Football (Soccer) Thread

[Josquius]

Wasn't boilerman an awesome bit of post modern advertising?
Really got people talking about the boiler by being intentionally ridiculous.

[Duque de Bragança]

Seems Antonin Panenka is in ICU for Covid-19.

Yes, THE Panenka.

[Sheilbh]

Great NYT piece on the Jorge Mendes merry-go-round:

The Big Winner at the Transfer Window Was Jorge Mendes. Again.
The coronavirus pandemic has sent the soccer industry reeling, but money still flows to Mendes, one of the world's most powerful agents. He just wrapped up another extremely profitable summer.


The soccer agent Jorge Mendes, whose guiding hand was present in dozens of deals before Monday's transfer deadline.Credit...Sergio Perez/Reuters

By Tariq Panja
    Published Oct. 5, 2020Updated Oct. 6, 2020

The soccer economy is reeling. Every week there appears to be a new, dizzying figure highlighting the financial crunch the industry is facing as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. More than $115 million in losses at Barcelona alone. Hundreds of millions more in rebates to television rights holders. Across Europe, losses are expected to climb as high as $4.5 billion.

But the crisis has also created a few winners. Among the biggest has been Jorge Mendes, the Portuguese businessman and player agent, who for the last two decades has regularly taken a healthy slice from the $7 billion-a-year player transfer market. This year, despite soccer's meltdown, Mendes appears to be doing better than ever.

In the transfer window that closed Monday night in Europe, Mendes sent Benfica's Rúben Dias to Manchester City for $80 million, then replaced him in Lisbon with another client. He eased James Rodríguez out of Real Madrid's doghouse and into a starring role at Everton, and arranged for Wolverhampton to sell the Irish defender Matt Doherty to Tottenham ($20 million) and the Portuguese forward Diogo Jota to Liverpool ($53 million).

And even as he completed those last two sales, Mendes helpfully persuaded Wolves to spend some of the money it received in his own shop: Wolves replaced Doherty with another Mendes client, Nelson Semedo, and used most of the money from Jota's sale to recruit two rising talents — two more deals driven by Mendes — from F.C. Porto.

Across the board, from the unheralded signing to the headlining-grabbing move, Mendes left his imprint across Europe again. This summer's deals alone have produced hundreds of millions of dollars in players sales, and — perhaps more important to Mendes and his agency, Gestifute — tens of millions of dollars in commissions.

"It seems he is not touched by the crisis," said Pippo Russo, the author of a book that charted the rise of Mendes, 54, from Portuguese nightclub manager to one of soccer's most dominant actors. "We can say the economic power network of Jorge Mendes resisted the coronavirus. It is as if he has the vaccine."

Permanently tanned, impeccably dressed and usually outfitted with a pair of glistening white earphones to field calls, Mendes is never off duty, never pausing in his efforts to cultivate new inroads that could yield new and richer deals. The Mendes business model is built upon relationships, and this summer's transfer window has seen him leverage them to full effect.

Operating deftly in an unstable marketplace, Mendes worked with both financially stricken clubs looking to balance their books and with the few cash-rich outfits that saw opportunity amid the financial uncertainty. The roots of his business are now so entrenched, in fact, that in some cases he and his company are represented on all sides — buying club, selling club and player — of a given deal.

In one recent example — the move of Doherty, a 28-year-old Irish defender, from Wolverhampton to Tottenham — the guiding hand of Mendes touched every facet of the deal.

Wolves, you see, is owned by Fosun International, a Chinese conglomerate that also holds a minority stake in Gestifute. And Doherty, who turned to Mendes earlier this year to guide his career, left a club managed by Mendes's first professional client, Nuno Espirito Santo, to join a team coached by one of Mendes's most high-profile clients, José Mourinho.

Wolves's relationship with Mendes has been the subject of scrutiny in English soccer, with rival clubs complaining about his close ties to Fosun, to Espirito Santo and to a handful of the players on the team's roster. An investigation by the Football League, which is responsible for the three professional tiers of English soccer below the Premier League, found that there were no breaches in how Wolves — bolstered by a clutch of Mendes-linked players from Portugal — secured promotion to England's top flight in 2018.

But Mendes's dealings with the club, and others, run deep. Wolves — and Mendes — were also at the center of two curious trades this summer involving F.C. Porto, a Portuguese champion with a two-decade link to the agent.

On the cusp of a financial meltdown, and with large debts coming due, Porto turned to Mendes to find buyers for some of its up-and-coming stars. In a feat of alchemy that Mendes appears to have honed to perfection, Mendes convinced Fosun, his Chinese partners at Wolves, to pay what could be as much as $70 million for two highly rated though largely untested youngsters: Vitor Ferreira, a 20-year-old midfielder known as Vitinha, and Fábio Silva, an 18-year-old forward.

A quarter of the 40 million euro fee for Silva ended up in agents commissions, Porto announced, with most of it going to Mendes.

The size of Mendes's commission for Silva was eye-catching, and considerably above the industry average, but not uncommon: Last year, when Mendes arranged the $138 million sale of the Benfica teenager João Felix to Atlético Madrid, he reportedly earned about $35 million in the deal.

Still, it was another sign that whatever measures soccer's governing body, FIFA, imposes to try to curb the excesses of the transfer market, the most canny operators are always able to generate sky-high returns.

Porto, which is regulated on the Portuguese stock market, declined to explain why it had agreed to part with 25 percent of the sale price for Silva in commissions.

A spokeswoman for Mendes declined to comment on any of Mendes's past or present deals, saying the agent never discusses his business publicly.

Portuguese agents have privately fumed about Mendes's influence over the industry for years. Yet Mendes is so well-connected that clubs routinely call on him to grease the wheels of deals even when he is not affiliated with the player in question. In January, for example, he was paid $8 million for helping arrange for Braga, a mid-ranking Portuguese team, to sell its young forward Francisco Trincão to Barcelona. Trincão's registered agents were not involved in the sale.

In 2018, the president of Benfica, Portugal's biggest team, described Mendes's role as akin to a taxi service, ferrying out the club's best assets in one direction and ferrying in millions of dollars in the other.

Last week, Mendes helped Benfica replenish its accounts once again. Benfica agreed to send striker Carlos Vinicius on loan to Tottenham under an agreement in which the London team will have to pay 40 million euros to make the deal permanent next summer, and then it sold Dias, a talented defender, to Manchester City for a fee of 68 million euros (about $80 million).

Dias's arrival at Manchester City was bad news for Nicolas Otamendi, since he plays the same position. But Mendes had a solution there, too: Otamendi was promptly sold to Benfica for $18 million, slotting neatly into the space Dias had vacated. Mendes, as Otamendi's agent, cashed in again.

His ties with clubs and executives have at times allowed Mendes's operation to seem like a carousel on which a never ending cast of athletes floats from one club to another. In collecting commissions each time, Mendes directs a system that sometimes seems as sophisticated, and as meticulously choreographed, as anything a coach might direct on the field.

Mendes rarely gives interviews, but he was required in 2017 to explain how his business operated at a court hearing in Spain, where the authorities charged a number of his clients, including Cristiano Ronaldo and Mourinho, with tax evasion. Most of the cases were resolved with guilty pleas and fines.

Mendes told the Spanish court he knew nothing about his clients' tax arrangements, saying he had hired professionals to deal with those affairs. His focus, he said, was purely on guiding their careers.

"I dedicate myself only to this, trying to find the best solutions for my players, and spending a year is like spending a minute," he said, according to news reports at the time. "I try to dedicate my time to my family and spend my life working, on the phone until midnight."

This year, even when soccer ground to a halt, Mendes kept right on working. He remains the agent always ready with a solution, providing clubs can afford his fee.

[celedhring]

I know Wolves are doing well and their fans won't complain, but the way he uses them to line his pockets is such a massive conflict of interest, how is that even allowed?

I mean, we sold Semedo for €30m to them, which is way over the odds given the current economy, and the only reason for the inflated price is because that way Mendes could extract a bigger fee from it, which Wolves paid.

[Duque de Bragança]

In 2018, the president of Benfica, Portugal's biggest team, described Mendes's role as akin to a taxi service, ferrying out the club's best assets in one direction and ferrying in millions of dollars in the other.

This is Salazar's Portugal in the '60s anymore. Even in Portugal, it's more of a 2+1 so with Porto and Sporting in best years. In European competitions, Benfica has been a joke for quite a while now.
Mind you, the big Three are kind of detrimental to the rest.

Yes, Mendes is a plague and no Portuguese club president can deal without him.

[Sheilbh]

I know Wolves are doing well and their fans won't complain, but the way he uses them to line his pockets is such a massive conflict of interest, how is that even allowed?

I mean, we sold Semedo for €30m to them, which is way over the odds given the current economy, and the only reason for the inflated price is because that way Mendes could extract a bigger fee from it, which Wolves paid.

I wonder if this is the window when Wolves sort of start to regret it. Because I think they've sold good players and replaced them with either fairly young, untested players or less good players like Semedo. They are  basically a shop window for Mendes' wares.

[Duque de Bragança]

League of Nations, after friendlies:

Games a bit disappointing yesterday, except perhaps for the English. 

Bosnia-Herzegovina 0 Netherlands 0

No Memphis Depay and it shows. Dzeko can't do everything by himself, specially if he enters only 30 minutes before the end. New Dutch coach is not that great either...

England 2 Belgium 1

Somewhat surprising, a lucky deflection yes but it is legit.

Sweden 1 Croatia

First victory for Croatia, Sweden still at 0.

Poland 0 Italy 0

Italy is not what it used to be and Lewandowski is not performing as well as with Bayern, as nearly always;

Last but not least, ™the Euro 2016 Final Revenge™ [spoiler]or so it was marketed[/spoiler]

France 0 Portugal 0

Tactical game indeed. or "matche taquetique" as would say Deschamps. A Selecção still leading the group.

Fluke of the night:
https://twitter.com/lequipe/status/1315335591832293376

[Josephus]

League of Nations, after friendlies:

Games a bit disappointing yesterday, except perhaps for the English. 
Poland 0 Italy 0

Italy is not what it used to be a
https://twitter.com/lequipe/status/1315335591832293376

Most teams treat this tournament as glorified friendlies, which is what they're intended to be. Come Euro or World Cup and you can expect Italy to do really well, and for England to suck.

[Duque de Bragança]

Well, England won against Belgium, which had beaten them for the Bronze medal for the last World Cup.
As for the last World Cup, Italy did not qualify.

First edition of the League of Nations was better as in less crammed games due to the current health crisis and a more competitive format (3 teams per group in League A).

[Duque de Bragança]

Cristiano Ronaldo tested positive for Covid-19, so no game for him with a Selecção vs Sweden.

Asymptomatic though, so everybody around him has been tested lately. Only the second Portuguese goalkeeper had to leave earlier, since he was tested positive previously.

[The Larch]

Are you guys getting any reporting on this "Big Picture Project" proposal for English football? I just saw a couple of reports son it and it seems to contain some rather worrying elements for the future of English football. As it currently stands it basically implies a heavy concentration of power on the top Premier League clubs and a reorganization of competitions in exchange for a bailout for lower league teams, which are currently in dire straits. It was created by the owners of Man United and Liverpool, with Chelsea later joining them and afterwards including also Arsenal, Man City and Tottenham.

A short summary would be as follows.

Competition related changes:
- Premier League would be reduced to 18 teams, with Championship, League 1 and League 2 staying at 24 teams.
- During the first season a "super relegation" would take place, with 4 Premier League teams going down and cascading downwards. Afterwards, 2 PL teams would be automatically relegated each year, with 2 CL teams being automatically promoted. Afterwards, the 16th PL team would enter a playoff with the 3rd, 4th and 5th CL teams.
- League Cup and Community Shield would be abolished.
- Creation of an independent Women's League.

Financially related changes:
- One-off 250 million pounds bailout for the EFL (Championship, League 1 and League 2), and 100 million pound "gift" for the FA in order to fund lower league teams, grassroots and women's game.
- Complete reworking of the distribution of tv broadcasting rights, with the abolition of parachute payments for relegated PL teams. Instead, 25% of the money from broadcasting rights would go to EFL teams (roughly speaking, 15 million pounds per CL team, 3 millions for L1 and 2 millions for L2), from the current 8%.
- Some games per season would be able to be sold independently from the current broadcasting agreement
- Cap on 20 pounds for tickets destined to away fans, and subsidised travel for supporters.

Premier League management changes:
- Decision making in the Premier League would be reformed. Instead of 14 out of 20 teams being needed to take a decision, for some topics, such as accepting new team owners, financial regulations or the negotiation of broadcasting rights, it would move to 6 out of the 9 "long term stakeholders" (the teams that have currently been in the PL the longest, ie Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Man Utd, Man City, Southampton, Tottenham and West Ham). 6 out of those 9 would also have veto powers as a bloc.

Apparently this plan would have the support of EFL teams, which are desperate for cash, but opposed by the FA, which had been involved in initial talks but left them in opposition of what was being discussed, and is willing to use its "golden share" to block any changes in the Premier League.

[Threviel]

Shouldn't Newcastle be a stakeholder?

[Josquius]

It's pretty bad. Hiding the good (supporting the lower leagues) amongst ridiculous bollocks.
The whole thing about giving 9 teams special rights is particularly stinky. The big 6 I get, and Everton too, but why Southampton and West ham in particular otherwise? Why not Leicester who have actually won the league or (🤮) Newcastle who have had more seasons in the Premier league?
The whole concept of creating an entrenched elite... No.

Also rather than killing the league Cup how about making it worthwhile? Putting some good prize money in it?

18 team premier league is also a thumbs down. Having the top teams weakened due to Europe is a good thing.

[The Larch]

Shouldn't Newcastle be a stakeholder?

They were relegated in 2016 but inmediately promoted again in 2017. Southampton and West Ham are, I believe, the ones from the "long term stakeholders" that have been in the Premier League for the shortest time (they were both promoted in 2012).

[Threviel]

Are there rules for when the stakeholder teams get relegated?