Well done to Cesc Fabregas who was part of Spain’s Euro 2008 winning side last night. Although he was rather oddly substituted by loopy manager Luis Aragones Spain were never really troubled by Germany and Fernando Torres’ goal was enough to win it. Cesc said afterwards:
This the best day of my life as a football player. It’s the best feeling you can have as a footballer. It’s one of your dreams and I made it.
And as much as I’m happy for him to have won with his country I really want him to experience that feeling with Arsenal. The more best of his life he has with us the happier we’ll all be. So congratulations to Cesc but commiserations to Jens Lehmann who was one of Germany’s best players on the night. So Euro 2008 over and done with, there’ll be a final Eurocast later this morning. Link.
Silly season can now well and truly kick off and I expect transfer madness/frenzy/mania to kick in any moment. It’s beginning already with Chelsea rumoured to be willing to pay big money for Emmanuel Adebayor. Sounds like a load of shit to me. The Telegraph, which carries the Adebayor story, and the Sun both link us with a move for Obafemi Martins. I really can’t see that happening either. Martins agent seems to use Arsenal to generate profile for his player all the time and nothing ever comes of it. He’s unhappy at Newcastle but I don’t think he’s the right man for us.
There’s an interesting story in El Mundo this morning saying that Arsene Wenger twice refused to meet Barcelona vice-president Marc Ingla. Ingla flew to Vienna for the semi-final of Euro 2008 to try and talk to the boss about Adebayor and Hleb but was told that Wenger didn’t have time to meet him. He wasn’t happy about this and decided to use an intermediary to try and set up a meeting. Can you guess who that might have been?
None other than Darren Dein. Son of football’s most orange sell-out. Obviously he’s somebody the Barcelona board consider a good old chum, eh? No doubt Dein Jr would just be doing them a favour out of the goodness of his heart because surely he has no personal interest in this grand plan. It’s not like the Henry deal where he, as Henry’s agent, would have benefitted financially from a big transfer, is it? Nevertheless, Ingla’s attempt to get baby Dein to arrange this meeting also proved fruitless, much to the frustration of the Barcelona man who wanted to go back to Spain with an arrangement agreed so the two signings could be announced this week.
Why the rush? Well, there’s a presidential election on July 6th and if Laporta and his crew can bring on board these players beforehand then the public dissatisfaction at Barcelona’s last campaign will be assuaged and the chances of re-election are much higher. No wonder they’re in a hurry.
I suspect there’ll be a lot of talking going on at Arsenal in the coming weeks. The Adebayor and Hleb situations have to be resolved. We’ve got two players who were regular first team members last season but who both, and Adebayor particularly, have lost pretty much all the goodwill they’ve generated during their time at the club. Hleb has been slightly more clever, allowing his agents to do the talking for him, but you have to feel that it’s going to be difficult for both of them to stay at Arsenal next season.
There are now just a couple of weeks until the players come back for their pre-season training. It might even be less than that although those involved in Euro 2008 might have themselves extra time off. Hopefully we can get this all sorted as quickly and efficiently as possible.
According to reader Dylan and arsenalfrance.fr we’ve signed a young player called Morgan Schneiderlin (link in French) from Strasbourg for €1.5m and he’ll go out on loan immediately to Southampton.
He’s actually signed for Southampton. Not us.
There’s also been a lot of talk about a player called Amaury Bischoff (sounds like a Dublin chipper) who plays for Werder Bremen. He’s been injured for about 2 years though so it does sound a bit whiffy.
Beyond that there’s not much happening this morning. How was your weekend then?
