Soccer Thread 2020-2021
 

We tend to base this on the European calendar so it is time for a new thread.

Ligue 1 has already started.

EPL, La Liga and Eredivisie start tomorrow.

Bundesliga, and Serie A get going next week but the DFB Pokal has begun.

I'm disappointed that NBC went and stuck a lot of games behind the Peacock TV paywall. I guess we've had it pretty good the past several years with just how many games we've had, but it's unfortunate to see good content get stuck behind another subscription service.

How is that any different than NBC Gold?

From what I remember, NBC Gold didn't put the better teams on its schedule. As an example, I don't think Gold would have had this Sunday's Spurs-Everton match. That would have been on NBC or NBC Sports Network. But sure enough, it's on Peacock this week. The same goes for Brighton-Chelsea on Monday. That's a step back for me.

One good TV move for the new season is Champions League/Europa League going from B/R Live to CBS All Access. Slightly cheaper, and Star Trek Picard too.

Outrageous.

The other teams in the Bundesliga should probably petition the league to force Bayern to make its five subs in the first half.

Screw NBC for moving all these games to Peacock. I enjoy watching soccer on Saturday and Sunday mornings, but I will not pay for a stream only version. I don't even pay for NFL games. This will just make my interest in the sport lessen, I'm sure. Out of sight, out of mind. I hope this doesn't go on for the entire season. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot with casual fans.

I can't believe they would make this permanent though ESPN+ has both Serie A and now Bundesliga. The new sports viewing world kinda sucks.

Yeah, I totally don't get their thinking here. They had early games on tv, no commercials, that's only competition is NFL pregame shows. I've come to love the game but not sure that would have happened without this window of dead time. I loved turning on the tube when I get up and watch whatever matches happen to be on and look forward to NFL Redzone in the afternoon. At minimum they should have left on an early and late Sunday morning game to keep building up the game. I think now the only game they show is late enough it competes against the NFL, really?

As for me I am trying the peacock week free today with the idea of buying the $50 annual package. Not a bad price for all of the games but not being able to watch on my large tv is making me question whether I'll keep it. I have firefox on my tv and you can stream peacock through that but... only on pc or mac, WTF?

Add to that first impressions do leave a mark. Opened up my chromebook this morning, Liverpool-Chelsea were live and 12 minutes into the game. Clicked on the game and got a "this game will start shortly, stay tuned message", again WTF? I get a chat window with support and the guy says "well LPool-Chelsea doesn't start 'til 10:30 central and it was only 9:30. I told him "well your game window shows the game as "live" now. I hardly expected that when I saw it listed that way on your app that I should go find a tv guide or fixture list to find the actual start time :mad: Told him this is seriously a pretty big glitch in your app you need to fix asap.

I am watching the LP-Chelsea match now and no issues there with quality, smooth stream, good hd picture. I imagine they will eventually get the app out for fire- tv or at least make firefox able to stream it on a tv? So, I'll probably pay the $50 but the whole Sunday morning atmosphere has taken a huge step down from previous years.

Exactly. I've been around here long enough that I can dig up old posts of mine about how boring soccer is, I can't ever see myself watching it, etc., but about 5 years ago, I started watching simply because I can't stand pregame shows and wanted to watch live sports while I worked out on Saturday/Sunday mornings. That happened to coincide with Leicester's run to the championship, and that hooked me over a couple of years. I tried the same with rugby even before that, but I don't understand that effing sport!

Fast forward, and this is the perfect viewing window on weekend mornings. I looked ahead to next weekend and it appears things are back to normal, so maybe this is a blip on the radar and was a good opportunity for them to sell Peacock memberships while they managed their obligations to televise the Tour de France (which of course is only happening now because of Covid). If so, I can deal with giving up one weekend. If they keep this up, I'm going to be less likely to keep up with EPL throughout the season.

Woke up today excited to watch this game. Then realized it’s on Peacock. WTF.

I was able to get Peacock on my Firestick, but had to download it separately.

Well I wasn't expecting to watch much Leicester today but as a Broncos and Lions fan, this is much less frustrating. Dare I say enjoyable (for the time being).

Jeez Louise, one weekend where NBC has a delayed Tour de France contract obligations moving EPL games to Peacock and people lose their fucking minds. Have people already gotten so entitled about this (British folk have to laugh, I'd imagine, because they literally can't watch every EPL game even if they were willing to pay, aside from getting a VPN)

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Entitled, no. Have a certain expectation for this product, yes. I am not sure why it would be a surprise. The moving of the games to Peacock was not an issue for me. It is not the first time they have done it. They did the same thing during Project Restart. At that time, I was aware of it, signed up for the Peacock network, and watched through my IPad. No biggie.

This was a different experience for me. I did not know that they were moving the games to Peacock last weekend until Saturday morning. Maybe they did a big advertisement beforehand but I did not see it. No worries, I will download the app on Fire TV and watch it. Nope I can't get the Peacock app on Fire TV. Finally I go to the app on my IPad to watch the games and it is behind the paywall. Welp, no watching EPL football for me for the weekend.

It was the equivalent of someone waking up on Sunday morning and realizing that for that one weekend, all NFL games were moved to the NFL app.

I'm a casual fan, so if this is the way they are going to handle the season, then I will likely not watch much. I don't really care what people in the UK can or can't get, that's their problem. I look at soccer in the US as a fringe sport that doesn't deserve NFL Sunday Ticket treatment, frankly.

I'm enough of a casual fan that I don't have any clue what the plans are for how they are televising this season, so I was not aware of the switch this past weekend until Saturday morning, or whether it is going to be permanent.

You can probably chalk up some of my frustration to all of the proprietary subscriptions required to watch TV these days. If this is the future, it sucks.

Ironically, with Covid preventing fans being in stadia, we can watch every game now with the right subscriptions!

First of all, ISiddiqui, got fuck yourself and your "entitlement" claims. Are you going to always jump on people for expressing their at-the-moment concerns ON AN INTERNET FORUM?! Mighty nice ivory tower you live in.
Second of all, we should all be concerned about so many networks putting things behind a paywall. Some people can get good TV service from Dish or DirecTV but those service's internet connectivity is lacking and makes streaming impossible or intermittent, as best. (Intermittent? I guess the same could be said about the TV signal too but everything I've heard about the internet service...)
Third, I looked ahead on NBCSports channel and there are two EPL game Saturday morning. The third game is on you normal broadcast NBC channel. Rejoice!

As you said, it isn't new for NBC to put games behind the paywall if there is something else during the weekend which NBC has contractual requirement to show. Beforehand it was Gold, now it's Peacock. And I get people who didn't follow the news get confused but unless you had a Roku (which just came to a resolution with Peacock yesterday), you could easily jump on and get it fixed - you can sideload Peacock onto FireTV.


Rolling my fucking eyes so hard right now. One weekend where things get put on Peacock because of contracts is not a big deal in the slightest. Especially when people freak the fuck out because they don't know how to look at a schedule for the upcoming weeks. Furthermore, it's an extra $5 a month on your cable sub to get every. single. EPL. game. It's the best value in sports in the US (I guess unless you are a Serie A or Scottish Premier League fan). Complaining about that when you could barely watch any EPL games a mere 10 years ago.

Your post just reiterates my position that some of these people are entitled spoiled brats, you included.

So what contractual obligations do they have at 3PM Eastern on a Monday where they need to hide Liverpool vs. Arsenal behind a paywall?

This would have been a match in previous seasons which would have easily been aired on NBCSN.

As noted, next weekend has multiple games on NBC and NBCSN (3 on Saturday, 3 on Sunday - only the 1 latest game on both days are on Peacock). They won't always put a Monday game on TV if they aired almost all of the games on Saturday or Sunday.

The contractual obligations this past weekend which put most games on Peacock was the Tour de France (which is usually during the Summer, but Covid...)

I'm sorry, where exactly did I act entitled?! I spoke of people in general who have other experiences than you. Maybe you have perfect internet in/around Atlanta but people on this forum live in rural places and might have to deal with DSL, egad!

What the hell is going on in your life that makes you so attacky?

Wait... you said [go] fuck yourself and you are asking what makes me so attacky?!! LOL

That's just not the case. Here is the schedule for the first four weeks last season: NBC SPORTS ANNOUNCES PREMIER LEAGUE TV & LIVE STREAMING MATCH SCHEDULE FOR FIRST 2 MONTHS OF 2019-20 SEASON - NBC Sports PressboxNBC Sports Pressbox

Every non-Saturday/Sunday match was aired on NBC or NBCSN. Like I said, it's a BS ploy by NBC to now put these behind a paywall regardless if I can spare the $5 or not. That really isn't the point.

Yeah it seems you are correct on the weekday games (at least compared to last year). At least this early on. Though the Saturday/Sunday schedules appear to be packed on terrestrial TV.

Though remember they had NBC Gold last year (and previous years before that), which was actually pricier than Peacock - so I wonder if it was a ratings decisions in addition to a Peacock decision (not denying they want to incentivize Peacock - as they tried with Gold when they had every team have a minimum amount of games on Gold) . FWIW, Peacock has the same number of games on it that Gold did last season (175 matches).

edit: It will be nice when you can just stream an entire league. I think you can basically do that for Serie A (very few games are on ESPN terrestrial channels). You can also do it for F1 (F1TV). Unfortunately the more popular sports are going to be tied to a cable package.

That is too funny.

I think it feels worse with NBC Sports because right now, every match is in its own window. Its unlike non-CV timeframes where there could be 5-6 games going on at the same time, So before they could put the 2nd best game on and people wouldn't complain.

I was literally halfway though a WhatsApp message to my brother complaining about how uninspiring the Leicester performance and setup was, when we got the first penalty... safe to say I didn’t send the message and my opinion changed! :D

A minute or two before that I stopped watched and watched yesterday's Ajax game on demand instead because Man City were obviously strolling to a 3-0.

Exactly. In previous years, NBCSN & NBC had games on pretty much every time slot Sat/Sun/Mon, and what was streamed were the other games. But there was always something on TV. Now they are putting games at certain time slots where there's nothing on TV, and it appears the Monday games may all get streamed (although I haven't looked at the full schedule, that's the way the season has started). It sucks - although I was grateful that Leicester was not streamed today.

NBC deserves criticism for moving live matches to Peacock, but so does the Premier League

A bit of reporting to add to the discussion earlier.

You guys should send all your top prospects to Dortmund, 17 year old Giovanni Reyna with 3 Assists today.

Not the usual football tweet :D

Best reply to a football tweet today...

pic.twitter.com/ZEPwIoFmkD

— Ian Ridley (@IanRidley1) October 3, 2020

They need to investigate Harry McGuire for betting for both teams to score in the MU v Spurs match. From the bad headers to grabbing Luke Shore in order to prevent him from clearing it.

Ole's at the wheel:

This is an interesting way for some of clubs in the EPL to go into the international break.

Well, I was kinda upset at Leicester's showing this morning, but then I saw ManU and Liverpool's days and now I think Leicester managed to be the least embarrassing loss of the day by a long shot.

Reyna would have been a stud anywhere, but Germany(/Belgium/Holland) do seem to be the best places since they let young guys play. We'll see if some of the guys like de la Fuente at Barca or Weah at Lille can see the same progression.

Definitely excited to see more young players getting MLS PT first then transferring to Europe & having success too. It's what I've been arguing for awhile - maybe the elite of the elite prospects like Reyna & Pulisic should go to Europe early, but it's not bad for career development to actually play in the MLS for a couple years as a youngster then go overseas into a situation where you'll get PT. Still think Altidore (and others like Miazga) were held back by trying to jump too high too soon instead of going to a place they'll actually play instead of riding the reserves/loan wagon.

I LOL'd for way too long on this one. Just as quality as this one. Excellent

I missed the Saturday EPL games and just caught up with the Virgil van Dijk injury. I don't believe that Pickford tried to hurt him, but he sure made it look like he tried to hurt van Dijk. I also don't know what the hell was going on with Michael Oliver either. Is there something preventing him from going to the monitor to see what happened? Does he have to wait for the VAR official to suggest he go to the monitor?

Hooray VAR!

So as Bartomeu ran out the door at Barca, he dropped this bombshell:

Barcelona accepted European Super League invite - Bartomeu

Those kind of rumors are thrown around every other year since the mid '90s. I've heard them long before Manchester City and Chelsea would be considered as legitimate members of such a league.

Glad NBC at least gave us free Monday games after only one morning game both days this weekend.

13 teams within 6 points of the top after 7 weeks. Could be the makings of a very exciting Premier League season.

Teams within 6 points through 7 weeks
19/20 season: 2 teams
18/19 season: 7 teams
17/18 season: 5 teams
16/17 season: 7 teams
15/16 season: 9 teams
14/15 season: 3 teams
13/14 season: 11 teams

A game with Fuchs and Koch on the same pitch... just need Stefan Kuntz in the studio and we have the trifecta!

Our starting defensive players when everyone is fit:
Ricardo, Evans, Soyuncu, Castagne, Ndidi

Our defensive players tonight:
Albrighton (30 year old winger, played wing back tonight)
Justin (22, full back, played centre back tonight)
Fofana (19, 3rd PL appearance)
Fuchs (34, full back, played centre back tonight)
Thomas (19, 4th PL appearance)
Mendy (TBF a decent back up DM)

4-1 away win? That’ll do...

Yes, fun game.

In the times of COVID-19, lineups look like they're completely randomly selected. Especially those clubs playing in the European competitions are picking up new cases left and right.

But at least let them stop claiming they're in their 'soccer bubble'. There's no bubble if your players and staff members still go home to wife and kids after practice.