Latest news with #CarlosTevez
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Iconic Carlos Tevez billboard recreated next to Manchester United's Old Trafford
The iconic Carlos Tevez billboard has been recreated as it was announced the star would be returning to Old Trafford. Striker Tevez famously sparked fury when he left Manchester United to join Manchester City in the summer of 2009, after a two-year loan spell expired. The Blues then rubbed their neighbours noses in it by paying for a huge sky blue advert on a billboard near Deansgate with an image of Tevez and the words 'Welcome to Manchester.' READ MORE: LIVE updates as air ambulance lands in Stockport READ MORE: Oldham murder investigation LIVE updates after man found dead Blues supporters lapped it up, whilst then-United boss Sir Alex Ferguson described it as 'arrogant' and an example of a 'small club mentality.' Now 16 years on, the often-recreated billboard has mimicked once more, and this time just a stone's throw from Old Trafford. It was today revealed Tevez would again grace the Old Trafford turf at this year's Soccer Aid. The now 41-year-old, who last played for his boyhood club Boca Juniors and who retired in 2022, will feature for the Word XI team. The new advert, displayed on the digital advertising screen over the White City roundabout, less than half a mile from Old Trafford, says 'Welcome back to Manchester' alongside an image of Tevez and the date Sunday June 15, when the charity game is behind held. Created by Robbie Williams in 2006 and held annually at OId Trafford, the charity game, broadcast live on ITV, brings together celebs and footballing legends and has raised millions for UNICEF. This year, former Heavyweight World Champion Tyson Fury will be managing England, with United legends Wayne Rooney, Gary Neville and Paul Scholes also returning to Old Trafford. One Direction star Louis Tomlinson and businessman and podcaster Steven Bartlett join a stacked squad full of new faces including Joe Hart and social media star Angry Ginge. Ex-Reds keeper Peter Schmeichel is on the World XI coaching staff, while Edwin van der Sar will also return to Old Trafford as one of the visiting goalkeepers. Former Italy defender Leonardo Bonucci and AC Milan star Nadia Nadim are set to make their Soccer Aid bows. Among the celebs pulling on the World XI kit are Tobi Brown, Martin Compston, Richard Gadd, Gorka Marquez, Brian Habana and Tony Bellew. The same billboard near Old Trafford was used a fortnight ago by Liverpool fans to troll United supporters following their title win. An advert placed by Liverpool fan channel The Anfield Wrap said: "Manchester, Just 37 miles to the country's most successful football club." It came after they secured the Premier League title and drew level with United's tally of 20 top-flight championships.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
What is the furthest a footballer has been offside when scoring a goal?
'Leyton Orient's Charlie Kelman was four yards offside when he scored against Stockport in the League One playoff semi-finals,' begins Jessica Hibbert. 'What's the furthest a player has been indisputably offside before going on to score?' In the spirit of Annie Hall, let's get Jeff Astle out the way so that we can relax and digest our offside goals better. His infamous tap-in at Elland Road in April 1971 isn't relevant here because Jessica asked specifically about goal scorers who were offside. In that case the controversy – 'And Leeds will go mad! And they've every right to go mad!' – was about the position of Colin Suggett and whether he was interfering with play. Scoring a goal is possibly the ultimate interference with play, and there are plenty of goal scorers who look bang to rights through modern eyes. Let's start with a couple from the World Cup. Roberto Baggio (Italy 2-1 England, 1990, although he probably should have had a penalty seconds earlier, and don't get us started on Nicola Berti's disallowed goal in the same game) Carlos Tevez (Argentina 3-1 Mexico, 2010) From the World Cup to League One, where Steven Fletcher's winner for Wrexham at Huddersfield this season had not so much a whiff of offside as a stench. Hearts' stirring Uefa Cup run in 1988-89 included a hard-fought 1-0 aggregate win over Austria Vienna, with Mike Galloway scoring the decisive goal in the away leg. We can't be certain because of the camera angles, but both Galloway and the creator, Walter Kidd, look so far offside that they could have done with their passports just in case. While Hearts lost to Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals, Longford Town went all the way in the FAI Cup of 2003, beating St Patrick's Athletic 2-0 in the final to win their first major trophy. They would have won anyway, as the second goal from Shane Barrett was the last action of the game, but it did not entirely satisfy the requirements of Law 11.1. Thanks to Mike Slattery for explaining the context behind this. The St Pat's keeper Chris Adamson had gone up for a corner, meaning Barrett was six or seven yards offside when he received the ball. 'I can't find a reference to any controversy about the goal,' writes Mike, 'meaning that nobody (including the match officials, apparently) realised there was anything wrong.' Barrett is clearest offside in terms of distance beyond the last defender, but our favourite – sent in by Pete Tomlin and others – is Joel Matip's goal for Schalke against Basel in the 2013-14 Champions League. Basel's offside trap worked perfectly – or it would have done had the assistant registered that four Schalke players were offside. Schalke 04 indeed. One of them was Matip, who had time to go through the alphabet backwards before putting the ball into the net. Or, as the Uefa website said at the time, 'The Basel defence mistimed their offside trap as the forward's right-wing free-kick swung over, allowing Matip all the time and space he needed to chest down and plant past the stranded Sommer.' Thank goodness we've got VAR now. 'Last week you listed the worst European finals based on league position,' says Richie Farquhar. 'What are the best? How many times have two champions of their country met in the final?' Thanks to the netbusting adventures of Scott McTominay and Romelu Lukaku, Saturday's Champions League final between Internazionale and Paris Saint-Germain will involve only the champions of France. Nothing new there: only 13 out of 70 European Cup and Champions League finals have been between teams who both won their domestic title the same season. 1964-65 Inter 1-0 Benfica 1972-73 Ajax 1-0 Juventus 1976-77 Liverpool 3-1 Borussia Mönchengladbach 1990-91 Red Star Belgrade 0-0 Marseille (5-3 pens) 1992-93 Marseille* 1-0 Milan 1993-94 Milan 4-0 Barcelona 1998-99 Man Utd 2-1 Bayern Munich 2008-09 Barcelona 2-0 Man Utd 2009-10 Inter 2-0 Bayern Munich 2010-11 Barcelona 3-1 Man Utd 2014-15 Barcelona 3-1 Juventus 2016-17 Real Madrid 4-1 Juventus 2019-20 Bayern Munich 1-0 Paris Saint-Germain * Marseille were subsequently stripped of their French title but not the Champions League. 'My son is a goalkeeper and he wondered if there has ever been a professional goalkeeper in top-tier football who has worn No 10?' asks Dave Sturges. A number of you mentioned the bald maverick Cristiano Lupatelli, who wore No 10 when he played in Serie A with Chievo from 2001 to 2003. The shirt was vacant after Raffaele Cerbone left the club, which gave Lupatelli an idea. 'According to an interview with Italian goalkeeping website Il Numero 1 he said that it came about because of a bet with friends,' writes Pete Tomlin. 'He said: 'It all started as a joke, and it became a reality. I think it is a funny and nice thing.'' Jim Hearson tells us that, when Lupatelli rejoined Roma in the summer of 2003, he took the No 3 shirt. The No 10 wasn't available, alas, due to some clingy killjoy called Francesco Totti. 'Ignacio 'Nacho' Gonzáles did it for Argentina in the 1997 Copa América,' writes Pablo Zadunaisky. And here's the proof. 'Spurs finished 17th in the Premier League,' notes Paul Savage. 'Has a team ever finished lower while winning a European trophy in the same season?' The short answer is: nope. There have been finalists who finished lower than 17th – see last week's Knowledge – but, excluding the Intertoto Cup for obvious reasons, Spurs are the lowest of the low in this particular sphere. We think only eight teams have won a European trophy while finishing outside the top 10 of their domestic league. And here they are: 17 Tottenham Hotspur (Europa League, 2024-25)14 West Ham (Conference League, 2022-23)13 Internazionale (Uefa Cup, 1993-94)12 Arsenal (Fairs Cup 1969-70), Schalke (Uefa Cup, 1996-97), Sevilla (Europa League 2022-23)11 Aston Villa (European Cup 1981-82), Eintracht Frankfurt (Europa League 2021-22) 'Luis Suárez picked up a championship winner's medal for Ajax while playing for Liverpool against Spurs,' wrote Nick Young in 2011 and yes we did pluck this from the archive because of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia winning the title with Paris Saint-Germain and Napoli. 'Has a player ever won two championship winner's medals in the same season by playing for two different clubs in two different countries?' 'When Suárez was transferred from Ajax to Liverpool last winter, Urby Emanuelson also left Ajax for Milan. Unlike Liverpool, Milan did grab the title, so Urby won two championship titles this season,' writes Stephan Wijnen, who is clearly prepared to overlook the fact that Emanuelson has made only eight appearances for Milan, which wouldn't qualify him for a medal under Premier League rules. 'Wolves striker Kevin Doyle won a League of Ireland medal in November 2005, when my beloved Cork City clinched the title on the final day,' suggests Colin Owens. 'Doyler had left for Reading the previous June for a measly €117,000, where he would go on the fire the Royals into the Premier League, pocketing a Championship medal in the process.' Richard Bald would like to nominate Crawley Town's Scottish midfielder Willie Gibson as another player that fits the bill. 'He picked up winners' medals for Dunfermline in the Scottish First Division and for Crawley Town in the Conference,' he writes, but fails to mention which of the two titles Willie considers more prestigious. 'Sheffield United have lost their last eight games at Wembley,' weeps Darren White. 'Does anyone have a worse streak on that ground?' 'Billy Gilmour, who almost gave Napoli the lead in their title-winning victory on Friday night, has made 146 club appearances in his career without scoring a goal. Are there are any other midfielders with a similarly long drought?' wonders Rob McCluskey. 'The success of Scott McTominay, Billy Gilmour, Harry Kane and Eric Dier means that British players have won three of the big five leagues this season. Has that happened before? And have any countries managed five out of five?' wonders Philipp Lohan. 'Royal Union Saint-Gilloise have just won the title in Belgium – 90 years after their last championship in 1935. Are there any longer gaps between two national titles for any team?' asks Holger Seiffert. Mail us with your questions and answers
New York Times
10-02-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
What's the best date for a footballer to be born on – and is it February 5?
Last Wednesday was an important moment for the admittedly small group of people who send birthday cards to each of Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez, Neymar and Jordan Rhodes. Those four men, with 230 international goals between them, turned 40, 41, 33 and 35 respectively on February 5, cementing the 36th day of the year's stellar reputation for producing elite footballers, led of course by Ronaldo, now operating as a professional into his fifth decade. Advertisement It's not just them, either. From the Premier League alone you can add Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Micky Hazard, Billy Sharp, Socceroos sensation John Aloisi, star-of-1999 Jesper Blomqvist, 2013 international-affiliation-tug-of-war-champion Adnan Januzaj, Vedran Corluka, former SC Telstar loanee Ryan Seager and 1990s England international-turned-EFL-expert Andy Hinchcliffe. Some people enjoy constructing five-a-side teams from players born on their own birthday; with the February 5 cohort, you can build a squad that could challenge for trophies on four fronts. Probably. But is February 5 really the GOAT date? Let's look at the history of the Premier League and Champions League to find out. If we delve into goals per game and assists per game across Premier League history then February 5 does indeed come out as an above-average day to be born. And yes, that is helped by Cristiano Ronaldo (103 goals and 37 assists in 236 appearances), but almost as much by Carlos Tevez (84 goals and 36 assists in 202 games). Really, though, as we will discover, it's not just the headline acts that give a birthdate strength, but strong performances from lesser or long-forgotten names too. So helping out in the Feb 5 trenches we have 2000s loan star Manuel Fernandes supplying two goals and three assists in 31 games at Portsmouth and Everton, and who can forget that Chiquinho — still technically a Wolves player — has three assists in only nine Premier League games. Oh, you had. February's other landmark date, one so cool it's only used quadrennially, is the 29th, and despite Darren Ambrose and Ferran Torres chipping in with 20 goals and eight assists between them, it doesn't stand out particularly. Maybe Jesper Lindstrom and Abdukodir Khusanov can do their bit to help it leapfrog some of the other more workmanlike dates soon. Advertisement May 24 stands out as the most assist-y day to be born for Premier League players — but not because of anyone you might necessarily think of when pondering the competition's finest creators. Instead, it's led by Eric Cantona (56 assists), Vladimir Smicer (24), Yannick Bolasie (17) and Adel Taraabt (eight). Good, solid May 24 representatives one and all. It's a similar story with goals, where July 1 comes out on top. Anyone who enjoyed football in the 2000s will at some point have told someone else that Ruud van Nistelrooy and Patrick Kluivert share a birthday, and guess what — this is it. Their combined total of 101 goals in 175 games (with, yes, the current Leicester City manager doing most of the heavy lifting), plus 16 goals from Alejandro Garnacho is what makes July 1 the official 'date of goals — primarily if you are Dutch and/or played for Manchester United'. It's not catchy, but it's undoubtedly true. At the other end of the scale is poor July 18, a date with such low goals and assists per game numbers that you fear it is riddled with goalkeepers. Lo and behold we find both Sasa Ilic and 1990s nepo baby Jonathan Gould here. Claudio Yacob — very much not a goalkeeper — didn't help much either, chipping in with just one goal and one assist during six seasons with West Bromwich Albion in the 2010s. Receiving a birthday card: good. Receiving a red card: bad. And scoring an own goal really isn't much better. All of which makes September 21 perhaps the unluckiest date for a Premier League player to be born. If you're hoping to find calamity big guns here then you won't be disappointed. Richard Dunne, the undisputed grand master of the own goal, was born on September 21, 1979, and ended his top-flight career with 10 of them (although he did score 11 at the right end, giving him a narrowly impressive goal difference of +1). He is aided here by 1989's Ben Mee, who has five own goals (firmly countered by a solid 14 in the correct net). Dunne also racked up eight red cards in the Premier League, with another son-of-a-famous-player, Andy Todd, adding four red cards to the September 21 roll call of shame. July 9 deserves a mention purely in terms of red cards, with 18, yet none of the Premier League's iconic dismissal merchants were born on that day. Instead, it's a group effort with Ashley Young leading the way on five. All of which brings us to... February 5 may have the glamour and July 1 screams goals, but humble old March 6 is the most common birthdate for a Premier League player. There are no superstars here, just 30 solid pros, from Tim Howard down to Garry Monk, via Daniel de Ridder and Philipp Wollscheid. If your child is born on March 6 then they almost certainly won't win the Ballon d'Or — but they may play 45 times for Stoke City, and it is important to have dreams. January 1 also comes out well here, one of the glamour dates of any calendar has provided 24 players, including Mickey Evans, who remains the Premier League's top-scoring player whose goals all came in a single month (April). October 6 also provides 24 names, including the only Elvis to feature in the Premier League (Elvis Hammond) as well as Juventus' new superstar Lloyd Kelly. As we continue to muse about the importance of February 5 in football terms we cannot ignore the Champions League, particularly given Ronaldo is the competition's highest scorer. The Messi/Ronaldo era's impact on goalscoring is clear in the chart below, which confirms that, yes, February 5 is the top-scoring birthday in the modern European Cup and a significant proportion of that is down to a certain Portuguese player. Advertisement Then again, even Ronaldo's impact on a date pales into insignificance when you discover how much Robert Lewandowski dominates the August 21 goals: 103 of the 114 goals scored by players born on that date have come from the Pole, with the next highest scorers being Kalifa Coulibaly, Ramiz Mamedov and Scott McDonald, with two each. And Ronaldo's influence is even felt when you isolate each date for total appearances, with February 5 second only to January 8. Compared to the former, the latter date has a much wider spread, with Koke the only player on more than 100 appearances. It also includes the Brazilian player known as 'Pitbull', formerly of Porto, who presumably ages in human rather than dog years. So where does all this information leave us? Clearly, in news that will disappoint some but surprise few, there is no definitive way of ranking birthdates. Everyone will always favour their own (Darren Anderton, Antonio Rudiger and Emmanuel Riviere, I love you all), and I'm sure there are Manchester City fans who enjoy the fact that Kyle Walker, John Stones and Phil Foden were all born on May 28, but what if there was some other way of at least demonstrating February 5's pre-eminence? Thankfully, there is. Not only is it a date laden with star names and Ludovic Sylvestre, but it can also claim the highest-scoring single day in a 20-team Premier League season. February 5, 2011, saw a bumper 41 goals in only eight games, including the only time a Premier League side (Arsenal) has ever thrown away a four-goal lead (doing so at Newcastle). Clearly, this is a date that exists bang on the ley line of footballing destiny. In a few years, we will come to know a football player who was born on 05/02/2011 — what seems certain is they will become the greatest player the sport has ever known. (Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)
