2022/23 Soccer Thread: Finals Week(s)

Ronaldo hasn't played in he Europa League since he was 17 at Sporting.

I can't laugh too much at this as Arsenal are now a Europa team. Even if they did qualify for the CL this year they would probably just dumped into the Europa League.

€90m for Antony??!?!?

Ajax, baby what is you doing? TAKE THE MONEY.

EDIT: Unless you think you can pump them for more, I guess. But Antony wants out, I'd take almost as fast as I'd take £60m for Anthony Gordon.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbFn3FyWYAA4loB?format=jpg&name=large)

Over/under on straight red cards for Casemiro then? Cuz he's not gonna get the Scholes treatment from the refs.

The Luis Figo documentary on Netflix is quite good.

For the truly nerdy amongst us, the Champions League Technical Report is out.

Scholes hard and fair? He was a great player but his tackling was awful and reckless.

Palace 2 - 0 up at City.

Liverpool 5 - 0 against a poor Bournemouth at half time.

It’s being an odd season already.

Poor Bournemouth.

Roke wrote:

The Luis Figo documentary on Netflix is quite good.

Thanks for the heads up, will give this a watch.

Sorbicol wrote:

Liverpool 5 - 0 against a poor Bournemouth at half time.

NINE.

Good God.

Parker did manage to keep Salah quiet, at least!

Remember back after the Community Shield, when Erling Haaland missed a couple chances aand morons on the internet were like "HE'S A FLOP!"

/checks top scorers

Well.

Watching the Palace - City game was an exercise in optimism being crushed by reality. =(

Prederick wrote:

€90m for Antony??!?!?

Ajax, baby what is you doing? TAKE THE MONEY.

EDIT: Unless you think you can pump them for more, I guess. But Antony wants out, I'd take almost as fast as I'd take £60m for Anthony Gordon.

Apparently up to €100m now.

Love to splash cash on an attacker I don't need who shoots from way too far out when I actually need more help in midfield.

My team won 9-0 today! And yes, I know Liverpool played yesterday, not that one.

I almost felt sorry for Dundee Utd today…

Yeah... not just today, to be honest. But as with Bournemouth yesterday, what do you do? If you stop at 5... 6... 7? Isn't it even more disrespectful to stop playing?

Pick of the bunch today was Kyogo's second:

https://twitter.com/CelticFC/status/...

Not sure how long Jack Ross will continue, no matter how much he thinks they can turn it around.

Still, Goal Difference is a realistic divider between the top two this season come the end, so I'll take every goal we can. We have Ross County in the cup midweek, followed by Rangers at Celtic Park at the weekend, then the small matter of Real Madrid coming to town to kick off the CL groups.

October is actually criminal for the number of games needing to be played. Fifa need to take a long, hard look at themselves, rather than just staring at their bank account. This is not healthy for players.

IMAGE(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/344767076730142722/1013171273544781952/unknown.png)

Good to know that even over in blighty, you have boring Brian McCann guys too.

And while the Antony deal does seem nuts it makes sense in one way: Martinez and Antony are already Ten Hag guys. They don't need any training they know the deal.

Also, an interesting note about the Bhoys:

One of the interesting things about Ange's Celtic is how his players are happy to stand in offside positions because they know they will become onside as the play progresses. It just tears defensive structure to pieces.

And this made me chuckle:

Favourite stat of the season so far: Napoli’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has attempted 16 dribbles in 3 games and been successful once

That’s roughly 7.3 attempts per 90 (~200 minutes played) and a cool 6% success rate

omni wrote:

Yeah... not just today, to be honest. But as with Bournemouth yesterday, what do you do? If you stop at 5... 6... 7? Isn't it even more disrespectful to stop playing?

I would prefer them to stop playing, yes.

omni wrote:

October is actually criminal for the number of games needing to be played. Fifa need to take a long, hard look at themselves, rather than just staring at their bank account. This is not healthy for players.

There have been so many opportunities to walk back the Qatar decision with none of them taken. FIFA remain a self serving group of fools. Big international tournaments remain for me the most exciting part of football but this is going to leave a real tarnish on the world cup and leave the door open for the big clubs who would love nothing more than to destroy international football to make some irrefutable points.

... and a Super League!

The condensed Calendar has already cause a sight kerfuffle for the Chelsea v West Ham game next Sunday. Although now it’ll be on Saturday.

It’s a mess entirely of Skys own making for sure - they knew the schedule and knew Chelsea would potentially have a CL game on the Tuesday, it’s a sign of things to come I would suspect.

Heaven forbid games get cancelled because of Covid outbreaks. It’ll be a disaster.

Sorbicol wrote:

Heaven forbid games get cancelled because of Covid outbreaks. It’ll be a disaster.

I spoke to a psychic last night, and was told that a Covid outbreak will occur next Spring in Islington, by pure chance coinciding with AFCON 2023.

Yeah. It's all bad.

I don't understand why the international window last June went ahead. Cancel that and you could have moved all the league seasons up a couple weeks without impacting summer rest.

Same with the window coming up, even if cancelling that would make for less cohesive teams come the World Cup.

Roke wrote:

Yeah. It's all bad.

I don't understand why the international window last June went ahead. Cancel that and you could have moved all the league seasons up a couple weeks without impacting summer rest.

I don't think there was any chance they were going to skip the European Championship, among other tournaments. Waaaaay too much money.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Roke wrote:

Yeah. It's all bad.

I don't understand why the international window last June went ahead. Cancel that and you could have moved all the league seasons up a couple weeks without impacting summer rest.

I don't think there was any chance they were going to skip the European Championship, among other tournaments. Waaaaay too much money.

The women's Euros was this past summer, but the men's calendar was wide open this summer (because the World Cup was moved to winter).

They wouldn't have had to skip actual tourneys, just forgo friendlies/Nations Leagues matches.

Lucas Paquetá to West Ham for €60m (£51.3m), their 8th signing of the summer.

Also, here's a TOTALLY unrelated video, I swear!

(The section about how much Nottingham Forest have spent compared to most of the rest of Europe made my mouth drop)

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbVGMfkXoAARMr0?format=jpg&name=large)

I hereby renounce my Puma preferences.

Prederick wrote:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbVGMfkXoAARMr0?format=jpg&name=large)

I hereby renounce my Puma preferences.

Oh my God. Those all look like bad fake shirts.

Roke wrote:
Prederick wrote:

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbVGMfkXoAARMr0?format=jpg&name=large)

I hereby renounce my Puma preferences.

Oh my God. Those all look like bad fake shirts.

Yeah, those look like me using the PES editor.