Tag: Manchester City

For Sinan Bytyqi, things were going well. The Manchester City starlet, who fled war torn Kosovo with his parents as a baby, was winning rave reviews during a loan spell in Holland.

During his last visit to Manchester, Pep Guardiola had pulled the then 21-year-old aside for a discreet word, wishing him luck and telling him his progress with Go Ahead Eagles was being monitored closely.

One of his close pals in what he was hoping would be a dream come true at the Ethihad was Nigerian ineternational Kelechi Iheanacho, who has since moved on to Leicester City.

After being named in the Eredivisie team of the week, and with thoughts already on returning to City to try and make the breakthrough into the first team, Bytyqi was called into the office of the Dutch club before training.

‘I went in and there was the manager, the coaches, the physios,’ he recalls. ‘I thought “what’s going on here?”. It was weird. The manager pulled out a piece of paper and told me that they had found something on my annual heart monitoring test in Manchester and I had to go back to England.

‘He also said it is the kind of condition that stops you from playing professional sport.’

That devastating sentence was delivered late last year. A second, hastily arranged opinion, in London, confirmed the diagnosis.

Bytyqi had hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a disease in which a portion of the heart muscle is enlarged, creating functional impairment of the heart. It is also the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in young athletes.

Bytyqi not willing to bid football bye both on and off the pitch, contacted Fergal Harkin, City’s scouting manager. ‘He looked after me while I was on loan,’ he says. ‘He said he was going to build a team and I was welcome to work with him. I wanted to do that because I know how difficult a loan can be.

‘At City you get everything, food, pool, sauna. You go out and you don’t get that. You have to cook your own food. Even the language you don’t understand.’

City, who have kept news of Bytyqi’s playing retirement quiet until this interview with the Mailonline, were as good as their word. On November 2, around a year after diagnosis, he started his new role as loan scout. ‘I watch players, provide reports and try to support them,’ he says.

Bytyqi is no doubt making the best of his new opportunity and deriving joy from it.

‘I can’t change yesterday but I can change tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I go home and cry or I move on.’

It is done and dusted, or better put signed sealed and delivered! Every nation that ought to have a ticket to Russia 2018 now has it in the kitty as the 32 countries to battle for honour are now all known.

All that is left now if for the various national teams to continue their build up to Russia 2018 and most importantly look forward to would be opponents when the official draw is made December 1.

Is that the end of the story? NO!  Action returns Saturday in the Premier league with the players all back from international duties though not completely 100% as some like Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero had cause to be in the hospital after fainting while away on national assignment with Argentina, a friendly match in Russia against Nigeria that ended in massive defeat for the two time world cup winners.

Aguero who is already back in the City fold is good to go and has been tipped to feature against Leicester City at the King Power Stadium on Saturday. Man City leads the league table with 31 points in 11 matches and only one thing could possibly be in the mind of the team and technical crew headed by Pep Guardiola, consolidation!

Nigerian international Alex Iwobi was on fire in Russia and scoring in the 4-2 defeat of Argentina in on Tuesday.  No doubt Arsenal will be expecting another 5-star performance from him as Arsenal host Tottenham.  The Gunners are currently out of the top five in the log and a good result Saturday could guarantee upward move.

Manchester United will no doubt be in a hurry to sing victory song on Saturday as they host Newcastle.

With the confirmed return of the trio of Zlatan Ibrahimović, Paul Pogba and Marcos Rojo,Jose Mourinho   appears to have the odds in his favour and the visitors need to be ready for fireworks. Interestingly both Manchester United and Newcastle lost their last matches before the international break to Chelsea and AFC Bournemouth respectively.  Before the international break Liverpool earned a massive away 4-1 win over West Ham. Can they continue the victory song when they host Southampton? The odds appear to say so with Southampton only able to record a win, two draws and two losses in the last five matches.

Manchester City have posted record revenues of £473.4million and a third successive profit as part of their 2016-17 financial report.

It is the first time the club has broken the £400m mark, with this year’s number an increase of 21 per cent on the previous figures.

The club also posted a £1.088m profit, though the club says that figure would have been higher had it not been for a change to their reporting period, aimed at aligning the financial year with the wider City Football Group.

City’s positive results come in spite of the club failing to win any titles last season, and they also remained debt-free.

Club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak commented: “This report is about making sure our fans and our partners can see the true detailed status of every aspect of the club.

“What hopefully comes across is that the football organisation and off-field business have the right symmetry and balance to allow us to continue to further strengthen and grow.”

Al Mubarak also spoke about City’s academy, which continues to produce talented young players, and he specifically mentioned the promising development of Brahim Diaz and Phil Foden, who recently played a starring role for England in their successful Under-17 World Cup campaign, winning the Golden Ball in the process.

He added: “The ongoing development of Phil Foden and Brahim Diaz, in particular, continues to be encouraging and our commitment to nurture our own talent remains a central pillar for the club’s long-term sustainability.”

Looking forward to the 2017-18 season, the Chairman says that the Club “enters this season with a justifiable sense of ambition and expectation”, a view shared by CEO Ferran Soriano who says that he is “convinced we will see further progress and silverware in the seasons to come.”

He further observes the revenue growth moving “towards the £500m mark” and reiterates the club’s long held position that “on-field success and financial sustainability must exist hand-in-hand.”