Pirate Galaxy » for the good of the group.Bela Ka

Everton forward Romelu Lukaku is right to look for Champions League football next season, according to The Sun’s deputy head of sport Martin Lipton. Lukaku cast doubt on his Everton future after telling Sky Sports News HQ that the Champions League is the next step for him, with Roberto Martinezs side 13 points behind Manchester City in the final top-four qualification spot.Speaking on the Sunday Supplement, Lipton believes Lukaku can still improve as a player, but has the quality to play at the highest level. He feels he should be playing in the Champions League and hes probably right, Lipton said. Look at his goals. Im sure he wouldnt be unhappy to do it at Everton, but thats not going to happen next season.Hes been excellent since he moved there and scored lots of goals. Hes a top player and a goalscorer, and hes still learning and growing as a player. Lukaku says he would like to play in the Champions League next year Its interesting that Chelsea looked at him and didnt fancy him under a couple of different managers. Jose Mourinho decided he was surplus to requirements when they brought in Diego Costa, and I wonder what Chelsea fans think of that now.Lukaku - who left Chelsea permanently in 2014 - has scored 43 league goals for Everton and, of players under the age of 23 in European footballs five major leagues, only Tottenhams Harry Kane has more goals this season.It is a record that has prompted speculation he could leave Goodison Park in the summer, with the players father suggesting Manchester United or Bayern Munich could be options for his son. Lukaku has scored 18 goals in 28 Premier League appearances this season Chelsea, who are 10 points off fourth with eight games remaining, have also been linked with a bid to re-sign their former player, but The Times Alyson Rudd says they dont have a chance because they are unlikely to be playing Champions League football next season.Chelsea are not going to buy him back because theyre not in the Champions League so he wont go there, Rudd said. In 20 years time when we look back at the career of Jose Mourinho, hopefully for him the massive blip this year at Chelsea will look odd and out of place. Most of the decisions he makes seem to be the right ones, and if all Lukaku needed was an arm around the shoulder, I dont see why you cant give a player that.That seemed to be the message coming out of Stamford Bridge. A young player misses one penalty, his head goes down and you give up on him? I dont see the logic at all.Lipton also urged Lukaku to pay attention to fellow Belgian striker Christian Bentekes experience at Liverpool. Benteke has struggled since making the move from Aston Villa. Christian Benteke (left) has struggled since his move to Liverpool Look at Christian Benteke, he thrives when hes told how great he is but hes found it much harder to cope with the goldfish bowl at Liverpool, where theres much more expectation on him, he added.It may be that Lukaku is better out of the spotlight, and well find out when he gets under the spotlight. At this juncture we dont really know because he didnt play enough for Chelsea. The only thing you remember is when he walked up and missed the penalty in the Super Cup final. Also See: Lukakus Everton future in doubt Time for Lukaku to move Dallas Stars Pro Shop . Then the Pacers gave Oladipo and his Orlando teammates the cold shoulder. 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RIO DE JANEIRO -- Martha Karolyi, the U.S. womens gymnastics national team coordinator since 2000 and overseer of the American Olympic teams transformation into a world power, is an exacting taskmaster. She talks about perfection as if shes never heard the axiom about perfection being the enemy of good.But Tuesday, even Karolyi, a woman with 54 years in the sport, had to admit -- after the American team defended its 2012 team gold medal in a rout of Russia and third-place China on Tuesday at Rio Olympic Arena -- that she could find little fault with this squad.This five-woman group is the best womens gymnastics team that has ever been.I would have to say yes, Karolyi said, knowing that the Americans 8.209-point victory over second-place Russia was the largest in an Olympic womens team final since the Soviet Union defeated Czechoslovakia by 8.997 points at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome. But the USSRs margin comes with an asterisk: Back then, six athletes scores were counted in each event, and the degree of difficulty cant compare to what female gymnasts do today.So when the American teams gold medal was finally won Tuesday, in the most impressive way possible, the 73-year-old Karolyi -- who has announced that she will retire after these Games -- burst into tears when the gymnasts told her they had adopted the nickname The Final Five, partly as a way of honoring her.Its hard to make Martha cry, said 22-year-old Aly Raisman, the captain of the team, who has said that she can feel Karolyis demanding presence in the gym before seeing her.Laurie Hernandez, the 16-year-old baby of the U.S. team, said the teams search for something to replace The Fierce Five nickname of the 2012 gold-medal squad started with a text chat among all five members of the U.S. team -- three-time world champion Simone Biles, Hernandez, Raisman, Gabby Douglas and Madison Kocian -- after they survived the U.S. Olympic Trials last month to earn their spots in Rio.I think [the final pick] was Simone Biles idea, Hernandez said.Karolyi said when the team sprang it on her after their final event Tuesday, it was only the second time in her gymnastics career that she cried. The first, she said, was when Nadia Comaneci and the Romanian team that she and her husband, Bela, coached dominated the 1976 Summer Games in Montreal. Five years later, Martha and Bela sought asylum in the U.S., and beginning with Mary Lou Retton, their first U.S. champion, the American program has never been the same.I am not a sentimental person. I am known as a very tough person, Martha told a crowd of reporters Tuesday, laughing along with everyone else at the enormous understatement. But once the tears started, Karolyi said, I was like, What is happening to me?Biles said, It was so cute. She told us, See? This is why I made you do all of those repetitions in the gym all these years.Numbers can sometimes seem like a dry way of making a case for best ever at anything in sports. When it comes to greatness, its often anecdotal evidence or images in the minds eye that we remember more.But by any measure --- the scores, the eyeball test, the consistently spectacular routines these five women threw out, the amplitude of the skills they perform, their imperviousness to pressure -- its easy to make the case that this team is the best womens team ever assembled. This was such a total domination that by the halfway point of the event, the U.S. was competing only against itself. It was Them vs. Whats Possible, Them vs. Perfection, just as Karolyi had always preached.This is how they responded: They went a perfect 12-for-12 on their routines, without a notable bobble.dddddddddddd?They posted the winning team score on all four events.I heard we still wouldve won [the gold] if we had a couple falls, but its still better when you have that magical moment of hitting 12-for-12, Raisman said.But the 12-for-12 wasnt the most impressive thing about this romp. Someone calculated that if Biles four scores, which easily qualified her first for the individual all-around event on Thursday, were removed from the American teams total and replaced with the fourth-best American scores in Sundays qualifier, the U.S. still wouldve won the gold medal. The margin wouldve been just two points, instead of the mind-blowing 8.2. That is beyond remarkable.Also noteworthy is that Douglas and Raisman became the first American women to repeat as Olympic team champions. Biles and Raisman could now go 1-2 in the all-around competition, and Kocian, the reigning world co-champ on bars, is a favorite to win gold when the individual events are held.Biles, a powerful 19-year-old with an old soul and bone-dry sense of humor, finally has her first Olympic gold medal in her first try to add to her three world all-around titles and four U.S. national championships. Just as significantly, everything she did Tuesday augured well for the likelihood that shell win the individual all-around as expected. Her soaring performances on the floor exercise and vault in particular drew gasps from the crowd.Karolyi said one of Biles sky high tumbling passes on the floor was the best tumbling pass Ive ever seen in womens gymnastics.But Im pretty sure if she [Karolyi] sees anything start to crack on the team, shell be back out of retirement,?Biles said with a mischievous smile.Karolyi insisted not so. Then she allowed, I might take a peek in the gym now and then when the national team returns to the ranch just north of Houston that she and Bela own for the monthly training sessions that were also the Karolyis idea.In hindsight, the Karolyis ability to push through their idea of a semi-centralized U.S. system that has allowed the national team members to train at home most of the time but reconvene five or six days a month at the ranch, which is now an official national team training site, was the flash point that started this all.Once there, gymnasts are required to perform pressure sets with Karolyi and a team of evaluators watching them. Their personal coaches come along to the camp, which sparked an unprecedented level of cooperation and an exchange of ideas, rather than the club vs. club mentality that used to prevail. As Karolyi has often said, it doesnt hurt that the gymnasts get to look at what their competition is up to and then say to themselves, Uh-oh, this one over there is gaining on me. Or I better get stronger at this.In the end, perhaps the most remarkable achievement is how everyone -- the gymnasts, their coaches, Karolyi herself -- bought into the idea of subjugating individual ambitions for the good of the group.Bela Karolyi has said that under the old U.S. system, the clubs created only queens of their own little gyms who collapsed when they faced the rest of the world. Those days are gone.We believe success comes from not only doing well for yourself but for your team and then putting a lot of hard work behind that, Biles said Tuesday. We all support each other. We all get ready together. Were like sisters. ... And I think well share a bond forever.Why not? For now and until further notice, theyre the best there has ever been. ' ' '