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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Tumaini Carayol (now) and David Tindall (earlier)

Lewandowski, Ronaldo, Messi up for Fifa award: weekend countdown – as it happened

Robert Lewandowski in Bayern training.
Robert Lewandowski goes up against Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo for FIfa’s best men’s player of 2020. Photograph: Reuters

That is all from me today. Thanks for following along and enjoy the weekend.

Here is Scott Murray with The Fiver, which leads with Jose Mourinho’s man management skills last night.

An interesting take on being relegated from the Champions League.

From Peter Oh:

Between his presence in the box, his goal scoring record and the titles he amassed last season, I agree that Robert Lewandowski would have been a worthy candidate for best player of the year. He had a cinematic year, which makes me want to call him The Big Lewandowski (with apologies to the Coen brothers and Jeff Bridges). The Dude abides.

Here are the finalists for Best FIFA Coaches of 2020. We will soon find out whether winning the Championship is considered a greater achievement than the Champions League.

Will the brilliant Bruno Fernandes ever know happiness? To be decided.

José Mourinho spoke about Kane, Son and his manager of the month award ahead of Tottenham’s tricky away game at Crystal Palace.

José Mourinho, 2020:

“It is not about me, it is about the team and if it was about me it would have to be the coaching staff of the month because without the other guys it would not be possible. This kind of thing I never feel it as an individual award, I always feel that it belongs to the team and the results we did.”

José Mourinho, 2018:

Mourinho held three fingers up. “Just to finish, do you know what was the result?” he said, indicating his digits. “3-0, 3-0. Do you know what this is? 3-0. But it also means three Premierships and I won more Premierships alone than the other 19 managers together. Three for me and two for them two [Pep Guardiola and Manuel Pellegrini]. So respect man, respect, respect, respect.”

Here is David Hytner on Ole Gunnar Solskjær and his wildly inconsistent Manchester United side.

“Solskjær’s high-wire act has been heavy on extremes, with the best victories elevated by drama and improbability; the never-say-die spirit reflects the club’s traditions and delights the fan-base. But the lows have been almost comically so and the defensive disasters, particularly this season – most recently against RB Leipzig in United’s Champions League exit on Tuesday – have led to legitimate questions about Solskjær’s tactical acumen. When the same bad things keep happening – the slow starts, the disorganisation – the credit in the bank runs dry.”

A solid argument.

Lucy Bronze, Pernille Harder and Wendie Renard have been nominated for The Best FIFA Women’s Player 2020.

Vivianne Miedema, who came in at No 2 on the Guardian’s top 100 female footballers list today, did not make the cut. Some would call it a snub.

Updated

Thank you, Dave. I return to the news that Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski have been named the three finalists for FIFA’s Best Men’s Player Award.

Time to hand back to Tumaini Carayol, who’ll take you through to full-time.

Saturday’s 8pm game is Everton v Chelsea - the Carlo Ancelotti derby. A preview here as the Toffees boss takes on his former club.

Off to the West Midlands now for a preview of another derby. This is Saturday’s 12.30pm kick-off.

Man Utd were 2-0 up at the Etihad after just 29 minutes last season while a 30th-minute strike from Anthony Martial gave them an early(ish) advantage in the return league match at home. That’s somewhat of a contrast to the current campaign. United have been behind in their last four matches while Crystal Palace, Tottenham and PSG all netted inside seven minutes at Old Trafford. Former Man City star Angelino took just two minutes to unlock their defence in the 3-2 midweek loss to Leipzig.

Updated

A match preview - with predicted starting XIs - of the 183rd Manchester derby.

Ole Gunnar Solskjær claims he is pleased with Manchester United’s direction as he approaches two years in charge. Agree? Read more in Jamie Jackson’s pre-derby piece here:

Fulham boss Scott Parker says having fans back (2,000 of them) is a huge boost ahead of Sunday’s meeting with Liverpool at Craven Cottage.

It will have a massive impact to be fair, it has been such a long time since stadiums have been empty. For large parts of our careers players and managers play with fans. That is what our game is about really, the passion our fans bring. We are fortunate to have fans in our stadium this weekend and we are looking forward to it. Hopefully it gives us that little more as well. There’s no denying we’re playing one of the best teams in Europe over the last 18 months. But like last week [2-0 loss to Man City], we’ll go into the game trying to cause them problems.

He probably hasn’t got time during Chelsea’s busy festive period but Ben Chilwell has the look of someone who could one day release a Christmas album of jazz/pop standards. An interesting article here with our very own Jacob Steinberg.

Updated

Injury updates from the Liverpool camp are always plentiful at the moment. So here’s Jurgen Klopp ahead of Sunday’s trip to Fulham. Alisson Becker and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could return while Diogo Jota and Kostas Tsimikas are maybes. On the definitely not list are Thiago Alcantara, James Milner and Xherdan Shaqiri, according to the Reds boss.

Ali will train today, that’s what I’ve heard. I came in and came directly to the press [conference] so all the meetings are after that and yes, Ali will train and if he trains and all fine, then he can play. We had a game two days ago and after the game we obviously had some niggles I would say, but [they] can be more, we have to see. The diagnoses are not finally done. Kostas we have to see, Diogo we have to see - he got a knock as well. That’s it from the game, I think. Apart from that, Oxlade is in normal training. He has been doing parts of training now for a week or so, he is now in full training and we will see. So the situation probably demands to involve him as soon as possible, but I don’t know if the weekend is that already. Nobody else is coming back, I’m afraid.

I’m standing here, corrected. Alert reader Andrew Champney notes: “She Bangs The Drums is on Liam Gallagher’s playlist (see 13:26).” It’s true. Clearly taste has trumped allegiance, so yes to the Stone Roses but still no to Simply Red thankfully.

A few months before Rossi won the Golden Boot and fired Italy to World Cup success, two blokes called Kevin netted in a 1-1 Manchester derby draw. That’s one for The Knowledge maybe - Goalscoring Kevins on opposite sides in derby matches.

Manchester derby, Old Trafford, February 1982

And, if you missed it, here’s Nicky Bandini’s feature on Paolo Rossi.

A slight change of pace now and a moment to remember Italy striker Paolo Rossi, who died earlier this week. Rossi features in Michael Donald’s 2017 book ‘Goal!’ – intimate portraits and interviews with every living World Cup final scorer.

Paolo Rossi on his vineyard in Tuscany (31/08/09)
Paolo Rossi on his vineyard in Tuscany (31/08/09) Photograph: Michael Donald

Michael took this wonderful picture and recalled his meeting with the Italian striker, who netted the opener in the Azzurri’s 1982 World Cup final win over West Germany.

He was a gentleman. He put us up in his vineyard and couldn’t have been more accommodating. He was incredibly self-deprecating, allotting his success to [manager] Enzo Bearzot and his teammates. When we asked him what his favourite World Cup final goal of all time was, he answered without hesitation, ‘Marco Tardelli’s’, his teammate who scored the second goal in the same final.

Updated

The inevitable question to Pep about his opposite number...

More Man City. Aguero could come off the bench again which brings us to the thorny issue of substitutes. Pep makes his feelings about being restricted to just three pretty clear here:

People are for this ridiculous rule meaning we cannot have more on the bench, so it’s more difficult to maintain a good level. That’s why they have to be ready every week because they have to be ready to play.

Some Manchester City team news. Ilkay Gundogan is set to be fit but the visitors will be without Eric Garcia. The big news, though, is that Sergio Aguero still isn’t ready to start. The striker scored on his return from injury during a cameo against Marseille but won’t be risked so soon again.

Sergio Aguero won't start

Updated

Some Opta stats for the Manchester derby. Raheem’s due a goal then...

  • Man City’s Raheem Sterling has never scored in 16 Premier League appearances against Manchester United, at least 10 games more than he’s faced any other side in the competition without a goal. Sterling has had 29 attempts in these matches (13 on target), while the last English player to score in a Manchester derby for City in the league was James Milner in April 2013.
  • Manchester City have won seven Premier League away games at Old Trafford, more than any other visiting side, with six of their seven such victories away to Manchester United coming in the previous nine seasons.
  • Man Utd’s Anthony Martial has scored in three of his last four Premier League appearances against Man City, including netting home and away against the Citizens last term. The last Man Utd player to score in three consecutive Manchester derby appearances in the league was Eric Cantona, who did so in five straight games between March 1993-April 1996.
  • Since his Premier League debut in February, Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes has been involved in more goals in the competition than any other player, racking up 15 goals and 11 assists in just 24 games.

Staying on a Manchester musical theme, here’s Clint Boon and friends with The Manchester Music Cup draw from a couple of years ago. Looking forward to that possible New Order v Joy Division last-eight clash. Some glaring omissions though.

Doves v Buzzcocks
The Smiths v James
Elbow v Stone Roses
Inspiral Carpets v Courteeners
Oasis v Happy Mondays
New Order v Blossoms
The Slow Readers Club v Joy Division
The Verve v The Charlatans

Here’s Liam Gallagher’s special derby playlist. Nothing from the Stone Roses or Simply Red funnily enough.

Here’s young City fan Philip Foden showing off his collection of stickers and figurines whilst getting in derby mood...

Marcus Rashford scored twice against Manchester City last season - one in a 2-1 Premier League win at the Etihad and another in a 3-1 home loss in the EFL Cup. He’s ready to do battle again...

Thanks Tumaini. Now, (checks watch) it’s just under seven hours until Elland Road takes centre stage for the first Premier League match of the weekend. West Yorkshire is still in Tier 3 so there won’t be any home fans tonight to give ex-Manchester United boss David Moyes a cheery wave.

And with that, I will hand over the liveblog to David Tindall. Thanks for following.

Jürgen Klopp elaborated on his many VAR thoughts:

“This is one of the things which I don’t like. We played Midtjylland, it was freezing cold, we had three or four decisions and altogether it was 10/12 minutes and it was really cold. Of course, with all the things, how it’s dealt with now, why would somebody say: ‘that’s brilliant?’”

“We wait always, we stop celebrating after goals and wait constantly about everything. We have less than millimetre offside decisions. A lot of things are not like before - that’s the truth. But I said, when it first came up, the idea of VAR I was rather in favour of it, to be honest. Because I thought, yes, right decisions would be nice. Not sure we all thought it through properly - how long will it take to get a right decision? How much will that take away from a game which we loved before?

Liverpool team news: Kostas Tsimikas and Diogo Jota both picked up knocks and they will wait and see. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is back in team training after injuring his knee at the start of the season. Klopp said that Oxlade-Chamberlain could play again soon: “It’s great for him, it’s great for us. We cannot, will not rush it.”

However, Klopp ended his comments with a dark statement: “Nobody else is coming back, I’m afraid.

Jurgen Klopp is speaking now. Asked if he relieved to see the back of Champions League games with this busy schedule, his response was a very firm “no”.

“We have exactly the same schedule right before, surprise, surprise. Nothing changed for us. The only fair thing now is that all teams play for 3 days from now on [...] there’s nothing to enjoy in the moment with the injuries we had and stuff like this.”

“It was a proper fight and it will stay a proper fight.”

Mara Gómez speaks about becoming the first trans female footballer in Argentina.

Zinedine Zidane duly notes that Atletico are favourites to win the title in his press conference. No pressure!

“I’m sure that they are the favourites for La Liga, they are showing it, they are doing well on the field. They have always been a competitive team, today they are first. We know the rival, now we are interested in what we are going to do tomorrow.”

Updated

Diego Simeone earlier this week on Real Madrid.

“I don’t consider it to be the end [of the title race] with so many matchdays to go.”

“Madrid are an excellent team. They know their footballers like no other, they always generate a change when faced with the pressure of any game and they compete. I admire them, they are footballers and a coach who compete every year. It’s not easy.”

As things stand, Atletico Madrid are top of the table, a point ahead of Real Sociedad and six points ahead of Real Madrid in fourth. However, Atletico have only played 10 games so far compared with Real Sociedad’s 12 and Real Madrid’s 11. This is clearly the biggest game of the season so far.

Updated

On Leeds vs West Ham this evening:

Despite last facing each other in the Premier League on Feb 8th 2003, Leeds and West Ham have contested two sets of league fixtures against each other in the time since, butting heads in the 2004-2005 Championship and then again in the 2011-2012 season.

Leeds have not won at home since their opening win of the season versus Fulham. David Moyes’s West Ham have very notably won their last 5 league matches this season against non “big 6” clubs.

In team news, Diego Llorente will be out of action for Leeds while Robin Koch underwent knee surgery this week and will be gone for three months. For West Ham, Ryan Fredericks has returned to the team but Michail Antonio is a doubt.

Updated

This certainly isn’t a false statement.

Here is more from Steve Bruce on the COVID-19 situation at Newcastle United, with two staff members still “poorly”.

Bruno Fernandes has been named as the Premier League player of the month for November.

Looking ahead to the Madrid derby on Saturday, El Pais have chosen to focus on Luka Modric, who was sensational on Wednesday against Borussia Mönchengladbach in the Champions League. Real Madrid won 2-0 with one of their most solid performances of a troubled season so far to finish as victors of their group. Modric is now 35 years old and has only 6 months remaining on his contract but he is still so dynamic in addition to his endless technical ability. A quote from former Croatian footballer Nikola Jerkan there:

“Many players tend to back down over the years, like Xavi or Iniesta, but he keeps looking for the hottest areas, where he can generate danger. Others step aside before reaching his age, but he wants to continue at Real Madrid and he sees himself with the strength to continue and to do so in a demanding position.”

Updated

As the weekend shifts closer into view, here are 10 things to look out for.

Graham Ruthven on the rise of Columbus Crew in MLS.

Here is Rich Laverty’s piece on the decision to name Pernille Harder as the best female footballer in the world and the Football Weekly episode.

We have finally counted down all 100 of the best women’s players in the world, with the final 10 revealed today. Chelsea’s Pernille Harder has been named on the top spot for the second time in three years. The top 3:

  1. Pernille Harder
  2. Vivianne Miedema
  3. Lucy Bronze

The full list:

Updated

Over in Madrid, the upcoming derby is not the only notable topic on the agenda right now. The treatment of women’s footballers has become a source of debate in recent days after a Rayo Femenino (Rayo Vallecano’s women’s team) player posted her post-match meal, a very sad ham sandwich, onto the internet.

A translation of thee tweet: “They are elite athletes but they are not treated as such. Rayo Feminino are tired of their conditions and consider not traveling to their next meeting in San Sebastián. On their last trip, this was their dinner.”

Steven Gerrard appears to be doing quite well, no?

Steve Bruce on the outbreak of COVID-19 at Newcastle over the past week.

Slaven Bilic spoke about his West Bromwich Albion team facing Newcastle on the weekend, which is just in the process of recovering from a COVID-19 outbreak at the club.

“It looks positive, hopefully we’re going to play it and that’s good news.”

“I didn’t have any of the [Premier League] guys knocking on my door saying like they are worried because Newcastle has got a number of cases. This is serious football and the Premier League would not allow any sort of those things to happen - they wouldn’t risk the health of the players. And Newcastle wouldn’t do it.”


On whether Newcastle will struggle after their past week:

“It doesn’t have to be. We had a significant number of players, and they were not all weak when they came back to training. Some of them were in a shape like they were before we found out they were positive. Some of them found it a little bit more difficult.

“I don’t know the situation for Newcastle. It’s definitely not a good thing for them, but we are not expecting the guys who are unfit to start the game. It depends. It’s all individual. But we have a preparation that we are expecting a team that is fully fit, full of confidence.”

Carlo Ancelotti noted to everton.com that the busy Christmas period means that he will have to rest his star players and he is already thinking about how he will rotate the irreplaceable Dominic Calvert-Lewin.

“We are going to replace him with another striker. That can be (Cenk) Tosun, he is fit after the injury. It can be Richarlison, sometimes. There is no doubt about this. This is a really important period, we are going to play every three days against really important teams: Chelsea, Leicester, Arsenal, Manchester United.

“All the players will be involved. I haven’t rotated the players a lot when we had only one game a week. But the fact we have a game every three days, I am going to rotate the players, as I did in the first period of the season when we played a lot of games and won all the games. I have confidence that playing every three days, we can manage the situation better than once a week.”

Everton face Chelsea on Saturday night.

Asked how he views his Chelsea team in the title race in light of Jose Mourinho branding Tottenham a “pony” in the competition, Frank Lampard was not quite as prepared to offer up a dramatic headline-ready answer.

“I don’t know, I don’t want to find a play on words with it or anything. I just want to say that we are happy where we are but I know that there’s also a long way to go. I don’t think it really matters too much the rhetoric. Jose gets asked about it like I do, once, twice, three times a week, and you have to give an answer.

“I think with Tottenham they have got fantastic players and a really strong squad, and the words are not that important at this point. It’s more about for us at Chelsea how we keep working and understand that consistency over the course of a season is what wins titles, it’s not matches until the middle of December.”

Lampard added that it is difficult to assess the progress of his team right now given the unusual circumstances and chaotic start to the season. They currently sit in 3rd, two points behind Tottenham and Chelsea. Christian Pulisic is training normally ahead of Everton but he has had some hamstring issues to resolve.

A few managers have already had their say ahead of this weekend’s slate of games. Here is David Moyes borrowing from a soon to be former president’s vocabulary while explaining that West Ham have improved since he joined. They currently sit in 8th place.

“Look, we are growing. We are not going to suddenly go from just being outside the bottom three to just being outside the top three, that’s just not going to happen.

“We have to take small steps, do it layer on layer, continue to make progress. We have done and I’m regularly looking to see how we can get this better again, whether it is new faces, the way we play, formation, I am always looking to add to it.

“It’s a great club and it’s my job to make it great again. I feel there are opportunities to do that.”

Via PA.

Jose Mourinho on Dele’s displeasure.

Some very lovely scenes yesterday as Raul Jimenez returned to Wolves for the first time since he had surgery on his fractured skull after butting heads with David Luiz.

Preamble

Good morning! Welcome to another Friday countdown as we turn our sights from the final round of European football games in 2020 to the weekend as the tiring Christmas period fast approaches.

Tonight we will first see the return of another nostalgic Premier League fixture as Leeds host West Ham at 8pm. Then Saturday will kick off with a very interesting West Midlands derby between Wolves and Aston Villa, a “rivalry” that seems to be growing in stature with every fixture. Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion follow at 3pm before the big fixture of the evening, the Manchester derby, as Manchester United take on Manchester City at Old Trafford. Everton will close off Saturday at 8pm as they look to disturb Chelsea’s handsome run of form at Goodson Park.

On an unusually busy Sunday, Southampton will face Sheffield United at midday, then Crystal Palace will host Tottenham Hotspur. At 4:30pm Fulham will attempt to keep Liverpool at bay. The weekend will close with two matches at 7:15pm as Arsenal take on Burnley and Leicester City battle Brighton.

Amid all of the Premier League action, Madrid will take centre stage on Saturday night as Real Madrid take on Atletico Madrid at the Bernabeu.

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