Zlatan set for La La Land
MANCHESTER United have confirmed the termination of Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s contract as the striker prepares to join the LA Galaxy.
The 36-year-old’s fine first season at Old Trafford ended with a serious knee injury and, despite resigning for the club in August, he has managed only seven appearances this term.
Ibrahimovic released a statement on Instagram alongside a picture of him arm-wrestling with a red devil in a nod to United’s nickname.
He wrote: “Great things also come to an end and it is time to move on after two fantastic seasons with Manchester United.
“Thank you to the club, the fans, the team, the coach, the staff and everybody who shared with me this part of my history.”
Ibrahimovic returned to action in November after recovering from cruciate ligament surgery. He joined United from Paris Saint-Germain in 2016 and scored 29 goals in 53 matches.
He is set to be the latest big-name signing for LA, following in the footsteps of former United midfielder David Beckham and ex-Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard. EXCLUSIVE IT was a bright Tuesday morning in Manhattan and Michael Jolley, a young corporate bond trader, was sitting at his desk in Midtown.
He was 23, had a Cambridge University economics degree in his back pocket and a bulging wallet in the front. Life was good.
Then, below the blizzard of numbers on the screen in front of him, something caught his eye. The rolling news feed at the bottom flashed up that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center, two miles away.
Initially, the talk in the office was that it must have been an accident with a light aircraft but, once the second plane hit, it became horribly apparent what was going on. September 11, a date the world – and Jolley – would never forget.
“We were very close to the Empire State Building so we were frightened that could be a target too. I left the office and walked north back towards my apartment. I saw the towers fall from the street,” he recalls.
“It was an absolutely horrendous experience and such a sad time. I spoke regularly to a broker who was lost that day. I’d actually spoken to him that morning.
“I worked with another guy who had to go to nearly 40 funerals because he knew so many people that were involved. These are things that do stay with you. “It was probably a prompt in thinking, ‘Is this what I want to do with the rest of my life?’ I was quite competent at what I did and it paid me fairly well – but if what had happened to all those people happened to me, would I be happy with what I had done?” And so set in motion a chain of events that today has the 40-year-old Jolley sitting behind the manager’s desk in a Portakabin at Grimsby Town’s training base. It is from the outside an unlikely appointment. An Oxbridge bond trader, with one brief spell as a manager at Swedish side Eskilstuna behind him, operating as the gaffer in the nether regions of League Two? Who thought that up? But Grimsby, who by their own admission wanted to move off the usual managerial merry-go-round in an attempt to pull out of their current nosedive, have seen something different in Jolley. Football had always been his first love. Growing up he had a peak behind the curtain at Stockport County, where his father was a director, and then, as a teenager, another at Barnsley, where he was on the academy books. But when Jolley was released at 16, he thought the door had closed. “My father and I sat down when I was released from Barnsley and we both agreed it was unlikely I would become a professional footballer,” he says. “My dad was really big on education. His father had died early and he’d left school early to work but had gone back into education and it had really changed things for him. He told me to go get a degree.” And so he did. From Cambridge. “I’m not a naturally brainy person. I’m just someone who slugs it out,” said Jolley. He played in two Varsity football matches at Craven Cottage before Cheapside moving into finance, first in London and then New York.
When he returned to London he began to dip his toe into football again, sitting his coaching badges before taking the plunge and resigning to pursue a new career.
“A few people were probably thinking, ‘Why on earth would you give up what most people would consider a really good salary to earn virtually nothing as a part-time football academy coach?’ But I didn’t see it that way. Money is important but it’s not everything,” he says.
“I took the view that, in the end, if I stuck at it for long enough the football would pay me back.”
The route to Grimsby has been one less travelled, taking in Crystal Palace then Nottingham Forest, Falkirk, Crewe and Burnley, where he studied at the University of Sean Dyche as Under-23s coach
“I think I could go through my whole career and not see management delivered as well as it is at Burnley,” he says.
“I can’t sit here and do an impression of Sean Dyche and Grimsby can’t pretend to be Burnley, but if I try to apply the principles he has it’s a really good starting point.”
There is a lot of pressure in football management, especially fighting to stay in the Football League. Almost three weeks into his appointment, he is still awaiting his first win.
But as a first-hand witness to the 9/11 atrocity, Jolley is well aware that however much it means at the time, football is a long way from life or death. “If I ever think I’m having a bad day, that event certainly serves to put into perspective what’s really important,” he said.
It was an absolutely horrendous experience