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It wasn’t too long ago that you reguarly saw two home nations appearing at a major tournament. Nowadays, however, it is something of a relief to see England there. Where did it all go wrong for the home nations in international football?

Whatever you may think of the FIFA rankings, they do tell you a lot about the current situation of the countries in the UK and Ireland. Wales are 117th in the world behind teams like Haiti; Northern Ireland are 59th; Scotland rank a measly 55th. The Republic of Ireland, meanwhile, are a respectable 31st in the world.

A perfect example of the recent decline is with Scotland. Scottish supporters have not seen the Saint Andrew’s Cross flying proudly at a major competition since 1998. Despite the win over Lithuania, which has kept alive their hopes of qualifying for Euro 2012, recent campaigns have followed an all-too-familiar pattern of hope and disappointment.

The growth of the Premier League has had an adverse effect on the fortunes of the home nations. The money on offer in the English league is eye-watering in comparison to that of the Scottish league system, and as a result it has all but been consumed by it. It now seems that the best players in the SPL are only good enough to play in the second tier of English football and is it not very often you see a Scottish player making the move to a top end Premier League team, Shaun Maloney’s move to Wigan being the most recent example. The SPL’s record top scorer, Kris Boyd, was deemed only good enough to play in the Championship which does illustrate the poor standard of football in the Scottish league. However I don’t think this should affect the national team as much as it has, since other nations that have poor domestic leagues still impress on the international stage. The Dutch league is not the greatest in the world but they still produce world class players on a regular basis, therefore I think there is a deeper problem at the heart of the poor performances.

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Another major problem is that the higher seeded nations get an easier draw and as soon as a nation hits a period of decline they find it hard to re-emerge due to their low seeding position giving them tougher groups. The best these nations can rely on is finishing in 2nd place behind the highest ranked team and then having to win the dreaded playoff to qualify.

While Scotland and Northern Ireland may be able to pull off a surprise result with their best eleven they do not have the squad capable of maintaining such a high standard for an extremely long qualifying campaign, conducted over a period of fourteen months. While both teams have a few players who are of Premier League standard, and who are proven performers at international level, the rest of the squaf is made of players who frequent the Championship, League One and the SPL. This is certainly the case with Wales who have a couple of high-profile names supported by a squad of lower league players. Hence, when these bigger players are missing, Wales seem to struggle.

The Welsh and Northern Irish domestic football leagues remain of very poor quality, which is unlikely to produce many future members of a successful international team. They have always relied on the English leagues to unearth and develop their top players and, with the ever-increasing number of foreign players in the Premier League, it has become even harder for these players to make it at the top.

As the number of countries taking part in qualifying tournaments has increased, with the collapse of the USSR and Yugoslavia, qualification has expanded making it harder for a smaller nation such as Scotland or Northern Ireland to get there and the minnows have improved in quality. When Northern Ireland are losing 4-1 away to Estonia it is time to worry and I think we may have to accept that we are unlikely to see the home nations countries at a major championship any time soon.

Let me know your thoughts and follow me on twitter @aidanmccartney for more thoughts and views on the biggest issues in football.

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The other Sunday the entire nation (according to the man’s man Richard Keys) watched Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United. Super Spectacular Sunday or something, or maybe Dull Derby Draw Deadlock D-Day. But going back to the Spurs game, I think we can all agree that surely a game of this importance shouldn’t be settled by a sending off?

No? Well Jonathan Pearce thinks so. And he said precisely that as United were reduced to 10 men.

I am clearly being lazy – I have obviously missed the rule change brought in by FIFA that stated that laws change according to the importance of the game. Or maybe the law has always been in place and I am just really stupid. Or maybe Jonathan Pearce is an idiot. It’s one of the three (maybe more).

It also seems appropriate to ask what stature of game Pearce considered the match to be – at the end of the day (my cliché of the day) it was Tottenham Hotspur v Manchester United. A big game, an interesting game for the neutral and both set of fans alike (or so I thought), but it’s hardly the World Cup Final. It was 5th v 2nd (1st by end of play).

It’s the same liberal application of logic that sees commentators bemoan referees sending off players very late in a game, instead preferring that they used a “bit of common sense”, or commenting that a red card had “ruined the game as a spectacle”, as that’s the last thing we need – afterall, it’s a sad day when applying the laws of the game correctly is more important than entertaining the masses.

Tony Cascarino once commented, as he discussed Ronaldo’s red card against Manchester City a couple of years ago.

“It’s a red card, but I just wish, for the sake of entertainment, that referees used common sense sometimes.”

Here’s a suggestion – why don’t commentators accept when commentating that the referee is there to apply the laws of the game, not turn a blind eye. Afterall, it is not just a case of commentators not knowing the laws, more that often they think they should be liberally applied. Or again, maybe it’s me. Maybe I missed the announcement that stated that contact with another player is automatically a foul. Or the rule that a player who raises his hands is automatically risking violent conduct and thus can have no grounds for complaint. Or the agreement that deems acceptable a commentator’s analysis that he has “seen them given” when judging a penalty appeal, as if this has any relevance to the situation.

Applying common sense is a quite idiotic mantra to push. No two people have the same idea of what constitutes common sense – and as I have said before until I am blue in the face, it is not the referee’s job to be doing that anyway but applying laws. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances occasionally. A slippy pitch should be taken into account when assessing some tackles, a feisty derby may require a different approach from the referee, but throughout, the laws of the game never change.

One of the biggest cries is “all we want to see is consistency” and I think I can help here. I had a good ponder about this, I even thought outside the box for a while, and I think the solution is to let one single referee do every Premiership game. This way, we will get consistency. Yes, I know there’s a few logistical problems with this approach, and no two games could be played at the same time, but instead of focusing on the negatives, let’s look at the positives. Total consistency, and the same standard of refereeing for everyone. I see no downside.

Referees are human beings. As if every referee can apply the laws and assess situations the same. It just doesn’t work like that. There are areas where consistency is needed – for example handball by a defender jumping in a wall at a free kick. And referees need a more consistent approach to issuing red cards, as there is too great a discrepancy amongst them. But in other areas total consistency is nigh-on impossible.

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It has been this way for a long time with commentators and pundits alike. Take Andy Gray, who also seems also to think that laws shouldn’t be applied all the time. We can go back as far 2006 to see an article of his for football365.com, when he penned a scathing piece on Graham Poll after he sent off James McFadden. The gist of his argument can be summed up in this extract:

You would have thought that Graham Poll would have kept his head down this week, taken himself out of the firing line and made sure he wasn’t involved in any controversy that would put him on the back pages again.

He must have known that his every move would be under scrutiny after the weekend, that anything he did would be open to question because of the reactions of the Chelsea players – so you would think that he would have avoided any contentious decisions on Wednesday night.

If referees sent players off every time they gave them a volley of abuse, every other game would be abandoned. It’s a passionate and emotive sport where the fear of failure means that anger is always bubbling just below the surface ready to explode if you feel like you’ve been treated harshly.

This is not a modern phenomenon. I swore at the referee all the time and I’m hard pushed to think of a player who didn’t, even the supposed nice guys of the game. Anyone who thinks foul language can be eradicated from the game is barking mad.

What Andy Gray is basically arguing is two things. Firstly, that a referee that has had a tough week, or given some controversial decisions recently, should keep his head down and not make any more controversial decisions. Andy Gray thinks he should not apply the rules as he sees fit, and call decisions the way he normally would, but chicken out and turn a blind eye. Secondly, he comes out with the moronic argument that football is a passionate game, and swearing at the referee is a natural consequence of this passion. By his logic, as football is the only sport where referees are treated in this way, then football must be the only game with any passion. I mean, I’ve never seen ANY passion in a game of rugby or cricket.

This is the one other area I think we do need to see consistency – punishing abuse from players – it will soon stop.

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The irony is that a commentator can joke about women not knowing about the offside law while sitting in the studio every week showing themselves to have a crass ignorance of the laws, and fellow commentators can spend years talking about a daylight rule when deciding offside that never existed as more than general guidance and was dropped years ago anyway.

At the weekend, these same arguments raised their head once more. Frederic Piquionne put West Ham 2-1 up late on in the game against Everton then was sent off after his over-exuberant goal celebration.

Chris Kamara on Goals on Sunday was not impressed with the referee, stating that he could have shown some of that famous “common sense” and let him off, especially as it was his last season as a referee, so sod the assessor in the stand. Andy Cole nodded his head in approval. Of course the referee was entirely correct to send him off – he was doing his job. It’s a stupid law in my opinion, but a law nevertheless. The referee acknowledged this by shaking Piquionne’s hand as he sent him off – he knew he had no choice.

And throughout this, who has escaped any blame? Why, Piquionne of course. Reinforcing the old stereotype that footballers are thick, he jumps into the crowd whilst on a yellow card. Of course it appeared to be a vital goal, and he was overjoyed and keen to celebrate – but it is possible to do this without jumping into the crowd. Only one person was to blame for that dismissal, and it sure as hell wasn’t the referee, yet still people are quick to blame him. Unbelievable, Jeff.

Maybe I was the only person speechless at Mark Clattenburg ignoring a blatant penalty for Chelsea at the end of the Blackpool match last September because it was 4-0 and the match was about to end, and he would have had to send a player off. Maybe I was the only person nauseous at him laughing with Drogba and then high-fiving and hugging him.

Maybe it was just me. I mean, he was only applying a bit of common sense afterall.

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It seems that with every positive comes a huge negative as far as Coventry City is concerned.

A brilliant start to pre season with an 8-0 win over Hinckley and news that one of two European centre backs on trial with the club had earned himself a contract with the other expected to sign in the near future.

This should all be positive for City but as quick as these positives came about Thorn confirmed that he was resigned to losing last years player of the year Richard Keogh.

It appears Coventry have been looking further afield for more signings with the latest free transfer arriving from French club Nice in the form of Kevin Malaga. Not much is really known about the player other than he is a 6ft 2inch French centre back who last season captained the Nice reserves.

First team opportunities seem to have been very limited for the player who at the age of 25 really should have had a lot more. I am by no means writing this signing off altogether but I am sceptical about a player who seems to have very little history in the game other than time spent playing for a teams reserves.

Another Frenchman is also on trial with the club and could be the man to replace Richard Keogh if or should I say when he leaves. His name is William Edjenguélé and will once again be a free transfer after his spell at Panetolikos F.C. in Greece came to an end. He unlike Malaga seems to have had plenty of first team experience both in the French and the Greek leagues and let’s just hope that Thorn once again has found some real talent out of nowhere.

With only a year left on Keogh’s contract there were always only going to be two options for the player. Either sign a contract extension and commit himself to the club for the foreseeable future or be sold to ensure the club don’t lose him for nothing next summer. It now looks certain to be the latter of the two which is a real shame for everyone involved.

He has been a real star in his time at Coventry and his passion, commitment and constant wholehearted performances were loved and appreciated by everyone. He has in essence been our very own Scott Parker, a player willing to throw his body on the line to help the team. Despite not being captain last season he always led by example and I fully believed that with him leading the team as captain this season we always had a chance of success. It is clearly not meant to be though and we now look certain to lose a player who if did choose to stay has the potential to become a true club legend.

I have to question SISU once more in that they should be doing absolutely everything they can to keep Keogh at the club.

Thorn publicly stated how desperate he was to keep him at the club so he could name him captain for the new season. It almost seems like the Marlon King situation all over again, he is undoubtedly a quality player and one we are not going to be able to replace like for like. The only difference this time is we will receive a fee for him but the value of him staying at the club will in my opinion far outweigh the short term benefits of allowing him to leave.

From Keogh’s own personal point of view I can totally understand him not wanting to commit himself to the club for a long period of time. With relegation to League One combined with the uncertainty about the clubs finances it is understandable for any player to want to leave for better things.

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However I do believe that if the right deal was put in front of him he would have no hesitation in signing.

The sort of deal I am referring to would be a contract which would include a release clause in it which could then allow for Keogh to leave at the end of next season if we fail to gain promotion but still enable the club to get a fair price for him. Surely a deal like this would have satisfied both parties but once again Coventry fans have to settle for seeing there star players leave and replaced by free transfers.

PUSB!!

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Celtic boss Neil Lennon will evaluate where his team is at when they meet Serie A giants Inter Milan in the Dublin Super Cup.The Scottish Premier League side have already started their 2011/12 campaign, beating Hibernian 2-0 in the opening round of matches and having had their meeting with Dunfermline Athletic postponed to participate in the two-day tournament in Dublin.

They will meet Inter on the opening day before a clash with Airtricity XI, which is a collection of the best players in the League of Ireland.

Lennon – who took his men to Australia as part of the pre-season programme – said he would use the test against Gian Piero Gasperini’s team to monitor his side’s progress.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to gauge where we are in terms of comparisons with the calibre of team of Inter Milan,” he said on Friday.

“We feel that Europe is important, not just to the club but to the players and the backroom staff, including myself, as part of our development.”

Celtic will begin their Europa League campaign on August 18 when they enter the qualification stages of the competition in the play-off round.

Their next league game is at Aberdeen on August 7.

Everton midfielder Steven Pienaar looks set to join Tottenham after announcing the move on his Twitter page.The South African international has been in the middle of a bidding war between Spurs and Chelsea, with both clubs having offers accepted by Everton for the 28-year-old.

But Pienaar travelled to north London to complete a medical at White Hart Lane on Tuesday and is expected to be unveiled as a Spurs player in the coming days.

“To end speculation I am going to Spurs,” Pienaar’s Twitter post read. “I’ve had brilliant years at Everton and it will always be a special place in my heart.”

With his contract set to expire in July, Everton were determined to get something for Pienaar and manager David Moyes revealed the club had accepted a bid for him from an undisclosed club at the weekend.

It is believed both Tottenham and Chelsea tabled bids in the region of three million pounds for the South African international, but Pienaar ultimately chose to link up with Harry Redknapp’s side.

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Pienaar joined Everton from Borussia Dortmund after a successful loan spell and has also spent time with Dutch giants Ajax Amsterdam.

As the dust settled in Kiev and the Swedes prepared for their flight home, England fans were starting to believe their makeshift team might actually have a decent chance at Euro 2012. With so many injuries and suspensions hampering the new manager’s preparations, expectation was as low as it had ever been but Friday’s 2-3 victory over Sweden has renewed supporter’s faith. In a typically fickle reaction, the English media are now building up the hopes of the nation but the reality is the team are unlikely to progress past the next round. With a potential banana skin against co-hosts Ukraine expected to be followed by Spain or Italy in the first knockout round, realistically how far can England hope to progress?

Despite the potential permutations being all ifs and buts, chances are England will face Spain in the next round. Unless they can win their group by earning a better result against Ukraine than the French gain against Sweden, England will finish 2nd in Group D meaning only a surprise from Croatia will stop the reigning World and European champions from topping Group C and facing Roy Hodgson’s troops. It will be a daunting test for the Three Lions’ ramshackle squad but while fans would have to suffer through 90 plus minutes of backs to the wall defending, England actually beat Spain the last time the two nations met so a shock result isn’t all that impossible. While few would criticise them should they fall to a side tipped as the eventual winners, former Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp believes England could still turn a few heads.

“Before the tournament, I said organisation in defence was key but, against the Swedes, England showed how threatening they are up front.

“Every other team at the Euros will have taken note and nobody will fancy playing us.

“England have a scary looking attack. Frankly, I wouldn’t swap England’s front six for any at this tournament – including Spain’s.”

That’s quite a commendation from the man overlooked by the FA in favour of Hodgson but his positivity is refreshing albeit dripping with bias overtones. Patriotism aside, few would agree that England’s forwards are as good as Spain’s but Redknapp is right to champion a group of more than capable footballers. England’s squad has a blend of seasoned match winners and exciting young talent all with European experience so why wouldn’t other nations be wary of facing them?

The tag of favourites may have been bestowed on more deserving nations but returning forward Wayne Rooney believes in his teammate’s chances and after seeing out a two match ban is confident he and his colleagues can progress a fair distance in Poland and Ukraine.

“We are hard to beat now. If we keep doing that and keep working hard then there’s no reason we can’t go really far and be in with a shout of winning it.

“If you want to win tournaments you have to play the best teams and how much of a boost would it be for us if we were to play Spain and beat them? How much confidence would that give us?”

It certainly would fill the nation with pride but England’s cagey victory against the Spanish at Wembley in November isn’t exactly a blueprint for success. The home side had just 3 goal attempts to the visitors 21 and allowed them 71% possession so a repeat of that performance wouldn’t suffice. England can’t rely on a lucky tap in from Frank Lampard every time but that hasn’t distracted Rooney from believing in England’s chances, even if he understands they’ll need some good fortune along the way.

“I think we’re good enough. I know everyone doesn’t want us to build expectations up but I firmly believe we have got the players.

“Obviously you need a bit of luck as well, but we’ve got a good opportunity. We’ve got the squad and are more organised than we have been as long as I’ve been in the squad.”

Despite his positivity, reservations still exist regarding Hodgson’s defensive tactics and a narrow win against Sweden hasn’t convinced anyone that England can genuinely win the competition. With so many top nations involved, a quarterfinal appearance would still constitute a decent showing for a team written off before the tournament even started. The majority supporters’ pretournament predictions placed England as rank outsiders so a blockbuster knockout tie against a strong nation would still give followers the heart pounding summer occasion they expect from an International competition.

Because of the players at their disposal, England are part of an elite group of nations in with a chance of winning any tournament so finishing in what is technically the top 8 is no mean feat. There would also be no shame in losing to Spain, or the Italians for that matter, but Croatia and Italy could both offer a decent chance of progressing to the semi-finals should circumstances dictate. Beyond that it’s anyone’s guess for no one can predict the various coming events but even if things do go pear shaped, England fans should be proud just to see their team challenge the best nations in the world.

Spirits may be high after their recent face saving comeback but few would begrudge them a heroic yet inevitable defeat in the latter rounds. Rather than moan when unrealistic expectations aren’t exceeded, fans should enjoy England’s efforts for as long they possibly can. Things may seem positive at the moment but the underlying reality is nobody would be that surprised if Ukraine sent them packing tomorrow evening.

Will England beat Ukraine to reach the knockout rounds? Do you think England can win Euro 2012? Can they beat the likes of Spain to progress in the tournament?

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Let me know your views and opinions by following me on Twitter – Tweet me @Alex_Churcher

The Mirror is reporting that Harry Redknapp wants Manchester City to cover the cost of his move for striking misfit Emmanuel Adebayor.

Redknapp is keen to bring the Togolese striker to White Hart Lane with discussions reportedly already underway between the two clubs, although a sticking point could be the player’s wages.

The ex-Arsenal striker is valued at £14 million and City are prepared to loan him out if a club meets his £175,000-a-week-wages.

A one-year loan deal interests Tottenham but they will only stump up £75,000 a week for the player, meaning City will have to cover the remaining £100,000.

Adebayor returned to Eastland’s for training yesterday after a self-imposed exile and boss Roberto Mancini is desperate to offload him before the transfer window closes.

Both sides are still some way from an agreement but with Spurs set to throw a loan fee into the mix it could sway City into sanctioning the deal just to get the player off their hands for a year.

Real Madrid are still monitoring developments and Adebayor has made it known he’d prefer a move back to Spain, where he spent the second half of last season.

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However it looks unlikely that they are prepared to meet neither City’s asking price nor Adebayor’s wage demands paving the way for Spurs.

Writing about football rumours is generally a pointless business. The vast majority of the speculation is nonsense — freely acknowledged nonsense — designed to do nothing more than keep the whole tumbrel rolling. Like water on a prayer wheel, talking about football glorifies football, makes football stronger, and so serves it’s own purpose. Accuracy is generally an afterthought, if indeed a thought at all.

But while most rumours are nonsense, the reactions of the fans to them tend to be honest: I really would have liked Mesut Ozil; I really wouldn’t have liked Joe Cole. So while the mooted £1.5 billion takeover of Manchester United by Qatari Holdings remains the purest of heresay, neither side having even bothered to deny it, it still represents a chance for United fans to envision a life after the Glazers.

Elsewhere on this website, a poll asking readers “Would you welcome a Qatari takeover?” is currently 83% in favour, an approval rating politicians would kill for. And the promise is alluring: on the one hand, no more debt; on the other, no more debt. If we had a third hand, no more debt. Then maybe a couple of players on top of that. Did I mention no more debt?

Whereas for the prospective owners, it’s all about the cachet: owning the most successful club in Premier League history has got to be a major boost to the ego. It’s a few steps above a yacht as a vanity purchase, and it makes sense as part of what looks to be a coordinated assault by Qatari money on the sacred artefacts of football. First the World Cup. Then that long-held taboo: the space on the front of Barcelona’s shirts. Now United? Everything’s for sale.

It seems to me that the positive reaction from some United fans is both entirely understandable but perhaps a touch short-sighted. Indeed, it is perhaps not too much of a stretch to suggest that United fans would accept almost any alternative ownership, if it would mean removing the debt. Yet is it really better to be little more than a toy of the super-rich? Apart from the fact that there’s less chance of the club going into genuine financial meltdown, United is simply exchanging a set of owners using the club for selfish financial ends, to another using the club for selfish egoistical ends. The club is still being used by owners who care nothing for the club in itself, only for what it does for them.

The two previous takeovers under similar circumstances in the Premier League were, of course, Chelsea and Manchester City, bought by Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour as the natural next step after shiny cars and super yachts, vital accessories for the international pastime of super-rich dick-swinging. They are clubs operated for the aggrandisement of their owners, rather like the circuses of Caligula and Nero, who derived great joy from watching indentured commoners kicking lumps out of one another. And what success they have had — this point applies to Chelsea only — is tainted by association with what Arsène Wenger rather cutely called ‘financial doping’. He’s a bad loser, Arsène, but he’s a clever man, and he knows a performance-enhancing injection of cash when he sees one. So let us be very clear: this purchase would place United in exactly the same position.

Such a takeover would also mean that the fans would be robbed of their only means of holding the club to account, the threat of withdrawing their financial support. The green-and-gold boycott campaign, while only haphazardly effective and widely disregarded, appears to have influenced the Glazer’s recent wrapping up of the PIK debts, and this is because the survival of the Glazer regime is dependent on the continued flow of money through the club. That stops, they’re screwed. But Qatari Holdings’ assets — estimated at $60 billion, or £38.5 billion, relative to which the mooted price for the club is negligible — mean that refusing to buy the tickets, shirts, pies or programmes won’t matter in the slightest. The fans would, finally, be totally irrelevant; their presence wholly optional.

It is worth remembering that these rumours have surfaced before, back in January, and amounted to nothing. And it is, in a way, a compliment to United that the takeover is mooted; the language in the press indicates that this is viewed as the pinnacle of the Qatari footballing operation, meaning United, in global brand terms at least, are the Koh-i-Noor of football clubs. Yet to see our first and only love reduced to arm candy, a trophy wife to fiscal power, flanked by an owner interested only in the reflected glamour that comes from standing so close to something so beautiful, would be to die inside. Just a little.

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Article courtesy of Twisted Blood from The Busby Way

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Liverpool have slumped to another defeat, being beaten 1-0 by Fulham at Anfield on Tuesday night.

With the FA Cup final against Chelsea on Saturday, the Merseyside team rested several players and a Martin Skrtel own goal after five minutes settled the game in favour of the visitors.

Reds boss Kenny Dalglish was unhappy with his players’ display and admits that one eye may well have been on their date at Wembley.

“The attitude and approach to the game is where it went wrong,” he told Sky Sports.

“Maybe I was culpable for trying to give as many of them a game as I possibly could to put them in the frame for Saturday.

“The attitude and desire wasn’t there. We can’t play at that tempo, we have to play quicker than that.

“There were one or two who did well, but apart from that it was not a good night for us, myself included. There is a lot of people of have got to take responsibility for it.

“We tried to be fair and give everyone an opportunity. Maybe I was wrong.

“This won’t affect the performance on Saturday, but it is disappointing because every game is important.

“There are people who come along to support us and they deserve a better performance than that,” he admitted.

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Fulham are now joint with Liverpool on 49 points and move up to ninth place.

By Gareth McKnight

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Arsenal will have to wait to see whether they have signed Velez Sarsfield midfielder Rick Alvarez, who is the subject of transfer bids from Inter Milan and Roma also.

Palermo president Mauricio Zamperini has revealed that his side were interested in the Argentinian, but were put off by the £11 million price tag – which has been met by their Italian rivals.

“We were close to signing Alvarez for half the price they will now pay for him but my colleagues took it easy and no agreement was reached,” the outspoken 65-year-old is believed to have said in The Sun.

“Where will he go? He was going to sign for Arsenal but Inter Milan made a move and that is where I believe he will go,” he concluded.

The Buenos Aires side’s chairman Fernando Raffaini confirmed that the European trio were battling for his services.

“Alvarez could be in England or Italy because we are negotiating with several clubs in those countries. Until it is signed, nothing is confirmed, but many clubs are interested, including Inter, Roma and Arsenal,” he concluded.

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The 23-year-old impressed in helping Velez to their 8th national Primera Division title in 2011.