2019/20 Soccer Thread

I mean, everyone in "Take Us Home" said Leeds refuse to make it easy, but they were not kidding, huh? Because I would put $20 down now that this will either end in heartbreak or a absurd, exhilarating, seat-of-your pants victory.

Prederick wrote:

I mean, everyone in "Take Us Home" said Leeds refuse to make it easy, but they were not kidding, huh? Because I would put $20 down now that this will either end in heartbreak or a absurd, exhilarating, seat-of-your pants victory.

Welcome to the life of being a leeds fan. Forever cursed

Related to Claudio?

Yikes! Shots fired, heck of a first goal.

Has he ever been called up to the USMNT?

Yup, his son!

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Yikes! Shots fired, heck of a first goal.

Has he ever been called up to the USMNT?

I believe he's a mainstay of our youth team.

Also, Dortmund lost that game 3-2, because they have zero defense.

Well that was short lived.

https://www.premierleague.com/news/1...

(Moving the transfer deadline back to the original end of August).

Not a fan of it tbh. But never made sense with other leagues not changing.

Kinda wish they really said f*ck it and had no window at all. Because.... Who really cares? Let clubs sign players in November March etc. Maybe a cut off April on so it's not ridiculous.

Was listening to an interview with the Stoke chairman today that basically summed up England in a wider context as he was "well we assumed, rather arrogantly, that the rest of Europe would follow". Opps.

onewild wrote:

Was listening to an interview with the Stoke chairman today that basically summed up England in a wider context as he was "well we assumed, rather arrogantly, that the rest of Europe would follow". Opps.

Hilariously accurate.

Kinda why I was hoping they went double reversal. Open until end of November! Closed for the holidays open again until end of March.

Stick it in the eyes of the other leagues considering the ££££ advantage the EPL has anyways.

onewild wrote:

Was listening to an interview with the Stoke chairman today that basically summed up England in a wider context as he was "well we assumed, rather arrogantly, that the rest of Europe would follow". Opps.

I didn't know one quote could sum up the last three to four centuries of UK history quite so succinctly.

2020 Nigeria kits: hot fire

2020 South Korea kits: pretty nice

2020 USA kits: that's gonna be a no from me, dog.

I mean, I'm usually in favor of simplicity but the USA home kit almost looks.... too boring?

Meanwhile, Madrid and Barca get knocked out of the Copa del Rey.

I would probably love that US home kit if it wasn't so similar to last year's USWNT kit. It IS a bit plain, true, and between the US and Tottenham I'm tiring of plain white kits.

Still, it could be worse: This year's England kit is literally a plain white T with the crest on it. Centered.

Messi is apparently surprisingly unsettled at Barcelona. I doubt he'll leave, but it's a shock to even think about it as a possibility.

If he promises to track back then we'll take him at Ipswich.

I like the South Korea home kits quite a lot.

The US ones are bland, and it's also weird and off-putting to me that the Nike logo includes the word "nike" - doubly so since none of the other announced kits have it.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/PQ64wBE.jpg)

No other national kits this year have that Nike logo, they announced. Tottenham's third shirt that released last Fall has it, too. It's quite an old logo now, ironically named "futura".

And Leeds are in proper free fall mode right now, way we are going, not only forget automatic but also the playoffs, we are that bad at the mintue.

The Guardian's Match Report wrote:

It’s happening again. The same old story played out again. It happened at Athletic, it happened at Marseille and it happened last season. This is just what Marcelo Bielsa sides do. They start brilliantly, they ignite the enthusiasm, and then they fade.

Leeds United’s start to the season was so good that they remain in the automatic promotion places, a point above a diligent Nottingham Forest, but it’s hard to avoid the sense that the mirror has crack’d and the curse is upon them.

Is it a curse if it’s a perpetual flaw? Perhaps not, and yet to complain of the flaw seems oddly beside the point. Part of the glory of Bielsa is that his sides can play football of great beauty, but it is a doomed beauty.

So fundamental has that come to feel that it may even now be self-perpetuating. It may not any more be about him exhausting his players, it may just be that the narrative Leeds fans deny so vociferously is so powerful that it eats away at players and Bielsa anyway.

Add to that Leeds’s (justifiable) perception of themselves as a major club, their desperation to return to the top flight after 16 years and the fear that hopes may have been raised in vain and the result is a potent psychological inhibitor.

Yeah, two wins in 9 will do that. That said, Fulham are a point off top (although West Brom have a game in hand)!

So if it's all Bielsa's fault, then why did it also happen under Monk?

Prederick wrote:

Also, Dortmund lost that game 3-2, because they have zero defense.

Bless them, they did it again.

Referee should have booked the weather.

https://twitter.com/ESPNFC/status/12...

Dimmerswitch wrote:

I like the South Korea home kits quite a lot.

The US ones are bland, and it's also weird and off-putting to me that the Nike logo includes the word "nike" - doubly so since none of the other announced kits have it.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/PQ64wBE.jpg)

I kind of like the smokey blue one, but the number and the Nike logo are a bit weak. I'm not sure how smokey blue relates the the USMNT though, unless the idea is to have the smoke hide how badly the team is playing. Or maybe the fumes are from the odor?

The white one looks like something you'd get if someone said, "Quick! We need an away kit design in five minutes." I mean, it's mainly ... just white.

I kinda love players like Payet. They're either completely useless, or scoring worldies.

A friend of mine - through his work - attended a corporate event at Melwood on Monday. He now has selfies with pretty much the entire Liverpool first team; Mane, Salah, Firmino, Henderson, Wijnaldum, Oxlaid Chamberlain, Lallana, Fabhino, Van Dijk, Robertson, TAA, Gomez, Alisson and Adrian. And Klopp. And Ian Rush.

I have never ever been so green with jealously my entire life. Is he rubbing my face in it? You bet he is.

How modern football became broken beyond repair

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

These were the words spoken by a senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs, in the kind of high-end London hotel you can easily imagine.

“Football history suggests fans like big teams winning,” the official continued, to the group of business people and media figures present. “A certain amount of unpredictability is good, but a more democratic league would be bad for business.”

Exactly whose business would it be bad for? And why is football even viewed that way? The answers are among the biggest problems for the game right now.

That big-six representative need not have worried. The entire sport has been increasingly conditioned so that Leicester City situations – where a club from outside the financial super elite actually wins a major title – are close to impossible. This is why the odds in 2015-16 were so long and that story was so exceptional. Let no one tell you, as former Real Madrid president Ramon Calderon insisted to The Independent, that “football has always been like this”.

He’s wrong. It hasn’t.

Every metric indicates that it is at a far worse level than ever before. It is getting worse and threatening to become irretrievable.