Three and in – not just another football blog

As well as providing you with our own sparkling content, Three and in will point you to some of the best football blogging elsewhere. Our web round-ups will be regularly irregular but you know each link is a goal.

The Offside – World Cup players on Twitter: If you’re a Twitterholic and a football fan this is fantastic. Don’t forget, you can follow Three and in on Twitter right here.

Who ate all the pies – Flashback to Heysel: The always fun Pies strikes a serious note. Hard to believe it’s been 25 years.

Arseblog – The 10 real reasons Cesc wants to leave Arsenal: Anything that invents the Ebouesaurus Rex has to be good.

The Spoiler – Football grounds 30 years ago: More backwards time travelling, should bring back some memories for those of you around back then.

Dirty Tackle – Terrible balls: Goalkeepers getting their excuses in early. Don’t we have the exact same complaints from keepers before every major tournament?

Bolivian football channels Street Fighter II. It’s a few months old but doing the rounds.

Barcelona have been very vocal in their pursuit of Cesc Fabregas over the last couple of weeks. So much so you’re reminded of the old adage about a dog’s bark being worse than his bite.

Certainly Barcelona talk a good transfer, they don’t seem too keen on the nuts and bolts of this one though. Outgoing President Joan Laporta seems to be less certain than he was, saying:

We will not sign any players for above market value. We are interested in signing Cesc and Arsenal know that but we will not pay an exorbitant price for any player.

When it comes to market prices, we’ll strengthen where we can but will not pay an unrealistic price.

So what is the market price for a 23 year old, world class central midfield player with 5 years left on his current contract with a club who don’t want to sell him? It’s certainly not the €30m Barcelona keep talking about. That’s what Real Madrid paid for Xabi Alonso last summer. I like Alonso but he’s no Cesc Fabregas.

Last summer Barcelona paid €25m for Dmytro Chygrynskiy. Do they expect us to believe that Cesc Fabregas is only worth €5m more than a Ukrainian centre-half? They paid £28m (with a potential £6m in add ons) for Sevilla’s Dani Alves, who is a fine player but if this is what they’re prepared to pay for him then they’re going to have to get real when it comes to Fabregas.

And isn’t it interesting to note that Barcelona say they won’t pay an unrealistic price for a player less than 12 months after giving Eto’o and £40m to Inter Milan for the mercurial Zlatan Ibrahimovich. Eto’o + £40m for a player who is remarkable on his day but will never produce as much and as consistently as Cesc Fabregas. It’s a bit late to talk about not paying unrealistic prices now.

Looking at what Barcelona are prepared to pay for other players I don’t think Arsenal’s reported £70m valuation of Cesc is too far off the mark at all. There might be a bit of room for negotiation but not much.

What Arsenal are not looking for is not exorbitant. It’s market value and unless Barcelona accept that and put their money where their mouth is – as they have so often in the past – I believe Cesc Fabregas will playing in red and white next season.

David Gill has been Chief Executive of Manchester United since 2003. He must know the fans of the club well at this stage. Which makes his comments about the ‘Green and Gold’ protests all the more bizarre. Speaking to the Independent, he said:

The green and gold campaign and the momentum behind that can get a bit tiring. We understand people’s desire to protest and I think it is a minority. It’s a visible minority in the stadium.

Would we prefer not to have them [green and gold scarves]? Yes. I think that minority will go away. A lot of people understand what it means but a lot of them don’t.

Obviously he has to protect the position of the owners but it’s quite clear the Green and Gold protesters are a bit more than a minority protesting at against the Glazer ownership. They’re almost ubiquitous at this stage. There’s nearly more green and gold than red at Old Trafford on match day.

The United fans have seen the Glazers come in, load a club which was previously free of debt and highly profitable with the cost of their takeover and seen promises broken. Gill said they would never use the training ground or the stadium to mortgage the club, they have done just that and should things go wrong on a financial level the foundations of the club are at risk. It’s little wonder fans are protesting.

Gill’s comments are an insult to the fans who care about the long term future of their club and let’s be clear – United’s current level of debt makes that future far more uncertain than it should ever have been.

And what makes it worse is that Gill knows exactly the depth of feeling about the Glazer ownership. It was under his watch that a new club was formed, a breakaway founded by fans who could no longer tolerate the way Manchester United was being run. FC United of Manchester are growing steadily and improving all the time. Yet it should never be underestimated how much it costs people to turn their back on the club they have supported all their lives.

Gill has presided over the slow financial violation of one of England’s greatest football clubs. The idea that they might go under is inconceivable given the supporter base, the fame of the club and everything else, but United’s finances are a disaster waiting to happen.

Not only does he dismiss them as a minority, when clearly they are not, he insults their intelligence by suggesting they don’t know why they’re protesting.

You can’t help feeling Gill has scored an own goal of Andrés Escobar proportions here.

Ivory Coast striker Aruna Dindane, who spent last season on loan at Portsmouth, has just signed for Quatar League side Lekhwiya.  Although I’ve not yet seen any quotes from the player, I’d hazard a guess that the move is motivated by more than just a desire to test himself in a new country.

Aged just 29, Dindane has turned down offers from Premier League clubs including Wolves and Blackburn to take the Quatari millions. The move comes after Dindane played a key role in Portsmouth’s run to the FA Cup Final – a run he was only able to take part in after cash-strapped Pompey were forced to negotiate a deal with Lens to escape a pre-arranged £3.5m fee.

Dindane impressed many with his work ethic and desire to keep playing for a club who were already doomed.  He was playing, we assumed, for pride, and a second crack at the Premier League with another club.  How wrong we were.  It seems that the Ivorian has learnt one thing from his time of Portsmouth: the importance of making sensible economic decisions.

It’s just your average football training camp, replete with slapstick crashes, bizarre costumes and allusions to hit movie March of the Penguins.  Click on the pictures for more.

In order to fill the European-football shaped gaps all over Threeandin with something resembling knowledge, I occasionally find myself thumbing through the European sports papers.  The other day, in an article in Spanish Daily AS about Real Madrid’s desire to snatch Jose Mourinho from Inter Milan, I was struck by one of the most nefarious-looking fellas I have ever seen.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Massimo Moratti.

Truly this man is the Krang to Mourinho’s Shredder.  I don’t mean to be cruel: I’m not taking the mickey out of this man.  I wouldn’t.  He has Satan in his eyes.

I’ve long suspect Mourinho’s success was due to a pact with some evil force.  Consider this proof.

Franck Ribery has had his hopes of playing in the Champions League Final dashed.  Again.

After the Bayern Munich winger wash handed a three-game ban, the German club sought to overturn the decision with an appeal to UEFA.  Bayern were unsuccessful, yet still unsatisfied.  They turned to the Court of Arbitration for sport, who have now arbitrated, and decided to uphold the suspension.  Ribery is out.

Taking a look at the tackle again, it’s not hard to see why:

It might not be malicious but it’s clumsy and very dangerous. Lisandro Lopez was lucky to escape without a serious ankle injury. If Bayern’s histrionics had taken place in the Premier League, Ribery’s ban would doubtless have been extended on the grounds of a frivolous appeal.

After the first ruling, Bayern chairman Karl-Heinze Rummenigge vowed “to fight on”. Hopefully he and his club now admit not only defeat, but that Ribery deserves his ban. The Champions League Final will be shorn of a great talent, but rules are rules.

Germany’s Michael Ballack has been ruled out of the World Cup after the ankle injury inflicted on him by Portsmouth’s Kevin Prince Boateng was much worse than feared.

While I have sympathy for any player injured after a bad tackle – and Boateng’s was certainly that – I do wonder if Ballack might now wish the cup final ref, Chris Foy, had been a bit stricter. A few moments before the tackle which injured him, Ballack was involved in an incident on the edge of the Portsmouth box which saw some pushing and shoving as the Pompey players believed the German had slapped Hayden Mullins. It was very much a case of flailing arms and I think Ballack knew he could do that, and possibly make contact without anyone being able to say it was deliberate.

There was then a bit of pushing and shoving and Ballack pushed one of the Portsmouth players in the face. It might even have been Boateng himself. The letter of the law says that if you raise your hands like that it’s a red card. It might have been soft but we’ve seen them given before.

I’m not saying the injury was karma but I bet he’s not as relieved now as he was then to get away with it.

Brazil coach Dunga is not a man prone to bowing to public pressure, and he stuck to his guns when naming his 23-man World Cup squad, ignoring calls to include old favourites including Ronaldo, Adriano, and Roberto Carlos.

None of these are particularly surprising omissions: the pair of strikers are over-weight and under-motivated in the backwaters of Brazilian football, whilst Roberto Carlos recently turned 37.  But there is one absentee which has raised eyebrows.  The squad announcement was bereft of one Ronaldo de Assis Moreira – better known as Ronaldinho.

Unlike Ronaldo and Adriano, Ronaldinho is still playing in one of Europe’s top leagues with AC Milan.  This season he has weighed in with ten goals and fourteen assists, and a series of performances that whilst not approaching the heights of his Barcelona form, have shown flashes of that mercurial ability.  In particular, he was credited as Milan’s best player in an otherwise disappointing two-legged showing against Manchester United.

A look at the midfielders Brazil have selected sees plenty of graft but little craft – the likes of Klebersen, Melo, Gilberto, Baptista and Ramires are not likely to work the ball around a metaphoric parked bus.  The exclusion of Ronaldinho places enormous burden on Kaka – a player who hasn’t had the best of debut seasons at Real Madrid.

Dunga has been praised for adding organisation and steel to the Brazil team.  He ought to beware, however, eschewing the beautiful game that makes them great.