Jose Mourinho believes Euro 2008 will be worse off because of England's failure to qualify. The miserable 3-2 defeat by Croatia at Wembley saw England finish in third place in qualifying Group E and led to the Football Association terminating the contract of head coach Steve McClaren after just 18 games. Former Chelsea manager Mourinho has already emerged as a strong contender to replace McClaren, and the Portuguese has admitted his affinity with the English game. He told Sky Sports News: "This is sad, a big loss for European football. "I was always a supporter of the England national team and England's clubs. "A European championships without England is not the same as one with them."
Jose Mourinho believes Euro 2008 will be worse off because of England's failure to qualify.
The miserable 3-2 defeat by Croatia at Wembley saw England finish in third place in qualifying Group E and led to the Football Association terminating the contract of head coach Steve McClaren after just 18 games.
Former Chelsea manager Mourinho has already emerged as a strong contender to replace McClaren, and the Portuguese has admitted his affinity with the English game.
He told Sky Sports News: "This is sad, a big loss for European football.
"I was always a supporter of the England national team and England's clubs.
"A European championships without England is not the same as one with them."
The three front runners are an Italian,Fabio Capello, an Irishman, Martin O'Neill and, of course, The Special One himself.
Or is this a nation that is only at it's best when it is open to foreign ideas? Money is a sign of Poverty - Culture Saying
The point is, José Mourinho is just pandering in order to get the job. There are 14 perfectly fine teams that qualified on merit. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Although since most of it would have been beer and curry, I'm not sure this is quite the national disaster that it's being painted as.
Sports groups suffer after England defeat England's spectacular crash out of Euro 2008 on Wednesday night drove Sports Direct to warn that it was unlikely to meet expectations for profits in the current year. The boot of Mladen Petric, who scored a late strike to lead Croatia to victory against England, also dented the prospects at Umbro. Sports Direct recently lifted its stake in the maker of the national football team's shirts to 29.9 per cent which is also the subject of a takeover bid from Nike. In September Sports Direct said it was confident of seeing limited growth during the current financial year. However, on Thursday it said: "As England have not qualified . . . the company can no longer be confident of achieving that level of financial performance and believes at this stage that pre-exceptional earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) for the current financial year is likely to be below that achieved in the last year." (...) Sports Direct was one of the biggest fallers on the FTSE 250 by mid morning on Thursday morning. Its shares were down 16 per cent at 94½p, nearly 70 per cent below the price at which the company floated in February last year. Umbro stock lost 3.87 per cent at 167¾p.
England's spectacular crash out of Euro 2008 on Wednesday night drove Sports Direct to warn that it was unlikely to meet expectations for profits in the current year.
The boot of Mladen Petric, who scored a late strike to lead Croatia to victory against England, also dented the prospects at Umbro.
Sports Direct recently lifted its stake in the maker of the national football team's shirts to 29.9 per cent which is also the subject of a takeover bid from Nike.
In September Sports Direct said it was confident of seeing limited growth during the current financial year. However, on Thursday it said: "As England have not qualified . . . the company can no longer be confident of achieving that level of financial performance and believes at this stage that pre-exceptional earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) for the current financial year is likely to be below that achieved in the last year."
(...)
Sports Direct was one of the biggest fallers on the FTSE 250 by mid morning on Thursday morning. Its shares were down 16 per cent at 94½p, nearly 70 per cent below the price at which the company floated in February last year. Umbro stock lost 3.87 per cent at 167¾p.
