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Posts Tagged ‘daughter’

• Bruce Dickinson takes Liverpool to Europa League match
• ‘I’d like to see Liverpool win again. They’ve had a hard time’

There are many ways to lift a team in crisis. Train harder, for example. Or appoint a new manager. Or go on a team-bonding boot camp.

Liverpool, however, have taken a slightly different route. They have been flown to Naples for their Europa League game against Napoli on Thursday by the Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson. Iron Maiden have had hits such as Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter and, of course, Number of the Beast, although it is unclear whether the 52-year-old performed any of these songs before take-off or landing.

“I would like to see Liverpool winning again,” Dickinson told the Liverpool Echo. “They have had a hard time recently but they are such an institution and mean so much to so many people. It would be nice to see them with their tails up.”

Liverpool fans need not to worry, however, as Dickinson has been a pilot for over 10 years and regularly flies the Iron Maiden band members around the world when they are on tour. He had flown from Iceland to Orlando on Sunday night before taking the Liverpool team to Italy this morning.

Dickinson added: “When I was five, I had Airfix kits like everyone other boy, but I was always too busy doing music. Once I did find the time to fly I was completely hooked. I am not sure how I became a captain of an aeroplane.”

When asked whether he preferred singing or flying, he said: “I don’t know – that is one of those questions, like which one of your kids would you throw out of a hot-air balloon. Iron Maiden fans would lynch me if I stopped singing.”

LiverpoolIron MaidenMarcus Christensonguardian.co.uk

• Benítez says Dalglish would be perfect as his successor
• ‘It was a really sad day when I had to leave Liverpool’

Football Rafael Benítez yesterday checked in at Internazionale, immediately endearing himself to his new employers by describing the job as “the perfect opportunity” while offering a piece of advice for his old ones back on Merseyside. The Spaniard said his former club should appoint Kenny Dalglish as their manager and forget about trying to lure Roy Hodgson from Premier League rivals Fulham.

“I think they should look at Kenny Dalglish,” he said. “He is the best man for the job. The owners should listen to the fans because they are unhappy. No one knows the club better than Dalglish and he would be perfect there. He wants the job and in my opinion should get it.”

Benítez, otherwise, tried to avoid talking about Liverpool at his Inter unveiling and there was no settling of scores with Tom Hicks, George Gillett or any other Liverpool suits with whom he fought. But there was the admission that, due to circumstances at Anfield, he had to go.

Benítez left Liverpool with a £6m severance payment, of course, the first £3m instalment offered in exchange for consent to his departure after one backwards step of a season and one too many disputes with the club’s hierarchy. It would be a surprise if the final pay-off did not include a confidentiality clause but there was a sense of Benítez wishing to move on from the turbulence that characterised his final few years at Anfield having, within a week of his exit, signed a two-year contract with the reigning European champions.

“It was difficult to leave Liverpool after six years working there. I had amazing times there,” said Benítez. “Also my daughter is seven, she lived most of her life there. It’s not easy but things changed so I needed to move and I had the perfect opportunity to come to Inter. The club was fantastic, the fans amazing so it was a really sad day when I had to go but things changed so it was obvious I had to do it.”

Benítez made a brief and emotional return to Merseyside last week when he donated £96,000 to the Hillsborough Family Support Group and what was described as “a significant amount” to the Lily Centre, a breast cancer support group where his wife, Montse, is patron. The causes that matter addressed, he saw little point in expending energy on Hicks and Gillett, the Liverpool co-owners whose takeover and financial problems provided the root cause of his ultimate frustrations.

Javier Mascherano, Dirk Kuyt and even Steven Gerrard have been touted as possible signings for Inter, but a new start at a new club in a new country has not brought a new era of openness from the Spaniard when it comes to transfer targets. After recent frugal times at Anfield, he will simply be pleased to have some.

“I will try to buy good players, of a good level who will suit a top-level club but I can’t say their names. I don’t talk about players of other teams,” he said. The Italian press will soon become accustomed to hearing that line. As for those at Liverpool, Benítez added: “I have been in contact with the majority of players and the majority said thanks for everything and all the best. I talked to Gerrard when it was his birthday and he’s fine. He wants to talk about the World Cup now, not anything else.”

Despite the stark personality contrast with his Inter predecessor, Benítez’s football was not wholly dissimilar to José Mourinho’s at Chelsea, as Jorge Valdano once infamously noted. There is, he accepts, little to fix at the European champions. “I don’t think I am the anti-Mourinho but I am different,” Benítez said.

“Inter are coming off an almost perfect year. I want the footballers not to lose the desire to win. I want to keep that winning mentality and I think I can. I’m happy to have top-class players. The difficulty will be keeping this level but we can do that. I think the level is high and if we can keep that winning spirit I think we can do well. If the players can do the same again this year, for two more years or even more, it will be an historic period for the club.”

Dalglish’s son, meanwhile, has claimed his father only wants to succeed Benítez at Anfield owing to an absence of credible alternatives. Paul Dalglish, now head coach of Tampa Bay Rowdies, revealed: “It’s not as though José Mourinho is going to come and do the job. It’s not as though Fabio Capello’s going to leave England to become the next manager of Liverpool. My dad wants to do the job and he feels he is the best person available to do the job. If José Mourinho was available and he wanted to do the job, my dad wouldn’t have any interest in it because all my dad ever does is act in the best interests of Liverpool Football Club.”

Rafael BenítezLiverpoolInternazionaleAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

Today’s Mill is waiting to be wooed

The Mill is no stranger to the elaborate dance of seduction. The tinklings of the drawing room piano. The scent of lavender, moth balls and Drambuie. The language of coy suggestion, elaborate pursuit and misguided, drunken soy sauce-stinking advance. The tearful pass in the shared mini-cab. The sting of the ju-jitsu municipal self-defence course fist to the bridge of the nose. The long walk back to the mouldering bachelor crawl space with its single sofa bed, its meticulously catalogued collection of original Green Lantern comics and its stench of frowsy decay. The subsequent civil action. It’s a cycle as old as life itself.

So when The Mill heard that Arsène Wenger had announced that he WLTM a tall, capable, not-that-expensive targetman who enjoys doing quite well at first, getting frustrated at waiting for ages until somebody finally crosses the ball, eventually disappearing to Milan for a respectable albeit pointless profit, and taking long boring walks in the country, it seemed only a matter of time before a hoard of suitors appeared.

In today’s Sun Edin Dzeko of Wolfsburg is duly being vigorously fluffed by his agent and presented in a state of freshly-hair-oiled cologne-reeking tumescence as the man to “save Arsenal’s season”. Dzeko is 6ft 3in, the current German Footballer of the Year, and has scored 49 goals in the last season and a bit. He will also cost £15m and cause television commentators to alternate between “Jekko”, “Juzekko”, “Duyetchko” and other variants before eventually just settling on “Dzeko”.

Arsenal have also agreed to sign the Brazilian Zezinho for £1.6m from Juventude. Zezinho is a “wonderkid”. And Phillippe Senderos, who was, unbelievably, also once a wonderkid, is waiting for people to notice he’s still there so that he can announce dramatically that he’s about to leave and go somewhere else, maybe to Atlético Madrid in January

Fernando Torres doesn’t want to play for Manchester City because he considers himself “a born-and-bred Scouser”. “I feel like I am from Liverpool,” he said, adjusting the sleeves of his shellsuit. “I hope to be here for a long time and if my daughter speaks English and Scouse, I will be proud.”

Nani is “heading for the exit” at Old Trafford, but not before he has spent quite a long time almost getting to the exit, turning unaccountably away from the exit, walking straight past the exit, doing a back flip quite near the exit, forgetting what he wanted with the exit anyway, falling over a long way from the exit, and then finally being dragged through the exit while being handed his coat by a pinched-looking Mike Phelan as Ryan Giggs is winched, grudgingly, out of his seat.

Atlético Madrid have “turned down a new mega-offer for striker Sergio Aguero”. The new mega-offer might have been from Chelsea.

Roy Hodgson says Danny Murphy is “like a vintage wine” – overpriced, dusty, and often seen being whisked about under the arm by a sneering, resentful man in a white apron with an ability to convey a sense of utter disdain for every aspect of your being simply by bowing slightly and saying “enjoy” before walking off with an air of feudal loathing.

Harry Redknapp is still “in the hunt” for Brazil midfielder Sandro, who reminds him strangely of his wife. The Mirror says Redknapp will sign him this weekend for £7m. And Manchester United will not sign Adem Ljajic of Partisan Belgrade because of his £10m price tag. “Maybe the real problem is that they are in financial crisis,” says Partisan president Dragan Djuric, who is either (a) in possession of secret financial documents after breaking into the Old Trafford accounts department under cover of darkness and miraculously locating exactly the incriminating bits of paper he needed in the first filing cabinet he casually rifled, just like in the kind of film that stars Matt Damon or Brad Pitt, not doing embarrassing “comedy” but instead playing some kind of corporate whistleblower who has bricks thrown through his window and then runs out into the street and shouts things like “I. Will. Not. Be silenced”; or (b) a Serbian man who won’t, now, be buying a summer house in Tuscany.

Richard Cresswell could sign for Sheffield United. “We have spoken with Cressy,” says Kevin Blackwell.”When Cressy is okay then I’m sure we’ll sit down and talk again.” Cresswell, who hates being called “Cressy” but has let it go on for ages now so he can’t really say anything without it being awkward, is on loan from Stoke.

And Sol Campbell is free to derail Newcastle’s season after and finally “settling his differences” with Notts County.

In The Mail Arsène Wenger will have to spend £12m to “prise away” Toulouse’s André-Pierre Gignac, but only after trying to jimmy Toulouse’s Andre-Pierre Gignac free with a screwdriver, a butter knife that he ends up breaking and, insanely, his car key, before giving up and going off to slam the door and sit in the kitchen and look cross. Gignac has played for France and now looks a better bet than Bordeaux’s Marouane “Five” Chamakh.

The Schalke coach Felix Magath has “opened the door” for goalkeeper Manuel Neuer to join Manchester United. Neueur would cost at least £9m. “If a player sees a better future somewhere else, then I sit down with them at a table,” Magath said, sitting down at a table.

According to the news agency Ansa via Goal.com Super Mario Balotelli isn’t going to leave Internazionale. “Mario has a contract until 2013,” said his agent, who is also his brother.

Jurgen Klinsmann is keeping “silent” over talk he could end up at Liverpool. “There are always rumours,” he told Bild, half-heartedly scanning the morning’s Mill for the bits in between the overly-long and convoluted half-asleep “jokes” for any about actual information about actual players actually doing stuff that might actually matter.

And Carlos Tevez says that Thierry Henry told him to join Arsenal, as well as telling him to jump off a cliff and to put his hand in a fire.

ArsenalArsène WengerManchester CityManchester UnitedLiverpoolAtlético MadridChelseaBarney Ronayguardian.co.uk