Global football is currently on pause for the most part, but the Premier League will restart again on June 17. Project Restart appears to be a success, with training returned and the UK government giving the official all clear for sporting events to resume.
Until we have football matches again, we still have plenty of transfer talk to cover and analyze. So let’s take a spin through the Manchester United rumor mill in cyberspace.
We start with what would be the ultimate example of “you’re just rooting for clothes in sports.”
Raheem Sterling, one of the best wing players on the planet today, first made his name with Liverpool FC, United’s biggest rivals, historically. He now plies his trade with Manchester City, the noisy neighbors who are a very fierce rival as well.
The English international comes off as someone who is worth rooting for off the pitch, so it really is literally a matter of what shirt he’s wearing at the time. According to the Independent, United are monitoring his situation, as he could move on from City, should they fail to get their Champions League ban overturned.
United are said to be facing competition from Real Madrid for his services.
Many believe that United are really just one wing player away from being all that they can be once again, and thus you can understand the interest in Sterling/why their top summer target is Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho.
BVB could price United out of getting Sancho, so a fall back option must be found, and the latest name to be floated as fitting this bill is Thiago Almada, of Vélez Sarsfield in the Argentine Primera División.
Finally, Paul Pogba transfer talk, anyone? Yes, this endeavor is the height of tedium, as Sideshow Mel from The Simpsons would say, but yet these narratives persist.
It’s long been ridiculous, for years on end already, but yes, here comes another story about his future at Old Trafford, which contractually ends next year.
French outlet Le10Sport said yesterday that Paris Saint-Germain are entering the fray for the Frenchman.
Selling Pogba to PSG would add yet another commonality to the story arc of Angel Di Maria, and thus make the careers of these two players forever analogized.
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 contributes to WGN TV, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Now and SB Nation.
You can follow Banks, a former writer for Chicago Tribune.com, on Twitter and his cat on Instagram.