England’s hopes of winning the World Cup may have been dashed, but Manchester City duo Kyle Walker and John Stones were unwilling to leave Qatar completely empty-handed. So they will bring home a stray cat befriended by the team from their training base.
England fell short to France on Saturday, who earned a gutsy 2-1 quarter-final victory.
The cat, whom Stones named Dave, will have to spend four months in quarantine before he can reunite with the City duo.
“He was just there one day, so we just adopted him, me and Stonesy,” Walker told the official Football Association media channel.
“Dave is welcome at the table… Some people really don’t like the cat, but I do.”
“The first day we got there…Dave comes out,” Stones added.
“Every night he sat there waiting for his food.”
Between improvised stadium visits, training and press conferences, cats stole the show at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Cats were seen at the side of the pitch during training sessions in France earlier in the tournament, where striker Randal Kolo Muani joked with reporters that he thought team-mate Ousmane Dembele was scared of the animals.
“Yes, the cats. There are cats wandering outside. When we eat outside, there are cats walking around. And Ousmane is afraid of them. It makes everyone laugh,” he said.
Meanwhile, Brazilian striker Vinicius Jr. was interrupted by a chat when speaking at a press conference last week. A staff member from Brazil was seen petting the animal, before picking it up and placing it at the side of a table.
Cnn
