With Jaka Bijol already set to arrive from Udinese to hand Leeds United their second signing of the summer, the 49ers are now reportedly prepared to commence a bidding war to welcome an impressive teenage talent who’s been compared to N’Golo Kante.

Leeds set to sign Bijol as summer business ramps up

Whilst Leeds fans are currently being made to wait for the official announcement, an agreement has reportedly been struck to make Bijol a Leeds player and his unveiling now seems only a matter of time. The central defender is set to join Lukas Nmecha on what is a growing list of incomings at Elland Road this summer.

Away from the Serie A defender, the Whites have also been linked with moves for the likes of Douglas Luiz from Juventus and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Hugo Bueno to replace the departing Junior Firpo.

Luiz instantly stands out as someone who would be an impressive signing. Whilst things haven’t worked out at Juventus, the Brazilian more than proved his worth in the Premier League with Aston Villa and could now be on his way back to English football courtesy of Leeds.

Meanwhile, Bueno’s arrival would also be important in its own right. With Firpo set to depart as a free agent this summer, Daniel Farke must welcome a fresh left-back option and Bueno would offer the German exactly that.

After enjoying an impressive season on loan at Feyenoord, the Spaniard could finally be ready to make his mark on the Premier League once again, even if away from Wolves.

It’s at Leeds that the 22-year-old could be joined by another young talent amid reports that the 49ers are ready to chase the signature of a midfield gem who’s received Kante comparisons.

Leeds prepared for bidding war to sign Atangana

According to GiveMeSport, the 49ers and Leeds are now prepared to launch a bidding war to sign Valentin Atangana from Reims this summer. The French side were relegated from Ligue 1 last season and the 19-year-old could now be available at an affordable price.

Leeds aren’t alone in the race to secure the midfielder’s signature, however, with Everton, Crystal Palace, Burnley and West Ham United all also eyeing summer swoops to sign Atangana.

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The amount of interest in the young Frenchman should come as no surprise. Described as the next N’Golo Kante by French media, Atangana started 33 of Reims’ 34 Ligue 1 games last season and was a rare standout in what was otherwise a campaign to forget for the relegated French side.

Described as a “fantastic modern holding midfielder” by scout Jacek Kulig, Atangana is someone that Leeds should go all out for this summer.

انتهت مباراة الزمالك مع منافسه طلائع الجيش، بفوز الأبيض بنتيجة 3-1 في المباراة التي جمعت بينهما مساء اليوم ضمن منافسات الدوري المصري.

وأقيمت المباراة بين الزمالك وطلائع الجيش، على أرضية استاد القاهرة، في إطار لقاءات الجولة الـ13 من الدوري.

وبهذه النتيجة، وصل رصيد الزمالك إلى النقطة 22 في المركز الثاني بجدول ترتيب الدوري المصري، بعدما فاز بـ6 لقاءات وتعادل في 4 مواجهات وتلقى هزيمتين.

ويدخل الزمالك في منافسة جديدة وصعبة بمواجهة قوية أمام بيراميدز في نصف نهائي بطولة السوبر المصري، ساعيًا للتتويج باللقب المحلي.

طالع | ترتيب هدافي الدوري المصري بعد ثنائية ناصر ماهر وهدف الدباغ أمام طلائع الجيش

وكان الزمالك قد خسر بطولة كأس السوبر المصري في الموسم الماضي، لصالح الأهلي، بالمباراة التي انتهت بضربات الجزاء الترجيحية. موعد مباراة الزمالك وبيراميدز في السوبر المصري

ومن المقرر أن يلتقي الزمالك أمام بيراميدز، يوم الخميس المقبل، 6 نوفمبر الجاري، وتنطلق في تمام الساعة 07:30 مساءً بتوقيت مصر، 08:30 مساءً بتوقيت السعودية، 09:30 مساءً بتوقيت الإمارات.

Babar Azam has been rested keeping in mind Pakistan’s busy schedule, Mahmood says

Danyal Rasool14-Oct-2024In desperate need of a result following an innings defeat in the first Test, Pakistan have seemingly had a complete change of heart on the sort of pitches they want at home, and opted to use the same one from the first Test. To that end, they have lined up with three spinners, with seam-bowling allrounder Aamer Jamal the only pace outlet.According to assistant coach Azhar Mahmood, though, this is precisely how Pakistan had planned it all along.”We had a clear plan of what pitches to prepare for Bangladesh, and what to prepare vs England,” he said on Tuesday. “Our approach was pace wickets against Bangladesh and spin pitches against England. Our instruction to the curator for the first Test was that the ball should spin after the second day. But the pitch didn’t take turn until even the fifth day. Hopefully the ball will begin to take turn on the ninth day.”Related

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If the expectation was that the pitch would take turn from the second day in the first Test, Pakistan’s line-up did not necessarily reflect that. Legspinner Abrar Ahmed was the only specialist spinner in the XI, with Pakistan lining up with Naseem Shah, Shaheen Afridi and Jamal to round the attack out. Now, unless one of the part-timers are thrown the ball, it will be the first time Pakistan play a men’s Test with only one quick bowler.It wasn’t an attack that left the Test with its reputation enhanced. England piled out 823 for 7, the highest score Pakistan have ever conceded. Captain Shan Masood was critical of the bowlers, and the focus has shifted to finding a way to take 20 wickets by any means necessary.”You have to take 20 wickets,” Mahmood said. “We thought about how we’re going to take those. We thought that if we use that pitch, the thinking was how do we take 20 wickets against England and we thought spin was the way to do it.”The players who are coming in are experienced. They are all experienced and have been playing first-class cricket for a while. The best option is to play players at home on pitches they are used to, so I don’t think there’ll be that much pressure on that.”

“Pakistan has so much cricket coming that the selection committee decided to give Babar a rest, because Pakistan have to go to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa”Azhar Mahmood on Babar Azam being omitted from the Test squad

While each of the incoming spinners – Zahid Mahmood, Noman Ali and Sajid Khan – have accumulated plenty of first-class experience over the years, none of it has been particularly recent. The Quaid-e-Azam Trophy season hasn’t started yet, meaning these players’ last red-ball involvement was in the previous season – none of them have played a first-class match since January this year. Thrown in against an England side that broke a multitude of records on this very pitch last week, it is not a particularly gentle easing in.Mahmood also attempted to downplay all the changes from the first Test, particularly the leaving out of Babar Azam, which he insisted was “rest” rather than “drop”.”Babar is our No. 1 player in terms if technique and ability,” he said. “Pakistan has so much cricket coming that the selection committee decided to give Babar a rest, because Pakistan have to go to Australia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.Jason Gillespie and Azhar Mahmood hatch their plans•Getty Images”We need to take advantage of our conditions. We announced the team for one Test match because we knew we would have changes. After this we’re flying to Australia to play white-ball cricket. We knew we’d have to rest Shaheen and other important players because we have non-stop cricket for the next six months.”There may be some scepticism towards Mahmood’s reasoning. None of the upcoming white-ball tours are as significant for Pakistan as a three-match home Test series against England. This is arguably the biggest series for Pakistan in this current season, and there will invariably be questions about why the upcoming white-ball series couldn’t serve as a more appropriate avenue for rotation.Fielding three spinners in addition to Salman Agha, who Mahmood said in August was a “specialist spinner”, requires a certain degree of confidence that the pitch will take turn. “We left a lot of grass on the pitches and wanted the ball to turn to use the pitch in our favour. Let’s see if it works for us.”

MatériaMais Notícias

da fazobetai： No Dérbi válido pela partida de volta da semifinal do Brasileirão Sub-17, o Palmeiras venceu o Corinthians por 2 a 1 e confirmou vaga na grande decisão do torneio. Estevão abriu o placar para o Verdão, Gui Negão empatou para o Timão e Luighi fez o gol da vitória alviverde. O Palmeiras havia vencido o jogo de ida por 3 a 2.

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da marjack bet： + Garanta a sua vaga no curso que formou craques como Pet, Dante e Léo Moura! Cupom: LANCE1000

O Corinthians tentou ditar o ritmo de jogo no primeiro tempo, mas André Luiz cometeu pênalti em Luighi, e Estevão, uma das principais joias do Palmeiras, abriu o placar na Arena Barueri.

O Timão voltou mais ligado para o segundo tempo e conseguiu o empate aos 15 minutos. Após cobrança de falta rápida, a bola sobrou para Pellegrini, que encontrou Gui Negão dentro da área para empatar o jogo.

+ Aposentado? Palmeiras teve ídolos na era Leila que já chegaram experientes ao clube

O sonho da virada corintiana durou pouco. Cinco minutos após o empate, Luighi recebeu belo cruzamento e finalizou firme, de direita, dando números finais ao Dérbi. O Palmeiras irá enfrentar Flamengo ou São Paulo na final do Brasileirão Sub-17.

2021 wooden-spoon winners are optimistic that young squad can make big strides forward

Alan Gardner01-Apr-2022Few things quicken the anticipation ahead of the start of the county season like a trip to Good Old Sussex by the Sea. The sight of Hove’s deckchairs might not cure all the ills which currently beset the English game, but it feels like a decent place to start. The question that might have been asked, however, as a flurry of sleet and snow across the immaculate green acreage caught the attention of those assembled in the pavilion for Sussex’s press day, was: which sea? Perhaps the Baltic.Soon the sun was shining again, and there are hopes for brighter times at Sussex. After finishing bottom of the Championship in 2021, during a season in which they gave as many as nine first-class debuts to young, homegrown players – and at one stage fielded a team with an average age of 19 – the expectation from both management and supporters is for a more competitive summer.Concerns about the club’s direction of travel have simmered under the surface, notably given voice by the former Sussex and England wicketkeeper Matt Prior, with the influx of youth offset by a high number of departures – Phil Salt, Chris Jordan and Ben Brown left over the winter, following the likes of Laurie Evans, Danny Briggs and Luke Wells out through the gates on Eaton Road. But Ian Salisbury, head coach of the Championship and 50-over sides, believes a rebuilding process was needed in order to deliver “sustained success” of the sort Sussex were used to in the 2000s.There have been moves to strengthen a callow squad that might otherwise be considered outside contenders in Division Two. In particular, the arrivals of Steven Finn, the former England seamer signed from Middlesex, and overseas batters Cheteshwar Pujara and Mohammad Rizwan ought to bring a hardened edge to the dressing room; Ollie Robinson, who has a point to prove after fitness issues stalled his progress at Test level over the winter, is also expected to be available for a number of the early rounds – though not next week’s opener against Notts.Related

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Further international experience has been added to the mix with the arrival of Grant Flower as batting coach, while former club captain Mike Yardy has returned to Hove as academy director. It feel likes there is now greater heft behind the club’s crop of young players, which includes a pair of precociously talented 17-year-olds in Danial Ibrahim and Archie Lenham. What Salisbury refers to as “the project” at Hove might just be coming together.”Do we aim to get promoted? Of course we do,” Salisbury said. “But more importantly, we want to be better than what we were last year. That’s not just as a team, it’s as individuals, as coaches. We just want to keep improving. We know where we want to be in four or five years’ time, which is bringing sustained success back to Sussex, in all competitions. I know the side we have, and the squad we have, once we get to that situation, we can be there for a long time, just because of the age of this side.”That’s why we took the decisions we have done in the past, because we haven’t been in the first division since 2015, we haven’t won a trophy for 13 years. So something had to change, because that’s not acceptable for a club of this standing. So how do you do it? You rebuild, you make decisions – some made around Covid. But we made a decision to go down the route we have, because we want to bring sustained success back to Sussex. But we know when we get there, we’ll hold it there for a long period of time.”One of the players who is expected to play a key role in any Sussex resurgence is 23-year-old opener Tom Haines. No-one in the country scored more than Haines’ 1176 Championship runs at 47.04 in 2021, and he will be aiming to lead from the front after being named interim captain of the red-ball side (“interim” because Sussex still retain the option to bring back Travis Head, the Australia batter who was expected to take charge, next summer). Encouragingly for Sussex, Haines’ average actually rose – to 51.12 – in the four games in which he stood in for Brown last year.It is only a couple of seasons since Haines was looking to establish himself in the first team and he admits it is “weird” to now be considered a senior player. Given the struggles of England’s batters over the winter, it is not too far-fetched to think that further promotions could soon be in order. A strong start to the summer could bring him into discussions for the New Zealand series in June, though Haines will not be looking that far ahead.Tom Haines made a pre-season hundred against Surrey•Getty Images”Right at the front of my mind at the moment is scoring as many runs as I can for Sussex,” he told ESPNcricinfo. “I’m really focused on leading this side, and hopefully leading by example with runs and in the field. I’m not one to get too far ahead of myself, I think when you do that in cricket, it comes back to bite you. So I would never focus on the speculation [around] England selection, I just want to get my head down again, like I did last year, and hopefully back it up.”It’s nice to be mentioned by people but I’m always one to try and stay as level as I can, because as an opener batter failure it always going to happen. I try to stay nice and level headed and focus on the here and now, game by game in the County Championship for Sussex.”Haines describes “trusting my defence, and leaving well” as the two fundamentals of his game. Like Kraigg Brathwaite, whose obduracy at the top of the order helped West Indies to secure a series victory over England last week, he has never played a game of professional T20 – and while Haines says he doesn’t want to pigeonhole himself, he has a clear goal in mind.”My dream since I was young is to play Test cricket for England. I don’t like to compare myself to any other players I don’t like to put myself in their shoes and say I’d have done better because that’s just not what I’m about. I try and focus as much as much as I can on myself, improving my own game. We’ve got great coaches here, Grant who’s come in and been brilliant since day one, and we’ve got all the facilities here to really improve as a player.”Salisbury says that the Sussex’s goal remains producing players for England, and Haines pushing for Test selection would be welcome – even if it leaves another hole in the side to be filled. The depth of the squad will be tested anyway, with spinner Jack Carson unlikely to play before May, having had surgery on a knee injury, and long-term absentee Jofra Archer unlikely to be in contention for first-team action until the Blast comes around.No-one is getting carried away at Hove, but with a strong T20 side looking to improve on their Blast Finals Day appearance last year and a zephyr of optimism whispering around the Championship rebuild, there is hope that the members might be able to rest a little more comfily in their deckchairs.”We won one [Championship] game last year, that’s factual,” Salisbury said. “So there’s got to be some realism. To get promoted we might have to win eight games – 800% improvement? Anything’s possible. More than anything, I want us to be better and show that we are actually progressing.”

Their season disintegrated in the latter stages, with their batsmen not putting up enough runs for their bowlers to work with

Karthik Krishnaswamy07-Nov-2020Five matches, five defeats. That’s how a promising Royal Challengers Bangalore season ultimately came to nothing. In each of those last five games, the Royal Challengers batted first, posting totals of 145, 164, 120, 152 and 131. And as hard as their bowlers tried to keep them in the game, they simply didn’t have enough runs to defend, with only two of these matches going into the final over.Something, clearly, went horribly wrong with the Royal Challengers’ batting. But what, and why? How did a team that won seven of its first ten games disintegrate so spectacularly?According to Mike Hesson, the Royal Challengers’ director of cricket, the downturn was caused by the batsmen’s inability to adapt to the slowing down of the pitches as the tournament progressed.”The reality is that the wickets slowed up and as a batting group we didn’t adapt quickly enough, and when you don’t score enough runs you put an awful lot of pressure on your bowling unit,” Hesson said in a media interaction on Saturday. “Last five games, we batted first, [and] on all of the surfaces we struggled to adapt, we struggled to be able to apply any pressure on our opposition, we kept losing wickets by trying to force our case, therefore you end up basically crawling over the line a little bit from a batting point of view, getting a sub-par score, and then scrapping hard.”And the fact that we’ve had to scrap for every game, the last four or five, it certainly exposed the fact that we struggled on the slower surfaces as the tournament progressed.”The first ten rounds, when there was enough pace in the surfaces, as a batting unit we were very good. In the death we were the second-best team, in the powerplay I think we were second or third, in the middle we were sort of around the middle, and as the tournament progressed we dropped off in those phases, but that in a nutshell was the story of the last five games.”On the surface, Hesson’s reading seems accurate. The Royal Challengers were indeed the second-fastest-scoring team in the death overs until the end of their tenth match of the season, and third-quickest in the powerplay, but second-from-bottom in the middle overs.Then they simply fell off a cliff, particularly in the death overs (their middle-overs scoring rate actually improved marginally in the latter part of the tournament).The Royal Challengers’ death-overs scoring rate nosedived over their last five games•ESPNcricinfo LtdBut did cracks suddenly erupt in the Royal Challengers’ batting unit after game 10, or did they exist right through the tournament, papered over initially by the acts of a genius? Look at the death-overs numbers in the above graphic, and think about this game, this game, this game and this one. Would the Royal Challengers have won any of them without AB de Villiers?Four wins out of seven, owing largely to the efforts of one man. And even de Villiers can’t keep such a run of form going forever. The Royal Challengers’ death-overs decline towards the end of their campaign can be attributed largely to de Villiers reverting to the mean. In their first ten games of the season, he batted six times in the death overs, and was only dismissed twice in 69 balls. In their last five games, he was dismissed three times in 16 balls across three innings.The Royal Challengers were heavily reliant on AB de VIlliers’ death-overs masterclasses•ESPNcricinfo LtdA team can’t be so reliant on one batsman. Or even two. Virat Kohli’s approach in T20s has been widely debated, but when he makes it as far as the death overs he usually makes it count. In the early, happy phase of the Royal Challengers’ season, he made it into the death overs four times in 10 innings, and scored 88 runs off 40 balls (strike rate 220.00) while being dismissed once.In his last five games, Kohli only got into the death overs once, scoring 17 off 11 balls in the phase against the Chennai Super Kings, after having scored 33 off his first 32 balls.That sort of start was typical of Kohli’s season, and the Royal Challengers were prepared to accept it given the death-overs payoff he can deliver. But did they organise the rest of their batting well enough to complement those slow starts?Simon Katich, their head coach, certainly believes so.”One thing that we tried to do with our batting order was structure it so that guys who batted in consistent pairings complemented each other,” Katich said. “You’re having guys who are strong against maybe pace, and other guys who’re strong against spin to complement each other in different phases of the innings, so it makes it harder for opposition captains to really stifle the innings.ALSO READ: Gambhir says RCB need to look beyond Kohli for captaincy“We see that in games where two similar players bat together and an opposition captain can win a three- or four-over spell of the game with a certain type of bowling, so we were really mindful of that, and hence the reason why there were games where we did bring left-handers into the fold to break up our right-handers at the top, which we obviously had, with three of the top four, in [Aaron] Finch, Kohli and de Villiers.”Pretty much in T20, batting has to be adaptable and flexible, because the nature of the game situation dictates how you have to play, whether you’re batting first or you’re chasing and when you enter the fray. So there are no actual set positions in T20 a lot of times, it comes up to how you have to go against a certain match-up and try and make it as hard as possible for the opposition captain.”That flexibility, however, wasn’t always apparent when it came to de Villiers’ batting position. He batted at No. 4 in all but two of his innings, no matter when the second wicket fell. And he ended up with a rigidly fixed position over his last six innings of the season, after the Royal Challengers made the widely debated decision to promote a pair of left-handers, Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube, above him, to match up against the two legspinners in Kings XI Punjab’s attack.”We certainly tried [promoting the left-handers] in Sharjah against Kings XI knowing full well they had their two legspinners bowling in that phase of the game,” Katich said. “Unfortunately, the execution of that plan probably meant that we copped a lot of flak over it, because it left AB de Villiers not batting as much as we would have liked, and also we didn’t get the runs we would have liked in that phase, where we did promote Sundar and Dube. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the actual thought around the plan.”

“The wickets slowed up and as a batting group we didn’t adapt quickly enough, and when you don’t score enough runs you put an awful lot of pressure on your bowling unit”Mike Hesson, RCB’s director of cricket

There wasn’t, but the flak they copped for the move dissuaded the Royal Challengers from trying it again, even in situations that seemed to cry out for it.In the game against the Super Kings in Dubai, Kohli and de Villiers scored a combined 68 off 62 balls against Ravindra Jadeja, Mitchell Santner and Imran Tahir, all of whom turn the ball away from the right-hander. Moeen Ali, a left-hand batsman with a T20 strike rate of 169.36 against legspin and left-arm orthodox before that game, and a far more proven performer than Sundar or Dube, didn’t come out to bat until the 18th over.Moeen didn’t play another game until the Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad, when the Royal Challengers made two major changes to their batting line-up. It felt like a belated recognition of the issues that had plagued the team through the tournament, especially through the middle overs. Kohli, who had struggled to find the boundary through the middle overs all season, opened alongside Devdutt Padikkal to try and make use of the powerplay field restrictions. Moeen – who boasted the best middle-overs strike rate (176.51) of all Royal Challengers batsmen since the 2018 season – came back into the team.According to Katich, Moeen was set to bat at No. 3 to target the legspin/left-arm spin combination of Rashid Khan and Shahbaz Nadeem. But the Royal Challengers lost two wickets within the first four overs, and the plan was put on ice. Moeen eventually arrived in the 11th over and ran himself out, off the first ball he faced – a free-hit.ALSO READ: Kohli’s mentorship and never-say-die attitude vital for RCB, says coach Katich“There was a period, if we hadn’t lost a wicket early [in the Eliminator], Moeen would have probably batted three, if he’d come in at the back end of the powerplay or just after the powerplay, so the timing of the wickets probably changed how our batting line-up looked,” Katich said.”We were taking the aggressive option, really, in moving Virat to the top of the order to try and get him in the game, to influence the game positively. That didn’t happen, I mean, that’s the way it panned out. It’s not often you get someone [Kohli] caught down the leg side and someone else run out off a free-hit no-ball, so that’s the way the game goes sometimes, and it didn’t go our way.”It didn’t go their way, but it might well have done had the Royal Challengers taken those decisions earlier in the tournament, and acted more proactively to address their middle-overs issues.

Also, only Malinga has produced better match figures than Siraj among visiting debutants in Australia

ESPNcricinfo stats team29-Dec-20204 – Wins for India at the MCG. This is India’s most successful venue away from home. Previously they had won three Tests each at Queens Park Oval, Trinidad, Sabina Park, Jamaica, and at the SSC in Colombo. No other team apart from England has won more than three matches at the MCG.ESPNcricinfo Ltd2003 – The previous instance of India winning a Test after losing the toss and bowling first in SENA countries (South Africa, England, New Zealand, Australia). That was also in Australia, the famous Adelaide Test of 2003. In fact the last time India won away from home in such a situation was in 2010 in Sri Lanka.2 – Previous instances of teams coming back from 0-1 down to win the second Test in Australia in the last 50 years. West Indies came back from 0-1 to win at the WACA in 1975-76. After that, it was New Zealand in 2011 in Hobart. India had lost the first Test on 23 occasions in SENA countries before this and come back to win the second Test only in 2010-11 in South Africa. The last team that won back-to-back Tests at the MCG was England in 1982 and 1986 . Before that Pakistan won in 1979 and 1981.Related

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32 – Years since no Australian batsman scored a fifty in a Test match at home. Incidentally, that was also at the MCG against West Indies. In the last thirty years, away from home, this has happened to Australia only three times.79 – The highest score for an Australian batsmen in the last six Tests between Australia and India in Australia. Marcus Harris scored this in Sydney last year. Since the start of 2016 there have been just two batsmen who have scored Test centuries for Australia against India – Steven Smith and Glenn Maxwell.1 – Overseas debutants in Australia with better match figures than Mohammed Siraj. Lasith Malinga is the only bowler to have taken more than Siraj’s five wickets in such a scenario. Only four Indian pacers have taken more wickets on debut away from home than Siraj.1887 – That’s when a visiting team’s spinners last averaged better in Australia. India’s spinners figures for this series so far read 13 wickets at an average of 16.92.2.52 – Run rate for Australia this series – the lowest ever in a home series starting from 1990. Three of the six lowest run rates for Australia in this period have come against India. The piece erroneously mentioned Pakistan in 1979 and 1981 as the last instance. This has been corrected