Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson insists Javier Mascherano will not move to Barcelona unless the Spanish giants offer the fee the Merseyside club feel he is worth.
Argentina captain Mascherano was left out of Liverpool’s 3-0 Premier League loss away to Manchester City on Monday because, Hodgson said, “his head was not right.”
Mascherano is desperate to leave Liverpool because his family have failed to settle on Merseyside and he is understood to be keen to move to Spain.
Barcelona have opened talks with Liverpool about Mascherano, who is one game short of making his 100th career Premier League appearance.
“Javier isn’t in the right frame of mind at the moment to play — his head has obviously been turned by the offer from Barcelona,” Hodgson said.
“But unfortunately, at the moment, the fee that the club thinks is the correct fee and the fee that is being offered is very far apart. Unless that can be resolved he might be unhappy for a long time to come,” he said.
Hodgson said he doesn’t want Mascherano to be sold, adding that the matter had developed over the previous three days.
INJURY TURMOIL: Despite stunning French Open champions Paolini and Errani to advance, Chan was forced to pull out after her partner’s tearful women’s singles defeat Last year’s mixed doubles champions Hsieh Su-wei of Taiwan and Poland’s Jan Zielinski on Monday crashed out of the quarter-finals at Wimbledon, leaving the Taiwanese star focused on pursuing a fifth women’s doubles title in London, while a partner injury forced compatriot Chan Hao-ching to give up on her doubles campaign. Hsieh and Zielinksi, who last year also won the Australia Open title, narrowly lost their opening set 7-6 (9/7), before Britain’s Joe Salisbury and Brazil’s Luisa Stefani stunned the former champions 6-3 at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. The Taiwanese-Polish duo had been dominant in the first two
Real Madrid’s FIFA Club World Cup quarter-final against Borussia Dortmund had taken three crazy turns during nine minutes of second-half stoppage time when Marcel Sabitzer chested the ball and sent a right-footed volley toward Thibaut Courtois’ post. Courtois leapt to his right, extended the long arm on his 2m frame and just managed to get his gloved fingertips on the ball, knocking it down. Courtois hit the ground as the ball bounded up. He looked skyward, planted his right hand to regain his balance, grabbed the ball with both hands on the second bounce and fell onto it with his chest. Sabitzer turned
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has overturned French Olympic fencer Ysaora Thibus’ four-year suspension for doping, ruling that her positive test for a banned substance was caused by kissing her then-boyfriend, American fencer Race Imboden. Thibus, a silver medalist in team foil at the Tokyo Games, had tested positive for ostarine, a prohibited muscle-building substance, during a competition in Paris in January last year. However, CAS concluded there was no intentional wrongdoing, finding it scientifically plausible that repeated kissing over several days with Olympic medalist Imboden — who was taking ostarine at the time — led to accidental contamination. The court
Chelsea scored the go-ahead goal on Malo Gusto’s 83rd-minute shot that went in after a pair of deflections, beating Palmeiras 2-1 on Friday night for a spot in the FIFA Club World Cup semi-finals. Cole Palmer put Chelsea ahead in the 16th minute, but Estevao, an 18-year-old who is to transfer to Chelsea this summer, tied the score against his future club with an angled shot in the 53rd. Gusto’s shot following a short corner kick appeared to deflect off defender Agustin Giay and goalkeeper Weverton and sent the Chelsea portion of 65,782 fans into a frenzy. FIFA credited Weverton with an
RSS