Frustrations at the Santiago Bernabeu were once again directed at Gareth Bale as Real Madrid supporters continued the pattern of whistling at the Welsh star during Wednesday’s Champions League win over Apoel Nicosia.
Bale has has been the target of persistent whistling since his arrival in Spain in 2013, with Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane praising the 28-year-old’s composure in the face of adversity last week after another incident during a draw with Valencia.
A section of supporters directed their frustration at Bale after a lackluster performance during Real’s 3-0 victory, but teammate Toni Kroos feels the criticism is unfounded and the whistles don’t benefit anyone in that situation.
“It is, of course, not a good thing to whistle against your own players,” Kroos told reporters, according to ESPN FC. “We gave our all, and Gareth also, and no one deserved it.
“This is Real Madrid and everybody wants to see the best of each player, but there are games where it is impossible to play at the best level.
“But one thing is clear – it does not help anyone.”
Bale isn’t alone. Supporters have a history of jeering other Real Madrid stars, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, who hinted at a possible return to England where he was rarely targeted by Manchester United supporters when he made a mistake.
“I’m very happy being in Spain but obviously I also miss England because you can’t just turn off the memories,” Ronaldo said before last season’s Champions League final against Juventus.
“I don’t like it and it’s not normal that they whistle you in your own stadium. I just don’t like it.
“It shouldn’t be the case that a player who always wants to give his best and give 100 percent for this team, when he makes his first mistake people whistle.”
Since his arrival from Tottenham, Bale has helped the capital-city team win the Liga title and a trio of Champions League crowns – even scoring the winning goal in the first one when Real Madrid beat city rival Atletico Madrid in 2014.
FRISCO, Texas — The NFL is trying to accelerate the timeline in its appeal of a federal judge’s injunction that blocked Dallas Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott’s six-game suspension over a domestic violence case.
The NFL quickly answered a filing from Elliott’s attorneys Wednesday, telling U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant that the league would immediately go to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans if he didn’t rule on its request for a stay of his injunction by Thursday.
The legal maneuverings are unlikely to keep last year’s NFL rushing leader from playing Sunday at Denver. He had already been cleared to play in a season-opening win over the New York Giants before Mazzant granted his request for an injunction.
Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott, whose six-game suspension was put on hold by a judge’s order Friday, said he is happy he will “finally get a chance to prove my innocence.”
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The NFL had until Friday to respond to arguments from Elliott’s camp against Mazzant putting his injunction on hold pending hearings. In that scenario, Mazzant wouldn’t have ruled until next week.
“If this court declines to grant relief, respondents intend to seek a stay from the Court of Appeals and believe it is important to give the Court of Appeals the opportunity to act promptly,” NFL attorneys wrote.
The 22-year-old Elliott was suspended by commissioner Roger Goodell last month, and attorneys representing Elliott for the NFL Players Association contended in a lawsuit that Elliott didn’t get a fair hearing in an appeal that was denied.
Elliott was suspended after the league concluded he had several physical confrontations last summer with Tiffany Thompson, a former girlfriend. Prosecutors in Columbus, Ohio, decided about a year ago not to pursue the case in the city where Elliott starred for Ohio State, citing conflicting evidence.
In their latest filing, attorneys for Elliott argue that the NFL can’t meet the standard for irreparable harm because the league can still suspend the Dallas star if it wins on appeal.
The league argues that the harm is in Mazzant’s ruling interfering with a labor deal that was approved by both sides.
“Petitioner should not be allowed to evade its CBA obligations by delaying suspensions indefinitely through the courts,” NFL attorneys wrote.
A notice has been filed with the federal appeals court, but future filings with the three-judge panel in New Orleans have been on hold while the league followed the procedure of asking Mazzant for a stay of his ruling.
The NFL said its conclusions in suspending Elliott after a yearlong investigation were based on photographs, text messages and other electronic evidence. The running back denied the allegations under oath during the appeal.
The league has argued that it acted within the parameters of a labor agreement that gives Goodell broad authority to suspend players and that the appeal process was consistent with its personal conduct policy.
Attorneys for Elliott contended that the appeal hearing before Harold Henderson was unfair because Henderson barred Thompson and Goodell from testifying and excluded notes from the investigation that were favorable to Elliott. Mazzant’s ruling for the injunction largely agreed.
Elliott, who had 1,631 yards rushing last year as a rookie, finished with 104 yards in the 19-3 win over the Giants.
Maurizio Sarri had the look of a man who needed a cigarette. OK, so perhaps that is always true of the Napoli manager – so fond of his smokes that his hometown fan club baked one into a cake for him. Watching him chew his fingers and hang a pen out the corner of his mouth in the away dugout at the Metalist Stadium on Wednesday, though, you sensed that the urge was getting to him on this occasion more than most.
At his press conference one day earlier, he had spoken about the need to start quickly in the Champions League. “In a six-game group, it is clear that the first game will condition everything that comes after,” Sarri said. “So it’s a hugely important game – more than important, in fact.”
And yet, his players had begun sluggishly away to Shakhtar Donetsk, falling behind to a Taison strike after a quarter of an hour. The closest Napoli came to scoring inside the first 40 minutes was on a sliced clearance by Shakhtar defender Ivan Ordets. The Italian side did generate a brief flurry of chances just before the interval, but then gave up another cheap goal to Facundo Ferreyra.
Was Sarri himself to blame? With hindsight, his decision to omit Dries Mertens from Napoli’s starting XI looks like the wrong one. The man who scored 34 goals for this team last season was finally introduced off the bench closely following that second goal, and Napoli was far more threatening thereafter.
The Belgian won the penalty from which the Italians clawed back their lone consolation goal, and Shakhtar’s defenders were plainly unsettled by his dynamism. And yet, the man who started in his stead is no slouch. Arkadiusz Milik is the second-most expensive signing in club history: the man Napoli was supposed to be built around, before he found himself on the wrong side of soccer’s sliding doors.
Twelve months ago to the day, it was Milik who fired Napoli to victory away to another club from Ukraine, Dynamo Kyiv, scoring both goals in a 2-1 win. The response back home was delirious. The headline writers at Gazzetta dello Sport, Italy’s biggest sports paper, dubbed him “dynamite,” and “the man who turns crosses into gold.”
Milik had already struck twice in a league win over Milan, and followed up the Kyiv game by sticking two past Bologna in his next outing. Just 22 years old at the time, and newly arrived in Naples, the Polish striker had been tasked with replacing Serie A’s single-season record goal-scorer, Gonzalo Higuain. He hardly looked fazed by the challenge.
But then he blew out his knee whilst away on international duty. And fate took his job away. Mertens, then a 29-year-old who had spent his entire career on the wing, moved inside and began a goal-scoring tear that not even he could have predicted. During one preposterous December stretch, he found the net nine times in 17 days.
So when Milik came back, Sarri stalled – using the player’s lack of match fitness as an excuse to keep him on the bench. After a full preseason, though, that will no longer fly. Mertens remains Napoli’s first-choice centre-forward, but a player of Milik’s calibre cannot just sit idly by.
On paper, these are nice problems to have. Between the Champions League, Serie A, and the Coppa Italia, Napoli will need to be able to rotate and give starters a rest at times. The problem is that Milik and Mertens are such fundamentally different players that the team must play differently depending on which one of them is leading the line.
With Mertens, Napoli’s attack took on a very distinct playing style – an approach built on rapid movements and interchanges. Flanked by two similarly undersized but technically gifted forwards in Lorenzo Insigne and Jose Callejon, he could assault the spaces behind the defence himself, or just as readily drop deep, pulling defenders out of position and leaving room for his colleagues to do the same.
Milik, by contrast, is a classic No. 9, a focal point who can hold the ball up with his back to goal or get on the end of a cross. Those skills remain as relevant in the modern game as they ever were, but they are very distinct from what Mertens can offer.
It was not that Milik lacked the quality to beat Shakhtar goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov on Wednesday – indeed, he converted the consolation penalty – but that he did not fit together with the team he was playing in. Napoli completed the greatest number of passes of any side in Europe’s top five leagues last season. Milik, on Wednesday, made a grand total of 13.
Sarri cannot simply slot him into Mertens’ role and expect the team to retain its fluency. Perhaps it would serve Napoli better to have a distinct alternative formation when Milik plays, something that works to his strengths. Or maybe a more subtle tweak can be affected without changing the team’s shape.
In either case, though, the manager has little time to start finding answers. Group F of this season’s Champions League already looked daunting enough, with Manchester City and the Dutch champions, Feyenoord, completing the slate. One defeat does not condemn Napoli to elimination. But, just as Sarri predicted, it has changed the outlook for what comes next.
With David Johnson likely to miss a significant amount of time, the Cardinals must rely on aging quarterback Carson Palmer.
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Johnson, who spent the previous two years with the Cardinals, likely will assume the featured back role in David Johnson’s absence.
David Johnson was placed on injured reserve Tuesday. He is expected to miss two to three months after undergoing surgery to repair a dislocated wrist, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.
Chris Johnson will likely get most of the carries against the Colts on Sunday in Indianapolis, followed by Kerwynn Williams, Andre Ellington, Elijhaa Penny and D.J. Foster. With each running back having a separate strength, Arizona’s rushing game will likely be by committee instead of relying on one player.
Johnson played in just four games last season before suffering a groin injury that required surgery and sent him to injured reserve. Before he was hurt, he had 25 carries for 95 yards as the primary backup. In 2015, he was the NFL’s third-leading rusher (814 yards) before he fractured his tibia in Week 12.
Before 2015, Johnson had never missed a game because of an injury.
He enters this season with 9,537 rushing yards. He told ESPN this offseason that his goal before he retires is to reach 10,000 yards.
Johnson, who will turn 32 on Sept. 23, re-signed with Arizona the day before training camp started, with the understanding that his role would expand compared to last season. Fumbling issues in training camp helped lead to Arizona releasing him before Week 1.
Johnson earned the nickname CJ2K after he rushed for 2,009 yards in 2009, when he played for the Tennessee Titans.
