Messi almost become a Blue last summer

Messi almost become a Blue last summer...after adidas offered to pay half of the staggering £210m deal to Barcelona for move to Chelsea

Lionel Messi could have signed for Chelsea in the summer after adidas offered to pay half of his

£210million buy-out clause, according to Barcelona sports paper Mundo Deportivo.
Messi, who joined Barcelona as a 13-year-old after the club paid for expensive hormone therapy treatment without which he would never have made the grade as a professional, has always had a strong emotional bond with the club.

But according to Mundo Deportivo, adidas saw the opportunity to prise him away from Barca – and effectively from Nike who sponsor the Catalan giants – and move him to one of their three main European clubs: Chelsea, Bayern Munich or Real Madrid.

The pro-Barcelona daily says that Messi’s representatives were made aware of adidas’ proposal and that they then informed the club, who were also told Messi had no intention of leaving the club.

Even if adidas had stumped up the £105m, Chelsea would still have had to find the other £105m and manager Jose Mourinho would have had to convince a player with whom he has never had a very good relationship that the two could work together.

Mourinho famously accused Messi of ‘theatre’ after he was involved in Asier Del Horno’s sending off in a 2006 Chelsea v Barcelona clash, and was subsequently public enemy No.1 for Barca and Messi as Real Madrid coach.

Real Madrid president Florentino Perez would have pulled off a coup to top even the swiping of Luis Figo in 2000 if he had signed Messi.

It has long been his intention and he may have felt with the arrival of Neymar at the Camp Nou he could tempt the four-time Ballon d’Or winner to defect.

Barcelona would have done everything possible to keep Messi but, as with Figo, if Real had paid the £210m (€250million) buy-out clause Barça would have been forced to sell putting Messi in the same team as Cristiano Ronaldo and bringing to an end any interest in Gareth Bale.

Barcelona star warms up for Milan clash with a home-cooked meal
Bayern Munich were the third team suggested by Mundo Deportivo as being capable of completing the sensation transfer. By moving Messi to Germany, adidas would have given a massive boost not just to Bayern but to the Bundesliga.

But Messi did not finish on the best of terms with Pep Guardiola at the Nou Camp and Bayern, like Chelsea and Madrid, would have found it difficult to convince the player to make the move.

Messi goes into Wednesday's game with Milan on a run of three games without a goal and another theory circulated in Barcelona on Tuesday – this is a good moment to remind Barca fans of Messi’s commitment to the cause as he passes through what, by his incredibly high standards, is a low point in his time at the club.

Would he find a place in the starting lineup under Mourinho?

Result Of Excessive Steroid Use And Squats

This image shows a guy who has appeared to of spent a little bit to much on steroids, and a little too much time squatting at the gym. Do women really find this attractive?…

EA Sport's Top 10 legends in the FIFA Ultimate Team game mode

EA Sports have finally released the statistics for the top ten ‘legends’ in the FIFA Ultimate Team game mode.

The former football greats will be available to gamers using both the Xbox 360 and Xbox One when the new console launches later this month, and is a highly-anticipated new feature on FIFA 14.

Players 43 to 11 have already been released in recent days, as Electronic Arts look to ramp-up the interest in the game for a second big sales push.

And, this controversial list will almost certainly do the job, as Ultimate Team continues to grow in popularity for one of the biggest franchises in computer game history.

Without further ado, check out the top 10 players in the multi-page above, and let us know your thoughts on the selections. Tell us who you think should have been higher in the list, and who shouldn’t have been included at all!

Legends – Top 10

1 – Pele (95 rating)

2 – Paolo Maldini (92 rating)

3 – Lothar Matthaus (91 rating)

4 – Marco van Basten (91 rating)

5 – Ruud Gullit (90 rating)

6 – Luis Figo (90 rating)

7 – Dennis Bergkamp (90 rating)

8 – Romario (90 rating)

9 – Ruud van Nistelrooy (90 rating)

10 – George Weah (89 rating)

India launches rocket in hope of joining elite Mars explorer club

London (CNN) -- India has launched a rocket it hopes will allow it to join an elite group of space explorers to Mars.

The country's space research organization (ISRO) launched its orbiter to the Red Planet on Tuesday -- only NASA, the former Soviet Union and the Europeans have previously been successful in operating probes from Mars.

Japan made an attempt with the Nozomi orbiter in 1998 but it failed to reach the planet and a Chinese probe was lost along with the Russian Phobos-Grunt mission in January 2012. The UK's Beagle 2 probe separated from the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter in 2003 but nothing was ever heard from the lander.

It will take 10 months for India's Mars Orbiter Mission to reach the Red Planet after lifting off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre near Chennai. The probe will explore the planet's surface features, minerals and atmosphere.

ISRO is hoping to discover more about the loss of water from Mars, map the sources of methane gas, as well as collecting data about the two moons Phobos and Deimos.

But ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan told CNN that one of the biggest technological challenges was just getting there. Many missions have failed to reach the planet while others have crashed on the surface or contact has been lost before the probes could send back data.

Scientists work on a Mars orbiter at the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) satellite center in Bangalore.

India's space program launched its first Earth satellite in 1975 and put an unmanned probe into orbit around the Moon in 2008. It plans to launch its own manned spaceflight in 2016, though an Indian cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, flew aboard a Soviet space mission in 1984.

The U.S. is aiming to build on the success of a series of robots that have roamed the surface of the Red Planet when it launches its own orbiter mission called Maven -- Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft -- scheduled to launch on November 18.

The European Space Agency is working with the Russians on an ExoMars rover that is due to start its mission in 2018.

But private companies are also proposing trips to the Red Planet -- and some of them are only one-way.
The Mars One project wants to colonize Earth's neighbor, beginning in 2022 and the Inspire Mars Foundation wants to launch a man and a woman on a 501-day round-trip in 2018 without ever touching down.

Indians in Nigeria may pay for the sins of their brothers

Goa - Indians may suffer the backlash for kicking Nigerians out of their homes in faraway Goa, India, reports NDTV.

Consular attache Jacob Nwadadia at the Nigerian embassy in India made this known on Monday when he declared that Indians in the country may be thrown out on the streets.

Nwadadia gave the Goa government an ultimatum to stop illegally evicting Nigerians from their homes.

There are presently over one million Indians living in Nigeria and about 50 000 Nigerians living in India according to the Nigerian consulate.

The crackdown on Nigerians in Goa started after a clash between protesting Nigerians and police. The Nigerians were protesting the death of a fellow citizen who was accused of being a member of a narcotics gang.

Nollywood!!!.....New movie title ASUU STRIKE

Lol........

ASUU STRIKE UPDATE: We Will Deliver President’s Message to Our Members – Fagge

After the end of the marathon meeting with President Goodluck Jonathan in Abuja on Monday, which lasted for about 13 hours, the leadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) said they would now go and brief their members on the details of the discussions.

The Chairman of ASUU, Dr. Nasir Fagge, told the reporters in the early hours of November 5, 2013, Tuesday, at the State House that the leaders would take the President’s message back to their members.

Dr. Fagge, who wore broad smiles afar emerging from the meeting venue at about 3.35 a.m. did not say what the message was when he spoke with the correspondents.

“Well we have had lengthy meeting with Mr. President, rubbing minds on how best to address the problem of University education in this country.

“And we now have a message from Mr. President we are going to take to our members. And we are expecting that our members will respond appropriately to the message of Mr. President.”

On whether the lecturers are going back to the classroom, he said: “That is up to our members.”

Asked what the message was, he said: “I can’t tell you. It's not for you. It is for our members.”

If impressed with the message, he said: “Don’t put words into my mouth. Our members will determine that.”

The Labour Minister, Emeka Wogu, who also spoke with the press, just said what was discussed did not go beyond the 2009 agreement.

The meeting with the President had begun at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, around 2.40 p.m. on Monday, after ASUU had also met with the President of the Senate, Senator David Mark.

It would be mentioned that it was the first meeting between the striking union and President Goodluck Jonathan since the strike began 1 July, shutting down almost all state and Federal Government owned universities in Nigeria.

The Federal Government had initially offered the striking lecturers N30billion to pay for allowances piled up since government and the union hammered out an agreement in 2009. Government also offered N100billion to pay for improvements of facilities in the universities and later increased this to N200billion on a yearly basis.

ASUU rejected the offer as too small and insisted on government implementing in full the 2009 agreement.