Sports Burst – Bob Bradley Reaches Final Frontier
Bob Bradley boldly goes where no American has gone before. 5 great leaps onto the moonscape of sport.
By Tim Stannard
1) Bob Bradley becomes Premier League’s first American coach
‘Merica – “used especially to emphasize qualities regarded as stereotypically American, such as materialism or fervent patriotism”
It’s ‘Merica Monday, a word that now officially exists in dictionaries. It was a word whooped by patriotic and probably tipsy golf fans on Sunday night after a Ryder Cup victory for Team ‘Merica against Europe after three straight defeats. And it will be on Monday by ‘football’ fans as the English Premier League is getting its first American manager, aside from Coach Ted Lasso.
Swansea City have sacked Francesco Guidolin and the Welsh team’s American owners have replaced the Italian with Bob Bradley who was coaching French second tier side, Le Havre, but isn’t anymore.
"He is highly regarded as a coach and has a wealth of experience on the international and domestic front," said Swansea chairman, Huw Jenkins, whose team have yet to pick up a Premier League win this season. Bradley’s first match will be at Arsenal on October 15th.
2) Aston Villa lose patience with di Matteo
As it turns out, Monday has produced two firings in England.
The number of Championship managers who has coached a team to a Champions League win has been halved to just Rafa Benitez. Roberto di Matteo has been sacked by Aston Villa after 11 games in England’s second tier, which produced just the single win. Aston Villa are currently lying in 19th place, two points off the relegation zone and 15 from Huddersfield at the top, a team managed by another (German) American in the form of David Wagner.
From one sacked coach to another. Big Sam Allardyce is reportedly looking for new work after being fired from the England job a week ago. And that new work might well be in MLS. Oh yes. Stand-by Olive Garden on bottomless pasta bowl days.
3) Real Madrid and Colombia scrap over James
The reason for the spate of sackings is that it is international fortnight. Again. And just when things were getting interesting in La Liga as well with Barcelona losing to Celta Vigo and Real Madrid making it four draws in a row with a 1-1 stalemate against Eibar on Sunday.
One player who was supposed to feature in that game but didn’t due to a calf muscle strain was James Rodriguez. However, the Colombian FA are still reportedly forcing the midfielder to travel to South America for their own tests ahead of the country’s CONMEBOL qualifying matches against Paraguay and Uruguay.
Luka Modric has made an appearance in the world of social media after keyhole surgery on his knee over the weekend. And there is an awful lot of plaster featured to worry Madrid fans, whose team lack a bit of zip and zap without the fleet-footed footballer.
4) Rakitic joins Croatian crocked club
The Croatian compatriot of Luka Modric, Ivan Rakitic, is also out of action with an Achilles problem and misses his team’s upcoming World Cup-qualifying matches against Finland and Kosovo.
There was some good news at least with Leo Messi out on the training fields of Barcelona running around and entering the second phase of his recovery from his troublesome groin.
5) Lebron gets stuck into presidential politics
Those readers thumbing through the Akron Business Journal on Monday will see a rather famous local getting involved in national politics. Lebron James has penned his support of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to balance the basketball scales with Dennis Rodman backing Donald Trump. Ahem.
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The life philosophy of Sports Burst is that if you are not upsetting someone, then you are not trying hard enough. SB is a daily trawl and troll through the morning's sports news to bring you fact-nuggets to make you both smile and swear. Hopefully at the same time.
