Vesper

I doubt Pep benches Mahrez straightaway Torres is superb, but will need time to adjust

so fucked when a London club gets turned down by a player to stay in BURNLEY lolololol

I so hope they do not get him, as their 2 LB's (Shaw and the right-footed Williams) are a major weakness in their lineup If you do not count Theo Hernández (as I do not think he is leaving at all) there are very few true quality upgrades left on the board Sergio Reguilón Alex Telles Robin Gosens Nicolás Tagliafico Ramy Bensebaini Pervis Estupiñán Alejandro Grimaldo Luca Pellegrini Alex Sandro (30yo in 3 and a half months, after this window closes he is gone from all lists) José Gayà (100m euro release clause) then 2 teens Rayan Aït Nouri (19) Nuno Mendes (18) <<<<<<< I would buy him next summer, when Alonso goes. Surely he must go by then)

How Chelsea signed Kai Havertz: Years of planning and Lampard’s ‘gutsy’ call https://theathletic.com/2044050/2020/09/05/havertz-transfer-mclachlan-marina-phone-call-lampard-real-madrid/ The best things come to those who wait and the mood at Chelsea is one of jubilation right now after securing the signing of Germany’s best young talent in Kai Havertz. All the biggest clubs in the world have cast more than an admiring glance or two in Havertz’s direction, but he will be playing at Stamford Bridge this season. No wonder coach Frank Lampard had a big smile on his face in the customary unveiling picture taken to celebrate the club’s new acquisition. Owner Roman Abramovich will be pleased too — he is thought to have been particularly keen for this rising star to be bought. It has not been an easy deal to do, it was never going to be. However anyone under the impression this is a saga which has stretched out over just a few summer months are underestimating just how much effort it required to lure the 21-year-old to west London. The story begins as Chelsea were preparing for FIFA’s transfer ban to become a reality over a year ago. A two-window embargo was in place — later reduced by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to one — and the club got busy making big plans for what they would do once the punishment was over. Whatever the 2019-20 campaign would bring, Chelsea were going to make amends for their inability to spend by making ambitious moves for some of the finest players in the game. Havertz had already been watched on numerous occasions. Head of international scouting Scott McLachlan, who is a man of great influence, championed the youngster to the hierarchy from a very early stage. A Chelsea source tells The Athletic: “He is a player the club have followed for many years and have made a huge amount of reports on. They did the same with Timo Werner (who signed in June), but this was even more extensive than that.” As revealed in June, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Liverpool and Manchester United all reached out to the player’s representatives at one time or another over the previous 18 months to gauge whether they could be at the front of the queue whenever Havertz decided to leave Bayer Leverkusen. Chelsea knew they had to do the same and it is understood conversations were initiated around late April/early May 2019. It was made very clear the club had an ambitious project in mind, that they would be spending very heavily once acquisitions could be made again and Havertz was very much in their thoughts. There has been some form of contact between the two camps ever since. Still it has taken a combination of a lot of work, skill and luck to make the switch happen. Put it this way, Havertz didn’t exactly have Chelsea at the top of the list at the beginning. Bayer Leverkusen’s £107.6 million asking price in the summer of 2019 was sufficient to scare any other suitor off, even Bayern Munich who had gone into great detail with the Germany international over where he would fit into their team and tactical shape. Surprisingly Bayern never ended up making an official offer for Havertz this year either, preferring to spend £40.9 million on Manchester City’s Leroy Sane instead. In fairness, Thomas Muller’s renaissance on the way to helping them win the treble of the Champions League, Bundesliga and German Cup played a part in their reluctance too. However, one leading Bundesliga official thinks Bayern have been guilty of short-termism, putting their need for a left winger in Sane over the more strategic benefit of signing the best young German player of his generation. “Kai is the one,” he insists. Manchester United also gave a noteworthy presentation of their own last year, but it didn’t go any further. Perhaps because they made a move for Bruno Fernandes in January and then focused on a different Bundesliga starlet in Jadon Sancho. It is believed Real Madrid were Havertz’s preferred destination for a long period though. The glamour of the Bernabeu is hard to ignore for many and one of his idols, Toni Kroos, is a part of their squad. Even when Chelsea began stepping up their efforts earlier this year, there was a suspicion he was waiting for the La Liga club to make a move. So how did Chelsea emerge victorious? The heavy impact on football finances caused by COVID-19 certainly played a part and the likes of Real Madrid and Bayern hoped Havertz might stay at Bayer Leverkusen another season and put something in place to join them the following year. But Havertz felt the time had come to leave Bayer now, especially after they failed to qualify for the Champions League and he was not prepared to wait. As far as he was concerned, he had outgrown the team and needed another challenge. Besides, with two years remaining on his contract, Bayer Leverkusen weren’t willing to run the risk of his valuation decreasing themselves. It’s fair to say the timing couldn’t have gone any better for Chelsea, who still had sizeable funds in place. But it would be wrong to suggest Havertz has merely settled for a move there because they ended up being the only ones in a position to make a bid right now. As one source explains to The Athletic: “Chelsea went from being just an option to Kai, to being something very desirable.” Meeting Bayer Leverkusen’s €100 million asking price was always going to be difficult and it is understood that in June, Chelsea’s director and main negotiator Marina Granovskaia felt the two clubs were a long way from finding an accord. But importantly, the club sent a significant message to Havertz by signing fellow Germany international Timo Werner from RB Leipzig for £47 million. With the signature of Hakim Ziyech being sealed in February too, it showed Chelsea were living up to their word about being very ambitious. Then Lampard got on the phone. Lampard is proving to be Chelsea’s ace in the pack in the market. His powers of persuasion were used to good effect with both Ziyech and Werner. Now Havertz’s name can be added to the list. He reached out towards the end of the Bundesliga season and made a very strong impression from the outset. It is believed Chelsea’s head coach came across as very gutsy as he laid out his vision of attacking football with young players at the fore. Lampard explained how he was in the process of building a new team and Havertz was going to be one of the lynchpins. There was a feeling of freshness, a club with a growing momentum, something Havertz wanted to be a part of. Indeed, he was full of excitement as the conversation came to an end. He was convinced Chelsea were going to be a lot of fun. In contrast to the ageing squads and disarray of Real Madrid and Barcelona, Chelsea actually came across as the more enticing adventure at this stage of Havertz’s career. As an insider adds: “I think Kai was just super impressed with Marina, the way Chelsea were stepping on the gas and really going for it. The stature of the Premier League helped too. While it would be great to succeed with Bayern or Real Madrid, winning the title with Chelsea is seen as a bigger thing because it is so hard to do.” No wonder Lampard sounded so enthusiastic. Chelsea may have made their intentions clear to acquire Havertz before he took charge last season, but insiders suggest he didn’t need much convincing to get behind the approach given this is an individual who can score goals and play in various attacking positions. He complained on a regular basis about his side not being clinical enough during the last 12 months and the possibility of adding Havertz to Werner was perceived as too good an opportunity to ignore. Hope is high that those goalscoring problems will now be a thing of the past. Chelsea’s German international defender Antonio Rudiger also got in touch to highlight the merits of the club, but his role is not seen as being too much of a factor. At the end of July, Havertz made up his mind for good and Chelsea were assured his desire was to join them but the player understood that it would take some time for the clubs to find an agreement. There have been many suggestions over the timescale ever since that a deal was “done” but things were only finalised between all parties a few days ago. An indication of that is the fact Havertz joined up with the Germany squad for their internationals against Spain and Switzerland. At the start of the week, agreements still weren’t in place and he wasn’t going to run the risk of missing out on games with the national side just because something may be concluded. Germany agreed to take good care of him though, which is why he ended up watching the Spain fixture on Thursday night from the bench. He was then released from duty to fly to London on Friday for a medical — notably attending Germany’s next game in Switzerland would have meant 14 days of self-isolation for Havertz on arrival to the UK because the country is on the government’s quarantine list. Havertz’s international and club team-mates Rudiger and Werner will not have to quarantine upon their return to England because they were already UK-based and are football professionals inside a bubble. Negotiations over the final fee have certainly been protracted. A breakthrough of sorts was made in the past three weeks when Granovskaia met with Leverkusen officials in the south of France for discussions. Leverkusen were aware Granovskaia had a reputation for being very charming, but they were determined not to fall for it and that it wasn’t going to help Chelsea’s case to lower the €100 million fee. The Bundesliga club’s chief executive Fernando Carro is a tough negotiator as well and his background outside of football means he also has an eye for the numbers. Granovskaia is no easy touch either so this is why it has taken until now for the transfer to be arranged. It’s been described to The Athletic as “super tough negotiations over every inch”. Both sides are claiming victory. On one hand we have been told Chelsea will pay an initial figure of over £62 million plus add-ons. On the other, Bayer Leverkusen, who won’t reveal the structure of the deal, are confident they have things in place to ensure they receive the full asking price in time. So what exactly are Chelsea getting for their money? Inevitably there will be a lot of expectations on his shoulders. Havertz is aware of that and the prospect it could take a period to adapt to a new club, league and country. He is close to Werner though so Chelsea hope that will help. As far as what he can do on a pitch, this is a player who is creating and converting shooting chances at a consistently elite level. Havertz’s 12 league goals for Leverkusen in the 2019-20 season fell short of his career-best Bundesliga tally of 17 in 2018-19, but it was actually the most efficient scoring season of his career; he found the net from 20.3 per cent of his overall shots and 46.2 per cent of his shots on target, despite the number of his shot attempts dipping from 2.8 to 2.2 per 90 minutes. Despite registering only six assists in the league, Havertz also more than doubled his average of key passes played per 90 minutes from 1.1 to 2.3 and his shot-creating actions per 90 minutes rose from 3.4 to 4.3, seventh-best in the Bundesliga. Lampard’s team particularly struggled to break down defensive opponents in open play last season and it is here that Havertz’s value could be felt most. His average of 3.55 completed live ball passes that lead to a shot attempt ranked fifth in the Bundesliga in 2019-20, behind only Thomas Muller, Philippe Coutinho, Jadon Sancho and Kingsley Coman. That figure also compares favourably to all of Chelsea’s attackers last season except Callum Hudson-Odoi, whose average of 3.65 is based on a relatively small sample size of 852 minutes played in the Premier League. Havertz will also bring considerable positional versatility to Chelsea; he is capable of shining as a No 8, a No 10 or even as a false nine, the role he most often played for Leverkusen after the resumption of the Bundesliga season. Wherever he chooses to use him, Lampard will relish the challenge of maximising one of Europe’s most coveted young footballers as part of his formidable array of attacking options. Inevitably some will question what effect his arrival will have on the Chelsea squad, particularly the academy graduates who got a lot of game-time under Lampard in his first season but may now fear being sidelined. While that is inevitably a factor, there has been a lot of positive talk around the camp about Havertz and the other new acquisitions. There is an acceptance Chelsea are a big club and will always make signings. It is something they are used to because it happens at youth level as well. Players like Havertz are also seen as a good thing in terms of Chelsea being able to compete for trophies and will help them raise their game. As far as making a statement in the market goes, this is similar to when Chelsea beat a host of clubs to sign Eden Hazard in 2012. Havertz is joining at the same age as the Belgian and has enormous potential. If he goes on to have anything like the impact Hazard had on Chelsea, then it really will be money well spent.

Insane angle goal by Mbappe smdh we had the only real chance of the game before that

Agents Giroud and Kante hope they are working on Upamecano lololol

2020-21 UEFA Nations League, Group Stage Sweden v France http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/nations-league-sweden-vs-france-s3/ https://www.totalsportek.com/highlights/france-live-stream/

they were absolutely dreadful really deserved to lose or at least draw

no way do England deserve this win, they were trash

wow skied that pen over the bar by 2 metres smdh

lol pen on England now

yes, great free kick

horrid call for that pen what a gift to England

Walker 2 yellow Red Card

Fleming on getting ‘beat up’ in ice hockey, ‘persuasive’ Hayes and… solar cells https://theathletic.com/2044235/2020/09/05/jessie-fleming-chelsea-women-ice-hockey/ Jessie Fleming freely admits her first six weeks as a Chelsea player, competing with and against the more established names in Emma Hayes’ star-studded squad every day at Cobham before the new Women’s Super League season, have been among the most challenging of her career — and that’s exactly how she likes it. “We train together for a couple of hours each morning and not quite beat the crap out of each other but we’re able to drive that standard,” she tells The Athletic. “It’s serious and intense but then afterwards, we’re able to sit down, eat a meal together and laugh. It’s really special to have that within a team and it’s important to success. I’ve really enjoyed the quality of the players and people here.” The welcome in Chelsea Women’s base at the back of Cobham has been warm. Before she got her own car Fleming got daily rides to training from Australian superstar Sam Kerr, who could offer advice on settling in based on her own adaptation process after moving to England in November. Last month she and fellow new signing Niamh Charles navigated another traditional football rite of passage: singing ABBA classic Dancing Queen in front of the rest of the squad at a team dinner. “I don’t think our singing was well received, but the effort was,” she says with a smile. Canada international Fleming signed a three-year contract with Chelsea in July, having turned down the chance to remain in North America and declare for the NWSL draft after finishing her college career with UCLA Bruins. In the statement announcing her arrival, Hayes described the 22-year-old as “one of the top young players in the world”, adding that, “to be able to sign her is a testament to the work that has been done here for several years. She chose Chelsea. This was her priority, her first choice, and we were over the moon to get her”. Fleming says Hayes played a leading role in Chelsea’s recruitment effort, calling her several times to talk her through how she would fit into the club’s broader plans. “She reminded me a little bit of my former coach on the national team, John Herdman, who I had a really good relationship with and really enjoyed working with,” she says of Hayes. “It was important to me that she values the person as well as the player she’s bringing in, and she approaches players and her teams with a growth mindset. I knew she was someone who was going to challenge me and help me develop as a player. She was very persuasive and I’ve enjoyed working with her so far.” Chelsea’s spectacular signings of midfielder Melanie Leupolz from Bayern Munich and forward Pernille Harder for a world-record £300,000 from Wolfsburg have garnered more fanfare but the acquisition of Fleming was no less of a coup. She has been widely regarded as a generational talent in Canadian football ever since making her international debut as a 15-year-old in 2013 and is frequently mentioned as the successor to Christine Sinclair, Canada’s most capped all-time player (296 caps) and scorer of more international goals (186) than any footballer in history. Sinclair, incredibly, is still Canada’s talisman and captain at the age of 37, and Fleming has cherished the opportunity to call her childhood idol a team-mate for so long. “She’s always been almost like a fantasy figure for a lot of kids growing up in Canada,” she adds. “To have a Canadian who’s scored the most international goals is such an incredible feat and she was the first Canadian player to establish herself on the world stage and be considered world-class. “On the national team, she’s very quiet but she drives the standard of play with how hard she works and the quality she brings to the team. She’s always set the tone for us younger players and help us set our own expectations for where we want to take the team, to carry on the work that she and the older players have been doing for the last 10 years. “I feel fortunate that I’ve had the chance to play with her, with Diana Matheson, Melissa Tancredi, Erin McLeod; all these players who won bronze in London 2012. That was a significant event in Canadian soccer. I watched that on TV and then got to come into the national team environment. I don’t think I was quite at that level but having the opportunity to learn from and develop with these players who were stronger and better than me improved my game.” Sinclair has played her entire club career in North America but many of Fleming’s contemporaries in the Canada team have made the jump to Europe in recent years as the centre of the women’s club game has shifted across the Atlantic. Kadeisha Buchanan and Ashley Lawrence play for Lyon and Paris Saint-Germain while Janine Beckie featured in the Manchester City side that lost to Chelsea in the Community Shield at Wembley on Sunday. Fleming always intended to join them. “For the last five years, it’s been what I wanted to do and then seeing Kadeisha, Ashley and Janine come over (to Europe), getting to watch their development and hear about their experiences, I wanted to be a part of the Champions League cycle,” she says. “Going to a country with a culture of football that is a lot stronger and more built into everyday life than it is in the US — that aspect also definitely excited me. The leagues are also more competitive and there’s a higher standard of play here.” But first, she was determined not to pursue her footballing aspirations at the expense of further education. She majored in materials engineering with a minor in environmental science at UCLA while playing for the Bruins and travelling all over the world to represent Canada — she’s amassed a remarkable 77 caps already. “I think I was always kind of a little off-balance,” she says. “I would overload some days with school and other days, my focus was elsewhere. I’ve learned a lot in the last couple of years about managing myself and how to compartmentalise a little bit.” Fleming is still working on her degree in the UK and already has an idea of where she would like her life to go after football. “One application of materials engineering would be solar cell technology or something along those lines — sustainable technologies and construction are things that really interest me,” she says. Football is Fleming’s passion, though. As a young girl, she would regularly watch Pep Guardiola’s great Barcelona side on TV with her father John between turning heads with her own play in youth matches in her home town of London, Ontario, quickly attracting the attention of national team scouts. Also a keen runner, she distinguished herself in track and field and cross country, as well as regularly playing Canada’s national sport, ice hockey. Fleming committed totally to football in her early teens, her father John taking her on the four-hour round trip by car from London to Toronto three times a week to train with Team Ontario before she was invited to join Canada’s under-17s. She still credits her childhood experiences competing in other sports with giving her some of the physical and mental skills that have helped power her success in the years since. “I played boys’ hockey for a long time, which was full-contact,” she says. “I’m not a big person or a tall person, so I probably got beat up a little by the guys and had to figure out how to play a not so physical game. With cross country, playing in midfield, we do a good chunk of running, so my endurance base has always been a really important part of my game. Other sports contributed to the player I am but at some point, you need to specialise and dive into perfecting your craft at one sport.” Her first World Cup experience with Canada on home turf in 2015 — “I probably realise more now the rarity of that experience, just how special it all was,” she says — came largely off the bench. But by the time the 2019 tournament in France rolled around, Fleming had established herself as the hub of her country’s midfield, a tenacious box-to-box presence with the creativity and quality to carry a goal threat in the final third. Canada bowed out in the round of 16 at the hands of Sweden after she had scored and been voted player of the match in the 2-0 win over New Zealand that got them there. It could take time for Fleming to acquire such status at Chelsea. Her first appearance was as an injury-time substitute in the Community Shield, where Ji So-yun and Leupolz were both impressive at the heart of midfield. But her rapid rise to prominence with Canada is testament to her ability to rise to every challenge placed in front of her and it’s clear from listening to her talk that she demands more from herself than Hayes or anyone else could. “I’m intrinsically motivated, so when I come into an environment where other players are better, I’m inclined to learn from other people and I want to get to that level,” she says. “I get kind of impatient with it sometimes but it was the number one factor in me wanting to come to a club like Chelsea. I’m trying to put myself in a position to get better and I feel like this is the place where it’s going to happen. “I have high ambitions for myself but I also recognise that real change and growth in your game doesn’t happen overnight. For me right now, it’s just about showing up at training every day, working as hard as I can and finding those parts of my game that I can tweak and how I can get myself to the next level.” The culture that Hayes has built at Chelsea demands nothing less than being the best in the world and, after another stellar summer of recruitment despite the pandemic, Champions League glory looks more achievable than ever. Fleming fancies their chances. “If there’s any group of people who are going to beat Lyon now, I think it’s us,” she says. “Between the players and the coaching staff, everyone has their sights set high this year. With that, there’s a lot of expectation but there’s a lot of excitement in the group with the level we’re playing at this early in the season.”

Land Of Giants : Human Shaped Pylons Carry Electricity Across Iceland more exciting than the game

2020-21 UEFA Nations League, Group Stage Iceland v England http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/nations-league-iceland-vs-england-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/england/

Great pull. Now we need to sort GK Sell the dregs Try for Rice The rest can wait (Rice may have to as well) I will admit, that with Sarr going out on loan, Tomori going out on loan, and Ampadu looking meh, that most all our beans for the CB pot are resting on 36 yo shoulders. Rudiger needs to step the fuck up, same for Zouma. I have little faith in AC. He is the 4th worst regular (ie not on loan last season) after Kepa, Bats, and Emerson.

Was out at a private club, just got home.

Barca shitshow. Loving it. Pep just shit his nappy too, lolol.

Fuck that drama queen and fuck that club. I hope they get bulldozed and lose their arse.

Turkey vs Hungary – Highlights Dominik Szoboszlai free kick goal https://yfl.clipsrom.com/player/html/JL4pJ0Rv5S1w3?popup=yes&autoplay=1

The Women's Super League has become the best in the world The Chelsea midfielder reflects on last season’s title and how the arrival of more top players is raising the bar https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2020/sep/04/the-womens-super-league-has-become-the-best-in-the-world-chelsea-guro-reiten I will definitely never forget my first Women’s Super League title. My Chelsea teammates and I were asked to join a Zoom call so I logged in from Norway during a camping trip. Emma Hayes came on and, all of a sudden, popped open a bottle of champagne: “We’ve won the league!” It felt so weird to find out we had won it on points per game and although it was a fantastic reward for all our work I hope we don’t have to celebrate that way again. We want to repeat the trick in front of our fans, but first we need to overcome the challenges the next few months will present. It is going to be an incredible season and we can safely say, looking around the division, the bar has been raised. Top players are flocking to England and I am not surprised. This has become the best league in the world and when you see the names coming here, it gets proved over and over again. One of those top players, Pernille Harder, has just joined us at Chelsea and I’m very excited. Who wouldn’t want her on their team? We want to be the best and she can only improve us. The same can be said for Rose Lavelle and Sam Mewis at Manchester City; they will help push women’s football in England forward and they also know they will be playing in a competition with tremendous depth. There are so many good teams. We saw it throughout last season, for example when Liverpool held us to a draw despite struggling all season. People are realising what a good product this is and I was delighted to hear WSL games will be shown in the US, on NBC. It shows this is now a truly global league; there are many people who have wanted to see us play but never really had the chance and now opportunities are coming. I can look at my national team, Norway, to see how times have changed. There are eight or nine of us here, which never used to be the case. The English league is just a different world to the circumstances I came through. When I played back home I was happy with how we did things because it was all I knew. But it is so professional here, from the start of the day until the end, and it means everything can be as we want it. snip

Havertz flying to London https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/teams/chelsea/12063516/havertz-flying-to-london