Soccer Thread 2023-24 Edition
 

So, having MLS and the Leagues Cup has been quite nice (especially with that new Argentinian signing), but the fact it's been locked away on Apple Pass is a bummer. But that and all the friendlies is no substitute for a season in full flow.

ESPN+ will be earning its keep.

Going to watch the Championship game that just finished, then the community shield and a couple of Belgian games on Sunday, maybe then over to Paramount+ for Scottish games (and maybe a random Brazillian or Argentinian game).

Then, next week, the EPL and La Liga.

The week after that, the Bundesliga and Serie A

It's official, Eurofooty is back.

Way too early first impressions.

10+ minutes of extra time is the norm.

yeah, they mentioned a couple things so far on the EFL broadcast:

the English officials found they were only awarding something like "50%" of the time they should be adding on.

and new rule, anyone who goes off the pitch for treatment must stay off the field for at least 30 seconds.

Fivethirtyeight did an analysis a few years ago and found that "added time" was something like 75% less than what actual time should be added on.

I thought I would miss de gea. Perhaps not


https://twitter.com/ManUtd_lndo/status/1687970654463877120?t=otukewohsE2ZwtkSuOQaOw&s=19

Anybody wanna guess which U.S. outlet is going to be showing the Saudi league this year? Is beIN Sports still a thing in the US?

Saudi Pro League confirms global broadcast deals in UK, Canada and more - The Athletic

It does not seem like a good strategy to sell the best player on your team three days before your first match and three weeks before the window closes.

Counterpoint is you are barely a Europa Conference League side even with him in the squad, he’s aging and going to be out of contract and that’s a lot of money. I think it’s clearly the right decision. Timing could be better but equally, they’ve got a lot out of Bayern by waiting.

Now reports are saying that Kane will not go to Bayern. If true, it will curious to see what conclusions are drawn from this and in the future, especially if he leaves next year on a free instead of resigning with Tottenham.

Interesting. I think the only logical conclusion is he's signing a new contract. Although anything is possible, I think he loves the club too much to walk without any compensation.

Agreed. I just think it makes Bayern look like a small club IMO. Why make a bid for Kane without some assurance from Kane that he is coming to Munich.

🚨 Harry Kane has reached an agreement to join Bayern Munich from Tottenham Hotspur. Personal terms in place for 30yo to sign a 4yr contract. England captain awaiting green light from #THFC to travel for medical + complete transfer @TheAthleticFC #FCBayern https://t.co/LPAkVUiF9E

— David Ornstein (@David_Ornstein) August 10, 2023

HAALAND

Already? Jeez.

HAALAND

I appreciated the delay of the Arsenal match so I can stayed locked in on the ENG-COL match. I want to believe it was intentional.:D

That spinning back heel pass from Martinelli to set up a goal was a thing of beauty.

This is my take, especially since it's for 100M (or roundabouts, depending on your currency of choice).

Only took the first weekend.

Referee, VAR taken off Prem duty after Onana penalty error - ESPN

Because we are all still wondering how Chelsea is doing it.

Why Chelsea believe their £900m transfer spending is within FFP rules - The Athletic

Also, the EPL is considering closing the FFP loophole that Chelsea has been exploiting following UEFA's lead from two months ago.

Former City transfer target Lucas Paqueta looks to be in some big trouble. People connected to him in Brazil opened up new betting accounts and put large sums of money on him and another Brazilian (in La Liga) both getting booked back in March.

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Wrexham with a 5-5 draw. Yeesh. Crazy stuff.

And over at the expanded Anfield, Mac Allister was not Mac Lovin' it. In his debut, he got a lovely card. From the referee. It was Red.

Liverpool Penalty? The Liverpool haters are going on and on about how VAR is a shambles, the refs are bought, yadda yadda yadda..

MacAllister's Red? The Liverpool supporters are going on and on about how VAR is a shambles, the refs are bought, yadda yadda yadda

All fans after the game: The refs are shite, VAR is even more shite, and fuck everything.

West Ham's shirt sponsor Betway were responsible for reporting the suspicious betting patterns that caused the collapse of Lucas Paqueta's proposed £85m transfer to Manchester City this week amidst a corruption probe.

Bets came from his birthplace, Paqueta Island.@MailSport pic.twitter.com/mRVMabZj8Q

— West Ham (C)entral 🏆 (@WestHam_Central) August 19, 2023

England can't sit off Spain passively and allow them to just control the ball. Spain want to remain in possession and are talented to do so but England is not forcing them to work hard to keep possession. Once England do get possession, the counter attack has to be much quicker.

The downside for England? The back to back Ballon d'Or and the FIFA Best Player Alexia Putellas is still on the bench for Spain.

Yeah, I think that is a penalty.

Outstanding shithousery/gamemanship by England during the run up to that penalty.

Absolutely strange celebration. Players only celebrating with other players. Coaches only celebrating with coaches. The hate is real for the players towards the coach.

I have this sneaky suspicion that Salah moves to KSA in the next several weeks. Their transfer window extends well into next month.

I haven't been paying much attention to the first couple weeks with everything going on with my dad but I just checked the scores as games are winding down and they are clearly serious about extending stoppage time. It looks like if in a previous year every game had a medivac injury.

Nevermind, the Score app appears to be having problems. Every damn game is +20-25 past FT and that's clearly wrong.

So if I've got this right, the Spain FA is going to withdraw from UEFA, sue a player, and is having an 80+ year old woman go on a hunger strike because their President kissed a woman without permission on live TV and wouldn't say sorry.

This shit is crazy.

Also:

1. Luis Rubiales the Spanish football federation President was suspended by FIFA because of the kiss.

2. The regional presidents of the Spanish football federation have demanded he resign.

3. The Spanish governement filing a complaint with Spain's Administrative Sports Court to get him removed.

4. Spainish prosecutors said they have opened a preliminary sex abuse investigation into the Rubiales incident.

5) All the players including a bunch of possible alternates are boycotting (first WNT Matches after the WC coming in 3 weeks)
6) all coaching staff except the head coach resigned after he didn't resign and Rubiales/FA made female staff sit up front for the assembly to project a favourable image when he went all woe is me instead of resigning as was expected.

It also really kicked off with the FA pretty much making up a statement by Hermoso.

Pretty remarkable interview with Luis' Uncle (his former chief of staff) who says that Luis was using FA money to host orgies with underage girls and a bunch of other corrupt shit.

��Extraordinary interview with Juan Rubiales, uncle of Luis. “All of our family stands with Jenni.” Calls his nephew “a cowardly man.” Juan adds: “He is obsessed with power, with luxury, and with women. He needs re-education on how to treat women.”https://t.co/nbBL2tDWEC

— Colin Millar (@Millar_Colin) August 30, 2023

Well great, now his abuela is going to have to go on a hunger strike.

Also, his mom had gone to the hospital due to her hunger strike.

So Champions League, Group F is insane and City/Barca can send their women's team and still make it out of their groups. United guaranteed to lose away to Copenhagen and beat Galatasaray at home thanks to a Fernandes pernalty.

Happy Transfer Deadline Day!:party:


Over €1 billion spent by Chelsea since May 2022! -€747 million net spend!

I am pretty sure I asked in another thread but what pejorative are we calling Chelsea FC for their spending under the Todd Boehly/Clearlake Capital ownership?

I really need MLS to step up their quality of play to match the top leagues in Europe. I want to see a Chelsea or Real Madrid submit a $150 million bid for the best player on a MLS Cup favorite's best player and see if they and their supporters would sacrifice the chance at an MLS title for the money.

Liverpool reject a $190M offer for Salah from Saudi Arabia. I'm actually surprised, to be honest. That's a lot of money for a 31-year old, even if Salah is going to be one of the biggest reasons they contend (if they contend) at all this year.

Cheeky

Chelsea look like they might need to strengthen in January

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Brentford are still your Premier League Lineal Champions, but that has to be in jeopardy in two weeks when they take on Newcastle

At least Chelsea's American owners are trying. They may be insane and not know what they're doing, but the evidence indicates that at least they give a fuck.

Compare that to the Glazers and I know which I'd prefer.

Brighton's owners. Brighton's owners are the ones I'd prefer.

Can't wait to reach the year anniversary of them announcing they were putting the club up for sale....

dola - Erling Haaland continues to be the soccer equivalent of a war crime.

He gone! part 1

Vilda fired as Spain boss in Rubiales unsolicited kiss fallout - ESPN

Thank God, I was beginning to worry. I guess they can just overwrite Antony in the database.

Football Manager to reinstate Mason Greenwood | Eurogamer.net

Pfft, hold Man Utd's beer: Manchester United invited convicted paedophile Geoff Konopka to WSL game | Manchester United | The Guardian

My nephew is a Man City fan so to wish him a happy birthday I sent him a gif of Antony (#21) dancing over a football.

Everton look to have a new majority owner soon. However, they still will have the same majority awful team

Soccer city! If you would have told me twenty years ago that Atlanta was going to be a big-time soccer town, I wouldn't have believed you.

������������ ���� ��������������

U.S. soccer to build National Training Center in Metro Atlanta with initial funding from Arthur M. Blank to help grow soccer ecosystem nationally» https://t.co/L6KusFjbug pic.twitter.com/nirw5QOsAq

— U.S. Soccer (@ussoccer) September 15, 2023

Proper domestic assault of United by Brighton

Yesterday afternoon, you couldn't get in the building for Atlanta United match versus Inter Miami for less than $150. Now that it was announced Messi didn't even fly to Atlanta for the match tickets are $40.

I have season tickets in the 200s, sold them a few weeks ago for about $300 a pop because I don't really care THAT much. Glad I did, but missed a good game as ATLUTD put up 5 on Miami.

File under "Only in MLS"



Player for Montreal FC, fed up with his playing time (only eight substitute appearances this season), decides he needs playing time, and plays three games for a friend's amateur league team (under a fake name), cops an indefinite ban for punching another player out, gets caught, and gets fired. Although he CAN point out he scored six goals in those three games...



Matko Miljevic: MLS sacks player after fake name and ban claims - BBC Sport

That is actually a fantastic story.

Even by ordinary South American football standards, this tackle from Honduras is something to behold pic.twitter.com/yQAHgTadaG

— GOLAZO (@golazoargentino) September 18, 2023

I think this is what one might be described as a tackle with a bit of bite.

Just to follow up on that story...

My brother, a former referee; now a high school JV coach; had a similar story. This was an U-14 Div 2 Promotion/Relegation game. One team slipped an illegal player onto the field. (After checking the players cards, unbeknownst to my brother, the coach switched the uniform of one player with the illegal player.)

At halftime, my brother's AR gets a call from the fed.. Apparently the team's manager had called them warning them that they were going to do this, so they had my brother stop the game, have the coach rehand out the player cards, and one by one brought them to the center of the field and asked them to confirm their name, and birth date. One kid gave the wrong info, and the jig was up.

Apparently, as a result, the coach was banned for life, and the team disbanded.

Goalkeeper goal!

I have tried to keep up with USWNT and the NWSL after the end of the World Cup. Overall, I can't say I have really been impressed with I have seen. After reading this article and others on the NWSL setup, there may be more dark times ahead if forward looking planning in all of these basic areas has not already begun.

After USWNT's poor World Cup, the NWSL needs big changes - ESPN

US Soccer (the organization, not the concept) is an inbred mess of sycophants installed/promoted solely on the basis of networking, not capability, that avoids the type of attention they might get in other countries because soccer is a journalistic afterthought in the United States.

While those idiots were collecting checks and avoiding real work, the rest of the world caught up and there's probably no way back to dominance unless the network of European clubs/leagues suddenly collapses.

I love soccer, and I love refereeing, and I love being involved at (obviously) the lower youth levels of it all, but developmental soccer in this country, men & women, is a complete shitshow dominated by a profit motive above all else and I don't see any obvious way back.

I don't see that last part happening. The rich European clubs have dollar signs in their eyes and finally understand that having a women's team is better for their image. European women love to play for famous brands like Arsenal, Bayern München, FC Barcelona and Liverpool, they feel no shame in playing for Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United or Paris SG either. Playing for such brands is their confirmation that they are catching up (with men). A long road stil to go is getting paid close to the same amounts, eventually leading to another semi-retired footballers league in Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, I don't see it happening either (a collapse of the European women's leagues).

The point is that the U.S. had a huge advantage in player development (again, for women) for decades due to the college model. That's now been usurped by a superior development model (this is true on the men's side, too), while at the same time everything else about under-18 soccer in the U.S. has regressed into a shitshow focused on making money with actual talent identification and development being an afterthought.

But hey, we're still #1 in American Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Ice Hockey, right?

:D

Refs fucked Liverpool today. So badly, they admitted it.

Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool: PGMOL admits 'significant human error' over disallowed Luis Diaz goal - BBC Sport

PGMOL seems bound and determined to implement & execute VAR in the worst way potentially possible.

I missed everything football related this weekend. I really look forward to seeing how bad this whole thing was.

It was similar to what happened every other weekend in the Premier League prior to VAR was - and why it was - introduced.

The way I've understood it, the fuck up here was that the VAR thought he was supposed to confirm it was not offside, while the call on the field was actually (wrongfully) offside and VAR's job was there to overturn it. It was so obviously not offside, it took just seconds to judge the situation and call: "check is over". As soon as the referee on the field blew his whistle for the free kick, VAR was no longer allowed to interfere and correct calling "yes" where "no" was in place.

Basically, I think.

The mistake was
And from today's official release with the transcripts

Yep, that's exactly what happened. Time for referee teams (including VAR) to implement Crew Resource Management: Crew resource management - Wikipedia

I think the new rule going forward is for VAR guy to never talk to the refs until after he's confirmed what he's going to say with the VAR asst.

All this hysteria because of plain ol' human communication error?

Weren't we suppose to be understanding humans will get things wrong and things will even out in the end?

I honestly don't understand why the VAR just isn't pitchside with a monitor (or just down the tunnel or something). It's not like they can't afford to have a VAR at every match.


miami_fan are you new to planet Earth? :D

Yeah. That's the thing I don't understand: why would you instruct a person to call "check complete"? I'd suspect it would be so much better to grasp to call as you see it: "onside, goal". Because then, when the referee made a mistake, he'd call the VAR back and say: wait, it was onside, not offside? etc.

I suspect the answer to that lies in how VAR is structered. This 2019 article with VAR Lead Neil Swarbick mentions how the process would work

The bolded part is my emphasis


My guess is that they don't give a clear terminology ruling (like "goal" or "no goal") because they really don't have the authority to make that call, they only have the authority to "check" what was ruled on the pitch. They are "reviewing" or "checking", they aren't deciding anything themselves.

That was probably done to keep referee egos from being even more bruised by VAR.

File under Harsh but fair

https://twitter.com/worldsoccertalk/...04149750808966

The Twitter handle is "out of context" so does anyone have the actual context that makes this look any better? I don't even know when it happened, could be years ago.

pic.twitter.com/hpLBRMM93n

— Out of Context Human Race (@NoContextHumans) October 6, 2023

More context.

A couple of years earlier, Dida was hit by a flare in a Champions League derby against Inter Milan.The match was abandoned and Milan moved on as they were already winning 1-0 in the match and 3-0 on aggregate at the time. Oh and this happened a couple minutes before. Basically the soccer version pulling up with a bad hammy after being burnt on a deep TD pass.:lol:

Luca de la Torre coming on for Gio Reyna was the obvious change. Other than winning a free kick and not engaging Leroy Sane in the buildup to the German goal, he did little in the first half. The back line is still crap though.

This is the best post-match manager reaction I've ever seen pic.twitter.com/kgeJPwkFyp

— Sammy James (@MrSammyJames) October 14, 2023

I bring more context this time for that post match interview. That is Marc White. Who is Marc White you ask?


In other words, what would a 50 year old Jerry Jones had said if he also was the official head coach of the Cowboys.:D

Someone in last season's thread mentioned that Leicester going down might be a blessing in disguise and they might the able to come up quickly and it'll be more fun to follow them when they are winning more consistently.

Well, Leicester is doing really well. I believe I heard they are the first Championship team to win 12 of their 1st 13 games in a season. I watched today's game while flying and they didn't look great but they didn't need to be. Seems like they might be up in the PL again next year.

Not a fan of either team but Galatasaray vs Bayern was a pretty damn fun game with a crazy atmosphere. Galatasaray had 16-3 shots in the first half which is kinda mental

Also, I believe Haaland has scored as many league goals as Man Utd.

Our start, and Ipswich’s TBF, is unbelievable.

To give an idea, the team in 5th after 13 games is the same number of points away from a relegation spot as they are from top. (After 12 games, that was true of the team in 3rd)

USWNT set to appoint Chelsea's Emma Hayes as head coach - source - ESPN


I would think this is a big deal.

Agreed.

Watching a VAR session and a soccer game broke out.

Chelsea and Tottenham players will be stuffed in pairs into those "Get Along Shirts" for the rematch.

I just tuned into the Napoli v. Union Berlin match. Is it me or does it look and sound like they are playing the match during COVID when they piped in crowd noise and just had members of the club staff and stadium staff in the crowd?

I think we have a winner for "Most petty way to deny opponent's celebration"

In the second leg of the Peruvian championship final,, the home team was confident of a victory, having drawn the first leg away to their rival, 1-1. However, things they did not go their way, and they lost the second leg, 2-0 (and 3-1 on aggregate).

The opposing team however, did not get a chance to celebrate on their rivals turf, as moments after the final whistle, the lights in the stadium went completely out, except for the LED advertising boards. The general belief is that it wasn't a "power outage", but someone backstage furious that their hated opponents were going to celebrate the title on their pitch.

If so, they did get their wish, as the post-match celebration was cancelled due to the "power outage" (and as fighting broke out between rival fans).

Universitario left dancing in the dark to celebrate Peruvian title | Soccer | The Guardian

edit: Now that I think about it, this does have some upsides, in that it allows the team to officially raise the trophy at home with their supporters this weekend, but kinda unfair that they didn't get to celebrate on enemy turf.. I think before the next derby between the two teams at that stadium, they should be allowed to reenact the trophy celebration, complete with confetti cannons, etcetera.

This is like how Mizzou will probably get their season vacated because Michigan cheated.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/e...ague-2q6hf3p6v

The good news is that the Premier League is still taking action. The bad news is that they apparently can only punish clubs that are transparent about their financial situation, still struggling to get a strong case against the other clubs that are obviously cheating.

Belgium v Scotland in the European U21 qualifying turned out one of those results that would make you throw your laptop out the window if it happened in Football Manager.

Belgium had 75% possession and outshot Scotland 26-2, but Scotland won 2-0.