Tag: Football News

Barcelona forward Ansu Fati broke a 95-year national record to become Spain’s youngest goalscorer at the age of 17 years and 311 days against Ukraine.

Fati – also the youngest goalscorer in Champions League history and Barcelona’s youngest scorer in La Liga – curled home a fine 20-yard shot off the post on his first start.

He had already won a penalty, scored by Sergio Ramos, as he became the youngest player to start a Nations League match.

Ramos added a header in the win.

The Real Madrid defender has now incredibly scored 10 goals in his last 15 caps.

The 34-year-old has 23 goals for his country, as many as the great Alfredo di Stefano.

Manchester City defender Eric Garcia, 19, made his debut as a second-half substitute while new City signing Ferran Torres scored a late fourth with a volley at the far post.

Barcelona and Juventus are negotiating a fee that will allow Luis Suarez to make the move to the Serie A champions.

According to reports, the Uruguay international, Suarez has already reached a personal agreement over a three-year contract worth €10 million (£9m/$12m) per season with the Turin giants.

Suarez is set to sit an Italian language exam in the coming days to get a passport to allow him to make the move.

The 33-year-old is in the final year of his contract at Camp Nou, which will automatically renew for a further year should he feature in more than 60 per cent of matches.

New Barca boss Ronald Koeman has decided Suarez has no place in his plans for the future and the attacker called for clarity on his place in the squad from president Josep Maria Bartomeu last month.

The Catalan side could release Suarez but it would cost €14m (£13m/$17m) to terminate the former Liverpool star’s contract, which is far from ideal considering the financial issues the club has had to contend with amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Barca are already plotting a move for Inter star Lautaro Martinez to take Suarez’s place and partner fellow Argentina star Lionel Messi up front after the latter confirmed to Goal on Friday that he will stay despite his desire to leave for free this summer .

Koeman’s side have also been linked with a move for Lyon and Netherlands star Memphis Depay, who recently suggested he would be open to leaving the French side in the current transfer window. Lyon coach Rudi Garcia admitted on Sunday that he would not stand in the 26-year-old’s way if Barca made an offer.

Juve, meanwhile, are in need of a new forward after new coach Andrea Pirlo confirmed Gonzalo Higuain will leave a year before his contract expires.

Suarez joined the Blaugrana from Liverpool in 2014 and has scored 198 goals in 283 appearances as he helped them to four La Liga titles and a Champions League crown.

He scored 21 times in 36 games in all competitions last season as they finished second in the Spanish top-flight and crashed out of Europe’s top club competition at the quarter-final stage with an 8-2 defeat to Bayern Munich.

Wolverhampton Wanderers have bolstered their defensive options with the signing of Fernando Marcal from Lyon.

The 31-year-old, who can play at both left wing-back and centre-back, has arrived at Wolves on a two-year deal for an undisclosed fee.

After starting out his career in his native Brazil with Gremio, Marcal moved to Portugal, where he played for Torreense in the second tier and then Nacional in the Portuguese Primera Liga.

Following spells on loan from Benfica with Gaziantepspor and Guingamp, Marcal joined Lyon in 2017.

He made 42 Ligue 1 appearances and helped the French side reach the semi-finals of last season’s UEFA Champions League.

Marcal will report for testing on Monday a week before Wolves’ opening match of the season at Sheffield United.

Chelsea have announced the signing of Kai Havertz from Bayer Leverkusen for a total fee of £89 million.

The German passed his medical earlier today and will join Frank Lampard’s team immediately.

This makes it Chelsea’s sixth signing after signing Kai Havertz from Bayer Leverkusen for a total fee of £89 million.

Havertz joins Ben Chilwell, Thiago Silva, Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner, and Malang Sarr as the new Chelsea additions for the upcoming 2020/21 English Premier League season.

The 21-year-old German joined the Bayer academy in 2014 and has spent six years at the club. In the 2019/20 season, Havertz scored 18 goals and created nine assists in 45 games and was deployed primarily as a central attacking midfielder.

The issue now will be about the balance in the side and how Frank Lampard fits all his new attacking players into the starting XI for the big games.

Lampard will have a lot of different options on his hands, but with the amount of congested fixtures this season, there will need to be some rotation.

However, Chelsea don’t seem to have finished with their transfers with reliable sources linking them to Edouard Mendy from Rennes. The Senegalese keeper has a price-tag of £30 million which Chelsea are ready to use.

Lionel Messi has put to bed the biggest potential transfer saga this summer by committing his future to Barcelona in a statement on Friday, confirming a dramatic u-turn after initially telling the club he wanted to leave.

“I wasn’t happy and I wanted to leave,” the player told Goal. “I have not been allowed this in any way and I will stay at the club so as not to get into a legal dispute. The management of the club led by Bartomeu is a disaster.”

It had earlier been reported the Argentine icon and Barca’s all-time top scorer would make his decision official as the club had made it known they would not sell him for less than the €700 million buyout clause in his contract.

“I’ll continue at Barcelona and my attitude won’t change, no matter how much I have wanted to go. “I told the club, the president, that I wanted to go.

I’ve been telling him all year. “I thought my time in Barcelona was over, sadly – I always wanted to finish my career here,” he said.