Barcelona see Busquets’ heir in Corentin Tolisso (Don Balon)
Perhaps Corentin Tolisso will have a nice landing after all if things don’t work out at Bayern Munich. Ye ol’ Don Balon has found a suitor: FC Barcelona!
Of course, Tolisso is unhappy that he is not a starter and so has supposedly expressed his “desire to leave, and at the Allianz Arena they have opened the doors wide.”
Tolisso’s agent has aimed high, offering his client to Barcelona. And, Don Balon notes, “the truth is that his characteristics fit like a glove.” Tolisso is the man to put Sergio Busquets to rest. Bayern supposedly is expecting €30 million for Tolisso, and that’s “not expensive,” as the Don puts it.
Pretty funny when the next headline as you scroll down is “Barca’s greatest historical crisis.”
Lucas Hernandez and Achraf Hakimi battle online for the Red Cross (Bild)
Some more pleasant news about Lucas Hernandez, though: it turns out that he and Real Madrid loanee, Borussia Dortmund’s right-back Achraf Hakimi, are close. Hernandez revealed that he, Hakimi, and some friends have been playing Fortnite together for a good cause:
I play online with friends. We’re a certain number of people, have a network for a Fortnite tournament with my brother Theo, Achraf Hakimi, and Alvaro Medran and YouTubers or Playstation pros. Registration costs money and that goes to the Spanish Red Cross.
On a personal level, Hernandez was happy that neither his own family nor those of his teammates have suffered any tragedies during the current pandemic.
Some oddball Bundesliga trivia (kicker)
Kicker ran a gallery of 20 off-color statistics about the 2019/20 season. I thought I’d share a few of them more notable ones with you.
What was the most common personal name in the Bundesliga this season? Kevin, with 8 players thus named. Seriously, Kevin is a massively popular name in Germany, ever since Macaulay Culkin’s “Kevin McAllister” captured our hearts while defending his Home, Alone. It’s interesting that the predilection for the rather non-Germanic name has survived the initial Kevin-boom (think Kevin Kuranyi) and passed to the second generation.
Had Lucas (5 players) and Lukas (6) been written the same, they would have claimed the title. But that’s a kappa of difference. Moving on:
Whose was the player called offsides the most this season? Timo Werner, 35 times.
Who was the most-fouled player this season? Amine Harit, fouled 67 times. Ouch.
Who hit the goal the most? Kai Havertz and Serge Gnabry with 4 times each.
There you go.
Chinese investors buy traditional Swiss club Grasshoppers Zurich (finews.asia)
“The new head of Switzerland’s record champions is the wife of Guo Guangchang, whose Fosun Group already owns Wolverhampton Wanderers.” That says it all, really. Guangchang’s wife, Janny Wang, has bought 90 percent of the shares of the former owners’ shares in the club.
It looks as if the Grasshoppers’ front office has already been replaced by newcomers from Wolverhampton. So it goes. They’re called the “Wanderers” after all.