2019/20 Soccer Thread

Yeah, it's a tonne of staff to put a game on and if one player gets infected you probably need to shut things down again.

I'm hopeful they'll be able to play behind closed doors come September but that's probably optimistic. I'm hoping they can play out the rest of the cup competitions. For the leagues I think they should just get the league up to everyone having played the same number of matches and use the table from there North American style where the schedules are unbalanced.

LOL KYLE WALKER WYD

Wayne Rooney is out here (rightfully) pointing out that players have been made scapegoats, meanwhile you're getting your card punched during a social lockdown. Way to go, dude.

Prederick wrote:

LOL KYLE WALKER WYD

Wayne Rooney is out here (rightfully) pointing out that players have been made scapegoats, meanwhile you're getting your card punched during a social lockdown. Way to go, dude.

Saw this article as well. Is prostitution legal in the UK? I've seen a number of articles like this, where the source is confessing to what is a crime in the US. Never seen a piece like this that comes from the US.

I think, even in America, it's only a crime if you get caught in the act of doing it. The cops can't charge you with prostitution if someone is like "he saw a prostitute" well after the fact. Johns get popped for solicitation, not afterwards (of course, there are mitigating factors, like if the victim was trafficked or underage, but those are different charges they'd bring against you).

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Saw this article as well. Is prostitution legal in the UK? I've seen a number of articles like this, where the source is confessing to what is a crime in the US. Never seen a piece like this that comes from the US.

Prostitution is legal in the UK but there are a host of activities around it that aren’t - soliciting ‘services’ in a public place for example, running a brothel for profit and purchasing ‘services’ from someone who is being force into it (sex trafficking) That said it’s not particularly enforced unless it’s becoming a nuisance.

The sh*t you learn. Honestly.

Newcastle takeover rumours heating up again. Still very conflicted about the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's part of it.

With the PL talking about a "best-case scenario" return in June, ESPN has a nice rundown of how many essential staff are needed to play games behind closed doors.

In short, whether in the Championship or the PL, you'll need at least 125-150 people to actually run a game, and that's at the smaller stadiums.

Prederick wrote:

With the PL talking about a "best-case scenario" return in June, ESPN has a nice rundown of how many essential staff are needed to play games behind closed doors.

In short, whether in the Championship or the PL, you'll need at least 125-150 people to actually run a game, and that's at the smaller stadiums.

I think is considerably more likely they’ll play on training pitches that don’t need nearly so many people. I do think ultimately all the leagues and games will get played (in all the top divisions) and next season might get curtailed or rearranged if this goes on until the end of the year (which I suspect is likely for mass gatherings of people) but what format that’ll be god knows.

I repeat, I am SUPER interested to see how FM 21 will handle this.

Y'know, assuming they can all be in a room to make it in enough time. Maybe it'll end up being FM 21/22.

Roke wrote:

Newcastle takeover rumours heating up again. Still very conflicted about the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's part of it.

Apparently, done.
Ugh, that Saudi dude is the worst.

slazev wrote:
Roke wrote:

Newcastle takeover rumours heating up again. Still very conflicted about the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's part of it.

Apparently, done.
Ugh, that Saudi dude is the worst.

One of the people I follow on Twitter for Newcastle stuff pointed out accounts which were Tweeting Saudi state propaganda a couple of weeks ago are now masquerading as Newcastle fans. So it won't be the benign, silent ownership I was hoping for.

Prederick wrote:

I repeat, I am SUPER interested to see how FM 21 will handle this.

Y'know, assuming they can all be in a room to make it in enough time. Maybe it'll end up being FM 21/22.

Miles tweeted out as this was unfolding that FM wouldn't be including Coronavirus because the game is meant to be an escape from the worries of the world. I'm not sure how that will play out in design decisions going forward and if it'll stay that way.

I read a rumor that once the Newcastle purchase was final, Pochettino was going to be hired. Love that guy.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Prederick wrote:

I repeat, I am SUPER interested to see how FM 21 will handle this.

Y'know, assuming they can all be in a room to make it in enough time. Maybe it'll end up being FM 21/22.

Miles tweeted out as this was unfolding that FM wouldn't be including Coronavirus because the game is meant to be an escape from the worries of the world. I'm not sure how that will play out in design decisions going forward and if it'll stay that way.

Huh, I find that a little odd (albeit, not enough for me to throw a fit over it). I'm sure there are several "real" things in FM that fans wish weren't there, so it just strikes me as funny to draw the line at this, which is going to have the most monumental effect on the sport since WWII. Like, there are some clubs that probably aren't going to make it!

BeIN Sports in Quatar has objected because they are thoroughly fed up with the state sponsored piracy of Premier League football via a Saudi media company.

That that has more weight than Saudi’s human rights record tells you all you need to know about money in football.

I am intterested, in a very black humor kind of way, how terrible your Human Rights record would have to be to fail the Fit & Proper test. Like, I feel fairly sure that Ayman al-Zawahiri couldn't buy a team.

.............fairly sure.

Prederick wrote:

I am intterested, in a very black humor kind of way, how terrible your Human Rights record would have to be to fail the Fit & Proper test. Like, I feel fairly sure that Ayman al-Zawahiri couldn't buy a team.

.............fairly sure.

That would be entirely down the political relationship between that individual's Country and the UK. Right now the middle east is propping up the UK arms industry quite nicely thank you, and considering the current global economic situation, and Brexit, the UK needs all the income streams it can get. Including selling high tech weaponry to people who think genocide is a perfectly acceptable tactic of war.

Allegedly. However on the basis this is a thread about football, it's probably not the place to discuss

So the Netherlands say the Eredivisie season is kaput.

I had hope, but it does feel increasingly unlikely that this season will finish in most of the European leagues, which is obviously terrible for Liverpool fans because there's almost no way they weren't going to win it, and probably by a historic margin, but also for Leeds, as it's hard to find a better definition of "we're cursed" than "we were set to probably get promoted and then a pandemic vacated the entire season".

True, but Germany's had a much better experience handling the outbreak than England,.

Moise Kean adds his name to the list of "athletes acting like morons during quarantine."

EDIT: Whoops, I'm sorry, that's from when he got dropped from the squad in November! This is his most recent foible.

Prederick wrote:

True, but Germany's had a much better experience handling the outbreak than England,.

Yes, very true. Still, I'm interested to see if it will work. Having a functional model would give other countries a place to start, for all sports, once they reach that same level of containment.

Serie A teams to resume training on May 4.

Well, maybe it's not DOA yet after all.

Saw something about UEFA issuing guidelines for leagues to have some sort of playoffs for European spots if they can't finish the season, which makes sense to me.

Vacating the season doesn't sit well with me. Liverpool deserve the title, Leeds & West Brom deserve to go up, Norwich probably deserves to get relegated. In the Netherlands with the title separated by goal difference I guess you can't really name a winner, but I think it's better to have a truncated 2019/20 and 2020/21 on record than scrapping 2019/20 so you can have a full-ish 2020/21.

PL votes to find a way to finish the season under strict gov't guidelines. Liverpool might still be able to make it official.

Same for League One?

slazev wrote:

Same for League One?

If you mean the Football Championship (or whatever its called nowadays), then that is the right question (insert i Robot gif. here).

The Premier League has been floating trial balloons about finishing the 19/20 seasons behind closed doors, with players permanently sequestered in 'clean' hotels, and subject to weekly testing. (IIRC, baseball floated something similar a month or so ago.)

However, it's not clear how their hotels can be kept clean, given all the staff they have. And it's not clear that the players themselves are willing to spend 6 weeks or more away from their families.

This raises lots of issues:

One is the other professional soccer leagues, which are linked to the PL by promotion and relegation. The PL finishes its season with a winner, but no relegation? What about the Championship? And Leagues 1 and 2?

Two is precedent for other professional sports. If the PL can return why not premier rugby? Though rugby involves much closer and much more prolonged physical contact between players, and larger squads.