2019/20 Soccer Thread

Prederick wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

We’re only 8 games into the season. There is a long way to go yet Nd despite what Pep thinks about the champions league, his employers sure as hell employed him to win it.

That's the thing though, that was his remit at Bayern as well, and that marriage only lasted 3 seasons. Again, not because he's not good, but because, from what I understand, the intensity his management/play style requires burns teams out on him.

I wouldn't count him out of any competitions yet, but I think it's fair to point out that, like I said, even at Barca he only lasted four seasons.

Oh I know and I don’t really disagree with you, but he’s got a level of resources available to him at City he’s never had before. I think that might allow the players enough of a ‘break’ during the season that they’ve not had available anywhere else to be able to cope with it all a little better.

Time will tell

Lloris out until 2020.

What a freak injury. Lots of season left to turn things around but I think the wrinkle this year is I actually think a team like Leicester or Wolves might push for the top 4. Less so because they have improved by leaps and bounds but outside Liverpool and City I don't really trust any team to be consistent.

International break. Portugal vs Luxembourg. Ronaldo is 7 goals from 100. Why not?

HBO Diego Maradona documentary is great.

Spoiler:

he really really likes cocaine

The least spoiler spoiler ever.

How much do you think Manchester United would pay for Harry Kane in January (or the summer)? With him having markedly declined, and that decline somewhat masked by scoring a bunch of penalties, Spurs would be smart to cash in on him if they can get a boatload.

Roke wrote:

How much do you think Manchester United would pay for Harry Kane in January (or the summer)? With him having markedly declined, and that decline somewhat masked by scoring a bunch of penalties, Spurs would be smart to cash in on him if they can get a boatload.

If they paid him a massive weekly wage too, we could call it Alexis Sanchez the Sequel.

I could see a wage revolution happen at Spurs. Not sure what tabloid was running it but apparently some players are jealous of Daniel Levy wages. Supposedly 6m a year.

Sounds like another rumor I remember that plagued a club. Oh right. When Wenger was making something absurd that was also more than any player.

So ya. Not sure what Kane is at for wages but I'm sure he would jump all over a Sanchez style wage bump.

I think Kane is on 200k a week.

Random sidenote, I've come to realize that the UK's way of talking about wage makes WAY more sense to me. Telling me how much you make a week is much easier for me to comprehend in terms of how much income you really have, as opposed to telling me how much you make each year, at which point i'm going to have to do a bunch of math to figure out what your average paycheck is.

Great fun in Bulgaria. England are 4-0 up at halftime, but the game has also been stopped twice in response to racist chanting and Nazi salute gestures from the Bulgarian fans. After about 30 minutes a message was read out over the PA and a sizable collection of Bulgarian fans all stood up and left.

The UEFA delegate is down at the dugouts talking to the two managers and the Bulgarian Captain went over to the fans at halftime and spoke to them for more than five minutes.

It looks like England have chosen to continue playing rather than take the option of going off at least once.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

Great fun in Bulgaria. England are 4-0 up at halftime, but the game has also been stopped twice in response to racist chanting and Nazi salute gestures from the Bulgarian fans. After about 30 minutes a message was read out over the PA and a sizable collection of Bulgarian fans all stood up and left.

The UEFA delegate is down at the dugouts talking to the two managers and the Bulgarian Captain went over to the fans at halftime and spoke to them for more than five minutes.

It looks like England have chosen to continue playing rather than take the option of going off at least once.

When fans are going in wearing Black Hoodies with ‘UEFA Mafia: No Respect’ written on you do wonder how they’ve been allowed in in the first place. Not by the ground staff so much but the state security (police and others) should be dealing with it. That they haven’t speaks volumes to me. It’s desperately sad really that in this day and aged there are places where Racism, if not explicitly condoned is broadly tolerated or found to be acceptable. I’m aware there are plenty of Bulgarians who clearly aren’t racist and will be appalled by the behaviour of some tonight’s fans. And yes, England has it own domestic issues at the moment too. However ‘doing something about it’ really isn’t on UEFAs agenda because if they drop the hammer on relative minnows like Bulgaria, they’d have to something about the Major nations issues as well. Neither Spain nor Italy have covered themselves in glory lately (just to name some examples). Banning Bulgaria from competition is one thing - apparently banning some other nations is something else entirely.

That said I don’t believe in banning teams, I just think they should be forced to play all their qualifiers away from home, behind closed doors (for their fans) for the next qualifying campaign. It sends a clear message, prevents their being more issues and while punishing the team a little at least gives them an chance’. Pretty much all the major nations would still get through in those circumstances, and you’d hope the fans would get the message.

I wish I was surprised, but I'm not. For a surprising number of people, the response to accusations of racism is to be ten times as racist.

No no no guys, it's okay. Coach Balakov didn't hear anything, goalie Ilijev said that the crow behaved well and that he also didn't hear anything, and plus the racism issue is much worse in England according to again coach Balakov.

I hope Bulgaria gets thrashed in every other game they play the coming years, and that every single goal is scored by a POC. Bonus points if these players - and almost every major European soccer nation (France, Netherlands, Belgium, England) has a solid contingent of POC - specifically point this BS out as motivational. I know for a fact that someone like Lukaku would be extremely motivated to answer on the pitch if it ever came to it.

Maybe the fans can try the Italian excuse of "it was just banter, not sincere racism!"

Canada's MNT just beat the USMNT for the first time since 1985.

Nice to see Davies on the scoreboard with some actually patient passing by the team (rather than 30 yard shots) before the goal.

https://twitter.com/PaulCarr/status/...

Let’s see if the expected goals look as bad as the game on the field…

Canada: 2.22 xG on 9 shots

USMNT: 0.77 xG on 7 shots

Yup.

I only caught a few minutes in the first half because the wife wanted to watch the debate on the big TV and I wasn't really thinking that the match would be interesting.

But wow, congrats to Canada! From reading about it afterward it sounds like they came out fired up, had a plan, didn't let the early injury to one of their better players deter them, and stuck it to us. That's gotta feel good.

He's 31, that's well into post-prime.

Meh. I honestly don't miss Ozil to be honest.

He's an amazing player and maybe arguably one of the most pure skill players I've ever seen. I don't want to use the cliche he lacks 'effort' 'steel' or other cheap talking head excuses.

His role/style though I would argue requires a team to be built around him. You can't just plug him into any team. At 31 as Roke mentioned he's not exactly in his prime anymore to have a team be built around him.

Maybe there are underlying stats that disprove this but just my opinion.

What I find more interesting is where is the market for his skills then? Something that hasn't quite creeped into European football is the buyout go away and player signs else where for less but in a whole gets his £££. Pretty sure this is more common in the NBA for example.

Use Sanchez for example. United, if the numbers were accurate, are paying still a pretty large chunk of the salary for Sanchez to just go far away.

If anything Arsenal should be questioned for not working out a buyout/loan that worked for 3 parties. Also how good of a teammate is he that there's been hardly a peep of get him out of the dressing room/training because he's ruining morale.

+1 to what jowner said.

I saw someone made the point earlier in the summer that the #10 position is having a bit of a malaise because the best #10 can't create chances as high of quality as you get shortly after winning the ball after a counterpress. Ozil's a guy who's always covered a lot of ground (though that hasn't stopped his critics from criticizing his work rate for some reason), but I don't think he's a dynamic presser of the ball.

Though with Arsenal not being great I think there's something to just playing your most talented players just to see if things improve, and even though he's post-prime Ozil is still that for Arsenal.

Also for how average Arsenal are supposedly playing they are 1 point behind City. Albeit with a GD of +18 vs +2.

I'm fine with seeing what the team looks like through November once Tierney debuts and Bellerin is back into the squad. Laca has missed time and Pepe is still adjusting.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Well done, Watford!

Well done Watford indeed. Probably should of had a PK even.

FFSYS. That's the slogan I'll use this year.
Or maybe Good Guys Spurs, giving points to everyone.

Bleeeeeeeeeech. Fulham looked lost in that 2-0 loss today.

jowner wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

Well done, Watford!

Well done Watford indeed. Probably should of had a PK even.

Nice pull, but in English we say "should have".

You're wasting your time. He's a rebel.

I remember thinking "watch, United will win this."

And they could've, probably should've.

Meanwhile, Mallorca beat Madrid, Augsburg drew with Bayern, more racist chanting in Italy (FOR THE BANTZ!) and a dude trying to watch the worst teams in all 55 UEFA countries.