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Wednesday Kickoff: Chicharito could leave Man United; Spain want Del Bosque extension; and more

Javier Hernandez (Getty Images)

By DAN KARELL

The current calendar year has been one of the toughest in the career of Manchester United forward Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez.

The 25-year-old has been a part of the floundering of his national team in the last ten months and has failed to earn a regular place at Man United, making just two starts in five games played, with only one goal scored. Though the goal was an important one against Liverpool in the League Cup, Hernandez told Mexican television station Telemundo Deportes that he may have to leave to play 90 minutes on a weekly basis.

I am working towards that – earning a spot as a starter,” Hernandez said, transcribed by the Daily Mail. “I know that my performance on the pitch will allow me to achieve that goal someday either here [in Manchester] or elsewhere for any other club. I am going on four years here [at Manchester United] and really, like I have always said, I am happy to be able to play for one of the best clubs in the world, doing my best every single day to earn more minutes on the pitch.

“I just need to be given more opportunities to showcase what I can do, because all of us want to be able to contribute our part so this team can win championships.”

Hernandez was a summer transfer target for a number of clubs in Spain, including Atletico Madrid, who eventually settled on David Villa.

Here are some more stories to get your Wednesday started:

SPAIN TO GIVE DEL BOSQUE AN EXTENSION

The Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) are hoping to keep Spanish National Team head coach Vicente Del Bosque around through 2016.

If Spain takes care of business in the next week against Belarus and Georgia in World Cup qualifiers, they’ll qualify for the World Cup and Del Bosque will be given a two-year contract extension that runs through the European Championships in France in 2016.

“Del Bosque is Spanish football heritage,” RFEF General Secretary Jorge Perez told Spanish publication AS. “We have not contemplated an alternative for the position of (national team) head coach. Del Bosque will be with us as long he wants to.”

The 62-year-old head coach, who took over the side in 2008 after Spain won the European Championship, has coached 80 games for the side, the most in history for one coach. While in charge, Spain have won a World Cup title, a European Cup, and scored 197 goals to just 53 goals conceded.

WILSHERE WANTS FOREIGNERS OUT OF THREE LIONS SQUAD

For the second time in a week, Jack Wilshere has been in the center of controversy for all the wrong reasons.

The Arsenal and England National Team midfielder made headlines on Tuesday evening when he told reporters at a press conference that he didn’t believe that Manchester United midfielder Adnan Januzaj should play for England because he isn’t English. Januzaj has been the talk of England after his terrific early-season performances and the fact that he’s still uncapped, despite being currently eligible to play for his birth nation of Belgium as well as Turkey, Serbia, and Albania.

“The only people who should play for England are English people,” Wilshere told BBC Sport. “If I went to Spain and lived there for five years, I’m not going to play for Spain.”

Wilshere clarified his comments on Wednesday in a series of tweets from his official Twitter account, saying that it was a misunderstanding from the journalists and that his opinion is that foreign players shouldn’t play for England.

KLOPP ACCEPTS ADDITIONAL GAME BAN

Borussia Dortmund manager Jurgen Klopp has decided against appealing an additional match suspension from UEFA.

After serving a suspension in the club’s UEFA Champions League match against Marseille, UEFA handed down an extra game suspension, which will now keep Klopp out of their match at Arsenal on October 22. Though originally considering an appeal, Klopp decided against it.

“My main motivation (in not appealing) is that I don’t want to give the impression of trivialize my own misconduct or detracting from it,” Klopp said in a statement on Borussia Dortmund’s website. “I stand by my responsibility and I accept the decision with a heavy heart.”

Klopp, who was suspended for his conduct during Borussia’s first group stage match against Napoli, has said that assistant coach Zeljko Buvac will take charge of the team against Arsenal.

QUICK KICKS

34-year-old Malaga defender Weligton has extended his contract at the club until the end of the 2014/2015 season. (REPORT)

Cardiff City owner Vincent Tan has decided to suspend and replace head of recruitment Iain Moody with a friend of Tan’s son. (REPORT)

Bayern Munich midfielder Thiago Alcantara is still at least two to three weeks away from returning to training with the club after his foot injury has been slow to heal. (REPORT)

Saint Etienne’s 18-year-old stud defender Kurt Zouma has been called up to the senior France National Team for the first time. (REPORT)

Tottenham and Belgium National Team midfielder Moussa Dembele suffered a sprained ankle in training on Tuesday, but on Wednesday head coach Marc Wilmots said that he should be fine for Friday’s match against Croatia. (REPORT)

Mamadou Sakho, a summer signing for Liverpool, has admitted that he left Paris Saint-Germain for England to return to the France side. (REPORT)

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What do you think of these reports? Do you see Hernandez leaving Man United? Do you believe Spain should keep Del Bosque after the 2014 World Cup? What do you think of Wilshere’s comments?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. Some background would be nice… what was Wilshere’s first bout with controversy? What was Klopp initially suspended for?

    Reply
  2. Wilshere has a point, but he’s coming off as a xenophobic loser. I get the arguement against Januzaj playing for England – he has zero ties to England beyond playing soccer, but you tread on thin ice when you start calling people foreigners. If you have familial ties to that nation, you should be able to play for them.

    Reply
    • “you tread on thin ice when you start calling people foreigners.” — is foreigner a dirty word? if someone’s a foreigner, why can’t you call them that?

      And what about calling people you don’t know xenophobic?

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      • Let’s cut out the semantics. The word foreigner, in and of itself, is not dirty – but I’m pretty sure you understand the conotation that it can have when used in certain ways.

        Case in point – Wilshere says that you should be “English” to play for England. Taken at face value, that statement isn’t very ground breaking is it? However, if you read between the lines, you’ll get what he’s really trying to say. He tried to take a step back from the initial statement with a followup, but his true sentiments should be plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain.

  3. I agree with Wilshere regarding Januzaj.
    He has lived in England for three years and only moved there as part of a transfer to Man U. He wasn’t born there, didn’t spend any of his youth there, doesn’t have any family connections there, and didn’t go there as a refugee. He only went there to be part of Man U.

    I imagine we would be pretty pissed if Donovan pledged himself to Germany from his time over there. Or if Villyan Bijev chose England after his loan at Liverpool, or if Pelosi chose England after being in the Liverpool academy for a couple years, or if Lederman chose Spain after playing for the Barcelona community.

    I don’t think that a player should be able to choose a team based *solely* on gaining citizenship by living in that country to play soccer. The precedent could be dangerous if England, Spain, and Germany started claiming every kid that comes through the Arsenal, Barcelona, and Bayern Munich academies as their own.

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    • The problem with what Wilshere said is that he basically ruled out anyone who wasn’t born in England proper. According to Wilshere: Matt Le Tissier is not English enough to play for England because he was born and grew up on Guernsey.
      This is not part of England or the U.K! It is a possession of the crown but it is not subject to UK laws. FRENCH is their official legislative language. Yet he played…

      Basically what I’m trying to say is that Wilshere is xenophobic and has opinions that don’t fit with this Era or his own nation’s extremely complex history. I guess if you are born in the Falklands you won’t be English enough either…..

      Reply
  4. >>But to challenge his “Americanness” (whatever the heck that is) is wher I stand up for any fellow American.<<

    Everyone who plays for the National Team (England, US, whatever) is doing so per the offical rules of FIFA – so live with it. And even if your not in favor, just think – what better to improve their "Americanness" (if you think it's needed) than to have them play with the National Team ?

    I remember one of the first interview with Jermaine Jones when he first joined the USMNT, and he said how included he felt (more so than in Germany). How's that for Americanness?

    And if I was a young soccer player I'd go where I thought I'd have the best chance to to play in the World Cup. Nothing is more American than wanting to suceede at the hights level.

    Reply
    • So, how would you feel about an American young soccer player obtaining Brazilian or Spanish or French citizenship only because he felt that playing for Brazil (Spain, France) was giving him the best chance to win the World Cup?

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      • Hey, why not go for it. It’s a personal choice, and they are lucky if they have a chance to play for any country. If it was my kid, he’d be stuck with the US (have to go back to 1840s to find ancestors not born in the US – potato famine gave us some Irish ancestors to go with all the English, Dutch and Scots).

      • I don’t remember hardly a thing before I was 12… so depending on when I moved to Brazil…. I might feel more Brazilian….

    • “Nothing is more American than wanting to suceede (sp) at the hights(sp) level.”

      DISAGREE. Totally fair at the club level because that’s a job. Americans want success at your job. On a societal level though, I like to think America still honors sacrifice, service above self, integrity, and loyalty above success. International soccer is about representing something greater than yourself. It is about the honor of representing the dreams of your community. I’m not going to point fingers and try and judge which players are playing for selfish reasons vs noble ones, but there are higher virtues than self-promotion, and as a country America still aspires to those. I hope. At least I do.

      Reply
    • NO WAY! National Teams are NATIONAL TEAMS! You play for your country! Jermaine Jones’s father is American. If you were not born there, or have a parent from there, you shouldn’t play on the National team. You want to “succeed at the highest level” you play in the best teams in leagues, not nationally. Its ruining the whole pride of a national team, are you kidding me. Your saying Messi should’ve chose Spain over his national team because he lived in spain????

      Reply
  5. Chicharito comes across as a rather humble guy when I hear him speak English and in translation. I have no love for Man Utd or Mexico, but I wish the Little Pea the best. Man U is going to have to make some serious changes to get back into form. It’ll be interesting to see if Chicharito plays any part in Moyes’ plan.

    Reply
    • Yeah, I remember that one of the reasons SAF wanted him was that he was getting his MBA part-time. Dude is smart and “educated” both academically, and in the way that intellectual Mexicans are brought up to be…an “educated” person isn’t necessarily someone with a PhD…it’s someone with class.

      Reply
    • He needs to move on. Many teams could use his poaching ability. He is (rightfully) just too far down the pecking order at ManU.

      Reply
  6. First off, an 18 year old cannot help that 5 years equals a third of his life. Second, immigration is this thing where folks move from one place to another, making their “nationality” and their heritage a little less than cut and dried. I guess not all of us can find our names in the Domesday Book.

    Do I think players are gaming this FIFA regulation? Sure they are, but that’s a recruitment dynamic that is universal to nearly every sport, only the players and roles and allegiances change.

    But the assumption that there’s some purity test that defines when a person belongs to a nation or not is what I think gets people worked up about this.

    Reply
    • Notice this is only ever really talked about in the world of soccer. I can’t remember the last time I heard complaining about people playing for other countries in Olympic sports (half of our table tennis team is an immigrant family from Asia).

      Or possibly a better comparison is basketball. It’s a game that’s popular worldwide, but only about 5 teams every have a shot at winning anything. That dynamic takes a lot of the competition for players away. If you are selected for those top 5 teams, you stay, and if you don’t you exploit ties to any other country. You never hear people spouting off when Ben Gordon tries for English citizenship.

      Reply
      • On the contrary, you hear about this kind of eligibility issue all the time in the Olympics, more generally, one constantly gears about “purity tests” whether it’s nationality, race, political affiliation, religious association. It’s a global issue that goes far beyond sport.

      • On the contrary, this is a very hot issue in the Olympics. For example, just before the Beijing Olympics, Georgia (not the US state, but one of the former Soviet republics) basically bought an entire beach volleyball team from Brazil. They found some Brazilian players who weren’t good enough to make the Brazil team and offered them substantial amounts of money to play for Georgia. Those who agreed were given Georgian citizenship right away. Needless to say that those “Georgian” players knew next to nothing about the country, didn’t know the language, and in some cases had never even been there.

  7. See that’s what sparks the response from me (and yes I bit). I both respect and disagree with your notion on who should play where. FIFA set the rules and people are, for the most part, playing by them. If that we’re the argument you wouldn’t hear a peep further from me because you have your position as I have mine on this, and while I don’t feel as strongly as you do to bring it up every chance I get it’s all good.

    What prompts my response now and always and forever will is this Americanometer thingy you have in your basement that you bring out every time this conversation takes place. You have beef with AJ playing for us? OK. But to challenge his “Americanness” (whatever the heck that is) is wher I stand up for any fellow American. I am naturalized and am probably too old to put on a uniform and defend my country and people at this point, but I will always stand and defend my fellow citizens whenever and wherever I can. It’s the least I can do, and I will always respond to your challenges of AJ’s and any other American’s “Amaricanness” (whatever that means).

    I kinda like you and respect most of your posts slow, but here we differ and I’ll be thee every time to call you out on this one, buddy.

    Reply
  8. Wonder if the PC police will get on Wilshire for his common sense statements. According to some commenters, it seems like anyone should just play for anywhere they feel like.

    Reply
    • I also think that someone who came to play in the US for five years is a whole lot more American than Aron Johannson although I don’t think either should play for the USMNT.

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      • You see .I don’t think slow is that conservative (I could be wrong on this, sorry if I am slow but based on your positions and your posts I kinda felt that you are liberal if not moderate – not that that matters or is anyone’s business). That’s the cool thing about slow though, that I really like and respect. He/she has a principle that they stand by (that I disagree with) but plaiting slow with a label as a Tea Party member is a bit too far.

        Slow could be a member of the Tea party and while I certainly disagree with their views that does not make them bad or anything. In fact you just did what slow does – you measured someone’s “ness” because it is in opposition to your definition of tolerance. How do you get to slow being a member of the Tea Party because of his/her position on AJ’s “Americanness”? (Man I hate that word)

        This is not a political statement just something to make my point – I am Liberal and proud of it but that does not mean that I don’t and cannot share the views of someone who is right leaning (well it depends on how far right. 🙂 ) just because slow said something unpopular does not warrant name calling. We have to cut that out of our discourse folks and the first step is being decent with those who you disagree with.

      • Nice! But slow provokes when he/she calls people who disagree with him “PC Police.” What is that, some antivirus utility?

      • It is quite easy for radical left wing groups(not american ones really) to be very very xenophobic. Look at Venezuela. The socialist party there is extremely xenophobic.

      • It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with where a player received their soccer education. Darlington Nagbe recieved almost all of his training in the US yet he currently can not play for us even though he’s lived here over half of his life and is married to an American. Yet a guy like Johannson can. Put it this way, if the US does well in the World Cup with over half of our players receiving 99% of their soccer education from another nation’s development system (not saying that will be the case, just a hypothetical), that doesnt reflect well on US Soccer for some of us. As Bruce Arena pointed out, it certainly doesnt represent an improvement over the status quo. Frankly, I’m embarrassed that your political intolerance makes you incapable of considering both sides of this issue.

      • What about all that soccer education Clint got outside the US? Don’t you BE questioning Deuce’s right to wear the crest!

      • Yes farm, by now we all know what you think. While I may or may not agree on an emotional level, individual “feelings” regarding who qualifies are completely irrelevant. It’s a legal issue, your feelings mean nothing…. ask a judge.

        There are rules in place in each country regarding what constitutes citizenship. There are rules according to FIFA regarding what qualifies a person to represent his country. Putting together a team, a manager is obligated to assess the available pool of players legally qualified.

        So… barking at/criticizing at these selections every time a National team makes one is a complete waste of time and is misplaced. Complaints or action should be directed at FIFAs stipulations regarding who qualifies to represent a nation or, address your nations citizenship laws. At a certain point, unless complaints are intended to promote purposeful change….. it really is nothing more than whining.

      • Slow, you’ve brought this argument/sentiment up many times in regards to USMNT players (Brooks, Johannsson, Chandler, Williams, Jones, etc….); and you are welcome to your opinion. However, so long as players adhear to the citizenship laws of the nation involved they are within their right to play for whatever nation they decide to play for.
        In the case of US players….The US has one of the strictest citizenship requirements of any nation. Citizenship is limited to having been born on US Soil, being born to a US Citizen, or 5-10 years to obtain naturalized citizenship.
        If you think that the citizenship requirments for the US need to be more strict I suggest you contact your congressman an push for legislation that requires people to meet whatever your criteria may be…

    • You feel very strongly about this. I’m guessing with your incessant posting on this message board (perhaps others a well?) you have a legion of like minded people that you could organize to lobby FIFA to change the policy. Or you could just keep complaining.

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    • Its not common since if you consider the complex history of the United Kingdom. Are people from the Falklands English? Do they consider themselves English? It’s very shortsighted for a nation like that.

      Reply

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