Injury scare for Brazil?
Has the foot that Neymar broke playing for Paris Saint-Germain in February fully healed? He limped out of Brazil’s training in Sochi yesterday after just 15 minutes and it was clear that his right foot was troubling him.
According to ESPN, the Brazil team doctor has said it was his ankle playing up - the result of a hefty Swiss challenge in Sunday’s 1-1 draw - and nothing to do with the foot injury he suffered at the start of the year.
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“Neymar trained a little, felt the pain, returned to physical therapy and trains normally [today],” said Dr Rodrigo Lasmar, who added that everyone should “calm down” and stop assuming the worst.
Brazil play Costa Rica on Friday in their second World Cup group E game and Philippe Coutinho sounded confident that his teammate will be fit.
“Neymar is OK,” he said, mindful of the fact that the PSG striker had been fouled ten times by the Swiss. “All matches will be like this and we have to live with that.”
Kane: I want to be the best
England captain Harry Kane wants to join Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentina’s Lionel Messi as one of the best players in the world.
Kane scored twice in the 2-1 victory against Tunisia on Monday and the group G double takes him to 15 goals in 25 games for England, the BBC reports. His club record for Tottenham is 135 goals in the past four seasons.
Ronaldo has scored 450 for Real Madrid while Messi has 552 for Barcelona - but Kane believes that he can reach the same levels of success. He said: “To be the best player in the world you have to aim high. You can’t aim low.
“I want to prove myself at a major tournament. I want to be up there with the best in the world and the only way to do that is to perform on the big stage and in the big moments. I had to prove people wrong throughout my career and I love proving to myself that I can do it.
“Ronaldo is the best in the world, up there with Messi, but the challenge is there to be with them. I have been itching to get out there and showcase myself on the big stage.”
Japan and Senegal fans clean up
Are Japan and Senegal supporters the most polite in world football?
Following their nation’s 2-1 victory against Colombia yesterday in group H, Japanese fans stayed behind at the Mordovia Arena in Saransk to clean the stadium and take away their litter.
The Japanese have cemented their reputation as the World Cup’s best guests, says The Sun, after another clean-up job in 2014 when fans “took bin bags with them to the game against Ivory Coast”.
It wasn’t just the Japanese who impressed with their good manners, but also the fans of Senegal following their 2-1 win against Poland. A video shared on social media by Argentinian TV channel TyC Sports shows Senegal fans “scouring the stands for rubbish and assembling it in a single pile”, the Independent reports.
The video has been viewed more than four million times and the TyC Sports caption reads: “Senegal pulled off a historic victory. But instead of partying in the minutes after the end of the game, they tasked themselves with cleaning up their section before leaving. #Respect.”
