Former Newcastle forward Stephane Guivarc’h has lashed out at a poll in a British newspaper that named the 1998 World Cup winner as the worst striker ever to appear in the Premier League.
Guivarc’h, who played under Kenny Dalglish and then Ruud Gullit at Newcastle in 1998, was responding to a survey published in the Daily Mail last week.
He told yesterday’s edition of French newspaper 10 Sport: “I couldn’t care less about this Daily Mail poll. It’s really a crap paper, how can they judge that?”
“At Newcastle I only started in two games and played in four in total. And I scored once, against Liverpool,” Guivarc’h said.
“After two matches Kenny Dalglish, who signed me and who wanted to use me with Alan Shearer, was fired. Ruud Gullit arrived and sidelined me straight away,” he said.
Guivarc’h, who retired in 2002 and now coaches a French amateur side in Brittany, dismissed Gullit as “a tourist.”
“He used to only turn up on Wednesdays and the day of the match, and spent the rest of the time with his wife back home in the Netherlands,” he said. “Never has a coach shown me such a lack of respect.”
The 39-year-old recalled: “After six months I left to join Rangers. I wanted to link up with [Rangers’ then French goalkeeper] Lionel Charbonnier. But the day I signed, he got injured.”
“In the Scottish Cup final I scored and set up another goal, but my ankle was causing me a lot of problems,” he said.
Guivarc’h left Rangers for Auxerre in 1999, going on to score 25 goals in 60 appearances before ending his career at Guingamp in 2002.
Turning his ire on English soccer in general, Guivarc’h concluded: “In fact, what have the English won since the 1966 World Cup?”
“Perhaps they invented football, but they would do better to focus on their national team because they haven’t really made a lot of progress for quite some time,” he said.
Guivarc’h started each of France’s seven World Cup games on the way to the 1998 title but failed to score any goals. In a total of 14 appearances for Les Bleus he managed one goal.
He was made a Chevalier (Knight) of the Legion d’honneur in 1998.
In the Daily Mail poll the second worst striker nomination went to West Ham’s former Dutch player Mark Boogers with Aston Villa “flop” Bosko Balaban in third.
Others to make the rogues’ list were “the footballer that never was,” Southampton’s Ali Dia, Fulham’s Steve Marlet, Ade Akinbiyi (Leicester), Tomas Brolin (Leeds), Andriy Shevchenko (Chelsea), Jason Lee (Nottingham Forest) and Sergei Rebrov (Tottenham).
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WITER
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier