Straight Gangsterism

The Sunderland game provides most of the stories today. Some glowing praise for Steve Bruce from Sir Alex, some for him as a manager, some for him as a player:

"Bobby Robson came to the team hotel in Portugal the year we played in Eusebio's testimonial game and, in front of all the players, he apologised to Steve for not picking him for England," recalled Ferguson.

"He accepted he had made a mistake. Steve was very unfortunate not to play for his country but he was a great player for us."

Perhaps not great in the same way as Cantona or Ryan Giggs, but in terms of heart, determination, bravery and desire, Bruce was out on his own.

"He was always hobbling about the training ground with knocks and hamstrings but he would just rub them off and play. It was incredible," Ferguson added.

"Heroes get built up very quickly at United. There are some unsung heroes, who don't get the same plaudits. Denis Irwin was one and Steve was exactly the same.

"But his partnership with Gary Pallister lasted for years. They hardly missed a game between them.

"They were pretty great characters too. It makes me laugh just thinking about them."

Reciprocal praise for Sir Alex from Steve Bruce:

"The one thing I am not frightened of is hard work, that's the one thing I have taken from him.

"I don't get in for 6.30am - I don't know if he still does that - but always when we got there, his car was there.

"That's the biggest thing I have learnt from him, not to take anything for granted, never to get carried away and not be afraid to work hard.

"To try to copy him, though, would be ridiculous. You would be found out very, very quickly. You have to be yourself." ...

"What do you say? All the superlatives have been said. He is just very, very good at what he does and that doesn't seem to change.

"But he has got an unbelievable hunger to win and achieve, and once he wins something, it is forgotten about within a day.

"'Okay, that's won now, what can I win again?'. That's the way he goes. You never see him really carried away with it."

Sticking with Sunderland, Kieran Richardson has a few words about his time at Old Trafford, and the article includes a nice little story about Roy Keane for good measure:

Texting Roy Keane is clearly not a pursuit for the faint-hearted. Last weekend Dwight Yorke revealed he sent the Irishman a good luck message following Keane's resignation from Sunderland last December only to receive the reply "Go fuck yourself." Kieran Richardson also texted his former Manchester United team-mate and was rewarded with a much more positive response. "Keep your head down and good things will happen for you," advised the man who brought him to Wearside in the summer of 2007. ...

"The first time I played [left-back] it was in the Champions League against Villarreal when Gabriel Heinze was injured," he recalled. "I did well and carried on there for most of the season. Sir Alex and Carlos Queiroz (Ferguson's then assistant) said they wanted me to keep me there but I'd always been a winger, midfielder or used in attack and I wasn't really open to it. I wasn't enthusiastic. Carlos said you can be like Roberto Carlos because you've got the pace, the energy but I just wanted to be in midfield."

And on going up against Ronaldo:

'I trained as a left back which meant that I had the best player in the world running at me in training in Cristiano Ronaldo.

'Obviously you're going to learn quickly because you won't come up against anyone better. We are both quick and he might get past me but I would be back straight away. We had some good battles.'

More from the press conference, on Owen Hargreaves:

“He has proved what an excellent footballer he is with his versatility and speed,” said Ferguson.

“And one area he may help us in more is that, outside of Ronaldo, I don’t think there is a better set-piece deliverer of the ball than Owen.

“He is a great asset at free-kicks, which you might look upon as minimal, but I look at it as an added detail to a football team.” ...

He said: “Ronaldo can get you three or four goals from free-kicks and we are searching for that at the moment.

“Ryan scored against Wolfsburg on Wednesday but it was deflection. It was a bit fortuitous but he had a great free-kick against Spurs the other week.

“But we are not going to have Ryan every game, so to have someone who can score from a free-kick or deliver a set-piece will be a bonus for us.”

Ferguson, who hopes to have England star Hargreaves available in November, added: “The thing about Owen is that he can play a few positions. He can play centre midfield, he can play wide right or right-back.

“Hopefully he will be back into football training soon.

“The signs are good. He has had absolutely no reaction at all from the operations.”

On Michael Owen's injury:

“We expect him to be available for the next game, it certainly won’t be three weeks.

“We are quite pleased. Obviously it is understandable we wanted to take precautions given his past history but we are quite comfortable with the situation.

“He did miss training earlier this week so maybe we should have left him out. But he wanted to play and I wanted him to play. Thankfully it is not a big problem for us.”

Owen himself on his injury:

"The injury is fine. I just felt my groin going tight and if I'd kept on playing, then I think I would've pulled it. So I came off before I pulled up.

"Instead of being out for three or four weeks, I'm only going to be out for three or four days. You listen to your body a bit more as you get older and more experienced!"

There's a nice piece/interview with Berba in The Times, worth reading in full:

But talking to Berbatov, it quickly becomes clear that this is an intensely private man whose shyness is mistakenly construed as arrogance. Mystery and intrigue surround him, but he seems to like it that way, which in part explains his discomfort when the little-known but shocking story of his kidnapping as a young player is raised unexpectedly.

According to a book published last year — and now confirmed by the player — Berbatov was 18 and the jewel in CSKA Sofia’s crown. “Where did you find out about that?” Berbatov asks, quizzically, after a brief, dramatic pause. “That’s true. It was a horrific ordeal but a long time ago now. That was a time back then, you know.”

In a scene straight out of a movie, Berbatov was grabbed after training by three henchmen of Georgi Iliev, a Bulgarian gangster, who was said to be determined to force this emerging star to sign for his club, Levski Kjustendil.

Dragged to meet Iliev, Berbatov managed to make a frantic call to his father, Ivan, a former footballer, who intervened. In August 2005, Iliev was gunned down as part of a suspected turf war between rival criminal gangs.

Finally, a humorous piece on The Guardian blog about the obsession with ranking footballers w/r/t Rooney:

The idea that you've always got to have a really clear notion of who is The Best Player In The World has become increasingly important. For what it's worth, I think Rooney is currently the 11th best player, although I have absolutely no evidence to support this and I'm willing to accept that he might also be the ninth best player, or the 13th, or the 21st. Is he really better than Ryan Giggs? Or some Serbians you've only vaguely heard of but who turn out to be devastatingly adept at all the things that seem so difficult when an England player tries them and the TV commentator has to put on his throaty, concerned voice and say, "always struggling to reach that ball"?

It's all very confusing. Perhaps there's no real way of knowing where we stand outside of staging one of those evenings on Sky Sports where David Platt and Glenn Hoddle sit around a table in black tie talking solemnly about quick feet and having a picture in your head and using the word "top" a lot as in "Richard, we're talking top, top players here, top, top, top players" while everyone nods sadly, as though, rather than talking about Frank Lampard, Graeme Souness has just delivered the funeral elegy for a heroic dead horse.