Category: Football (Soccer)

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With more than 80,000 English football fans expected to descend on Bilbao for the Bigger Vase final, it’s safe to assume that approximately half of them will return home in despair, while almost all of them will be seriously out of pocket. But despite its status as a fine location with a proud football heritage, Bilbao doesn’t have the infrastructure to cope with the myriad demands that come with hosting a game between the 16th and 17th best teams in England. With “budget” flights costing well north of a grand and even the most low-rent accommodation priced up at £500-plus a night, one can but hope for the sake of those Spurs and Manchester United fans who use plane, train, automobile or boat to arrive in northern Spain for this season-defining match that Bilbao has no shortage of doorways and park benches. Expect plenty to be occupied on Tuesday evening by green-around-the-gills landlubbers who set off on Sunday evening’s Portsmouth ferry, a vessel which docked in Bilbao earlier.

A very beautiful career is coming to an end, a very full life. I feel very fortunate for what I’ve experienced. I didn’t expect it, but I think the time has come and I feel like bringing it to a close here” – former Barcelona, Liverpool and Spain vibes-man, Pepe Reina, is hanging up his gloves aged 7842 after Como’s final game of the season on Friday. He might have a busy last day at the office given Inter will be desperately fighting for the title. Look out for any loose beachballs, Pepe!

Trust the Germans to have a word to describe every situation or feeling. Liverpool’s current performance (or lack of) can be defined as Erfüllungsleere” – Krishna Moorthy.

Given this appears to be the year of the underdog in cup finals, Tottenham and Manchester United must be really optimistic” – Martyn Shapter.

Re: Memory Lane (yesterday’s Football Daily, full email edition) – that mascot got a bit more than they bargained for” – Jim Hearson.

I’d question the wisdom of publishing both of Michael Glogower’s pun-laden Eredivisie missives in recent letters sections. Remember, two De Jongs don’t make a right …” – Derek McGee.

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Winger enters Europa League final as his club’s top scorer this season after showing application alongside ability

“It’s easy when things aren’t going well to come up with excuses,” Brennan Johnson says and, with things not going well for him at Tottenham, there was plenty of stuff that he could have hidden behind.

The weight of the £47.5m fee which took him from Nottingham Forest in September 2023; Spurs have paid more for only three players in their history. The sky-high expectations of being at one of London’s glamour clubs. Apart from a loan to League One Lincoln in 2020-21, Johnson had known life only in Nottingham and at Forest, whose academy he joined at the age of eight. And then there was the social media abuse; kryptonite for confidence.

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• Europa League would be club’s first silverware since 2008
• Van de Ven: Postecoglou has ‘proved all you guys wrong’

Micky van de Ven remembers being told that he would never win a trophy in his career after he moved to Tottenham. But the centre-half, who was signed by Ange Postecoglou from Wolfsburg in the summer of 2023, says the collective determination within the club to break the silverware curse will fuel them in Wednesday’s Europa League final against Manchester United in Bilbao. Spurs have won nothing since the 2008 League Cup.

“It will be a big thing, of course, because everybody knows that when you join Tottenham, you get the words through of: ‘Ah, you’re not going to win a trophy, you will be trophyless for the rest of your career,’” Van de Ven said. “All the guys that came up here were like: ‘We’re going to change something about this club.’

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