Ding Dong! Priest 1, Man City 0
They're England's best football club. But as they end their first week in an Austrian training camp, Manchester City is down 1-0 in the battle of the bells against a local priest whose dawn church chimes are waking the players earlier than wanted.
City, the English Premier League champions for the first time in 44 years, are spending hundreds of thousands of euros (dollars) on the 12-day exercise in the Tyrolean village of Seefeld and they want the players to train hard — and rest well.
But their hotel is attached to the medieval St. Oswald's Church, which rings its bell at 7 a.m. daily with predictable consequences.
Austria's daily Heute newspaper cites City coach Roberto Mancini as complaining that the bell is keeping the players from getting enough sleep.
Source: Associated Press
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