logo
Kelleher could link up with Ireland pal as fresh Premier League interest emerges

Kelleher could link up with Ireland pal as fresh Premier League interest emerges

Caoimhin Kelleher could link up with one of his Ireland teammates at club level this summer, with Premier League side Brentford set to enter the market for a top goalkeeper.
The Bees are fearful of losing Mark Flekken to Bayer Leverkusen, now that former Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag has taken over at the Bundesliga side.
He is interested in bringing his fellow Dutchman to the BayArena - and Flekken is reportedly keen to make the move.
That would leave Thomas Frank in need of a top-class replacement, and Kelleher's name has now been connected with the side that finished 10th in the Premier League last season.
Kelleher's Ireland pal and Brentford centre-half Nathan Collins was the only outfield player to play every minute of the Premier League campaign.
The Corkman has repeatedly spoken of his desire to nail down regular first-team football.
His most recent comments came after Liverpool's final game of the season when he said: 'I think I've said it before as well that I feel like I'm good enough to be a number one.
'I feel like I'm good enough to play week in, week out – and that's what I'm looking to do.
'This season I was lucky enough to play a lot of games, but it's definitely something I'm looking at.'
Kelleher made 10 Premier League appearances for the Reds during their title-winning campaign, while he played 10 more games between the Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup.
Ireland boss Heimir Hallgrímsson recently called on the goalkeeper to secure regular football.
With Gavin Bazunu's injury woes, Kelleher has emerged as Ireland's undisputed number one during the Icelandic manager's reign.
'I just want him to go to a club where he will play on a regular basis,' said Hallgrímsson, as he announced his squad for the friendlies against Senegal and Luxembourg.
'I'm not so bothered where he goes because he showed everyone he can play at the highest level of the Champions League and Premier League.
'Sometimes goalkeepers and centre-backs, if they are playing at a lower league level they have a lot to do and keep busy.
'I know he wants to be playing at the highest level and he's spoken about that as well.
'I know that and I guess - I don't know for sure - he will be playing at the highest level.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Darts host forced to apologise after Nathan Aspinall's X-rated interview with Asp left covering his face in horror
Darts host forced to apologise after Nathan Aspinall's X-rated interview with Asp left covering his face in horror

The Irish Sun

timean hour ago

  • The Irish Sun

Darts host forced to apologise after Nathan Aspinall's X-rated interview with Asp left covering his face in horror

NATHAN ASPINALL went from hero to zero after accidentally swearing during an on-stage interview. The Asp won the European Tour 8 final last night, beating Damon Heta 8-6 to bank a whopping £30,000. Advertisement 3 Nathan Aspinall covered his face in embarrassment after swearing Credit: PDC 3 The presenter was forced to apologise Credit: PDC Aspinall is in great form after making the Premier League play-off last Thursday by finishing in the top four and he won the night in Aberdeen on May 15. The 33-year-old was asked about his recent brilliance in a live TV interview after picking up the trophy in Leveruksen, Germany yesterday. "When things are not going your way, you have to keep fighting, digging and believing you can get back to your best. That is what I do. Advertisement READ MORE IN DARTS "And the last few weeks have been pretty f***ing good." Aspinall immediately covered his face in horror after his X-rated remark. Host Philip Brzezinski said: "Very nearly Nathan. We apologise for the language." Advertisement Most read in Darts BEST ONLINE CASINOS - TOP SITES IN THE UK It came after Aspinall also said: "To bounce back after the defeat on Thursday night, to come here and win this tournament, shows where my game's at at the moment. "I don't make games easy but in the semi-final and final I played fantastic. 'Early to be losing your rag' - Commentator blasts darts star as he has MELTDOWN in just second leg "Credit to Damon - I thought that final was absolutely fantastic, it was a great game of darts, nip and tuck." Advertisement 3 Aspinall has built on his brilliant Premier League form Credit: Shutterstock Editorial

Chelsea on verge of £30m Liam Delap transfer after agreeing personal terms with Ipswich striker on six-year contract
Chelsea on verge of £30m Liam Delap transfer after agreeing personal terms with Ipswich striker on six-year contract

The Irish Sun

timean hour ago

  • The Irish Sun

Chelsea on verge of £30m Liam Delap transfer after agreeing personal terms with Ipswich striker on six-year contract

CHELSEA are poised to confirm the capture of Liam Delap on a six-year deal. The 22-year-old striker has been a top summer target for the Blues after a Advertisement 2 Liam Delap is set to sign a six-year contract with Chelsea Credit: Getty Delap netted 12 goals in 37 Premier League matches as the Tractor Boys headed back to the second tier. The former Man City ace had a £30million relegation release clause written into his contract. Chelsea have now agreed personal terms with Delap, according to The England under-21 striker will sign until 2031 at Stamford Bridge. Advertisement READ MORE ON FOOTBALL He selected a move to Chelsea ahead of Manchester United, Newcastle and Everton. Delap is set to undergo a medical at Chelsea's Cobham base later today. BEST ONLINE CASINOS - TOP SITES IN THE UK 2 Advertisement Liam Delap talks about joining Ipswich Town THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY.. Most read in Football Latest The Sun is your go to destination for the best football, boxing and MMA news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures and must-see video . Like us on Facebook at

Désiré Doué joins the global A-list to lead PSG's coronation as kings of Europe
Désiré Doué joins the global A-list to lead PSG's coronation as kings of Europe

Irish Examiner

time2 hours ago

  • Irish Examiner

Désiré Doué joins the global A-list to lead PSG's coronation as kings of Europe

The third great Moment of Doué was beautiful for its simplicity, 63 minutes into this game and with Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) 2-0 up. As Désiré Doué glided in on goal, all alone suddenly in a wide open patch of green, he was found by a deliciously weighted through pass from Vitinha. From there Doué allowed the ball to run across him as the retreating Inter defenders closed at his back, a perfect little screenshot of time, space, angles, ground speed allowing him to open his right instep and shoot with the path of the pass, wrong-footing Yann Sommer and easing the ball into the far corner. The celebration, and indeed the game itself to that point, felt coronational. Doué took off his shirt, saw it placed on the corner flag and stood in clean-cut gladiatorial pose in front of the Paris supporters, before slightly sheepishly – this is also very Doué-like – going to retrieve his shirt and accept his yellow card. By then the game was gone, as was Doué shortly after, replaced by Bradley Barcola. And really it was his opening 20 minutes that decided this Champions League final. Doué is a very distinct kind of attacking tyro, with a martial artist's precision in his close-quarter fast-twitch movements, always just enough of a feint and a snap of the heels, always purposeful, never gratuitous. Watching him on nights such as this, it is as though somebody has taken Neymar and boiled him for eight hours until all the waffle and frippery have disappeared, then sent him on to the pitch crisp and starched and purified. This is a Neymar without the madness, the weight, the excess appetite, a post-therapy Neymar. Read More Carnival atmosphere in Paris after Champions League success Plus, of course, Doué has that thing all the best players have, the compound eye vision, the ability to freeze, rewind, judge the space and angles around him in the tiniest flicker of everyone else's analogue time. How do you get like this, aged 19, on this stage, a goal and an assist in the opening 20 minutes of the Champions League final, for a team that have never won it, and who you joined only last summer? Doué has been a late-breaking story this season after his move from Rennes. He didn't score his first goal at the Parc des Princes until March. He hadn't scored or assisted in eight games coming into this final. But he is without question the high-ceilinged real deal. Lamine Yamal may be more obviously, cinematically effective. But Doué is at the same level, just more compact and less lavish, the further maths version to Yamal's bold strokes of fine art. By the end here, as another 19-year-old, Senny Mayulu, made it 5-0 against a frazzled Inter, this had become the perfect night for PSG and for the Paris Project, overseen by the unclosing hand of Qatar Sports Investments. First we take the world. Then we take Europe, via Paris, Doha and now Munich. For the state of Qatar and its interests this is football pretty much completed. In the space of three years the world's most relentlessly efficient gas state's outreach arm has won a home World Cup, led by its star player, the emir's tailor's dummy Lionel Messi, and now the greatest club prize. Paris Saint-Germain's French midfielder Desire Doue (C) celebrates with PSG's Portuguese midfielder Joao Neves (2R) and Brazilian defender Marquinhos (R). Pic: INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images PSG are currently the best team in the world, treble winners and champions of Europe, the scalps of three recent finalists dangling from their belts on that run. And really this was just too easy most of the time, a flaneuring kind of victory against opponents who were always either chasing, panting for breath or windmilling away just out of reach. Munich had spent Saturday baking in the sun, a city already on its summer holidays, green fringes thronged with picnickers, sunbathers and knots of Italian men sweating across the white heat of the Englische Garten in blue and black nylon shirts. The Allianz Arena is an epic, widescreen kind of stage, those steeply tiered stands curving towards a perfectly puckered oval of powder blue above the lip of the roof. Ten minutes before kick-off it was still hot and heavy, the kind of evening that makes you sweat just sitting still. Linkin Park, who must have a very good agent, put on an agreeably energetic pre-match rap-metal stomp-about. A celebrity violinist performed a hideous screeching Seven Nation Army fiddle-along. The giant Parisian tifo was scrolled away. And from the start this was just pain for Inter, a time to run and harry and chase younger and fresher opponents as the Mendes-Vitinha midfield pivot, PSG's velcro-touch directors of traffic, just took the ball away. Physical and mental intensity were always going to be key. PSG have been able to replenish the stocks, let the bruises heal, rest their best players. Inter have been all-in, flailing through a series of crunch end-of-season dates, limbs sloshing with lactic acid all the way to the line. It showed. For 12 minutes this was a kind of smothering. After that it became an extended execution, led by Doué. The first goal came from a lovely piece of applied geometry, all clean crisp lines, made first by Khvicha Kvaratskhelia easing inside two defenders. From there the blue shirts completed a high-speed passing triangle, the key ball from Vitinha pinged hard into the feet of Doué, who had found space by not moving, holding his position while Inter's defenders went to cover. He clipped the ball back for Achraf Hakimi to side-foot into an empty net. Read More Luis Enrique 'emotional' at tribute to his daughter after Champions League win The second goal eight minutes later was a break the full length of the pitch, PSG funnelling out from their own corner flag, finding Ousmane Dembélé in space, there to gallop away, all easy grace, head up, before curling a crossfield pass into the run of Doué. He controlled with his torso, then hit down on the ball at the top of its bounce, a deflection taking it past Sommer. Either side PSG were immaculate. This was box-fresh elite club football, possession, counterpress, swift transitions. At times it's like watching a team of head prefects, a supremely drilled exhibition the Iberian-Catalan Style, with just the right bolt-on parts in every role. This is of course the work of Luis Enrique, who has won 11 out of 11 finals, and who was up from the start at the edge of his rectangle, all in black with white trainers, lithe and animated, revolving both arms, shuttle running left to right, like a mime artist taking part in a gruelling military fitness drill. It has been said Luis Enrique turned to Paris two years ago after being appalled by the despotic owners of Chelsea and Spurs, which is certainly an interesting take on the extraordinary freedoms inherent in the Qatari propaganda project. But he has been the perfect man at the perfect time, the ideologue, the data-based strongman, here just as the years of celebrity overdose are finally cashed in, brand leveraged, income vast enough to leave PSG with a free hand to build a brilliant, hungry, youthful modern team. The idea has been to create a group of anti-stars. Good luck with that. Doué will now take his place, up there floating in his tin can high above the world, the latest addition to the global A-list. From Paris via Doha, with Catalan style, Asturian brains, past the scars of all those glitzy late stage slumps, PSG now stand at the summit. Guardian

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store