Football Daily | Evangelos Marinakis, phlegm and a full-throated discourse

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When it was reported last Friday that Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis had been landed with a five-match stadium ban for “improper behaviour” around the tunnel area following their defeat to Fulham last month, Football Daily can’t have been alone in wondering what exactly it was the Greek businessman could have done to merit such a hefty punishment. Considering Nuno Espírito Santo and Morgan Gibbs-White had received shorter bans on the same day for slinging a few effs and jeffs at match referee Josh Smith and his team of match officials, it turns out Big Vange’s suspension was imposed for the similar – but crucially very different and far more serious – crime of gobbing off in their direction.

As I read Sid Lowe’s article on Luka Modric, I was reminded of a mind-blowing stat that I saw the other day, that Modric has now played in more than half of Croatia’s all-time men’s national games (182 out of 363). He has outlasted legends at Real Madrid, including Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Toni Kroos, Casemiro and more. That Modric is now 39 and still competing at the highest level, both for club and country, is amazing, and it’s a wonder his name is not brought up as often in discussions about the greats” – Sam Fetherlin.

I know four years is a long time in football but, even still, the change from this to the utterly predictable this with Real Madrid is quite startling” – Noble Francis.

While Arthur Ellis might well have been the ‘man in the middle’ in Berne (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition), this was some years before I was even born. So you’ll have to forgive me (and 1,056 other readers) for remembering the man and his weekly refereeing role in It’s A Knockout. If you can get past Stuart Hall, Arthur adds a ‘smart, aristocratic’ air to the seaside-postcard proceedings. Sadly, 1979 never looked so seedy” – Stephen Gash (and no other readers).

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