EX-I’m A Celebrity winner Vicky Pattison is finding Strictly rehearsals difficult and admits: “I’d take kangaroo balls over glitter balls any day. I’m really done in.”
Portuguese star says he’d rather prepare himself for a ‘very long’ season, which ends with the FIFA World Cup 2026.
Cristiano Ronaldo says he preferred to take a rest rather than play in the revamped FIFA Club World Cup as he aims to prolong his playing career for club and country.
The Portuguese international, who recently led his country to the UEFA Nations League title, made the comments on Saturday, two days after extending his stay at Saudi Pro League side Al Nassr.
Al Nassr announced on Thursday that Ronaldo had signed a two-year contract which would keep him at the club past his 42nd birthday and possibly his last appearance in the FIFA World Cup at its next iteration in the United States, Canada and Mexico in 2026.
Speculation over the 40-year-old’s plans intensified last month when FIFA President Gianni Infantino said discussions were under way about Ronaldo playing in the Club World Cup, despite Al Nassr failing to qualify, but the star forward swiftly brushed them aside.
“I had some offers to play in the [Club] World Cup but I think it didn’t make sense because I prefer to have a good rest, a good preparation, because this season will be very long as it is the World Cup season at the end of the year,” Ronaldo said in a video posted by Al Nassr on X.
“I want to be ready not only for Al Nassr but also for the national team. So, this is why I decided to play the last game for the Nations League and not listen to anything,” he added.
“And of course, to be in this club, which I love”.
Ronaldo scored for Portugal in the Nations League final against Spain earlier this month, which ended 2-2 before his side went on to beat the European champions on penalties.
The Portugal captain said his aim in staying at Al Nassr was to win a major trophy with the Riyadh-based side.
“My goal, it’s always to win something important for Al-Nassr. And of course I still believe in that,” Ronaldo added. “This is why I renewed the two years more because I believe that I will be a champion in Saudi Arabia.”
Ronaldo, who joined Al Nassr in 2022 after leaving Manchester United as a free agent, has scored 93 goals in 105 appearances for them in all competitions.
Ronaldo is also eyeing the 1,000-goal milestone in his career. He has scored 794 goals in club football and 138 for Portugal, taking his tally to 932.
For Ken Holland, the Kings’ decidedly old-school general manager, new isn’t necessarily better. Take the NHL draft, for example.
Holland presided over more than a quarter-century of drafts with the Detroit Red Wings and Edmonton Oilers, and they were generally held in one place, with everyone from the executives doing the drafting to the players being drafted on site.
On Friday, for the first time in a non-pandemic environment, the draft was conducted semi-remotely, with the top 93 draft-eligible players and their families filling some of the seats in the half-empty Peacock Theater in Los Angeles while team representatives made their selections from their home markets.
And whatever the league was attempting to accomplish with the decentralized format, other than saving on travel, it didn’t work.
After each pick was announced on a giant video board that took up two-thirds of the theater’s massive stage, players made their way up the aisle to be greeted by Commissioner Gary Bettman. They then pulled on a team jersey and hat before being led into the “Draft House” — a small virtual reality room in the center of the stage — for what amounted to a congratulatory Zoom call with the club’s brass.
The Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles hosts the NHL draft.
(Juan Ocampo / NHLI via Getty Images)
The young men were celebrating the biggest moment of their lives yet they came off like Dorothy speaking to the Wizard of Oz. Much of it was awkward, especially when James Hagens, the eighth selection, was left waving at Boston Bruins general manager Don Sweeney after the audio in the Bruins’ war room in Boston went mute. That was just one of multiple technical glitches that included echoes and timing delays that left players and executives talking over one another.
When it became obvious the painfully slow-paced event would plod past 4½ hours, the Draft House was closed to some teams.
Brady Martin, the fifth pick, didn’t even bother to come to L.A. So when Nashville announced his selection — via a celebrity video taped at a golf course — the NHL showed a video of Martin working on his family’s farm. Russian goaltender Pyotr Andreyanov wouldn’t even get that treatment. When he was announced as the 20th overall pick, the NHL had nothing to show, making Andreyanov the first no-show of the no-show draft.
Matthew Schaefer, a 17-year-old defenseman from Hamilton, Canada,, who was taken with the No. 1 pick by the New York Islanders, said being part of video draft did not spoil his big day.
Matthew Schaefer stands between Michael Misa, left, and Anton Frondell after being selected 1-2-3, respectively, in the NHL draft at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Bruce Bennett / Getty Images)
“I’m just honored to be picked,” said Schaefer who cried, alongside his dad and brother, when his name was called. “I dreamt about it my whole life. It’s such an honor. Especially the first pick overall.”
For Holland, however, none of that counts as progress.
“I’m old and I’m old fashioned. So I like the old way,” said the Kings general manager, whose view was shared by other GMs around the league. “You draft some player in the sixth round and all of a sudden you hear ‘yay!’ way up in the corner. It’s him, it’s his family, and they’re all excited to hear [his] name announced by an NHL team.
“This weekend, to me, is about the young players.”
Aside from the technical difficulties, the actual draft went largely to form. The Ducks, as expected, took Roger McQueen, an 18-year-old forward from Saskatchewan, with their top pick, the 10th overall selection. The Kings, meanwhile, traded their first pick, No. 24 overall, to the Pittsburgh Penguins. After moving down seven spots they took right-handed-shooting defenseman Henry Brzustewicz, 18, a Michigan native, with the penultimate pick of the first day.
Round two through seven of the draft will be conducted Saturday.
Roger McQueen, second from right, poses for photos with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, right, and actors Joshua Jackson, left, and Marguerite Moreau, second from left, after being drafted by the Ducks at No. 10 overall.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
The Ducks, who had a top-10 pick for a seventh straight year, see the 6-foot-5 McQueen as a raw talent who can develop into a top-line center.
“He has a big body. But what goes along with that is his skill and skating ability,” said general manager Pat Verbeek, whose team has 10 picks this weekend.
For the Kings, this draft was the first public move in what could be an intense couple of weeks. Defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov and winger Andrei Kuzmenko are unrestricted free agents and the team would like to re-sign both before they hit the open market Tuesday.
“If we re-sign Gavrikov, there’s not going to be a ton of change,” Holland said. “If we don’t, then there’s going to be change.”
Gavrikov, 29, emerged as a solid presence on the blue line, playing a career-high 82 games and posting the best goals-against average of the 17 defensemen to play at least 1,500 minutes. Former Kings GM Rob Blake made Gavrikov a contract offer last March, said Holland, who has since sweetened the deal twice. Replacing him, the GM said, could require a couple of signings.
Kuzmenko, 29, reenergized the offense after coming over from Philadelphia at the trade deadline, with the Kings going 17-5 and averaging nearly four goals a game down the stretch.
Kings fans cheer after Henry Brzustewicz is drafted by the team at No. 31 overall.
(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)
“We like Kuzmenko. Kuzmenko likes it here; he likes his role,” Holland said. “I’m talking to him. I talked two, three, four times this week with his agent. So we’ll see.”
Signing both players would put a big dent in the Kings’ $21.7 million in salary-cap space.
“We have a lot of cap space but it doesn’t take much and it’s gone,” Holland said. “We’ve got to figure out how we want to spend our money and they need to figure out how much money they can get.”
Aside from Gavrikov and Kuzmenko, the Kings don’t have many loose ends to tie up. The team is confident it can get forward Alex Laferriere, a restricted free agent, to agree to a short-term deal and it has to decide whether to re-sign David Rittich, an unrestricted free agent, as the backup to starting goalkeeper Darcy Kuemper.
Two players who could be moving on are forward Tanner Jeannot and defenseman Jordan Spence, both of whom are looking for more ice time and may have to leave to get it.
