If you choose to live near Barcelona’s Camp Nou, then you can’t be moaning about your neighbourhood being on the noisy side, but since major renovation work began on the stadium in June of last year, the team have been playing their home games at the city’s Olympic stadium, and then the din has been a bit unrelenting.
Local residents have complained about restrictions forbidding work to take place after midnight not being observed, so they’re unlikely to be chuffed about a decision made by Barcelona City Council last week.
While the project is not expected to be fully completed until June 2026, the club is hoping to have the team back playing in their traditional stadium this December, when it is due to be at two-thirds capacity. And considering they lost close to €100 million in income last season by being away from their home patch, it’s little wonder they’re in a hurry.
That council decision? To allow work to be carried out 24 hours a day between Monday and Friday, and between 8am and 10pm on weekends. Although it’ll be 24 hours a day, seven days a week at the north end of the stadium because its primary neighbours are those buried in Les Coats cemetery. Hopefully it won’t be so noisy that it’ll wake the dead.
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“Lee Carsley needs to zone out of his Irish republicanism and learn to sing God Save the King. Otherwise, no one will believe he cares about the England team he wishes to lead.” Well-known football pundit Jacob Rees-Mogg entering the anthem-gate debate.
By the Numbers: 4
That’s how many goals Troy Parrott helped himself to in AZ Alkmaar’s 9-1 win over Heerenveen on Saturday, his last three coming in eight minutes.
Word of Mouth
“We sh*t our pants. I am furious.” Newly promoted Holstein Kiel’s Timo Becker somewhat poo-pooing his team’s performance in their 6-1 thumping by Bayern Munich.
“When I was a player I did everything wrong. I’d eat on a Friday night and then I’d take some laxatives because I wanted to feel empty the following day. I’d have five cups of tea with sugar in it and play the game. I think I might have won even more if I’d known how to look after my body better.” Considering what Graeme Souness did win, he’s a good ad for laxatives and copious cups of sugary tea.
“Once the first is in, more is coming. Once a striker was talking about a ketchup bottle, once it’s going, it’s coming more.” Erik Ten Hag hopeful that after scoring his first goal since March, Marcus Rashford will quickly catch up to where he aims to be.
Dundee United’s imaginative sales pitch
Dundee United fans were, no doubt, all a-tingle last week on hearing that they can now own a piece of “the hallowed Tannadice turf”, which will give them “a new way to connect with the club and their favourite players”.
There’s just one small catch – it’ll be a virtual piece of turf, they won’t actually get a lump of grass in the post. Instead, for €35.51 they’ll receive a digital e-certificate that will give them ownership of the sod for a year – or if they part with €106.52, they’ll own it for a whole three years.
“I genuinely think this product is great for the fans,” said club legend John Holt. “It means supporters around the world can feel that sense of ownership.” Whether he said this with a straight face is an entirely different matter.
FAI’s famous attention to detail
Apology of the week: “We are aware of a translation error that was published in the match programme for the Under-21s match on Tuesday. Our Latvian visitors were contacted and made aware of the situation for which we apologised.”
So said a presumably mortified FA spokesperson after Latvia’s Robert Melkis, Bruno Melnis and Glebs Patika appeared in the programme as “Robert the Liar”, “Bruno the Black” and “Gleb Liked It”. Dario Sits was entitled to feel most aggrieved, though. He was somehow translated in to “Dario Shit”.
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