When it comes to the art of “withering put-downs” few in the history of football matched Brian Clough’s ability on that front, but Martin O’Neill, one of his disciples at Nottingham Forest, learned well from the master.
In a chat with The Times (of London) at the weekend about his forthcoming book, On Days Like These – My Life in Football, O’Neill recalled taking charge of Norwich City in 1995 and one of his players, Mike Milligan, the Manchester-born midfielder who won a single cap for the Republic of Ireland, “testing the new manager a bit”. So…..
“Mike, Irish boy?”
“Yes.”
“Catholic descent?”
“That’s right?”
“Go to church?”
“Yeah I do.”
“Well next time, pray for some ability.”
Mind you, nothing quite topped his handling of John Hartson at Celtic when he was especially peeved with his lack of work rate during a game. “John,” he shouted. “Get warmed up – you’re coming off.” Gulp.
Quote
“My wife is the one who knows best how to define me: a grumpy man and a bit of a dickhead.”
Lazio boss Maurizio Sarri. Mind you, Marina has been married to him for 25 years, so he must have some redeeming qualities.
Number: 726
That’s the cost in millions of Euros of the priciest starting XI fielded anywhere this season (Manchester City’s line-up against Brighton last month), according to CIES Football Observatory.
Word of Mouth
“Woke up this morning, I had three requests: us to win, Man City to win, and me missus to be in a sexy mood. I’ve got two out of three so far, I’ve got a two-hour drive home – I will be grafting to make sure I get a hat-trick.”
Hartlepool gaffer Keith Curle sharing more about his day than we really needed to know.
“We sit by the Ukrainians all the time [at draws and meetings] and that’s nice because we’ve become good friends with them. But we would like to sit by the Croatians and the Czechs a bit more.”
Football Association of Wales chief executive (and FAI old boy) Noel Mooney explaining the benefits of Wales changing their name to Cymru, but completely forgetting poor old Cyprus.
“Ever since I left France, you have nothing to talk about. France needs me, I don’t need France. Even if you have Mbappé, Neymar and Messi, it doesn’t help you because you don’t have God.”
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, sounding a little like a comedian who’s been telling the same joke for 30 years.
Apology of the Week
“We realise now that a link can be made between this advertisement and the appalling working conditions in Qatar and that was never our intention. We deeply regret this and offer our sincere apologies.”
What was that about? Well, Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo thought it would be a mighty idea to make a World Cup TV ad showing construction workers, kitted out in the orange of the Netherlands, dancing on scaffolding at a building site. No, really.
As Jan Kooy of Human Rights Watch asked, not unreasonably, when referring to the number of construction workers who died while building Qatar’s World Cup stadia, “they have Google at Jumbo, right?” Seems not.
More Word of Mouth
“There were bags of piss thrown from the stands down on to the back of the bench. It goes without saying, that is a little irritating.”
And just to complete Maurizio Sarri’s night, his Lazio side’s 1-0 defeat to Feyenoord saw them knocked out of the Europa League and relegated to the Europa Conference League play-offs. Apart from that ...
“I don’t know who the hell they are. I know they’re film stars and all the girls go ‘whoo’, but I’ve never seen anything they’ve been in.”
How excited was Oldham chairman Frank Rothwell at the prospect of meeting Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney at Sunday’s FA Cup game between the teams? Not a lot.
“We fear our dear region is at risk of becoming a forgotten Atlantis, a place only known in ancient scriptures.”
Jimmy Sandberg, the tourism chief for Halland in Sweden, on Google assuming you’re looking for ‘Haaland’ whenever you search for the place. Erling is, then, wiping Halland out, a bit like he’s doing to Premier League defences.
