“He could get emotional and was crying sometimes, when he was speaking about important matters. When he found the proper values, the proper football, he got emotional. He was scary, I tell you” – Juan Mata reveals that Louis van Gaal felt things so intensely that he would often shed hot salty tears while giving team talks.

“Thank you for continuing posting your tea-timely emails despite the success of your Stop Football campaign. it’s a reassuring piece of normality among all the unreality” – Iain Moore (and no others).

“My nephew Tom is an important worker — a long-haul lorry driver. He recently took a crucial delivery from the north to Erith, outside London. Do I care what the load was? No. Am I concerned about his safety? Sure. But the primary thing I searched online once I learned about his trip was this: Erith Town FC is within the Premier division of the Southern Counties East League, which can be the ninth tier of the pyramid. Yup, I’m now a Dockers fan simply because of a truck trip” – Mike Wilner (in the USA! USA!! USA!!!)

“The vision of individuals leaving Old Trafford ‘sprinting to their cars … determined to succeed in their destination within the smallest possible timeframe and damn the consequences’ (Tuesday’s Fiver) are going to be easy to conjure for anyone conversant in the stints of Messrs. Di María, Depay, Sánchez etc in recent times. Although perhaps this may end after Pogba does his bit” – Christopher Smith. Wayne Coyle seems like the handsomest man in Derry, but he wasn’t the frontman for the Flaming Lips. That was Wayne Coyne” – Dara O’Reilly (and 1,056 others). judi bola terbaik judibolaterbaik.co

Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you’ll always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Iain Moore.

Join Max and therefore the pod squad as they revisit the Hand of God.
Barcelona are studying the likelihood of applying a salary cut of up to 70% to all or any of their players for as long because the coronavirus lockdown lasts in Spain.

Meanwhile, Birmingham players on £6k or more per week are asked if they might be willing to trouser half their usual wage while football is under lockdown.

Barrow boss Ian Evatt has warned that the National League leaders would struggle to get over the punch of being denied promotion if the season is voided. “You cannot, you can’t , null and void it,” he roared. “We’ve been top for five months and nobody , no disrespect to anyone, has really come that on the brink of us.”

And England are knocked out of Euro 96 on penalties. Again.
“We were shouting: you would like to prevent and go inside.” Strong stuff from Fabrizio Romano on life under lockdown in Italy.
Jamie Fahey recalls his favourite game: Everton v Bayern Munich within the 1985 Pot Winners’ Cup. He played a stunning pass as a ballboy at Goodison that day.

Which teams have played ahead of faux fans? The Knowledge invites you to insert your own punchline here.
Paul Doyle hands out the gongs in his awards for the Premier League season thus far .

In the words of Joe Gallen, the Portsmouth assistant manager, the results came back in “dribs and drabs”. The League One promotion chasers had ordered 48 of their players and staff to check for Covid 19 last Tuesday, within the wake of the club’s FA Cup meeting with Arsenal on 2 March. The Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta, was diagnosed with the virus on 12 March, which was really the instant when everything unravelled in English football, resulting in the suspension of action.

And so, to quote Gallen again, there was “a little bit of a await everyone”. He was within the first batch to seek out out last Thursday, along side nine others. Everybody was clear. But things darkened from Friday because the next set produced three positives, Saturday another and Tuesday yet one more . The club have said they’re waiting on one last result for a member of the backroom team. agen sbobet online maxbetsbobet.org

All five of the Portsmouth personnel to check positive are players – Sean Raggett, James Bolton, Ross McCrorie, Haji Mnoga and Andy Cannon – and it means the club became the primary in British football to verify multiple members of their squad have the virus.

There is a sliver of excellent news, and goodness knows we’d like it. Gallen says the players, who are in isolation, aren’t suffering. “They are all feeling reasonably good,” he says. “One of them said that he’d lost his sense of smell, which has been mentioned now as a symbol , and two of the others … you’ll call them as having a chilly or a cough. They were all surprised to listen to that they had it – very surprised.

Symptoms-wise, there weren’t many flowing around our squad in the least .”

It is nevertheless impossible to shake the marginally unreal feeling that has enveloped the club. fortnight ago they were within the thick of it, having just played their 50th game of the season – the 2-2 home draw with Fleetwood within the league. it had been their sixth match in 18 days and left them fourth within the division, two points off automatic promotion.

After a slow start to the season – Portsmouth were fourth from bottom at the top of September – they need won 16 of 30 league games, drawing six – and also reached the EFL Trophy final for the second season in succession. They won it last time once they beat Sunderland. The run to the fifth round of the FA Cup which tie against Arsenal, which they lost 2-0, was an extra source of pride. But now the virus has gripped and uncertainty reigns.

“When we were told we were getting to pack up on 13 March, it had been an enormous disappointment,” Gallen says. “But after a touch of sober reflection, you are doing start to think that football does seem a touch irrelevant. It’s such a difference to eager to achieve success and win to, oh, hang on a moment , there’s other things happening that are miles more important.”