Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

Zaniolo upfront somewhere

I was thinking about it, and this is the first crisis Ajax is in since Cruijff passed away. It’s a sad thought that he isn’t there anymore to step in.

The success we had in recent years was for a decent part the result of the last time Cruijff stepped in and restructured the club.

Oh, I didn't see that update, thank you. Still, that makes it over double the price in one season.

Cruyff's Barcelona might be luckiest team in history, 3 of their 4 La Liga titles are due to massive bottlejobs of rivals on a final day, twice Madrid lost to Tenerife and once Deportivo missed late penalty which would've made them Spanish champions. I guess their luck finally run out when they got battered by Milan 4:0 in UCL final, after which "dream team" won nothing.

I assumed Scotland games would be on TV like England's games are, I've never even heard of Viaplay before.

So even having all of the other services to watch football you would still need to pay Viaplay £15 to watch a Scotland game?

!PING TRIVIA

You know the easiest way to stop players from betting and fixing? Ban betting. Gambling fucking ruins lives.

Toffolo at LB, Sturridge uptop with Toney

Because if rules made sense and VAR worked greatly, football talk shows and pundits would lose 80% of their talking points.

My stream is showing the 'Fox Soccer plus' coverage of the Albania-Czechia game, and I've never heard more of a golf commentator ever. Commenting here because no match threaddo.

I didn’t say it wasn’t impressive nor did I say it was easy. But only, City have done more impressive and harder things.

For the love of fucking god just let have open discussions on this sub

I mean how was he meant to know that Barnes would be injured and Tonali might be betting?

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I think that athletes should be able to bet on sports unless they are betting against their own team.

Money is never enough. Messi can earn €1M weekly and still need a contract boost lest he leaves. Imagine people like Tonali.

I also imagine it isn't just about making money, they already have so much disposable income I think they probably are looking for a "fun" way to spend it.

I agree but there's a weird sizeable minority who really have it out for him.

But what has milan to do here? He played in milan 3 years ago and he is invastigated for betting on west ham games?

Do you think that the variety in the Morrocan diaspora is a reason for their success?

Other than Morroco itself, players come from Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Spain. Most other African countries don’t have as great of a reach.

so apparently Brentford - Arsenal on the 26th November (Saturday) can't be played at 12:30 pm so they'll move Man City - Liverpool to the early kick off

This would mean Liverpool would have the early game away on TNT/BT in all 3 of this season's early kick offs after the intl break

I'm not sure what even would be the conspiracy here, but what exactly is this record?

Oh absolutely gambling is old style it’s been around for ever. What’s changed now is gambling companies are much smarter and know how to target individuals and how to do so. Betting companies actively seek out and target people they can exploit to get hooked so much more now and it’s hard to escape it.

Who do you fancy winning golden boy? Don't know half of the names there ffs, do João Neves or António Silva have a shot?

I stumbled on a newsletter from 2009 (I can’t find it anymore) where they rated the top 100 greatest goalkeepers of all time, and Buffon was ranked 2nd behind Yashin. He was only 31 years old at the time.

I found that very interesting, because from all the revisionism you read, you’d think he was a longevity merchant and his peak was nothing special.

It is quite illegal, but I don’t think there’s any way to prove it for Newcastle so they’re not gonna face any consequences

The hypocrisy in football and gambling is insane. Every club and sponsor pushes every gambling algorithm they can now to get people addicted and hooked onto spending there money and wonder when players do it. It’s a joke how much influence and how big sports betting has come at the cost of targeting young sports fans and getting them hooked. Gambling is dangerous and football makes it thrive. Not just football it’s all betting kinds now.

England and Real Madrid PR together if that happens, world isn't ready for this.

That's just match fixing though. Doesn't matter if it's Toney calling up Pickford or some crime syndicate.

Yeah I can’t think of a situation where your shoulder being ahead of the defender gives you an advantage (if your feet are in line).

Neither are worth close to the fee they went for

England u21s playing some lovely football tonight.

Tbh it seems like the game was the same for years but in the last 5 we’ve had more rule changes than in the 15 years before that.

For those who think Bellingham is overrated, what exactly are his weaknesses? The only glaring one that I can think of is he's not really a controller like a Kroos or Xavi, but that's probably due to the position that Ancelotti is playing him this season. If Madrid sign a world-class striker next season, and Bellingham goes back to his usual midfield position, we'll probably see him focus more on controlling the game. Maybe you can argue his technique/eye test is overrated, but technique doesn't really matter if you're producing results on the pitch

He didn’t win 1 La Liga title, he won 4 in a row and a Europa Cup 1.

I understand the concern, but (unless I'm mistaken) boxers are allowed to bet on themselves and MMA fighters were until 2022 and I don't think either have have a greater uptick in match fixing than football.

The AFCON draw is going live, Akon is dancing coupe decalé. Good stuff

Don't get me wrong Cruyff did brilliant things for Barcelona, even if he only won 1 La Liga title, but it rubs me the wrong way when people say it is one of greatest teams of all time, when it wasn't even best during its era - Milan under Sacchi and Capello was.

Please a match thread we've already scored.

This is a beautiful day for my anti-Zaniolo agenda. Following his ídolo Pogba right out of football

Both the Hull City boys on the scoresheet for England tonight 😎

Is it just a coincidence that Paqueta played for Milan, or is he also part of the expose that's going on in Italy right now.

Maybe not but I’d be against boxers or MMA fighters betting on themselves as well. Betting on yourself is also different than betting on a match you’re not involved in, but I think it’s easier to just have a blanket ban on betting instead of all kinds of exceptions.

It’s also not like you’re depriving a player of something meaningful if you don’t allow them to bet. I don’t see the upside of allowing it, only downsides.

To the people already crying about Bellinghams PR, just wait until he fires England to Euros glory next summer, he’ll be spoken about in the same way as most prophets

Don't disagree, just it's weird that it is often talked about as one of greatest teams in history, when they weren't even best of their era(Sacchi and Capello's Milan).

THE BIZARRE STORIES OF ARGENTINIAN FOOTBALL: DAY 7 RESULTS

The options from last time, the “teams indirectly affiliated (IA) to AFA” day:

A- Federal Amateur 2022 had 283 teams. Only 6 were promoted.

B- In 2022, AFA gave each Primera B team more than double the money from TV rights than they gave to each Federal A team, despite both divisions being the same tier, and Federal A teams travelling much more across a season.

C- Gimnasia de Jujuy got promoted to the 1st division in 2005. Their city, Jujuy, is located at the very north of the country. The city’s airport wasn’t working for most of that year; therefore, they were forced by AFA to play many home games in Tucumán (around 300 kms to the south), so away teams wouldn’t need to travel that distance by bus.

D- Argentinian football went professional in 1931, but teams indirectly affiliated to AFA were accepted in the main leagues system only since 1980.

(be aware, this will be a bit longer than usual)

A: it’s true and, as usual, it becomes worse. First of all, why so many teams, and why the weird number? Well, have in mind that Argentina is a huge country and this is the last division for IA teams, below this it’s regional leagues to gain a place to Federal Amateur.

Until 2019, there were 2 divisions, Federal B and C, but that year AFA (with Tapia as president) had the “fantastic” idea of merging both into one, also making the new division amateur instead of professional, hence the name. A lot of teams got fucked by that, and you can imagine that nowadays being relegated to Federal Amateur is like entering a black hole, as it’s really hard to get promoted in this mess.

Another thing: actually, in 2022 there were going to be only 4 promotions. What happened? After the 4 finals to determine the promotions were played, someone said “why not have 2 more?”, so the 4 losers played 2 more finals to determine the last 2 promotions. Well, “played” is generous in the case of San Martin de Mendoza: they were supposed to play one of the new finals, but instead got automatically promoted because their rivals, Independiente de San Cayetano, were disqualified due to incidents in a previous game. Odd.

B: Yes, you probably guessed it: it actually gets worse! I chose 2022 as it was the last year, but in some of the previous ones, the money distribution was even worse. In 2020, for example, teams from Primera B made almost 3 times more than Federal A ones, and even Primera C teams made more than those from Federal A. That’s right: teams from 4th division, who usually travel like 30 kms at most and have very small fanbases, made more money from AFA than 3rd division teams that usually travel A LOT more, and are watched by more fans (in case TV views could be an excuse).

And if you’re thinking that it looks like the distribution is slowly improving, I gotta say that I doubt it. If there’s something that Tapia is doing, is NOT giving fair chances to federal teams. I expect the difference to become bigger over time. Consejo Federal (the organization in charge of Federal A & Amateur), as well as many of the team’s presidents, are corrupt as fuck, so Tapia will continue to destroy federal teams as long as he has money to give to CF and its teams’ boards.

C: my story-telling must be improving, as none of you thought I could come up with this. I even made up the airport part haha. But hey, Gimnasia (J) did get promoted in 2005, that part was true.

D: football in England was invented in 1992, and for many teams in Argentina, it was in 1980. I had to specify in the “main leagues system” part, as many IA teams actually played in the first division previously, in the called “Torneos Nacionales”… but that’s a story for another moment.

A last thing: I decided to include a “bonus” in each quiz from now on. This time I will post it here as I forgot to do it in the previous trivia, but starting from the next one, it will be in the same post as the game. It will not be part of the trivia tho, as it will be always true; it’s simply another story, that may not fully deserve to be part as one of the headlines, was too complicated to write in a “trivia option” way, or that I couldn’t include as I have many more.

This time, of course, the bonus is about this trivia’s theme: in 2014, Federal A had 21 new teams compared to the previous season. One of them, Talleres, was relegated from the 2nd division. 3 of them were promoted from Federal B. And the other 17? They were teams from Federal B that were invited by the Consejo Federal to “restructure” the division. Here’s a list with the teams.

!PING TRIVIA

Take a guess