France defender William Gallas will become the first player to appear in the league for London rivals Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur following his move across north London yesterday.
The Premier League club confirmed on their Web site that he had signed a one-year deal.
The former Arsenal skipper, 33 on Tuesday last week, became only the 14th player to move from Arsenal to Spurs in almost a century and will earn a unique place in the record books as the first to appear in competitive action for London’s three biggest clubs.
George Graham featured for Chelsea and Arsenal in the 1960s and 1970s and also later managed Arsenal and the Spurs.
Clive Allen played for Tottenham and Chelsea and although he also signed for Arsenal in June 1980, he left two months later for Crystal Palace without playing a competitive match.
It seems appropriate that Gallas, released by Arsenal at the end of last season, should create another landmark in his already noteworthy career, although he may not initially receive the warmest of welcomes at White Hart Lane.
Many Spurs fans loathe anything connected with their arch-rivals and still regularly curse former skipper Sol Campbell nine years after he left for Arsenal.
Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp was not worried about the reaction of the fans and said Gallas’ decision to join Spurs said much about the player’s character.
“It’s not like I’ve signed the Yorkshire Ripper,” he told reporters, referring to English serial killer Peter Sutcliffe. “He [Gallas] is a footballer. When he leaves here, he might go and play for West Ham, who knows?”
“He will come here with a point to prove ... if he had wanted an easy life, he would have taken some big money in Greece or somewhere. He has put himself under real pressure by coming here and you have to give the man some credit,” Redknapp said. “It’s not like he came here for a big pay day. I promise you, he came because he wanted to play and he’s taken the hardest challenge of all to come to Tottenham.”
Moves between the clubs are rare and Gallas is only the fourth player to join Spurs having been at Arsenal in the last decade after Rohan Ricketts, Jamie O’Hara and David Bentley.
No matter what the fans think, he should be a valuable addition to a Tottenham defense, which needs reinforcing.
England defender Ledley King has a long-term knee problem that restricts his appearances, while Jonathan Woodgate is battling a career-threatening injury.
“I think he [Gallas] is a great player on a free transfer,” Redknapp said. “I’ve signed a good player to keep Tottenham going forward instead of backwards.”
Gallas is a peerless reader of the game who also scores goals and there is far more in his armory than the petulant display most neutrals remember when he sat on the pitch after Arsenal’s 2-2 draw at Birmingham City in February 2008.
He later explained his actions, but was stripped of the captaincy by Arsene Wenger following an interview in which he questioned the commitment of some of his teammates.
At Chelsea, Gallas won two Premier League titles, but he failed to win any honors in his four seasons at Arsenal.
Born at Asnieres, just outside Paris, of Guadeloupe-born parents, Gallas started out at Caen playing his first game in the top flight against Racing Lens as a 19-year-old in 1996.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS