want to tread quite carefully here.
Still, he probably did endear himself to their fans by declaring that they wouldn’t be signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a move that would surely have signalled they were going Full Jose. He said:
I have more than a connection [with Ibrahimovic]. Amazing player, amazing guy, but I would say no chance. We have the best striker in England. It doesn’t make any sense for a striker of Zlatan’s dimension to come to a club where we have Harry Kane.
Van Basten suspended by Fox Sports over ‘Sieg heil’ comment
You do sometimes wonder if there’s any point in trying to make sense of the wider world when you’re confronted with a headline like that. But all the key details are included in that headline: at the weekend Marco van Basten shouted ‘sieg heil’ across a studio after Frank Wormuth, the German coach of Heracles, had just been interviewed on Fox Sports.
Van Basten claimed the intent was merely to ‘ridicule’ the German language, but of all the many words in the German tongue, surely he could’ve picked a better couple to have a little light fun with.
The former Dutch striker apologised, adding the slightly glib qualifier: “Life is like football. Sometimes you score, sometimes you miss. But if you miss, that does not mean that you are a bad person.”
He’s been stood down from his TV duties for one week and his salary in that time will be donated to the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.
Welcome back Steve, have a 2-0 defeat
Steve Bruce’s time at Aston Villa wasn’t the happiest, for various reasons, and he’ll be even more sick of the sight of the place after his Newcastle team were beaten there on Monday night.
A couple of well-worked free-kicks were Newcastle’s undoing, Conor Hourihane scoring directly from one and Anwar El-Ghazi benefitting from the other to seal Villa’s first win in a little while. For their part, Newcastle were limp, passive and offered nothing, as Bruce admitted afterwards. “What was disappointing was that we were too passive with the ball and without, especially in the first half.”
Still, at least nobody threw a cabbage at him this time.
HEROES AND ZEROS
Zero: Massimo Cellino
It would be entirely unbelievable if, well, it wasn’t so depressingly believable. In what looks like an interview filmed on someone’s phone, Brescia club president Massimo Cellino responded to Mario Balotelli being dropped from their first-team by coach Fabio Grosso by…well…by being colossally racist.
And with clockwork-like depressing predictability, the club chose not to side with, apologise to or sympathise with their player after being racially abused, but rather use the banter defence.
The club said: “In relation to what president Massimo Cellino declared this afternoon about our player Mario Balotelli, Brescia Calcio explains that it was clearly a joke said as a paradox.
“It was clearly misunderstood and it was said in the attempt to downplay an excessive media exposure and aimed at protecting the player.”
Hero: Mario Balotelli
For constantly having to deal with all of this.
RETRO CORNER
On this day in 1992, Eric Cantona signed for Manchester United, starting one of football’s most intense fan-player relationships. Here are all of his goals at Old Trafford. Try to contain yourselves.
HAT TIP
Dortmund’s policy of signing young players cheaply, giving them first-team exposure and then selling them on for massive profits has made the club a byword for transfer success, with Shinji Kagawa, Ilkay Gundogan, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Ousmane Dembele and Christian Pulisic just some of the players to have trodden that particular path in recent years. In turn, the lure of regular playing time, Champions League football and a consistently full, vibrant stadium has turned Dortmund into one of the most attractive destinations in Europe for the game’s leading young talents.
For Bleacher Report, Tom Williams on how Borussia Dortmund are trying to stay ahead of the game.
COMING UP
The Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaampiooooooooooooooooooons. To be frank this isn’t a vintage night of Gazprom action: most of the big boys have qualified already, a few teams can seal their places in the knockouts but if they don’t they’ll get another go in a couple of weeks. But hey: some Gazprom is better than no Gazprom, so get it down you.
Tomorrow’s Warm-Up will be brought to you by the Gazprom-guzzling Ben Snowball.
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