Naija vibe

  Manchester City   have not opened transfer talks with   Lionel Messi   and will wait for him to decide his   Barcelona   future before considering formal negotiations, sources have told ESPN. City chiefs have been angered by reports the club have already tabled an offer to Messi ahead of a possible free transfer move to the Etihad Stadium in the summer.  Messi, who has won the Ballon d'Or six times, is free to leave Camp Nou at the end of the season as his contract expires and City, as well as Paris Saint-Germain, are among the clubs interested. Messi has been free to talk to clubs outside Spain since January but sources have told ESPN he has not yet made a decision on where he will play next season and his representatives have not held talks over potential moves. Sources have told ESPN that City will wait to see what Messi decides before making any potential move at the end of the season. It is the same stance they employed in the summer when the 33...

Liverpool FC via Getty Images Danny Ings' early goal was enough for Southampton to end their wait for a win over Liverpool, who put in a toothless display at St Mary's. Liverpool 's frustrating run continued as they slipped to a 1-0 Premier League defeat against  Southampton , handing further impetus to  Manchester United  and the chasing pack. Having drawn their final two games of 2020 to West Brom and Newcastle United, Liverpool were downed by an early goal from their former striker Danny Ings at St Mary's. They remain top, above United on goal difference having played a game more ahead of a crunch clash between the two old rivals at Anfield on January 17. Ings' earliest goal of his Premier League career came after Liverpool switched off from a James Ward-Prowse free-kick. Southampton might have added to their lead before half-time, but although Jurgen Klopp's champions dominated after the restart, they could not avoid a second league defeat of the season. Liv...

  Borussia Dortmund have sacked coach Lucien Favre following a 5-1 home defeat to newly promoted Stuttgart, the club has confirmed. Dortmund, title contenders ahead of the season, have lost their last three home games and trail league leaders Bayern Munich by five points 11 match days into the season. We are all grateful to Lucien Favre for his excellent work over the past two-and-a-half year, in which he and his team won two runner-up championships. As a professional and as a person, Lucien Favre is beyond any doubt," Dortmund chairman Hans-Joachim Watzke said in a statement. Edin Terzic, Otto Addo and Sebastian Geppert will take over until the end of the season amid a tight schedule which sees Dortmund face away trips to Werder Bremen on Tuesday, to Union Berlin on Friday, and then to 2. Bundesliga club Braunschweig in the German Cup on Dec. 22. Terzic, a youth coach who has also worked as an assistant at West Ham and Besiktas, took charge of the Sunday afternoon training sessio...

  Former Barcelona assistant coach Juan Carlos Unzue has said that some players are not capable of handling the strain of playing with the club's talisman Lionel Messi. Unzue, who was assistant to Luis Enrique between 2014 and 2017 at the Camp Nou, said the standards demanded by the Argentine are too much for some teammates. What has kept Messi [where he is] is ambition and how to live with moments of stress," he told YouTube channel Idolos. "He self-demands to himself to keep being the best and, as a result, also wants the best around him, teammates, physio, or coach. That produces a great stress that some teammates are not capable of bearing." Messi almost left Barca in the last transfer window amid speculation of a move to Manchester City and many expect him to leave the club when his contract expires in June. The 53-year-old Unzue said the situation surprised him. "The truth is it came as a shock to me that Messi wanted to leave but, knowing the club and Leo...

  Bayern Munich forward Robert Lewandowski has been nominated for FIFA The Best Men's Player of the Year for 2020, alongside Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Juventus' Cristiano Ronaldo. The women's award will be contested between Manchester City defender Lucy Bronze, Chelsea forward Pernille Harder and Lyon defender Wendie Renard. The FIFA The Best award is the rebirth of the FIFA World Player of the Year award, which ran parallel to the Ballon d'Or award from 1991 to 2009. The two awards then merged to create the FIFA Ballon d'Or from 2010 to 2015 before FIFA The Best was reintroduced in 2016.  Lewandowski, whose 55 goals helped Bayern win the Treble in 2019-20, said he was disappointed the Ballon d'Or award had been cancelled due to COVID-19. But he has the chance to add his first FIFA The Best award as he goes up against winners Ronaldo, who has won it twice, and Messi, who won in 2019. Ronaldo scored 31 goals in Serie A last term as Juventus won the title, ...

  Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has hit out at the fixture schedule and said it set the club up to fail, following the 3-1 win against Everton on Saturday. United have only won three of their opening eight Premier League games this season and back-to-back defeats against Arsenal -- in Solskjaer's 100th game in charge of the club -- and Istanbul Basaksehir led to speculation about his future at Old Trafford However, United responded with a 3-1 win away at Goodison Park to ease the pressure on Solskjaer and he hit out postmatch at the timetable he has had to contend with. "We were set up to fail. The kick-off time set us up to fail. We have been to Turkey, played loads of games this season already, we got back Thursday morning and we are playing Saturday lunchtime, it's an absolute shambles," he said. "These boys deserve better. Luke Shaw has got injured because of it. It's a hamstring which might be a long one and Marcus Rashford might be stru...

 Chelsea continued their fine run of form with a dominant 3-0 win over Burnley at Turf Moor on Saturday afternoon. Hakim Ziyech's strike opened the scoring for Lampard's men with Kurt Zouma and Timo Werner adding to the total in what proved to be a  Blues masterclass in Lancashire.Positives The relentless nature of Chelsea's threat in the final third was on full display here, and when you consider the fact that their defensive performance was equally as impressive, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about the boys from London. They didn't take any unnecessary risks, they executed their game plan brilliantly and it finally felt as if there was substantial communication and cohesion within the team. Negatives On occasion, there were gaps just beyond the halfway line that would've been exploited by more explosive opposition and in the first half, there was a lack of killer instinct that could've put the visitors out of sight before the break. Even when they ...

 Zinedine Zidane has taken responsibility for Real Madrid's Champions League defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk, calling the 3-2 loss "a bad game, a bad night" and vowing to "find the solution" ahead of El Clasico on Saturday. Madrid trailed 3-0 at the Alfredo di Stefano stadium after a disastrous defensive display, before Luka Modric and Vinicius Junior scored in the second half. The result means Zidane's team have lost twice at home in four days -- after being beaten 1-0 by La Liga minnows Cadiz -- to increase the pressure going into the high-profile clash with Barcelona at Camp Nou. "It's a bad feeling. Everything came together," Zidane said in his postmatch news conference on Wednesday night. "We made a mistake with the first goal, and then we lacked confidence. It's just as well my players reacted in the second half. It's a bad game, a bad night. I'm the coach, I have to find the solution, I didn't find it tonight." ...

 Cristiano Ronaldo has left the Portugal national team after testing positive for the coronavirus. Portugal confirmed in a statement that Ronaldo is in isolation and not showing symptoms.The statement added that following Ronaldo's test, the remaining players in the Portugal squad underwent new tests on Tuesday, which came back negative. Portugal will be without Ronaldo when they host Sweden on Wednesday in a UEFA Nations League game. The 35-year-old played all of Sunday's 0-0 draw against world champions France and came closest to scoring when he fired a left-footed strike at goal in added time, but his deflected shot was well saved by France goalkeeper Hugo Lloris. He also started in Portugal's goalless draw against Spain in Lisbon last week, a game that marked his 200th appearance for his country at both youth and senior level. On Monday, Ronaldo posted a picture of himself with the Portugal squad alongside the message: "United on and off the field!" Ronaldo...

  Despite the financial downturn across the globe, clubs in Europe's top five leagues still spent over €4.6 billion in the summer window -- a drop of 43% when compared with 2019. And as the economic reality of COVID-19 hits hard in the next few months, free transfers will become even more important. Some big-name players will be available on a free transfer in 2021 if they don't put pen to paper soon. Here are 10 top players who can be picked up for nothing -- and can start to negotiate with other clubs in January -- with the help of Transfermarkt. Lionel Messi (Barcelona) Messi's desire to leave the club he's been at since the age of 13 was the story of the summer, but he opted not to take them to court over a clause in his contract saying he could leave for free and not for his €700 million release clause. Manchester City (and former Barca manager Pep Guardiola) missed out on him but surely he'll move in 2021 when his contract actually expires. He'll be 34 but...