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Football in my veins, Toronto, ON (2025)

10/11/2025

Martin Zubimendi on the difference between football in the Premier League and La Liga:

"The mentality is: be a man. Go into clashes hard. It’s more direct. In Spain when you get the ball, it’s more about keeping it; in England, whenever you win it, it’s straight on to the attack. Transitions are unavoidable, it’s harder to control. But handling that is not about ability as such, it’s getting your mind used to it.

"That’s different to La Liga but the thing that has most struck me is the dead ball, how important it is. I’m seeing loads of goals from that and they’re often what opens up the game. We have a set-play coach and we work on that practically daily.

"But I chose a team in Arsenal on the basis of my qualities too: what they wanted from me. I have to adapt my play a bit in terms of playing faster, more direct. I’m a pivot, but in this structure I have the chance to take that step forward and Arteta insists a lot that I can play that final pass and make the difference. But I think my profile doesn’t change much.

"If they have signed me it is because they like what I do. They know this is what I can contribute to the team. If I changed my profile it would be an error."

[Guardian Sport]

10/11/2025

Gasperini says a sign that Italian football is changing is the investment in strikers

"Before everyone bought defenders first. People questioned me at Atalanta for years but when we got Zapata we made UCL football. When we got De Ketelaere and Scamacca we won Europa League.

"Juventus had 3 strong strikers and they still bought another 3. Napoli added 3 attacking players as well. Inter have 4 strikers who are of a top level, that’s where they spent their money.

"When you have strong strikers you have more fun. This is probably a sign that calcio is changing."

10/10/2025

Mkhitaryan in his autobiography about José Mourinho forcing him out of Man United:

"I had lost my patience with Mourinho, 'I said to him, you have been criticising me for two years, you are s**t!' He said 'I never want to see you again.', he would not say a word in training, but every night he'd send a text 'Leave so I can get Alexis.

He'd say on WhatsApp every night, 'Miki, please go away.', it had gotten really bad. And I always copied and pasted the same response, 'If I go, I have to find the right team, otherwise I will wait until the summer.'

Around January, his text changed to 'Miki, please go away so I can get Alexis.' Then my response changed too, I started saying 'I'm not leaving just to please you, and I beg you, please stop texting me. Talk to Mino (Raiola) if you want."

10/10/2025

Antoine Semenyo: "Haaland is number one. You see it on TV, scoring all these goals and thinking, surely he's not like this in person... That man is tall, my goodness. Tall, strong, fast, can finish. He's got everything you need as a striker.

"I remember Man City just bopping, and I'm thinking, okay this is normal that they bop it. Ruben Dias wraps the ball to him, the ball's like this high, I’m thinking ‘how's he going to deal with this?’ just takes it on his chest like this - I am thinking: Haaland, the man.

"I tell you what, the aura he has. You can see that when he's on the pitch. If you don't mark him, it’s done, he's going to score. Like, everyone is trying to mark him, and even when you mark him, he still scores.

"I remember watching him, I was thinking ‘yeah, this is the kind of striker I want to be’. I want to have this presence where I'm being marked by everyone."

10/08/2025

Cristiano Ronaldo: "People, especially my family, say: 'It’s time to stop. You’ve done everything. Why do you want to score a thousand goals? You already have more than 900, what difference will it make?' But I don’t think that way. I believe I’m still producing good things, helping my club and the national team, so why not continue?

"I’m sure that when I retire, I’ll leave fulfilled because I gave everything. I know I don’t have many years left to play, but for the time I have, I try to enjoy it as much as possible… If I could, I’d play football only for the national team, for no other club, because that’s the pinnacle of a footballer’s career."

10/08/2025

Wojciech Szczęsny on the photo of him laughing after conceding the 4th goal:

“I saw the photo, but I promise I wasn’t laughing. It’s very easy to freeze an image at a moment like that, but I don’t usually laugh when I concede four in a game. Someone made a comment to me in the locker room. It wasn’t Robert (Lewandowski). But at this stage of my career, I don’t take my work home with me.”

10/07/2025

Van Basten: "Why on earth is Villarreal vs Barcelona played in the USA? What are we doing? Is this a comedy show? It's completely ridiculous. And it's cheating too by the way! For me this translates to the complete bankruptcy of La Liga.

"UEFA has to stop this from happening."

10/07/2025

🗣️ José Mourinho: “I remember a game in Siena, with Maicon. They said he always got a fifth yellow to be suspended at Christmas, so he could go on vacation to Brazil.

I went to him and said that if he got a yellow he wouldn't be going on vacation, I'm not an idiot. He asked if he scored, could he go? I said 'No, only if you score two.'

In the game, he scored two goals, received a yellow card for taking his shirt off and he went on vacation. I also gave him an extra week off.”

10/07/2025

Former PL Referee Mark Clattenburg: "Everyone called Ekitike silly for removing his shirt, but no one’s saying Maresca’s silly in his actions for getting sent off."

10/07/2025

Wayne Rooney: “I don’t like Arsenal but I would much rather them win the league than Liverpool. I like what they’re doing, they’re figuring it out, they’re finding a way. They’re being difficult to beat, they don’t concede many goals, and I just think there’s something happening.” [BBC]

10/07/2025

Toni Kroos: "Barcelona possesses one of the most attractive styles, if not the most attractive in all of Europe, but I think they take too many risks.

"On a bad day for Pedri or Lamine or Raphinha, any team can hurt them and beat them, you can knock them out of the Champions League. That happened last season against Inter, and this season, they will come up against a team of that type that knocks them out. That will happen to them in the Champions League.

"Starting from the seventy-fifth minute you notice that everyone is more fatigued, and you see them not changing their style to close the spaces. If you're tired and don't change your way of playing, it becomes very obvious how exposed you are."

10/07/2025

Rodrygo: "The game against Man City? It was the hardest. The best day of my life. And for many Madrid fans who keep writing to thank me for those two goals in two minutes. It was crazy.

"With it 1-1, the announcer says there are six minutes of added time and it felt like a goal for us. The Bernabéu went crazy and celebrated as if it were a goal.

"That scared them. And I thought, 'I can score another one.' And I did it with a header. And watch, I could have scored another before extra time! Ederson stopped it. It would have been the greatest hat-trick in history.

"The day before, I told my father I was going to score three goals, really. It was in my mind. It would have been total madness."

[Diario AS]

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