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Archive June 8, 2025

Clement ‘had bad feeling after League Cup final’

SNS

“I had a feeling, a bad feeling, after the League Cup final.”

The passing of four months has afforded Philippe Clement time to reflect on his turbulent 16-month reign as Rangers manager.

Distance from Glasgow, and the febrile environment in which he became engulfed, has allowed him to pinpoint one particular game that he believes marked the beginning of the end of his time in charge at Ibrox.

Mid-December 2024. Pressure is building. Rangers are nine points behind Celtic. Only a series of good Europa League results are keeping the dogs at bay.

Just three days before the season’s first domestic silverware is awarded, Clement’s side earn another of those in a creditable 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur.

Then to Hampden, with Celtic heavy favourites to wrest back the League Cup.

Rangers, however, go toe-to-toe with them and are denied a spot-kick before losing on penalties following a 3-3 draw.

“I think it was a vital game,” Clement tells BBC Sport Scotland.

“If we had won, there would have been more patience with the fans also and the board could have stayed much calmer.”

But Rangers did not and Clement endured a winter of highs and lows before being relieved of his duties following an abject defeat by St Mirren at Ibrox in February.

‘It’s pity board didn’t have patience’

Every manager wants patience – and few get it. But Clement arguably got more than predecessors Michael Beale and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.

After all, neither of them suffered the ignominy of a Scottish Cup home defeat by second-tier Queen’s Park.

Protesting that his squad needed time to develop and grow became a regular refrain of Clement’s and the passing of time has not changed his view on that.

“It’s a pity that the story stopped, that the board didn’t have the patience, or maybe listened too much to some fans,” he says.

“There are other clubs where there is a difficult moment and everybody sticks together because everybody knows the story, how the work is done inside the building, and they continue and they are successful afterwards.

“In three or four windows, we could have closed the gap [to Celtic] with a good development of players, but the decision is made and you need to accept it.”

As Rangers tried to assuage swingeing losses, Clement’s task was to usurp Celtic but with a diminishing budget.

Was he initially misled about what funds might be available to him?

“No, not misled, but I understand now why,” he says. “Because some people were already thinking about selling the club and selling their stocks.

“I think you need to go back to one year ago. The story was that the club was not financially sustainable anymore, so that was the story of the transfer window.”

Clement says he and the recruitment team were told they could spend whatever money the club were able to recoup in player sales and from cutting salary spend.

But, despite taking “more than 35%” from the wage bill, an ageing squad, contracts expiring, and a lack of attractive young talent, meant the yield proved meagre.

“You gain money by bringing young players in, making them better and selling them,” Clement says. “That was the idea. There was not another road to take.

“In the end, it’s about deciding if the idea we had was working. You need patience to build it or you need to spend money. It’s one of the two.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.

‘Squad was not ready to be consistent’

It had all started so well.

Rangers were seven points behind Celtic when Michael Beale lost his job at the end of September 2023.

But from Clement taking over until the end of February, their only league loss came at Celtic Park. That run ended with the Ibrox side two clear at the top.

Things began to go awry soon after, though. A home defeat by Motherwell. A first-ever loss to Ross County. Then a draw at Dundee.

Celtic never looked back after that as Rangers’ mentality and inability to break teams down began to be questioned.

“I don’t agree with that,” Clement says of the latter criticism. “In moments, it was really good, but in moments not.

“It’s more a story about consistency, about having the demand – physically and mentally – to be ready for that every three days.

“In the end, the squad was not ready. There were too many players who had never done this before.”

Clement also bridles at suggestion mentality was an issue.

Mentioning the slip-ups against County and Dundee, he points out that “two players who were not good in those games” left at the end of the season and were perhaps distracted by discussions with other clubs at the time.

‘Four or five players could be sold’

Rangers were unable to mount a similar challenge this season, with Clement leaving them 13 points adrift in the Premiership and out of the Scottish Cup.

Interim head coach Barry Ferguson did take the Ibrox side a round further in the Europa League, but they ended the season without a trophy.

Regardless, Clement believes Rangers are now better placed to succeed because of the signings made during his tenure and the development of those players.

“Nicolas Raskin made a really good evolution,” he says. “A lot of clubs are interested in him. But you also have Jefte, Hamza Igamane, Clinton Nsiala, who will have a better value. Mohamed Diomande is also one of those guys.

“The club has worked well the past year in that way. There are now four or five players with the value to sell and several teams would pay good amounts of money.

Rangers fans – have your say

What do you make of Clement’s comments, Rangers fans?

Was the League Cup final decisive? Should the board have shown more patience? Do the club have four or five sellable assets?

Related topics

  • Scottish Premiership
  • Rangers
  • Scottish Football
  • Football

Clement ‘had bad feeling after League Cup final’

SNS

“I had a feeling, a bad feeling, after the League Cup final.”

The passing of four months has afforded Philippe Clement time to reflect on his turbulent 16-month reign as Rangers manager.

Distance from Glasgow, and the febrile environment in which he became engulfed, has allowed him to pinpoint one particular game that he believes marked the beginning of the end of his time in charge at Ibrox.

Mid-December 2024. Pressure is building. Rangers are nine points behind Celtic. Only a series of good Europa League results are keeping the dogs at bay.

Just three days before the season’s first domestic silverware is awarded, Clement’s side earn another of those in a creditable 1-1 draw with Tottenham Hotspur.

Then to Hampden, with Celtic heavy favourites to wrest back the League Cup.

Rangers, however, go toe-to-toe with them and are denied a spot-kick before losing on penalties following a 3-3 draw.

“I think it was a vital game,” Clement tells BBC Sport Scotland.

“If we had won, there would have been more patience with the fans also and the board could have stayed much calmer.”

But Rangers did not and Clement endured a winter of highs and lows before being relieved of his duties following an abject defeat by St Mirren at Ibrox in February.

‘It’s pity board didn’t have patience’

Every manager wants patience – and few get it. But Clement arguably got more than predecessors Michael Beale and Giovanni van Bronckhorst.

After all, neither of them suffered the ignominy of a Scottish Cup home defeat by second-tier Queen’s Park.

Protesting that his squad needed time to develop and grow became a regular refrain of Clement’s and the passing of time has not changed his view on that.

“It’s a pity that the story stopped, that the board didn’t have the patience, or maybe listened too much to some fans,” he says.

“There are other clubs where there is a difficult moment and everybody sticks together because everybody knows the story, how the work is done inside the building, and they continue and they are successful afterwards.

“In three or four windows, we could have closed the gap [to Celtic] with a good development of players, but the decision is made and you need to accept it.”

As Rangers tried to assuage swingeing losses, Clement’s task was to usurp Celtic but with a diminishing budget.

Was he initially misled about what funds might be available to him?

“No, not misled, but I understand now why,” he says. “Because some people were already thinking about selling the club and selling their stocks.

“I think you need to go back to one year ago. The story was that the club was not financially sustainable anymore, so that was the story of the transfer window.”

Clement says he and the recruitment team were told they could spend whatever money the club were able to recoup in player sales and from cutting salary spend.

But, despite taking “more than 35%” from the wage bill, an ageing squad, contracts expiring, and a lack of attractive young talent, meant the yield proved meagre.

“You gain money by bringing young players in, making them better and selling them,” Clement says. “That was the idea. There was not another road to take.

“In the end, it’s about deciding if the idea we had was working. You need patience to build it or you need to spend money. It’s one of the two.

To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.

‘Squad was not ready to be consistent’

It had all started so well.

Rangers were seven points behind Celtic when Michael Beale lost his job at the end of September 2023.

But from Clement taking over until the end of February, their only league loss came at Celtic Park. That run ended with the Ibrox side two clear at the top.

Things began to go awry soon after, though. A home defeat by Motherwell. A first-ever loss to Ross County. Then a draw at Dundee.

Celtic never looked back after that as Rangers’ mentality and inability to break teams down began to be questioned.

“I don’t agree with that,” Clement says of the latter criticism. “In moments, it was really good, but in moments not.

“It’s more a story about consistency, about having the demand – physically and mentally – to be ready for that every three days.

“In the end, the squad was not ready. There were too many players who had never done this before.”

Clement also bridles at suggestion mentality was an issue.

Mentioning the slip-ups against County and Dundee, he points out that “two players who were not good in those games” left at the end of the season and were perhaps distracted by discussions with other clubs at the time.

‘Four or five players could be sold’

Rangers were unable to mount a similar challenge this season, with Clement leaving them 13 points adrift in the Premiership and out of the Scottish Cup.

Interim head coach Barry Ferguson did take the Ibrox side a round further in the Europa League, but they ended the season without a trophy.

Regardless, Clement believes Rangers are now better placed to succeed because of the signings made during his tenure and the development of those players.

“Nicolas Raskin made a really good evolution,” he says. “A lot of clubs are interested in him. But you also have Jefte, Hamza Igamane, Clinton Nsiala, who will have a better value. Mohamed Diomande is also one of those guys.

“The club has worked well the past year in that way. There are now four or five players with the value to sell and several teams would pay good amounts of money.

Rangers fans – have your say

What do you make of Clement’s comments, Rangers fans?

Was the League Cup final decisive? Should the board have shown more patience? Do the club have four or five sellable assets?

Related topics

  • Scottish Premiership
  • Rangers
  • Scottish Football
  • Football

UFC 316: Merab Dvalishvili stops Sean O’Malley to retain title

In their rematch to retain the bantamweight title, Merab Dvalishvili defeated Sean O’Malley with ease in the main event of UFC 316 in Newark, New Jersey.

Dvalishvili (20-4 MMA) made an argument as one of the sport’s best bantamweights, perhaps of all time, while United States President Donald Trump watched from cageside on Saturday night.

Dvalishvili, who won his 13th victory in a row in the third round, expressed his delight at his upcoming title defense against Cory Sandhagen (18-5 MMA), who has won four of his last five fights.

Dvalishvili said, “You’re the man, let’s go,” adding that he was interested in fighting Sandhagen next.

O’Malley (18-3 MMA) lost to Dvalishvili by unanimous decision in September. O’Malley assured readers that the loss was a minor setback and that it would be gradual.

“100 percent, thank you guys for coming out,” O’Malley said.

In the bantamweight title fight, Dvalishvili, left, faces O’Malley [Elsa/Getty Images via AFP]
Sean O'Malley and Donald Trump react.
After losing to Dvalishvili at UFC 316, US President Donald Trump speaks with O’Malley [Photo by Andrew Caballero/AFP]

In the co-main event, Kayla Harrison submitted Julianna Pena with a second-round kimura, a form of submission known as the double wristlock or reverse keylock, to change hands.

After the 34-year-old had control over every aspect of the fight, Harrison and Pena embraced in the Octagon and showed the most class in it.

Given that the majority of MMA fighters do not win a UFC title, Harrison claimed during her post-fight interview that her weight loss on Thursday night was “worrying.”

Amanda Nunes, Pena’s 13-year-old former opponent, was called out by Harrison (19-1 MMA). Nunes, a former two-division champion, retired in 2023. She made a comeback as time went on. As the Prudential Center crowd beamed as Harrison and Nunes posed for a face-off and discussed a fight later this year, it now seems inevitable.

At 1:03 of the second round, Vicente Luque defeated Kevin Holland to claim a D’Arce choke.

Holland, who is currently 28-13 in MMA, has now won three of his final five, underscoring the need to maintain a leading welterweight position. Luque, a 23-11-1 MMA fighter who moves from Brazil to New Jersey, has lost three of his matches.

By unanimous decision, middleweight Joe Pyfer defeated TUF alumnus Kelvin Gastelum on November 29, 28 and 29, respectively.

Gastelum (19-10 MMA) is currently in the midst of a slump, while Pyfer (14-3 MMA) has won his previous two matches.

Kayla Harrison and Julianna Pena in action.
Julianna Pena and Kayla Harrison, right, square off in the UFC 316 fight for the bantamweight title. [Elsa/Getty Images via AFP]

Italy holds referendum on easing citizenship rules

In response to concerns that low turnout may render the poll invalid, Italians are casting ballots on easing citizenship laws and strengthening labor protections.

Voting began on Sunday and will continue through Monday.

Italians are asked if they support reducing the time to which an Italian citizen must reside before becoming a citizen by naturalization to five years in the citizenship question on the ballot paper.

Without having any prior marriages or blood ties to Italy, a resident of a non-European nation must reside there for ten years before applying for citizenship. This process can then take several years.

According to supporters, the reform would bring Italy’s citizenship law in line with that of many other European countries, including Germany and France, and would have an impact on 2.5 million foreigners who reside there.

The main union and left-wing opposition parties in Italy put forth proposals for the measures.

Giorgia Meloni, the prime minister, has stated that she won’t cast a ballot at the polls. The action has been criticized as antidemocratic because it would not help to reach the required 50 percent plus one of eligible voters to make the vote valid.

Meloni is vehemently opposed to it despite the fact that his party’s far-right Brothers of Italy has prioritized reducing illegal immigration.

She stated on Thursday that the current system is “one of the most open laws, in the sense that we have consistently been one of the European countries that grant the most citizenships annually.”

In 2023, more than 213,500 people erroneously became Italian citizens, representing a whopping 2% of the EU’s total.

More than 90% of the immigrants were from countries other than the EU, primarily from Albania and Morocco, as well as Argentina and Brazil, two nations with significant Italian immigrant populations.

Even if the proposed reform is implemented, the migration law, which many believe is the most unfair, will remain intact because children born in Italy to foreign parents cannot apply for nationality until they are 18 years old.

Ghali, an Italian singer who was born in Milan to Tunisian parents and has consistently backed child law reform, appealed to his fans to support the proposal as a step in the right direction.

Ghali wrote on Instagram, “I was born here, I always lived here, but I only became a citizen when I was 18.” We ask that five years of living here, not ten, be sufficient to make this nation, with a “Yes.”

A “yes” vote was also urged by Michelle Ngonmo, a cultural entrepreneur and champion of diversity in the fashion industry.

“This referendum is really about dignity and the right to belong,” according to the statement from many of the people who were born here and spent the majority of their adult lives making a difference in Italian society. A lack of citizenship is “like an invisible wall” for them, according to Ngonmo, who has spent most of her life in Italy after relocating from Cameroon as a child.

You can work and pay taxes, but you won’t be fully recognized as Italian. She told the Associated Press news agency, “This makes young generations, especially those in the creative field, feel unappreciative, excluded, and have a lot of potential.”

The other four measures on the ballot address the labor law, including stronger sanctions against dismissal, higher severance pay, permanent contract renewal, and liability for workplace accidents.

Only 46% of Italians were aware of the issues influencing the referendums, according to opinion polls released in the middle of May. With a quorum that was below 35 percent of the more than 51 million voters, the turnout projections were even worse.

Numerous of the previous 78 referendums held in Italy failed because of low turnout.

Burgess wins first World Cup silver in six years

Paddle UK

After a “pretty special” run in the heats, Great Britain’s Adam Burgess won the C1 World Cup for the first time since 2019.

Olympic champion Nicolas Gestin, 32, defeated Slovenia’s Luka Bozic to finish second.

In the heats in north-east Spain, Burgess ran a stunning run to take the lead.

The Stoke-born paddler, who was last in the finals, ran an emphatic run to start the season without penalty.

After agonizingly slipping by 0.16 seconds in Tokyo in 2020, Burgess won Olympic silver in the individual canoe at the Paris Games.

“I’m always there or thereabouts, and we’ve done a lot of work to try to get those runs in the final, and I’m guessing that the final was my worst run today,” Burgess said.

related subjects

  • Canoeing

This £24 water-resistant hair mask stops the sun, sea and chlorine from damaging your hair on holiday

Want to stop your holiday from ruining your hair? Then this £24 hair mask is about to be your summer saviour, helping nourish and protect your hair from sun, sea and swimming

The Philip Kinglsey Swimcap hair mask protects from chlorine, sun and salt water(Image: Philip Kinglsey)

Nothing ruins your hair faster than chlorine, salt water and too much sun, which can make your long-awaited holiday a nightmare for your locks. From drying out your strands to causing discolouration and tangles, the combination of chemicals and UV rays can spell disaster for your hair.

However you don’t need to spend your whole trip trying to keep your head above water, because Philip Kingsley’s Swimcap Water-Resistant Mask is here to save the day. Originally created for the US Olympic synchronised swimming team, the hair mask has now become one of the go-tos for swimmers and sunbathers alike for protecting their hair.

READ MORE: ‘Life changing’ IPL hair remover that banishes sun spots and pigmentation works out at £11 per session

READ MORE: Fenty Beauty blurring skin tint ‘feels like nothing on the skin’ and has 20% off

The Swimcap Water-Resistant Mask is £24 for a large 100ml bottle, and is suitable for all hair types, including coloured and chemically treated hair. It creates a protective barrier between your hair and external aggressors like chlorine, salt water and UV rays, and helps to nourish and hydrate each strand while you wear it.

Philip Kinglsey Swimcap hair mask
The mask is fully waterproof(Image: Philip Kinglsey )

It’s been fortified with hydrolysed elastin which boosts the strength and body of each strand, minimising breakage and damage. You also get extra moisture from castor oil and olive oil, leaving it silky soft and shiny after use.

You just need to apply it to damp hair in sections and comb it evenly through your hair, and leave it on whilst sunbathing or swimming – it’s fully water resistant, so you don’t need to worry about it coming out. For the best results you can apply it the day before you’re planning on being in the sun, and it’s important to leave it on whenever you know your hair will be exposed to things like sun and swimming.

Other options with similar results include Umberto Giannini Swim Proof Hair Protecting Cream, £8.95, which protects your hair from sun, chlorine and salt water whilst still letting you style your hair as normal after use. If your hair has already suffered the effects of your trip abroad, the SUN BUM Hair Mask, £19.99, or Color Wow’s Coconut Cocktail, £25, are both excellent at restoring dry, damaged or over processed hair almost instantly.

However Philip Kingsley’s Swimcap Water-Resistant Mask has been getting rave reviews from LookFantastic shoppers, with a 4.85 star rating. One wrote: “Absolute lifesaver on holiday! Saves your hair from all the chlorine & sun! Hair feels so soft after using it! Worth the money!”

Another agreed: “I have coloured hair and a few times in the pool my hair was coming out and was dry. This has changed my life no hair coming out and feels healthy after doesn’t feel like I’ve been in the pool I will be using constantly now.”

Philip Kinglsey Swimcap hair mask
You can pick up the hair mask for £24(Image: Philip Kinglsey)

A third chimed in: “I first tried this about 2 years ago for our holidays it’s an absoloute God send for keeping your hair nice when in the sun or pool but I then realised it’s amazing to put in the kids hair for there swimming classes. It stops the hair getting that build up of chlorine and when they rinse it out after swimming their hair is tat free and easy to manage. A little goes a long way too so although it’s not the cheapest you do get your moneys worth.”

Whilst a fourth was thrilled, writing: “I have bleached highlighted hair, and this protected my hair from discolouration in the 30 degree heat whilst swimming. I didn’t want my hair going green from the chlorine, and it didn’t! I love this product, and is a firm favourite for holidays to protect my hair.”

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In fact there were only two reviews less than five stars, both of which were four star ratings. One was from someone who had yet to try it, and the other said: “Love this for holidays as protects hair against sun, UV, chlorine etc. Only downside is that it has to be applied to damp hair!”