CELEBRITY
BITTER HATRED! DI MARIA CHANGES TV CHANNEL WHEN MAN UTD PLAY
Angel Di Maria who scored the goal for Argentina that denied Nigeria the Beijing 2008 Olympic gold medal in football is extremely bitter about Manchester United. He was one of the more incredible transfer rumours to circulate during the football shutdown came from Italy last month.
Daily Mail reports that one media outlet suggested that Angel Di Maria could be on his way back to Manchester United from Paris Saint-Germain as part of a swap deal involving Paul Pogba.
Are they mad? Short of being dragged back to Old Trafford at gunpoint, Di Maria is about the last player you would expect to see wearing a United shirt again.
This is a man who made no effort to hide his dislike for the club long before his wife weighed into the debate spectacularly in a Spanish TV show on Wednesday morning.
‘I begged Angel, any place but England,’ said Jorgelina Cardoso, recalling Di Maria’s £59.7million move from Real Madrid to United in 2014. ‘One year later we were in Manchester – s***!’
Ms Cardoso lambasted the ‘disgusting’ food, English ‘dolls’ wearing too much make-up, and the ‘weird’ folk of Manchester. ‘You are walking and you don’t know if they are going to kill you or not,’ she claimed.
Her feelings on that last point were no doubt fuelled by an attempted burglary at their luxury home in Prestbury five months after Di Maria joined United when raiders tried to force their way into the rear of the property using scaffold poles.
The Argentine and his family moved into the Lowry Hotel and never returned to the house. It was a deeply unsettling experience from which they never quite recovered. That summer he joined PSG for £44.3m with United taking a £16m hit on what had been the biggest transfer in the history of British football.
There was much more to Di Maria’s failure to settle in England than issues off the pitch, however.
For a start, he had no wish to be at Old Trafford in the first place, insisting that he had effectively been forced out of Real Madrid after helping the club win a 10th European Cup.
‘My intention was always to stay at Real,’ he said later. ‘After winning La Decima, I went to the World Cup with the hope of receiving the nod from the directors, which never came.
‘Many lies were spoken. They always wanted to attribute a desire to leave the club, but it was not true. I ended up going to United.’
Life at Old Trafford started well with Di Maria scoring three goals in his first five games. But he did not agree with Louis van Gaal’s decision to move him from the wing to a more central position where he found himself with his back to goal and less room to run.
‘There were problems with the coach at the time,’ he said. ‘I started a game in one position and the next game in another. I scored goals playing in one position then suddenly the next game I was picked to play in a different position. This didn’t help me settle.
‘It’s up to the manager where and how every player should play, but I think every player should be comfortable in that position.
‘I’m very happy at PSG and it wasn’t the case over there. It’s more that they didn’t let me settle properly than I couldn’t settle.’
Di Maria’s only other goal after that opening flurry was against Yeovil Town in the FA Cup. In total, he scored just four times in 32 appearances. Figures that hardly justified his transfer fee.
After being shown a second yellow card for shoving referee Michael Oliver during a FA Cup defeat to Arsenal in January, he made just one more start on the final day of the season against Hull, lasting just 23 minutes.
No-one was shocked to see his stay brought to an end after one season, but it’s the depth of bad feeling towards his old club that is perhaps most surprising.
Di Maria’s teammate at PSG, Marcin Bulka, revealed that the 32-year-old Argentine ‘hates’ United so much that he insists on changing the channel if they are playing on television.
That antipathy was apparent when Di Maria returned to Old Trafford for the first time last season and set up both goals as PSG took a 2-0 lead that was spectacularly overturned in Paris.
He was the target for abuse, and at one point a beer bottle, from United fans and appeared to mouth obscenities at them after the opening goal.
So his wife’s comments are perhaps to be expected, even though her timing is a little peculiar. Maybe she’s heard those transfer rumours as well.
Former England soccer captain David Beckham and actor Gary Oldman were knighted in King Charles’ annual birthday honours list on Saturday, while sculptor Antony Gormley was made a Companion of Honour.
Beckham, 50, joined Manchester United as a trainee in 1993, going on to make almost 400 appearances for the club where he won a string of titles and cups.
He subsequently played for Real Madrid, LA Galaxy, and Inter Milan, as well as captaining his country 58 times and making 115 appearances.
His marriage to fashion designer and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham in 1999 cemented a celebrity status which went far beyond his sporting exploits.
Oldman, 67, started his career on the stage, where he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, before rising to prominence in film. He won the best actor Oscar for playing Winston Churchill in the 2017 drama “Darkest Hour”.
He also had roles in the “Dark Knight Trilogy” and the “Harry Potter” movie series and more recently starred in the TV spy drama “Slow Horses”.
Other famous names receiving honours included damehoods for musical theatre star Elaine Paige, novelist Pat Barker and ceramics maker Emma Bridgewater.
Roger Daltrey, lead singer of rock band the Who and a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, received a knighthood for services to charity.
More than 1,200 people received honours for their achievements, with a particular focus on those who had given their time to public service, the government said.
King Charles’ official birthday will be celebrated with the annual “Trooping the Colour” military parade in London on Saturday. His actual birthday is on November 14
-Reuters
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One of three judges in Diego Maradona’s closely scrutinized homicide trial in Argentina resigned on Tuesday amid a scandal triggered by the alleged filming of an unauthorised documentary, bringing uncertainty to the future of legal proceedings.
The high-profile trial over the death of soccer star Maradona began on March 11 in the South American country where the World Cup winner is still revered.
-Reuters
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For the third year in a row, and the fifth time overall, Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s highest-paid athlete.
But at age 40, the Portuguese soccer superstar is reaching new highs.
Over the past 12 months, counting both his playing salary at Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr and his off-field business endeavors, Ronaldo collected an estimated $275 million before taxes and agent fees—the third-best year by an active athlete ever measured by Forbes.
On that all-time list, Ronaldo is surpassed only by boxer Floyd Mayweather, who earned $300 million in 2015 and $285 million in 2018.
And when it comes to the 2025 leaderboard, Ronaldo has a $119 million advantage over No. 2, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.
The League of Wealthy Sportsmen
The gap is especially impressive considering that Curry’s $156 million total is also a record for his sport, beating the NBA mark of $128.2 million set last year by LeBron James.
And there are plenty of other eye-popping paydays among this year’s 10 highest-paid athletes, starting with James, who notched a personal-best $133.8 million to land at No. 6. Meanwhile, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (No. 4, $137million) and New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto (No. 7, $114 million) broke records for the NFL and MLB.
Combined, the 10 highest-paid athletes brought in $1.4 billion, up slightly from last year’s $1.38 billion and the largest total since Forbes began ranking athlete earnings in 1990.
This year is also only the second time, after 2024, that every member of the top 10 made at least $100 million.
In fact, heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk ($101 million) and golfer Jon Rahm ($100 million) reached the milestone, too, without managing to crack this list.
For the third year in a row, and the fifth time overall, Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s highest-paid athlete.
But at age 40, the Portuguese soccer superstar is reaching new highs.
Over the past 12 months, counting both his playing salary at Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr and his off-field business endeavors, Ronaldo collected an estimated $275 million before taxes and agent fees—the third-best year by an active athlete ever measured by Forbes.
On that all-time list, Ronaldo is surpassed only by boxer Floyd Mayweather, who earned $300 million in 2015 and $285 million in 2018.
And when it comes to the 2025 leaderboard, Ronaldo has a $119 million advantage over No. 2, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.
The gap is especially impressive considering that Curry’s $156 million total is also a record for his sport, beating the NBA mark of $128.2 million set last year by LeBron James.
And there are plenty of other eye-popping paydays among this year’s 10 highest-paid athletes, starting with James, who notched a personal-best $133.8 million to land at No. 6. Meanwhile, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (No. 4, $137million) and New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto (No. 7, $114 million) broke records for the NFL and MLB.
Combined, the 10 highest-paid athletes brought in $1.4 billion, up slightly from last year’s $1.38 billion and the largest total since Forbes began ranking athlete earnings in 1990.
This year is also only the second time, after 2024, that every member of the top 10 made at least $100 million.
In fact, heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk ($101 million) and golfer Jon Rahm ($100 million) reached the milestone, too, without managing to crack this list.
World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2025
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