Captain Colo: The latest vistim of made up media stories?There has been much talk amongst fans in the past few weeks on the situation with Newcastle United’s captain, Fabricio Coloccini.
While there is no doubt that the player is having personal problems at the moment, that he made a request to go back and join his family in Argentina, and that one of his previous clubs, San Lorenzo (where Coloccini’s father Osvaldo works as a youth coach) tried to take advantage of the player’s personal problems by making an audacious attempt to sign the player for free, and finally that the situation has now been resolved until the end of this season at least, there have been other things have been repeated as facts in the media which were completely unsubstantiated.
Is this just the usual dishonest media tripe? Or was a “deep throat” who was party to the negotiations leaking information?
One example without a byeline in the Daily Express confidentally proclaimed: (more…)
Captain Colo: Emotional letter to San Lorenzo. Dear Reader, below is my own personal translation of the letter Fabricio Coloccini allegedly sent to his old Argentinian club San Lorenzo, who have of course been trying to exploit Coloccini’s personal problems to their own ends over the last few weeks.
There is another English translation floating around on the Interweb, however they can be somewhat misleading sometimes so I thought I would check for myself and do my own translation of el Capitano’s original Spanish missive just to be sure.
So, here’s what I came up with, but please bear in mind that my Spanish has become rather rusty in recent years!
Gouffran: "Tomorrow I will be a Newcastle player."Many of you out there will know by about the signing of versatile 23 year old Montpellier defender, Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, confirmed this evening on the Newcastle United’s official website. You have probably heard about the allegedly imminent arrival of 20 year old Nancy full back Massadio Haïdara too.
The other one which has been slightly more “under the radar” has been that of 26 year old forward Yoan Gouffran, who played against the Magpies in the first (home) leg of our Europa League tie against Bordeaux.
Well anyway, though there has been no official confirmation by either of the clubs involved at the time of writing, Gouffran confirmed on his Twitter site that he will be joining Newcastle United, subject presumably to a medical of course. So here’s a full translation of what he wrote below:
Another stiff test for the lads.Venue: St James’ Park, Newcastle. Date: Weds 2nd January, 2013. Kick off: 8.00pm. Referee: Martin Atkinson (Yorks). UK TV: Sky Sports.
Hello, good evening and welcome to our “match banter” for this evening’s game against Everton at St James’ Park.
Of course, this will be our first game of 2013, and the last of what has been a very tricky trio of games over the Christmas and New Year holidays, with the Magpies conceeding a whopping eleven goals in the first two. Well here’s hoping that 2013 starts on a better note than 2012 ended!
It will be tough though. Despite a narrow defeat in their last game against Chelsea, Everton’s recent form has been very good, with the record in their last six games (most recent first) being L|W|W|D|W|D, leaving them at sixth in the Premiership table going into this game. On the other hand, our recent record has been L|L|W|L|L|L, though if you only count Premiership games, it has been L|L|W|L|L|W which is slightly more respectable. (more…)
Same old Shola, always scoring.Many thanks to “ToonBano” from the Toon blog www.toonbano.com for his fourth guest blog here – wt.
As we managed to fall over the line to a 1-0 ‘win’ over QPR its got to be said that was one of the worst games of football I have ever seen in my whole life. Which was caused by mainly two things a) QPR being one of the worst teams that have ever shown up at St James’ Park and b) Our defensive starting line up. Those two miserable things cancelled each other out into an insufferable bore fest that would kill anyone’s Christmas spirit no matter how jolly they were feeling prior to kick off.
But this kind of performance from us on our own patch against a completely inferior side is no surprise whatsoever to all of us, or it shouldn’t be. It’s a typical Alan Pardew performance which we have come to expect in his 2 years here as manager. We didn’t exactly ‘win’ that game on Saturday afternoon but just managed to get the ball into their net on that bare minimal occasion, as the opposition had no chance of doing the same to us. QPR were hopeless. We were not much better. (more…)
