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Cardiff City transfer news as stance on defender revealed and forward opens up on ‘dream’ Man Utd move
Here are your Cardiff City headlines for Tuesday, May 23.
Stance on linked Newport defender
Cardiff City and Rotherham United have both been linked with Newport County defender Cameron Norman.
According to Football Insider, the Championship duo are ‘in a race’ to sign the free agent this summer.
The English right-back, 27, named the Player of the Season as well as the Players’ Player of the Season in County’s end-of-season awards following a campaign which saw him play 53 games.
Cardiff might indeed be looking for a right-back this summer, with the signing of Vontae Campbell last season not really working out. However, we are told there is no truth in links with the Exiles man.
READ MORE: Cardiff City new manager search Live
Youngster opens up on ‘dream’ Man Utd move
Teenage striker Gabriele Biancheri has described his move from Cardiff to Manchester United as a “dream come true”.
Biancheri started the campaign in excellent form for Cardiff, eventually earning him a call-up to the under-21s despite being only 16. However, Dave Hughes, the former Bluebirds head of academy, used his inside knowledge of the player to get him to sign for Man United.
Cardiff received a chunky six-figure fee for the player, while Biancheri himself would likely have found it impossible to turn to the move to such a huge club down.
“It’s gone really well. There have been a couple of difficult moments, like leaving home, not being with my family, moving houses, moving away from my friends,” he said of the move to the FAW’s Red Wall+ channel.
“But this is what I’ve always wanted, to play for a team like Man United, it’s a dream come true.”
Cardiff broaden horizons for manager search
Cardiff City are understood to be broadening their search for a new manager out into Europe and the USA, we are told.
French, German and Turkish names are all understood to have been in the conversation in recent days, with the club looking to cast their net into Europe. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Sabri Lamouchi aside, Cardiff have tended to opt for British managers, but it appears the club are once again exploring options from outside of these shores. We have seen Alexander Blessin, the German former Genoa and KV Oostende manager who began his coaching career at RB Leipzig, shoot up the odds list into fourth favourite in recent days.
It is also understood that managers based in the United States are also being looked at.
The official line is that the interview process is still in progress, but there is obviously a growing urgency that the club want to make a swift appointment in order to get the ball rolling on a number of other issues which need to be tackled in the coming days and weeks.
Cardiff rarely have time to consider new managers for any length of time, given they are typically mid-season appointments and/or firefighting jobs. This time, though, they are understood to be speaking to or at least looking at far more options than they have previously been afforded the chance to in the hope of getting the appointment right.
Read the full story here.
Bluebirds youngster outlines his ‘dream’
Cardiff under-21s right-back Jai Semenyo is aiming for the stars as he revealed his goal is to play in the Champions League.
Semenyo, 19, made his first-team debut against Liverpool in the FA Cup last year, but had a frustrating year stuck in the youth team this season. However, that has not dampened his drive to reach the very top.
“Growing up, I wasn’t a fan of football. My brother was the footballer and he just dragged me in to do things. I realised I was actually good and I was enjoying it,” he said on YouTube channel Pace of Work.
“International level, I’d love to play for Ghana. My parents are from Ghana. The first time I started playing football was around seven or eight with my brother and his mates around the estate, street games, two touch.
“My biggest achievement so far is signing my first pro (contract). My family felt speechless, because most African families, they don’t want you to be footballers. They want you to be doctors.
“My goals and dreams are to play football at the highest level. Champions League football, Premier League football, that’s the aim.”
Bamba’s brilliant Warnock tale
Assistant manager Sol Bamba told The Athletic about the powers of Neil Warnock’s man management.
This, in a nutshell, sums up the man…
“He had an office at Cardiff which looked out over the car park at the training ground,” Bamba said of Warnock. “I drove in one morning, got out of the car, and he appeared from nowhere.
“He said to me, ‘Sol, go home. Take two or three days off. I’ll see you Friday’. So, I want to know why. We’ve got a game coming up, I want to train. But no, he tells me to go away.
“I take the missus away to France for a few days and then I come back in on Friday – he puts the team up and I’m in the starting line-up. It’s all really strange. I don’t get it.
“I try to get into his office to ask what’s going on but he won’t have it — ‘I’m not talking to you, we’ve got to focus on the game’, things like that. I play the next day, I have a great performance. Man of the match. Afterwards, he says to me, ‘Normally when you get here in the morning, you’re laughing, you’re smiling, you’re getting all the lads going, but when you got out of the car this time, you didn’t look the same’.
“Basically, he didn’t think I was myself. He thought there might be something up, so his attitude was for me to get away from there, refresh and then I’ll run through a brick wall for him. Which I did.
“He’s so clever like that. He sees everything, because he makes it his job to get to know every player. Just a quick look at me in the morning made him think he had to do something, even though I didn’t realise it.
“I’m biased but I love the man.”
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