Italian footballers and athletes will not be allowed to train together as Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced on Wednesday the extension of the country’s lockdown until April 13.
All
sport in Italy had been suspended from early March until April 3 as a
result of the coronavirus pandemic which has killed 13 115 people in the
country.
Conte said in a televised address to the nation on
Wednesday that the lockdown would be extended and would now also include
training sessions.
Spain’s La Liga could recommence in July without spectators, the head of a major broadcaster has said, adding that the season was likely to be cancelled if a player tested positive for the coronavirus once the campaign had restarted.
All organised
soccer in Spain has been on hold since March 10 due to the spread of
the deadly virus although Jaume Roures, CEO of Spanish multimedia group
Mediapro, predicted that matches could resume behind closed doors in
three months’ time.
“I expect football to return in July,
certainly without supporters, but first of all there would have to be a
pre-season campaign,” Roures told radio station Cadena Cope on
Wednesday.
Spain is the second-worst affected country in Europe by the virus behind Italy and on Tuesday reported a record daily death toll of 849 from the virus, which has killed a total of 8 189 people.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is keeping in touch with his Manchester United stars as he deals with the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus.
The Premier League has been postponed until at least 30 April because
of the pandemic and it is feared the season will be delayed again when English football’s stakeholders meet to discuss the crisis on Friday.
During the unsettling virus lockdown in Britain, United manager Solskjaer has been unable to train his squad in person.
But he has been in constant contact with players and staff on the
phone in a bid to ensure they are ready, if and when matches can resume.
“Of course, I’m used to seeing them every day for hours and hours, so it’s different,” Solskjaer told United’s website on Tuesday. Make cool cash from home by clicking 12hrs upcoming events on NaijaBet
“But it’s such an unknown and we don’t really have an idea and are not 100 percent about when we’ll start.
Tottenham have reduced the wages of non-playing staff by 20 percent for the next two months, with chairman Daniel Levy hoping players will follow suit due to the financial crisis caused by coronavirus.
Players at Barcelona, Juventus and Bayern Munich are among those to have taken either a significant wage cut or deferred payments during the crisis.
Football in England is suspended until at least April 30 and a meeting of Premier League clubs on Friday is expected to push that date further back.
“Having already taken steps to reduce costs, we ourselves made the difficult decision, in order to protect jobs, to reduce the remuneration of all 550 non-playing directors and employees for April and May by 20 percent,” Levy said in a statement on the Spurs website.
Inter have made it clear they will only negotiate Lautaro Martinez’s departure this summer if the striker asks to leave, reports Marca.
Martinez has been earmarked as a top transfer target by both Barcelona and United, though the forward would prefer to join the former.
The Argentina international has developed into one of the most sought after young forwards in Europe this season and is now valued more than £100M.
Barcelona are expected to either move to sign Martinez or try and re-sign Neymar from Paris Saint-Germain this summer but they only have enough money to conclude one of those transfers.
The 31-year-old has entered the final three months of his current Chelsea contract and is free to discuss a Bosman transfer with foreign clubs.
Chelsea want Willian to stay but are only willing to offer the Brazil international a two-year deal to renew.
Chelsea do not tend to offer players the wrong side of 30 with anything more than rolling 12-month deals.
Willian, however, has made it clear he wants a three-year deal and is even willing to join one of Chelea’s main rivals after settling in England.
“My desire is to stay in the Premier League but I don’t rule out playing in other leagues, no,” Willian told The Sun. “I’ll play until the end of the season and see what happens.
Lionel Messi confirmed on Monday that Barcelona’s players will take a 70 per cent pay cut and make financial contributions to ensure the club’s other employees are paid in full during the state of alarm in Spain.
In a lengthy message posted on
his Instagram account, Messi also took another swipe at the Barca
board, led by president Josep Maria Bartomeu, whom he accused of
undermining the players during recent negotiations.
Other Spanish
clubs are expected to follow suit in applying temporary pay cuts, as
football’s hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic leaves a number of
them fighting for financial survival.
Atletico Madrid have said the club will impose salary reductions on staff whose hours have been affected while Espanyol have also confirmed pay cuts, although for sporting staff only.
The 22-year-old England international has
teamed up with charity FareShare to help children in the Manchester area
after schools were closed.
And he revealed that his own childhood had inspired him to want to make a difference to the next generation.
“I
remember when I was at school I was on free meals and my mum wouldn’t
get home until around six o’clock so my next meal would have been about 8
o’clock. I was fortunate, and there are kids in much more difficult
situations that don’t get their meals at homes.”
Rashford said fundraising had gone well.
“We have got to the £100 000 ($124 000) mark, which means we get to feed 400 000 children so it’s been very positive.”
Manchester United and Manchester City have joined forces to donate to food banks in the area.
It stated this in a series of tweets posted via its verified Twitter handle on Thursday afternoon.
The commission said the discoveries followed an attempt to end tax fraud in the lottery business, adding that only 21 operators and 18 firms were licensed by the National Lottery Regulatory Commission (NLRC).
“The 35 illegal companies’ names were unravelled during an investigation on the operations of lottery companies in the country, supported by a document from the National Lottery Regulatory Commission, NLRC, based on request from the EFCC.
Among LaLiga’s most exciting defensive rising
stars is Real Valladolid centre-back Mohammed Salisu, whose solid and
composed displays in his debut season suggest a long and highly
successful career is ahead of him.
Valladolid’s 20-year-old
Ghanaian centre-back has been one of the most impressive defenders at
any La Liga Santander club in 2019-20, getting the better of personal
duels with forwards as experienced and talented as Atletico de Madrid’s
Alvaro Morata, Real Sociedad’s Willian Jose and Real Betis’ Borja
Iglesias.
Having only made his La Liga Santander debut last
August, Salisu has started 26 of Valladolid’s first 27 games, as part of
a solid defence which has been key to Sergio Fernandez’s team spending
most of the campaign well clear of the drop zone.
Born in Accra in 1999, Salisu was signed by
Valladolid in autumn 2017, having been scouted from the ‘African Talent
Football Academy’ in his home country. By the following January, the
17-year-old had broken into Valladolid’s B team in the third tier,
impressing enough to become a regular for the remainder of the campaign.
