luxury_scruff

Can't wait for Fernandinho to fuck off from this league. He's the modern day Scholes. Dirty fucker who somehow blinds refs.

These are our salad days, slowly being eaten away...

Me Salah.

Sublime footballer. Exceptional awareness.

Who knows. I think we are at the end point now. Fabulous footballer, but he'd rather miss than pass for me.

I'd get Gomez, Diaz and Bobby on straight away.

Apologies if this has been posted previously; https://www.gqmiddleeast.com/features/the-curious-case-of-ramy-abbas

She has Huntington's disease. Maybe that's why she looks different?

http://weakstreams.com/soccer-streams/premier-league/liverpool-vs-brentford/48139/

Jurgen Klopp backs Mohamed Salah to remain world class into his mid-30s Salah had put pressure on Liverpool by claiming in an interview he is 'not asking for crazy stuff' in contract talks Mike McGrath 12 January 2022 • 2:09pm Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp is certain Mohamed Salah’s peak years will extend into his mid-30s as he reiterated his confidence the Anfield contract saga will be successfully resolved. Salah raised more questions about his long-term future in an interview earlier this week, suggesting his wage demands are not ‘crazy’. Ahead of Thursday’s Carabao Cup semi-final, first leg with Arsenal, Klopp said he was positive that Salah will eventually extend his terms. “First of all, nowadays I think it’s really dangerous to talk about interviews when you didn’t speak to the player yourself,” said Klopp. “There was nothing in it that would be unexpected. We know, I know, that Mo wants to stay. We want him to stay. That’s the point where we are. These things take time, I can’t change that, sorry. But I think it is all in a good place. “I am very positive about it. I’m pretty sure the fans are not as nervous as you (the media) are! They know the club, know the people here who are dealing with things, so there are, I think, enough reasons for being pretty positive. As long as it’s not done, we cannot say anything about it. ‘Good conversations’ - that’s what I could say.” Liverpool’s owners, Fenway Sports Group, have critical decisions to make on the contracts of Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino, whose deals all run until the summer of 2023. That has been the background to prolonged negotiations for a board which is determined the club must live within its means with transfer fees and salaries. The fact Salah turns 30 in June would ordinarily be a key factor in talks, too. There is a recent history in the Premier League of superstar players being handed their most lavish deals just as their peak years are over, and subsequently becoming a financial burden. It is understood the Egyptian is hoping to be paid in the region of £400,000 a week, similar to Manchester City’s Kevin de Bruyne. But Salah’s case for a new deal was assisted by his manager emphatically backing the opinion his striker will mirror Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, whose productivity has been of an elite standard throughout their 30s. “Yes. Yes, I think so. It's his character, his determination, the way he trains, his attitude, work-rate. It's incredible,” said Klopp. “He is the first in, last out, doing the right stuff. You can do some not-so-good things when you spend so long in the gym and the training ground, but he knows his body, he knows what to do. He listens to the experts here and tries to improve all the time. He tries to improve for the situation he is in now, and he will not waste it by doing less. I am as convinced as you can be.” Pressed on why there has been such a delay finding common ground, Klopp added: “Things take time. There are so many things you have to do, and by the way there is a third party. The agent is there as well. But there’s nothing to worry about, it’s a normal process. Mo has a contract here this season and next season. Nobody has to worry, it’s just the situation. All fine, not done, but we had talks. He’s a world class player, unbelievable player, did a lot of great stuff for Liverpool. Of course we want to keep him, and let’s see how it will work out.” Salah had put pressure on Liverpool to accept his contract demands by insisting is not asking for “crazy stuff” - but he does want a salary increase to reflect his achievements at Anfield. “I want to stay, but it's not in my hands. It's in their hands,” Salah told GQ Global Sports Issue. “They know what I want. I'm not asking for crazy stuff. “The thing is when you ask for something and then they show you they can give you something because they appreciate what you did for the club. I've been here for my fifth year now. I know the club very well. I love the fans. The fans love me. But with the administration, they have [been] told the situation. It's in their hands.” Fenway Sports Group, Liverpool's owners, must weigh up the value of handing a lucrative contract to a player who turns 30 at the end of the current campaign. They will also be aware that the usual options in the transfer market for a high-profile player have changed in recent windows. Salah has previously spoken to Spanish outlet Marca about his future, although Real Madrid appear focused on Kylian Mbappe as their next marquee signing and Barcelona have suffered financial problems that saw Messi leave last summer. Paris St-Germain would be one of the only other realistic alternative outside England. Salah is among a clutch of players whose deals expire in 2023, meaning in one year they will be able to speak to clubs about a pre-contract to move as a free agent. Raheem Sterling at Manchester City is in the same position. Salah is currently away on duty with Egypt at the Africa Cup of Nations and has made the three-man shortlist, along with Bayern Munich's Robert Lewandowski and PSG's Lionel Messi, for Fifa's Best Men's Player of 2021. "If you asked me if this was a drive for me to be here? Yeah, of course," he said, when asked about his ambition to win the Ballon D’Or. "I can't really lie and say honestly I didn't think about it. No, I think about it. I want to be the best player in the world. But I will have a good life even if I don't win. My life is OK, everything is fine."

The Lord Mayor of Liverpool is wearing a nervous smile and a gold ceremonial chain the size of a saucer, the kind worn to greet royalty or a foreign dignitary—which feels appropriate, because it's not every day you get a visit from the Egyptian king. It's a cloudless autumn day in the city, and star Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has come to the town hall to film an interview with an Egyptian TV channel. The producers wanted somewhere aspirational, opulent, to film their national icon, and honestly they couldn't have picked better. The building is ostentatiously beautiful, late Georgian, all Corinthian columns and gold-filigree cornices and crystal ballroom chandeliers that the Lord Mayor, a tiny woman named Mary, informs me each weigh a tonne. The staff buzzes around nervously, chattering in low voices while the cameras roll in the next room. Salah! Even Mary, an Everton fan—and thus a supporter of Liverpool's most-hated rivals—is excited. “I'm not a bitter Blue,” she whispers, because all rivalries aside, who doesn't love Mohamed Salah? In Egypt, where his life story is taught in schools, his nickname is the Happiness Maker. This is as much for his feats on the field—where he has in five seasons led a resurgent Liverpool to Premier League and Champions League titles, breaking umpteen records on the way—as his feats off it. He's got that million-lumen smile; the Afro-beard combo; the whole wholesome, hardworking, family-man image. In Nagrig, the village in the Nile Delta north of Cairo where Salah grew up, his generosity is legendary: He has paid to build a school, a water-treatment plant, and an ambulance station there, and every month his foundation provides food and money to the destitute. Tales of Salah's beneficence occur so regularly that stories about it occasionally now crop up that aren't even true, but because Salah almost never gives interviews, nobody is around to dispel them. Others are true but would seem fantastical if there wasn't video and/or photographic evidence to confirm them, such as the time a bunch of arseholes were picking on a homeless man at a Liverpool petrol station, only for Salah to show up in his Bentley and defuse the situation, before giving the homeless guy money for somewhere to stay. (True.) Or the time that a thief stole 30,000 Egyptian pounds—about £1,400—from Salah's father's car, and the police caught the culprit, only for Salah to persuade his father not to press charges, and then actually give the thief money to help turn his life around. (Also true.) According to Stanford University researchers, Salah's arrival at Liverpool in 2017 correlated with an 18.9 per cent fall in hate crimes in the city; in Egypt, his involvement in a government anti-drug campaign led to a fourfold increase in help-line calls. At this point, it may not surprise you that at Egypt's last presidential elections, in 2018, there were widespread reports of voters spoiling their ballots and writing in Salah's name, despite the seemingly pertinent fact that he wasn't running. Finally, some double ballroom doors swing open and here comes Salah, in a black Haculla hoodie and jeans and MGSM sneakers, being mobbed by what must be two dozen of the film crew all attempting to get a selfie with their idol. Salah goes along with it, smiling even though it's clearly a bit much, until eventually his agent intervenes and we take refuge in another equally splendid room that appears to be set up for a wedding. Salah sits down, hands in pockets, unfazed by it all. He is used to adoration. “It's something I wanted,” he says. “But not that much!” Besides, this is nothing. If he were to step out onto the street right now in Liverpool—a city that reveres its football players almost as much as it does the Beatles—instant mob. In New York, he can't even stay at a hotel without some Egyptian staff member tracking down his room number and calling up to pay tribute while he's trying to sleep. (True.) And in Egypt itself? Well, I am unable to adequately convey the extent to which Salah is beloved in his own country, where the bazaars sell his face on every marketable household item, and streets and schools are frequently renamed in his honour. “Salah is the dream,” Amr Adib, the Egyptian TV anchor who has come to interview him, tells me. “He is a role model. It is a success story: how you can begin from zero and become number one in the world.” For a country that has struggled to get back on its feet since the Arab Spring uprising more than a decade ago, Salah is something more than an athlete: He has become a paragon of how to live. The responsibility can be overwhelming. Not long ago, Salah took his family—his wife Magi Sadeq, and their two kids, Makka, 7, and Kayan, 1—back home to Nagrig for Eid. “I went out with my family just to walk and go to pray, and suddenly I see three or four hundred people outside,” he says. The throng was so intense that they couldn't leave the house. Salah tweeted about it at the time; one of the few occasions that he has shown anger in public. “I was so mad. My mum was crying, my sister was crying, my wife was crying, because they wanted me to go on that day,” he says. “My father was disappointed. I needed to be with them.” Still, he knows that it comes from a place of love. “I really do understand. People get excited to see you. It is what it is, you have to deal with it.” He remembers what it was like, to be growing up without much. When I ask Salah about the incident with the thief, he at first tries to dodge the question, apparently not wanting to seem crass by discussing his own charity. So I press him: Why did he let him go? “I'm not supporting that [stealing],” he says. “But I'm sure he had a bigger reason to steal. I just feel he did it for a reason. When my father asked, the police said he was a really poor guy and had nothing in his life. So I told him: Just help him and leave him alone.” Mohamed Salah knows firsthand how lives can change, and he is nothing if not a true believer in the power of second chances. On the pitch he is a winger who plays as a striker, a goal scorer of sublime quality and uncommon consistency. Salah marked his arrival at Liverpool in 2017 by breaking the record for goals scored in a 38-game season; the following season, he led the team to its sixth Champions League title; the year after, the club won the Premier League title for the first time in 30 years. A freak team-wide injury crisis meant last season was a washout (they still somehow came third). But this season Salah has ascended to another plane. At the time of writing, he has scored 19 goals and assisted nine more in just 20 games, putting him on track to break his own record. To watch Salah play right now is to experience the rare, thrilling sensation of an athlete's true peak revealing itself, like an alpine summit in clearing fog. As Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool's manager, told me via email: “At this moment, I think Mo can make a very valid claim for being the best footballer on the planet.” Throughout his career, Salah has been, if anything, underrated: discarded by Chelsea, twice ignored for Team of the Year, including in 2018–19, when he was the league's joint-top scorer. There is a long-held perception—unfounded—that he is selfish, that he shoots too much, or that he chases individual glory over team success. This is easily disproved by the numbers. No forward in the league has more assists than Salah since he arrived at Liverpool, not his regular Golden Boot rivals Sadio Mané or Raheem Sterling or Harry Kane. “He's the best sort of greedy,” Klopp says. “He wants more for the team and more for himself, but the first part of that is what drives him. He wants us, the team, to win first and foremost.” He has scored more Premier League goals than any African player in history, reached 100 goals faster than any other Liverpool player. Despite this, he has never broken into the top three for the Ballon d'Or, football's most esteemed individual prize. Partly this is just the misfortune of having existed at the same time as two of the greatest to play the game. But there's also the lingering sense that his game doesn't get the recognition it deserves. Salah says it doesn't bother him. “I'm sure a lot of people appreciate what I'm doing. I don't really care about it. Weak mentalities like to feel that. I don’t.” Anyway, this will surely be the year his doubters are converted. Crucially—highlights being to professional athletes as hymns are to missionaries—he scores beautiful goals. Take the one he scored against Manchester City in October. Salah receives the ball outside the penalty area in a crowd of three opposition players, shrugs off one, rolls the ball past the other two with the sole of his boot, then surges into the box. You think he'll do what he always does, which is shoot with his left—but no, he beats the City centre-back with a jagged cutback and hits it with his right across the goal face at an angle so acute that it hits the far post before nestling into the net. Or his goal in the 2-0 win over Porto in November: First he plays a back-heel pass to Liverpool captain Jordan Henderson on the edge of the box, then runs on to Henderson's return pass. The ball is rolling perpendicular to the goal, toward a Porto defender, when Salah micro-momentarily shapes to shoot, and the defender dives to the floor to block it—but Salah hasn't even touched the ball. Only then does he control it so imperceptibly that the ball doesn't even change speed, and rifle it in at the near post with a deft sweep of his instep. This is Salah's greatest weapon: this sense that he's streaming reality on a faster connection than we are. He doesn't showboat, instead sprinting at defenders full pelt, waiting for the smallest misstep or shift of momentum that he can use to go past. “That's my game since I was young,” Salah says. We're in his box after the Porto game, Salah cooling down in Nike sweats and Yeezys and snacking on blueberries and a Vita Coco. “I get the ball, I am coming to you. I am coming to you!” The night of the Porto game, the Anfield crowd started singing his name in the seventh minute, and it was still emanating from nearby pubs long after the final whistle. Liverpool is, in many ways, the perfect fit for Salah. His face adorns the outside of the stadium and a flag in the fabled Kop. Under Klopp the team has become notorious for overwhelming its opponents before they can even escape their own half, and the cruel effectiveness of this approach, known as gegenpressing, is really only possible to appreciate in person. The entire team hunts in packs, Salah yelling to his teammates to press high, forcing mistakes that might be quickly turned into scoring opportunities. These chances are produced not by delicate play but by sheer force of will—and Salah is better at converting them than perhaps any player alive. The best-known story about Salah is that as a kid he had to travel by bus for nine hours round trip every day to get to training. This is also true. He learned to play the Egyptian way, on the streets, scrapping it out in the local youth leagues around Nagrig until he was scouted at 13 by Al Mokawloon, a team in Egypt's top division. Al Mokawloon, which Salah refers to by its English name, Arab Contractors, is based in Nasr City, a suburb of Cairo 82-miles south of Salah's hometown. So every morning Salah would go to school at 7am, then leave after two hours (the club gave him a permission slip) and walk a mile past jasmine fields to a bus stop. There he boarded a microbus—a camper van crammed with three or even four rows of seats—to nearby Basyoun. From Basyoun he'd catch another to Tanta; from Tanta to Cairo's bustling Ramses Square; and finally a fourth to the training ground in Nasr City. “Half an hour, one hour, then two hours, then maybe half an hour or 45 minutes for the last one,” Salah says, ticking off the transfers from memory. Training itself lasted only a couple of hours, but Salah would try to turn up early and stay late, starting the long journey home around 6pm. At the time, Al Mokawloon was paying him a monthly salary of 125 EGP—roughly £6—which didn't even cover bus fare for a week, so his father, who owned a jasmine trading business, covered the rest. So many journalists have tried to recreate Salah's bus journey that their dispatches could fill an essay collection. None capture what it must have been like: the gruelling monotony, the social isolation, all mixed up with a 14-year-old's daydreams of going pro. “I know when we say nine hours this looks crazy, but I did it because I loved it,” Salah says. “I wanted to be where I am now, so I didn't feel that it was that hard.” Eventually, Salah impressed the coaches at Al Mokawloon enough that they gave him a room at the training ground, and by 17 he had broken into the first team. In old footage you can see glimpses of what he would become—the quickness, the hunger. Then, in February 2012, a riot broke out at a stadium after an Egyptian league game between Al Masry and Al Ahly in Port Said. Seventy-four people were killed. In response to the disaster, the Egyptian authorities suspended the league and ordered that all games be played behind closed doors for two years, and in the aftermath, Salah's representatives secured a transfer to Basel, one of the biggest clubs in Switzerland. For Salah, arriving in Basel was like plunging into ice water. “The weather's cold, and you can't speak English, can't speak the [Swiss German] language. No one in the club spoke Arabic,” Salah says. At first he couldn't watch TV, read the newspapers, or even order takeout. “It was really hard. But I needed to adapt to it, or go back. You don't have a third choice.” On the field, his talent did not require translation. In two seasons, he helped Basel to back-to-back league titles and earned the league's best-player award. What happened next is one of fate's curious what-if moments. In the winter of 2014, Salah had an offer to join Liverpool but instead accepted a move to Chelsea. It made sense at the time: Chelsea was the more dominant team. But the club was also stacked with star forwards and managed by José Mourinho, a coach notorious for rarely rotating his starting lineup. “When I look back, [I had] bad advice with the situation,” Salah says. London was an even bigger change than Switzerland. Soon after arriving, Magi gave birth to their first child, Makka. Back home, Salah's fame exploded. Then and now, an Egyptian player signing for a top Premier League team is virtually unheard of. But he struggled to get minutes at Chelsea, often left out of the squad entirely. Critics started saying that he'd moved too soon, that he wasn't suited for the more physical side of the Premier League. Salah stopped reading the news. “It was so tough for me, mentally. I couldn't handle the pressure I had from the media, coming from outside,” Salah says. “I was not playing that much. I felt, ‘No, I need to go’.” The following year, Chelsea sent Salah out on loan to Fiorentina. He enjoyed Italy, played well, and in 2015 moved to Roma. At this point, plenty of equally talented players might have settled: OK, you had your shot at the top, but this is your level. But Salah's rejection at Chelsea cracked something open within him, like a drill hitting groundwater. His motivation redoubled. “You have two choices: to tell the people that they are right to put you on a bench, or to prove them wrong,” Salah says. “I needed to prove them wrong.” While he was still on the bench at Chelsea, Salah had started lifting weights more, building his upper-body strength. “I used to go every day because I knew I would not play,” he says. (If you've seen Salah's shirtless celebrations, or his Instagram, you know it worked. The guy's abs look like freshly baked dinner rolls.) He started getting deep into self-help books such as Mark Manson's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and bingeing YouTube videos by success coaches including Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar. “The one I think changed [me] a lot is Napoleon Hill,” Salah says. “He is one of the main guys who really talked about belief in yourself. For me, every book after that takes from what he said.” (Ironically, Hill, the self-help pioneer behind best-sellers such as 1937's Think and Grow Rich, is now thought to have largely fabricated tales of his own success. Fake it until you make it, I guess.) It's easy to be cynical about self-help—be positive, believe in yourself—but for Salah, it's clear that it really helped, enough that talking to him now can sometimes feel like a motivational seminar. “The best thing you could have is a serious conversation with yourself. Just get a coffee and just sit like this and just ask yourself what you want,” he says. And: “Some people can't face themselves properly. But I have no problem with that. If I'm struggling, I just face myself and just feel where I am.” In Rome, Salah rented a separate house in the city and built a private training pitch in his backyard so that he could work on his shooting outside of practice. He started to work on his mind too. He practices both meditation and visualisation every day, running through the next game in detail, picturing both what he wants to happen and—because he read Michael Phelps does it—what could go wrong. “Some situations you need to face before it happens, so when it happens you've already experienced it,” Salah says. He started this mental routine during his second season at Roma, which coincided with the best form of his career to that point. He scored 15 goals and made 11 assists, leading the team to a second-place finish in Serie A, which ultimately led Liverpool to come calling again. This time, he didn't hesitate. Still, there are moments that even visualisation can’t prepare you for. In Salah’s case, it was Liverpool’s 2018 Champions League final against Real Madrid. The game should have been the Hallmark ending to Salah’s record-breaking first season back in the Premier League. Instead, in the 25th minute, Madrid’s infamously combative defender Sergio Ramos dragged Salah to the ground in an armlock, dislocating his shoulder. Salah left the field in tears. Liverpool, visibly deflated, lost the game 3-1. (After the result, a lawyer threatened to sue Ramos for €1bn, citing “physical and psychological harm” to Salah and to the Egyptian nation.) Ramos said of the incident: “I didn’t want to speak because every- thing is magnified. I see the play well, he grabs my arm first and I fell to the other side; the injury happened to the other arm, and they said that I gave him a judo hold.” Worse, the injury ruled Salah out of the opening game of the 2018 World Cup. The tournament was only the third time Egypt had qualified, and the first in 28 years. Salah himself had scored the goal that secured his country's qualification, an injury-time penalty against Congo. By the time of Egypt's first game against Uruguay, Salah still hadn't recovered. “I cried on the bus, then I went to the toilet and cried on the toilet before the game, because I couldn't play,” he says. Egypt lost 2-0. Salah did play in the next two games, scoring twice, but couldn't prevent his team from crashing out of the group winless. Salah has said that he has come to accept the injury. “Injuries you can't really control,” he says. “Everything happens for a reason, I believe, and you have to deal with it.” In the end, he took strength from it. The following year Liverpool made it to the final again, and won. Salah's Liverpool contract is set to expire in the summer of 2023, at which point he will be a free agent. Salah has frequently said he wants to stay; however, negotiations with Liverpool's owners, Fenway Sports Group (who also own the Boston Red Sox) over a new contract are at an impasse over Salah's salary demands—reportedly double his current deal, which would put him among the best-paid players in football. (Salah's representatives say reports that Salah is currently paid £10.4m a year are inaccurate but otherwise would not comment on negotiations.) “I want to stay, but it's not in my hands. It's in their hands,” Salah says. “They know what I want. I'm not asking for crazy stuff.” And besides, sewage plants and ambulances don't come cheap. To Salah, it's about more than the money. It's about recognition. “The thing is when you ask for something and they show you they can give you something,” he says, they should, “because they appreciate what you did for the club. I've been here for my fifth year now. I know the club very well. I love the fans. The fans love me. But with the administration, they have [been] told the situation. It's in their hands.” If Liverpool is unwilling to match his wage demands—entirely possible, given FSG's reluctance to pay superstar salaries both at Liverpool and at the Red Sox—there are few clubs in world football who could. Barcelona is notoriously broke. Real Madrid seemingly has its sights on France striker Kylian Mbappé. There's Paris Saint-Germain, with its limitless Qatari-backed financing, but otherwise the only real contenders are the two Manchester clubs or Chelsea, and a move to any one of them would torch Salah's status as a Liverpool legend. (I will confess here that I have been a Liverpool fan for 20 years. Yes, I asked him to stay. No, it didn't help.) Salah knows his own worth, and that his next deal may be his last chance to make big money. There is also ‘brand Salah’ to consider. He has sponsorship deals with Adidas, Oppo, Uber, and Pepsi, each paying handsomely for his image. (MBC, the Arabic TV channel, reportedly paid Salah approximately £480,000 to interview him that day at the town hall.) He is 29 now. Conventional wisdom states that football players peak at around 30, although recent advances in sports science are changing that: Zlatan Ibrahimović, for example, is still scoring for AC Milan at 40. “It's not just Zlatan,” Salah says. “[Cristiano] Ronaldo is 36, [Karim] Benzema, 34. All the top players at the moment, [Robert] Lewandowski, Messi, all of them are 34, 35.” At his house, Salah has built his own recovery suite, including a cryotherapy bath and hyperbaric chamber—things you'd normally find only at a cutting-edge training facility or treatment centre. “I have everything at home. It's a hospital,” Salah says. “He's like a sponge for information. He has an incessant hunger for being better,” Klopp says. “He's never satisfied. He's so attentive to what we are asking of him for what helps the team. But alongside that, his commitment to individual improvement is remarkable. Whether it be the fitness and conditioning coaches or the nutritionist or whoever, he looks for those small margins everywhere.” Salah rarely speaks publicly, and never about politics. This, you feel, is partly self-preservation: Salah's visibility in Egypt and the Middle East means anything political he says or does is immediately international news. In the Middle East and online, coverage of him can sometimes verge on moral policing: When Salah posted a picture on Instagram of his family celebrating Christmas, it led to a torrent of abuse. But controversy is a distraction, and so he has tried to remove that from his life too. He doesn't go out partying, or often play video games, instead preferring to stay at home with his kids. “People really change with the fame and the money, so I'm just trying not to do the same, to stay steady,” he says. This, too, is all deliberate, an investment in ensuring he can hit his maximum potential and stay there as long as possible. In late November, a few days after our meeting, France Football held the annual Ballon d'Or awards in Paris. The black-tie gala, attended by football's elite players, proceeded as it always does: Messi won. Salah placed seventh, a slight both inexplicable and expected. Salah spent the evening in Monaco, where he was due to receive the Golden Foot, football's equivalent of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But Liverpool had a game the next day, so he left early and got on a plane home. Magi accepted the award for him. He says that individual awards no longer motivate him. “I'm not really bothered by that.” That doesn't mean he isn't still determined to become the world's best player: He is. Spending time with Salah, it's clear that he has reconfigured his entire life around that singular goal. “If you asked me if this was a drive for me to be here? Yeah, of course. I can't really lie and say honestly I didn't think about it. No, I think about it. I want to be the best player in the world. But I will have a good life even if I don't win [the Ballon d'Or]. My life is OK, everything is fine.” He looks out the window of the town hall, hands in his pockets, shrugs. “Sometimes I feel it's just politics.” He still has other ambitions. “I want to qualify for the World Cup again, I want to win the African Cup [of Nations],” he says. This January, Salah plans to lead his country out onto the field in the delayed 2021 AFCON tournament in Cameroon. Egypt is among the favourites, largely because of Salah. He wants to be a good father. Makka and Kayan are settled in England; Makka already speaks English in a Scouse accent. Occasionally he posts pictures of them together: kicking a ball in the garden, teaching Makka chess, the two of them dressing up as Disney characters. “She is really competitive,” he says, laughing. “She tells me, ‘By the way, I am more famous than you, because when we go out people want to take a picture with me.’ ” To his kids, Salah's fame is normal, the baseline. I was in Salah's box during Liverpool's 4-0 home win over Arsenal, and the kids weren't even watching the game: Makka went off to play in the kids' area and Kayan sat in a high chair, throwing fruit around and giggling joyously, while 50,000 fans sang their father's name. There is a popular idea that Chelsea made a mistake in selling Salah, and that he deserved a better chance to prove himself. (He wasn't the only one. Manchester City's Kevin De Bruyne, a strong contender for the world's best midfielder, is also a Chelsea reject.) This version of events, however, misses the point: Getting benched turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him. “When you feel that your dream is slipping away, you want to do everything to get it,” Salah says. “Whatever it takes to succeed, I will do it.” Perhaps that's why the episodes with the thief and the homeless person resonated so much with people: Everyone deserves a do-over. There's something comforting in the idea that we can all unlock the potential that exists inside of us, even when others don't see it. That all that stands between us and outrageous fortune is hard work. “People are always happy with where they are. People have their routine or their comfort zone or whatever they want to call it. They don't like to change. That's who we are as humans,” Salah says. “People suffer for years because they don't want to change. But for me, like: No. I needed to change.” If that sounds like the kind of pop philosophy you'll find in any self-help book, that's because it is. But how many of us read those books on the secrets of success and actually follow through? Who spends nine hours on a bus, just to play football? Salah did. He spent those hours dreaming of this moment, and now that it has arrived, he's going to savour it for all it's worth. “I sacrificed everything I could just to be sitting here, now,” he says. “I gave everything. All my life was just for football.” He smiles that big smile, and the sun pours in through the window, and maybe it's the chandeliers or the golden room we're in, but it's like he's glowing. He needs to get to training. Even now, he likes to be there early and last to leave. Salah says his goodbyes to the film crew and heads out into the street, where he climbs into the back of a plush BMW sent just for him. Several passersby do a double-take, like, Was that—? But it's too late, he's already gone.

https://lfcglobe.co.uk/liverpool-vs-shrewsbury-stream-links-watch-live-streaming-2/

http://thecyclingentertainment.com/novo/events/09-liverpool/

I supply to that industry - music playlists that is. Unless they are using Spotify (or another domestic music service), then she wouldn't have been able to do that. They'll be using Spotify the bad cheap meffs. And Spotify is unlicensed for business use.

Halal the lads...

Terry McDermott reveals dementia diagnosis Paul Joyce Terry McDermott, the former Liverpool, Newcastle United and England midfielder, has confirmed he has had dementia diagnosed. The 69-year-old announced he is in the early stages of Lewy body dementia after hospital tests. “I’ve got to get on with it and I will,” McDermott said. “It’s the way I’ve been brought up. Nothing has come to me easily. I’m not frightened of taking it on and also, as we’ve seen, there are a lot of former players in a worse state than me. Battling is second nature. The worst thing was [that] until my condition was diagnosed, you don’t know what’s going on.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/terry-mcdermott-reveals-dementia-diagnosis-078wlrrs5

I've got it via Apple

I've had experience of this, but have learned to manage it myself. Effectively, we worry about two things: 1. Things that have already happened, and 2. Things that haven't happened yet. You can't change number 1, but you can change how you 'feel' about things that have happened. The Blindboy podcast has three or four good sections to help you, using the 'ABC' method. 'A' is the activating event 'B' is the belief or thought about it 'C' is the consequence about it https://iveronicawalsh.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/cbtafg_abcdextract_handout.pdf Work through it by writing it down. Then have a think about what you have written down. Here's a link to one of Blindboy's podcasts - highly recommended from me; https://play.acast.com/s/blindboy/anintrotocognitivepsychologypt1

Jürgen Klopp retains the unflinching support of Liverpool’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, and will remain tasked with leading the club forward. The Liverpool manager has admitted that he is enduring one of the lowest points of his managerial career after an unprecedented sequence of six successive home defeats, the latest of which came with the 1-0 loss to Fulham yesterday. Outside scrutiny on Klopp’s reign has intensified now that Liverpool have fallen to eighth in the Premier League, having been top on December 27. However, Klopp can continue to count on the unequivocal backing of FSG, which harbours no doubts that he will oversee a revival in the champions’ fortunes. It believes that a two-month downturn in results is an anomaly and has been shaped hugely by a lengthy injury list during what is an unusual season owing to the pandemic. After five years of progress FSG will not abandon 53-year-old Klopp and plans to make money available to strengthen the team despite the increasing likelihood of missing out on a place in the Champions League next season. Liverpool’s finances will take a hit should they face a season outside Europe’s elite, and that would compound the effects of the pandemic, but funds will be found to improve the team, in keeping with FSG’s overall strategy. Last summer, Thiago Alcântara, Diogo Jota and Kostas Tsimikas were recruited and a lack of availability, rather than complacency, prompted the January signings of Ozan Kabak and Ben Davies to try to offset a defensive crisis. Klopp has said that his squad does not require an overhaul and FSG also believes that this is the case. Both manager and hierarchy are confident that when the likes of Virgil van Dijk, Jordan Henderson and Joe Gomez are available again, there will be an improvement in results. With Van Dijk unlikely to be fit again until next season, there is the possibility of further pain in the short term, yet FSG’s belief that Klopp, lauded as the best manager in the world nine months ago, remains the perfect fit for Liverpool is unshakeable.

My Jack Russell Frank, with his sister Sadie. Both 10 months old...

/\ This.

World exclusive: Man Utd and Liverpool driving 'Project Big Picture' - football’s biggest shake-up in a generation 18-team Premier League, increased EFL funding and axing of League Cup among raft of proposals in 'Revitalisation' document seen by Telegraph By Sam Wallace, Chief Football Writer11 October 2020 • 11:45am Manchester United and Liverpool are the driving force behind the biggest changes to English football in a generation and an extraordinary overhaul of the Premier League, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. The two clubs have worked together on a radical set of proposals – called “Project Big Picture” - that will reshape the finances of the game. The Premier League, the most lucrative sports league in the world, would see a reduction to 18 teams, and controlling power in the hands of the biggest clubs. In return for tearing up many of the rules that have governed the game since the Premier League’s inception in 1992 there will be £250 million rescue package to the Football League to see them through the Covid crisis. The Daily Telegraph can reveal the details of the working document “Revitalisation” authored by Liverpool’s American ownership Fenway Sports Group with support from United. It anticipates the backing of the other members of the so-called big six, Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur. In a remarkable set of proposals, which will send shockwaves through the game, 25 per cent of the Premier League’s annual revenue will go to the EFL clubs with £250 million paid up front to see them through the current crisis. There would also be a gift of £100 million to sustain the Football Association. However, there would be an abolition of the one-club, one-vote principle that has sustained the Premier League since its inception as well as the abolition of the threshold of 14 votes to pass any decision or regulation change. Under the new proposals, the League Cup and the Community Shield would be abolished. There have been additional discussions that the League Cup would survive but without the participation of the clubs in Europe. There would be two automatic promotion places for Championship clubs, but the third, fourth and fifth placed clubs would be in a play-off tournament with the 16th placed Premier League club. The nine clubs who have been in the Premier League for the longest - which includes the big six - would dictate its running in every aspect and would be free to play more games in the expanded Champions League that is anticipated from the 2024-2025 season onwards. As well as the Premier League dropping from 20 clubs to 18, there would be 24 in each of the Championship, League One and League Two making a total of 90. The plan is supported by the EFL chairman Rick Parry who has held talks with Liverpool’s principal owner, the American investor John W Henry, and shareholder and director Mike Gordon. In addition, Parry has spoken to the Glazer family, who own United. The talks began in 2017 but have been accelerated since the coronavirus pandemic has thrust football into the grip of crisis with no fans in stadiums until March at the earliest. Liverpool and United are prepared for a fierce debate over their proposals but they want them implemented as soon as possible. The Revitalisation document calls for immediate action to cut dramatically what it calls the “revenue chasm” in earnings from television contracts between the Premier League and the EFL. In order to discourage Championship clubs from gambling recklessly on promotion, the parachute payments system would be abolished in favour of the 25 per cent share of Premier League revenue being shared more equitably among EFL clubs. Under proposals for the new model of distribution of television revenue in the Premier League, Fenway, the driving force behind the document, insist there would be no greater share for the top six. Their stated aim is to eliminate the huge gap in earnings between Premier League and EFL clubs while in return having a greater control of the decisions made by the Premier League. The document says: “A reset of the economics and governance of the English football pyramid is long overdue”. The proposals also rewrite the Premier League’s 20-club democracy in favour of placing huge power in the hands of the nine clubs with the longest continual stay in the division. As things stand that is the big six, as well as Everton, Southampton and West Ham. Those nine clubs afforded “long-term shareholder status” would have unprecedented power, with the votes of just six of them required to make sweeping changes. These clubs would even be able to veto a new owner taking over a rival club. In an exclusive interview with The Daily Telegraph, Parry said that he had the support of many of his 72 members, many currently facing financial ruin, to go ahead with the plan. He said: “What do we do? Leave it exactly as it is and allow the smaller clubs to wither? Or do we do something about it? And you can’t do something about it without something changing. And the view of our clubs is if the [big] six get some benefits but the 72 also do, we are up for it.” He accepted there would be opposition from the Premier League clubs outside the big six who would see it as detrimental to their financial prospects with less money and two fewer places in the top flight. “It is definitely going to be challenging and it is an enormous change so that won’t be without some pain,” Parry said: “Do I genuinely think it’s for the greater good of the game as a whole? Absolutely. And if the [big] six are deriving some benefit then why shouldn’t they. Why wouldn’t they put their names to this otherwise?” The proposals include: £250 million immediately to the EFL to compensate its clubs for lost matchday revenue, deducted from future television revenue earnings and financed by a loan taken out by the Premier League Special status for the nine longest serving clubs – and the vote of only six of those “long-term shareholders” required to make major changes, including amending rules and regulations, agreeing contracts, removal of the chief executive, and a wide-ranging veto including on club ownership Premier League to go to 18 clubs from 20 £100 million one-off gift to the FA to cover its coronavirus losses, the non-league game, the women’s game, the grassroots 8.5 per cent of annual net Premier League revenue to go on operating costs and “good causes” including the FA From the remainder, 25 per cent of all combined Premier League and Football League revenues to go to the EFL clubs Six per cent of Premier League gross revenues to pay for stadium improvements across the top four divisions, calculated at £100 per seat New rules for the distribution of Premier League television income, overseas and domestic, including proposals that base one portion on performance over three years in the league The abolition of the League Cup and the Community Shield 24 clubs each in the Championship, League One and League Two reducing the professional game overall from 92 clubs to 90 A women's professional league independent of the Premier League or the FA Two sides automatically relegated from the Premier League every season and the top two Championship teams promoted. The 16th place Premier League club in a play-off tournament with the Championship’s third, fourth and fifth placed teams. Financial fair play regulations in line with Uefa, and full access for Premier League executive to club accounts A fan charter including capping of away tickets at £20, away travel subsidised, a focus on a return to safe standing, a minimum away allocation of eight per cent capacity Later Premier League start in August to give greater scope for pre-season friendlies, and requirement for all clubs to compete once every five years in a summer Premier League tournament Huge changes to loan system allowing clubs to have 15 players out on loan domestically at any one time and up to four at a single club in England

EFL - Bristol Rovers...

In a letter to supporters, chief executive Peter Moore was repentant on behalf of the club. “We believe we came to the wrong conclusion last week to announce that we intended to apply to the Coronavirus Retention Scheme and furlough staff due to the suspension of the Premier League football calendar, and are truly sorry for that,” he said in a statement. “Our intentions were, and still are, to ensure the entire workforce is given as much protection as possible from redundancy and/or loss of earnings during this unprecedented period. “We are therefore committed to finding alternative ways to operate while there are no football matches being played that ensures we are not applying for the government relief scheme.” Liverpool have accepted they misjudged the strength of feeling within their fanbase when taking what they initially believed a pragmatic and necessary business decision in the face of mounting costs. The club has been in talks about the economic impact of the health crisis with senior staff for weeks, including manager Jurgen Klopp and leading players. Many senior staff have already accepted pay cuts. “In the spirit of transparency we must also be clear, despite the fact we were in a healthy position prior to this crisis, our revenues have been shut off yet our outgoings remain,” Moore added. “And like almost every sector of society, there is great uncertainty and concern over our present and future. “Like any responsible employer concerned for its workers in the current situation, the Club continues to prepare for a range of different scenarios, around when football can return to operating as it did before the pandemic. These scenarios range from best case to worst and everything in between. “It is an unavoidable truth that several of these scenarios involve a massive downturn in revenue, with correspondingly unprecedented operating losses. Having these vital financial resources so profoundly impacted would obviously negatively affect our ability to operate as we previously have. “We are engaged in the process of exploring all avenues within our scope to limit the inevitable damage.”