Samuel Chukwueze’s cartoon golazo seals his place as Villarreal’s new hero | Sid Lowe

The Nigerian winger was unstoppable against Real Madrid and is approaching his peak after a long, hard journey to Spain His boots are on fire, and not for the first time. When Samuel Chimerenka Chukwueze was a boy growing up in Umahia, southeast Nigeria, all he wanted to do was play football but his mum had other ideas. The way he recalls it, Sarah was so determined for him to become a doctor, and for sport not to get in the way of school work, that one time he came home to find that she had burned all his kit. That day, he cried; on Saturday, he laughed his head off, live on TV. “It’s a mad golazo, isn’t it?” he said, and then he cracked up. It certainly is, Samu. Ten minutes remained at the Santiago Bernabéu when he received the ball on the right one last time. Before him, poor Nacho Fernández, whose insides still hadn’t straightened out, unravelling the knots the Nigerian spent the evening tying them in, must have felt his heart sink. Chukwueze rolled the ball under his studs, headed for him, neatly evaded Eduardo Camavinga and gave it to Álex Baena, which might have been a relief to Real Madrid, except Chukwueze got it straight back and then broke them again. For good this time. Continue reading...

Komentar

Posting Komentar

Postingan populer dari blog ini

Wiegman’s Lionesses rekindle lost energy to fire spectacular comeback | Jonathan Liew

Gambar
Nations League victory against the Dutch arrives at the last despite a lack of clarity and brittleness creeping into the team They’ll always have Paris. Throughout this Nations League campaign this has been an England team fighting its own sense of entropy, still giving everything, still trying the same plans and processes in the hope that eventually something would click. And at 9.34pm on a briskly cold Wembley night, it finally did. Ella Toone’s injury-time goal earned England three points and kept their faintly glowing Olympic dream alive. But somehow it also did so much more. It breathed life into a team and a cycle, and a moment that for so much of the evening had felt like it was drawing to its natural conclusion provided a rousing encore to a cast preparing for its final curtain. There will be new challenges and new frontiers to conquer soon enough, a fresh set of European Championship qualifiers in the spring, but for now this iteration of the Lionesses still has tricks up
Baca selengkapnya

US owners understand profit but do they appreciate clubs’ tradition and values?

Gambar
Half of the Premier teams are part- or fully-owned by Americans or US companies. Fans’ suspicions are understandable * Sign up to Jonathan’s weekly newsletter here It’s just over a year since Gary Neville declared US owners of English soccer clubs “a clear and present danger to the pyramid and fabric of the game”. The comment provoked a furore but the former England full-back turned high-profile pundit was unrepentant, insisting that if profit is the priority, there are vital aspects of the roles of soccer clubs that risk being lost. The issue, clearly, is not restricted to US owners. It’s unlikely that anybody who is not a fan who takes over a club is going to be acting primarily in the best interests of the community it represents. But given half the 20 Premier League clubs (and seven of the 24 Championship clubs) are part- or fully-owned by Americans or US companies, and given the prevalence of private equity companies whose sole interest is short-term profit, it’s perhaps
Baca selengkapnya

‘Emotional’ Leah Williamson to make first England start in almost a year

Gambar
* Euro 2022-winning captain missed World Cup with ACL injury * Defender brings ‘flexibility in defence’, says Sarina Wiegman Sarina Wiegman has confirmed Leah Williamson will start for England against the Republic of Ireland on Tuesday night in their second Euro 2025 qualifying group game. Williamson, the Euro 2022-winning captain, said she would be emotional at the Aviva Stadium when she steps out with England for the first time in almost a year, after she was sidelined with an anterior cruciate ligament injury last April. Continue reading...
Baca selengkapnya