Vesper

Norwich are hanging in there hard still nil nil

My father says that if Shitty's ban is upheld, then Sancho's right of refusal clause with them is more than likely null and void bad faith nullification

shocked that Ben Godfrey isn't starting at CB

Norwich City v Victimpool HD Streams http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-norwich-city-vs-liverpool-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/highlights/arsenal-vs-everton-2016-match/

hat trick today for Wout

Next Big Thing: What next for the Champions League? Guaranteed spots, more matches or solving ‘the Ajax problem’ https://theathletic.com/1596517/2020/02/12/champions-league-reforms-agnelli-liverpool/ When Chelsea beat Wolves to the First Division title in 1955 they were not just surpassing the reigning English champions, they were also getting one over on the self-styled “champions of the world”. Wolves had just beaten Honved and their Marvellous Magyars 3-2 under Molineux’s new floodlights in a game broadcast live by the BBC. While L’Equipe editor Gabriel Hanot was not buying the British bravado about Wolves being the best side on the planet, he had seen enough to know it was time for Europe to settle this properly. One of Hanot’s reporters, Jacques Ferran, had already been bending his ear about the South American Championship of Champions he had seen a few years before in Chile and, in the summer of 1955, they ganged up on UEFA to get a European version up and running. The European Champion Clubs’ Cup started on September 4, but Chelsea were not on the starting grid. They had been blocked from accepting UEFA’s invitation by Football League secretary Alan Hardaker, who thought European football was a “distraction”. Sixteen teams disagreed, with Hibernian flying the flag for Scotland, Rot-Weiss Essen representing Germany and Saarbrucken doing the honours for the Saar Protectorate. Europe was a very different place then, but some things have not changed at all: Real Madrid took the prize and held onto it for five years. L’Equipe were right, though. Watching the best sides compete to be continental champions was fun and financially rewarding. And for the next 36 years, the European Cup provided the stage for superstars such as Alfredo Di Stefano, Eusebio, George Best, Johan Cruyff, Franz Beckenbauer, Kenny Dalglish and Marco van Basten. The format was deliciously simple: last year’s winners plus domestic champions from around Europe, playing home and away, in a straight knockout. Get it wrong in round one, as double-defending champions Liverpool did against English title winners Nottingham Forest in 1978 (no keeping domestic rivals apart back then, either), and you were out — with no Europa League safety net to catch you. Get past four opponents, as Forest did, and you got to play the champions of Sweden — or even Greece, Scotland or Yugoslavia — in the final and become legends. Twice. Nottingham Forest captain John McGovern lifts European Cup in 1979. But then the tinkering started. Under pressure from the richest clubs to give them more of this good thing, UEFA scrapped the quarter- and semi-finals and introduced a group stage in 1991, giving the top eight sides six guaranteed games instead of just two. A year later, the European Cup became the Champions League, four years on it was the Champions (and runners-up) League and two years after that the big leagues got the best of the rest in, too. Now, 65 years after that first tournament, European football is becoming a distraction again. The bosses of the continental game are faced with a range of options for what happens after 2024, the last year of the current set of calendar and commercial agreements. Dramatic change, tweak again or do nothing — whichever UEFA choose, not everyone will be happy. Here, The Athletic outlines those options… The Agnelli revolution The first idea out of the gate was also by far the most radical. The cynics among you may be wondering if those two facts are not connected and we are being softened up to accept a “compromise” that will keep the big clubs sweet… but we are getting ahead of ourselves. Andrea Agnelli is the chairman and owner of Juventus. His great-grandfather, Giovanni, founded Italian car company Fiat and there have been the Agnellis on board at Juventus for a century. Andrea, however, is also the president of the European Club Association, the organisation that represents the interests of Europe’s leading clubs. So when it emerged last spring that Agnelli was proposing to change the Champions League’s group stage from eight groups of four to four groups of eight, with the top four from each group progressing to the current knockout format, eyebrows were raised. This proposal would increase the minimum number of Champions League games for those involved from six to 14. The second part of Agnelli’s plan then became clear: there should be promotion and relegation between Europe’s three club competitions (the third-tier Europa Conference League is due to start in 2021) from one season to another, with the top 24 of the 32 sides in the Champions League retaining their places. This, everyone agreed, was certainly something completely different. That was as far as the idea went, although it did achieve what many had considered very unlikely in that it united Europe’s “big five” domestic leagues — the Bundesliga, La Liga, Ligue 1, the Premier League and Serie A — in saying they absolutely hated it. Here’s why. Winners: Juventus and several of the other elite continental clubs, who do not share anything like the £3 billion a year in broadcast revenue that the Premier League brings in for its members, are convinced the only way to earn that kind of money is to play each other more regularly. UEFA’s total income has risen from about £500 million a year in 2003 to £2.75 billion now, with the vast majority of that coming from the Champions League. The governing body dish out two thirds of that to the clubs every year, via bonuses for those involved in its competitions and solidarity payments for the rest. Taken together these payments account for £1.77 billion, or 10 per cent of European club football’s total income. Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid and co believe they earn this money and that they deserve more of it. They also think that giving the audience, particularly in the growing Asian and North American markets, more of what it seems to want will grow the pot so everyone can get a bigger slice. More for them and more for UEFA to dish out to those clubs and smaller leagues getting flattened by the big five. This last point has been slightly lost in the ensuing bun fight. Agnelli’s “Super League by the backdoor” is supported by a surprising coalition of smaller players on the European scene, including Legia Warsaw president Dariusz Mioduski and HJK Helsinki chief executive Aki Riihilahti, both ECA board members. For them, doing nothing is worse. Losers: As mentioned, the speed of the reaction from the Premier League et al said it all. The top flights in France, Germany, Italy and Spain all put it to a vote and the results were a resounding defeat. The Premier League did not even bother with a show of hands. Why bother, when the status quo is so sweet? But if you need to identify reasons why the big leagues hate Agnelli’s plan, you do not have to look far. First, where do you find room in the already crowded calendar for eight more games? The leagues thought they knew where: weekends. And if UEFA is after our weekends, what is next? Twenty-team top flights? A second cup competition? Cup replays and two-leg semis? Everything. It would all be up for grabs. But the extra dates are only half of the existential nightmare. The Premier League earns £3 billion a year in broadcast income because some of the world’s most famous teams take it very seriously, their fans usually prioritise it and the dramatic tension this creates is sustained throughout the season thanks to the race for the title, scrap to avoid relegation and the fight for the European prizes. Take that away and you are not going to get Sky Sports and co queuing up to write you such big cheques every three years. The best teams might be able to replace that revenue with the extra cash from Europe but what about the rest? OK, let’s leave it, then. The weeks and months after Agnelli’s plan was leaked witnessed a dizzying round of extraordinary assemblies, off-the-record briefings and public promises to listen, talk some more and try again. Many will say this is what should have happened in the first place, and there are some who think this is what Agnelli and UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin, the godfather to one of Agnelli’s children, intended all along. But for the talking to work, you do need people to agree on a few core principles at the start — such as whether the Champions League really needs to change at all. Listening to the boss of the organisation that represents Europe’s domestic leagues, European Leagues’ Lars-Christer Olsson, that answer seems pretty clear: No, we don’t. This cry for the status quo came across loud and clear at a European Leagues event, hosted by the Premier League, in London in October. Olsson repeated his earlier objections to the “dangerous” plans for a “closed league” that would damage the domestic game and Chelsea head coach Frank Lampard was called in to state the case for conservatism. “If you ask me, ‘Can we play more European games?’, I personally don’t believe you can fit them in among our busy schedule,” said Lampard. “I would find it hard to keep the quality level and the freshness within the players. If you did do that, there would be a lot of discussion about how that would work practically. At the minute I think the level is about right. I like the format, personally.” Winners: Anyone whose priority is maintaining the primacy of domestic league football will be perfectly happy if absolutely nothing changes after 2024. The Premier League’s new chief executive, Richard Masters, was at that October meeting, too, although he was only an interim boss then. When asked by The Athletic if there was any possible change to the current Champions League format that he would be comfortable with, he said no, albeit with a smile on his face. We asked him the same question last week and he said: “Let me answer your question with a question: Is it really going to add value to the Champions League product? If you look at how (the Champions League) is doing in the media markets in the UK and abroad, it is performing extremely well. There are no real complaints about it.” Leaving things as they are means no threat to the Carabao Cup, the most vulnerable item on the chopping board, no need to upset the Football Association or English Football League by scrapping FA Cup replays and no extra burdens on managers and players. Losers: Juventus, Barcelona, Real Madrid and the rest are not going to take the offer of “nothing” lightly. They want more games against each other. It really is that simple. But you could also add UEFA to this list, as it has the difficult job of trying to keep the peace in Europe — which boils down to persuading the elite there is still power in the union and no need for them to go off to form a competition where they share all the money among themselves. It also needs to grow its own revenues to mitigate the worst effects of the polarisation it has helped create by growing the Champions League in the first place. Having caved in to the rich clubs once, UEFA is fighting a rearguard action. That has been the story of the last 30 years of European football and it is a fight UEFA has fought pretty well, all things considered. But it knows it cannot throw up a rampart now and say “That’s your lot!” Swiss models, French diplomacy and solving “the Ajax problem” Compromise, tweak, rebrand, whatever you want to call it, this is where most sensible money thinks we are heading. But which compromise? Having realised the public squabbling was not particularly edifying, Ceferin stepped in and assured everyone nothing would happen until all voices had been heard. The urgency and insurgency of last year was halted, and a consultation process of at least a year was started. We are nearly six months into that now and, after a Christmas truce, the various sides in this row have resumed combat, albeit at a much lower level than before. And from this battle of ideas, two strong possible solutions have emerged. The first, the one closest to Agnelli’s in terms of being a genuine departure from what we have now, is a plan to replace the group stage with a league of at least 32 teams. Sides would play, say, 10 group games — five at home, five away — but against 10 different opponents. This is known as a Swiss-system league and is the main format used in chess as it is a good way to rank a large number of competitors, without sending some home very early or having to play dozens of rounds. Those backing this idea say it will give the top clubs the extra games they want — with four more looking like the maximum number the domestic leagues will tolerate — and provide UEFA with something genuinely fresh to sell to broadcasters and sponsors. Those alarmed at this idea argue it looks like the basis of a European Super League and is unnecessarily complicated. Another idea, championed by the French Football Federation, is gaining ground: just add more teams. So, instead of 32 teams in eight groups of four, we could have 36 teams in six groups of six, giving everyone their four extra games. This idea also has the benefit of solving something Agnelli and ECA wanted to fix: What about Ajax? The Amsterdam club have perhaps suffered more acutely than any other from the (unintended?) consequences of Champions League reform and European football’s growing haves and have-nots divide. Stuck in a small TV market, Ajax do not get handed millions every season for competing domestically in the Netherlands. This means they, and other Dutch teams, are at a disadvantage that is reflected in their league’s UEFA coefficient, the mark the governing body uses to decide which stage of the tournament each country’s champions should join in at and how many automatic places in the group stage a nation gets. The Premier League, for example, gets the maximum number of four slots. The Eredivisie, on the other hand, sees its runner-up enter the second round of qualifying and its champions begin a round later, still four games away from the group stage. Ajax have found themselves in this position many times and managed to successfully navigate a path through this season. But there are many in Europe who think a team that got within seconds of a place in the previous season’s final — a club that has won the European Cup four times, as well — should not have to get past the Greek and Cypriot champions three months later just to reach the group stage. The French plan to expand to 36 neatly solves that problem, and also probably spares Ligue 1’s fourth-best team the trouble of qualifying, too. Winners: Ajax (naturally); Ligue 1; the sixth, seventh and eighth best leagues, too; fans of complicated new tournament formats (the 36-team tournament would probably require a second group stage); the big clubs who want more games; the big leagues who will probably realise they can live with finding room for four extra midweek games. Losers: Those four slots will still have to come from somewhere, won’t they? And as Masters made clear last week, it is the Carabao Cup’s “trajectory” that looks most “challenged”. That is not likely to cause much concern in Madrid, Munich, Paris or Turin, though, as their countries have already done away with second cup competitions, and frankly cannot get their heads around why England’s needs two-leg semi-finals. But the Carabao Cup is one of the EFL’s prized assets and continuing to play in it was part of the bargain the top teams made in 1992 when they broke away to keep most of the English game’s income. The same argument applies to the FA Cup and its replays in rounds three and four. The FA has already given up replays in the last four rounds, including the final, as a concession to the top clubs and a quid pro quo in the creation of a winter break. But those four extra games for England’s best teams will have knock-on effects at home, as Liverpool’s involvement in the Club World Cup this season demonstrated. And that raises another potential loser and significant player in this debate that we have, so far, only briefly mentioned: FIFA. World football’s governing body has been greedily eyeing the riches of the Champions League for years, particularly when compared to the pittance it currently earns from every other tournament it runs apart from the World Cup. Now led by a former UEFA man in Gianni Infantino, FIFA wants to turn its annual seven-team Club World Cup into a 24-team spectacular that takes place every fourth summer. Is there room for that, too? Good luck sorting that out, as well as the 48-team World Cups, expanded UEFA Nations League, potential new tournaments in other confederations and ever-growing desire for summer friendlies in new markets. Non-stop football it is, then? Nobody is saying this, of course. In fact, everyone seems to agree you can have too much of a good thing and we should perhaps start to think about what playing twice a week, with travel, is doing to the players and the planet. But equally, nobody is giving any ground. So European football has a square to circle. The richest clubs want to play what they call more meaningful games, more often. The domestic leagues are trying to convince them that those games can be found at home, as well as in Europe. UEFA is trying to straddle both camps, while FIFA and several potential private partners flutter their eyes at the top clubs, too, adding to the sense they will get what they want, one way or another. It seems almost inevitable the Champions League will grow again. That is the lesson from the past. But it is also true that it cannot keep growing without rubbing up against existing competitions, here and abroad, the aspirations of other continents and the basic limits of the human body — both to play the sport and to watch it.

Honigstein: Revenge, nepotism and stodgy football – why Jurgen Klinsmann lasted only 76 days at Hertha https://theathletic.com/1595726/2020/02/14/honigstein-jurgen-klinsmann-76-days-hertha-berlin-resignation/ Jurgen Klinsmann hails from Swabia, the conservative south-west of Germany. But the 55-year-old took to his job at Hertha Berlin in the radical manner of fellow Californian Mark Zuckerberg. Move fast and break things. It’s the way he’s always operated. If there are people within a federation or a club that he doesn’t like or rate, they’re gone. Not tomorrow. Today. After his appointment at Hertha ten weeks ago, his first prominent victim was goalkeeping coach Zsolt Petry. The 53-year-old was instantly replaced by German national team goalkeeping coach Andreas Kopke, on an interim basis. That decision marked an inauspicious start to Klinsmann’s 76-day tenure before it had even begun: it reeked of nepotism and personal revenge. Two years ago, Petry had criticised Klinsmann’s son, Jonathan, a budding goalkeeper at Hertha for lacking charisma. Klinsmann junior, 22, has since moved on to play for St Gallen in Switzerland last summer but his father wanted to bring him back. As Bild revealed, he raised the issue during failed negotiations for an extended coaching contract beyond the summer. The club president Werner Gegenbauer refused. Kopke’s son Pascal, incidentally, also plays for Hertha. Klinsmann handed the 24-year-old, a striker on the fringes of the first team, his first two starts for the seniors last week. Hertha lost both games, in the cup away to Schalke and at home to Mainz. Klinsmann made the controversial decision to dismiss Petry and bring in Kopke The former Bayern Munich and Germany manager, it should be said, was hardly the first man in football to look after his own. Previous Hertha coaches Pal Dardai and Ante Covic, too, had their sons playing for the club. The Zolt-JK-junior-affair was indicative of Klinsmann’s sheer bloody-mindedness but a mere sideshow in comparison of the bigger conflict that lay at the heart of his abrupt departure on Tuesday morning. Backed by London-based investor Lars Windhorst, who bought just under half the shares of the club’s subsidiary company that runs the football operations for €224 million last year, Klinsmann wanted to turn the mid-sized and rather dull Hertha into a glitzy European superpower as quickly as possible. “Klinsmann doesn’t do any half measures, he’s travelling at a murderous pace and expects everyone to follow suit,” an official from one of Germany’s leading clubs tells The Athletic. “At a club like Hertha, where those in office have been there for years and are fairly comfortable with the status quo, it was all bound to blow up.” Gegenbauer and general manager Michael Preetz pleaded patience, gradual progress and cooperation. In effort to ward off relegation, Klinsmann was allowed to spend €77 million on four new players in January, more than any manager in Europe. But the two parties never saw eye to eye about the best way of rendering Hertha, the self-styled “Old Dame”, sexy and successful. Preetz, a former Hertha striker turned official who’s been in the job since 2009, even admitted to acting like “a handbrake” a few weeks ago. The 52-year-old was suspicious of the pace of change and of the amount of money invested into the squad. Transfer fees and wages for the new quartet — Krzysztof Piatek (AC Milan), Lucas Tousart (loaned back to Lyon until June), Matheus Cunha (RB Leipzig), Santiago Ascacibar (VfB Stuttgart) — swallowed up a significant portion of the Windhorst funds in one go. Klinsmann himself revealed that he wanted more, however. Everything, in fact: the power to control all aspects of first team affairs without internal oversight, with a commensurate salary that Hertha officials privately described as “astronomical”. The club rebuffed him. Klinsmann denied that money was a factor for his abrupt departure on Tuesday morning in a Facebook video the next evening.“We couldn’t agree on the division of responsibilities,” he said. “I’m not used to general managers sitting on the bench, talking to referees and players. I’m used to the English model, where managers only report to the owner. I was very annoyed by that.” It’s hard to know whether the mid 90s Spurs striker truly believes that the Premier League is still the domain of autocratic rulers in the Ferguson-Wenger mould or why he thought that Preetz and Gegenbauer would simply move aside for his one-man-show, in a break with protocol in the Bundesliga. Perhaps he simply overplayed his rather weak hand. Either way, he had no realistic chance of being anointed as the club’s full-time potentate while Hertha were still in the relegation battle and playing a stodgy, ultra-defensive game that made even well-disposed spectators’ eyes bleed. Things could have conceivably changed if he had saved Hertha and brought about a marked improvement in the performances but there was also the danger, conversely, that Preetz would have fired him after a defeat against bottom-side Paderborn this Saturday. Klinsmann simply walked out without any prior notice on Tuesday, put up a Facebook post soaked in crocodile tears (“It was an incredibly exciting time for me, with many new interesting insights. The club and the city have grown on me even more”) before anyone had a chance to react and left the whole club in a ditch, six points off the relegation play-off spot. His exit was widely castigated as shameful and disrespectful by the German media, including journalists who had supported him steadfastly for decades. Klinsmann had initially mooted the possibility of returning to his erstwhile role as an advisory board member on behalf Windhorst in a few weeks but by Wednesday afternoon, it was obvious that he had lost the financier’s support. Klinsmann apologised to him and to supporters for the manner of his resignation and sheepishly blamed his impulsive nature. Windhorst’s verdict was damning, still. “The way he left was unacceptable,” he said at a joint press conference with Gegenbauer and Preetz on Thursday morning. “I guess he blew a fuse. That can happen if you’re an adolescent but it shouldn’t happen in business, when serious agreements between adults are in place.” Klinsmann’s departure, Windhorst added, had cost Hertha a sponsor. Then Preetz cooly twisted the knife. “There was a disagreement about the role of the head coach and its responsibilities,” he confirmed. “But there was never any talk about me sitting on the bench being a problem. I’m used to people addressing conflicts, talking them over and attempting to find a solution. You can’t do that by turning around and running away.” There is no coming back for the Swabian from that; not in Germany, in any case. His former assistant Alexander Nouri will take over, for the time being. The situation in the capital is bound to remain volatile, however, as the side’s league position and Windhorst’s “big city club” aspirations, are unlikely to align any time soon. It thus remains to be seen whether he’ll prove a calm and largely passive investor for “10 or 20 years,” as he promised on Thursday, or fall head over heels for the next Klinsmann to come along and whisper sweet promises of Champions League football into his ear. The real battle for the heart of Hertha, one suspects, is yet to begin.

Manchester City’s belligerent approach to FFP smacks of extreme arrogance. They deserve to be punished https://theathletic.com/1609360/2020/02/15/manchester-city-champions-league-ban-punishment/ The official line is that Manchester City are “disappointed but not surprised”. It is one that reinforces that idea of a stitch-up, a “prejudicial process” at the hands of a kangaroo court, because City still insist that the evidence in their favour is “irrefutable”. It would be nice for City to share that evidence one day because for now the case against them looks damning. It is why, nearly six years after negotiating and accepting a £49 million fine (two-thirds of which suspended and later refunded) for alleged breaches of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, we were informed on Friday night that they faced another £25 million fine and, more dramatically, a two-year ban from the Champions League and Europa League. Of course, City will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) but, for all the bullishness among the club’s hierarchy, UEFA’s announcement last night was an almighty blow to the Premier League champions’ ambitions and indeed to their reputation. Anything less than an overwhelming victory on appeal — a full acquittal, with all sanctions quashed — would be insufficient for a club that has consistently and vehemently protested its innocence. City stand accused not only of exceeding the maximum losses allowed under UEFA’s FFP regulations but of trying to beat the system by “overstating” sponsorship revenue and, according to UEFA’s adjudicatory chamber, failing to co-operate in the investigation of their case. The case against City was blown open again in November 2018 when the German newspaper Der Spiegel revealed what it called the Football Leaks files, based on e-mails accessed by an individual since identified as Rui Pinto, a Portuguese national who has been charged with 147 criminal offences including computer hacking, all of which he denies. City have consistently called those leaks an “organised and clear” attempt to damage the club’s reputation, referring to “out-of-context materials purportedly hacked or stolen from City Football Group and Manchester City personnel and associated people”. The Football Leaks process seemed indiscriminate, though; whether it was shedding light on the finer points of transfer deals and players’ contracts, illegal third-party agreements or secret talks about the possible creation of a breakaway league by leading European clubs. An early mission statement said simply: “This project aims to show the hidden side of football. Unfortunately, the sport we love so much is rotten and it is time to say ‘enough’.” City would have us believe that their ownership by Sheikh Mansour is an antidote to such rottenness — a pure personal investment by an individual who loves his adopted club and city so much that he paid it a visit in August 2010 — rather than, say, yet another prime example of “sportswashing”, a phenomenon whereby regimes use association with sport in order to launder their image. Put simply, City are to Abu Dhabi what Paris Saint-Germain are to Qatar: a vehicle that has opened up more and more investment opportunities for regimes seeking to diversify their economy, improve their image and expand their global influence. Football clubs, like financial institutions and famous buildings, always seem to be available to the highest bidder. Petrodollar states are allowed to bankroll football clubs as long as they stay within the rules. And here we come to the subject that attracts furious indignation from some of City’s supporters. For decades, clubs were allowed to spend as much money as they liked. It was not until 2008, the same year their club was bought by the Abu Dhabi United Group, that UEFA decided it was time to regulate spending. In fact — and this is where City do have a legitimate grievance — FFP was not originally meant to be about controlling expenditure. When the former UEFA president Michel Platini first outlined his determination to clamp down on financial excesses within European football, his target was debt. On the eve of the 2008 Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea, Platini complained that this “unsustainable level of debt (…) is distorting the level playing field in Europe”. David Taylor, then UEFA’s general secretary, cited “a problem with clubs that secure debt (…) in order to compete at a higher level than their resources would allow”. That was not true of Manchester United, whose debt remains a burden to the club, entirely for the benefit of the Glazer family, but it was certainly true of Chelsea, beneficiaries of a £578 million interest-free loan from Roman Abramovich (which he later wrote off). By the time FFP was introduced three years later, though, United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and the rest of the establishment clubs, several of them heavily indebted, had used their influence to persuade UEFA to change focus. It was not, in the end, a clampdown on debt; there was nothing to prevent leveraged buy-outs like the Glazers’ — instead, it was all about sustainability. The financial stability it has brought to European football, relatively speaking, is to be welcomed, but it has also served to reinforce the hierarchies that have built up over the course of the Champions League era. City, PSG and others are entitled to complain that it left them with precious little time to move towards sustainability between the new regulations and the sanctions starting to bite. City are certainly entitled to argue that their case seems to have been handled less sympathetically than that involving PSG, whose president Nasser al-Khelafi sits on UEFA’s executive committee and has a prominent role at beIN Media Group, which is one of UEFA’s major broadcast partners. City’s own attempts to gain influence in UEFA’s corridors of power have so far been rebuffed. What City are not entitled to do, though, having signed up to the regulations that allow them a licence to compete in the Champions League, is to try to ride roughshod over the regulations and then expect to avoid punishment. There is a passage in Der Spiegel’s Football Leaks coverage — the contents of which has never been disputed by City, even if they continue to complain about the context in which things have been presented — that appeared to sum it all up. The allegation goes that when compiling City’s accounts for 2012-13, the club’s chief financial officer Jorge Chumillas wrote an internal e-mail stating that, due to the cost of sacking Roberto Mancini, “we will have a shortfall of £9.9 million in order to comply with UEFA FFP this season”. Ferran Soriano, the chief executive, is alleged to have replied that this problem could be overcome if City could be paid the contractually stated bonus from their sponsors for winning the FA Cup. There was just one problem with this. City had lost the FA Cup final to Wigan Athletic. According to Der Spiegel, a compromise was reached whereby various sponsors — the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad, the Abu Dhabi-based fund Aabar Investments and the Abu Dhabi department for culture and tourism — would have their payments adjusted so that the shortfall was covered. When Chumillas asked whether they would be allowed to change the date of sponsorship payments, Simon Pearce, a board member of City Football Group and a special adviser to the club’s chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak, is alleged to have replied, “Of course. We can do what we want.” That line appears to sum up the City hierarchy’s approach to the whole FFP question. It has not exactly served them well to this point. There is much to be admired about the work City have done over the past decade — their investment in infrastructure and in high-calibre people at all levels of the club, the development of a strategy and a philosophy summed up by the excellence of Pep Guardiola and his squad over the past two seasons, their commitment to community projects in Manchester — but the hierarchy’s belligerent approach to the FFP challenge smacks of extreme arrogance. What is more, it threatens to undermine so much of that good work, particularly if a Champions League ban causes Guardiola and his players to question their futures at the club. In fact, it is worth recalling what Guardiola said last March after UEFA reopened their investigation in light of Der Spiegel’s allegations. Of the City hierarchy, he said, “I work with them and have known them for a long time. I trust them a lot. After that we’ll see.” Of the prospect of UEFA’s investigation he said, “If (the outcome) is not good, then ok, we will accept it. If everything is right, then it will finish and we will move forward.” Football was never meant to come down to accountancy, hacked e-mails and legal representation behind closed doors in Switzerland. Then again it was never intended to come down to a battle between petrodollar states, Russian oligarchs and American real estate investors. In Platini’s eyes, FFP was going to be all about reducing those influences, bringing the game down to a pure level. It has done nothing of the sort — if anything, European football has become even less of a level playing field than it was before — but the rules are the rules and if you sign up to play in the competition, you have to go along with them. If City have treated those rules and the entire process with total contempt, then they deserve to be punished accordingly.

Ampadu is on for RB

Expect all-out war at ‘CAS Two’ – Manchester City’s Champions League ban explained https://theathletic.com/1609547/2020/02/14/manchester-city-champions-league-ban-cas-two/ Manchester City have been banned from European club competition for the next two seasons and fined £25 million for “serious breaches” of UEFA’s licensing and financial fair play (FFP) regulations. City say they are “disappointed but not surprised” and plan to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. So what does this mean for City now? Will Pep Guardiola stay at the club if there is no Champions League football? Here, The Athletic explains the implications for the future of Manchester City as we know it… What have Manchester City done wrong? The independent Adjudicatory Chamber of UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) said City “overstated its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016”. It also said the club “failed to cooperate in the investigation”. The allegations were based on hacked emails between senior figures within City’s ownership group, which implied the club had made a cynical and concerted attempt to deceive European football’s financial watchdog. According to Der Spiegel, the German newspaper, City had lied about the true source of millions of pounds’ worth of sponsorship income and hidden various costs that should have been factored into their FFP calculation. Under UEFA rules, clubs are meant to spend only as much on players and wages as they earn, and there are limits on the amount of additional revenue a club’s owner can put in from their own pocket. The news of the ban was welcomed by La Liga president Javier Tebas last night, who praised UEFA for “finally taking decisive action”. “Enforcing the rules of financial fair play and punishing financial doping is essential for the future of football,” he said. In City’s case, it is alleged that £51.5 million of the sponsorship money they were meant to receive from United Arab Emirates-based airline Etihad came from Abu Dhabi United Group, the holding company controlled by City’s stated owner, the deputy prime minister of the UAE and member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, Sheikh Mansour. Furthermore, the emails suggest the club got more than £30 million in costs off the books by paying former manager Roberto Mancini large consultancy fees via Al Jazira, Sheikh Mansour’s team in Abu Dhabi, and setting up an elaborate scheme to shift the players’ image-rights payments to a third party, which was then secretly reimbursed. Manchester City have said they will “commence proceedings with the Court of Arbitration for Sport at the earliest opportunity”. How long will this process take? Is City’s appeal likely to be heard before the end of the season? There is no set amount of time for a hearing but very high-profile cases — and it is hard to think of a more high-profile case than this — are heard quicker than most. CAS also tries to meet the natural deadlines imposed by the sporting calendar. Any appeal from Manchester City, and they have been prepared to appeal a negative result from the outset, will be “expedited” or fast-tracked. This is what CAS does with doping cases immediately before Olympic Games or big disputes during major tournaments. All parties will want to get the City case finalised before next season’s Champions League campaign starts with the first qualifying round on July 7 and 8. City have been preparing to throw everything at UEFA in the event that they would have their day in court. The two-year ban does, of course, give UEFA some wriggle room in that it could be reduced to 12 months and European football’s governing body could still claim victory over City. But this is a very complex case and it may drag on. When Velez Sarsfield took City and FIFA to CAS after alleging City had signed young striker Benjamin Garre from them when he was 15, the appeal was lodged in May 2017 and was supposed to be heard in July of that year but was not settled until April 2018. City were cleared of wrongdoing. The “full reasoned decision” of the Adjudicatory Chamber of UEFA’s financial control body, who imposed the ban and fine on Friday, will not be published before CAS makes its final decision. On what grounds can City appeal? There are two main areas. One is along the lines of the statement they released on Friday night, that they don’t believe the process has been fair and that UEFA has, in City’s view, pushed for this outcome. We’ve seen in their attempt to get the case thrown out already at CAS that they will jump on any procedural error — for example the supposed leak to the New York Times. So if UEFA has slipped up in any way, City will try to exploit it. It is also likely they will use the result of an investigation against Paris Saint-Germain. This was eventually dismissed when the same UEFA prosecutor who has acted in this case, Yves Leterme, decided that the value of PSG’s sponsorships were more or less at the value that PSG declared — despite an independent valuation suggesting they were worth much less. Even other key figures at UEFA were understood to have been alarmed by that decision, and City are sure to have monitored it. The other line of attack is likely to come from City having kept a studious eye on their European rivals’ financial activities since they have been under investigation. They have been taking notes on transfer expenditure, on clubs receiving extra funds from their sponsors and they could well argue that what they have been accused of doing is no worse than what others are doing. Either way, we should assume all-out war. Manchester City have made no bones about the fact that they intend to fight this one until the last QC. They set their stall out with the pre-emptive CAS appeal they made to have the FFP case thrown out before UEFA’s adjudicatory appeal had even heard it. You cannot go to the highest arbitration body until you have been through the usual process — what is known as exhausting all internal remedies — but City were trying it on. Why? First, it was a textbook case of parking tanks on lawns. City sent eight lawyers to the CAS appeal, UEFA sent two. They were sending a message. The Athletic understands City referred to this operation as “CAS One”, which strongly suggests they always knew there would be a “CAS Two”. They also hoped to throw some shade on UEFA’s processes, which you could argue they achieved. The written verdict that was published on the CAS website last week did criticise European football’s governing body for some loose language in its rule book. Expect City’s lawyers to pepper that cut with blows next time around. And finally, they wanted UEFA to stop leaking to journalists. This they certainly achieved. Although this meant they had to stop doing it themselves, too. Such niceties are unlikely to be observed in the next round of fighting at CAS. How does this affect City in the Premier League? The Premier League investigation into City is independent of UEFA’s and remains ongoing. There could be various penalties, of which a points deduction is one. The Premier League also has the power to remove City’s licence to participate in the Champions League if they have been found to have made “a false statement (whether made verbally or in writing) in or in connection with an application”. What does this mean for other Premier League teams in Europe? If City’s appeal is not successful and the club finishes in the top four this season and next, the side which finishes fifth in 2019-20 and 2020-21 will qualify for the Champions League. Europa League qualification is a little more complicated. If City’s ban is upheld and they finish in the top four for the next two campaigns, the sixth-placed team in the Premier League would be granted a place in the Europa League group stage, alongside the winners of the FA Cup. The EFL Cup winners qualify for the second qualifying round of the competition. If either of the cup winners also finish in the top five of the Premier League — or if City win either cup — the spots would go to the next best-placed Premier League sides. In theory, this could be the side which finishes eighth in the top flight. What happens if City win the Champions League this season? There’s a long way to go yet, but it would have no impact on next year’s competition. City face Real Madrid in the last 16 of this season’s Champions League, with the first leg to be played on 26 February at the Bernabeu. Are any other Premier League clubs at risk of this sort of sanction? There are no active investigations into other clubs regarding potential FFP breaches. What happens if City win the Carabao Cup this season? Are Aston Villa in Europe already? Pep Guardiola gets another trophy and City would enter the 2020-21 Carabao Cup in the second round along with all the other Premier League teams who aren’t competing in Europe, assuming their ban is upheld. Villa have to win the Carabao Cup to enter the second qualifying round of next season’s Europa League — there are no prizes for coming second. What does this mean for Pep Guardiola’s future? This is one of the key questions. Guardiola has always insisted that he will see out his current contract, which runs until the end of next season, and could even extend his deal to stay beyond that. There are probably two main schools of thought here: one, that if he is not in the Champions League next year he could make a case to be released from his contract or he could simply quit. The other is that he has always been especially loyal to Txiki Begiristain, one of the men responsible for handing him his break in management at Barcelona. Begirisitain is currently City’s director of football, working with CEO Ferran Soriano, also previously of Barca. Additionally, Guardiola has developed a very close relationship with Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the City chairman, and has spoken of how well he has been supported at the club. Those close to Guardiola have always dismissed suggestions he will leave at the end of this season. Last year, when he was approached by Juventus, he told them he may be interested one day but that he would see out his contract with City. Juventus are likely to try again now, and Guardiola’s loyalty is bound to be tested, but if he is true to his previous words then City should not expect him to leave before next summer. What will happen to City’s star players? A lot of this depends on clauses in their contracts, and who inserted them. Regarding Champions League participation, the club may have inserted clauses that would lower the players’ wages if there is no Champions League football, in order to protect their accounts and minimise the losses in television revenue (some £25 million last season). But, if so, the players could argue that the failure to play in the Champions League was not their own fault. Players’ agents may also have thought to insert clauses looking at it from another angle — if City fail to qualify for the Champions League (or if they are banned), their client could leave for a certain fee, effectively a release clause. Beyond clauses, it would come down to players and their agents arguing the case with City that they should be allowed to leave, if they do indeed want to go. There could well be a long queue of agents asking for their players to be moved on, especially as some of them have thought about going once Guardiola leaves, anyway. Whether they will be sold or not depends on the same factors as always — how long they have on their contract, how much they are willing to force their way out, how much the buying club is willing to pay and how much City are determined to keep hold of them. What is the financial hit? Champions League television income is a major source of revenue for the club, and sources have previously indicated that a year or two out of the competition would be regarded as a major blow. The most simple equation is this: last season City earned £77 million from the Champions League, not including match day revenues. City’s total profit in their most recent account, for 2018-19, was £10.1 million. So in very simple terms, City can most likely forget about turning a profit for the years they are out of the Champions League, if they are not able to overturn the ban at CAS. The only way to mitigate that would be to lower the wages of their star players, but if there are clauses in those contracts the players could justifiably argue that the ban is not their fault and they should not suffer a loss of earnings. If they were to make significant losses over the two seasons they are out of the Champions League, it could mean they fail FFP in the future and would be banned again. How does this affect their summer spending? If City start making major losses they would have to tailor their spending accordingly. Player recruitment is always a huge source of expenditure and, while there are certain ways to spread those costs (for example splitting them across different financial years, or amortising the values over the length of long contracts) it would surely restrict the club’s ability to spend transfer fees over and above any amounts they recoup through sales. Attracting players of the calibre City have grown used to in recent years is also bound to be incredibly difficult if the club cannot offer Champions League football until 2022-23 at the earliest. Do City have to abide by FFP during the seasons they are banned from European competition? Yes, because FFP breaches are judged on cumulative losses of more than £25 million spread over the three previous seasons. So if City were to splurge for two seasons and end up significantly out of pocket during a three-year period, they would fall foul of FFP and not be allowed back into the competition. Have City learned anything since they were found to have breached FFP rules in 2014? City paid a £49 million fine — £32 million of which was suspended — and their Champions League squad was reduced for the 2014-15 season. Since then, they haven’t changed their accounting practices per se. Are they meant to have learned from the 2014 case and changed their ways? Yes, absolutely. That was the basis of the settlement they made. That settlement also applied to the next season (2015-16) and City were adjudged to have met the terms, which is why UEFA “released” them and paid them the suspended amount of the TV/bonus money they owed the Manchester club. One of City’s defences at CAS was that this recent investigation had no basis because it was dealt with in the 2014 settlement, which UEFA had said had been satisfied and therefore could not be reopened. But there’s a problem with that. A basic tenet of law is that you can unpick or reopen cases/deals if one party has lied or acted in bad faith by holding key information back. The leaked emails are held to be an example of that: City said they were doing one thing when they appeared to be doing something else. The final point to make here, though, is that City would meet UEFA’s FFP rules now, two titles later, with bigger gates at the Etihad, new sponsorship deals and the City Football Group. They have changed the equation. But it is how they got here that is the issue. Have they paid tax on these “overstated sponsorship revenues”? Yes but, unlike most clubs, they reduce their tax bills by using deferred losses to offset profits. Why is the punishment a Champions League ban rather than a transfer embargo like Chelsea were handed by FIFA? UEFA does not have the ability to restrict player registrations — the responsibility for that lies with FIFA, which is why clubs who have fallen foul of FIFA regulations have had transfer bans. UEFA cannot hand out transfer bans per se, but they could at least stop a player from being registered in European competitions, so theoretically they could have stopped a new City player from playing in the Champions League. But this type of punishment was not written into FFP regulations. UEFA explored it at the very start of FFP but found it was not viable. What, if anything, does this mean for City’s owners? As deep a question as there could be! Much of this debate depends on which side of the story you believe: is this an “organised and clear” attempt to damage the club’s reputation, as City have always alleged, or are these allegations completely true, and City have knowingly and systematically broken the rules? As far as the owners are concerned, that’s not likely to matter. Either they have been genuinely hard done by and will fight the sanctions with all they have got — because they feel a strong sense of injustice — or they know exactly what they have done but they are pretending to be offended to aid their attempts to overturn the ban and continue their quest towards football domination. The motives of the ownership in the first place are interesting. If they do indeed want to use City as a “proxy brand” for Abu Dhabi, as was claimed by former CEO Garry Cook in an interview with The Athletic, then would it make any sense to pull out now, after investing so much money? Would they be more determined than ever to shake up the football world? Or on the other side of it, do they now consider City’s brand itself so tainted that there is no longer any point in persevering with using the club’s image to improve their own? Does this have any repercussions for sponsors Etihad and their relationship with City? Again, this depends on exactly what happened behind the scenes. Will Etihad be aggrieved that the club it is associated with have been found to have broken rules and attracted negative headlines? There will certainly be a reevaluation of the PR approach because big brands, no matter who is pulling the strings, do not want to be associated with troubled organisations. The contents of any statement will be instructive, as they may well point to what is likely to be an ongoing appeals process. Does this affect City’s women’s team? The statement released by UEFA said the ban would be imposed “on Manchester City Football Club”. It did not specify that this would only apply to the men’s side. However, since 2015, investment in areas including women’s football, stadiums, training facilities and youth development has not been included in FFP calculations, which therefore means the women’s team are not contributing to the club’s permitted losses. City’s women’s side has been present in the UEFA Women’s Champions League every season since 2016-17 but have already been eliminated from this season’s competition following defeat to Atletico Madrid at the last-16 stage. They are again in contention for qualifying this season, fighting for one of the two spots alongside Arsenal and Chelsea. England is due to receive a third qualifying spot for the Women’s Champions League from the 2021-2022 season. How do City fans feel about this? It is hard to generalise but the most common reaction was shock — at both the timing of the announcement and the severity of its content. Beyond that, there is a split in the reasoning. Some feel that the club have been caught bang to rights. Many, however, feel they have been the victim of a long-held UEFA desire to keep them away from the top table. A common view among City fans (and many outside the club, it should be said) with regard to FFP is that it was designed in principle to stop new, rich clubs from breaking up the established order of more “traditional” clubs, such as Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. Given the audible response to UEFA and its flagship competition over the years — the booing of the anthem before games — it is fair to say that the overwhelming sentiment is one of hostility towards the governing body.

I am so so utterly nervous about this match worst in ages I cannot take another loss to these OGS fucking frauds

yes, they use their wingbacks for the wide roles

Sancho for only €120m (£99.6m) would be a steal

curious to see if and how many points Shitty get docked could make move all the top 10 up if it is a serious amount

I just hope the board doesnt shit away a potential windfall I am beside myself that Lampard inferred we are actually in talks to renew both Pedro and Willian https://www.livesoccertv.com/news/33334/lampard-offers-update-on-willian-s-future-after-chelsea-confirm-ziyech-signing/ The North African is a proven goalscorer and playmaker, possessing an eye for both finding the back of the netting and setting up team-mates. As a result, many now wonder whether the likes of Willian and Pedro will be deemed surplus to requirements, given that both of their contracts expire this summer. However, Frank Lampard has touched upon this topic, insisting that this is not the case. Given that the Premier League is a tough league to adapt to, Chelsea are still keen on retaining the services of the Brazilian and Spaniard. When asked if Willian and Pedro are no longer needed at Stamford Bridge, Super Frank said (as per Goal): “No it doesn’t. “Conversations are ongoing with those players. They have both been successful players with the club.”

RB Leipzig v Werder Bremen HD Streams http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/bundesliga-rb-leipzig-vs-werder-bremen-s4/ https://www.totalsportek.com/rb-leipzig/

Italian club meet with Chelsea in an attempt to remove €10m buy back clause for ace https://www.caughtoffside.com/2020/02/15/italian-club-meet-with-chelsea-in-an-attempt-to-remove-e10m-buy-back-clause-for-ace/ It’s hard to see a situation where a club would just voluntarily agree to waive a buy back clause for an emerging talent, so this could represent a handy windfall for Chelsea. Jeremie Boga has often looked dangerous on the ball and always came across as a good dribbler, but he’s started to add some end product and spectacular goals to his game at Sassuolo this season. READ MORE: Video: Jeremie Boga scores exquisite chip against Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon Naturally that means the bigger clubs may start to circle, so this could be the ideal chance for his team to cash in and make some money on him. According to a report from Gianluca di Marzio, Chelsea do own a buy back option on their former player for €10m, so they would be in a position to trigger that and look to sell him on at a profit. snip

this makes no sense or cents IMHO I also think you are underrating Boga as a player

what a goal by Vydra, wowowowow

we are crazy to not buy him for only £12.7m he is worth triple that I guess if we do a sell on clause then oki that means we really do not want him

sorry I was late with the streams, setting up a new laptop

Southampton v Burnley HD Streams http://www.sportnews.to/sports/2020/premier-league-southampton-vs-burnley-s1/ https://www.totalsportek.com/aston-villa/

I cannot see it totally blue-washed away clubs will go apeshit