Aguero: I want to be the best player in the world

The 25-year-old forward wants to be remembered alongside Lionel Messi as one of the greatest footballers of all time and insists he is not considering leaving Manchester City

Sergio Aguero says he wants to win the World Cup with Argentina and become the best player in the world.

The Manchester City striker says that winning the tournament is his “dream” and that, realising it, would go a long way towards securing him legendary status within the game. 

When asked if he feels like a ‘crack’ (a Spanish term for a great player), Aguero told La Nation: “Let’s see. I don’t know about that, but I do my best to be one of the best players in the world. 

"My dream is to win the World Cup and then be the best player in the world. That would remain in history.”

Describing his role within the Argentina set-up, Aguero explained that his goal is to take some of the pressure off Lionel Messi, whose No.10 shirt he recently had the honour of wearing on account of the Barcelona attacker's current injury problems.

“Messi has a heavier load because everybody expects more [from him],” said Aguero. “I am there to help Leo carry all that responsibility in the national team, and also to help the team. 

"We have to divide the responsibility between a few of us. The people want more from us and that’s good: we have to give the maximum to please the people.

“That [No.10] shirt has an owner. Somebody had to use the No.10 [against Peru] and Leo asked me to wear it. But some people even wrote to me [afterwards] and said: ‘What are you doing with the 10?’. 

"I told them that the shirt has an owner and that’s Leo. I used it because somebody has to use it for now.”

The 25-year-old was also quick to dispel any rumours about a possible departure from Eastlands, citing his contentment in Manchester as a central reason for his continual improvement as a player.

“The truth is that I’m happy,” he added. “The club treats me very well. It’s very calm - it’s different to being in Spain or Argentina.”

"I’ve always said that in every match, watching or training, you learn things. It’s like in any job, you know what to do or not to do. 

"The same happens on the pitch: you think where you have to attack, where you feel comfortable inside the area - it’s like you read where you can make the centre-backs feel uncomfortable. 

“You are always improving. English football, for example, being so fast, it allows you to develop your concentration and refine your technique. So every day you’re learning and I feel that I still have plenty to learn. 

“The only thing I do is enjoy football, rest, be at home and then go out or walk around or eat in peace. For a player or anybody who is well-known, it’s good not to be afraid of the madness because later, when it’s time to play, it’s important to have a clear head.”

Oscar: Mourinho wanted me at Real Madrid

The Brazilian says the Portuguese wanted to bring him to the Bernabeu in 2012 but he felt that the Liga club were well covered in his position so he opted for the Blues instead

Chelsea midfielder Oscar claims he came "very close" to joining Real Madrid prior to his switch to Stamford Bridge.

The Brazil international moved to England from Internacional in 2012, but has revealed that current Chelsea boss Jose Mourinho wanted him to join los Blancos instead.

Oscar explains that the Portuguese came to watch him in an international friendly against Denmark, but the 22-year-old was put off joining the Liga giants due to the intense level of competition at the Santiago Bernabeu. 

"A month before signing for Chelsea I was very close to doing so with Real Madrid as Mourinho said he wanted me," he told Globoesporte. 

"Before the game [against Denmark] there were talks with Madrid, but they had the playmaker position well covered. After that, I signed for Chelsea."

Oscar has scored four times in all competitions this season, helping Chelsea to fourth in the Premier League and top spot in Champions League Group E, and the Selecao starlet attributes his good form to Mourinho.

"He talked to me as soon as he came to Chelsea," Oscar stated. "He gives me confidence and I'm trying to return all such support on the pitch."

Ancelotti rules out Pirlo-Alonso exchange deal

The former Paris Saint-Germain coach has stressed that the Spain international remains a key player for Madrid and is not interested in a swap for the Juventus veteran

Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti has ruled out the possibility of a player exchange deal involving Xabi Alonso and Juventus midfielder Andrea Pirlo.

Both playmakers are reaching the end of their respective contracts and Alonso, 31, has been heavily linked with a move to the Serie A champions while Pirlo is thought to be keen on a reunion with former AC Milan boss Ancelotti.

However, the Madrid boss has now made it clear that he will not make a move for his 34-year-old compatriot and is eager to keep Alonso at Santiago Bernabeu.

"Xabi is a vital player for Madrid now that he's recovered from injury. There are only two players like him in Europe. One is Pirlo and the other is Xabi," Ancelotti told Mediaset.

"However, we have no intention of making a player exchange deal with Juventus. There is no substance to any rumour like that.

"I am still in touch with Andrea because I have a good relation with him. I was pleased to see the Madrid fans give him a warm welcome when we met."

Pirlo has been with Juventus since the summer of 2011 was inspirational in their successive Scudetto triumphs, but has seen his first-team place come under increasing threat from Paul Pogba this season.

Manchester City made a 'mistake' by not signing Pogba, says Vieira

The World Cup-winning midfielder, who played for both City and Juventus, believes the Etihad Stadium outfit missed a trick by not recruiting the "extraordinary" 20-year-old

Manchester City reserve team manager Patrick Vieira has labelled the club's failure to sign French midfielder Paul Pogba a "mistake".

The 20-year-old left rivals Manchester United on a free transfer in 2012, joining Serie A champions Juventus where he scored five goals in his maiden campaign en route to the Scudetto.

And Vieira, who noted the similarities between himself and the Blues youngster, says he regrets City's failure to lure his "extraordinary" countryman to the Etihad Stadium.

"Many people say he is like I was. I think he is more offensive than me and perhaps better technically," Vieira told L'Equipe. "He is a player that I really like. 

"I saw him play for Manchester United. That Manchester City did not take him when he left was a mistake because he is an extraordinary player."

Pogba was on the losing side as France suffered a 2-0 defeat to Ukraine in their World Cup play-off first leg and Vieira has urged the players to step up.

"In the French team, we have the players. These players must have a structure that allows them to grow," the former Arsenal midfielder continued.

"They must feel that the France team is as important, if not more important, than the club. This is not the case right now.

PSG preparing monumental €48m bid for Chelsea star

The Spaniard, who has been involved in the transfer rumour-mill consistently since the summer, has had his struggles at Stamford Bridge well documented over the last few months and now it seems the French champions are determined take advantage of his situation.

It is thought that the massive fee will be enough for Laurent Blanc to tempt the Blues into a sale, even though Jose Mourinho has repeatedly stated that the playmaker has a future at Chelsea.


Mata has found himself on the bench more often than not this year and may well fancy his chances of glory with PSG, particularly given the fact that it's a World Cup year and competition for spaces in the Spain team is as fierce as ever.

With Mourinho believed to be planning a large-scale overhaul of his squad, Mata may not be the only one to be tipped to leave, but the suggested fee will surely be the most they can look to receive for one player.

Women Reach a Milestone in Job Market

Women have recovered all the jobs they lost during the recession. Men have not.

A record 67.5 million women are working today, up from the prior peak of 67.4 million in early 2008, according to the Labor Department's latest tally of payrolls that captured the full rebound for the first time. By comparison, 69 million men currently have jobs, below their high of 70.9 million in June 2007.

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Nurse Danielle Zammerelli checks an ICU patient in Atlanta last month. The health sector has weathered the economic turmoil relatively well. Associated Press

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The primary reason for the labor-market milestone: Women tend to hold jobs in health, education, hospitality and retail, all sectors that have weathered the economic turmoil of recent years comparatively well.

Male-dominated sectors like construction and manufacturing suffered the brunt of the recession, and men lost more than six million jobs in the recession and its aftermath. Women lost 2.7 million jobs.

"The last recession and recovery really showed how segregated the labor market is," said Ariane Hegewisch, an economist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank. "There was quite a bit of movement and further integration until the mid-1990s, and from the mid-to-late '90s onwards, a number of indicators have stalled," she said.

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Job security was one reason Faby Gonzalez, who previously did construction work on apartment buildings, sought opportunities in retail and health care. The work "had kind of torn apart my body," said Ms. Gonzalez, who recently recovered from a dislocated shoulder.

The 37-year-old Denver resident took a six-week training course in customer service, received multiple job offers and started selling telephone products in September. "Retail is an industry where people are always going to need things," she said.

Women recouped the early-2008 level of payrolls for the first time in September, according to revised data released this month. October showed further gains.

The unemployment rate for women stood at 6.9% in October, compared with 7.6% for men, according to a separate Labor Department survey of households. According to this survey, which has a smaller sample size than the payroll survey and tends to be less reliable due to volatility between months, women haven't yet regained their peak employment level of early 2008, while men remain below their late-2007 highs.

Other gauges point to a deeper malaise in the labor market. Overall employment gains haven't kept pace with population growth, a development that has lowered the share of Americans who are working.

If the share had remained constant since the economy tipped into recession in December 2007, women would hold an additional 3.8 million jobs today, according to an estimate by the Institute for Women's Policy Research. Men would have 5.5 million more jobs.

About 56.9% of American women are either working or looking for work, versus 69.2% of men. Labor-force participation—the share of men and women working or looking for work—had been converging for decades before women's gains started to level off in the 1990s. It declined in recent years for both women and men, as a greater share of workers retired and others grew discouraged and gave up job searches.

Despite the fact that more women are obtaining college degrees than men, a wage gap persists. They earned just 76.5 cents for every dollar that men did in 2012, according to Commerce Department data. That is slightly below 2011's level of 77 cents, where the ratio has hovered for much of the past decade.

One reason for the divide is that women often occupy lower-paying segments of many industries they are in.

Many women report a lack of labor mobility and difficulty breaking into traditionally male-dominated professions.

Kimberly Meyer, 33 years old, said it took her a year and a half to get a job as a carpenter in St. Louis as she switched from her social-work career. She finally secured an entry-level job in September, on a construction site where she is one of just a "couple dozen women" out of several hundred.

Ms. Meyer attributes her difficulty to her lack of formal experience and skepticism from some companies that a woman could do the job. "The reality is that I grew up with a craftsman-worker father and was well versed in construction," she said.

The job market remains tough even in sectors that recently have seen steadier gains, like education. Annette Bochenek, 23, of the Chicago suburb of Mount Prospect, couldn't find a full-time high-school teaching position when she finished her master's degree in English literature in August. "I feel like the positions are there, but, unfortunately, there are a lot of applicants," she said.

So Ms. Bochenek has been doing substitute teaching work and working nights at a library in Mount Prospect, a Chicago suburb. As she looks for a full-time position, she said she's developing her expertise in 1920s American literature and classic Hollywood films by participating in conferences and writing in academic journals.

"I'm hoping that will make me more marketable as well," she said.

A debate on whether Twitter stock is Shariah compliant

On Thursday, November 7, 2013, Twitter went public with a well-publicised IPO, sparking interest from investors around the world. CREATIVE COMMONS

LONDON: 

The technology sector has done fairly well when it comes to Shariah compliancy of stocks listed on exchanges around the world.

On Thursday, November 7, 2013, Twitter went public with a well-publicised IPO, sparking interest from investors around the world. Before this, Facebook went for a rather controversial IPO on May 18, 2012.

Edbiz Consulting, a London-based Islamic finance advisory firm that has partnered with Nasdaq to develop a Shariah-compliant version of Nasdaq100, reported that Twitter stock was Shariah compliant when the company went public. What does it mean?

There are a number of Shariah screening methodologies that have been employed by index providers around the world to construct, maintain and market what are known as Islamic indices. The most widely used methodology is that of Dow Jones but other methodologies, ie, that of FTSE, MSCI and Nasdaq do not significantly differ.

There are two screens employed by Shariah screening companies – business screen and financial screen. The former ensures that the overall business of a firm is not outright in contradiction with Islamic teachings on business and commerce. The business screen, therefore, excludes all the stocks that lie in the impermissible sectors like financials (except Islamic banks and other financial institutions that explicitly commit to Shariah guidelines for conducting their businesses), gambling and gaming, entertainment (including but not limited to pornography), weapons manufacturing, alcohol, pork, tobacco, etc.

The financial screen is based on a number of financial ratios. The most frequently used financial ratios are the following:

*Gearing ratio – total interest-bearing debt divided by market capitalisation of the company

*Liquidity ratio – cash plus interest bearing securities divided by market capitalisation

*Cash flow ratio – receivables divided by market capitalisation

*Income ratio – impermissible income divided by total income

Dow Jones Shariah screening methodology employs the above-mentioned gearing ratio, liquidity ratio and cash flow ratio and excludes all those stocks that exceed a threshold level of 33%. They recommend to investors to employ a 5% threshold for the income ratio, although they do not incorporate income ratio in the process of constructing and maintaining their family of Islamic indices.

FTSE, on the other hand, uses total assets in the denominator as opposed to market capitalisation when computing the above ratios. They also include cash in addition to the receivables in the numerator when calculating the cash flow ratio. They use 33.33% as threshold for the gearing and liquidity ratios while a higher threshold level (50%) for the cash flow ratio.

FTSE may seem a bit liberal financial screening methodology but it actually depends on market conditions to infer whether it is more conservative or liberal as compared to Dow Jones. In bullish market conditions, Dow Jones may prove to be more liberal than FTSE, and the other way around in bearish markets.

MSCI has a similar approach to FTSE in terms of denomination of ratios but its thresholds are more consistent with Dow Jones. All the three ratios have a threshold of 33.33%.

Russell-Jadwa Islamic indices use financial ratios similar to Dow Jones’s but threshold of their cash flow ratio (with cash included in the numerator) is far higher than the Dow Jones’s – 70% for Russell-Jadwa as opposed to 33% for Dow Jones.

Securities Commission of Malaysia uses a more detailed Shariah screening methodology. Unlike other methodologies (which use 5% threshold for the income ratio), SC uses two thresholds for this ratio to determine whether a business is Shariah compliant.

Stocks are excluded from Shariah universe if the business of the companies issuing such stocks generates more than 5% of revenue from the following sectors:

Conventional banking including insurance; gambling; liquor and liquor-related activities, pork and pork-related activities, non-Halal food and beverages; Shariah repugnant entertainment; interest income from conventional accounts and instruments; and tobacco and tobacco-related activities and other activities deemed Shariah repugnant.

The stocks will be excluded from Shariah universe only if the issuing companies generate more than 20% of their income from the following business activities:

Hotel and resort operations, share trading and stock broking business, rent received from tenants engaged in Shariah repugnant businesses; and other activities that are deemed Shariah repugnant.

Other financial ratios (ie, gearing ratio and liquidity ratio) are the same as that of FTSE.

In the context of Pakistan, Meezan Bank’s Shariah screening methodology is adopted by a number of Islamic equity fund managers. It is perhaps the most detailed approach to Shariah screening. Business screen is consistent with other international Shariah screening methodologies. However, it employs following five financial ratios with the stated thresholds:

*Gearing ratio, as defined by total interest-bearing debt divided by total assets, should be less than 37%

*Investment ratio, as defined by Shariah repugnant investments divided by total assets, should be less than 33%

*Income ratio, as defined by impermissible income divided by total revenue, should be less than 5%

*Illiquidity ratio, as defined by illiquid assets divided by total assets, should not be less than 25%

*Market price per share should be at least equal to or greater than net liquid assets per share

Twitter stock met the requirements of all the internationally known Shariah screening methodologies. This is true for Facebook stock as well, which along with Google, is included in Nasdaq100 Shariah index.

Another interesting stock is Apple, which was Shariah compliant until its iTunes businesses started generating more revenue, making it non-compliant as it breached the 5% threshold on the income ratio.