Football Daily | Nobby Solano only gets time for the briefest of solos with Blyth Spartans
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While Newcastle may be the latest and most high-profile club in the north-east of England to be linked with an autocratic foreign state renowned for its laissez-faire attitude towards human rights abuses, they certainly weren’t the first. Fans who rocked up to Croft Park to watch Blyth Spartans’ 2-2 draw with Spennymoor in the National League North on Boxing Day 2018 were somewhat surprised to see a new pitchside advertising hoarding imploring them to “Visit North Korea”. Paid for by a student in the University of Sunderland who had a side-hustle organising tourist excursions to the world’s most secretive country, it is not known how many of those fans present that day have since visited Pyongyang. It is unlikely to have been many considering one among their number told the Newcastle Chronicle “you’d struggle to get anyone to visit Ashington in here, never mind the People’s Republic of North Korea”.
Tomorrow is a good one, we go up north, up to Anglesey and just getting to meet people as well and travel the country. I haven’t done since I was a youngster, maybe this is the last time I’ll be in Wales so for this period now, I really want to find peace with that, travel as much of Wales and see as many people as I can and really take advantage of that” – Craig Bellamy on how the national job has the added bonus of helping him explore lesser-travelled parts of his homeland.
David Beckham is often mocked as a man whose lack of eloquence is directly related to the amount of space his brain cells have while whizzing around looking for company. But I read yesterday’s Quote of the Day about his last meeting with Sven-Göran Eriksson and felt he put all the pathos and emotion at losing a friend to cancer in simple, emotional and affecting language” – Colin Reed.
The football world is poorer today with the retirement of Wojciech Szczesny (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition). A gentleman throughout his career, he remains one in his retirement. No sneaking off to China, Saudi Arabia or USA USA USA. Much maligned at Arsenal, for no fault of his, he thrived at Juventus and for his home country in the World Cup. Your name may be unpronounceable and unspellable to us, but we will miss you!” – Krishna Moorthy.
Football Daily’s credentials as a modern-day Nostradamus were comprehensively dented by your prediction that Goodison Park would be ‘half-empty’ for the visit of Doncaster Rovers (yesterday’s Football Daily). In fact, the attendance of 37,245 was not too far off the 39,414 capacity and your 2-0 score prediction was also wide of the mark. In other words, you can’t do predictions for toffee(s)” – Adrian Irving.
Jonjo Shelvey has signed for Turkish club Eyupspor. The Yorkshire connection isn’t clear and Shelvey didn’t have to ‘go to the foot of our stairs’ to sign, but I would love to think that photo ops with flat cap and whippet were considered” – Kevin Worley.
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