Football (Soccer) Thread

[The Larch]

AFAIK, it'll be like that for at least the next 3 seasons.

[FunkMonk]

Porchettino out Mourinho in. What a trade for Tottenham.

Hahahahahaha

[Sheilbh]

Porchettino out Mourinho in. What a trade for Tottenham.

Woke up to some surprised texts from my Spurs-supporting fans

[Liep]

The Special One gets a freebie against a very passive West Ham.

[Josephus]

In MLS there is always talk of adding a relegation system to the league,

Is there? Not officially.

They've actually said that they are studying it;  I posted about it some time back.  Now, it's entirely possible that they just said that to mollify fans who want to see it, but they did say it.  Of course, even if they were sincere, there's still a huge difference between studying an idea and deciding to implement it.

The MLS makes money by selling franchises, not by allowing mid-range teams to get promoted into it. Also, as I said earlier, it's hard to sell to potential new owner, say in Sacramento, "OK, so it will cost you millions to get a franchise, and just so you know, if you suck, you get booted out to a lower league."

[Josephus]

So just flew back from London.

Highlight of my trip was seeing England at Wembley. Yeah, it was a 7-0 blow out, but it wasn't the game ... it was being there. Coming out of the subway stop and taking the view of thousands of people walking towards the stadium was amazing. Bucket trip item checked.

[FunkMonk]

#EmeryOUT

[Liep]

So just flew back from London.

Highlight of my trip was seeing England at Wembley. Yeah, it was a 7-0 blow out, but it wasn't the game ... it was being there. Coming out of the subway stop and taking the view of thousands of people walking towards the stadium was amazing. Bucket trip item checked.

Nice!

Did you partake in any hooliganism?

[Josephus]

So just flew back from London.

Highlight of my trip was seeing England at Wembley. Yeah, it was a 7-0 blow out, but it wasn't the game ... it was being there. Coming out of the subway stop and taking the view of thousands of people walking towards the stadium was amazing. Bucket trip item checked.

Nice!


Did you partake in any hooliganism?

No. It was quite a docile crowd that because of the lobsided score line (7-0) started to do the Mexican wave and fling paper airplanes around.
The closest I got was on the tube to the game, a few stops before wembley some rather stereotypical big steel worker types hopped on and started making a ruckus--but even that was disappointingly short of violent mayhem,

[Syt]

It's not unusual to have Turkish football clubs in German. Apparently there's also a Serbian clubs. Like "FK Nikola Tesla Hamburg":

[Valmy]

We need to have American expats form the FC Thomas Edison Hamburg to be their rival.

[dps]

In MLS there is always talk of adding a relegation system to the league,

Is there? Not officially.

They've actually said that they are studying it;  I posted about it some time back.  Now, it's entirely possible that they just said that to mollify fans who want to see it, but they did say it.  Of course, even if they were sincere, there's still a huge difference between studying an idea and deciding to implement it.

The MLS makes money by selling franchises, not by allowing mid-range teams to get promoted into it. Also, as I said earlier, it's hard to sell to potential new owner, say in Sacramento, "OK, so it will cost you millions to get a franchise, and just so you know, if you suck, you get booted out to a lower league."

Dude, I don't disagree with you--I don't think they'll ever actually do it.  But that doesn't change the fact that they did say that they are studying it.

[Syt]

The obvious difference being that American pro leagues have a top down approach - you have the top tier (NFL, MLB, etc.) and the rest serve to feed those teams with players.

In European football, it's a bottom up approach where this is played from a very basic grassroots level with every team having the (theoretical) chance to make it to the top floor if they're just good enough.

[Liep]

Brugge equalise in injury time and gets 2 players ejected, one for removing his shirt and one for kicking the corner flag (both already had yellow cards). Most idiotic celebration in Champions League history.

[Liep]

VAR keeps being confusing and utterly arbitrary. You can apparently VAR check a (very) small free kick and then cancel a clear penalty and a doubtful red card.