Jonjo Shelvey, the 23-year old Swansea City player who has earned a national recall, has said that the Three Lions have set the target of topping their Euro qualifying group by winning each and every match.
The Three Lions have secured wins in the 8 games that they have played so far and are already at the top of the Group E table.

One more win would probably see them through to the tournament proper, but, according to Shelvey, the manager does not want the players to start taking it a little easy once the qualification is achieved.

Speaking on the sidelines of the training session the other day, Shelvey said, “Roy is quite keen that we should try and finish with 30 points. He believes we are capable of doing that and we are also backing ourselves. There is a lot of skill in the group at the moment and irrespective of who gets the opportunity, we can get the job done.”

It’s probably a fanciful question to ask and, right now, the more pertinent question about Mario Balotelli is will he still be at Liverpool next season, rather than whether he will one day fulfil his ambition of being named the Ballon d’Or.

Unless he enjoys the type of super-human run of form between now and the end of the year, the like of which is the staple of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, then Balotelli will not even register as an after-thought when it comes to the naming of the next Ballon d’Or winner in early 2016.

Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery has criticised the FIFA Ballon d’Or award as a political affairs amidst unhappiness that he was not considered as a potential winner last year. Ribery came third in the rankings for last year’s award while his Bayern Munich teammate Manuel Neuer finished in the same position for this year’s title.

The shortlist for the prestigious FIFA Ballon d’Or award has been announced with several names from the Premier League managing to make it into the shortlist. The first 30 man shortlist has just been announced.

It will be reduced to a three-man shortlist before naming the winner in December. Real Madrid superstar Cristiano Ronaldo is the overwhelming favourite to get this award after helping his team win the Champions League and also scoring more than 50 goals along the way. A number of players in the Premier League like Diego Costa and Eden Hazard have also been named in the list.

The new Premier League campaign coverage on BT sports starts with the match involving Manchester United and Swansea at Old Trafford. BT emerged as the major contender for Sky Sports in the UK sports television business. Sky Sports has been the number one channel when it came to watching Premier League action, but last season witnessed a major shift in power. BT secured access to most of the live games featuring top clubs in the second half of the campaign. This was primarily because Sky Sports decided to take up most of their allotted number of matches in the first half of the season.