Delap not part of England Under-21 squad for Euros
Liam Delap has not been selected in England's Under-21 squad for this month's European Championship.The 22-year-old has just completed a £30m move from Ipswich to Chelsea and is now expected to travel to the United States with his new club for the Club World Cup.Sunderland's Jobe Bellingham is in the squad, despite interest in the midfielder from German side Borussia Dortmund, who will also take part in the Club World Cup which runs from 14 June to 13 July.The U21 Euros will take place across eight host cities in Slovakia from 11-28 June.More to follow.
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Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
India's Rahul signals top-order readiness with warm-up hundred
LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) - KL Rahul's composed hundred in the ongoing second unofficial test against England Lions will bring much relief to the India team management ahead of the five-test series in England. Partnering with Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top of the batting order, Rahul produced a chanceless knock of 116 in Northampton on a lively track in overcast conditions on Friday. India, under new captain Shubman Gill, have been left with gaping holes in their top order after opener Rohit Sharma and stalwart Virat Kohli quit test cricket last month. While Rahul, who can bat practically anywhere in the lineup, is likely to succeed Rohit as Jaiswal's opening partner, either Gill or Karun Nair is likely to fill the void of Kohli at number four. Nair, who played the last of his six tests in 2017, smashed a double hundred in the first unofficial test in Canterbury. "We haven't really decided on the (batting order), we still have some time," Gill had said in his pre-departure press conference in Mumbai. "We will be playing an intra-squad match and we will be having a 10-day camp in London. So we still have a little bit of time and I think we can decide on the batting order once we go there." The five-test series begins in Leeds on June 20.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Extortion, tasteless stunts and malign forces – the endless fascination with Michael Schumacher
As soon as the initials 'MS' appeared on a white race helmet, it felt like a message from the void. For nearly 12 years even the faintest update on Michael Schumacher had arrived second-hand at best, but here, at last, was a signature purportedly by the man himself. Sir Jackie Stewart, for whose Race Against Dementia charity the gesture was made, could not conceal his joy that the helmet – adorned with the Royal Stewart tartan and worn across a career spanning the Scot's three Formula One titles – had now been signed by all 20 living world champions. The wider significance, however, was that it represented the closest connection yet to an icon removed from public view, at once a precious affirmation of his survival but also a reminder of his desperate condition, truly an anguish without end. 'A wonderful moment,' said Johnny Herbert, Schumacher's former Benetton team-mate, on seeing those two surprise letters in black marker pen. 'We haven't seen something emotional like this in years, and hopefully it's a sign Michael is on the mend. It has been a long, horrible journey for the family, and maybe we'll see him in the F1 paddock soon.' Herbert's sentiments testify to the power of hope. While well-intentioned, they are negated by all available evidence. Since Schumacher struck his head on a rock while skiing in Méribel in December 2013, suffering such devastating brain trauma that he was placed in a coma for 250 days, he has made no public appearance of any kind. The likelihood, given the gravity of his injuries and wife Corinna's insistence on absolute privacy, is that he will never be seen by the wider world again. The effect of the family's scrupulous discretion is twofold. On the one hand, they have created a ring of steel around Schumacher, to the point where nobody can state with certainty even where he is being treated. As Corinna has put it: 'Michael always protected us, and now we are protecting Michael.' But the dearth of official health updates has bred a fascination so intense that the most elaborate fictions can masquerade as fact. In 2023, Die Aktuelle, a German women's interest weekly, ran a strapline promising 'Schumacher: the first interview', only for it to be disclosed at the end of the article that the quotes were generated by artificial intelligence. The publishers had to pay £170,000 in compensation, while the editor was fired. Today the only semblance of access to Schumacher's situation comes via his former inner circle in the sport. Just this week, Flavio Briatore, the irrepressible figure instrumental in his mid-Nineties glories at Benetton, offered an unusual level of detail, appearing to indicate the seven-time champion was bed-bound. 'If I close my eyes,' he told Corriere della Sera, 'I see him smiling after a victory. I prefer to remember him like that rather than him just lying on a bed. Corinna and I talk often, though.' Sabine Kehm, the Schumacher family's spokeswoman, did not respond to a request for comment. But Briatore's policy is one that Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's former ringmaster, has also adopted. While he is still in touch with Corinna, he clarified as early as 2015 that he would not be paying house visits, preferring to cherish the memory of the Michael he knew. Asked if this feeling remained the same a decade on, he replied: 'Absolutely. A hundred per cent.' Briatore's intervention came after his ex-wife, Elisabetta Gregoraci, said in 2020: 'Michael doesn't speak, he communicates with his eyes. Only three people can visit him and I know who they are.' Who are the three? Two we can identify with confidence are Jean Todt and Ross Brawn, the team principal and technical director during Schumacher's all-conquering years at Ferrari. Gerhard Berger, who went from being the German's fierce adversary to a close friend – and who, by eerie coincidence, broke his arm skiing off-piste just 10 weeks after that fateful Méribel morning – is understood to be the third. Brawn has spent time on several occasions with Schumacher at his vast house in Gland, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva, cementing an unbreakable bond. He has provided the odd expression of optimism, saying in 2016 that the driver was showing 'encouraging signs' of recovery and that he was 'extremely hopeful we'll see Michael as we knew him at some point in the future'. Todt has long been the most frequent guest, welcomed by the family around twice a month. He has given a few more specifics, divulging that he and Schumacher have watched F1 races together on television. The Frenchman's reflections – which, despite their tenderness, acknowledge that 'there's no longer the same communication as before' – supports Gregoraci's suggestion that Schumacher is non-verbal. There is further corroboration from Felix Görner, a presenter with German broadcaster RTL and once the driver's frequent paddock companion. 'He is a person dependent on caregivers, who can no longer express himself through language,' he said recently. 'It's a very sad state of affairs. He was actually a hero, an indestructible hero. We're just clinging to hope, to a straw. But he's simply not well, so we won't see him again.' In many ways, Corinna's ability to sustain the official omertà around her husband is extraordinary. In 2019, the policy was tested to the limit by confirmation of their son Mick's elevation to the F1 ranks. But throughout his two seasons at the summit, inhabiting the most oppressive goldfish bowl in sport, Kehm acted on Corinna's behalf to ensure that he was never lured into any unwitting bulletin about Michael. The same hyper-vigilance has extended to the couple's daughter Gina. At her wedding last October to partner Iain Bethke, held inside the Schumachers' lavish Majorcan villa, guests reportedly had their phones confiscated to prevent the leaking of any images or videos. This still failed to stop accounts surfacing in Germany that Michael had attended the ceremony – reports since rubbished by Herbert as 'A1 fake news'. That said, the Schumacher link to the Balearic island is well-established. Spanish newspapers indicated in 2020 that Corinna had moved Michael on a more permanent basis to a property in Port d'Andratx, formerly owned by Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez, as she began a gradual relocation from their Swiss home. But even the particulars of this arrangement are fiercely guarded, with the family's precise division of time between Majorca and Switzerland kept secret so as to deter fans and paparazzi from prying on the houses. You can understand the reasons for reticence. In some quarters, the obsession with Michael's situation has long since gone from ghoulish to outright criminal. The Schumachers are still reeling from a trial earlier this year that culminated in three men being found guilty of a £12.5 million plot to blackmail them. Yilmaz Tozturkan, a nightclub bouncer, received a three-year prison sentence after he, with his IT expert son Daniel Lins and Schumacher's former bodyguard Markus Fritsche, had threatened to upload 1,500 pictures and videos of Michael, as well as confidential medical records, on the dark web unless they were paid the money. The material had been stolen from a computer and given to Fritsche, who passed it to Tozturkan at a cafe. Both Tozturkan and Lins had claimed to be offering the family a 'business deal'. Before the verdict was announced, Tozturkan said: 'I'm very sorry and ashamed for what I have done. It was a very disgusting thing. I take full responsibility.' During the trial, the Schumachers had voiced worries that one hard drive containing sensitive photos had not been recovered, despite several searches of the defendants' residences. Thilo Damm, their lawyer, confirmed their plan to appeal against the 'lenient' punishment, saying: 'We don't know where the missing hard drive is. So there is the possibility of another threat through the back door.' Kehm, the first witness called, gave an insight into the acute anxieties inside the Schumacher camp around breaches of trust. 'I got a call, and it was a number we didn't recognise, so at first we didn't answer,' she told the court in Wuppertal. 'But it kept calling and calling, so in the end I answered, and it was a man who said he had pictures of Michael, that if the family didn't want them published he could help. We would have to pay €15 million. He said the money was for the pictures and his go-between service.' In Corinna and the long-serving Kehm, at his side since joining as his personal press officer in 1999, Michael has two formidably effective gatekeepers. Now that he is seemingly no longer in a position to dictate his wishes, the two women unswervingly loyal to him exercise them on his behalf, upholding his long-held principle that his private life is off-limits. 'We are getting on with our lives,' she explained in the 2021 Netflix documentary Schumacher, the only interview she has given since the day of horror in the French Alps. ''Private is private,' as he always said.' Theirs was always a strong marriage, even under the stresses of the F1 hamster-wheel. Michael once said of Corinna, a celebrated equestrienne who became a European champion in Western-style horse riding: 'We share the same values. During all the time I was racing, she was my guardian angel.' Still, you cannot help but wonder at the toll that the tragedy of Michael's circumstances has wrought on his wife's wellbeing. Eddie Jordan, who died in March but who had given Schumacher his first F1 chance, recruiting him to his eponymous team in 1991, did not shy away from a view on the subject. Having known Corinna since before she married Michael, he said in 2023: 'This was the most horrific situation. Corinna has not been able to go to a party, to lunch or this or that – she's like a prisoner, because everyone would want to talk to her about Michael when she doesn't need reminding of it every minute.' Schumacher accumulated a vast fortune as the most decorated driver of his era, with a net worth estimated at £450 million. Clearly, this has cushioned the financial impact of the bills for his round-the-clock medical care. But money is a frippery when set against the nightmare that his accident has unleashed. At one level, there is the sorrow that Schumacher has apparently shown no progress to report, with the extent of his injuries – diagnosed at the time as cerebral contusion and oedema – causing terminal damage. At another, there is the constant concern that the carefully-maintained silence around his day-to-day life could be upended by malign forces. As gruelling as this year's court case proved, it was not the first time the family had been targeted by unscrupulous opportunists. Even as Schumacher lay fighting for his life in a hospital bed in Grenoble, just eight days after his ski crash descending the Combe de Saulire, a journalist sought to gain entry to his private room by posing as a priest. 'I wouldn't have ever imagined something like this could happen,' said a furious Kehm. Each time that a gross violation of privacy occurs, the culprit is full of contrition. Just as Tozturkan admitted his extortion attempt was a 'disgusting' act, Bianca Pohlmann, managing director of Funke – the company behind the notorious AI article in Die Aktuelle – apologised for the 'tasteless and misleading' stunt. And yet the pattern keeps repeating, with the voracious global appetite to learn more about Schumacher naturally hardening a resolve among his protectors to give nothing. Willi Weber, his ex-manager, has been critical of this circumspect approach, previously accusing the Schumachers of 'not telling the whole truth' about Michael and urging them to 'pour pure wine for his millions of fans'. At this stage, any such urgings are redundant. What remains of Michael's life will unfold according to Corinna's prescription, where, to whatever degree possible, he can feel the strength of the family bond, and where she and their two children can, in turn, map out their lives without prurient intrusion. It is worth asking whether that white helmet, now the pride of the Sir Jackie Stewart collection, should mark the end of the intrigue. There is something intensely poignant about seeing the addition of that 'MS' beneath the visor. It is as much as we had any right to expect, and as much as he is ever likely to provide. On the surface, it might look insignificant, with even Stewart conceding that it had needed the guiding hand of Corinna to produce. But the weight of its symbolism is profound, signifying that Schumacher, now 56 years old and the figure by whom all other champions are judged, is still with us, still capable of communicating through his touch. In an otherwise shattering tale, it is the one consolation to which we can cling.
Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Enzo Maresca told Chelsea have already signed their very own Lamine Yamal
Chelsea are set to welcome 18-year-old prospect Estevao Willian to Stamford Bridge this summer and a former Blues star has compared the youngster to Lamine Yamal Chelsea have been told they already have a player like Lamine Yamal, who has become one of the top stars in Europe after bursting onto the scene as a 16-year-old in 2023. The Barcelona winger has already won two LaLiga titles and Euro 2024. However, former Chelsea star Willian has compared 18-year-old Estevao Willian to Yamal and believes the Brazilian can help the Blues "win many titles". Chelsea announced last year that Estevao would be joining the club this summer after he turned 18, having agreed a deal worth up to £49million with Palmeiras. And Willian is expecting big things from the youngster, stating: "Without a doubt, he has a lot of potential, a lot of quality. The player has the advantage of still being so young, but with great potential like Lamine Yamal, they have a similar style. "I hope that he can be very successful here in England playing for Chelsea, he can win many titles, score a lot of goals with the Chelsea jersey and he will help to win titles over the years. "My advice is that he dedicate himself to the fullest. In England, football is quite different to what he is used to. When he gets here I think he needs some extra work at the club. I'm sure he has a very good head. "There's no need to argue about his quality, he has more than enough quality to play for a big club like Chelsea. But I hope he can adapt as quickly as possible and get into the style of play here to be very successful." After his move to Chelsea was confirmed, Estevao mimicked Cole Palmer's celebration when he next scored for Palmeiras and received a message from the England international who vowed that the pair will "do a lot of great things together" at Stamford Bridge. "When I signed for Chelsea, the next day I scored a goal and celebrated like Palmer," Estevao told the Guardian. "His celebration was trend, very popular. "We talked on social media, I tagged him on Instagram, he called me a star, I said he's a star too. He said we're going to do a lot of great things together for Chelsea." Estevao has also been compared to Lionel Messi and when asked about being nicknamed 'Little Messi', he added: "I like Neymar a lot too, Cristiano Ronaldo. But my reference is Messi for everything he's done for football. "The way he plays and what he does off the pitch is a guy I always have to look up to. And, of course, for me being left-footed like him favours as well. Some people are born with talent, others have to work hard. Good examples are Messi and Ronaldo. "Messi has the talent, Ronaldo the effort. I look for both. Talent and dedication. Today in football you have to dedicate yourself, you have to keep to a schedule, train, travel, take care of yourself. You have to give up a lot. Without dedication you can't get anywhere." Join our new WhatsApp community and receive your daily dose of Mirror Football content. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice.
