Transfer news LIVE: Chelsea reach agreement for Joao Pedro with Gittens also set to join, Calvert-Lewin EXIT
Grealish EXCLUSIVE
Jack Grealish's future is in limbo with clubs scared off by his £300,000-a-week wages.
Everton, Newcastle and Napoli all showed tentative interest in the £100million Manchester City winger, while he has also been linked with Bayern Munich.
But nothing has materialised for the 29-year-old England ace, who is under contract on £15m a year at City until 2027.
Grealish wanted to keep his options open as the new campaign drew to a close.
And he's ready to play the waiting game for as long as possible.
The ex-Aston Villa attacker realises his time at City is over after falling foul of boss Pep Guardiola and has been putting in the hard yards during a holiday in Ibiza.
He looks in fine fettle as he prepares for the upcoming campaign.
Grealish's stock has fallen to such an extent that he was not included in City's squad for the Club World Cup in the US.
His motivation is to reach the World Cup next summer.
But the megabucks contract he signed after joining from Villa four years ago is hindering his chances of returning to Prem action.
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Glasgow Times
33 minutes ago
- Glasgow Times
Monday's briefing: Chelsea set to sign Joao Pedro and England in seventh heaven
Elsewhere, long-time Everton striker Dominic Calvert-Lewin has left the Merseyside club, while England coasted past Jamaica in their final European Women's Championship warm-up. Pedro Chelsea-bound Brighton's Joao Pedro is on his way to Chelsea (Adam Davy/PA) Chelsea have agreed a deal to sign Brighton striker Joao Pedro, the PA news agency understands, for a fee reported to be £60million. It has also been reported the 23-year-old has agreed a seven-year deal with the Blues and could feature for them in the on-going Club World Cup after flying from Brazil to the US for his medical. Pedro could make his Chelsea debut in Friday's quarter-final clash against Palmeiras in Philadelphia. The Brazilian, who will become Chelsea's sixth summer signing, scored 10 goals in 30 appearances in all competitions for Brighton last season. City still seeking successful reset Manchester City's Matheus Nunes believes the team has developed a 'different energy' at the Club World Cup (John Raoux/AP) Manchester City will bid to join Chelsea in the quarter-finals of the Club World Cup as they come up against Saudi Arabian side Al Hilal on Monday. City were the only team in the tournament to win all three of their group games and will hope to carry that momentum into their last-16 outing in Orlando. Unlike Chelsea, who are trying to add a final flourish to a 2024-25 season in which they won the Conference League, City have been trying to make a fresh start in the United States. 'We're still early in the season, but I think the energy is different,' said Matheus Nunes. 'I think last year we were a little down in terms of spirit, but we know what it means to play for Manchester City and this season that's definitely going to change.' Toone gets two as England complete Euros preparation Ella Toone scored two in England's 7-0 friendly win over Jamaica (David Davies/PA) England signed off their last assignment before the European Women's Championship in style with a comprehensive 7-0 victory over Jamaica at the King Power Stadium. The Lionesses were looking to gather some momentum before they faced France in their Euros curtain-raiser next Saturday and were more or less out of sight at the half-time whistle. Ella Toone struck twice from distance either side of Lucy Bronze's header to give England a three-goal lead at the break, but things could have been different if Kayla McKenna's effort for the visitors had not been ruled out by VAR for offside at 1-0. England still had room for more though. Georgia Stanway, Alessia Russo, Aggie Beever-Jones and Beth Mead also got in on the act to give England the perfect send off before they attempt to defend their European crown. Calvert-Lewin bids farewell to Everton Dominic Calvert-Lewin's nine-year Everton career is over (Peter Byrne/PA) Dominic Calvert-Lewin is to leave Everton after nine years with the club. The striker endured a difficult final season, scoring three goals in 26 league appearances and missing over three months between January and May due to injury. 'After nine remarkable years at this club, I've made the incredibly difficult decision – together with my family – to begin a new chapter in my career,' the forward wrote on Instagram. 'This isn't something I chose lightly. We believe it's the right moment to seek a new challenge and continue growing, but that doesn't lessen the bond I'll always have with Everton.' What's on today? Defeated Champions League finalists Inter Milan face Brazil's Fluminense in the last 16 of the Club World Cup.
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
USMNT diversity is a positive. Data proves it
"Previous research, they found a negative impact, not because of the diversity itself but how to put the team together. When you merge several players from different countries with different language, you create a barrier that makes it, at some extent, difficult to perform," said Thadeu Gasparetto, author of a paper published earlier this month titled "Multicultural teams: Does national diversity associate with performance in professional soccer?" "More recent research is showing pretty much the opposite, where the diversity provides a set of different skills ... different codes that tends to be positive." With less than a year until the World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico, which U.S. Soccer officials hope will be as transformative for the game as the 1994 tournament was, the "golden generation" of the U.S. men's national team is struggling. To put it nicely. Most of their top players, led by Christian Pulisic, are playing in Europe. Several on top teams, no less. Their coach is Mauricio Pochettino, who took Tottenham to the Champions League final. Yet the USMNT skidded into the Concacaf Gold Cup on a four-game losing streak, its longest since 2007. Then team reached the quarterfinals of the tournament, but Sunday's game against Costa Rica will be the first real test. As players, fans and pundits look for answers, former USMNT player and pot stirrer extraordinaire Alexi Lalas blamed the team's diversity. In addition to players from across the United States, the USMNT -- like many other national teams -- has multiple players who were born or raised overseas. "I've argued that the homogeneous nature of some other countries and cultures, just in population in terms of the size, are much more manageable and there's a collective understanding and, more importantly, an agreement in, 'This is how we're going to play,'" said Lalas, who makes no secret of his willingness to be a right-wing media provocateur. "But getting 11 men to represent this great country of 350 million people and all be on the same page, that is very, very difficult." Except it's really not. And there is both data, and anecdotal evidence, to prove it. Gasparetto examined six professional leagues in Europe -- England, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus, Latvia and the Netherlands -- between the 2015-16 and 2020-21 seasons and found that each foreign player on a team correlated with a 0.42% increase in win percentage. "It's much more about how well or how qualified the players are rather than where he or she's from," Gasparetto said. His findings are similar to those in a study by Michel Beine, Silvia Peracchi and Skerdilajda Zanaj that looked at ancestral diversity and its impact on a national team's performance. "Ancestral diversity and performance: Evidence from football data," published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization in September 2023, found ethnic diversity can lead to an additional goal scored per game. "The idea is, basically, that more genetic diversity is going to allow more complementary skills between players," Beine said. "Soccer is a game in which complementary skills is very important because you have different positions and these different positions, they require different type of skills. ... These complementarities, these different type of skills are going to be beneficial for the team." Look at France. Les Bleus won the men's World Cup in 2018 and were runners-up in 2022 with a team that was a melting pot. In addition to players whose parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and -- you get the idea -- were born in France, about half the team was born in Africa or the French Caribbean, or had parents who were. England, much to the country's consternation, endured decades of frustration after winning the World Cup in 1966. But it has reached the final at the last two European Championship and got to the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup with a multiracial team. Belgium had its best finish ever at the World Cup in 2018, third place, with a team that reflected the influence of immigration to that country in the 1950s and 1960s. Conversely, teams that are homogenous -- Iceland, for example, or Japan -- don't fare as well. "This mixing, in terms of skills, in terms of genetic endowment, we show in the statistical analysis that, over time, countries benefited from immigration flows and diverse immigration flows. ... They improved their soccer performances," Beine said. "On the contrary, you have countries who had very little immigration flows and who have kept quite a homogeneous population ... maybe they have less benefited from this." Soccer is a global game -- and not only because it's played everywhere in the world. Players routinely move from country to country in their club careers, and that is likely to have far more influence than the country in which they were born or the neighborhood in which they grew up. Lionel Messi was born in Argentina, moved to Spain at 13 and spent two decades at Barcelona before going to France to play for Paris Saint-Germain. Now he's in the United States, playing for Inter Miami. Do you really think him being from Rosario has more of an impact on Argentina's national team than what he learned at Barcelona? "The evidence is very clear that diversity is something that can be beneficial. And it is a little bit overlooked by people," Beine said. "I think that sometimes people are not looking at the evidence. Or they are closing their eyes on what is really obvious." And that is that. The USMNT, much like the country it represents, is better for its diversity. Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Guardiola worried that lack of rest after Club World Cup could 'destroy' Man City
June 30 (Reuters) - Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is concerned about the lack of rest his side will get ahead of the new Premier League season and said their involvement in the Club World Cup could "destroy" them. City wrapped up the previous Premier League season on May 25 and opened their Club World Cup campaign in Philadelphia just over three weeks later on June 18. They face Al-Hilal in Orlando on Saturday in the round of 16 and should City go on to reach the final on July 13 they will have a month to prepare for their new league campaign beginning on August 16. Guardiola said he did not know how much the Club World Cup would take out of his squad and told reporters to ask him about the impact later in the year. "I may say, so listen, we are a disaster. We are exhausted. The World Cup destroyed us," he added. "I don't know, but it's the first time in our life that that's happened. So we'll see." Guardiola said he understood comments made by former Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp, who said the expanded 32-team event, to be held once every four years during the pre-season, was football's worst idea. "Juergen, we fought together many, many times... when we went to UEFA meetings especially, or when we discussed the Premier League calendar, about how to add more quality, giving the managers and players more rest," Guardiola said. "So his comments didn't surprise me a lot ... I understand his argument, because I would defend his argument as well."
