Ibrahimovic dismissed because of "reputation"

Paris Saint-Germain sporting director Leonardo claims Zlatan Ibrahimovic was only sent off against Valencia because of his standing in the game.



The Swedish striker appeared to become riled as he challenged with two Valencia players and went over the ball in a challenge with Andres Guardado, prompting referee Paolo Tagliavento to brandish the red card.



The dismissal came swiftly after Valencia pulled a goal back in stoppage time, having trailed 2-0, and the Spanish side will head to Paris in three weeks' time looking to make up a 2-1 deficit, with Ibrahimovic suspended.



Leonardo was asked if he regretted the late twist to the night's events.



"To concede a goal, that can happen due to fatigue for example," Leonardo said. "But the red card... I think Ibrahimovic pays for his reputation. If it was another player committing this foul, he wouldn't be sent off.



"Suddenly, there is a slight bitter feeling because of it."



Carlo Ancelotti's Ligue 1 leader had taken command at the Mestalla with first-half goals from Argentinian pair Ezequiel Lavezzi and Javier Pastore, with Valencia's late reply coming from Adil Rami.



"Even when you lead 2-0, it's not easy," Leonardo said.



The Brazilian former World Cup winner stressed it was worth remembering the progress PSG has made since Qatar Sports Investments took control of the club in 2011.



"It's only been a year and a half since QSI took over the club," he said, according to psg.fr.



"We are still in the construction phase. Our ambitions isn't only to win a match in the last 16 away from home. It's more than that.



"To win the Champions League? This year, I don't know. But after that ..."



Manager Ancelotti agreed with Leonardo's assessment of Ibrahimovic's dismissal.



"It wasn't deserved," he said. "I don't under stand it, it isn't fair."



Italian Ancelotti added: "We played a good match on a difficult pitch. There was quality and a good attitude. We will need to have this same attitude in the return match.



"We had a lot of chances to score and we defended very well. It's a very good performance even if we let in this goal at the end of the match."

Laudrup poised for Swansea talks

Swansea manager Michael Laudrup will begin contract talks with the club's board in the coming days, according to his agent.



Laudrup's existing deal runs until the end of next season but Swans chairman Huw Jenkins confirmed last week he would like to extend the Dane's deal by 12 months.



Laudrup is happy in south Wales but recently stated his focus is on the present rather than the future and is in no rush to negotiate new terms.



Nevertheless, Laudrup's agent Bayram Tutumlu told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet: "Yes, Swansea has a strong interest in extending Michael Laudrup's contract.



"In the coming days, we will meet with Swansea and discuss the possibility of an extension."



Laudrup is enjoying a good first season in charge of Swansea after replacing Brendan Rodgers in June.



The 48-year-old has led the Swans into the top half of the Barclays Premier League table and they are already just three points shy of the 40 widely regarded as the mark required to avoid relegation.



Laudrup has also guided Swansea to the Capital One Cup final at Wembley later this month, where they will face Bradford.

The top stories from papers and websites - 13 February 2013

• Jose Mourinho has dropped the biggest hint yet that he will return to the Premier League this summer - but not to take charge of Manchester United.


• Tottenham outcast David Bentley is set to get the chance to relaunch his career at Blackburn.


• Sunderland will make a £2million summer bid for Morocco defender Michael Chretien Basser.


• Martin O'Neill is set to give Sunderland flop James McFadden another chance.


• Dave Jones has blocked Gary Madine's exit from Sheffield Wednesday.


• Exiled Andre Santos insists he WILL return to Arsenal when his Gremio loan finishes.

• Jose Mourinho says he is heading back to the Premier League - probably this summer.


• QPR and Harry Redknapp have been labelled "out of their minds" for shattering the club's wage structure to sign Chris Samba.


• Tony Pulis has been assured of the final say on Stoke's transfer policy despite owner Peter Coates' criticism of the £10million deal for Peter Crouch.


• Mark Robins is ready to quit League One Coventry and take the Huddersfield job.

• Everton have joined the chase for Chelsea and England star Frank Lampard.


• Jose Mourinho is heading back to the Premier League - and it might be sooner than he thought.


• QPR were last night branded crazy for breaking the bank to sign Chris Samba.


• Reading defender Alex Pearce is ready to snub offers from West Brom and Sunderland to sign a new deal with the Royals.

• Jose Mourinho chose his official press conference in Madrid ahead of the Champions League clash with Manchester United to declare he would soon be returning to English football.


• Frank Lampard may not yet have signed a new contract at Chelsea but the midfielder has signed at least one new deal - as a children's author.


• Blackburn want to take David Bentley back on loan for the rest of the season.


• QPR were "out of their minds" to spend £12.5million on Chris Samba, according to the club who sold him.

• Jose Mourinho has confirmed that he sees his future back in English football.


• QPR have been told they were out of their minds to spend so much money on bringing Chris Samba back to the Premier League.


• Tony Pulis will still have the final say on Stoke's transfer policy despite owner Peter Coates admitting he "never liked" the club-record move for Peter Crouch.


• Blackburn are hoping to finalise a deal to bring David Bentley back to the club on loan from Spurs.


• West Brom boss Steve Clarke insists Peter Odemwingie still has a part to play this season.


• Manchester City are considering a summer move for Bayern Munich striker Mario Gomez.


• Wolves are preparing a loan move for Reading defender Kapsars Gorkss.

• Arsenal sent a scout to Parkhead on Tuesday night to watch Celtic’s Victor Wanyama, with Arsene Wenger having identified the holding midfield as a transfer priority this summer.

• Newcastle are eyeing up deals for Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Nicolas Isimat-Mirin with the club confirming plans to raid the French market again in the summer.


• Liverpool are ready to tie up a £1million deal for Viborg goalkeeper Kevin Ray Mendoza Hansen – if he passes a two-week trial at Anfield.

• Napoli are eying Spurs target Leandro Damiao as a replacement if Edinson Cavani leaves the club this summer.


• Fiorentina could turn to Southampton star Gaston Ramirez should they sell Arsenal target Stevan Jovetic this summer.

Ayre: 'Liverpool players will walk if racially abused'

Liverpool's Managing Director Ian Ayre has said that the team will not hesitate to walk off the pitch if their players are subjected to racial abuse when they play Zenit St. Petersburg in Russia on Thursday.



The Russians host the Reds in the first leg of their Europa League last 32 tie, and Ayre has said that they will take the "right action" if any player is singled out for racist taunts.



"Anything that happens off the pitch, we'll work very closely with the authorities," Ayre was quoted as saying in The Telegraph.



"We'll take the right action. I'll ensure we do whatever we need to do to protect our players.



"I'd much rather we take the incident off the pitch and we deal with it. Obviously the referee has a role to play within that. But we'll be briefing our players on what's acceptable and what's not.



"[Racist behaviour] has been a major concern for us. I wrote to Uefa very recently expressing our concerns – and also to Zenit. The most we can do is make our feelings clear ahead of the game, and hope that we get an adequate response and adequate support on the night."



Back in December, a Zenit fan group wrote an open letter to the club calling for the exclusion of gay and non-white players from the club.

Rafael: 'I know what Cristiano can do'

Manchester United defender Rafael da Silva has insisted that he is prepared to face Cristiano Ronaldo in the Champions League tomorrow night.

Rafael spent one season playing alongside Ronaldo at Old Trafford before the Portuguese winger moved to Real Madrid in 2009.



The Brazilian full-back will come up against his former teammate at the Bernabeu on Wednesday but believes that Ronaldo will offer nothing he has not seen before at close quarters.



He told reporters: "I know what he can do because I played and trained with him a lot.



"So he's not the type of opponent where you would say 'he's good but I don't know what he can do'. I know what he can do. If you concentrate, that's the key, reading the game. For me, he's the best player in the world.



"I think he's the complete player and I really like him. I think he's the number one. I'm sure he'll get a good reception back here [at Old Trafford]. I think it'll be massive."



The 22-year-old has enjoyed a breakthrough season at Old Trafford, establishing himself as a first-choice defender under Sir Alex Ferguson.

Eto'o: "The leaders of the FCF want to kill me"

In a recent interview Samuel Eto'o accused the Cameroonian Football Federation (FCF) of "wanting to kill him" following his claims last year of mismanagement in football in his homeland.



In a two-hour video interview published online by the Cameroonian magazine 'Je Wande' and broadcast on local television, the Anzhi striker claims he received "death threats" from the FCF. "The leaders of the FCF want to attack my life, they want to kill me," said the former Mallorca player.



"I live with a group of gendarmes and one sleeping in front of my door. I do this not out of snobbery, but for my own safety." said Eto'o. "I cannot put the team jerseys on, I get mine directly from Puma,".



"I don't eat with my teammates to avoid being poisoned", he said, describing the Cameroonian football officials as "incompetent" and "corrupt" and demanding their resignation.



Until recently one of the leading African football teams,Cameroon has missed two straight editions of the Africa Cup of Nations. Eto'o - currently in South Africa to attend the final -, refused to play in Cameroon’s last friendly against Tanzania. The ‘Indomitable Lions' lost 1-0 against their lowly rival.



The interview was done in 'camfranglais', a dialect that, as its name suggests, mixes French, English and Cameroonian expressions from the slums of the big cities where Eto'o himself grew up.

Anzhi director says QPR were 'out of their minds' to splash out on Samba

Harry Redknapp and gambles in the transfer market goes hand in glove, but even by his standards the package to take Chris Samba to Loftus Road was risky.



While most people were scratching their heads that the club would pay £12.5 million and offer £100,000 a week over four and a half years for the former Blackburn centre-half, it seems Anzi Makhachkala themselves couldn’t get over the offer made for their Congolese defender.



Director of the big-spending Russian club German Tkachenko said that the club wept – in a good way – when the offer came in and think that the London club were out of their minds to pay such sums in order to get the defender.



“At QPR he will earn almost as much as he did at Anzhi. In my view QPR have lost their minds,” he told Russian media.



“When they agreed to pay his release fee we wept. He [Samba] wept. Everybody says that he ran away from the club, but that's not true. He didn't put any pressure on the club until we received an offer from QPR for £12.5m, the amount required by his contract,” he added.



He did suggest that Samba is also one of the top five defenders in Europe, but maybe he sees qualities most others don’t.



Seven points adrift of safety, Samba will need to tighten up a porous defence very quickly or we will soon be looking at perhaps the highest earning player ever to feature in the Championship.