Bayern Munich linked to UEFA Cup Match Fixing

As per a Spanish daily,El Pais the second leg of the semifinal contested between Bayern Munich and Zenith St Petersburg was fixed.

Zenith had won that game 4-0 after both teams drew 1-1 in Munich.They went on to win the tournament as well.

The paper goes on to say that a Spanish judge has sent two tapes of Russian mobsters who were behind the alleged match fixing scenario.The first, from rumored Russian gang member Gennady Petrov, mentions paying 50 million of unpaid currency to Bayern. The second, from Petrov’s aide, states the 4-0 Zenit scoreline before the match took place.

Source : Sports Illustrated CNN

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Champions League : Match Day 2 : Tuesday

Scores from Match Day 2 action on Tuesday (30/09)

Aalborg BK 0 - 3 Manchester United
Rooney 22'
Berbatov 55'
Berbatov 79'

Manchester United's new last day signing Dimitar Berbatov finally struck his first goal for his new side.Two goals from the Bulgarian and Rooney's low strike removed the memories of a shaky performance two weeks back by the defending champions against Villareal.

Manchester United however have their concerns coming out of the win too.Scholes was taken off on the stretcher and Rooney limped off in the second half.News reports say Scholes would be out for upto eight weeks due to a knee injury.

Villareal 1 - 0 Celtic
Senna 67'

Villareal continued to showcase the performance that has been keeping them on the top of the La Liga now in the Champions League.Celtic as again failed to win on the road.

The only goal of the game came courtesy Marcos Senna's free kick which the keeper wasn't able to stop.

Bayern Munich 1 - 1 Lyon

Demichelis (o.g.) 25'
Ze Roberto 52'

German Champions Bayern Munich continued their unbeaten ways in the Champions League despite turmoils in their domestic campaign.Lyon also were able to manage the same feat as both sides drew 1-1 at the Allianz Arena.

Demichelis inadvertently put Juninho's long range free kick on his own net to give visiting team the lead.

Bayern equalised 7minutes into the second half courtesy a thumping header by Brazilian Ze Roberto past Lloris.

Fiorentina 0 - 0 Steaua Bucharest

In a disappointing game for the Italians who tried their best they couldn't put the ball in the back of the net and had to share the spoils with the Romanian side.

This leaves Fiorentina with 2 points from as many games and Bucharest won their first point of the season.

Arsenal 4 - 0 Porto

Van Persie 31'
Adebayor 40'
Van Persie 48'
Adebayor(pen.) 71'

Arsenal showed their resilience as a footballing side after their shock loss at the hands of Hull City over the weekend at the Emirates Stadium.

Gunners have a fabulous record in the Champions League at home with no losses since its inauguration last season.

Arsenal were in the mood to continue their record and send out a message to Premiership title hopefuls that they have their bad days and Saturday was one of them.

Robbie Van Persie and Emmanuel Adebayor scored two goals each to give Arsenal a well deserved victory.Arsenal could have scored many more with many chances being created by Walcott and for him as well.The game also saw the return of Nasri after a 5 game injury lay-off.

Porto on the other hand looked to be in an attacking mood when the game was evenly poised at 0-0 but didn't bother Almunia much after Arsenal scored.Portuguese giants would be sick of coming to England after 5th defeat in 5 years and the biggest loss in 11 years in the competition.

Fenerbahce 0 - 0 Dynamo Kiev

Fenerbahce's impressive run of eight consecutive European home wins came to an end after Ukranian side stopped the Turkish sides' dominance at home.This earned Kiev their second draw in their second game.

Fenerbahce earned their first point in the competition in the process after their loss at Porto on Match Day 1.They would look for a better performance in front of goal when they face Arsenal next.

Zenith St Petersburg 1 - 2 Real Madrid
Hubocan (o.g.) 4'
Danny 25'
Van Nistelrooy 31'

Real Madrid sent out a strong message to other European contenders and pundits after their slender victory in St. Petersburg.

Like all games taking place in Russia this one took off early and an own goal by Hubocan helped the 9 time Champions League winners to take a 1-0 lead.

Zenith equalised soon afterwards as Arshavin's cross was met by Danny who put the ball behind Casillas as a despairing header came from the defender on a very low cross.

Van Nistelrooy got Real Madrid back on track after he was on the end of a deflection by the defender to strike it in the home sides' goal.

Thereafter it was all for Madrid to defend who were helped by Casilla's keeping,the woodwork and the defensive numbers to get their act together.

Bate Borisov 2 - 2 Juventus
Kryvets 17'
Stasevich 23'
Iaquinta 29'
Iaquinta 45'


FC Bate's dream home start to the Champions League were cut short by the Old Lady of Italian Football.

Kryvets and Stasevich provided the dream start to the Belarussian side inside the first 23minutes.

The dream however didn't last long as Iaquinta's double before halftime brought them back on their feet and out of dream land.Iaquinta who had come in for David Trezeguet didn't disappoint manager Claudio Ranieri.

This result leaves Juventus in the second spot of Group H behind Real Madrid with four points.

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Transfer Madness : Last day!

I bring this post at 4am (IST) or around midnight in GMT and the day for transfers isn't over yet.There is still almost an hour and a half left for the transfer deadline to complete.










It would be hard to give details of all deals that were completed today so I would give all the major signings and the clubs involved along with the transfer value.

Real Madrid have confirmed the transfer of Robinho to Manchester City instead of Chelsea who had been pursuing the Brazilian for the past few weeks.The fee is around 32.5million pounds.The contract is for a span of four years.
Mark Hughes had this to say on Manchester City's official website:

"I am absolutely delighted to get the opportunity to work with such an incredible talent like Robinho."

It would be interesting to see Chelsea's reaction to the late twist in the Robinho saga.





Berbatov has undergone a medical at Manchester United and looks likely to snub Manchester City who were also linked to the Bulgarian after Abu Dhabi based consortium purchased the Eastlands club.To add to that,Manchester United have added youngster Frazier Campbell.
However,Spurs manager Juande Ramos isn't too happy and has claimed he hasn't spoken with the player and Manchester United are accused of contacting the player without the approval of the London club.

UPDATE:Berbatov's move has been confirmed by both Spurs and Manchester United with the player signing a four year deal worth a record British fee of 30.7million pounds and Frazier Campbell has been added as an on loan player.






Inter Milan have confirmed the signing of Ricardo Quaresma from Porto.Pele would go in the other direction as part of a swap deal.Quaresma signed a deal for 5years with the Italian champions.The deal is made for around 30.6million euros which also adds Pele as a swap player.
This marks an end to months of speculation with Quaresma joining Inter and former Porto manager,Jose Mourinho.





Liverpool have signed Albert Riera from Espanyol for an undisclosed fee but believed to be around 8million pounds.
Riera had also been pursued by Everton and he had been Rafa Benitez' number one signing after he failed to bring Gareth Barry from Aston Villa.





Irishman,Steve Finnan has signed for Espanyol from Liverpool for a 2year contract.Finnan had been a Liverpool player for the past 5years.
Finnan would be out for international duty for the next week or so but Espanyol expect him back in time for the game against Getafe on September 21.





Hertha Berlin have acquired the services of Andriy Voronin from Liverpool on a one year loan deal.
The Ukranian joined Liverpool last year from Leverkusen on a free transfer but couldn't make way into the starting lineup for Liverpool.He scored 6 goals in his 27 appearances. He was further not expected to get a start after reds signed Robbie Keane during the summer.




Roman Pavlyuchenko has signed a five year contract with Spurs worth 14.2million pounds.The Russian player arrived in London yesterday to complete the medical and by today morning the deal was complete.
Spurs were otherwise looking for Andrei Arshavin but no consent was reached between Spurs and Zenith St Petersburg.




Spurs also signed veteran Manchester City defender,Vedran Corluka on a six year deal.The fee is reported to be 8.5million pounds.
The Croat had earlier decided to join Spurs last month only to be recalled by City but after City signed Zableta,Corluka handed in the transfer request.
He joins his national side team mate,Luka Modric.




Newcastle United have confirmed the double signing of Xisco from Deportivo La Coruna and Ignacio Gonzalez from Valencia.
Xisco has agreed for a five year contract at St.James' Park.Gonzales joined on a one year loan deal irrespective of the fact that the player had penned a four year deal with the Mestalla club.

If anything more happens,you know where to find it...

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Zenith overcome the Red Devils

Zenith beat Manchester United 2-1 in the 2008 Super Cup.

Sir Alex claimed throughout the week they would take this game “very seriously” and he had been very disappointed to have lost out in 1999 to Lazio when he didn’t give this game much of an importance.

When it got to the game, it was a different thing altogether. Manchester United were rugged and not their usual best. They probably took their competition to be a fragile one and only woke up after they were two goals down to Russian UEFA Cup champions, Zenith St Petersburg.

Sir Alex didn’t have a good night from the beginning when he tripped over television wires on the way to the dugout and looked set to take his embarrassment out on the poor chap who was reeling them in.

On the pitch, the things for Manchester United weren’t going well either. The attacks were slow and they lacked ideas to penetrate the Russian sides’ defence.

Zenith St. Petersburg’s first goal came on the verge of half time when Pogrebnyak’s header at the far post made it 1-0 to Zenith.

Second goal came courtesy Zenith’s newly acquired Portuguese midfielder, Danny from Dynamo Kiev who slid the ball past Van der Sar after Rio Ferdinand was caught ball watching, an uncharacteristic mistake by the English defender.

Manchester United suddenly realised the need for goals and got one back when somehow Vidic scrambled the ball in the back of the net to make it an interesting last few minutes.

However, things turned worse for Champions League winners when Scholes was sent off for deliberately handling the ball inside the Zenith box and earn his side the equaliser. Although the hand was seen by the referee and gave him the second yellow card and the marching orders. He will miss the first game of the Champions League campaign against Villareal.

The match hinted at two things. A flared tendinitis forced English midfielder Owen Hargreaves to miss the game at the last minute. This poses a big challenge for both Sir Alex and Capello who was in attendance to assess the player after Steven Gerrard is set to go under the knife and would be out for the first two qualifiers for England. The problem has been troubling the big player who moved from Bayern Munich last season for the past 16months and the duration for recovery is still unknown.

Another problem for Sir Alex is the need for a striker. Rooney and Tevez have a good rhythm together but there is a requirement of a complete striker because neither Tevez or Rooney are firing enough to trouble the defenders. Berbatov has been highly linked throughout the summer and with just two days to go transfer deadline, Glazer Family and Manchester United board need to act fast.

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Transfer News : Toffees to try for Saha,Arshavin misses flight to London and more..

Toffees to try for Louis Saha


Louis Saha looks set to leave Old Trafford for Everton only if he succeeds in his medical to be conducted by the Merseyside doctors.
Saha who has had injury plagued past two seasons and has been overshadowed by Rooney and now probably by Berbatov.(if transfer goes through that is!)
This would be Everton's third signing this week after a dull summer of no signings and the Frenchman would join for an undisclosed fee and the contract is for a span of two years.

Arshavin would not be a Spurs player



Andrei Arshavin's move to White Hart Lane looks highly in doubt says the player himself.
Arshavin who had a fabulous Euro 2008 and caught the eye of many clubs especially Spurs boss Juande Ramos who was interested in signing the player.The deal now looks dead and buried after both clubs couldn't decide on the transfer fee after the Russian club,Zenith St Petersburg asked 24million pounds for the player which Spurs weren't interested in paying.
On the other hand,Spurs are expected to announce the signing of Arshavin's national team mate,Pavlyuchenko in the next 48 hours.
Arshavin looks set to another season in Russia and has a big game coming up against Manchester United in Monaco on Friday as part of the Super Cup.

Robinho move to Chelsea in doubt



Robinho's "dream" move to Chelsea looks set to have hit a road block after Real Madrid claimed he is under contract with them for two years.

Brazilian midfielder who was to travel to London and complete the move for 30million pounds now looks doubtful.

The reason stated however sounds ridiculous coming from Real Madrid who have been known for signing players with some years left in their contract but the real reason however is that they haven't found a suitable replacement for the winger.

Robinho's agent claimed the deal would be done before Chelsea play Spurs on Sunday but that doesn't look possible now.

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Arshavin could join Gunners

Arshavin's agent has hinted at the player's decision of choosing Arsenal over other clubs due to Arsene Wenger.


Zenith St Petersburg's hot property,Andrei Arshavin could snub offers from Barcelona and Chelsea and instead move to Arsenal after his agent revealed how the striker is a fan of Arsene Wenger and Arsenal's exciting attacking football.




He had this to say,

"If Arsenal go for Arshavin it could be really good for both parties. Arsenal is a very young team and Arshavin is 27. There's something about combining young and older players, they propagate attacking football."

Barcelona have already had their one bid rejected for the Russian striker who grew in the transfer market after winning the UEFA Cup and an impressive performance in the Euro 2008.
Chelsea are also considered to be in the running due to Roman Abramovich who pays wages for the Russian National team and wants to add Russian flavour to his Chelsea squad.
Only question that needs to be answered is Will Arsenal bid for Arshavin??

Zenith want Messi + cash for Arshavin

I am sorry I found this "rumour" to be extremely bizarre and well funny alongside.
As reported by Extra Football,Russian club,Zenith St. Petersburg have been in formal talks with Barcelona over Arshavin.
Now as reported by the afore mentioned website,UEFA Cup winners Zenith will only let go of Arshavin if they are offered 20 million euros and Lionel Messi.
Yeah the equation reads :
€20 million + Messi = Arshavin!
This would probably be the most stupidest piece of rumour one could ever even think of believing!

Andrei Arshavin to move

Upcoming Russian star,Andrei Arshavin who helped his club side Zenith St. Petersburg to a league title and UEFA Cup glory is thinking of moving to greener horizons.


He has been amazing in the games that he has played for Russia at the Euro 2008 when he created one and scored one against Holland in last nights game.Totally sensational in midfield and class apart from any other Dutch player.

Dick Advocaat,manager of Zenith St. Petersburg has confirmed that Arshavin wants to move with interested clubs being Newcastle United,Manchester City,Everton,Arsenal and Chelsea are expected to follow soon.More clubs from Spain,Italy,France and Germany are expected to line up offers too.