Vesper

the only AMF's I would take over Coutinho (this includes impossibles who are in bold) De Bruyne (I still grieve, I never will stop) best AMF on the planet for years now, no one even remotely close, the only bigger gap between best and second best at a position is arguably TA-A at RB Kai Havertz (will cost £100m plus so we have no chance, but he is De Bruyne's heir apparent I think as the best AMF on the planet in 3 years or so) Bernardo Silva (he can play AMF, not just winger) Bruno Fernandes <<< thank fuck Manure did not get him until January or we would so fucked now James Maddison (will cost close to Havertz, so pass) Jack Grealish <<<<< the ONE AMF I would move for over Coutinho and two maybes, maybes (and both can play winger as well) Nicolò Zaniolo (if he is oki after his horrid knee injury, if so then yes as he is young, 20yo, can play winger, is big, strong pacey and left-footed, but he, sigh, did his knee BAD, so he is a dice roll until I see 2 full healthy, fully recovered years) Pablo Sarabia (only 2 months older than Coutinho, but not sure, although he has been a BEAST the past two seasons, at Sevilla and now PSG, pure class player, a late bloomer)

There are over 40 posts by me that talk about Gosens http://forum.talkchelsea.net/search/?&q=gosens&page=1&sortby=relevancy

Coutinho is not near the top for me, but I do think there is far worse out there I can see your point though, and £70m is still a shit tonne of cash as for buying both LB's if we only sell Emerson and keep Alonso, we are basically conceding we will take a huge loss on him (versus what we could have gotten for him the last 2 years) as he turns 30 in December, at which point, say 2021, we will not even be able to get what we paid for him when we bought him If we sell Alonso and keep Emerson, we are fucked if the new LB goes down as Emerson is dogshit in the EPL I have been raving for years about thsi, and each year their values go down and each year we are fucked overall with them at LB a 31yo, out of position Azpi at LB is utter capitulation as well Telles is a HUGE weapon on corner and free kicks as well, he is a top 10 on the planet corner kick taker he has 52 assists in the last 3 and 2/3rds seasons as well, plus 21 goals (10 of them in this last shortened season) I think we can get both Telles and Gosens for less than £60m, say £55m or so, which is near to what we can get if we sell Alonso and Emerson, (I would guess around £50m) if we only sell one and buy Chilwell, then that net cost is around £55m (versus £5m or so) and it still leaves us fucked if Ben goes down I have little hope we will do the correct move though, we have been fucking up at LB since Ash aged out

Cristiano Ronaldo's worst nightmare. STAGGERING how far we have fallen at LB!! MADNESS

Coutinho at £70m (maybe less if the euro crashes further v the pound) is a fair price, especially if we miss out on Sancho he is still really dangerous and is in his prime, we would get about 4 prime years out of him (he is only 6 months older than I am, not that I am footie star! LOLOLOL, maybe back in my 12,13 year old tweenie/teenie girls footie dreams) this is the last year I would go for him same goes for Telles and/or Alaba (all are 1992 born like moi, 1992 was a superb year for footie players being born, those I listed, plus players like Neymar, Mane, Salah,Son, Alisson, ter Stegen, Verratti, Eriksen, Casemiro, Marcelo Brozovic, Stefan de Vrij , Cuntois, Koke, Zaha, Danny Carvajal, Pablo Sarabia, Luis Alberto, Filip Kostic, Sergi Roberto, Isco etc etc ) I would be over the moon if we dumped both Emerson and Alonso and picked up Gosens and Telles (Gosens is almost exactly 2 years younger than Alaba and Coutinho, Telles is 13 days younger than me) (Alaba will cost Chilwell level or close so I would not splash that cash, would rather have TWO new LB's who would cost almost nothing net IF we sell both of ours ) If not Gosens or Telles for one of the 2 new LB's than I would LOVE to have Theo Hernández, but I dread his price now that he has exploded (best LB in Serie A IMHO, then Alex Sandro (too old now though to buy, he turns 30 in January( then Gosens, then Luca Pellegrini (just turned 21yo, but on loan at Cagliari from Juve, so that's a tough pull), and that's IT for Serie A LB's that I rate atm) Obviously I would prefer Sancho over Coutinho for many reasons, BUT we do need a bloody plan B, plan C, etc Coutinho also would have a shit tonne of motivation to beat the scouse vermin as well, I would think (maybe I am wrong, I am not inside his brain)

Friday April 3 2020 Football Nerd The Premier League season's most 'unfair' results By Daniel Zeqiri Many results are produced by variance and good fortune CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES Throughout football's coronavirus hiatus, we remain committed to providing a weekly newsletter of football facts, analysis and retrospectives. If there is a topic you are keen for us to cover please email [email protected]. Above all, stay safe. The thought of voiding the Premier League season repels football's authorities and most supporters for a variety of reasons. One is that football matches are a series of never-to-be-repeated discrete events, and their outcomes owe much to fortune and who enjoys the rub of the green on the day. Football's low-scoring nature means teams can dominate a significant portion of the 90 minutes but find themselves on the wrong side of the result. The tension and jeopardy created by this dynamic is what keeps us all interested. In the past decade, metrics such as 'expected goals' have gone mainstream and allowed even the casual fan to quantitatively value which team created the better chances. Despite its clunky name, expected goals is just a numerical expression of concepts that have been discussed in pubs and cafes for decades. How many times have you heard someone say "eight or nine times out of ten we win that"? Or recall Ron Atkinson's riposte to Sky Sports' Richard Keys, when the defeated Coventry City manager pointed out that Southampton goalkeeper Dave Beasant had won the man of the match award. Familiar sentiments all football fans understand - expected goals just puts flesh on the bone. Below are the 10 most 'unfair' results of this Premier League season, based on the discrepancy between the actual scoreline and the xG tally. They can be divided up into two categories: ever so slightly flattering thrashings, or an unlikely reverse of the outcome the balance of the game should have produced. CREDIT: OPTA It is not surprising to see Leicester's 9-0 and 5-0 routs against Southampton and Newcastle or Manchester City's 6-1 win at Aston Villa feature on the list. Scoring five goals or more in 90 minutes is practically impossible without some xG over-performance - Bayern Munich scoring seven at Tottenham from an xG total of 1.45 the perfect example. This does not mean the result of these games was unjust however, as the xG indicates the victors were certainly the better side. More influential for league table are those games where the outcome of the game flips. Tottenham's 2-0 win over Manchester City was the best example of floodlight robbery, achieved with an xG match-up of 0.31 to 2.86. Burnley have also kept up their reputation for squeezing out wins against the odds, with home wins against Southampton and Crystal Palace achieved while creating fewer than 1.0 xG per game. This is not to suggest some teams have been lucky, but rather demonstrate the number of results determined by variance. That is why studying a bigger sample of matches offers a better idea of each team's level.

for a fair price, yes, but Barca spent £142m on his arse, so how fair (ie. low) will they go?

I wish I could say the same.

Why Raheem Sterling will not return to Liverpool, even if he does leave Man City https://theathletic.com/1711380/2020/04/01/james-pearce-liverpool-raheem-sterling-manchester-city/ It started with Raheem Sterling’s live Instagram Q&A with supporters last week. Asked if he would ever go back to Liverpool, the Manchester City winger said: “To be honest with you, I love Liverpool. Don’t get it twisted, they are always in my heart. It’s a team that done a lot for me growing up so…” French newspaper “L’Equipe” then ran a story on the prospect of Jurgen Klopp making a move to sign the England international, fuelled by comments attributed to one of Sterling’s representatives. “Even if Raheem is attached to Manchester City, he hasn’t forgotten Liverpool because that’s where he became who he is, as a man and as a player. There was controversy surrounding his exit, of course, but time has run its course and everything is possible.” Eyebrows have been raised on Merseyside. The reality is that there’s more chance of Lord Lucan riding into Anfield on Shergar than Sterling returning to Liverpool any time soon. It’s a non-starter on every possible level. Forget the bad blood for a minute — the 25-year-old still has three years to run on a contract worth up to £300,000 per week. He’s a £150 million asset and it’s highly unlikely that City would contemplate selling him to their biggest domestic rival. And even if City’s Champions League ban is upheld and that puts pressure on them to consider offers, Liverpool simply wouldn’t be interested at those kind of figures. You don’t break your transfer record or your wage structure to secure the services of a player who wouldn’t get into your first-choice XI. Reports have suggested that Liverpool “fear” losing Sadio Mane to Real Madrid this summer and Sterling would be the ideal replacement on the left of Klopp’s front three. However, that’s news to the Anfield hierarchy, who are convinced that the Senegal international is happy and still sees his long-term future at the club. Sterling does have the qualities that Klopp looks for in an attacker and would certainly fit the style, but he isn’t a more complete player than Mane, who has contributed 14 goals and nine assists in the Premier League this season compared to Sterling’s tally of 11 goals and two assists. Even if there was a void to be filled and even if the finances made sense, selling the return of Sterling to Liverpool supporters would be a major challenge. He has felt the wrath of Anfield on each visit since his acrimonious £49 million transfer to the Etihad in the summer of 2015. Every touch has been booed by the Kop and he’s been subjected to chants of “only one greedy bastard”. The manner in which he repeatedly agitated for the move to City left a sour taste. He always maintained that it was a desire to play Champions League football and win trophies rather than the pursuit of greater riches that was his motivation. But there’s no doubt that the saga was handled badly and he received some poor advice after rejecting Liverpool’s offer of a new contract. An interview with his agent Aidy Ward was published saying “he didn’t care” about the club’s image and that Sterling wouldn’t sign an extension “even if he was offered £900,000 per week”. Ward claimed he thought the conversation with an Evening Standard journalist was off the record. The result of Ward’s rant was more negativity in Sterling’s direction as he was booed at Liverpool’s end of season awards in 2015. It was all so unnecessary: after having two bids turned down, City ended up paying the £49 million fee which was Liverpool’s asking price from the start. Since then Sterling has grown both as a player and as a man. He has won two league titles, the FA Cup and three League Cups at the Etihad, and has become one of the most influential sports people in Britain. Yet the jeers from the stands at Anfield clearly still affect him. Last November tempers boiled over towards the end of Liverpool’s 3-1 win as Joe Gomez and Sterling squared up to each other. Calm was restored but 24 hours later when the duo reported for England duty, Sterling lost his rag when Gomez went to shake his hand at St George’s Park and tried to put him in a headlock. The scar under the right eye of the Liverpool defender remains visible. Sterling was fortunate that Gomez, a quiet and unassuming model professional, decided not to take the matter further. Instead he quickly accepted his apology and helped convince Gareth Southgate not to banish him from the squad. The incident upset Gomez and his Liverpool team-mates were angered by the treatment that followed, with the centre-back booed by a section of England fans. The question is: what’s the motivation behind the comments of Sterling and those close to him? Maybe Sterling regrets the way he handled his exit and is just trying to build bridges and show his appreciation for the club who launched his professional career. He has previously talked about how his young daughter Melody remains a Liverpool fan and sings Mohamed Salah’s “Egyptian king” chant around the house. Maybe he’s been casting admiring glances towards Anfield, with his old club on the brink of taking the title off City’s hands. Speaking back in 2015, Ward suggested that Sterling would have stayed put if Klopp had replaced Brendan Rodgers earlier. “The new Liverpool manager probably would have been a great fit for Raheem — passionate, disciplined in the right way, new ideas, not afraid of trying new things. Would Raheem under Klopp have been a good scenario? Yes, 100 per cent, definitely, mainly because of the person Klopp is — the passion, the drive, the emotion, wanting to achieve,” Ward said. “Working with Klopp — that could have been great. He’s going to get the best out of those players. It could have been a dream come true.” Both Liverpool and Sterling have flourished since then. They will remain on separate paths. If Sterling and those close to him are plotting a move, his next stop won’t be Anfield.

Player contracts are biggest barrier to season finishing. It’s a legal minefield https://theathletic.com/1716043/2020/04/02/coronavirus-premier-league-football-contracts-season-finish/ Several leading sports lawyers have raised serious doubts about the implications of extending the season beyond June 30, with one lawyer saying it is simply “not realistic”, while another said the situation would be an “absolute nightmare”. The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic is, of course, bigger than football or any other sport, but that does not mean the professional game is not dealing with significant and unprecedented challenges. One of the most complicated issues is how to finish the current season in Europe, where many players’ contracts expire on June 30, a hard deadline to end one season and start another that nobody expected would be forced to move. But that is the predicament facing administrators, clubs, leagues and players as they try to work out how to preserve the integrity of their competitions, as well as satisfy their various broadcast and commercial contracts, assuming their respective governments let them do so. “If the season is to be extended beyond June 30, clubs are going to want to extend some of their expiring contracts, but they are unlikely to want to hand out new three-year deals, so they are very likely to be short-term deals,” says Nick De Marco QC, a barrister with Blackstone Chambers. “But this presents a perennial problem for players: if you get injured while playing on a short-term contract, you could find yourself without a job. Now, it makes sense for all parties to negotiate and find a way through this, but it is not required for players to agree to these short-term extensions under English law.” Dan Lowen, a sports contract specialist at London-based law firm Level, agrees with De Marco. “Some with expiring contracts may be delighted to be paid by their clubs for a few more weeks or months, but others will refuse to accept any extension as they won’t want to jeopardise a long-term or better contract with a new club,” says Lowen. A working group set up by world football’s governing body FIFA to look at the regulatory issues posed by the pandemic has recently sent a report to the game’s stakeholders. In this report, which The Athletic has seen, FIFA says the “three core matters” that must be addressed are expiring contracts, the “appropriate timing” for the next transfer window (currently scheduled to open on July 1) and “frustrated” agreements that can no longer be fulfilled because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The concept of frustration exists in common law systems, like England’s, and civil law systems, such as Switzerland’s, where FIFA is based. In simple terms, it says contracts can be set aside if an unforeseen event makes it impossible for the contract to be fulfilled. This is particularly significant now that clubs are unable to provide their coaches, players and non-playing staff with work, and may be struggling to pay them. As a result, clubs have been persuading their employees to take pay cuts or defer wages until life returns to normal, with players at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Juventus among those who have accepted cuts. So far, only a handful of teams in England and Scotland have agree to do likewise, although Newcastle United, Norwich City, Bournemouth and Tottenham Hotspur have become the first Premier League clubs to take advantage of a government-backed scheme to furlough their non-playing staff. This means these employees will be paid 80 per cent of their usual salaries, up to a maximum of £2,500 a month, out of the public purse — a controversial move for companies who employ millionaires. FIFA can only provide general guidance on these matters and its proposal is that “clubs and employees (players and coaches) be encouraged to work together to agree on deferral and/or reduction of salary by a reasonable amount for any period of the stoppage”. The English Football League, Premier League and Professional Footballers’ Association met on Wednesday in attempt to reach a united position and it is expected that English-based players will agree to defer a proportion of their wages. That is certainly the hope of global players’ union FIFPro, whose secretary general Jonas Baer-Hoffmann told reporters on Tuesday he hoped the various contractual issues could be resolved “collectively, with the right will on both sides”. But, presumably as an example of the wrong will, he also highlighted the example of seven-time Slovakian champions MSK Zilina, who became the first European club to start liquidation proceedings after the start of the coronavirus crisis on Monday when 17 of their first-team players refused to accept an 80 per cent pay cut. This is clearly an extreme example, but it highlights how difficult it can be to find common ground or a way through the crisis. As Lowen points out, the situation in the England, particularly at several of the Premier League’s top clubs, is further complicated by the fact many player contracts are now “heavily skewed towards incentives” or bonuses. “In normal times, these contingent payments are seen as a win-win because the clubs recognise that they gain if a player meets these targets,” he says. “If the season is cancelled, players will not receive these bonuses, some of which they could have reasonably expected to have received. In those circumstances, should they also agree to cut or defer their basic salaries? “There is often a difficult tension between the regulatory and legal spheres in global sports and this crisis is shining a bright light on that. FIFA is in a tough spot because it has 211 member associations: each one of those may have a slightly different approach to the regulations around contracts and will have different legal frameworks in which those contracts exist.” A good example of this is how an English court might interpret a contract expiring on June 30 versus a court elsewhere in Europe, and it is based on the concept of “contractual intention”. “In England, it is based on what an objective bystander would reasonably consider the intention of the contract to be,” explains De Marco. “In this case, the fact the contracts say June 30, it would be reasonable to assume that is what was intended. But under civil law, you look more at the subjective interpretation of intention. So, for example, if you had evidence to suggest the parties to the contract actually meant ‘until the end of the season’, you could more easily extend it.” Some experts have suggested football needs to look again at its player contracts, as they do not contain “force majeure” clauses that guard against unforeseen circumstances. “They are common in other sports contracts,” says Dan Chapman, head of the sports and employment teams at Leathes Prior, a law firm in East Anglia. “For example, the last race of the season in Formula One is scheduled for Abu Dhabi but the sport has had to cancel and reschedule races before. This is reflected in the drivers’ contracts, which have more flexibility. “Football contracts, on the other hand, really aren’t very sophisticated and I wonder if this is something we should look at after the crisis. If you’re (Birmingham City’s) Jude Bellingham, just to pick one example, are you really going to want to play a few more games in the Championship this summer if you already have a move to Borussia Dortmund or Manchester United lined up? “I don’t think extending the season for months is realistic or possible from a legal point of view. I can’t see players agreeing to short-term extensions if they know they’re going to be cramming games in before facing a quick turnaround for another long season. The risk of injury will only be increased.” De Marco, however, is not so convinced that football contracts can or will be changed as a result of the crisis. “Football contracts are not like most employment contracts for good reason,” he says. “First, they are the product of years of collective bargaining between the clubs, players’ unions and the governing bodies, so they cannot be altered without consultation. “Second, they are fixed-term contracts, so players cannot just be made redundant or dismissed on notice because there is no work for them. And there are no force majeure clauses in them because of the highly specific nature of the industry. “A Liverpool player cannot just hand in his notice and join Arsenal in the same way most of us can move to new companies. This is because of the integrity and team stability issues this would pose for football competitions, but it is a fundamental restraint of trade. Therefore it is only fair that players get something in return. “Force majeure clauses might seem reasonable to some but most players only get two or three good contracts in their lifetime: is it fair that those contracts could be ripped up for something that is completely beyond their control?” Lowen believes one possible way out of the legal minefield is to relax FIFA’s ban on pre-contract agreements between clubs in the same country. Under the current rules, players can sign pre-contracts with clubs abroad, as Aaron Ramsey did when he left Arsenal for Juve. “One way of potentially allaying players’ concerns would be for national associations to allow players to do this now for moves within national borders,” says Lowen. “This could, however, lead to potential issues with the integrity of the competition, as players could face their future employers in the final matches of the season. But signing a pre-contract would in theory give players a degree of protection against the risks and impact of a bad injury.” Daniel Geey, a sports lawyer at Sheridans, raises another potential headache for clubs and players. “What happens if a player is out of contract on July 1 but cannot be employed or registered by another club until the new season starts because the transfer window has moved? That’s a restraint of trade,” says Geey. “And then there will be other players who will only sign extended contracts if they are rewarded for the added risk of injury. That is why I can imagine some clubs would simply decide to play on with a smaller squad. “My gut feeling is the clubs will have enough players to finish the season without dishing out lots of short-term deals, although this will clearly lead to some questions about the integrity of the competition. Watford are a good potential example as Heurelho Gomes and Ben Foster are out of contract. That is a good prisoner’s dilemma for them as they wonder if they should re-sign or not.” Another lawyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said all these issues amounted to the “absolute nightmare” mentioned above and it is why he believes the game will reach a “tipping point” in the coming weeks and realise the season cannot be completed. He said he thought the leaders in each league would be awarded the respective titles, the current Premier League table would decide the European places, the top two in the Championship, League One and League Two would be promoted and there would be no relegation. The divisions would then be readjusted over the coming seasons. “Somebody will try to sue the leagues but I think it will be a case of the path of least resistance and I’m sure a settlement can be reached with the broadcasters,” he said.

it is Marina and the rest of the duncey berks on the board's fault we all knew 100% Cuntois was leaving, and that waiting until he had only 11 months left on his contract to sell was a guaranteed ass-fuck

I wanted Alisson the year BEFORE had been tipped off to him by some Brasilian mates

Serie A’s rising stars: ‘Kulu’ – the missing piece of Sarri’s Juve puzzle https://theathletic.com/1713957/2020/04/01/dejan-kulusevski-juventus-ibrahimovic-sarri/ “Yesterday was positive,” Zlatan Ibrahimovic explained with unusual understatement. “Me in Milan. Dejan [Kulusevski] in Juventus.” The transfers, both concluded at the end of December, left Zlatan with an almost avuncular sense of pride. “If you’re a Swedish player and you represent a big club, it’s good. There aren’t many of us at big clubs, not just in Italy but all over the world.” Ibrahimovic returned to Serie A on a free transfer in January, well into the twilight of his career. At the dawn of his own, Kulusevski ended up as the second most expensive buy of the winter window (behind Bruno Fernandes to Manchester United) when Juventus, one of Zlatan’s old teams, edged rivals Inter and Manchester United to the teenager’s signature. All told, the fee could rise to £37 million — no Swede other than Ibra has fetched more money. Sent back to Parma for the remainder of the season, where he was already on loan from Atalanta, Juventus’ chief football officer Fabio Paratici admitted “we would have loved to” have the 19-year-old for the second half of the campaign. It’s not difficult to see why. Even out of position on the wing, Kulusevski still managed to have a hand in 12 goals (seven assists, five goals) in his first four months as a regular in Serie A. The only player of a similar age in Europe’s top five leagues affecting games to a greater degree was Jadon Sancho. Firmly installed by December as the outstanding candidate for rookie of the year in Serie A, Juventus sensed that if Kulusevski carried on at the same rate and attracted even more attention at the Euros, then the hype around him would only rise and take up his price with it. Whichever way you look at it, “Kulu’s” ascent has been rapid. In hindsight, it’s strange he never started a league game for Atalanta and made only three cameo appearances towards the end of last season. The limited game time he received did not culminate in him making the same instant impression other kids like Musa Barrow and Amad Traore did upon being granted their first bow on the big stage. Kulusevski never seriously doubted himself though. Without being arrogant, the shy red-head has always believed he could make it to the pinnacle, visualising every step of the way, as Bartosz Grzelak, the assistant coach of Sweden Under-21s, tells The Athletic. In March last year Grzelak’s boss, the former Coventry and Sheffield Wednesday defender Roland Nilsson, planned to call up Kulusevski for a couple of friendlies against Russia and Scotland, so he sent his deputy to Italy to get to know him a bit better. “I went down to Bergamo,” Grzelak recalls. “We were sitting at dinner and he was very clear about how he saw his career panning out. He said, ‘My plan is first to make my Serie A debut with Atalanta. Then I’ll probably go out on loan to one of the clubs where I have more chance to play and from there I’m aiming for the top clubs in Europe.’ I’ve sat down with some young players over my coaching career and you always hear those stories: ‘I want to go to Barcelona or United or Juventus.’ You’re like, ‘OK, son, it’s good to have high goals.’ In this case you then look back at what happened: Dejan made his Serie A debut, he went to Parma, a team where he could have playing time, and then he went to Juventus.” All in the space of less than a year. “That’s amazing,” Grzelak says. Born and raised in Stockholm with a Macedonian mother (Katica), Kulusevski started out at the same club as Grzelak: Brommapojkarna. Small in profile, BP have made a disproportionate contribution to the development of Swedish talent, rivalling the bigger, richer and more illustrious Malmo, where Zlatan broke through at the end of the 1990s. “If you look at the national team right now, I think we’d have five players that have been at the academy from a young age,” technical director, Andreas Engelmark explains. They are Kulusevski, two members of the Under-21 European Championship winning side from 2015 (John Guidetti and Ludwig Augustinsson), Sampdoria midfielder Albin Ekdal and back-up keeper Kristoffer Nordfeldt, who is now in Turkey after four and a half years at Swansea. Engelmark first came across Kulusevski when he was coaching BP’s Under-14s. There were three players on his team who were playing for the age group above and Kulu was one of them. “I saw pretty soon that he had something special,” Engelmark says, “but it’s still too early at 12 or 13 to assess if they’re going to be a professional and even more difficult to predict he was going to be the player he is today.” What stood out to Engelmark was the skill Kulusevski displayed on the ball. “The clearest thing for me is that he was a very strong dribbler. He was dribbling all the time.” Malmo didn’t boast a player like him. Everyone focused instead on a kid coming through at AIK, Alexander Isak, who Dortmund paid £8.4m for shortly after his 17th birthday. The slightly younger Kulusevski, who likes to watch Eden Hazard and Kevin De Bruyne, wouldn’t have to wait much longer for his own move abroad. He gracefully began bleeping across the radars of bigger clubs from top leagues around the time BP were touring Europe. They were participating in a series of youth tournaments of which no one, apart from scouts and agents, will know the names, like the Gusella trophy just outside Turin. There were others, including in Pordenone, where Atalanta first caught sight of him. Reflecting on the Gusella, Engelmark says: “I think we ended up in sixth position out of 48 teams. We lost to Roma 2-1 but they had a really good side. Some of them are professionals now like Luca Pellegrini (who moved to Juventus for £19.5m in the summer). The other guy, Gianluca Scamacca. He’s at a decent level now (on loan in Serie B from Sassuolo) and was twice the size of everybody else. They were better than us, but the year after we were stronger. Dejan left after that. We actually beat his team, Atalanta. We beat them 1-0. I think they had a few players away but it was still a very strong team, Alessandro Bastoni (now a starting centre-back for Inter who left Atalanta for £28.3m) was in it. We had a guy up front who was really strong as well, Joel Asoro, he’s now on loan at Groningen from Swansea.” The fee Atalanta paid for Kulusevski is chicken feed in today’s game. Initially reported as 200,000 euros, the club’s sporting director Giovanni Sartori told sports daily Il Corriere dello Sport: “It was for less and if you really must know, it was half of that.” The pitch to Kulusevski was easy. Atalanta, long known as the nursery of Italy, have a proven track record of bringing through top talent and, in Gian Piero Gasperini, a coach prepared to put faith in the academy. He promoted from within in 2016, integrating Mattia Caldara, Andrea Conti, Franck Kessie and Roberto Gagliardini into the first team and was rewarded with a fourth-place finish. When that team broke up, the circumstances began to change. Atalanta developed into an even better team — the one we know today — and the pathway for Kulusevski was blocked by Josip Ilicic and captain Papu Gomez. Despite lighting up youth football and being in a class of his own in the club’s physical testing, deep down he knew he’d have to leave to keep progressing. In the meantime, Grzelak consumed every game of Atalanta’s Under-19s on Wyscout. “He was exceptional at that level,” Grzelak says. Kulusevski contributed 1.28 goals or assists every 90 minutes and Atalanta went onto become national champions. His role in that success was undeniable. Kulusevski not only scored and set up a goal in the semi-final against Torino, he laid on the winner and only goal of the game in the final against Inter too. As much as Kulusevski’s decisiveness in that tournament persuaded him this kid had a very bright future in front of him, Grzelak found himself marvelling at his qualities as a team-mate. The Primavera finals were in June and as such they clashed with the Sweden Under-21s’ next get-together. Kulusevski asked for a leave of absence. “He’s very loyal to his team,” Grzelak explains. “We understood after his explanation that this team and his team-mates meant a lot to him. He’d been with the Primavera for a few years. The year before, they had lost the semi-final, so they really aimed to win the whole competition. We decided that since we were only playing friendly games, it was all right. And he was very grateful for that. He even said: ‘If we lose the semi-final [a seven-goal thriller that went to extra-time] I can fly. I’ll come the next day.’ We said just focus on that. He focused, they won the semi-final and the final and he was the MVP of the final.” As elite clubs scout younger and younger these days, it should not come as any great surprise to learn Kulusevski was already attracting high-calibre interest last summer. Juventus wanted him for their Under-23s side. But Kulusevski was too good to be playing third-division football. Manchester City expressed an interest, albeit with a view to sending the Swede out on loan. The examples of Sancho and Phil Foden indicated consistent game time would be hard to come by. RB Leipzig (of course) wanted to be in the mix, too. In the end, the decision was made to prioritise a loan to a club content to act as a stepping stone. It came down to Cagliari and Parma. After analysing the profiles of both teams and drawing some technical parallels between Parma winger Gervinho and old team-mate Asoro, Kulusevski elected to move to the Ennio Tardini. As with Bastoni the year before, Parma played the loan market perfectly. Kulusevski made an instant impact, setting up two of his side’s three goals in the Crociati’s first win of the season away to Udinese. His first top-flight goal followed less than a month later. “From texting him and reading what he said in the media, that was a really big relief for him to score,” Engelmark explains. Gasperini’s tentativeness in giving Kulusevski opportunities with Atalanta had made him understandably curious about whether he could deliver as quickly as he wanted in Serie A. “Dejan started to grow slowly but surely,” Engelmark says. “There were a few games in the fall where I could really say this is the player that I’ve seen before, but at a level that’s so much higher.” The speed with which Kulusevski adapted surprised but did not astonish Grzelak. Those around Kulu say that whenever he steps up a level, he tends to need one or two games to figure out the standard of the competition and recalibrate. Serie A was no different. Grzelak, who sees flashes of a taller, more physical Freddie Ljungberg in Kulusevski’s game, recalls the player’s debut for the Under-21s against Russia. Sweden lost and Kulusevski didn’t play particularly well. “I remember him taking in the feedback he got from that game. It was not like it was bad or anything. He got honest feedback. And I remember him asking for the full video of the game. That’s not always common from the players. He went up to his room and took a good night to watch it through and he came down in the morning and said ‘I understand now’. From then on, he hasn’t made the same mistakes. That’s Dejan. I think he’s extremely strong mentally. You know he left Sweden quite young. He moved to a country where he didn’t know the language. It was a huge step for him to take.” There’s a maturity about him that is unusual for players still a couple of years shy of their 21st birthday. “When I saw his first games at Parma I saw that he was very comfortable on the ball. He was not like a young boy who is just happy to be on the pitch. He contributed from the first game and I think that is connected to his mental strength.” Another indicator of that kind of fortitude came as Parma’s other attacking players started to drop like flies. Roberto Inglese has barely played this season and needed surgery in Finland on a torn muscle. Gervinho has been in and out of the team and pushed rather too hard for a move to Qatar in January. The Ivorian was frozen out until he made an apology to his team-mates and Parma’s coaching staff. As for Yann Karamoh, he didn’t even show up for training one day in September and isn’t always fit either. Then there’s former Cardiff striker Andreas Cornelius, who had only scored once until Kulusevski set up two goals of a hat-trick he scored against Genoa at the end of October. For Kulusevski it has meant playing as a winger, a No 10, a false nine; anywhere Parma coach Roberto D’Aversa needs him. He trusts Kulusevski and knows he not can only cope with whatever’s thrown at him but also pose a consistent threat, from kick-off to the final whistle. D’Aversa compares him with former Ballon d’Or winner — and current Juventus vice-president — Pavel Nedved for his ability to affect games, allied to the sheer amount of running he gets through. For context, only one player (Inter’s wandering playmaker Marcelo Brozovic) is averaging more kilometres per game than Kulusevski in Serie A this season. “He constantly moving,” Grzelak says. “And he’s available for his team-mates. That’s why you see him involved in so many situations in the final third. He’s extremely strong. When it comes to covering ground with the ball, he’s fast. He doesn’t appear that fast, but he’s fast with the ball and he can definitely handle body contact. He can handle tackles and in his decision-making he seems to find the right solution very often. When you look at his goals and assists, it’s clear he knows when it’s time to shoot or pass to someone else in a better position. His understanding of the play is brilliant in that aspect.” Perhaps at no point was that more evident this season than in his man-of-the-match display against Napoli. Kulusevski outpaced Kalidou Koulibaly and sent him flying as he put Parma in front early on, then 90 minutes he later joined a counter-attack and still had the lucidity to pick out Gervinho for a stoppage-time winner. To have the presence of mind at that age after running more than 14km — a record for a player in Serie A this season — was jaw-dropping. In the stands that night Engelmark knew his friend had ascended to another dimension. “You kind of understood now something is going to happen,” he says. The week before the Napoli game, Marco Ottolini, Juventus’ loan players’ coordinator, had been in touch with Engelmark to get some information on a BP player they wanted to trial. The pair had known each other for eight or nine years, so after Parma’s win in Naples, Engelmark went up to Turin, stayed with the triallist and caught up with Ottolini. “He asked me about Dejan. A little bit if I could help convince him.” But Engelmark politely declined. He knows Dejan too well. “He’s going to make his own decision,” Engelmark said. Juventus needn’t have worried. Paratici outlined the club’s plans for Kulusevski. Juventus see him as the missing piece. He’s the No 10 Maurizio Sarri needs to make his 4-3-1-2 work, a role Kulusevski was born to play. It’s one that exists in Turin but not in Milan, where Antonio Conte has set up Inter to play his trademark 3-5-2. Seeing the photos of Kulusevski putting pen to paper on a four-and-a-half year deal still blows Engelmark’s mind — but not too much. “For him and everyone who knows him it was a bit surreal in one way, but I also think it felt natural. He’s the kind of guy who’s going to keep going until the end. And you can see that when he plays. He always plays 90 minutes.” As exciting as it is for Juventus, the prospects for Sweden are even better. “We haven’t really seen this type of young player coming through for a long time,” Engelmark says. “Maybe Ibrahimovic in terms of technical ability. For us to see Isak and Kulusevski reaching that level at such a young age, it’s extraordinary. It’s not common. Not this young. I think the generation coming up now and the next one, they’re working harder. They’re more detailed. They’re doing everything they can to compete. I also think with Dejan and Isak coming through in Stockholm and being able to break through at an early age will help kids here see that it’s possible. It’ll be interesting in the next few years because the ceiling now is higher than before.”

Covert scouts, modern data and Marina the leader: Chelsea’s transfer revolution https://theathletic.com/1713452/2020/04/01/frank-lampard-chelsea-recruitment/ There is one story that illustrates Chelsea’s recruitment strategy in the Frank Lampard era. It comes from the agent of one of Europe’s brightest young players, who had been made aware that his client was first choice to be Chelsea’s long-term solution in his position. Chelsea’s interest in the player dated back several years and it was clear they were serious. Scott McLachlan, the club’s head of international scouting, kept in contact, letting the agent know when they were coming to watch and compile further information on his client. The agent was keen to do a deal and optimistic the player’s club could be persuaded to sell. But then, this season, the situation suddenly changed. Lampard brought through an academy graduate in the player’s position, giving him regular first-team minutes and the opportunity to prove that he was every bit as promising. The academy graduate, having been handed a new long-term contract, went from strength to strength and is regarded as integral to Chelsea’s future. Chelsea’s interest in the player formally ended with a phone call from McLachlan to the agent, in which the message was: “Frank is happy with X (the kid) coming through.” Despite his relative inexperience, Lampard is leading the conversation over who Chelsea do and don’t try to sign. He has further cultivated a healthy working relationship with the director Marina Granovskaia, and is regarded internally as a real asset in persuading transfer targets to join. “I was in contact with him for a few weeks,” Hakim Ziyech said of Lampard in an interview with Ajax shortly after his £39 million transfer to Chelsea was announced. “At first, it was mainly by phone. We had a few long conversations about his approach, his playing style, the club and about me. Later on, we texted a lot. “He was such a big player and he was a midfielder, so I can learn a lot from him. I have a lot to learn. I had a good feeling after I talked with him and that feeling only became stronger. There was no doubt in my mind.” Lampard pushed for Ziyech, as well as other players, to be signed in January. Unlike more combustible previous Chelsea head coaches, however, he did not lash out at the board publicly or privately when no reinforcements arrived, instead recognising the club’s efforts in pursuing the names he requested, as well as understanding how difficult it is for any top club to do deals that make sense for quality, long-term targets in the winter market. Chelsea believe that Lampard’s youth movement this season will save them millions in future transfer fees, as well as providing a vibrant young home-grown foundation on which to build a team that contends for the Premier League and Champions League in the near future. But they also know the importance of getting the next transfer window right. The pressure is on, and not simply because they have spent the last two on the sidelines. The disastrous summer of 2017 remains fresh in the minds of many supporters, and Chelsea are still trying to extricate themselves from the consequences of some of those failed deals. Finding any buyer for Danny Drinkwater may yet be Granovskaia’s greatest achievement to date. Yet the picture painted of Chelsea’s recruitment system from a wide range of conversations with scouts, agents and rival football executives is one that stands up well to comparisons with the most modern, slick transfer operations. If they fail again, it won’t be due to a lack of resources, effort or thinking. McLachlan has been Chelsea’s head of international scouting since 2011, but the scope and nature of his role has evolved over the years. When he reported to technical director Michael Emenalo, he was granted considerable autonomy to identify weaknesses in the scouting and analytics departments, and to make the necessary changes. The recruitment structure at the time was convoluted. Each new manager voiced their transfer preferences, but owner Roman Abramovich had a tight-knit group of football advisors — including former manager Bobby Campbell and Dutch scout Piet de Visser — who influenced decisions. Emenalo’s job was to mediate, adding recommendations from the scouting system and his own network of contacts. The results were muddled and inconsistent; within a year of committing £50 million to an ill-fated move for Fernando Torres, Chelsea spent far less combined to acquire rising Belgian stars Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne and Thibaut Courtois on the recommendation of De Visser. Emenalo pursued his idea of building a large pool of loan players, to act both as a developmental pathway and an additional source of revenue. McLachlan’s focus was on making Chelsea’s process of talent identification more data and analytics-driven. A graduate of London South Bank University with a masters degree in sports coaching science, he had worked as head of performance analysis at Southampton and as a technical scout at Fulham, building a reputation as one of the pioneers of performance profiling — the process of analysing an athlete’s performance to identify strengths and weaknesses — in football. “I am going to four or five matches a week, because I don’t want to lose touch with the essence of the game, but at Chelsea my role has changed,” he said in Michael Calvin’s 2013 book The Nowhere Men. “It is more managerial. I have about 20 scouts working to me. It is my job to educate them scientifically, to tailor their observations and analysis to data presentation. I’ve got to stop them using silly cliches, like the boy does this and that, and get them to focus on trends and averages.” McLachlan also spoke of the dangers of a lack of due diligence in deals like the one for Torres. “What is crazy is that, to pick a moment in time, £269 million was spent in the transfer window in January 2011,” he added. “How much of that was down to quantitative analysis of the facts? How much objectivity was used in the signing decision? How much involved real scrutiny of the data? If you are going to make a capital investment of £50 million in one player, how are you going to discover what you are getting for your money?” By the time Emenalo resigned in November 2017, McLachlan’s remit had expanded to include the UK scouting operation. Ever since, he has reported directly to Granovskaia, and the lack of urgency to appoint a new technical director — technical and performance adviser Petr Cech has different responsibilities, despite the similarity of his job title — underlines the club’s satisfaction with how this more streamlined structure is functioning. McLachlan speaks frequently to Granovskaia, to Cech and to Lampard, who has taken a more active interest in the work of the recruitment department than previous head coaches. Lampard’s approachable demeanour and desire to offer a “willing ear”, as one source describes it, to scouting recommendations have been appreciated, and this more collegiate atmosphere has prompted hope that damaging tensions over transfer strategy with past managers will not be repeated. There is broad respect in European football for McLachlan, who remains driven by a desire for self-improvement: he is enrolled in the FA’s Level 5 course for technical directors. His reputation is founded on the Chelsea scouting system he has re-moulded to his own specifications — a system regarded as one of the smartest, most efficient and forward-thinking among elite clubs. It’s possible that you could find yourself sitting next to a Chelsea scout at a match. You may already have done so, and simply not realised. Unlike a lot of clubs who formally request scout accreditation, Chelsea more often buy a ticket in the stands to make sure no one knows they are watching. They wear nothing to identify who they represent, and are under strict instructions to keep a low profile. When notes are made on smartphones or iPads, technological precautions are taken to ensure they are not seen by the wrong eyes. At times they still record their observations with pen and paper, but even if you did manage to get your hands on a Chelsea scouting report, you would not be able to read it. Like several other top clubs, they have developed over years a language of code and abbreviations that no one on the outside can understand. To help maintain this veil of secrecy, McLachlan does not use scouting consultants who also provide their services to other clubs. Chelsea’s scouts work for them, and for them alone. Their reports feed into a bespoke scouting and data analysis system, built by a member of Chelsea’s recruitment department regarded as one of the best in the industry. McLachlan’s team at Chelsea’s training ground in Cobham then sift through the sea of data — a combination of live scouting from around the world, video assessment using Wyscout and other resources, and advanced performance metrics — to identify the players who should be added to the list of potential first-team targets. Robustness is a quality particularly valued in Chelsea’s scouting assessment. They pay close attention to a player’s injury record and whether they are capable of playing three matches in the space of a week — the kind of challenge English football frequently poses. Cesar Azpilicueta’s appearance record since moving to Stamford Bridge in 2012 is held up internally as an example, while durability was also a defining characteristic of Eden Hazard and Willian’s careers at the club. McLachlan can make his player recommendations in transfer discussions with Lampard, Cech and Granovskaia, but central to Chelsea’s overall recruitment strategy is that it must ultimately serve the needs of the head coach. It is part of the reason why Jorginho accompanied Sarri to Stamford Bridge in 2018, and why Lampard has been able emphasise targets that complement the young academy core he is trying to build around. Emenalo moved to separate Chelsea’s senior and youth recruitment operations, but since his departure the two have become more integrated. The emphasis is on building players towards one journey from the under-9 age group to first-team level, and so while head of youth development Neil Bath and his assistant Jim Fraser are directly responsible for all academy business, there is frequent communication with McLachlan and Cech. In the age of Jadon Sancho and Erling Haaland — an era when players between the ages of 17 and 20 are increasingly ready to shine at first-team level and are priced accordingly — such joined-up thinking is vital. Youth scouting is increasingly regarded as a separate specialism in modern football, and Chelsea are widely seen as the masters. Domestically, their ability to spot, secure and develop talent at an early age is borne out by the presence of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Tammy Abraham, Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James and Fikayo Tomori in Lampard’s squad, while Andreas Christensen and former Chelsea defender Nathan Ake are testament to the club’s success at attracting promising teenagers from across Europe. Even accounting for the transfer bans FIFA handed the club in 2009 and 2019 for violating transfer rules regarding foreign players under the age of 18, their aggression in this area has worked for them more often than against them. McLachlan empowers his team — headed up by his second-in-command James Bell-Walker, a former scout for Everton and Bolton who lives in the north west but spends most of his week at Cobham — but he also insists on watching any potential senior recruit several times. Assessing the player’s temperament and personality are an important part of the process — one agent told The Athletic that McLachlan had revealed he had watched a fly-on-the-wall documentary series focused on the player’s club to see if he could glean anything about his character. Part of McLachlan’s job is to do any due diligence relating to a player of interest and to come up with an estimated cost of any deal. At that point, if it is something Chelsea are minded to commit to, the relevant parties are informed that Granovskaia will call them to begin the final negotiations. Granovskaia’s prominence has been the constant in a decade of evolution for Chelsea’s recruitment process. The person entrusted with managing the club’s day-to-day football operations by Abramovich when she joined the board in 2010, her voice has grown more authoritative as she has established a reputation as one of the game’s most capable transfer dealmakers. Among those who have worked with or against her, the consensus is that Granovskaia is firm but fair in negotiations, and formidably dedicated to her job. “She’s constantly working,” one agent says. “It’s not uncommon to get a reply from her at midnight if she hasn’t had a chance to get back to you during the day.” An executive at a rival club says: “I’ve been involved in three or four deals with Marina and she’s always been good to her word. Every time I dealt with her, it was very straight forward, very business-like, very professional and she never went back on her word. I can’t say that about everybody else in this business.” Granovskaia does much of her transfer communication via phone calls, and is not known for engaging in tricks or mind games during negotiations. She states her position in plain terms and makes it clear when there is no room for manoeuvre. Abramovich is kept updated on all the key decisions Chelsea make in the transfer market, but her judgment is trusted. As a number of high-profile Chelsea players have discovered, Granovskaia never allows emotion or sentimentality to cloud her decision-making. If there is a good, fair deal to be made in the interests of her club, she will do it. If there isn’t, she will not be convinced otherwise. Diego Costa sent her a barrage of WhatsApp messages during his self-imposed exile in Brazil pleading to be allowed to join Atletico Madrid, but the transfer did not happen until the money was right. One agent went so far as to describe Granovskaia’s approach as “cut-throat”, though most of those who spoke to The Athletic did not use those words. The over-riding impression is of a serious dealmaker who is widely respected within the business, even by those with whom she has engaged in more fraught negotiations. She has worked productively with most of the major agents, and some have done a lot of business with Chelsea in recent years — Kia Joorabchian and Giuliano Bertolucci represent many of the Brazilians who have come and gone from Stamford Bridge, while Federico Pastorello helped facilitate the appointments of Antonio Conte and Maurizio Sarri. Pini Zahavi has had long-standing connections with Abramovich. Relations with Mino Raiola became strained in the fallout from Chelsea’s failed attempt to bring Lukaku back to Stamford Bridge in 2017, when it was felt that he had steered his client towards a more lucrative offer from Manchester United at the 11th hour. But overall, Granovskaia does not favour particular agents and Chelsea’s recruitment is not regarded as agent-led — the suitability of the player is what matters. Granovskaia chairs Chelsea’s internal discussions about transfer strategy, but does not overstep her brief in pretending to know the strengths and weaknesses of individual players. She understands that her expertise lies in the business of transfers, and relies on the input of the first-team head coach and scouting reports presented by McLachlan to take the lead in identifying club targets. Once a player is identified, she initiates talks and makes the final decision on the deal. Her biggest achievement in the role has been maximising Chelsea’s income for players deemed surplus to requirements, generating £397.4 million profit from player sales since 2013 — a vast sum that has provided a key source of income to help keep the club competitive near the top of the Premier League in the age of Financial Fair Play. Perhaps her most notable miscalculation was the sequence of events that led to Chelsea making Kepa Arrizabalaga the most expensive goalkeeper ever in the summer of 2018. Talks over a deal with Roma for Alisson, the club’s first-choice target, reached an advanced stage but Granovskaia had still hoped to convince Courtois to stay. Liverpool capitalised on their rivals’ hesitation to snatch Alisson, Courtois went on strike and Kepa was No 2 on the recruitment list. The only option left was to pay the £71.6 million buyout clause in his contract with Athletic Bilbao. But indecision is not a trap that Granovskaia often falls into. If they feel a fair deal can be done for a player they want, Chelsea tend to move quickly: their speed in reaching an agreement with Ajax to sign Ziyech impressed recruitment professionals elsewhere in Europe, where Premier League clubs have a reputation for being too reactive and ultimately paying over the odds. It’s fair to wonder how this widespread respect for Granovskaia, McLachlan and Chelsea’s broader recruitment system squares with the undeniable howlers that transpired in the summer window of 2017. Of the five players signed at a combined cost of almost £180 million (Alvaro Morata, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Drinkwater, Antonio Rudiger and Davide Zappacosta) only Rudiger still factors into the club’s plans. Each deal has its own context. Morata was a worthy but ultimately lost bet on an elite talent, a bet that Chelsea only made once Lukaku chose United. Bakayoko was a player with potential who could yet blossom somewhere, but he arrived injured and never adapted. Drinkwater and Zappacosta, the least defensible, were late signings made to try and appease Conte, who had spent the summer furiously lobbying for squad reinforcements. Rudiger has become a solid contributor. No matter how scientific your approach to recruitment, you can never turn it into an exact science. Chelsea’s record since offers greater cause for encouragement: Kepa is the only senior signing to underperform the fee paid for him and, at 25, still has time to improve. Mateo Kovacic has been one of the best players this season, while Jorginho has proven his usefulness was not tied to Sarri and his system. Christian Pulisic showed enough flashes prior to injury to suggest he can be a significant part of the next great team at Stamford Bridge. The biggest test of Chelsea’s senior recruitment is coming, but there is a quiet confidence that they will prove equal to the challenge. McLachlan’s data-driven scouting network has never carried more weight behind the scenes, or found a first-team head coach more receptive than Lampard. As long as they can find the players capable of taking this team to the next level, Granovskaia’s track record indicates she is capable of delivering them.

I have been RAVING about this for years!!! So nice to be backed up yet again.

obviously it was bullshit first off NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO chance Messi would rate MOUNT as the 2nd best young player in the world, that is ridiculous, insane anyone who thinks Mount is good enough to even be considered being picked there (let alone by Messi) knows as much about football as a can of foot powder does and that list had Mbappe at THIRTEENTH!!!!!!! roflmaooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Also, Kimmich is not young, he turns 26 in the middle of next season, he has only 4 full sub 30yo seasons left. Pavard too, he is only 1 year younger. 23/24yo is when a player stops being 'young' (except for GK) IMHO And deffo 21yo is a cutoff for 'youth' Zouma is 25. Let that sink in. If you don't have your shit together by the time you hit 25, odds are high as fuck you will be shit for the rest of your career. Of course there are exceptions, but it's really rare overall to have someone just explode out of nowhere at 26, 27, this is not yank baseball or cricket.

only time I ever cried over a footy game

they will never finish this season, and it is bollocks to combined it with next year it needs to be voided we make the CL (if there is one) and no title for the victims too fucking bad for them but that's the way the virus crumbles

that's the 5 year coefficient we got fucked because of no points in 2016/17 if we had the average year then we would be 8th in the world with 104 points, 1 behind PSG who have 105 look at this seasons rankings the previous set of 5 years before the current 5 we are 4th in the world for the ten years we are 5th (AM passes us up)

Unwritten: The American college duo plucked from obscurity for a year at Everton https://theathletic.com/1702859/2020/03/27/unwritten-the-american-college-duo-plucked-from-obscurity-for-a-year-at-everton/ This is a story about two young Americans, signed out of nowhere to play for Everton for a year and where life has taken them since; including the front-line of the fight against Covid-19. The pair were one of David Moyes’ thrifty experiments, in an era when financial constraints fuelled the Scot’s hunt for diamonds in the rough. Cody Arnoux and Anton Peterlin were college boys playing semi-professional football when they were recommended to Moyes by the coach of Californian club Ventura County Fusion, and former West Bromwich Albion goalkeeper, Graham Smith. The pair travelled to Merseyside for a successful trial in March 2009 and that summer became Everton’s first bit of low-key transfer business, signing 12-month deals. Arnoux was 21, studying communications at Wake Forest University near his home in North Carolina. A prolific marksman, Smith wondered if the stocky youngster’s eye for goal would translate across the Atlantic. Peterlin, a year older, was a star on the college soccer circuit. A tough-tackling midfielder for California Polytechnic State University, he was being watched by several Major League Soccer outfits. They didn’t know one another but became firm friends after making what Peterlin called at the time a “miracle” move to the Premier League, where they largely trained with the reserves alongside players such as Seamus Coleman, Shane Duffy (now at Brighton & Hove Albion), and Jose Baxter. “I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” says Arnoux, now 31 and back home in Wilmington, North Carolina, running his family’s construction business. “The leap from college soccer to football in England was huge and in the end, there’s no getting round it, I wasn’t good enough. But it was some experience. I’d watched the Premier League all the time back home and suddenly Louis Saha was talking to me on the training field. I was like, ‘This is insane’.” The two Americans were given an apartment in Liverpool city centre, next to the newly-constructed Liverpool One retail and leisure development, built as part of the city’s 2008 Capital of Culture year. Arnoux hadn’t been to the UK before. “I was a homebird,” he says. “It was tough adjustment to leave my bubble in North Carolina and go to England. The level was just so much higher than I could have imagined. “I really had no business being close to the first team. Our first training session, the thing I’ll never forget is the tempo. There wasn’t a minute to switch off or rest. Of course at first too, the other players don’t really want you to do well. They’re all competing to make it at Everton and you’re a foreign guy who is coming in adding to that, so it takes time to make friends. We had me, Conor McAleny, Lukas Jutkiewicz and Kieran Agard all vying for a striker spot. “Then there’s the coaching. In the US college scene, we’re probably too nice. This was much tougher. I wasn’t used to an environment where players hold each other to account so much. If you made a mistake back home your team-mates were supportive, but at Everton you really knew about it. You had four guys unloading on you. It toughens you up.” Despite the culture shock, the pair began to win respect for their work ethic and ability to take knocks and keep going. Arnoux scored a header against Burnley on his debut for the reserves, and soon the pair were taken under the wing of Coleman, who knew what it felt like to be a fish out of water at Everton. The future Republic of Ireland captain had joined that January, also making an implausible leap from the League of Ireland. “We became pals and he would come over to our apartment after training,” says Arnoux. “It was the season he broke through into the first team. We were at Goodison watching when he was man of the match against Tottenham in his second game. Afterwards he came to our place and we had Papa John’s pizza and played FIFA. He had this perma-smile on his face all night.” Although his homesickness eased, Arnoux was still dazzled by the standard when the reserves trained with the first team. “They were unbelievable,” he says. “I remember one session we had a pick-up game of the young guys against the first-team and we didn’t have the ball for 15 minutes. Pienaar, Saha, Arteta… they were just laughing at us while we were running around. “Finishing sessions were the same. If I scored one in three I’d be happy, but you’d have Yakubu and Saha and they didn’t miss.” Arnoux and Peterlin were close but different. The former more gregarious, the latter was older with the edge on discipline and focus. “I’m pretty sociable and would go out for the occasional beer every few weeks,” says Arnoux. “I wanted to meet people. I wasn’t out partying by any means but even then I should have been focusing on my game more. Anton would always stay behind after training and do extra work.” Peterlin, though, says he too became increasingly aware their time at Everton would not be extended. Unlike Arnoux, he had been to Europe several times; the son of a Danish airline pilot mother and Slovenian doctor father. He found it easier to settle, if not to match his new club-mates’ technical prowess. “They saw the play so quickly,” he recalls. “In a split second they already knew what they were going to do with the ball before they got it. Arteta just passed it forward all the time, always clever, into space. “I was exhausted — mentally and physically — after every session with the senior players. The banter was lively too, with guys like Jose and James (Wallace) running the reserve dressing room. We made friends but I was kind of used to not being accepted. In the US when I was a kid, soccer was considered a girls’ sport. Some of the kids in school would puncture our balls and make fun of us for playing it. “Seamus becoming our friend helped massively. He’s such a good guy. Then there was a taxi driver called Billy Lawler who kind of took us into his family and invited us to Sunday roasts. It made a huge difference. We’re still in touch now.” Peterlin played against Paul Pogba and Michael Owen in a game against Manchester United reserves, and lined up for the first team in a pre-season game against Bury. “It was mainly reserve football though, with Alan Stubbs as coach,” he says. “I remember a game against Blackburn and I was tackling everything that moved for 90 minutes and Stubbsy said, ‘Anton, you’re an English player now.’ “One day, Stubbsy and Taff (assistant Andy Holden) said to our group that this would probably be the highest level we’d play at so to appreciate it. The first team were in the Europa League that season and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we’d help them train so we’d be under Moyesy. He was very old-school and demanded a lot but he was respectful to us and us to him. “It’s a cut-throat environment. True Darwinism really, in that it’s survival of the fittest. For every Ross Barkley or Tom Davies that come through there are scores of other lads with their dreams crushed.” Towards the end of the year, Moyes called the pair to his office, thanked them for their efforts and confirmed they would not be kept on. He would, though, help them find another club in England if they wished. After a brief spell trying out at Motherwell and Plymouth Argyle, Arnoux returned to North America, playing for Vancouver Whitecaps in the second tier and MLS side Real Salt Lake, where he finished his college degree. He wound up playing for lower-league hometown club Wilmington Hammerheads for a couple of seasons. “Injuries stacked up on me,” he says. “I had a bad knee and then I kind of forgot how to score goals. It was innate when I was younger but something in me just stopped doing it instinctively.” He hung up his boots aged 28 and now loves running a business and watching Everton games on TV. Coleman still gets tickets for Arnoux’s father to fly over and see them play live once a season. “I’ve got no big regrets,” he says. “I guess if I could speak to my 21-year-old self I’d say you can always work harder but just to have the opportunity was amazing. I’ll always be an Evertonian.” Peterlin got a contract at Home Park. Peter Reid knew a tough-as-boots midfielder when he saw one and picked him as much as possible before he was sacked. Devon life suited him. A true Californian, Peterlin would surf in his spare time and was disappointed to be released. “I went to Walsall then and I still loved playing in League One,” he says. “It was just different than Premier League reserves. “The gaffer was Dean Smith (now Aston Villa boss) and it was very competitive. Every point mattered. There was relegation and a bunch of pressures but I liked it. We played 4-4-2 and I was the midfield engine next to a lad called Adam Chambers but then younger guys on loan from Premier League clubs came in and there was a pressure for them to play.” Peterlin made an important decision. Sensing that his options were dwindling he quit English football and moved to Denmark, enrolling at the University in Copenhagen to study medicine while still playing part-time. That’s where this also becomes a story about these troubled times. About bravery, dedication and selflessness. Peterlin is 32 and right now his time in English football feels a long time ago. He is a recently-qualified doctor working in an A&E department just outside Copenhagen, treating a growing stream of coronavirus patients. His wife Josephine is also a doctor on the A&E ward of a different hospital in the city. Peterlin is now a doctor on the frontline against coronavirus They have 18-month-old twins Bjorn and Luka (Slovenian for light), and Peterlin admits his present challenge is harder than trying to make a name for himself in football. “After graduating from med school here you do an ER rotation and then general practise,” he explains. “I was already doing my GP year but we’ve all been called back to ERs because of the pandemic.” Denmark went into lockdown on March 12 and has significantly less confirmed cases of Covid-19 than the UK, but it remains a worrying time. “Numbers here are slowly increasing but we’ve haven’t seen the peak in most places in Europe yet,” he says. “Me and Josie talk about the risk of getting it, of course. We take precautions and disinfect ourselves as much as possible after work. “You hear about shocking cases of kids aged nine in hospital with symptoms. It’s always in the back of our minds how much more serious it could become. But we swore an oath as medical professionals to care for people. We have to do as much as we can. My parents back home in the States worry but I worry just as much for them because, like Britain, the US was slow to go into lockdown even after the WHO declared a pandemic. It’s mind-boggling.” Saving lives, raising babies, worrying about his wife’s health, his parents, himself. How does Peterlin cope? “Football gives you a way of focusing,” he says. “It makes you mentally tough. I’m very happy with my life. It’s had a good flow to it so far. I’m thankful just to have had the chance at Everton. I told David Moyes that when he let us go. “Now I’m glad to have the chance to make a difference here.”

Premier League clubs hold talks about wage deferral agreement https://theathletic.com/1711625/2020/03/30/premier-league-clubs-hold-talks-about-wage-deferral-agreement/ Premier League clubs are in active discussions over forming a collective agreement to defer top-flight wages to safeguard their financial future. The Athletic has learned senior executives at several clubs are making calls to form a joint agreement that would see the Premier League make a statement of solidarity. Some of the division’s most prominent voices are conscious of the need to secure an agreement across multiple stakeholders, as they seek to strike a deal that will appease players, the Professional Footballers’ Association and agents. Should the clubs reach a unanimous view, it is then expected to be fiercely negotiated by those who represent the players’ interests. The clubs are engaging in these talks because they believe their wage outgoings are unsustainable in the absence of the usual match-day income. There are also doubts over the fate of existing broadcast deals, in addition to concerns over how future negotiations with sponsors and broadcasters will be affected by the overall economic impact of coronavirus. Even the largest clubs, whose revenue streams are hugely diversified, will lose millions of pounds if games are cancelled or take place behind closed doors. One senior director said: “We simply cannot spend all the money we usually spend while missing significant amounts of what we usually bring in.” The Premier League initially suspended fixtures until April 30, but after the country’s deputy chief medical officer warned on Sunday that it may be six months until the country returns to “normal”, clubs are now hastening measures to protect their finances. Failure to complete the season would mean broadcasters demand £762 million in recompense, as revealed by The Athletic earlier this month. Last week, Leeds United secured an in-house agreement that saw senior executives, playing staff and coaching staff agree to defer their wages until Championship football resumes. Across Europe, similar moves have taken place. On Monday, Lionel Messi announced that Barcelona players have agreed a 70 per cent wage cut to help tide the club over, while Juventus announced at the weekend that the playing and coaching staff have committed to wage cuts that will save the club up to £80.7 million during the next four months. Premier League clubs have been criticised in some quarters for being slow to make the same moves, but executives have been at pains to point out that social distancing guidelines from the government arrived later in the United Kingdom than they did in Spain and Italy. Indeed, only a couple of weeks ago, the government was advising that matches and crowds should continue as normal. Now, however, the reality is setting in for the clubs and The Athletic is aware of top-ranking executives at Premier League clubs — from those competing in Europe to those battling relegation — attempting to broker a unified agreement across the Premier League. However, not every club in the division was immediately aware of the discussions as of Monday afternoon. Indeed, some clubs were surprised by Newcastle’s decision to place all academy and scouting staff on furlough. This means they must apply to the government’s coronavirus job retention scheme, which allows staff to claim 80 per cent of their wages, to a maximum of £2,500 per month, with the club paying the remaining 20 per cent. Across other clubs, there is hope of a collective deferral agreement by their high-earning staff to protect jobs across the board and ease cash flow issues. Some smaller clubs are more openly contemplating not only deferrals, but also reductions in salary, particularly if play restarts behind closed doors and clubs do not have access to the usual match-day income. The larger clubs, meanwhile, are not all under the same urgently pressing need to defer wages but recognise the long-term damage that could ensue for the Premier League if a deal is not secured.

Daniel Sturridge and the FA ban that is no longer a ban https://theathletic.com/1705066/2020/03/31/daniel-sturridge-fa-ban-betting-liverpool-turkey/ The decision to ban Daniel Sturridge for providing his brother with information about a potential transfer to Sevilla in 2018 should have been one of the longest delivered by the Football Association since the formation of the Premier League. His punishment, enforced at the start of March, was for four months. Considering the possibilities at Trabzonspor, the club he used to represent, in real terms that would have meant him missing as many as 14 games, including a cup final. Sturridge’s ban exceeded the penalties handed down to Joey Barton in 2012 (12 games for violent conduct), Paolo Di Canio in 1999 (11 for pushing a referee) and Luis Suarez in 2011 and 2013 (separate eight and 10-game bans for racism and biting). The longest? Eric Cantona’s nine months in 1995 for kung-fu kicking a spectator, a period that ultimately covered 32 Manchester United games. Sturridge, it is fair to assume, has suffered reputational damage for his actions. It is also fair to say that the Football Association has other priorities at this moment. Yet is it fair that Sturridge’s penance for breaching betting rules, to the naked eye at least, won’t be that much of a punishment at all? The FA confirmed to The Athletic yesterday that he will be free to play again from June 17. The global lockdown means he’ll have missed out on making just four Trabzonspor appearances — one of them played behind closed doors — since announcing his departure from the club shortly before his suspension was revealed. A prevailing mood of apathy towards Sturridge’s providence is understandable but it might be different if, like say, Barton, Di Canio, Suarez or Cantona, his indiscretions were captured live on camera, or — indeed — if he was still a truly relevant footballer in an active sense. The details in the regulatory report certainly make for stark reading. Should the Turkish authorities be able to conclude the current campaign, there is a chance that Sturridge may end up with some regrets on a professional level. At Liverpool, he missed out on the title once when he was a key performer in Brendan Rodgers’ 2013-14 team. He was also involved last season when Jurgen Klopp took Liverpool even closer to a feat that has eluded the club since 1990. Both endings mean Sturridge’s only experience of featuring in a title-winning side was a decade ago when he was a back-up to a 29-goal Didier Drogba at Chelsea, starting two league games and scoring one goal. That could have changed at Trabzonspor, who led the Super Lig table on goal difference when the competition was halted in the middle of the month. Should Turkey return to something like normality, he will only be able to imagine the celebrations that may follow in Trabzon, which has not witnessed a championship-winning team since 1984. It is an ugly way of putting it but there are some footballers for whom coronavirus have increased their career chances. Joe Allen, for example, had been ruled out of Wales’ 2020 European Championship campaign with an achilles injury, but it is fair to assume he’ll be there in 2021. Is Sturridge as fortunate? There are points to remember about what may or may not happen over the months to come — a period where nobody knows for certain when competitive football will be played again, or, indeed, whether the campaign will finish. Most signficantly for Sturridge, with the appetite for behind closed-door matches growing across Europe’s governing bodies, indeed, The Athletic understands free agents such as himself are unlikely to be able to sign for clubs until 2019-20 is officially over. Only at the conclusion of this interrupted season would a new window open up and the calendar be amended accordingly, with authorities wary of the perils of sticking by the transfer system because they know it would go against existing rules and therefore jeopardise the integrity of each competition they have tried to save. It has been suggested that Major League Soccer may be a convenient destination for Sturridge but he would face the same problem there given that their season has not been immune from coronavirus, lasting only two weekends before proceedings were stopped. In normal circumstances, the next transfer window in MLS would open on July 7 but that date is likely to shift towards another at some point later in the year. Sturridge, then, will face challenges around travel restrictions depending on where the virus spreads and how trends change. He will be 31 on September 1. Should he at the earliest opportunity find the urge to return to a game that has been cruel to him in terms of injuries, it is highly unlikely it will be on better terms than he expected. Sturridge, it should not be forgotten, had served a six-week ban last summer (though four of those weeks were suspended) before the FA launched a successful appeal against an independent commission’s findings. Even though his status in the game had taken a hit following the original sanction, Sturridge had clubs from across Europe, North America and the Middle East lining up to speak to him throughout the period, though representatives from Trabzonspor had been one of the first to contact him earlier in the year when it became clear there was no future for him at Anfield. Ultimately, one way or another, his options will be a lot narrower than they were this time last year.

Chelsea’s greatest goals: Di Matteo’s 43-second thunderbolt sparked trophy haul https://theathletic.com/1697076/2020/03/30/di-matteo-chelsea-fa-cup-middlesbrough-greatest-goal/ The Athletic’s reporters have chosen their top three goals scored by the clubs they cover and over the next three weeks, will be writing a piece on each of them. When they have finished, you can vote for which you think is your club’s best and discuss what we got right/wrong. Scott Minto doesn’t hesitate for a second. When it comes to naming the most important Chelsea goal in modern times, one stands out from all the rest. “This goal is iconic,” Minto insists. “Not only is it a thing of beauty — it is the start of everything for Chelsea in the modern day. The club had gone so many years without winning anything. Since then, they have won consistently.” Chelsea’s former left-back is talking about Roberto Di Matteo’s remarkable strike after just 43 seconds of the 1997 FA Cup Final against Middlesbrough. While Eddie Newton provided a late second to ensure the game was won, it is Di Matteo’s contribution which is most remembered and revered. On a poll conducted by the BBC in 2015, the Italian’s effort was voted by viewers and readers of the website as the third-greatest to ever be scored in an FA Cup Final. Winning silverware has become a common occurrence in the Roman Abramovich era — the club have collected 16 major trophies since the multi-billionaire arrived at Stamford Bridge in 2003. Such a return was unthinkable during a drought which started after lifting the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1971 and was finally brought to an end on the day Di Matteo used his right foot to devastating effect. Chelsea went into the game as strong favourites. They were a team renowned for a silky playing style under head coach Ruud Gullit and their opponents had just been relegated from the Premier League. Confidence was oozing throughout the squad. Minto, who was appearing in his first, and only, final of his professional career, says: “All of us were relaxed. Gullit treated it as just your typical game in terms of our preparation. “We didn’t stay in a hotel for three, four nights like many teams for the Cup final did back then — it was just the one. We trained as normal the day before. That was Ruud using all his experience as a big-game player. It was a very good idea. It kept the pressure off. He just knew how to keep everybody calm. We just had fun. “Getting to Wembley was a culmination of a good season. We’d been inconsistent in the league (finished sixth) but we just felt our name was on the cup. We had quality players with Mark Hughes and Gianfranco Zola up front, Frank Leboeuf at the back and Dennis Wise as captain. Plus Robbie in midfield, of course. He was as cool as ever in the build-up to that day.” Chelsea signed Di Matteo from Lazio for £4.9 million the summer before. His arrival was outshone by that of legendary Italy international Gianluca Vialli from Juventus, as well as suffering a back injury in pre-season. But on his home debut in England’s top division in August 1996, the elegant midfielder made his mark, stroking the ball from 25 yards out to provide Chelsea’s first win over Middlesbrough that season. This moment sparked a celebration which made many of the back pages as five team-mates (Wise, Leboeuf, Jody Morris, Dan Petrescu and Erland Johnsen) posed with him for the cameras. “That was the game which helped him settle in, feel part of everything,” Minto recalls. “It was a real introduction to the Chelsea scene, the Chelsea fans. He kicked on from there. Robbie had a dry sense of humour. He could be very quiet but once you had his trust, were part of his inner circle, he showed just what a funny guy he is. “Technically, he was a very good player — his touch was good and he could score these long-range goals. He was doing what Frank Lampard would go on to do for Chelsea first.” By the time the two sides met to fight it out for the oldest domestic cup competition in the world, Di Matteo had a respectable eight goals to his name. His reputation had been growing steadily, but what happened next changed his life for good. Middlesbrough played a part in their own downfall. They pressed so high up the pitch after Minto had headed out for a throw-in, there was little cover when Wise won possession back. A simple pass found Di Matteo unmarked on the edge of the centre circle and he set off on a 40-yard run with no-one making much of an effort to stop him. Other Chelsea players were pushing forward too, including right-back Frank Sinclair. “I just saw a huge space in front of me and raced down the right wing,” Sinclair recalls. “I was just saying, ‘pass it to me’ and I was preparing myself to cross it into the area. But he took a shot instead and I was thinking, ‘What are you doing taking a shot from there?'” Sinclair soon knew. With Hughes having made a clever run to take Middlesbrough centre-half Gianluca Festa back toward his own area, Di Matteo had a clear view of the net. Despite being more than 30 yards out, he let fly. The ball flew at a perfect trajectory over goalkeeper Ben Roberts before dropping sharply to go in off the crossbar. “I still feel for Roberts,” Minto admits. “He took a bit of criticism because the shot went over him in the middle of the goal. If it had gone in the top corner, no-one would have said a word. But the way the ball dipped, made the shot unstoppable. He jumped as high as he could and didn’t get near it. “I have never seen Di Matteo celebrate a goal like that. He went pretty crazy. He knew how huge this game was, that people around the world were watching it. “I was one of the only players that was able to catch up with him. There are some really good pictures of it. Fans sent them into me to sign and send back. One of them is me with my hand around his neck.” Sinclair had a bit more ground to cover but he got there eventually — although it would come at some cost. He adds: “I just went chasing him all round the pitch. I went from the right-hand side all the way to the dugout on the other side so by the time we were finished celebrating, I was proper breathing!” Another one joining in up in the stands was Di Matteo’s blind sister Concetta. The drama caused by her brother was described to her in great detail by those around her and she couldn’t have been more proud. History had been made too for it was the fastest-ever goal in the final, a stat which was beaten 12 years later against Chelsea, funnily enough, when Louis Saha converted with his left foot after only 25 seconds. “We were all a bit gutted about that,” Minto adds. “It was satisfying to know that we were in the team which had the record. Not that Robbie changed. He was exactly the same afterwards; a really cool, chilled guy. He wasn’t in the middle of all the celebrations — just to the side, chipping in.” Di Matteo would continue to chip in as far as helping Chelsea win trophies as concerned. He scored in the Carabao Cup Final and FA Cup victories in 1998 and 2000 respectively. And as manager, he led the club to the ultimate dream of the Champions League and another FA Cup eight years ago. But as a moment of high drama, importance and skill, 1997 will always be hard to beat.

Moscow, May 21, 2008 grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr worst sporting night of my life I will say this Manure is the ONLY Big Six EPL team I respect, as a club I hate their yank owners and that cunt Woodward but as a team, they were brilliant for so long I would so love to go back to us v them and streets ahead of all others we were so close to each other in talent from 2004 to 2010 they won 3, we won 3 2007-8 was such a gut punch, both the league and the CL, that was arguably, on paper, our best team too, overall (obviously 2004/5 was the greatest Chels team every) CR7 was a difference maker, we only had a player like that once, and for only a few years, Jimmy Greaves their MF stars were really ageing towards the end of this period we both had the two best set of Cb's ever in the EPL its flip a coin for me if we had beat them for the league and CL in 2007/8, then easy, we were better but we did not seeing as they won 3 EPL trophies in a row, and then after this period won 3 in a row again, and we each had 1 CL (Barca fucked them after this in 2 CL finals, that 2010/11 Barcelona team was probably the best single season football team ever, even Fergie said so ) probably go with Manure, but it's so close 2008 was a great year overall for me and all things (until the crisis) but my dog, footie wise, grrrrrrrrrr

CIES Football Observatory n ° 289 - 03/30/2020 Weekly letter Values Pandemic: 28% loss on player transfer values https://football-observatory.com/IMG/sites/b5wp/2019/wp289/en/ The coronavirus pandemic is heavily impacting the football industry. Issue number 289 of the CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post presents the gaps in the players’ estimated transfer value in the event that no matches will be played and no contract will be extended until the end of June. As such, the total player transfer value at big-5 league level would decrease by 28%: from €32.7 to €23.4 billion. The extent of the decrease varies according to several factors such as the players’ age, contract duration, career path and recent performance. The greatest loss in relative terms concerns ageing footballers with short-term contracts who played fewer matches during current season than in the previous one. As matter of example, Paul Pogba’s estimated transfer value would almost halve from €65M to €35M. The greatest potential percentage loss per club was measured for Olympique de Marseille: -38%. Conversely, the lowest one was recorded for another French Ligue 1 team: Stade Brestois (-16%). The values presented have been calculated on the basis of the exclusive CIES Football algorithm. The transfer value ranges for big-5 league footballers before the league shutdown are available here. Aggregated transfer value decrease, 11/03/2020 - 30/06/2020 20 players with the highest values per club (€ Million), if no matches played and no contract extension