Page 105 - Soccer360 Issue 107

DID YOU KNOW?
• Virgil van Dijk played his 100th match for Liverpool when the Reds beat Brentford 2-0. He has won 82 and lost just two of those (D16), with only Patrice Evra with Man Utd (263) picking up more points in his first 100 home games with a side in the competition than van Dijk (262).
• New Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca (right) is the first manager in Premier League history to see his team score six goals in his first away game in the competition.
OOOOOOPS
Chelsea forward Noni Madueke mistakenly shared an X-rated message about Wolves ahead of the Blues’ Premier League clash with the West Midlands side. The ex-
PSV man shared an Instagram message showing his location as Wolverhampton and added: “Everything about this place
is s***.” Madueke, who has nearly one million followers, quickly realized he had used the wrong social media account. And he responded: “Damn wrong Instagram account. You lot are too fast.”
By Derek Ross
The greatest players of all time. Yes, well we’ve all seen the usual lists, at the usual times, containing the usual names. I won’t mention them here and of course those names wouldn’t garner much disagreement from me. But for every world’s greatest player there’s another great player out there whose recognition lingers in the shadows of obscurity, unheralded, unsung and little known. Such players are every part of the great history and tapestry of the beautiful game. if nowhere else, deserve a big shout out at least within the pages of Soccer 360 Magazine.
Valentino Mazzola
Let’s face it. Italy don’t do c**p players. And even when they do, they still seem to be better than everybody else’s, and that’s before we get to the matinee idol looks, and silk football strips designed more for striding down the catwalk than rolling around on grass. Style is the sort of thing that Italians inherit, while the rest of us inherit Asthma and bad skin.
And when it comes to stylish footballers, the Italians are literally in a league of their own. And yet in a glamorous rollcall of Italian superstars that include the likes of Giuseppe Meazza, Paolo Maldini, Roberto Baggio, Franco Baresi, Paolo Rossi and Andrea Pirlo, it is some mark of Valentino Mazzola that he is still regarded by many Italians as the greatest Italian footballer of all time.
He won five Serie A championships and was the Italian national team captain for two years. I had to look him up and conduct
a bit of the old research, and so your correspondent can confidently report that there’s absolutely no doubting the man’s pedigree. An old-fashioned number 10, Mazzola was the archetypal complete player who was as hard-working as he was technically skilled, and who skippered the great Torino team of the 1940s, known as ‘Grande Torino’.
And he wasn’t afraid to do the dirty work either. Mazzola
was famous for raising his shirt’s sleeves when his team were playing like relegation contenders as a signal to his teammates and the fans. Mazzola won the Serie A title five times, scoring 148 goals, but tragically died in the Superga air disaster, along with all of his Torino teammates, at the age of 30. His story makes any serious football fan feel short-changed, so I get exactly where his legions of Italian admirers are coming from.
KIM TIME
Kim Kardashian linked up with Jude Bellingham at Real Madrid’s training ground during a visit to the Spanish capital. But Los Blancos fans will be praying her infamous ‘curse’ does not strike again. Kim loves taking her kids North, Saint, Chicago and Psalm to watch their favourite sports teams in action. The famous supermodel visited the club’s training ground where she linked up with various
big names. David Alaba, Eduardo Camavinga and Vinicius Jr were among those who posed for photos. But it was Bellingham who delighted Saint and friends as he signed autographs on a customised jersey. The England ace is the face of Skims, an underwear brand created by Kim.
23
Noni Madueke is the 23rd different player to score a Premier League hat-trick for Chelsea, more unique hat-trick scorers than any other side in the competition.
EIGHT LITTLE WORDS
Erling Haaland shut down a reporter with a brutally witty eight-word response to a Premier League fantasy football question. Haaland was in goal monster form after netting his tenth Man City hat-trick in City’s 4-1 win against Ipswich. And most footie fans around
the country reaped the benefits of having the double Golden Boot winner run rampant against the newly- promoted side. Around nine of out ten fantasy football managers would have captained the Norwegian
striker on the second Gameweek. The journalist asked: “I’ve got a fantasy league with my friends and we all captained you today apart from one guy. We’ve all been laughing at him today. What’s your message to the guy who left you out?” To which Haaland replied: “Yeah it’s sad for him and I don’t care”, before grinning.
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