Stoke City sign Bojan Krkic for £3million from Barcelona

Stoke manager Mark Hughes delighted to land Spain international Bojan Krkic the former Barcelona prodigy once hailed as the next Lionel Messi 

Firepower: Stoke are confident of wrapping up a deal for Bojan in the next few days which will see him sign for the season

Bojan Krkic, the former Barcelona prodigy once hailed as the next Lionel Messi, has signed for Stoke City in a £3million deal.
The Spain international flew out to Germany on Tuesday night to join Mark Hughes's squad on their pre-season tour and will sign a four-year contract.

Bojan, 23, held talks with Hughes a fortnight ago and also passed a medical but Stoke feared missing out when negotiations with Barcelona stalled.

But Bojan verbally agreed to move to the Britannia Stadium on Monday night and his arrival ensures a remarkable coup for Hughes.

A product of Barcelona's famed academy, which has produced talents such as Messi, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi, he made his debut for the Catalan club at the age of 17 and is determined to rebuild his career after falling off the radar in recent years.

Louis van Gaal faces his first test ahead of LA Galaxy friendly: who should captain Manchester United?

New manager Louis van Gaal needs to decide who will captain Manchester United this season, with Wayne Rooney and Robin van Persie obvious but divisive options

Louis van Gaal will make his first significant decision as Manchester United manager on Wednesday when he names his captain for the pre-season friendly against LA Galaxy in Pasadena.

The absence from the United States tour of Robin van Persie, Van Gaal’s captain during the World Cup with Holland, and the ankle injury which has sidelined Michael Carrick for three months ensures that a decision on a permanent captain may still be some weeks away.

But if Van Gaal overlooks Wayne Rooney when he hands out the armband in the Rose Bowl dressing room, it will point towards a wholly new dynamic at Old Trafford and one which the England forward is unlikely to have anticipated when he signed his new five-year contract in February.

The loss of so many experienced and long-serving players this summer has created a captaincy vacuum at United and the reality is that there is no outstanding candidate to succeed Nemanja Vidic, who has left for Inter Milan.

How Real Madrid and Barcelona could line up following stunning signings of James Rodriguez and Luis Suarez

James Rodríguez's £63million arrival at Bernabéu ensure that both Spanish clubs will be equipped with the most formidable forward lines next season 

                            James Rodriguez (right) poses with Florentino Perez after signing for Real Madrid

In 2001 when Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez began the second summer of his Galáctico revolution with the signing of Zinedine Zidane from Juventus for a world record fee of £45 million, the only available squad number between one and 11 was No5. And so the greatest midfield player of his generation glided around the Bernabéu for the next five seasons with a swan-necked centre-half’s shirt on his back. Two years later David Beckham turned that notion on its head when he took No23 because Raul held the freehold on No7, but before the marketing phenomenon arrived it was felt that 1-11 remained the most valuable slots for merchandising.

Commonwealth Games 2014: Glasgow’s big night comes by royal appointment

The Queen will attend opening ceremony of event that presents an invigorating antidote to some of the grating commercialism of mainstream sport

It was a papal document that encapsulated the standard to which Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games aspire.

“A place of renown,” read the Vatican’s edict of 1451, establishing a university in the city, “where the air is mild and the victuals are plenty.” Truly, Pope Nicholas V could not have put it any better than if he had been describing a summer’s night on Sauciehall Street.

For Glasgow, aptly for a place once heralded as the ‘Second City of the Empire’, finds itself enveloped by a Commonwealths fever.

Not, mercifully, the gastroenteritic variety that plagued the last Games in Delhi – although the athletes’ village in the East End has reported more than 50 cases of the norovirus – but the same avid, fervent, immersive fascination with the spectacle that marked the 2006 instalment in Melbourne.

Louis van Gaal has brought positive energy to Manchester United, claims executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward

Ed Woodward, the man responsible for hiring Louis Van Gaal to Old Trafford, insists there is a feel-good factor surrounding what he describes as 'the biggest club in the world'

Louis van Gaal takes charge of Manchester United for the first time in the early hours of Thursday morning with the man who sealed his appointment claiming that the Dutchman’s “aura” is already banishing memories of David Moyes’s disastrous year-long reign as manager.

Exactly a week after arriving at Old Trafford following his run to the World Cup semi-finals with Holland, Van Gaal’s United face LA Galaxy at the Pasadena Rose Bowl aiming to take their first steps towards erasing from memory a miserable campaign last season.

Ed Woodward, United’s executive vice-chairman, insisted that the Dutchman’s arrival had generated a feel-good factor within the club, claiming that the 62-year-old’s philosophy was “in sync” with the traditions of a club still coming to terms with the underachievement and turmoil of last season which led to the team finishing seventh in the Premier League and missing out on European qualification for the first time since the Eighties.