Football (Soccer) Thread

[celedhring]

So, how much do you love Luuk de Jong right now? 

I feel conflicted.

[Sheilbh]

Hadn't seen this but genuinely incredible punditry on the Zouma-cat vidoe by Graeme Souness
https://twitter.com/CheapPanini/status/1492909460003725317?s=20&t=oYU9gYZ72Tt7DRr5tIK75Q

[The Larch]

So, how much do you love Luuk de Jong right now? 

I feel conflicted.

Having a target man who can head a cross goes against your religion? 

[celedhring]

So, how much do you love Luuk de Jong right now? 

I feel conflicted.

Having a target man who can head a cross goes against your religion? 

He's Football Satan coming to tempt me with false miracles of turning long balls into goals.

[Duque de Bragança]

Pepe's fans on Languish will be happy to know that in the highlight of the Portuguese league, Porto-Sporting, he managed to get red carded, after the final whistle, for kicking.
2-2 was the final result, with almost 10 min of stoppage time, and not much effective play 43 min (!).
5 red card all in all, with the last 4 in the post-game rumble.  or 

Porto still first of the league, 6 points ahead of Sporting with 12 more games to play.

[FunkMonk]

Hadn't seen this but genuinely incredible punditry on the Zouma-cat vidoe by Graeme Souness
https://twitter.com/CheapPanini/status/1492909460003725317?s=20&t=oYU9gYZ72Tt7DRr5tIK75Q

[Sheilbh]

What's the reason for the UEFA/CL rule that they can't show replays during a VAR check?

[celedhring]

What's the reason for the UEFA/CL rule that they can't show replays during a VAR check?

To avoid putting pressure on the referee one way or another. Many stadiums show replays on their jumbotrons.

[Sheilbh]

I can see that. Weird it applies to broadcasters too though.

[Syt]

Saw the other day that DAZN have doubled their subscription price over here from 14.99 to 29.99 per month (or 149.99 to 274.99 annually) for new and returning customers. They have the German Bundesliga rights split with Sky, so if you want to watch all of Bundesliga, you need to sub to both (Sky Sports is 20 EUR/month, I think?). The German market competition/anti-cartel authorities said a few years ago that having German Bundesliga on only one pay TV channel is bad for competition which is why the rights are now split. One of them (Sky?) is carrying the Saturday matches, the other the Friday and Sunday matches. Over the season every club will play several matches on each one of those days - so if you want to be able to watch live all matches of your favorite teams you have to sub to both providers and pay more than you did when there was only one broadcaster.

[Sheilbh]

Similar here - the Premier League absolutely loves it because if they can sell games to more broadcasters they can earn more money. But, as you say, not sure it's great for the consumer - I think here you'd need Sky, Amazon Prime and maybe BT Sport (I think they're selling to DAZN though). Plus BT Sport have the Champions League - and if you're interested in any other leagues they're all also spread across loads of different broadcasters. Competitive, sure. But not great

[Josquius]

At the least they should sell packages based on teams rather than just a random grabbag.
If you support West ham you get sky, if you support Bournemouth you get BT. That sort of thing.

[Josephus]

Here...in Canada...it's getting annoying.

A few years back, all you had to do was subscribe to a decent cable package with the two main sports networks, TSN and Sportsnet. Technically you could do without Sportsnet who shared EPL with TSN for a bit, but then ditched it and only had FA Cup and Bundesliga.

On TSN, both on TV and its website you could get all EPL games. All Canadian MLS games. All Canadian international games. They carried some world cup qualifiers as well as the finals itself. They had the Champions League games as welll.

There was another premium channel, BEIN, you could get to watch Spanish games and the Champions League games TSN sold to them (the shitty ones no one watched).

Then DAZN came in and stole EPL, La Liga and Serie A. OK... good deal. Plus MLS games not involving Canadian teams. Lots of football.
Then OneSoccer came and started up with the Canadian Premier League and then stole the Concacaf club and nations leagues.
Now a new up and comer, Fubo TV, took Serie A and next year will have EPL.
DAZN lost La Liga to TSN.

So next year, if you're a hardcore you need:

FuboTV for EPL and Serie A.
DAZN for Champions League and UEFA. (Plus Carabo if you care). And non Canadian MLS games.
OneSoccer for Canadian Premier League, Ligue Un, Concacaf world cup qualifers, Concacaf Champions League
Sportsnet for FA Cup. Bundesliga (some) Plus women's games
TSN for La Liga (some) World Cup Finals. MLS involving Canadian teams.
Telelatino for World cup qualifiers that involve Italy, Spain and Portugal.
BEIN now only has South American qualifers.

And it keeps changing every few years.

[Grey Fox]

And that's only in English & if you only are hardcore about soccer.

[Syt]

It's weird when you compare e.g. with NFL or MLB. If I sub to them for the season, it costs me a much less of what I'd pay for soccer over here (I know it's different for North Americans due to blackout rules), with access to, well, everything, really. I mean MLB is under EUR 200, and we're talking 162 games per team (with your choice of home or away commentary, or radio commentary), plus spring training, plus playoffs.