The coronavirus pandemic has brought all of world football down for the foreseeable future. The Premier League announced suspension of play until April 30, and at that point they will re-evaluate again. That said, there are still plenty of interesting Manchester United related news and notes to go over.
Let’s take a look at some of the news items trending in cyberspace right now during these very strange days and extremely uncertain times. (For today’s MUFC transfer rumors round-up, go here)
We begin with on loan striker Odion Ighalo, whose future at the club beyond this season (whenever it’s completed) remains uncertain…mostly because loan contracts will need to be extended, due to the season being put on hiatus for so long.
There is a very popular school of thought that holds the addition and subsequent flourishing of Bruno Fernandes means the end of Paul Pogba’s second tenure at the club.
Ighalo says the opposite- he can’t want to see the two midfielders in action together, and he believes this stellar partnership in the middle of the park will make United a different and better team.
“He is working hard to get back to fitness and imagine when we have Pogba and Bruno in the midfield, then you will see a different team; (Marcus) Rashford coming back also,” Ighalo said in the interview below:
#InConversationWith Odion Ighalo, Manchester United & Nigeria Forward https://t.co/9RBdHE4bKb
— Juliet Bawuah (@julietbawuah) April 11, 2020
“Manchester United is going to be great again, winning games week in, week out. He’s [Pogba] a great player and it’s going to be a privilege to play with him.”
“Bruno is a fantastic player. I played with him in 2013-14 at Udinese. We’ve not seen the best of him yet in the Premier League.”
“Once Bruno Fernandes settles down in England you will see what that guy can do. He has vision, he wants the ball always. He can shoot, he can score goals, he is very intelligent.”
“Before the ball comes, he is a step ahead to know what he wants to do. In times to come you are going to see what he can do in the Premier League, even better than what he is doing now.”
Elsewhere in Pogba news, the Frenchman explained, on the club’s official podcast, why he left the club in 2012 and made a move to Juventus. His family convinced him to go to a destination where he could get more playing time, as the opportunities were just not there at Old Trafford.
“My brother, the United fan, told me he was really angry — even more than me — when I didn’t play,” Pogba said.
“He told me: ‘No, go. You can play in this team. If they don’t want you here, go somewhere else. They will see.”
“My mother always told me: ‘You will go somewhere but come back.’ She always said this.”
“I was like: ‘We will see’ but you know mothers and the things she said: ‘You will come back here, don’t worry’ and that was just after. She said you will come back to Manchester, don’t worry, and I did.”
Finally, a former United star, Jaap Stam, is a finalist for the FC Cincinnati managerial job in Major League Soccer. Stam won the UEFA Defender of the Year for United in 1998/99 and 1999/2000.
In his managerial career, he’s led Championship side Reading, and Eredivisie clubs PEC Zwolle and Feyenoord.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, which is partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” regularly appears on WGN CLTV and co-hosts the “Let’s Get Weird, Sports” podcast on SB Nation.
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