Lovren facing threat of jail
LIVERPOOL defender Dejan Lovren faces up to five years in prison after he was charged with perjury for allegedly providing false testimony in the trial of former Croatian football director Zdravko Mamic.
Mamic was sentenced to six and a half years in prison after being found guilty in June on a series of charges, including making millions on transfers illegally while working at Dinamo Zagreb.
Two of those included deals that saw Luka Modric move to Tottenham in 2008 and Lovren to Lyon in 2010.
Lovren, 29, has been accused by prosecutors of giving false evidence during the trial. It comes just six months after Modric was charged with the same offence. If convicted, the pair face a jail term of between six months and five years.
During the trial, the court ruled that Modric and Lovren were unlawfully paid 50 per cent of their transfer fees and passed a significant proportion of that to Mamic and his family through illegally backdated clauses in their Dinamo contracts. Lovren’s testimony relates to the dates of signing those annexes.
The Dinamo officials were charged with avoiding paying £1.45million in taxes and diverting £14m from the club. All of them denied any wrongdoing.
Lovren moved to Lyon from Dinamo Zagreb in 2010 and then joined Southampton in 2013 and Liverpool a year later.
He and Modric both played in the Croatia team defeated 4-2 by France in the World Cup final.
Lovren has yet to play for Liverpool this season due to a pelvic injury but yesterday he returned to training at Melwood following the club’s Champions League victory over Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night.
No trial date for the pair has yet been set.
VIRGIL VAN DIJK says Liverpool have built a squad capable of chasing glory on four fronts this season and one fuelled with the self-belief they can “win everything”.
The Liverpool defender conceded the inherent difficulties in keeping feet on the ground so early in the season while shooting for the stars.
But after their last-gasp win over Paris Saint-Germain at Anfield on Tuesday night extended the Reds’ winning start to the season to six matches, Van Dijk felt emboldened enough to state that they are aiming for an unprecedented quadruple.
“It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be something very difficult to do, but we’re going to try it,” he said.
“Everyone is excited, everyone is feeling good, everyone wants to be part of this. We know the season is very long, we have four competitions to play in, and you know – we want to win everything.
“That is basically our mindset, otherwise you’d better stop. You need to have ambitions, with the size of this club, with the people around here and the history of the club.”
Weightier history than just their own, however, stands in the way of a quadruple.
Joe Fagan’s Liverpool in 1983-84 and Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1998-99 went the closest by winning three out of the four trophies on offer.
Liverpool missed out on the FA Cup and United the League Cup.
Van Dijk and his team face a gruelling test of their lofty ambitions over the next 18 days. It starts with Southampton in the Premier League on Saturday before they meet Chelsea twice – first in the EFL Cup next Wednesday then in the league the following Saturday. That is followed by a Champions League trip to Napoli and the visit of Manchester City to Anfield four days later on October 7.
“We’ve had a good start to the season, nothing has been won yet, we need to show it every week, every three days now,” said the defender. “We have to be ready.
“But you know it’s a great time to be a Liverpool player because you want to play these games – you want to play these clubs we’re going to face.”
Such a gruelling schedule is also going to mean fans and players getting used to a greater degree of squad rotation, according to Van Dijk’s team-mate Sadio Mane.
“We know it won’t be the easiest for us with a game every three days but we have to take it [rotation] seriously and try to do our best,” said the Liverpool striker.
“But sometimes you need it. You do not like to rest but sometimes your body tells you you need to. The manager is prepared for it and he knows his team more than most so he tries to help us cope.”
Roberto Firmino came off the bench to fire the injurytime winner against PSG despite sustaining an eye injury in last weekend’s win over Spurs.
And Mane joked that he had never had a moment’s concern because his teammate can score with his eyes shut.
“Bobby doesn’t need his eye to play, so I told him,” said Mane. “I sent him a message on Monday saying, ‘Hey Bobby, come on, we need you’. You’ve all seen the ‘no look’ goals so I think that he doesn’t need his eye to play.”