Liverpool’s young reserve striker Florent Sinama-Pongolle has gone back home to France to train with his former club Le Havre at the end of his loan spell at Blackburn. Rather than cause any upset in the first-team camp ahead of tomorrow’s FA Cup final it looks like Pongolle is being kept away.
Flo had been a very slow starter at Anfield, despite his reputation, and many were disappointed to see him go on loan to Blackburn in January. He played an important part in getting Liverpool to tomorrow’s final with his scoring appearance against Luton in the third round, but comments he made before Blackburn’s visit to Goodison made sure he wouldn’t be quite as welcome in making a return to Anfield as he might have liked.
In words that seemed designed to upset Liverpool supporters, especially those who are based in Liverpool itself, Flo claimed there were more blues than Reds in the city. If he’d left Liverpool under a cloud then perhaps there would be some understanding, but at the time he was considered by Reds fans to be due to return for the new season. Then he said this: “I’ve been in this country for three years so I know all about the rivalry between Everton and Liverpool, but everywhere I go in Liverpool, the football fans I meet are all Everton fans. The bigger part of people in Liverpool all support Everton. Liverpool have fans in Europe and everywhere else, that’s why Anfield is always full. But when you go to Goodison, it is just full of Liverpool people. It is all Scousers.”
Some have tried to justify his words by saying his lack of English made them sound differently to what he’d intended. After a few months to put them right not a word of apology has been forthcoming, and it does look like an attempt to engineer a move away from Anfield. Leeds are now one club interested in signing him, although he’s not likely to get the wages he’d like at the former giants of Yorkshire football.