Sporting holding out for €70m up front as Arsenal close in on Viktor Gyökeres
Mikel Arteta has made a new No 9 his priority during a pivotal summer for Arsenal and he has had Gyökeres on his shortlist, together with RB Leipzig's Benjamin Sesko. If the manager has not had the encouragement he might have wanted over Sesko, the picture has been different and more clear-cut on Gyökeres, with Sporting saying they would sell for €80m – less than the value of his €100m buyout clause – and standing by the position.
Gyökeres, who has scored prolifically for Sporting since his £20.5m move from Coventry in the summer of 2023, has been clear he wants to sign for Arsenal. The 27-year-old's personal terms have been agreed. They were never likely to be an issue; the obstacle has been an agreement between the clubs.
Arteta wants the deal wrapped quickly, ideally before Arsenal depart for their tour of Asia on Saturday week to play Milan, Newcastle and Tottenham. Gyökeres is scheduled to return to pre-season at Sporting on Friday. It has been reported in Portugal that he is unwilling to turn up, such is his determination to force through the move to Arsenal.
Sporting's record sale is the deal that took Bruno Fernandes to Manchester United in January 2020; the agreement was €55m plus €25m in add-ons. They have been intent on rivalling that with Gyökeres, who has three years to run on his contract.
The Sweden international has been a sensation at Sporting, scoring 97 goals in 102 appearances. He has helped them to back-to-back league titles and, in this past campaign, to the Portuguese Cup.
Arsenal have signed the goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga for £5m from Chelsea and the midfielder Martín Zubimendi for £56m from Real Sociedad. They are close to agreeing a deal worth up to £15m for the Brentford midfielder Christian Nørgaard and are weighing up a move for the Chelsea winger Noni Madueke.
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BBC News
24 minutes ago
- BBC News
Dundee lose & St Mirren suffer shootout pain at Arbroath - Scottish League Cup round-up
Steven Pressley suffered home defeat in his competitive debut as Dundee head coach, with Championship side Airdrieonians causing the shock of the opening day of the Premier Sports Cup group rivals St Mirren were held to a goalless draw away to League 1 champions Arbroath and missed out on the bonus point by losing the penalty Motherwell did manage to take an extra point after edging Clyde on spot kicks after drawing 2-2 with their League 2 Ross County lost their shootout after a 1-1 draw away to fourth-tier Championship winners Falkirk fired seven goals without reply away to Highland League side Brechin City and there were wins for Premiership rivals Kilmarnock and St Johnstone. Group A Dylan Tait scored a hat-trick as Falkirk cruised to victory in signing Brian Graham set up fellow veteran Scott Arfield to strike Falkirk's opener and the former Rangers midfielder added the second from the penalty Tait added three more, with winger Alfie Agyeman and forward Ross MacIver adding the the other group game, League 2 side Spartans came from behind to upset Championship visitors Queen's Fowler fired the Glasgow side ahead in the first-half, but Bailey Dall headed the second-half equaliser before Cammy Russell grabbed the winner from the penalty spot. Group B Northern Ireland striker Ronan Hale fired County ahead just before the break against Stranraer, but Tommy Sharp's close-range strike sent the tie into penalties, which the hosts won means second-tier rivals Partick Thistle lead the group after Friday's 4-1 win away to Edinburgh from Cammy Logan, Robbie Crawford, Logan Chalmers and City's Robbie Mahon gave Mark Wilson the perfect start as permanent head coach before Tiwi Daramola's reply for the League 2 side just before the break. Group C Player-manager Rhys McCabe set up Chris Mochrie to coolly slot Airdrieonians ahead early on at Dens Park and Dundee were unable to early goal also settled the group's other game, Luke Rankin's 35-yard drive giving third-tier Alloa Athletic victory away to Bonnyrigg Rose, who are now back in the Lowland League after relegation. Group D Both ties in Group D went to spot add to St Mirren's misery as they were held to a goalless draw in Arbroath before losing 4-2 on penalties, captain Mark O'Hara was sent off for a second booking two minutes from Martin Rennie, Forfar Athletic's summer signing from Clyde, headed his side into the lead before hosts Annan Athletic replied through Aidan Smith's second-half penalty, but it was the visitors who prevailed 4-2 in the shootout. Group E Hamilton Academical, relegated to League 1, scored two second-half goals to ease aside fourth-tier hosts Stirling Smith struck and Kyle MacDonald headed in to give League 1 Accies all three of Midlothian are playing Dunfermline Athletic in the evening kick-off. Group F St Johnstone came from behind to avoid an upset against SPFL newcomers East Lowland League champions led through John Robertson's early free-kick, but summer signing Jamie Gullan replied with a set piece of his own and strikes from Adama Sidibeh and Makenzie Kirk secured the points for the Championship midfielder Dylan Easton scored two penalties in Raith Rovers' 5-1 win away to Elgin Rowe, Lewis Vaughan and Josh Mullin grabbed the Championship side's other goals, with Jack Murray replying for the League 2 hosts. Group G Summer signing James Hilton gave Clyde a shock early lead as he chipped over stranded Motherwell goalkeeper Calum Ward after a defensive Maswanhise soon headed the Steelmen level and put the Premiership side ahead after the break, but Liam Scullion nodded the League 2 hosts back on terms only for Well to win the shootout and the bonus point Morton won 4-2 away to Blues, summer signing Kris Moore, Ali Crawford and Zak Delaney scored for the Championship visitors, with Oliver Colloty's penalty and Seb Ross replying for the League 1 side. Group H Kilmarnock eased to a two-goal win over Highland League champions Brora Rangers in Stuart Kettlewell's first competitive game in charge.A right-foot shot from 18-year-old defender Ben Brannan gave the Premiership side the half-time lead, with summer signing Djenairo Daniels firing the second 10 minutes from Livingston also won on the road, 2-1 away to League 2 champions East Muirhead gave the visitors the lead from close range in first-half added time before Hearts loanee Macaulay Tait extended their advantage from similar distance just after the Slattery's goal from outside the area reduced the arrears before East Fife's Mamadou Bah was sent off for a second bookable offence deep into added time.
Times
26 minutes ago
- Times
How Britain's fluent footballers are finally beating language barriers
There he was at Wimbledon, the blazer, sunglasses, tan and swept-back hair — looking every last centimetro an Italian movie star. Except it was good old Scott McTominay. ' Come stai?' ('how are you?') he asked a talkSPORT interviewer. ' Tutto bene?' ('is everything OK?') McTominay's metamorphosis at Napoli is one of the stories of our age and from a British perspective his embrace of local language and culture is as delightful as his success on the pitch. Because, if we're honest, ability to adapt abroad does not come easily to Brits. One of our greatest footballers, after all, was Ian Rush, who, when asked to explain why he couldn't score at Juventus, replied that being in Italy was like being in a foreign country. But McTominay is new school. Since transferring from Manchester United last summer he has taken biweekly Italian lessons with a university tutor, while using several language apps to improve his fluency. His team-mate and Scottish compatriot Billy Gilmour is the same. McTominay now records video messages to fans in Italian and can navigate Italian TV interviews. He's determined to keep getting better. Even more assimilated is Fikayo Tomori, the England centre back who joined AC Milan in 2021 and used lockdown to learn Italian to a high level, speaking it with a native accent. Football's polyglots... and some useful phrases Players who speak a variety of languages Romelu Lukaku Napoli and Belgium striker: English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Flemish, Italian, Lingala Henrikh Mkhitaryan Inter Milan and former Armenia winger: English, Armenian, French, Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, German, Italian Nadia Nadim AC Milan and Denmark women's forward: English, Danish, German, Persian, Dari, Urdi, Hindi, Arabic, French Amadou Onana Aston Villa and Belguim midfielder: French, German, English, Dutch, Wolof — and is learning Spanish Managers and coaches Mike Arteta Arsenal: Spanish, Basque, Catalan, English, Portuguese, French, Italian (and he claims an eighth: 'Scottish') José Mourinho Fenerbahce: Portuguese, English, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, French Nuno Espirito Santo Nottingham Forest: Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, Russian Roy Hodgson English, Swedish, French, Italian, German —and even taught French as a sideline when in South Africa as a player Arsène Wenger French, German, English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese Foreign language cheat sheet (from the Futbol Lingo app) 'Switch of play' Changez le jeu (French), Spiel Verlagen (German), Cambia de orientacion (Spanish), Skipt um Kannt (Icelandic), Zhuanji jingong (Mandarin) 'Penalty spot' Punkt pola karnego (Polish), Penalti noktasi (Turkish), Strafschopstip (Dutch), Nuqtat darbat aljaza (Arabic) 'Referee' Arbitro (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish), L'arbitre (French), Scheidsrichter (German), Domari (Icelandic) …and some interesting idioms (from 'Do You Speak Football' by Tom Williams) 'The Top Corner' in different countries: Spain Donde anidan las aranas (literal translation: 'Where the spiders nest') Egypt Fil maqass ('In the scissors') Brazil Onde dorme a coruja ('Where the owl sleeps') Algeria Wayn yeskon shaytan ('Where Satan lives') 'A nutmeg' in different countries: France Petit pont ('Little bridge') South Korea Alggagi ('Hatching an egg') Jamaica Salad Tammy Abraham learnt enough to conduct interviews in Italian while playing for Roma and two hours of language lessons a day during five years at Borussia Dortmund left Jamie Gittens, Chelsea's new signing, fluent in German. Harry Kane jokes about his continued struggles with German but in March a clip emerged of him taking lessons with a tutor at Bayern Munich that suggested he is better with the language than he lets on. Jude Bellingham learnt some German at Dortmund and threw himself into mastering Spanish after joining Real Madrid, using apps and taking lessons at home. Trent Alexander-Arnold noted his close friend's example and wowed with a long address in fluent Spanish at his Real unveiling. Sensitive to accusations that considerable time was spent plotting his transfer from Liverpool, Alexander-Arnold's camp declined to clarify how long he had been learning the lingo when contacted for this article — but an experienced Spanish-language teacher of footballers said, 'I found it incredibly impressive. That didn't strike me as just a few months' study.' Yet before lapsing into parochial self-congratulation it should be acknowledged that British players are merely beginning to do what those of other nationalities have done for years. Kylian Mbappé spoke Spanish to a higher level at his Real unveiling and started learning Spanish as a 15-year-old because, even at that age, he was planning to play in La Liga one day. McTominay's Napoli team-mate Romelu Lukaku speaks nine languages and at United he played with Henrikh Mkhitaryan (eight languages), Bruno Fernandes (five languages) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (five languages). He was managed by José Mourinho, speaker of six languages, whose route into coaching began with a stint as Sir Bobby Robson's translator at Barcelona. Sixteen of the Premier League's 20 managers speak at least two languages (including Mikel Arteta, who has seven) but the only bilingual Brit among them is Graham Potter, who has Swedish. However, at the same time as a rise in polyglotism in the game so there is an acceleration towards English becoming football's lingua franca. Take refereeing. A number of Premier League refs speak more than one language, including a certain younger official, who would rather remain nameless, who speaks five. And yet increasingly Fifa and Uefa are pushing referees across the world to learn English. The men's and women's national teams of Belgium — a linguistically divided country — have used English in their dressing rooms since Roberto Martínez introduced the principle nine years ago. Long before he joined Liverpool Arne Slot was coaching and doing team talks in English. He demanded English be used at all times at Feyenoord, even getting dinner ladies to speak to players in English. His reasoning was that a common tongue builds unity and it would be more useful, in their future lives, if Feyenoord's many South American and African signings learnt English rather than Dutch. British players learning languages and English as football's lingua franca appear, at first glance, to be opposing developments, but both have the same root cause. It's that communication has never been considered more important in football. In a marginal-gains world where every advantage is important, the leading coaches see social bonds and successful communicating as super-important to the success of teams. Thomas Tuchel has spoken of little else since becoming England head coach. In Premier League academies, players access GCSE and A-level language qualifications through clubs' education programmes. The Professional Footballers' Association offers language courses to players across the men's and women's game, encouraging members to use them and the PFA considers it critical to have a multilingual leader. Its chief executive, Maheta Molango, speaks six languages and this is seen as vital to helping connect with the union's modern membership. Southampton's Will Still, raised in Belgium by British parents, is an example of a young English manager able to switch tongues to project his message. Footage of Still motivating his former Reims squad in French while switching to industrial English for emphasis is fascinating — and amusing — viewing: ' Ces trois points dimanche … F***ING THREE POINTS ON SUNDAY!' And so on. Roy Hodgson, the father of multilingual English managers, coached in five languages, including French — which he even taught part-time in a school while playing in South Africa. The League Managers Association includes a 'learning a foreign language' module in its diploma in football management and provides a language consultant, Robert Hunt, a former United Nations translator, to help members broaden their language skills. An early linguistic specialist in English football was George Scanlan, a remarkable character who played at junior level for Everton and had a successful coaching career with Marine, but was also head of languages at Liverpool Polytechnic, having studied French, Russian, Persian and Arabic at Christ's College, Cambridge. He was attaché/interpreter for the Soviet Union at the 1966 World Cup and fulfilled a similar role for numerous British and foreign teams, sitting on the Aston Villa bench when they played Dinamo Kiev en route to winning the 1981-82 European Cup. Scanlan became a trusted figure for Sir Alex Ferguson, not only interpreting for Andrei Kanchelskis at United but also co-writing Kanchelskis's autobiography and even helping to broker his transfer to Everton. Phil Dickinson, who studied under Scanlan, has been a key provider of language services to top English clubs for 25 years and his early gigs included interpreting for Eric Cantona. Dickinson was on duty the day Cantona signed for United and it befell him to go through the contract with the Frenchman and ask all the insurance questions. 'There was a certain one,' Dickinson remembers. 'Er, Eric, have you got Aids or ever had Aids? Non, non. OK, that's good.' Dickinson could fill several books with his experiences. One was working for Wigan Athletic during their era of high-profile South and Central American signings. He sat on their bench and in their dressing room to translate Paul Jewell's instructions to the Ecuador international Antonio Valencia. 'The other players would snigger because quite often Jewelly would turn round and tell me off,' Dickinson recalls. 'Like when Antonio didn't take the player on, or just played back inside: 'Fookin 'ell, Phil!' 'Once we had a home game against Watford and Paul brought out a video tactics board pre-programmed to replicate Watford's movements at corners. All these yellowy-orange discs representing the Watford players suddenly flew in all directions and [Jewell] was, 'Lads, it's like the f***ing Red Arrows!' 'There's always that totally untranslatable phrase that is wrapped in culture. Afterwards I said to Antonio, 'Well, the Red Arrows are our kind of acrobatic air force.' But I'm not sure that did the trick.' There was the interpreter who accompanied a Spanish-speaking player's wife to a pregnancy scan and, separated by a curtain for privacy, found themselves saying, 'There's the leg, here's the head.' Another had to talk a South American player's partner through breast-enlargement surgery. These are tales from the era before clubs invested properly in player care, when often the language tutor/interpreter was a foreign signing's only point of contact. Now most Premier League clubs have whole player-care departments. Hugo Scheckter, the former head of player care at West Ham United, Brentford and Southampton, founded The Player Care Group, the largest consultancy and education provider for sporting clubs across the world in player care. Research commissioned by his company showed that 80 per cent of all failed Premier League transfers from 2021-24 arrived from leagues where English is not the native language and Scheckter says, 'When going into clubs, we get them to buy into language learning from the top down. 'When I started in football it was from the bottom up. I'd try to persuade a player to do their English lessons but they wouldn't want to and there were no repercussions. Whereas now, either putting it in the contract or having the manager or director of football behind you, makes it a priority. 'On the pitch, in a high-pressure situation, if a player's English isn't good enough and a team-mate is shouting 'man on' or a manager is shouting an instruction and they can't get it immediately, it slows things down and in the modern game there isn't time for that.' David Moyes used Arteta as go-between when conversing with Marouane Fellaini at Everton and last season Jack Harrison (a Spanish speaker, having had a Costa Rican partner) proved invaluable in helping the Argentine player Charly Alcaraz communicate. Even after three seasons at Liverpool, Darwin Núñez leans on Alexis Mac Allister for language help but some players are linguistic sponges. The formidably bright Amadou Onana, at 23, is already fluent in French, German, English, Dutch and Wolof and has his heart set on learning Spanish — so asks the Villa head coach, Unai Emery, to use the language when speaking to him. Football language is different. At present Hunt is teaching a Spanish coach English. 'You have to be aware of the nuances,' he says. 'When we talk about a player playing deep in England we mean they drop towards their own goalkeeper and in Spanish the exact translation of 'deep' would be ' profundo '. But when you talk in Spanish football about ' profundidad ' you mean playing high up the pitch.' Offering a solution is Futbol Lingo, a brilliant app designed by two Uefa-licensed coaches based in England. One, Pierce Kiembi, speaks six languages and without widespread marketing his app has grown through word-of-mouth to almost 10,000 subscribers. Used by clubs in Spain, Belgium, Colombia and France it provides 1,600-plus football-specific words and phrases (with recordings of how to pronounce them) in 15 languages, including Arabic, Mandarin and Brazilian Portuguese. Users of the Futbol Lingo app can learn useful football phrases in a variety of languages… The vocabulary is provided by native-speaking players and coaches, rather than AI. 'Futbol Lingo won't teach you the whole language but it'll teach you phrases you need on the pitch, in the dressing room, in the boardroom,' Kiembi says. Maybe Carlos Tevez could have done with the app. During seven years in England he avoided learning more than a couple of English words, later claiming this was out of Argentine patriotism: 'I had a cultural problem with the English. I didn't want to learn English. I wanted them to learn Spanish,' Tevez said. One tutor sent to him found Tevez in no mood for a language lesson but rather craving a game of golf. He wondered, as they jumped in Tevez's car, how on earth the Argentinian would ask directions to a course. Tevez just typed 'GOLF' into his satnav and sped off with a grin. It took them to a run-down municipal course an hour away, rather than one more salubrious and local, but Tevez wasn't the type to care.
The Sun
26 minutes ago
- The Sun
Iga Swiatek earns more than £52,000 PER MINUTE in Wimbledon women's final double-bagel over Amanda Anisimova
IGA SWIATEK earned a staggering £52,000 PER MINUTE in her brutal double-bagel Wimbledon final win. The Polish star, 24, smashed Amanda Anisimova 6-0 6-0 on Centre Court. 4 4 The shocking one-sided match was the first time a women's final at Wimbledon saw the loser fail to win a single game for 114 YEARS. And it lasted just 57 extraordinary minutes. Swiatek collected a cheque for £3million [$4.05m] for her demolition job, dropping 24 points and zero games. And that meant that the champion banked a whopping £52,631.58 [$71,047.37] for each minute of play. Swiatek had already secured a minimum of £1,520,000 [$2,051,848] for reaching the final. In the end, though, that figure went to Anisimova as the runner-up - working out as £63,333 [$85,494] per point she won in the final. Unstoppable Swiatek - who completed the 'Surface Slam' with Majors on hard, clay and now grass courts - dropped just nine points in the first set. The No8 seed said: 'It seems super surreal. 'I want to congratulate Amanda for an amazing two weeks. No matter what happened, you should be proud of the work you are doing. 'I hope we are going to play many more finals and in other tournaments. You have the game for that. Moment Swiatek beats Amanda Anisimova in first Wimbledon final whitewash for 114 years 'For me, this was way too far to dream about. I feel like I'm already an experienced player after winning the Slams before. But I never expected this one. My team believed in me more than I did. 'I want to thank my coach who joined this year. We have had ups and downs but we showed everybody that it is working. 'This tournament is unique. And I was anxious of that. 'Walking around here, being on Centre Court felt like a huge pressure. This year I really enjoyed it and improved my game. 'I will always remember the opening of champagne bottles in-between serves – a sound that will keep me up at night. I will enjoy these moments.' Anisimova struggled to settle and hit a whopping 28 unforced errors in the brutal beatdown. She headed straight off court after match point to compose herself and looked visibly emotional. 4 And the American understandably broke down in tears as she tried to speak on the microphone during the trophy ceremony. A sobbing Anisimova said: 'Thank you Iga, you're such an incredible player. It obviously showed today. 'You have been such an inspiration to me, an unbelievable athlete. You have had such an incredible two weeks here. 'Getting to the final of your first Wimbledon and then winning it. It's so special. 'Thank you to everyone who has supported me since my first-round match. 'You guys have carried me through this entire championship. An incredible fortnight. 'Even though I ran out of gas and I wish that I could put on a better performance for all of you, you guys were still there for me and lifted me up. 'It has been such a privilege playing here, making it to the Championship match. To compete in front of all of you has been so, so special. I'll never forget this experience and all these memories. 'My mum flew in this morning. She has put in more work than I have honestly. My mum is the most selfless person I know. She has done everything to get me to this point in my life.' 4
