Football Manager 2018: Neymar, Messi & the most expensive players in the game

The beta for Football Manager 2018 went live on Thursday night, giving football fans their first chance to test out the newest version of the game and take charge of their favourite team.

Virtual managers will be looking to strengthen their teams as soon as they start up the game, but many of the world's biggest and best names may be a little out of their price range at the beginning.

Following his €222 million transfer from Barcelona to PSG, Brazil forward Neymar is the joint most expensive player in FM2018, with a market value of €95m. However, even if you do have that much to spend in your initial wage budget, it is unlikely that the Ligue 1 giants will be willing to sell their new superstar.

Here are the most expensive players:

🔰Neymar (PSG) - €95m

🔰Lionel Messi (Barcelona) - €95m

🔰Kevin de Bruyne (Man City) - €87m

🔰Gareth Bale (Real Madrid) - €84m

🔰Sergio Aguero (Man City) - €82m

🔰Robert Lewandowski (Bayern) - €82m

🔰Antoine Griezmann (Atletico) - €81m

🔰Isco (Real Madrid) - €78m

🔰Eden Hazard (Chelsea) - €78m

Jose Mourinho full of praise for Luke Shaw's comments on Mauricio Pochettino*

Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho has praised Luke Shaw's comments about reuniting with Mauricio Pochettino, saying the defender was just being honest.

Writing in the epilogue of Guillem Balague's new book, Brave New World: Inside Pochettino's Spurs, Shaw spoke glowingly about his former manager and said he would be keen on working under the Argentine once again.

Shaw had the most successful season of his career under Pochettino at St. Mary's before he left to join United and Mourinho was very understanding of his comments, describing them as the "perfect words".

When asked whether Shaw has any future at the club, he responded: "Why not? If you want to speak about his words - I would be very disappointed if his words were different. For me, they are the perfect words

"I'm always disappointed when a player has a new manager, the new manager becomes the best and the old manager becomes very bad.

"Football is full of examples of lack of character, Luke Shaw was just honest. The manager that helped him to come to the first team, the manager who brought him to the best point of his career."

DESIRE TO DO GOOD ALWAYS

⏰Friday of the Twenty-Ninth Week of Ordinary Time 1 (27 October 2017)

📖Rom 7:18-25a; Ps 119:66, 68, 76, 77, 93, 94 (R.v.68b); Luke 12:54-59

🎤DESIRE TO DO GOOD ALWAYS

Have you often found yourself falling prey to sin even when you desire strongly to do the right thing? That is often explained as concupiscence - what some people call human frailty, limitation or weakness. It is the orientation that drags man to move toward the bad which he wants to avoid. St. Paul, too, often complained about this (see Rom 7:18-25).

We know that some of us normally hide under that orientation to explain away our deep indulgence into sin. Before we join that crowd, it is important to note the difference between St. Paul in Rom 7:18-25 and the people that Jesus condemned as hypocrites in Luke 12:54-59 - the desire and effort to do good.

Even while it is true that we are bound by human limitations, we must always strive to live above boards. And then, remember that we have no power of our own. But with God on our side, we can do all things.

We therefore pray with the psalmist that he, the Lord, may teach us his statutes (cf. Ps 119:68) and help us to keep them at all times. Amen.

Have a lovely day spent in God's merciful love. Peace with you, through Christ our Lord, AMEN

*Lazio to wear image 📷 of Anne Frank on shirts after fans' anti-Semitic slogans

On Sunday, during a leading football match in Europe, fans of Italian club Lazio posted stickers around Rome's Stadio Olimpico depicting Holocaust victim Anne Frank wearing the shirt of city rivals Roma alongside anti-Semitic slogans. 
The head of Rome's Jewish community, Ruth Dureghello, tweeted a picture of the stickers, writing: "This isn't the terraces, this isn't soccer, this isn't sport. Kick anti-Semitism out of the stadiums." 
Italian President Sergio Mattarella was widely reported to have called the case "alarming for our country," while Lazio players will wear an image of Frank on their shirts during the warm-up to Wednesday's Serie A match against Bologna.

In a statement on the club website, Lazio president Claudio Lotito said the move showed the team's commitment to fighting "all forms of racism and anti-Semitism." 
According to Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport, Lotito has also promised that the club would organize an annual trip for 200 young fans to Auschwitz, where more than one million people were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp. 
Italian police is investigating Sunday's incident, and using the stadium's surveillance cameras, has identified 15 people, two of which are minors. All are possibly facing charges of incitement to racial hatred.

*Saudi 🇸🇦 Crown Prince 👑 calls Qatar embargo a 'small issue' 😱*

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince downplayed his country's months long dispute with Qatar in rare comments about the diplomatic and economic boycott.

"Qatar is a very, very, very small issue," Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said late Wednesday in a Reuters interview about the tiny gas-rich Gulf Arab country that has been the target of a major embargo since June.

"We're pursuing (the Yemen war) until we can be sure that nothing will happen there like Hezbollah again," bin Salman told Reuters, referring to the Iran-backed Lebanese Shia group.

Saudi Arabia, backed by a coalition of Arab states, launched a military operation in March 2015 against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who toppled the internationally recognized leadership in Yemen.

I appeal to the parties to make the necessary concessions that can help paving the way for a long-lasting peace, and to the international community to ensure unity of purpose in supporting these much-needed initiatives," said UN envoy Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

*Twitter bans RT and Sputnik ads amid election interference fears

Twitter is banning two of Russia's biggest media outlets from buying advertising amid fears they attempted to interfere with the 2016 US election.

Twitter said the decision "was based on the retrospective work we've been doing around the 2016 US election and the US intelligence community's conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government".

The statement, published on the social media platform's blog, continued: "We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter."

The decision has provoked an angry response in Russia, with the country's foreign ministry accusing Twitter of bowing to pressure from the US intelligence services, saying the move was "another aggressive step" aimed at blocking Russian media in the US.

It added "retaliatory measures" would follow, according to RIA Novosti news agency [in Russian], Meanwhile, responding to the allegations, RT's deputy editor-in-chief Kirill Karnovich-Valua said the outlet "has never been involved in any illegal activity online, and that it never pursued an agenda of influencing the US election through any platforms".