The European Leagues & Competitions Thread V2

[Johnnyeye 7,403]

5 hours ago, Vesper said:

Yes, that 2013/14 Atletico team was superb, damn shame they missed two great chances to beat Real in regular time in the CL final.

At least they won La Liga, which was the only time in the last 15 years it was not won by either Barca (10 times) or Real (4 times)

They were fucking loaded

Raúl García was a beast (his career best year with 17 goals) at AMF that season, as was Diego Costa (36 goals, by far his best year, he came to us the next season)

Saúl Ñíguez was out on loan at Rayo Vallecano (the only season he was not at AM) and became a starter next year at just 19yo

They even had an ageing Tiago (he was 32yo most of the season, the ages below show the oldest age that season, even if it was only for a couple games like Tiago) from our 2004/5 wonder team (who was sold bizarrely in summer 2005 and that made me cry, lolol)

Other than the backup keeper, Dani Aranzubia (born in September 1979, so missed it by around a year and 3.5 months, and he retired from football after this season at only 34) the entire team was Millennials

Trivia note, Dani Aranzubia, then on Deportivo de La Coruña, on February 20, 2011 became the first GK in La Liga history to score from open play (corner kick header to draw the game 1-1 in the 95th minute versus UD Almería.)

what a team, Atletico were really unlucky not to win Champions League that season, they deserved it no doubt, still remember watching the final and i tought that 1-0 lead they had was never safe and they should have scored the killer 2nd goal, but in football when you don't score you get punished and that Ramos equalizer in stoppage time was a big blow to Atletico, who couldnt cope in extra time and got blown out 4-1. Football can be so cruel, we know it from experience.

[Johnnyeye 7,403]

16 hours ago, Atomiswave said:

lmao im dead  

[Atomiswave 6,072]

Dont you just love the myth that is Anfield, the hype and love the media shove in our throats. Its a myth, they sing when they score or ahead, they love to big these cunts at every corner, no agenda here at all.

I fucking loved seeing mcmanaman and Owen cry, it was lucious. YNWA? WHat is that exactly? Cuz im my reality it means you make a slight mistake and death threats on your way....all fucking myths.

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Laylabelle 9,292]

One legged would make more sense. 

[Vesper 27,280]

CIES Football Observatory

n°287 - 16/03/2020

Values

Squad valuation: six clubs over one billion

https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2019/wp287/en/

 

The 287th edition of the Weekly Post ranks clubs from the five major European leagues according to the value on the transfer market of players under contract. The analysis takes into account the 20 players per club with the highest values as per the algorithm exclusively developed by the CIES Football Observatory research team.

With an aggregated value of €1.4 billion, Liverpool heads the table. Jürgen Klopp’s team outranks Manchester City, the two Spanish giants (Barcelona and Real Madrid) and Chelsea. The valuation of the latter team has strongly increased thanks to the outbreak of many young talents following the transfer ban imposed by FIFA to the London club. The German side Paderborn is at the bottom of the table.

The estimate ranges for all of the big-5 league players with a sufficient level of professional experience are freely available here. The 53rd Monthly Report presents the variables included in the statistical model developed by the CIES Football Observatory to assess the transfer values of professional footballers on a scientific basis.

Aggregated transfer value, by club (€ Million)

20 players with the highest values per club, 11/03/2020

 

 

[Jase 43,479]

Euro 2020 -> Euro 2021

[Laylabelle 9,292]

Right decision. Doesnt have the same ring to it though

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Fulham Broadway 16,383]

Its not all suspended. Massive game on Friday live on BT 3 .

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Central Coast Mariners v Melbourne City -should be a cracker

[communicate 2,703]

6 hours ago, Jason said:

 

Make sense due to player contract. I don't understand listening people who complained about this. 

[Jase 43,479]

1 minute ago, communicate said:

Make sense due to player contract. I don't understand listening people who complained about this. 

That's assuming the leagues can start on time for them to be completed by June 30...

[communicate 2,703]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

That's assuming the leagues can start on time for them to be completed by June 30...

Agree, If they can't resume playing at least in close door by May, there will be another meeting and it will be an interesting one. 

[Vesper 27,280]

Will we really finish the season in June? Football’s new calendar explained

https://theathletic.com/1681602/2020/03/18/coronavirus-football-june-euro-2020-champions-league-uefa-season/

Eight weeks after the outbreak of a virus led to some Olympic women’s football qualifiers being moved from one Chinese province to another, the last football fixtures were removed from the calendar everywhere.

Of course, we will play, watch, argue about and enjoy football again, but on Tuesday the last football dates we could circle on the calendar were moved. The 2021 Club World Cup, Africa Cup of Nations, Copa America, Champions League, Europa League, Euro 2020… all paused, pushed back and provisionally rearranged.

And those are the tournaments everyone knows. The day in England started with coaches, officials, parents, players and volunteers reading emails from their county Football Associations and local leagues telling them the grassroots and youth seasons were on hold.

Tuesday felt like the first day football got a foothold. There were meetings and there were decisions. Those decisions were sensible and clearly communicated. And, for the first time in a fortnight, nobody appears to be threatening to sue anyone.

OK, what was decided and who decided it?

Last Thursday, a day before Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta contracted COVID-19 and the Premier League was forced to suspend its season, European football’s governing body UEFA invited its 55 member associations, the European Club Association, European Leagues and world players’ union FIFPro to discuss how the game should tackle the coronavirus outbreak.

That discussion took place in three separate video conferences on Tuesday, with the key announcement being the widely-trailed decision to move the European Championship finals from this summer to next.

In a joint statement, signed by the four presidents of the ECA, EL, FIFPro and UEFA, it was also revealed that the Euro 2020 play-offs scheduled for later this month to decide the last four sides in the 24-team competition will hopefully take place in the now-vacated June international window. The Nations League finals, Euro Under-21 Championship and Women’s European Championship that had all been scheduled for next summer “will be rescheduled accordingly”, as will the third and fourth rounds of European qualifying for the 2022 World Cup.

On the club side, a “commitment” was made to complete all domestic and European competitions “by the end of the current sporting season, ie 30 June 2020 at the latest, should the situation improve and resuming playing be appropriate and prudent enough”. To facilitate this, there will be “possible limitations or drops of current exclusive calendar slots”, which means domestic games might be scheduled at the same time as European club fixtures and European games might have to take place on weekends.

But, and this is potentially very significant, it was also admitted that further “possible adaptions” to next season’s qualifying rounds for the Champions League and Europa League, which usually start in early July, might need to be considered “in case of late completion of the 2019-20 season, ie after 30 June 2020”.

And it was also announced that two working groups would be set up: one to look at the fixture list and how best to complete the current season “in a coherent manner”, and another to “assess the economic, financial and regulatory impact” of the outbreak and “propose measures to mitigate its consequences”.

Elsewhere, South America’s governing body CONMEBOL followed UEFA’s lead by moving the 2020 Copa America back 12 months and the African confederation postponed the 2020 African Nations Championship, which alternates years with the Africa Cup of Nations, indefinitely.

Later on Tuesday, world football’s governing body FIFA added its voice to the chorus of common sense by “accepting” the various postponements and agreeing to reschedule its new and improved Club World Cup, which had been pencilled in for next summer, to later in 2021 or some as yet to be discovered gap in the calendar in 2022 or 2023.

If that sounds like the very least it could do in terms of leadership, it did also commit $10 million to the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19  solidarity response fund and suggested setting up a “global football assistance fund to help members of the football community affected by the crisis”.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino was probably not across the latest breaking news from north London when he dictated this statement but the very obvious need for such a hardship fund was confirmed shortly before it arrived when Barnet, a former English Football League side now in the fifth-tier National League, announced it was putting all non-playing staff on notice.

As FIFPro general secretary Jonas Baer-Hoffmann told journalists on a conference call on Tuesday, “our industry employs hundreds of thousands — there is the potential for it to turn ugly very quickly”.

Why have all these different football bodies agreed to postpone their tournaments? 

For the simple reason that everyone — apart from those like West Ham United vice-chair Baroness Karren Brady or Southend United owner Ron Martin, who might have an agenda or two — agrees priority must be given to finishing this season.

To do anything else will only spark rows, resentment and reams of billable hours. That might happen anyway, such is the utter unpredictability and mounting gloom of the situation in Europe, but what was impossible a week ago, when Euro 2020 was still starting in Rome on June 12, is now less impossible.

Nobody believes football will be resuming in England, or anywhere else, on April 3, which is when the initial pause is programmed to expire. In fact, there is almost no chance of any professional football until May at the earliest, and many are wondering if even that is ludicrously optimistic given the prediction that the outbreak’s peak in the UK is still 10 weeks off. But let’s just be ultra-positive for a moment.

Teams in England have 10 or fewer league games to play, eight of them are still in the FA Cup and there are the three EFL play-off competitions to complete, which add another 15 games. It is a similar story across Europe, where most leagues have about a quarter of their games to finish, plus a domestic cup, and in UEFA’s two club competitions 12 of the 16 last-16 games have not been completed.

With a fair wind, some creative thinking, the best efforts of the players and a bit of luck that not too many of them will be self-isolating at once, it is just about feasible to squeeze all of that into nine weeks of non-stop football.

That way, Liverpool get their title, asterisk-free, the relegation chips will fall where they may, Manchester City can seal the most litigious treble of all-time, Leeds United are given a fair crack at scratching their 16-year itch, the Championship’s Grand National-sized chasing pack are allowed to fight to the last fence, Celtic receive no gifts, Coventry City and Crewe Alexandra are forced to seal the deal and all the other sporting questions are answered as the fixture computer intended. Though if Manchester City continue in the Champions League and FA Cup, their schedule will be very tight.

UEFA might have to drop the two-legged quarter-finals in its competitions and organise “Final Four” weeks in Gdansk and Istanbul, and we might all have to get used to four different competitions being played on one day, but after two months of board games and boxsets we will be desperate for some live sport so, who knows, it might be just what the doctor ordered.

Finish by that June 30 target, six days after the Europa League final is supposed to happen in Poland and three days after the Champions League final’s new date, and you also avoid the headache of having to persuade thousands of out-of-contract players to accept short deals to keep playing or returning any money to broadcasters and sponsors.

You also avoid completely scuppering the start of the following season and if these games have to take place behind closed doors for public health reasons, well, at least we are avoiding meltdown on Merseyside and the prospect of Brentford trying to sue the Premier League.

Great, will it work? 

Erm, no. Probably not.

Not by June 30, anyway. And that is why the only date in the joint statement was prefaced with a bizarre but telling “ie” and then slightly contradicted two bullet points later with the reference to “possible adaptions” being needed if the seasons go beyond the end of June.

Because right now it just does not seem plausible that a continent at the epicentre of a global pandemic, which has killed nearly 8,000 people, will be playing much professional sport in six weeks’ time.

As FIFPro’s Baer-Hoffmann puts it, “the players will not just be able to walk out of their apartments and go straight on the pitch… they will need mini pre-seasons”, while Accrington Stanley owner Andy Holt has talked about the resumption in even more sobering terms — “we could start playing again with quite a few of our fans missing”.

This brings us to the debate nobody wants to have this week — for good reason — but everyone knows must be had at some point in the next month. Do we start as soon as we safely can and then just keep playing until this season’s games are finished, whenever and wherever that is, or do we wrap up the season without playing all the games and dish out the merits and demerits as best we can?

At present, there does appear to be a consensus in the game to finish what we have started.

In a call with reporters on Tuesday afternoon, FA chief executive Mark Bullingham repeatedly said “football is firmly of the view” the season should be completed, while the 24 Championship clubs held their own video conference and decided unanimously to play on until the last kick of their play-off final, even if that means continuing to Halloween.

It is heartening to hear that commitment to the principle of competitive integrity and letting teams decide their fates on the field but it will be interesting to see whether that consensus holds if the lockdown lingers beyond May. The contractual conundrum has already been mentioned and FIFA has said it will need to come up with some solutions to its rules on registering players after certain deadlines and working out when to open and close the next transfer window.

Broadcasters and sponsors will want certainty at some point, too. So far, they have not publicly started throwing their weight around but having invested so much in the football industry, they will be desperate to get back to normality with a brand new narrative to tell.

Fans with no dogs in the fight at the top or bottom of the tables might tire of the stoic march to completion, while FIFA and UEFA will also start to get a little antsy about the never-ending season and the knock-on effects it will have on their 2020-21 plans.

One possible hurry-up would be to come up with a series of play-offs to decide who wins what, who comes up and who goes down. It is something the Italian football federation has started thinking about… and apparently already decided against.

There is, of course, another solution to a season you cannot finish: you pretend it never happened.

This is the idea floated by Brady in a newspaper column last weekend and backed by Southend’s Martin, whose side are 16 points off safety in League One with nine to play, in an interview with the local paper on Tuesday. But it is an idea that attracted howls of indignation across the game, forcing the baroness to back-pedal.

This does not mean, however, these two pantomime baddies are the only ones thinking “null and void” is the only way out of the contractual chaos and scheduling nightmare the sport faces.

What Tuesday’s outbreak of collegiate thinking has done is silence those whispers for a few weeks. By removing this summer’s hard deadline for finishing the club seasons, the game’s bosses have created just enough space for a minor miracle to occur.

What happens next, then? 

The big bosses keep talking, the working groups get working, hard-pressed clubs cut costs and triple-check insurance policies, players post workout videos, broadcasters run their back catalogues, referees creosote their fences and agents moan to each other on WhatsApp.

But, most of all, we wait.

And for those who follow, play for or work for a club that needs to sell tickets, burgers and raffle tickets to carry on, we probably pray, too.

It was good to hear FIFA, with its reserves of nearly £2.3 billion, talk about a hardship fund, and it would be nice to think that UEFA might be able to chip in from its rainy-day fund of over £500 million, but there will be many mouths to feed after the economic shock of COVID-19 and it is hard to see how money tied up in a governing body’s bank account in Switzerland can help Macclesfield Town pay its bills in the coming weeks. The next set of wages are due in a fortnight.

“It was important that, as the governing body of European football, UEFA led the process and made the biggest sacrifice,” said UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin on Tuesday, and in purely numerical terms he is probably right.

As The Athletic reported on Monday, the European confederation believes postponing the Euros will cost it, and therefore all of its 55 member associations — the majority of whom depend on UEFA’s handouts — £275 million.

It is also perhaps worth noting that most of the money UEFA makes from its club competitions barely leaves a trace in Nyon because it is back out the door and on the way to the clubs so fast. Like the World Cup for FIFA, UEFA makes most of its money on one event every fourth year, the men’s European Championship. France 2016, for example, cleared £2 billion, which Ceferin has dished out to FAs over the last three years. Euro 2020 — sorry, 2021 — is meant to do the same thing.

“Moving (it) comes at a huge cost for UEFA but we will do our best to ensure that the vital funding for grassroots, women’s football and the development of the game in our 55 countries is not affected,” he added. “Purpose over profit has been our guiding principle in taking this decision for the good of European football as a whole.”

Infantino is no doubt feeling similarly magnanimous wherever he is right now — Switzerland’s various sporting headquarters have all been shut to slow coronavirus’s spread — after agreeing to delay his Club World Cup, a tournament with no teams, broadcasters or sponsors at the moment.

But the 60 staff at Barnet who have just lost their jobs might have something to say about who has made the biggest sacrifice, not that such talk even makes sense when people are actually dying ahead of time because of this awful illness and health workers are risking their lives to save others.

Tuesday was a better day than the most of the last seven or so in terms of football’s response to these uncertain times but we should be under no illusions that we are only just getting into this and that worse is still to come.

[Jase 43,479]

Tennis season currently suspended until early June.

Different sport but if that's the case with tennis, then it doesn't seem likely football will resume before that..? 

[chippy 342]

Even when the worst of this horrid thing is over the scientists expect another spike next year, so it's likely we'll see another period with no games. So, taking everything into account i think the best move would be to cancel next seasons leagues. That would leave plenty of time to finish off all of this seasons leagues and cups and enough time for next seasons cups. 

[Vesper 27,280]

Exclusive: UEFA to relax FFP regulations in light of coronavirus crisis

https://theathletic.com/1690193/2020/03/20/exclusive-uefa-relax-ffp-regulations-coronavirus/

European football’s governing body UEFA has relaxed its Financial Fair Play regulations to help cash-strapped clubs survive the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

With the professional game facing its biggest economic challenge since World War Two, the move has been broadly welcomed by football finance experts but some have warned UEFA not to let clubs with the wealthiest owners take advantage of the temporary relaxation.

In response to calls for urgent help, the Swiss-based governing body has extended the deadline for clubs to prove they have no “overdue payables” — such as unpaid tax bills, transfer instalments or wages — from March 31 to April 30.

Furthermore, it has also reminded clubs that the principle of “force majeure”, a French term that means greater force, is written into the spending rules.

“Any extraordinary event or circumstances beyond the control of the club that are considered a case of force majeure are taken into account as part of the club’s assessment, on a case-by-case basis,” a UEFA spokesperson told The Athletic.

Introduced in 2011 to curb overspending, the FFP regulations are based on the idea that clubs should not spend more than they make from their ordinary business activities. Owners are allowed to invest as much as they like in the club’s academy, community work, stadium and women’s teams but there are strict limits on how much additional funding they can put into the first team playing budget or transfer kitty.

The rules are policed by an independent body known as the Club Financial Control Body, which has investigatory and adjudicatory arms. Numerous clubs have been sanctioned for breaching these rules, most notably Manchester City, who are currently appealing against a two-year ban from European club competition that was imposed last month.

It is understood that the decision to push back the deadline for unpaid bills and reassure clubs that any extra support from owners in the coming months will be assessed more leniently than usual follows talks with the European Club Association, the organisation that represents the interests of the continent’s leading clubs.

Confirmation of UEFA’s move comes a day after the Premier League warned clubs that domestic broadcasters might ask for £762 million back if no further fixtures can be played this season and former Football Association chief executive Mark Palios told The Athletic that clubs will go bust if players do not agree to pay cuts.

“UEFA has employed a practical and sensible approach,” says Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert who lectures at the University of Liverpool. “By giving clubs longer to provide proof of no outstanding debts it allows the clubs to focus on day-to-day issues rather than administrative compliance issues.

“In relation to the monitoring for FFP, UEFA has acknowledged we are in extraordinary times. It has effectively allowed clubs some flexibility in terms of FFP compliance.

“At the same time, those clubs who do have significant resources behind them cannot exploit their financial advantage to use the present circumstances to give themselves carte blanche in terms of spending money without fear of action.”

John Mehrzad QC, a leading sports law specialist at Littleton Chambers, agrees with Maguire that this move was necessary, pointing out that the relaxation of the March 31 deadline will help “clubs remain afloat” at a time of continuing expenses and uncertain income.

He warned, however, that it might not be so good for “clubs, players or staff wishing to be paid over the next six weeks, as clubs can effectively default until the end of that period and not face UEFA sanction”.

But this, he explained, is the “hard balancing act” governing bodies have right now, as they prioritise saving clubs on the basis that if they go bust, their players and staff might not receive any further pay at all.

On the decision to take a more generous view of injections of cash from owners, Mehrzad says: “That approach makes sense but it is potentially open to abuse if, for example, a very rich club injected in a lot of cash from an owner not to use on wages but to buy players in the next transfer window. Hence, the assessment on a ‘case-by-case’ basis.”

Nick De Marco QC, from Blackstone Chambers, is perhaps the leading legal expert on FFP rules in the UK and described the UEFA move as “obviously sensible”. But he would like to see the British football authorities follow suit.

“The suggestion that clubs may be able to rely on the principle of ‘force majeure’ will be of particular interest,” says De Marco. “In England, the clubs that are struggling the most to pay their players and keep going are governed by the English Football League’s (Profitability and Sustainability) rules which are far stricter than those of UEFA.

“In my view these rules need to be suspended during the current health emergency. Clubs are already struggling to be able to pay their players and other staff, and if the only way they can do so is by going into debt it makes no sense at all to then punish them for it.”

The EFL declined to comment on UEFA’s decision to loosen its rules but it is understood that any change to its profitability and sustainability regulations would have to be agreed by its 71 clubs and those conversations are ongoing.

Sean Cottrell, the founder and chief executive of LawInSport, sums up the situation like this: “Extending the deadline makes sense, given the crisis countries across the world are facing.

“Football, like all sports, is having to adjust rapidly to the situation and in many cases they are supporting local communities at this difficult time whilst managing their own internal difficulties.

“What is of interest is UEFA suggests COVID-19 is considered a case of force majeure in terms of FFP. This may have significant legal implications later down the line for clubs and players.”