Ronaldo’s Fallout, The Mbappe Saga, The UCL Draw + More in The Football Tea #1
By Jim James
Welcome back to the blog everyone, and today we’ll start the first edition of The Football Tea: A weekly post where we round up the football news of the previous week.
Ronaldo Transfer
As Recent stories suggest that Manchester City & Juventus have reached an agreement on a transfer fee & Jorge Mendes & Man City have also reached an agreement, the fee has been varied from anywhere between 25-30 million British Pounds. It is most likely to be announced before the next Juve game, which is a major blow for everyone in Juventus except Paulo Dybala.
It is sad what has happened over the last few months between the two sides. A fallout, mainly over the recent failures of Juventus. A majorly disappointing season, barely making it to the CL, getting knocked out in the Round of 16, having only a domestic cup, and now their best player is leaving. Gee, doesn’t sound like any other club that I know.
He is set to join Pep Guardiola’s Man City for a fee in the region of 25-30 million British Pounds, and now Pep is set to start coaching the other one of the two megastars of this age. I have two observations: The first is the most uncertain: Jorge Mendes was spotted in Paris – not Manchester – earlier today and according to Foot Mercado, he’s offered Ronaldo back to United, who after signing Jadon Sancho & Raphael Varane for a combined 120 million Pounds, don’t have the financial appetite to sign their former Golden Boy. The other one also has to do with Manchester United as well: what will happen to their relationship now that he’s signing for their inter-city rivals, their cross-town foes? Ronaldo has always said how he’s wanted to go back to Man U, and until this week I’ve thought that he was done with new adventures, that he would go back to Man U, then Sporting to end out his career. It will be exciting to see what he can do with Man City this season.
Mbappe Saga
Some reports have suggested that PSG will accept the bid for Mbappe & others say that they are currently negotiating and a meeting point hasn’t been reached yet, but again, this one seems a formality. After a whole 4 years of this dragging on, Kylian Mbappe is about to join Real Madrid
This comes as a saddening for PSG & its fans, but Lionel Messi is a nice consolation prize, plus now you’ll have 170 million euros to spend plus 10 in addons for a potential now replacement & a Haaland push.
I’m not 100% on how to feel about this for Real. Sure, on the face of it it seems like all good news for Los Blancos, trying to bring back the Galacticos, but they’re IN NO PLACE to do that. They were financially stable when they had the Galacticos, they’re in 1 billion euro debt and will be in 1.2 billion euro debt after this deal gets over the line. I still expect a Barca-esque rebuild from them soon. Maybe I’m just a bitter Barca fan.
UCL Draw
The Champions League draw was earlier today and I have to say, wow, just wow. Barca ended up with a 50/50 chance of ending up with Lille or Bayern. Guess who we got. Yep, Bayern. Ratsimus Maximus. We also got Benfica in our group as well as Dinamo Kyiv from last year, although I would’ve wanted Sheriff.
Man City FINALLY got the group of death with PSG & Leipzig in their group, who will have played each other 5 times since the Semifinals of the 2020 Champions League. Liverpool & Atletico play each other again, so do Villarreal & Man U, so a lot of scores will be settled in these groups.
Harry Kane
What. An. ANTICLIMAX. Harry Kane announced that he’s staying at Spurs yesterday and I’m livid. This was it? City were supposed to sign Harry Kane for 120 million Pounds, Kane was supposed to win, and Levy had 120 million pounds more to spend on the next Ndombele.
However, from a certain point of view, this was coming. When Kane agreed to go back to training and talks with City weren’t progressing for a couple weeks, a seed of doubt was planted, and it ended up sprouting.
Pep Guardiola
This news is quite shocking for me, he has 2 years now to win the Champions League with City before “taking a break” from the Beautiful Game. Cristiano Ronaldo hasn’t had much Champions League success recently with Juventus, but will hope to regain his form with Man City. Still, quite a shocker.
That is it for the first ever edition of Football Tea. That recaps an epic week of football news, and I hope to make this series a consistent thing now. I’m Jim James, and I’ll see you soon.