Liverpool must not dwell on their woeful start to 2017 but instead use it as motivation to turn their faltering season around, forward Sadio Mane has said.
The Merseyside club’s Premier League victory over Tottenham Hotspur on Saturday not only marked their first league win of the year but was also just their second victory in 11 games.
“It’s too early to speak about what’s going to happen but the confidence is back in this team now,” Mane told British media. “We have a team with great qualities. What happened has happened.”
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See also
■ Champions League: Arsenal v Bayern Munich preview
■ Primera Liga in focus: Maradona jets in for Napoli v Real Madrid
■ Man City: Gabriel Jesus suffers fractured metatarsal
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Liverpool’s title bid has collapsed in recent weeks as their poor form has dropped them to fifth, 11 points behind Chelsea after 25 games.
“We can’t change that but the motivation is there to keep improving and get whatever we can from the rest of the season. Those kind of moments can happen in a season,” added Mane.
“We had three or four difficult weeks but we are out of that now. We have to take it game by game and try to win every game between now and the end of the season.
“We have time to rest and time to train so we need to use that.”
Liverpool, who will have a five-day training camp in Spain, travel to 17th-placed Leicester City on February 27.
* Reuters
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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