Posts Tagged ‘AC Milan’

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Despite his name Zlatan Ibrahimović is Swedish. His father was from Bijeljina in Bosnia and his mother from Prkos in Croatia. They met, however, in Sweden after both emigrating there a few years earlier.

When Zlatan was six they gave him a pair of football boots and, apart from a short time when he was fifteen, he has never looked back!

Fast forward to 1996 when he joined Malmo and stayed with them until 2001, experiencing relegation, promotion and little else, although it was during his time there that Arsene Wenger tried, unsuccessfully, to sign him for Arsenal. (more…)

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1. A Winning Mentality

Wherever Mourinho has been he has won trophies. Beginning with Porto back in his homeland all those years ago he took this unfancied team to Champion’s League glory. Obviously, domestically he had already won the Portuguese league in order to qualify.

Since leaving Porto for Chelsea he has had one success after another. In fact, since his first club, Benfica, back in 2000 he has managed clubs in a total of 765 games winning 505, a win percentage of 66.01%

It must also be remembered that this success hasn’t always been with the biggest clubs, but some of it has. This brings us to the next point:

2. Big Club Management Experience

Mourinho, as we know, has won the Champion’s League with Porto, in Portugal and Internazionale in Italy. He has also won domestic titles in Portugal, Italy, Spain and England. He has proven, unlike van Gaal and even Guardiola, that he can do the business when there is realistic competition around. (more…)

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At the risk of appearing as though this is becoming my pet project I want to write, for the last time, about the attraction, (or otherwise), of capital cities to football players.

In England, at the moment, there is a feeling that players coming into our game from abroad would rather play for a London team because they would rather live in London.

I don’t think it is the feeling of the majority, but there are certainly some who think this way. I have covered the reasons as to why this isn’t true, specifically about London, in another post, which you can access here.

What I would like to look at now is whether the capital cities in other countries hold any more attraction than the other large cities when a player is making a move. (more…)