Edinson Cavani is back in the news and according to the UK press Manchester City are preparing to make the Napoli striker the best-paid player in England. But one paper reckons City have competition. Click here to find out which club has also entered the equation and the latest rumors.
Roberto Mancini has conceded the title race is done and dusted, but what about his future and that of star midfielder Yaya Toure. Find out what the Press make of it all by checking out the latest edition of Paper Chase.
Alex Ferguson may have stated that Wayne Rooney is staying at Manchester United for the long term, but that hasn’t stopped the rumors surrounding his future. The latest comes from the French league - and it’s not the side you’re thinking of! Take a peek at Paper Chase on FOX Soccer to find out which club is contemplating making an audacious bid.
Carlos Tevez is back in the news again - for all the right reasons. The Argentine scored an impressive hat-trick in Manchester City’s 5-0 victory over Barnsley - a result which set up a potential FA Cup semi-final date with arch rival United. Tevez has now been linked with a move to France. Go to FOX Soccer to find out which club is considering making a move.
By Leander Schaerlaeckens
Admission: Football Manager plays a pretty big part in how I form opinions on soccer players.
I’ve been playing the unfathomably detailed simulator since long before I discovered girls. And – thanks to an actual network of scouts rating many thousands of players around the world – it’s proved uncannily prescient. I knew about many a promising young player long before he surfaced in real life thanks to the game. And more often than not, how a young player developed within the game more or less corresponded to his career trajectory in reality. The clubs he went to and stats he put up weren’t exact, of course, but the sort of career he had was accurate an astonishing amount of the time.
So when Football Manager’s makers SI Games sent me a simulation of how David Beckham would do at the various clubs that are rumored to be interested in signing the free agent who recently departed the Los Angeles Galaxy, I actually took it more seriously than the idle speculation of pundits and such. As these last U.S. presidential elections showed us, our grasp of the numbers has outpaced our ability for cognitive predictions.
Here then, some highlights of the predictions made by SI Games:
