The European Leagues & Competitions Thread V2

[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

Bundesliga return has a major headache. The whole Dresden squad have had to go into quarantine for 14 days....

[Fernando 6,376]

It's ridicules that they are bring back the game. 

Should just have been canceled and wait till September for new season. 

[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

1 hour ago, Fernando said:

It's ridicules that they are bring back the game. 

Should just have been canceled and wait till September for new season. 

Like the vaccine virus, its all about the money.

Each European league has contracts with global TV companies. The leagues have been paid in advance, and there are penalties if the leagues don't finish. The Premier League has to pay Sky 965 million if the season is scrapped -that is just one TV company, and one league....

[Laylabelle 9,296]

Safe to say Champions League wont be finished anytime soon with quantining in countries for flight passengers..

[Jase 43,479]

 

[Laylabelle 9,296]

Long as no one tests postive and all.

[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

Sounds like all the DM stories ''could this'' could that'' ''Season could start'' All speculation.

[Laylabelle 9,296]

12 minutes ago, Fulham Broadway said:

Sounds like all the DM stories ''could this'' could that'' ''Season could start'' All speculation.

Its Boris!

They should just halt the talks till becomes clear. They dont know...league dont know..no one knows. No point having the same pointless discussions and getting no further from it cause no one knows.

[Fulham Broadway 16,392]

23 minutes ago, Laylabelle said:

Its Boris!

They should just halt the talks till becomes clear. They dont know...league dont know..no one knows. No point having the same pointless discussions and getting no further from it cause no one knows.

 

[NikkiCFC 7,580]

5 hours ago, Laylabelle said:

Safe to say Champions League wont be finished anytime soon with quantining in countries for flight passengers..

They are planning it for August. And you will be able to travel if you have tasted negative so no problem for clubs.

[Laylabelle 9,296]

22 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

They are planning it for August. And you will be able to travel if you have tasted negative so no problem for clubs.

Least it's far enough away. UK have only introduced the 14 days so way behind everyone else. 

[Vesper 27,310]

Your guide to the Bundesliga: Young stars, brilliant Bayern, Dortmund’s title?

https://theathletic.com/1797407/2020/05/11/bundesliga-back-haaland-lewandowski-bayern-dortmund-covid/

All eyes will be on the Bundesliga this weekend as Germany’s top-flight becomes the first major European league to return during the coronavirus pandemic.

Here, German football expert Raphael Honigstein — who you can read exclusively on The Athletic — highlights what to look out for as the likes of Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig prepare to return to action…

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The Unbearable Heaviness of being Bayern Munich

They are the team that cannot lose. We’re not talking minuscule probabilities here — even though seven titles in row would suggest as much — but a moral imperative. Bayern Munich are football’s Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems, never satisfied with what they have, always hustling for the next big take. They win by winning. All the time. In the Bavarian capital, lifting the league trophy isn’t the culmination of dreams and aspirations. It’s mere survival. Everything else is death. “We win to be left alone”, Thomas Muller once remarked. That’s their burden, their affliction.

No club have more fans in Germany and more anti-fans who take umbrage at their relentless success, their unrefined brashness, their total self-absorption. What they do at the weekend consequently affects more people than any other side might, and explains why their travails never cease to dominate the airwaves, in a self-enhancing storm of noise and money. While for Bayern supporters it doesn’t get much better than a sense of relief (result) or quiet satisfaction (performance), everyone else can take great delight in the existential pain they experience after a 2-2 draw with Augsburg. Bayern are ever only one game away from total crisis. You might not like what you see but it’s quite impossible to look the other way.

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2286752/?utm_source=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/2286752

To make matters more fraught, even winning is sometimes not enough. Niko Kovac’s domestic double in his first season in charge did little to allay dressing room doubts that Bayern’s success had come despite the Croat’s best endeavours, not because of it. He was let go in November after one of the poorest first-half of the season runs of the decade. Under Hansi Flick, the team have since re-found their tactical identity as one of Europe’s most-accomplished possession sides and given neutral viewers a second compelling reason to tune in, the sense of moral hazard and potential for limitless schadenfreude aside: they’re seriously good, as good as they have been since Pep Guardiola ruled the roost four years ago.

Borussia Dortmund: another shot at making history

Germany’s second-biggest powerhouse have enjoyed a rare few months of relative stability. Only three years ago, the whole team narrowly escaped a financially-motivated murder attempt, and Thomas Tuchel’s reign ended in unprecedented acrimony. The following season, Dortmund chose not one but two unsuitable coaches — Peter Bosz and Peter Stoger — and 2018-19 was a spectacular implosion. Having led the league at Christmas, Lucien Favre’s men stumbled from one defensive calamity to another and finished runners-up behind Kovac’s rather humdrum Bayern.

But that failure to capitalise on the serial champions’ weakness didn’t produce nearly the same fallout as it would have done in Munich if the roles had been reversed. Favre kept his job. No important member of the squad left, but half a team of top reinforcements joined: veteran defender Mats Hummels (back from Bayern), scheming midfielder Julian Brandt (Leverkusen), winger Thorgan Hazard (Gladbach), prodigy Giovanni Reyna (New York City) and teenage goal-machine Erling Haaland (Salzburg). Add the likes of Marco Reus, Achraf Hakimi, Axel Witzel and a certain Jadon Sancho to the pot and what you have is a side that can mix it with the best of them, as Barcelona, Inter and Paris Saint-Germain found out in the Champions League.

The €100 million question is whether Borussia’s free-flowing, utterly mesmerising attacking game will be complemented by the requisite stability at the back over the course of the next nine games. Both individually and tactically, their defensive game has been found wanting when it really mattered, including the last two pivotal games against Bayern, which were lost 4-0 and 5-0. But they’re still well-poised to take advantage of any slip-ups down south, with four points separating them and the champions in the table.

Welcoming the league leaders to an empty Signal Iduna Park in a possible title decider in just over two weeks’ time isn’t an ideal prospect but Dortmund should really take their chance to win their first championship since Jurgen Klopp’s double in 2012 this summer. Bayern, much more settled on the pitch and off it, are likely to strengthen considerably next season, courtesy of the anticipated arrival of Leroy Sane and maybe Kai Havertz, too, whereas the days of Hakimi, Sancho et al jointly gracing the pitch look sadly numbered. Their time, in other words, is now.

Grandmasters and tomorrow’s superstars, today

A league that prides itself on the involvement of fans and stadium experience will have to narrow its focus onto the players in the next few weeks. Luckily for the Bundesliga, the 2019-20 crop is sufficiently stellar to warrant the extra bit of attention. At Bayern, for example, we’re witnessing the emergence of young Canadian Alphonso Davies as one of the most exciting left-backs in world football. In front of him, Thiago’s passing excellence is coming to the fore once more, thanks to Flick’s more structured approach, and it’s been a joy to see Serge Gnabry grow into a seasoned performer alongside the indestructible goal fiend Robert Lewandowski.

Dortmund’s aforementioned forward-line reads like a Who’s Who of 2024 Ballon d’Or candidates, while the less intricate but by no means less impressive RB Leipzig boast forwards (Timo Werner, Patrick Schick, Christopher N’Kunku), midfielders (Marcel Sabitzer, Konrad Laimer) and defenders (Ibrahima Konate and Dayoy Upamecano) who are destined for greatness at some of the world’s best clubs. Fourth-placed Borussia Monchengladbach have their own future big names in Marcus (son of Lilian) Thuram and Denis Zakaria.

The Bundesliga’s monopoly on live football provides an opportunity to appreciate their otherwise more easily overlooked talent, alongside those of an increasingly fluent Bayer Leverkusen side. Kai Havertz’s status as the crown prince of German football has been reconfirmed since the winter break but he’s being helped by the fact that Bosz’s side can also rely on the pace of 20-year-old French winger Moussa Diaby and the finishing skills of Argentinian Lucas Alario. In addition, newly recruited centre-back Edmond Tapsoba (signed from Guimaraes in January) has been a revelation. Watch him to understand why the Burkina Faso international will be coveted by the elite over the next couple of years.

Further down the table, striker Wout Weghorst, midfielder Xaver Schlager (both Wolfsburg) and the likes of Dennis Geiger (TSG Hoffenheim), Filip Kostic (Frankfurt), Robin Koch (Freiburg) and Milot Rashica (Bremen) will be in strong demand, COVID-19 notwithstanding. It’s been a while since Germany’s top-flight had so many players worth watching.

A league of extraordinary gentleman (in masks on the touchline)

The league’s objectively good top teams (see results in Europe) and a raft of exciting players haven’t appeared out of nowhere. They’re both, to varying degree, the result of some top coaches plying their trade in the Bundesliga this season.

RB Leipzig’s Julian Nagelsmann, for example, is widely recognised as a generational talent who will one day fight it out with the world’s best for the most distinguished trophies. Why not watch his super-competent second act closely now then wait for the lengthy retrospective pieces when he joins a super club of your liking in two or three years’ time?

Marco Rose (Gladbach) is another coach going places, proving that he can improve a team and its players with smart ideas and obsessive attention to detail. Despite a loss of momentum, David Wagner is beginning to have a similar impact at Schalke, while Bosz, Flick and Favre all have their teams playing sumptuous attacking football. All in all, we’re perhaps not quite at the level of 2014, when Guardiola, Tuchel and Klopp were around but 2020 is not far off.

Circus Hertha is still in town

Seeing the Bundesliga’s attention-neediest club play football hasn’t been that much fun this season. They were at best obdurate under Ante Covic and Jurgen Klinsmann and at worst quite a shambles. Things should improve under newly-installed Bruno Labbadia, who is now on his 14th different club in the Bundesliga*. But the real entertainment will once more come by way of the contrast between Hertha’s “big city” ambitions (as per investor Lars Windhorst) and the rather staid, languid tempo of progress expected.

Hertha, a bit like the city they inhabit, pull off the curious trick of being strangely provincial despite their locale. Forward Salomon Kalou live-streaming dressing room handshakes and a coronavirus test of a team-mate might have been out of character for a player who’s considered rather thoughtful but it was totally Hertha.

This season has already brought us the Klinsmann diaries, a sensational mix between “J’accuse” — Michael Preetz of being too comfortable, to be precise — and a coldly-phrased asset management report, outlining the prospective resale value of the squad. What’s next, you wonder. Players breaking into (the currently defunct landmark club) Berghain to stage their own corona party after a derby win against Union Berlin? Windhorst selling his stake to Mike Ashley? The Athletic’s money would be on a more mundane mess, like all COVID test tubes being sent off to the wrong lab before the first game, for example. Something’s odd is bound to happen.

(*might be a slight exaggeration.)

Even the worst teams are… a pretty good watch, in truth.

Since 2000, every single Bundesliga game has been shown live by domestic rights holders. The plethora of full matches on offer hasn’t always done much for quality control. Some teams are simply better enjoyed off-screen.

Sceptics joked that the world’s joy of seeing the Bundesliga reappear next week might have been short-lived: Fortuna Dusseldorf were due to take on Paderborn on Friday night in the first comeback game. But the league were saved from that prospect by the political authorities’ decision last week. They green-lit a return to football “in the second half of May” which, on closer reading, conveniently starts with May 16.

Dusseldorf v Paderborn, a classic relegation battle six-pointer, will now play out at the same time as the somewhat more glamorous Revierderby between Dortmund and Schalke (Saturday, 3.30 pm local time). But following the basement boys for the remainder of the campaign should actually be more entertaining than usual. Paderborn, a high-pressing side assembled from lower league no names, to single out one, love to give it a go and often produce spectacular scorelines, including a 3-3 draw with Dortmund.

Dusseldorf, too, are very watchable since former Manchester City cult hero Uwe Rosler replaced Friedhelm Funkel on the bench. Werder are more of an acquired taste, granted, but they, just like all the other sides in the wrong half of the pitch, at least try to play.

The new normal

Yes, the Bundesliga’s rush back to the pitch is motivated by money. Unlike the clubs in the Premier League, they hadn’t all been paid up for the rest of the season and without that last part of the TV rights payment (€300m) up to a third of the 36 professional clubs would have faced severe financial difficulties before too long. But the backdrop to the government’s permission is also the gradual reopening of the economy, coupled with a stark realisation: COVID-19 will continue to pose problems for all of society for many more months to come. In March, Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “60 to 70 per cent” of Germans could get infected before the development of a vaccine and that the crisis could last two years.

The return of the Bundesliga, a non-essential activity played out in sterile environs of the so-called ghost games, will look hasty and reckless to many. Players are rightly concerned, organised fans at best ambiguous.

But there is no material prospect of the situation changing anytime before the end of the year. The same uneasy questions the league is grappling with now — the safety of players, the right protocol for testing and quarantine — will dominate the debate in all walks of life until there is a medical breakthrough. If professional football is to survive in the meantime, in Germany and elsewhere, it’ll have to strike a way to balance risks and necessities just like everybody else. Playing football under these conditions will remain a difficult prospect, even with effective mass testing in place, to be sure. The rest of the world will have the benefit of being able to learn from the Bundesliga’s successes and failings but they shouldn’t expect clear-cut answers.

Watching games without fans and (genuine) noise will put our love for the game under considerable strain, in the meantime. Will it be possible as a viewer to zoom past the empty stands onto action on the pitch or will the prevailing emptiness swallow up the game as a whole?

Whatever clubs will or won’t do to mitigate the drabness, it’ll look unfamiliar and strange. Before too long, however, every professional club in the world will have to think along the same lines. And it won’t make any difference whether you count the games taking place as this season or the next.

The Bundesliga will provide an early snapshot of what this all will look like, with all its contradictions, moral compromises and unsatisfactory optics. It won’t be football as we know it. But that’s how it’s going to be.

[Vesper 27,310]

Sancho, Ampadu and three other British players to look out for in the Bundesliga

https://theathletic.com/1806003/2020/05/12/bundesliga-sancho-dortmund-ampadu-leipzig-chelsea-kenny-lookman-everton/

English football is not back yet, but some English footballers are. The last few years have seen a steady stream of young players leave the Premier League for the Bundesliga in pursuit of greater first-team opportunities.

It has not worked out for all of them. Some have flopped, some have come back. But when the Bundesliga restarts on Saturday, there will be an Englishman on both sides of the flagship match: Borussia Dortmund’s Jadon Sancho will be up against Jonjoe Kenny, on loan at Schalke from Everton, in the Ruhr derby.

They are just two of the new generation of British youngsters who are making their way in the German game right now, and who will be on our screens long before the Premier League gets back underway…

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JADON SANCHO, BORUSSIA DORTMUND

The young man who made everything else possible.

Forward Sancho walking out of Manchester City three years ago, when he turned down more than £30,000 a week to try his luck at Dortmund, was one of the most influential decisions in the recent history of English football. It signalled to a new generation of English teenagers that they did not have to sit and wait for their chance at British clubs. They could go and seize it abroad.

Sancho has been a phenomenon in Germany, impressing with his ingenuity, speed and the remarkable ball skills he learned growing up in south London. He has pushed his way into Gareth Southgate’s England team far quicker than anyone expected and was in the Bundesliga team of the season last year. Manchester United were hovering last summer, but he has decided to stay with Dortmund — for now.

This season has felt like his Dortmund swansong before a summer move, but there have been just as many moments when he has shown why he is considered one of the most exciting young players in the world. He has formed a natural pairing with Erling Haaland up front and won the Bundesliga’s most recent player of the month award (for February).

JONJOE KENNY, SCHALKE

Perhaps the best of all the English players in this season’s Bundesliga.

The Everton right-back Kenny found opportunities limited last year so decided to temporarily move to Germany to play for former Huddersfield Town manager David Wagner.

And Kenny has flourished in Gelsenkirchen. He has impressed with his forward drive, his energy and his crossing, coming to terms quickly with German football as well as learning the language. He has started 23 of Schalke’s 25 Bundesliga games so far.

He is a lifelong Evertonian who has played for his hometown club, so pressure is nothing new to him. But at Schalke, he has been playing for an even bigger crowd. “To perform at a good level at a big club in front of 65,000 fans in an amazing stadium can be hard,” Wagner told The Athletic last year. “For some guys, the shirt can be a little too heavy. But Jonjoe took it and he’s done very well.” Wagner has even compared Kenny to former Schalke and Bayern Munich full-back Rafinha.

Schalke want to keep Kenny beyond this season’s loan, but they have been one of the worst-affected teams by the coronavirus crisis, so raising the necessary funds might be difficult. To make things even trickier, Everton may see bringing back Kenny as a cheaper alternative to buying their own on-loan right-back Djibril Sidibe, who would cost them £12 million.

ADEMOLA LOOKMAN, RB LEIPZIG

When Lookman returned to RB Leipzig last summer, it was a chance for the winger from south-east London to pick up where he’d left off. Lookman enjoyed a thrilling loan spell at Leipzig in the second half of the 2017-18 season, instantly fitting in with Ralph Hasenhuttl’s fast, aggressive style. No permanent deal was sorted in summer 2018, so he went back to Everton for a year, trying to impress Marco Silva, before finally moving back to Leipzig for £22 million in July.

But this season it has been harder for Lookman to make the same impression. Playing under Julian Nagelsmann in a team currently just five points behind leaders Bayern Munich, he has been limited to a role as an impact sub.

But when The Athletic spoke to Leipzig technical director Paul Mitchell in February, he said there was still a bright future for the 22-year-old at the club.

“Ademola has come into a really, really competitive and capable squad,” Mitchell said. “Julian has high demands, technically and tactically. We have great depth, great multi-functionality, and all of us believe Ademola can have a major impact here. It’s just a learning process with Ademola. He’s still a very young man. We’re all still big believers in his talent.”

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RABBI MATONDO, SCHALKE

Matondo has followed a similar path to Sancho, swapping the Manchester City academy for the Ruhr valley, but without the same level of instant success. Matondo started off in Cardiff City’s academy before moving to the Etihad at age 16, where he impressed with his lightning pace and skill on the wing. Like Sancho, he felt he would get more opportunities in Germany, so in January last year he signed for Schalke, pocketing Manchester City a £10 million return on their investment.

“When Schalke got in touch, I wanted to see how good I actually am and how good I can actually be (at senior level),” Matondo, now 19, explained to The Athletic earlier this year.

“I had watched some of the bigger games in the Bundesliga when I was in England, but I didn’t realise how aggressive and quick it was. I knew the league was good but not how good. People underestimate some of the teams here.”

Domenico Tedesco, the Schalke manager who signed him, was sacked soon after, but Matondo has started to get more chances again recently under Wagner. The Wales international even started the last two games before the stoppage, against Bayern Munich and Hoffenheim. He will be desperate to pick up where he left off.

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ETHAN AMPADU, RB LEIPZIG

Not many 19-year-olds can say they’ve been playing first-team football for nearly four years. Ampadu, who played for Exeter City at the age of 15, is one of the most highly rated teenagers in British football. After one season in League Two, he moved to Chelsea, where he impressed enough in the under-23s and a handful of senior games to earn his first Wales cap.

This season, he joined RB Leipzig on loan and won more admirers with an immaculate display at centre-back in the 1-0 Champions League win away to Tottenham Hotspur in February. On the whole, however, it has been a difficult season and Ampadu has struggled for opportunities.

“There’s been a lot of frustration at times,” he told The Athletic in an interview last month. “However, I’ve learned a lot through those frustrations which will only help me later in my career. I’ve not played as many games as I’d have liked to, but in the games I’ve played in, I think I’ve done reasonably well. That’ll give me confidence, but I have things to learn from.”

[Fernando 6,376]

Lol almost all the world of futbol will be watching the bundesliga this weekend. 

[Vesper 27,310]

Friday May 15 2020 Football Nerd

Can the Bundesliga's festival of attacking football continue? By Daniel Zeqiri Erling Haaland set the Bundesliga alight before the break CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES Through football's coronavirus hiatus, we are committed to providing a weekly newsletter of facts, analysis and retrospectives. If there is a topic you want us to cover please email [email protected]. Above all, stay safe.     Live football returns to our screens this weekend with the resumption of the Bundesliga, which prior to sport's suspension was the most entertaining of Europe's big five leagues. Long gone are the days when German football had a reputation for being staid and defensive. The 728 Bundesliga matches this season produced an average of 3.3 goals per game, bettering the Premier League by 0.6 goals per game. Given the English game sells itself on the promise of frantic and chaotic attacking football, that is a significant deficit. Germany's failure at the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship prompted a period of introspection, and a radical redrawing of their philosophy and coaching structures. Their shift towards a more technical style - typified by players such as Toni Kroos, Mesut Özil and Mario Götze - was the guiding principle of their 2014 World Cup triumph and has made their domestic league all the more attractive. Add the pervasive influence of Pep Guardiola after his three years at Bayern Munich; Jurgen Klopp and the succession of coaches following his brand of breakneck counter-attacking; the arrival of young talents such as Jadon Sancho seeking opportunity; and a vibrant and democratic fan culture, and it is plain to see why thousands travel to Germany to experience the madness first hand.     Bayern, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig, the Bundesliga's top three, have each scored in excess of 60 league goals with nine matches still to play. Across January and February, Dortmund scored 22 in five league games, led by Sancho and the freakishly good Erling Haaland. Aside from entertainment value, this Bundesliga season has also been competitive after dominant force Bayern Munich's slow start to the campaign. Just eight points separate Bayern and Bayer Leverkusen in fifth, and top and bottom are separated by 39 points. Only Spain's La Liga, where 38 points separate top and bottom, is more condensed among Europe's big five leagues. Liverpool's exceptional consistency and near-perfect season makes it difficult to assess the Premier League, where 61 points separate top and bottom. It will be intriguing to see if silent stadiums and players' lack of match sharpness dull this festival of attacking football. Fans seeking respite in dire times will hope the Bundesliga can pick up where it left off.

[Vesper 27,310]

Borussia Dortmund v Schalke 04 HD Streams

http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/bundesliga-borussia-dortmund-vs-schalke-04-s1/full.php

https://www.totalsportek.com/borussia-dortmund-matches/

 

UPDATED

[Vesper 27,310]

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooootttttttttttttttttt

FUCKING LIVE FOOTIE!!!!!!!

[Magic Lamps 11,449]

BVB lineup is a little weird. Reyna over Hazard and Snacho... we will see

elates to have footy back even if it is just Bundesliga