Samir Nasri will feature in the France-Ecuador friendly tonight.
Then he will come to London on Wednesday and sign for Arsenal.
The deal has already happened but the legal niceties of administration have to be respected. The French transfer market only opened at midnight on Sunday.
Nasri will play in France’s three friendlies and be in Domenech’s 23 but will probably not play a lot in Euro 2008. We’ll have to see what formations France use.
Arsene’s friend Charles Villeneuve, 66, will be the new president of Paris St, Germain, which will lead to some interesting developments. Villeneuve was head of sports at TF1, the French equivalent of BBC1, where Arsene commentates.
Seydou Keita, that Sevilla midfielder I like, has gone to Barcelona for £12 million, which frees up YaYa Toure to come to Arsenal, if they can afford him.
Hleb doesn’t want his transfer to become a test case. But Arsene does, so that saga could run and run.
As I’ve been saying, this is a big summer for Arsenal.
The departure of Edelman is an opportunity for AFC. It’s a rebuilding scenario. For me the club is a bit like the team. They couldn’t rebuild the team with Thierry Henry there, so they sold Henry. And they couldn’t rebuild the club with Edelman there, so they fired Edelman. There is so much that needs doing there. Staff need galvanising, retail needs to be made classy.
Guus Hiddink was never gonna take the Chelsea job.
It could be Lippi as Director of Football with Luca Vialli coming back as manager. I know Luca really wants it. I went to Harlington to interview him when he was a player and that was a fun day when I really saw a lot and learned a lot.Only time I ever went to Chelsea’s old training ground, which smelled like an airfield and had 747s coming in 20 feet above the crossbar.
It’s nice to have a break. We all put a lot into last season and we all deserve a bit of chill-out time.
And I love not being busy on wet bank holidays when the phone hardly rings. Summer is different. Summer is cricket and pregnant women, summer is parties and holidays, summer is music and dining alfresco, maybe.
Summer began on a wet night in Moscow when Platini handed that trophy to Rio Ferdinand.
We watched the Champions League Final at my best friend’s house in Primrose Hill, six of us, and when we came home there was a voicemail message from Allan, a friend I’ve not seen for 30 years. Yes, 30 years. He was on my floor in Moberly Tower in Manchester and turned me on to Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Jean-Luc Godard. We once saw Yusef Lateef play sax and flute in a tiny club with very spartan furniture. Allan did chemistry and was a TV film cameraman when we lived together in St Ann’s Villas, at the bottom of Holland Park Avenue, just opposite what is now the Kensington Hilton.
He came for lunch on Sunday and told us what he’d been doing in Pakistan, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, the Solomon Islands, how he got married in Japan and went to South Carolina at 30 and did a computer science course, and then they moved to Palo Alto, a San Francisco suburb at the top of Silicone Valley. I was excited when I got up on Sunday morning and it was unbelievably heart-warming and fascinating to spend a day with Allan again. My best day of the year, by far.