Barcelona are back, Ibrahimovic has his cake, Joe Kinnear breaks the press conference swearing record and Tottenham sink to the bottom of the Premier League. All of these stories feature in this week’s the good, the bad and the ugly. Click on the links for more information about them below.
Good
Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored an amazing goal for Inter Milan in their 2-1 victory over Bologna in Serie A last weekend. The best way to describe it would be a flying a back heel but take a look at it here. He later described the goal as a ‘piece of cake’. Indeed.
After a tough start to La Liga, Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona are starting to impress and moved into fourth place behind Valencia in the Spanish table. They destroyed title rivals Atletico Madrid 6-1 to win their fifth match in a row, scoring 19 goals in those games.
Staying in Spain, or more precisely the Basque country, former Spanish international winger Joseba Etxeberria has announced that from next season he will play for his beloved Athletic Bilbao in La Liga for free after playing for the club for 14 seasons. The fact that a player can demonstrate such loyalty to one club is one thing but to then give something back in this manner is another. Hats off to Joseba.
Bad
Bad for my team Tottenham after yet another defeat – this time at home to high-flying Hull – means that no wins from the first seven league matches is the worst start to the league since 1912. Though this was an improvement on previous matches, no direction, little organisation and hardly any confidence suggests it might be a while before that elusive win appears.
Newcastle stand-in boss Joe Kinnear was lambasted by the press for unleashing a verbal torrent of abuse that included more than 50 swear words in five minutes during his press conference at the weekend. He will face an FA charge for that outburst but the press’ ‘holier than though’ approach is somewhat hypocritical.
The Football Association chairman Lord Triesmann attacked the ‘toxic debt’ that English clubs have found themselves in by claiming that they are as much as A£3 billion in the red – with the top four clubs owing almost a third of that figure. West Ham have already lost their sponsorship deal, while other clubs have put stadium plans and new transfers on hold to see whether the credit crunch will pass. Could become pretty ugly for English football.
