Football (Soccer) Thread

[The Larch]

Five substitutes will be allowed next season, football lawmakers have announced following a meeting of the International Football Association Board.

[Sheilbh]

Almost feels like that's a bigger win for City etc than the CAS decision

[The Larch]

Almost feels like that's a bigger win for City etc than the CAS decision

It'll certainly help the big clubs for sure.

[Duque de Bragança]

Almost feels like that's a bigger win for City etc than the CAS decision

It'll certainly help the big clubs for sure.

More and more as gridiron and the like. Closed league soon?

The whole team is in shambles lately, and prospects don't seem good.

Another team in shambles lately is Benfica. Collapse after the Covid-19 break, while the situation was not exactly good before (1 point behind Porto only then).
Porto recovered from the worst first League half memory and is champion since yesterday, following a victory 2-0 vs Sporting.

Not a brilliant season, but I'll take it. 

[The Larch]

Massive boondongle in the last game of the Spanish 2nd division. The Deportivo - Fuenlabrada game (the most exciting one of them all, with Deportivo fighting against relegation and Fuenlabrada fighting to enter the promotion playoff) has been called off this afternoon after 6 Fuenlabrada players tested positive for Covid. Now we'll surely have a big legal mess, with other teams claiming that competition has been disturbed (in the last games they're all meant to be played at the same time) and huge question marks about what to do with the promotion playoff that was meant to start next week.

[celedhring]

And it looks like Fuenlabrada traveled to La Coruña knowing the risk (one of their players tested positive before the trip, and they failed to isolate the rest of the squad as close contacts) in order to avoid the game being forfeit...

[The Larch]

And it looks like Fuenlabrada traveled to La Coruña knowing the risk (one of their players tested positive before the trip, and they failed to isolate the rest of the squad as close contacts) in order to avoid the game being forfeit...

And we'll be getting legal action for sure. Deportivo have said that they won't play the game next week as intended unless the whole last set of games is repeated, which the league has already ruled out, so funnily enough they might be the ones who end up forfeiting the match. I've just seen that it has been proposed that next season's Segunda could have 24 teams, in order to "compensate" Deportivo for the whole situation by allowing them to stay in Segunda. 

As I heard being reported today, it is extremely ironic that the team that has benefitted the most from all of this, Fuenlabrada, is the one that actually created the mess.

Other ramifications:

- Galician health authorities are now mandating Fuenlabrada to stay quarantined in Coruña for 2 weeks, when they'd be meant to be playing the promotion playoff in the 2nd of August. Fuenlabrada has challenged that saying that league protocols don't mandate quarantine in this situation (they argue that only the people who tested positive have to be quarantined, rather than the whole expedition), but the Galician health authorities have rubbished that, since a private entity's internal protocol can't be softer than the law that has recently been enacted to control covid outbreaks (and this situation falls under it because it is qualified as a full outbreak, since there are more than 3 related cases, and that triggers automatically a series of measures, amongst them the official notification to the government about the situation).
- Moreover, if it is proved that Fuenlabrada knew ahead of travelling that anyone in their party was positive, they could be charged with a crime against public health.
- The Coruña city hall will take the league to court, claiming that the failure of their internal protocol has created a health risk in the city.
- It is not yet known if Elche, which played Fuenlabrada a few days ago, should enter quarantine as well, and they're also in contention for the promotion playoff.

[Sheilbh]

Mildy obsessed with this map/data viz:
http://www.cahiersdufootball.net/infographie.php?id_infographie=13

[Josquius]

Mildy obsessed with this map/data viz:
http://www.cahiersdufootball.net/infographie.php?id_infographie=13

Awesome.
I always wanted to figure out how to do something like that for the UK.  Zero idea on the data scraping skills needed to pull it off though. Twitter scrapes I guess but...clueless

[Sheilbh]

The full article has loads:
http://www.cahiersdufootball.net/article-geographie-des-supporters-francais-7391

[Grey Fox]

Mildy obsessed with this map/data viz:
http://www.cahiersdufootball.net/infographie.php?id_infographie=13

No one cares about a Grenoble team, lol.

[Liep]

Messi transfers to Inter. How realistic is that? Is he just leaking the story to get more power in Barca?

[Josquius]

Messi transfers to Inter. How realistic is that? Is he just leaking the story to get more power in Barca?

I guess if he's towards the end of his career it makes sense to do what Ronaldo did and get a big pay day.

[Sheilbh]

Messi transfers to Inter. How realistic is that? Is he just leaking the story to get more power in Barca?

I guess if he's towards the end of his career it makes sense to do what Ronaldo did and get a big pay day.

Also from everything I've read he is very powerful at Barca but is also kind of tired of the politics especially at the minute - no diea if there's any truth to it, but living the Barca mess at the minute would be exhausting.

[Liep]

Messi transfers to Inter. How realistic is that? Is he just leaking the story to get more power in Barca?

I guess if he's towards the end of his career it makes sense to do what Ronaldo did and get a big pay day.

He makes over 20 million euros a year now. The rumor is he'll get about 5-6 million more a year at Inter though.