Chandler's been aces going forward today. Lovely ball into Johnson for the penalty.

Maybe I missed something, but I don't recall us using a lot of offsides traps since Klinsy took over. This is the first I really noticed it. I don't know if we've been doing it, or if we saw something in Slovenia's game. The guys have looked uncomfortable with it so far.

I'd like to see someone other than Beckerman as the anchor in the back.

That was horrible defense.

I feel bad for Macca, having to be in the studio with those two clowns.

nice game by the US, caught only the 2nd half but was impressed :)

Germany is up 2-0 on the Netherlands, both goals absolutely outstanding :) Müller and Klose with the goals

Germany ends up winning 3-0, Özil scores on another beautiful attacking move capped by a double one-two between him and Klose .

Müller, Klose and Özil were all amazing :)

Did Gotze play? If so, how'd he look?

only got subbed in in the 65th or so when it was allready 3-0 and Germany didn´t exactly go full speed anymore + he played on the left wing when the german game was really focussed on the right side today, so not really much to say about him today.

It was like the teams switches outfits today. Germany was impressive (I know, I know, equally so at the World Cup, but still). Oranje... not so much.

Pretty good stuff from the USA today. I wonder if we'll see the team going out there with two strikers more often now, especially in qualifying where a lot of the teams we face will be packed in defensively.

The field of the European Championships is complete. The top countries missing would be Turkey, Serbia and Denmark, being replaced by Ireland and the two host countries. So all in all, Ireland replaced Turkey and the top countries in Europe are all present. Good thing this expands to 24 teams in 2016...

Today's game made Edson Braafheid not look so good. He was involved with all three goals, twice with the crosses from the right wing, basically allowing the 'assist' on all three goals...

I agree - in essence this expansion makes the 2 years of qualifying a complete waste of time: may as well just give 20 invites and tell the rest to qualify for the remaining 4 places

Juventus have given me 540 million reasons to hate them:

AFP: Juventus claim 400-million euros off Federation

Fresh definition of Chutzpah:

"We're hurt because you caught us attempting to fix games and bribe refs. You took away the two titles we won by this cheating and sent us to play in Serie B for a year. For all the hurt you've caused us (and the fact that we can't get away with it any more... we want a half-billion dollars."

Send em to Serie C for Chutzpah.

That's almost as bad as the president of Barcelona demanding that the big european leagues cut down to 16 teams and there are less international frendlies so they can arrange for more club friendlies between the big european clubs and expand the champions league.

Greedy assholes. Why the hell do Barcelona need more money again?

To be fair - the other big teams were equally guilty of the "cheating" as well, and for Inter to try to lay claim to those Scudetti with a straight face is a joke.

I don't think that necessarily justifies a $500m lawsuit or anything...but to pretend everyone else was innocent and Juve is the only guilty club is ignorant.

Because they're essentially broke just like all the other big clubs in Europe.

Exactly. And it's even worse, as the group play of the finals tournament will be near-meaningless as well. It will mean 23 out of 52 participants in qualifying (or 22 out of 51 with co-hosts) will reach the finals and 16 of 24 in those finals will reach the knock-out phase. With 6 groups, being group winners ain't such a big deal, since you'll be facing a group winner in the quarterfinals anyway, or will be playing runners-up back-to-back.


Just to give an indication of what a 24-team tournament would look like for 2012, for ease I added all four play-off losers (Turkey, Estonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina), plus the 4 higehst rated third ranked team (Serbia, Switzerland, Israel and Norway), and I decided to 'draw' teams into groups with a snake format, using Ukraine and Poland as the top2 seeds:
gr A: Poland, Portugal, France, Montenegro
gr B: Spain, Greece, Czech Rep, Bosnia-Herzegovina
gr C: Netherlands, Croatia, Rep of Ireland, Israel
gr D: Germany, Russia, Serbia, Norway
gr E: Italy, England, Switzerland, Turkey
gr F: Ukraine, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia

Eventually probably resulting in the same sweet 16, with less attractive group play games and things coming down even more to knock-out survival. The only real gain is limiting the chances of losing big markets like Turkey, Russia or England as prime examples of recent non-qualifiers.

That wacky Sepp Blatter...

BBC Sport - Sepp Blatter says on-pitch racism can be resolved with handshake

Here's a thought, don't spend 30 million on Fabregas to sit on your bench.

Which is funny considering the way they work out the tv revenue in Spain with Barca and Real getting their own deals, etc, etc.

Tomorrow. 12.30 pm Eastern. Bayern Munich vs Borussia Dortmund. :popcorn:

just in case you have even a passing interest in the Bundesliga, go look for a stream (or does some channel show it in the US ?).

Basically half the german NT will be on display, Bayern currently ahead by 5 points in the Bundesliga, so this is a game Dortmund just can´t loose if they want to stay in contact.

Streaming on ESPN3.

Where can I see it in Germany? Do I really have to buy the Sky package to get to see Bundesliga gamesat home in Germany?

i´m afraid so :( There´s only highlights of the games in free TV...
saturday games on the "ARD" at about 18.30 local time (23.00 for the late game at "ZDF") and sunday games on "sport1" (22.00 i think)

There will be lots of streams available though or you could have a look around town, there´s bound to be plenty of bars (or what we germans call "Kneipe" ;) ) that will show it.

You are in the southwest in/near kaiserslautern, right ? Have you been to any games there yet ?

Okay, I don't mind paying. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. The bars are fine but my son enjoys the game I prefer to watch the game with him. I have gone to two home games and one away game. The atmosphere was fantastic for the two home games (Mainz and Stuttgart). However, the away match to Wolfsburg was unbelievable. I now understand what people mean when the call into the radio and talk about a few hundred away fans out-singing a entire stadium of home fans. Good times despite the loss. I am planning on going to the next home game against Hertha Berlin.

Glad you are enjoying the games, the Kaiserslautern stadium is very energetic :)


Dortmund wins at Bayern Munich, 1:0 :) In truth not a spectacular match, but Dortmund played brilliant defense and got a little better offensively in the 2nd half earning the victory.

Goetze the scorer :)

BTW Robbie Rogers and Kyle Beckermann have begun training with FCK.

Beckham to Keane to Donovan on the title winning goal. LA's money players were pretty good tonight.

It's actually kind of nice to see the favorite win one of these for once.

good game. glad LA won. hope becks stays.

It was a nice goal to take it. All three money players displayed their skills on that one.

FORZA JUVE!!

JUVE VAFFANCULO!

Just blame Platini for Man City's £195m loss
By MARTIN SAMUEL
Last updated at 11:52 PM on 21st November 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...in-Samuel.html

The craziest notion is that they had any alternative. There is nothing remotely lunatic in Manchester City running up a £194.9million loss for the financial year ending May 31, nothing bizarre in a wage bill totalling £22m more than turnover. To argue other options were available in the quest for elite acceptance: that is the true madness.

It was this way, or die wondering. Manchester City either bet the farm on Roberto Mancini and this squad before UEFA’s financial fair play rules kicked in or they remained outside forever.

Across football in Europe, a giant drawbridge is being pulled up. City had one last year to get the right side of it, or risk permanent exclusion. Given Sheik Mansour’s resources, any owner of ambition would have done the same.

While UEFA’s financial constraints remain, the same way forward will not be open to another club. City could not wait until next year and while the cost of the project may seem astronomical, the consequences of inaction were far greater.

Had financial fair play been more thoughtfully structured, City’s development could have been less frenzied. Had Michel Platini, the UEFA president, ruled against owner investment that was given as a loan, there would not have been this clamour to spend, spend, spend.

Regulation was needed, we could all see that. The model whereby an owner could bankroll a huge spending spree beyond the means of a club, lose interest in the project and then seek repayment, putting its very existence in jeopardy, had to be curtailed. The insistence that all money invested in a club had to be in the form of a gift, not a loan, would have solved that problem.

What UEFA did by going further and linking spending power to generated income was effectively outlaw new money coming into the game to upset the established order. City then had a deadline in which to join the elite or be left behind.

The £194.9m loss is the cost of that artificial imposition, nothing else. City knocked the castle wall down by firing money at it and UEFA will shore it up behind them.

The greatest cost is elsewhere. The prospect of Everton being successfully sold dwindles by the day, despite the boundless optimism of chairman Bill Kenwright. ‘I’m searching very hard for a wealthy benefactor and I’ll find one,’ he insisted this week. ‘The doomsayers can say what they like, this is a great football club.’

Indeed it is. But who would want it, now UEFA have barred the new owners from providing the money needed to propel it towards the Champions League? If close to £200m is the cost of leading the Premier League, then at least half that is needed to break the top four.

Yet any potential successor to Kenwright could not spend it, because such sums could not be supported within the football club. It would take decades, or luck on a spectacular scale, to compete at the elite level without utilising a significant cash injection.

And new money does not want a daily grind spread over many decades. It wants fun, success and excitement; it wants to be put on the map.

Imagine buying Blackburn Rovers and growing it organically to the size of Bolton Wanderers, and then to the size of Stoke City and then maybe to the size of Aston Villa. That would take, at a conservative estimate, 10 years. And you’re still not guaranteed the Europa League, let alone the title.

Say it was possible to grow a smaller Premier League club to one the size of Everton or Aston Villa, just on good housekeeping and clever management. How would you make that giant next step? Answer: you wouldn’t. Say you produced a string of fantastic youth players. Where would that get you? Where are the products of Southampton’s youth academy? At Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. Wayne Rooney is now with Manchester United. So is Ashley Young. How much longer will Jack Rodwell remain at Goodison Park?

The elite few will snap them up, because UEFA have decreed they will have more money to spend. Always. It will no longer matter if an oil man wants to invest in your club. Unless he strikes it beneath the main stand, his hands will be tied by UEFA.

So forget the fallacy of being propelled to glory by a brilliant youth team. Can’t happen, won’t happen.

Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, now admits he got Phil Jones from Blackburn on the cheap. Welcome to the future, as an elite cabal arrogantly claims the best talent throughout the league, safe in the knowledge they are now the only ones that can offer any chance of success.

There will be no point Everton telling Rodwell he can realise his dreams at Goodison Park. He can’t. We all know that.

So do not hate City for their debt. They did what they had to do because it was the only course UEFA left open to them. Blame Platini: it’s his idea.

That's the most ridiculous piece of twaddle I've read in quite some time.

"Blame UEFA for trying to make a fair playing field for all. If it wasn't for them, Man City wouldn't lose 200 million pounds in a year."

Excuse me, but that's Grade-A, 100%, USDA Approved bullshit.

Not sure if serious?

I agree with the article though. The rules are set up in a way that entrenches those at the top because of the way it permits clubs to spend going forward. Once the deadline hits, clubs are going to be pretty much stuck at the level they're at barring some sort of lucky growth.

Pining for a rich benefactor to come and waste a couple hundred million is stupid and does nothing but perpetuate the vicious cycle. Financial Fair Play stops the cycle by limiting a team's expenditure to their income. Ask the fans of Scottish team Hearts how a rich man giving the team money and then losing interest turns out

I still don't see how this works out for City. Their wage bill is 22mil pounds above turnover, how do they get to self sustaining from there?
Sure they have a huge squad and can sell several players, but I don't think it will be all that easy to move those players in the fair play evironment. To say nothing of convincing them to take a 75% pay cut.

The problem is the implementation. By limiting it to income, it means that once the rules hit, that's it. A club is going to be pretty much be stuck where it's at unless that club gets amazingly lucky in some way. I'm not even sure what "lucky" in this context would mean to be honest, especially since there isn't such a thing as a draft for professional soccer.

Put it another way: The new rules essentially means there's a salary cap for each team but each team's cap is based on its own financials. Small clubs would pretty much never catch up especially since the chance of a small club building a bigger stadium every few years is pretty much out of the question.

I think the point is that Man City needed to make the Champions League for the revenue generated there (which significantly dwarfs the UEFA Cup). If your revenue increases, your cap increases.

Does Man City still face issues? Yes. But this is a step they needed to make in order to "progress". Besides, once you're in the big boys club, the question will be whether UEFA will have the balls to actually sanction you from the Champions League (especially since there is a period for clubs to get affairs in order).

The article does miss one big point though. Man City is trying to use their Etihad development as part of the basis for their revenue/income and apparently it's been done in consultation with UEFA. If that works, then Man City is going to be ok under the new rules because of the retardedly high sponsorships that have been signed if I recall correctly.

Promotion money is a one-off each time you get promoted. While sponsorship money may increase, there is always going to be a massive gap between the haves and the have-nots (see Man Utd's training kit sponsorship deal). Again, I'm not saying it's not impossible but it just becomes that much harder for a club to grow organically and beat the big boys when there is now a cap on how much they can spend.

The only way to really increase revenue substantially is to have a much larger infrastructure (stadium, facilities). But a club climbing through the ranks is not going to be able to afford such things in most cases and they will languish behind as a result imo.

man, i'm out of the loop. i didn't even know montreal was coming this year.

thanks for the heads up.

mixed results for the german teams in the CL. Bayern wins like expected and is through to the knockout stage, Bayer Leverkusen wins at Chelsea in a real shocker and is also through.
Unfortunately my favourite team Borussia Dortmund looses to Arsenal ... Even 3rd place (going to the Europa League) is in danger now that Arsenal doesn´t need to go all out against Piraeus on the last day. A draw would have still given them even a decent chance at 2nd place, now 3rd place would have to be considered great.

Game just went too shitty. After starting well and playing great defense they loose their 2 most important midfielders in the first 30 minutes of the game, Goetze with a bad bruise (thank god not a knee injury as first feared) and Sven Bender with a doubly broken jaw (immediately rushed to the hospital and got emergency surgery) which pretty much took the life out of the team. Then they have a good chance by Kagawa and a minute later Van Persie scores ...

Hope he gets well soon, one of those guys you can´t help but root for because he plays the game with such passion and smarts at the same time.

in other news : Cypriot team Nikosia is through to the 1/8 final :) Inter is through, so are Benfica, Real, Barca and Milan.
ManU will have to beat Basel on the road to get through. I love ManU, but i root for Basel just a little bit here ...