Ancelotti clears all doubt on Di Maria's future, as player is expected back in Madrid

Carlo Ancelotti insists nothing has changed regarding Angel Di Maria's future and he expects the winger to return to Real Madrid on Aug. 5.
Di Maria, 26, is currently on an extended holiday after helping Argentina reach the final of the 2014 World Cup but has been linked with a move to Paris Saint-Germain.
Speaking after Real Madrid's preseason friendly against Inter Milan, Ancelotti told reporters there have been no developments. "I don't have any news about Di Maria" he said. "I know the same about him as I do about the others. He has finished the World Cup and on Aug. 5 he has to be at Valdebebas."
AS report PSG have lodged a bid of 75 million euros for the winger and want to complete a deal as soon as possible in order to facilitate the sale of Edinson Cavani or Ezequiel Lavezzi.
The report continues that Ancelotti is keen to hold on to Di Maria but faces a struggle to convince the former Benfica player who has set his heart on a move to the French capital.

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Ebola: World current Deadliest disease. As Fears rise over biggest outbreak

There was nothing unusual-looking about the passenger arriving at Heathrow from Lagos. He was carrying one of the most deadly diseases known to mankind, but it wasn’t noticed by overstretched Nigerian airport officials before departure, nor by attendants on the flight, despite their special training to watch out for feverish passengers.

Because Ebola is a disease that has an incubation period of between two and 21 days, it’s more than likely that the final line of defence — immigration staff at Heathrow — failed to notice anything untoward about him either. It wasn’t as if he was so unsteady or unwell that he couldn’t answer basic questions.

And so he was waved through. Little did anyone realise that his initial flu-like symptoms — fever, headache, achy limbs, sore throat — would soon become something much, much worse.

Ebola, a disease which is fatal in 90 per cent of cases and for which there is no vaccine and no known cure, was now in Britain for the first time. It would soon be spreading across the country, killing almost everyone it touched.

Fortunately this is an imaginary situation, but an Ebola epidemic is the nightmare scenario which inspires Hollywood disaster movie writers and keeps public health officials awake at night.

However, there is now widespread alarm among experts that it could actually happen, because the deadly disease has spread for the first time from remote jungle villages to claim its first victim in Lagos, one of Africa’s most sophisticated cities, with air links to major cities worldwide, including London.

And woe betide anyone who comes in close contact with an Ebola victim. While the virus’s one virtue is that it isn’t as easily transmitted as, say, an airborne influenza, it is highly contagious if you come near enough to be infected by any sort of bodily fluid.

This means not only contamination from vomiting and diarrhoea — the next stage after the fever and headaches — but saliva from a kiss, sweat from a mopped brow, or even, it is thought, a sneeze.

If a sufferer is looked after by loved ones, only the most ruthless sanitation regime will save them. If he or she seeks medical help, risks could be even greater.

As one British expert told me yesterday, if an Ebola victim was misdiagnosed and ended up being admitted to a normal hospital ward, the ‘consequences would be disastrous’ as nurses and doctors unwittingly passed the virus to other patients and colleagues. 

The final stages of the disease are hideously unpleasant as the virus punches holes in veins, often causing massive internal haemorrhaging and bleeding from the eyes, ears, mouth and other orifices. Death is generally caused by multiple organ failure.

Just as well, then, that no one ever gets Ebola beyond a handful of unlucky souls in the remote rural villages of equatorial West and Central Africa, where locals ignore warnings and still eat the fruit bats and monkeys that are the chief carriers of the disease.

At least, that’s what public health experts have been saying for years. Suddenly, though, they are changing their tune.

The latest outbreak of the disease is not only to be the worst ever by number of deaths, it has also been the first to spread to people living in major urban centres, including national capitals. The risk of it spreading across the world is now very real, experts warn.

Since the outbreak started in Guinea in February, spreading to Sierra Leone and Liberia, the virus has infected more than 1,200 people, killing 672 of them so far.

A cruel irony of Ebola is that those caring for its victims often contract the disease themselves. Recent casualties included one of Liberia’s most respected doctors and two Americans — thought to be Ebola’s first Western victims.

Dr Ken Brantly was the medical director of a Christian aid charity, Samaritan’s Purse, who had been working in Liberia since October. He contracted the disease despite wearing head-to-toe protective clothing while treating sufferers.

Nancy Writebol, a Christian missionary, had also been working with Ebola victims in the Liberian capital of Monrovia when she became infected.

Dr Brantly, at least, may yet defy Ebola’s grim statistics. Early treatment improves a patient’s chances of survival, and he recognised his own symptoms and got immediate care.

His wife and two young children were with him in Liberia until flying home to the U.S. a few weeks ago, but they have not yet shown any signs of the disease.

On Sunday, Liberia took the drastic step of closing its borders but it may be already too late. In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, a Liberian man who tested positive for Ebola died on Friday.

Patrick Sawyer, a civil servant, collapsed at Lagos Airport as he returned from the funeral of his sister, who had also died from the disease. He changed plane in Togo and was vomiting on board, prompting fears the disease has already spread to a fifth country from just one outbreak.

Nigeria’s government says all ports of entry are on high alert.

‘The situation is getting more and more scary,’ conceded Tolbert Nyenswah, Liberia’s assistant health minister.

Hugh Pennington, emeritus professor of bacteriorology at Aberdeen University, warns: ‘If the disease gets going in Nigeria, it would be cause for concern. Nigeria has close links with the UK and many other countries.’

Professor Pennington, an international expert, said yesterday that he was hardly reassured by current efforts to contain Ebola’s spread.

‘This is a very big outbreak, and I get the feeling that whatever is being done to control it is not being done very well. Once you get a fairly large number of cases, it gets a momentum and becomes more and more difficult to control.

‘This is now crossing international borders.’

Professor Pennington, who criticised the UK government over its handling of mad cow disease, warned that Britain would be ill-equipped to cope with a sudden influx of Ebola victims.

Isolating them is critical, he said, but ordinary hospitals simply don’t have the facilities or the necessary highly trained staff. The specialist hospitals that dealt with such diseases have largely closed.

‘If [Ebola] came into London, I honestly don’t know where they’d put the patients,’ he said. ‘We could cope with one or two, but more than that? Let’s hope we don’t have to.’

The big problem with Ebola, he stressed, is diagnosing it. The disease looks much like common flu until it’s too late. Even the rash that sufferers get after about five days could be confused with other less serious ailments.

‘Ebola patients can often go under the radar, but if they ended up in hospital, giving blood samples and coughing over everyone, it would be potentially disastrous,’ he said.

He adds that it was crucial for British GPs and hospital doctors to start watching out for Ebola.

‘If someone is coming in with flu-like symptoms, it’s crucial to ask them where they’ve been — and whether they’ve been to Africa.’

Surprisingly, scientists are still not clear exactly where Ebola comes from. The first known outbreak was in 1976 in a remote village near the Ebola river in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although most of the cases are understood to have been transmitted from human to human, each Ebola outbreak is initially caused by someone coming into contact with the blood or body fluids of an infected animal, such as a fruit bat, monkey or pig. (The bats are believed to carry the disease without being infected by it.)

The chief cause is the popularity of ‘bush meat’ — animals trapped in the wild. Bats and monkeys are frequently dried and then eaten without being cooked. Since bush meat is now being smuggled into London and Paris, scientists warn this could be another source of infection in Europe.

According to Dr Ben Neuman, a virologist at Reading University, the disease is spreading so rapidly now because people are ‘rescuing’ Ebola sufferers from hospitals or snatching their dead bodies so they can wash them in accordance with religious custom.

In the first case of an infection in Sierra Leone, a hairdresser in Freetown, the capital, was forcibly removed from hospital by her family, sparking a frantic search to find her before she infected others. She died on Sunday.

Dr Neuman also fears officials in the UK may be hard-pressed to keep out every Ebola sufferer if their numbers become too great.

‘We have to hope they do, though, as in the late stages of infection, you have enough virus in your body to infect everyone on Earth maybe three times over.’

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United Manager 'Van Gaal' sees a United broken squad that need fixing

Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal thinks he has inherited an unbalanced and "broken" squad from David Moyes.
Van Gaal, speaking in his first English media interview of United's tour of the USA, denied the idea that succeeding Moyes would be easier than following Sir Alex Ferguson, who won 13 titles in 26 years at Old Trafford.
In Van Gaal's eyes, Ferguson left Moyes with a team of winners. He says he is inheriting a "broken" squad awash with attacking midfielders.
"No," Van Gaal said when asked whether following Ferguson would have been harder.
"I don't agree. I had to follow Bobby Robson at Barcelona the year after he won three titles and there wasn't a problem (Van Gaal won the league that year).
"When there is success you have a very good squad, and now I have to follow and the squad was broken I think.
"When you look at the squad, there is quality. There is (Wayne) Rooney, (Robin) van Persie, (Javier) Hernandez, (Danny) Welbeck, but you also see Juan Mata, (Marouane) Fellaini, and you see (Ander) Herrera. There are a lot of players that can play in the same position.
"It is not in balance. It's more difficult to succeed in a difficult situation than in a fantastic situation."
Van Gaal will look to address the imbalance in his squad by signing at least two players over the next three weeks -- rumoured to be Thomas Vermaelen and Mats Hummels.
United have been told they will have to stump up 79 million pounds to sign other target Kevin Strootman from Roma while Real Madrid are also demanding a big fee for Angel Di Maria, who is also on the club's radar.
Van Gaal insists he will not pay over the odds for any transfer targets though.
"I don't buy players for the sake of buying players," he said.
"I buy players to improve my selection.
"Now I don't know if we will play (5-3-2) or 4-3-3.
If I play 4-3-3 I need more specialists in the wings and attackers and then we have to buy another kind of player."

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Men’s and women’s brains really are different- Researchers

Researchers say that if both sexes had access to the same levels of education, they’d expect women to do best on tests of memory – and men to excel at maths.

The prediction comes after an analysis of how the sexes’ abilities varied across Europe across time.

More than 31,000 men and women aged 50-plus from 13 countries were put through three tests of brainpower.

The test of numeracy involved being given five questions, such as working out how much a cut-price car would have cost when new, while the memory test involved trying to remember a list of ten words.

The third test was of ‘verbal fluency’ – and involved naming as many different animals as possible in a minute.

In northern Europe, women in their 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s consistently outperformed the men in the memory test.

However, in southern Europe, where economic conditions were poorer for longer, the earliest born women did worse than the men. However, as education and living conditions improved, so did their performance and those born from around 1940 onwards beat their male counterparts.

Men came out top in the maths tests in all countries at all ages.

However, the gap narrowed as conditions improved, the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports.

The researchers, from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, said that women may benefit more than men from improvements in lifestyle because they were at a greater disadvantage to begin with.

They said the patterns mean that if men and women had equal access to education, females should do better than men.

Men should still to slightly better than maths – and the sexes should do equally well in quick fire tests of vocabulary.

It is thought the differing strengths can be explained by differences in the biology of the brain as well as in the way the sexes are treated by society.

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Dani Alves relaxing in Miami Beach during pre-season break

It’s been a summer to forget for Dani Alves, but the Brazilian footballer appeared to be making the most of it during a pre-season break in Miami on Sunday.

The Barcelona right-back is enjoying a sunshine break as he attempts to put some perspective on a sobering World Cup in his home country, during which he picked up an injury that saw him benched during Brazil’s 7-1 mauling at the hands of Germany.

Hitting the beach with a group of pals, 31-year-old Alves looked relaxed as he peeled off his shirt – thus revealing an impressive array of tattoos on his upper-body as he reclined on a lounger.

Sporting a pair of garish tropical print shorts, bright baseball cap and blue Beats headphones, the moody defender’s colourful appearance didn’t reflect his sombre mood during the outing – which was cut short by the onset of rain.

Making his way back to his hotel, Alves attempted to keep himself dry by covering his head with a white beach towel.

The footballer is no doubt reflecting on Brazil’s embarrassing performance in their World Cup semi-final against Germany, the tournament’s eventual winners.

Speaking on Instagram shortly after the debacle, Alves – who was ruled out due to an injury sustained earlier in the tournament – rounded on critics of the host nation, branding them ‘a**holes.’

‘I know a lot of a**holes will make fun. I know a lot of losers in the biggest game in the world, which is the book of life, will rejoice,’ he wrote.

‘I want to take this hard moment for all of us who chose football as a profession and who were chosen to represent our country in this World Cup.

‘I would say that, for me to share with you all this time, was an unmatched pleasure.

‘But I would like to say publicly that you are f***ing champions. I am privileged to be part of this group, you are champions, which all these a**holes will never be.’

He added: ‘Today you are not respected here but in the rest of the world I'm sure you are. Bad days like this teach us to appreciate the good days.’

The footballer, who has amassed 79 caps for his country, will soon return to Spain for training with Catalan giants Barcelona ahead of the new season.

The club’s pre-season list of friendlies include away games against Recreativo Huelva, Nice, Napoli and HJK Helsinki before they return to Camp Nou for one final match against Leon on August 18.

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