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sharkie
Austria18481 Posts
On June 01 2025 12:05 evilfatsh1t wrote: awkward moment when you left psg for cl trophies and they win one the moment you leave Definitely one of the reasons PSG won the CL | ||
GTR
51487 Posts
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Bacillus
Finland1973 Posts
On June 02 2025 13:38 GTR wrote: meanwhile in brazil, neymar handballs a ball into the net then has the gall to argue with the referee after getting a second yellow card for the infraction and gets sent off lmaoooooo As far as I've understood, his contract is also ending. That may have been his last game for the team. | ||
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KobraKay
Portugal4231 Posts
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Harris1st
Germany6975 Posts
On June 02 2025 16:36 KobraKay wrote: What and end to a career. Outch.....could have been one of the greats but his head was rarely in the right mindset. He got what he deserved IMO. He could have been great but somewhere along the way he decided he wanted to be an asshat instead | ||
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Malinor
Germany4728 Posts
On June 03 2025 00:50 Harris1st wrote: He got what he deserved IMO. He could have been great but somewhere along the way he decided he wanted to be an asshat instead I just watched the highlights of that game, and asshat really is the best description for NEymar. He is just an insufferable person on the pitch. I am glad that he did not succeed on the level that he could have. | ||
Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
Inter in big trouble now. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25875 Posts
Can’t begrudge him looking a new challenge, earning a ‘bit’ of extra cash. Did a great job, and sometimes you do just hit the end of the road and need a change of scenery. Just a bit shit that it’s rumoured to be Saudi Arabia he’s going, rather than say, the Premier League In a related vein, interesting article the BBC published the other day, I meant to stick it in here but was too depressed :p - A new winner, but is Champions League now a Super League by default? Tying it all together, Bruno Fernandes is apparently staying put in Man United, for now at least. But I think it also illustrates this growing gap between leagues yet further. Neither Barca or Real Madrid, or Bayern, or a PSG remotely need a player of his characteristics. I think he’d be a cracking signing for an Italian CL side. I think, if he wanted to move on to play CL, challenge for titles, Inter would be a great move for him. I think it could potentially be a cracking move for Inter as well. Inter can’t afford him, even as CL regulars and the extra prize money from consistent knockout runs and a few finals. Aside from being an Inter Milan fan, that’s kinda a problem, and it’s gonna get worse. The 2000s felt like something of a sweet spot. Or at least a ‘best you can hope for’ balance. Multiple Prem sides won it, or contested finals. 3 Italian sides contested finals, including an all-Italian affair. Porto won it. Teams like Deportivo La Coruna and Villarreal made semis, the latter being a missed penalty away from the final. German sides were competitive, and not just Bayern, Leverkusen made a final only for Zidane to score one of the all-time great final goals. Finishing runners up in 3 competitions to earn the ‘Neverkusen’ moniker that it took until Alonso to extinguish. Never mind the 90s. Just ask Chat GPT or whatever to list the Ro8 lineup for each decade and you’ll see what I mean | ||
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Malinor
Germany4728 Posts
On June 04 2025 03:55 WombaT wrote: Oh fuck right off. Was already going to be a hard rebuild, that’s gonna make it that much harder. Can’t begrudge him looking a new challenge, earning a ‘bit’ of extra cash. Did a great job, and sometimes you do just hit the end of the road and need a change of scenery. Just a bit shit that it’s rumoured to be Saudi Arabia he’s going, rather than say, the Premier League In a related vein, interesting article the BBC published the other day, I meant to stick it in here but was too depressed :p - A new winner, but is Champions League now a Super League by default? Tying it all together, Bruno Fernandes is apparently staying put in Man United, for now at least. But I think it also illustrates this growing gap between leagues yet further. Neither Barca or Real Madrid, or Bayern, or a PSG remotely need a player of his characteristics. I think he’d be a cracking signing for an Italian CL side. I think, if he wanted to move on to play CL, challenge for titles, Inter would be a great move for him. I think it could potentially be a cracking move for Inter as well. Inter can’t afford him, even as CL regulars and the extra prize money from consistent knockout runs and a few finals. Aside from being an Inter Milan fan, that’s kinda a problem, and it’s gonna get worse. The 2000s felt like something of a sweet spot. Or at least a ‘best you can hope for’ balance. Multiple Prem sides won it, or contested finals. 3 Italian sides contested finals, including an all-Italian affair. Porto won it. Teams like Deportivo La Coruna and Villarreal made semis, the latter being a missed penalty away from the final. German sides were competitive, and not just Bayern, Leverkusen made a final only for Zidane to score one of the all-time great final goals. Finishing runners up in 3 competitions to earn the ‘Neverkusen’ moniker that it took until Alonso to extinguish. Never mind the 90s. Just ask Chat GPT or whatever to list the Ro8 lineup for each decade and you’ll see what I mean I'm painting with a deliberately broad black-and-white brush here, but: What I find fascinating is that hyper-capitalist, winner-takes-all America has built systems into its major sports leagues—like the draft and luxury tax—that effectively ensure most teams can be competitive if managed well. As a result, champions rotate regularly, and dynasties are rare. Meanwhile, "socialist" Europe has managed to create the most entrenched sports oligarchies imaginable. In France and Germany, Paris and Munich have virtually monopolized their leagues. Spain isn't much better, with Barcelona and Madrid alternating dominance. England is arguably more diverse, though mainly because the Premier League has abandoned nearly every form of regulation in pursuit of profit. Italy, at least for now, remains relatively competitive. But the 9 titles of Juventus from 2011-2020 is not that long ago either. But this is barely news. It has just become so boring and I cannot believe that football as a product has improved over the last 10-20 years. My interest at least has peaked long ago. I guess/believe it is a bubble in some sense, but since so many countries and shady business men are willing to put giganteous amounts of money into the system, I think we can keep going for quite a while. Don't get me wrong, it was already super capitalist and money focussed 25 years ago, but back then at least smaller clubs could challenge for a title relatively regularly, domestic and international. This aspect has nearly completely vanished. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25875 Posts
On June 04 2025 07:24 Malinor wrote: I'm painting with a deliberately broad black-and-white brush here, but: What I find fascinating is that hyper-capitalist, winner-takes-all America has built systems into its major sports leagues—like the draft and luxury tax—that effectively ensure most teams can be competitive if managed well. As a result, champions rotate regularly, and dynasties are rare. Meanwhile, "socialist" Europe has managed to create the most entrenched sports oligarchies imaginable. In France and Germany, Paris and Munich have virtually monopolized their leagues. Spain isn't much better, with Barcelona and Madrid alternating dominance. England is arguably more diverse, though mainly because the Premier League has abandoned nearly every form of regulation in pursuit of profit. Italy, at least for now, remains relatively competitive. But the 9 titles of Juventus from 2011-2020 is not that long ago either. But this is barely news. It has just become so boring and I cannot believe that football as a product has improved over the last 10-20 years. My interest at least has peaked long ago. I guess/believe it is a bubble in some sense, but since so many countries and shady business men are willing to put giganteous amounts of money into the system, I think we can keep going for quite a while. Don't get me wrong, it was already super capitalist and money focussed 25 years ago, but back then at least smaller clubs could challenge for a title relatively regularly, domestic and international. This aspect has nearly completely vanished. American sport was run as a collective business since forever, and they sensibly concluded a more competitive league is one that sustains consistent interest. European football has very different origins and culture, which does contribute to the problem. With basically the sole exception of the European Super League, partisanship rules. It’s a ‘no you go first’ to problem. Most fans bemoan what we’re talking about, but the second you propose something that’ll touch their club’s prospects, nah mate no thanks! Another problem is we’ll, that it’s European. You regulate say, Serie A to be less financially influenced, and you might get a better domestic league but even less chance of making a dent in Europe unless others follow suit. A further problem for being European is, to my knowledge it’s not legal for a body like UEFA to just implement hard salary caps. And you basically need hard salary caps. Financial Fair Play and tying budgets to revenue is an ineffective fudge, and in some ways merely helps the rich get richer. Valencia twice, Deportivo La Coruna won La Liga in the 2000s, Real Sociedad were runners-up to Real Madrid in a season where the other Champion’s League spots went to Celta Vigo and and Depor. How’s that happening now? I’ll add the caveat that Depor and Valencia kinda spent big and suffered for it eventually, but you could do it. If you’re capped at revenue, and your existing competition already has more revenue than you, which basically guarantees them CL football and more additional revenue every year, how do you ever catch up? Another is where the money comes from. Broadcasting and benefactors increasingly dwarf matchgoing fans, so they cease to be a part of the equation at all. Other, I’ll call historical or ‘organic’ facets of big clubs increasingly cease to matter too. Ajax is in a big European capital. They’ve got a famed academy. Pretty decent attendances. If they could just hold on to a generation or two of academy grads and actually build a side they’d absolutely be consistently at least competitive. But they cannae do that. Porto are less a creator and nurturer of local talent, but have a great eye for taking hidden (or even less hidden) gems, especially from South America, giving them that platform to develop and shine. Unlike Ajax Porto managed to actually win the Champion’s League, but, like Ajax can’t keep a team together for long. Absolute parity is gonna be hard to achieve of course. You can’t realistically equalise say, Celtic/Rangers and I dunno, Saint Mirren. The Glasgow clubs have an ‘organic’ advantage too big to kinda circumvent. Serie A at its peak probably had the best domestic league relative to others going that I’ve ever heard of. Foreigner cap in this instance. Incredibly competitive and also high quality. The famed ‘Seven Sisters’ , so named as a whole seven teams were frequently involved at the business end. This cap worked because plenty of Italian clubs could produce or acquire Italian players of similar levels, and with limited slots they went big for their foreigners. Maradona most famously at Napoli, Platini at Juventus (some forget he was a bloody handy player these days haha!), Matthaus at Inter. For fuck sake Zico played for Udinese Now, I certainly wouldn’t argue for quite as strict a cap on foreign players or anything like that, but I think it’s quite the interesting contrast, and I think one of the huge problems in competitiveness. Imagine those players were playing in modern La Liga. Barca are a bit financially fucked, you’d have maybe one of that list there, and about 4 at Real Madrid, and none for the rest of the league. Can they all play? No. I’m not picking on Real specifically here, within the confines of French football PSG are even worse. The disparity of talent across first teams for me is less of a problem than the disparity of squads, and those squads are growing. It wasn’t a problem in Italian football of the 80s because you only had room for one or two, you’d buy some world class, hall-of-fame player but most of the league had one. End Rant/Final Thoughts I’m unsure how you can fix that problem. I don’t know if you can, and ultimately I don’t know if the will is even there, but here’s some random ideas of mine anyway. - You obviously can’t ban foreign players and go 80s Serie A nowadays haha, nor would I particularly advocate it. Perhaps a European-wide soft salary cap or something like a ‘designated player(s)’ would be legal. You are only allowed x amount of players who earn above x salary in a matchday squad. I’ve yet to see a legal case where actually playing football, on the pitch formed a restriction of trade case. Maybe a grey area! You could potentially mitigate some of the problems I’ve outlined in a twofold way. Clubs have less incentive to acquire top, top players that aren’t guaranteed starters that enhance their side, top, top players may think twice at joining such a club and look elsewhere. Different tax regimes may prove annoying here, assuming this was even legal, but I think the principle is overall quite sound. I’m quite proud of this one as it’s a rare example of me not just regurgitating someone else’s ideas :p Nah but really it’s the only one I’ve either had or heard that might work. It’s illegal to cap individual salaries, and by extension (although I’m not sure) I think it’s also illegal to cap it at an organisational level. At least on a pan-European basis. Capping by revenue as FFP does to some degree is legal, but I think doesn’t address the problem and indeed makes it worse. - I would reverse the flow of some prize money, or split it into sporting achievement/sporting development. Some way to stop the perpetuation of success. The same concept of how US sports equalise where the worst sides get preferential picks next time, only via prize money distribution. It may require some funkiness to prevent deliberate tanking, as well as keeping some incentive for success. Perhaps a badly performing side gets their failure bonus, but if they perform worse the next season, there’s a little cut. And perhaps the top sides still get their bonus, but it’s paid out over a stretch of time. I’m aware of the pitfalls here. More of a domestic league proposal than a Champion’s League one, but I think the CL could definitely look at its redistribution as well. - Speaking of the CL, prize money could be inversely correlated to your country’s coefficient ranking. If both Celtic and Spurs get to the Round of 16 in next year’s competition, Celtic get more money because they’re doing it from a weaker league. The downside of this is it even further gives Celtic an edge domestically with even more CL cash, but I think that ship has sailed long since for teams in that kind of position of dominant domestically, always in the CL, more money, even more dominant, more CL. As that ship has sailed, you may as well try to get sides like that to be more competitive in Europe. - Another one I’m not sure of the legality of, but I would fix abuse of the ‘home grown’ rules, that mostly big clubs seek to muck around with. Alejandro Garnacho and Marcus Rashford are both Man United produced for example, but I mean, they really both aren’t the same there. - On the positive side of that, I would also add to the ‘genuine’ homegrown players aspect and offer some kind of bonus to sides in European competition who’ve a lot of them in their side. I’m not sure what that looks like. Perhaps, going back to my earlier proposal, if you’ve got a certain amount of academy players, you get to field an extra big salary player to your squad. The pitfall of this, yes I’m aware is this is basically a ‘give Barcelona an extra big salary player slot’, but they’re quite a special case and tbh as much as they’re a badly-run shitshow, they probably do deserve something for La Masia. Whew, fuck me I was not intending that to be even an eighth as long! Hopefully it can spark some further chat and I’m interested to hear what your thoughts are on my bollocks | ||
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gTank
Austria2584 Posts
 In my home town too! | ||
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DropBear
Australia4371 Posts
Plus you would get Superleague 2 faster than you could blink | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6975 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25875 Posts
On June 04 2025 18:53 gTank wrote: Still reading this, nice stuff so far Wombat but Ajax won CL ... In my home town too!And what a side that was! The Bosman ruling did rather dismantle it sadly | ||
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Acrofales
Spain18088 Posts
On June 04 2025 21:00 DropBear wrote: The dream is a salary cap being mandatory to compete, but EU law would make that impossible right? (not an expert on EU law here) Plus you would get Superleague 2 faster than you could blink I'm still not entirely clear on why EU makes salary caps impossible. The Dutch civil service has salary caps, and they include things like television hosts on public tv, CEOs of publicly owned companies, deans of universities, etc. So clearly the government can regulate salaries in a broad range of situations. They could presumably find a way to regulate that sports organisations playing in public leagues have a salary cap. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25875 Posts
On June 05 2025 04:49 Acrofales wrote: I'm still not entirely clear on why EU makes salary caps impossible. The Dutch civil service has salary caps, and they include things like television hosts on public tv, CEOs of publicly owned companies, deans of universities, etc. So clearly the government can regulate salaries in a broad range of situations. They could presumably find a way to regulate that sports organisations playing in public leagues have a salary cap. From memory (I’m really basing most of what I ‘know’ about this stuff from a big giant podcast on the topic), the main impediments are a combination of international trade/freedom of movement, competition laws and ye olde worker’s rights. You can solve problem A, but then you get problem B. Solve that and you’re transgressing A again, or perhaps some new area. And if we assume you can crack these issues legally, there’s the rather thorny issue of the legitimacy of say, UEFA to even do it. They administer their competitions, and clubs play ball, it’s kinda mutually beneficial, or at worst tolerable. They don’t own football in Europe as such, if that semi-symbiotic relationship stops suiting some stakeholders, maybe we see Superleague 2.0, or a more widespread detachment. I’m not even sure if FIFA’s current role as overseer and ratifier of things like regulations and inter-club transfers would survive an actual big rebellion of clubs. I mean they are basically more akin to Kespa in Brood War, than Blizz in SC2. So perhaps if potential legal hurdles are overcome, and it’s doable that way, clubs may just rebel, breakaway orgs and leagues form or something. | ||
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sharkie
Austria18481 Posts
Very good S11, chaotic game, Germany lead and then he subs in Füllkrug, Gnabry and Gosens Why??? | ||
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gTank
Austria2584 Posts
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GTR
51487 Posts
![[image loading]](https://preview.redd.it/iugll3ct9w4f1.png?auto=webp&s=55754d1123249d9ba5f7c6c943004411a021071d) had a giggle at this | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25875 Posts
To you ‘continentals’, are the Nation’s League finals a big deal in your various countries and taken seriously, or is it a case that some football is better than no football? The English really don’t. The Scots and Welsh do seem to get up for it, given it’s another potential route to a major tournament | ||
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