Vesper

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say LB here but most games he was a DMF or a CB

IF we drop 70m on Shamu I am going to explode in rage and likely toss my laptop out my home office window

Manc Evening News says Manure want to sign; Joao Neves DMF Jarrad Branthwaite CB Federico Chiesa Winger Joshua Zirkzee CF that is around £230-250m

supposedly IF he can, and can play it well, we might have a freak of nature on our hands (1.90m tall LB/LWB who can just bully people)

you know the 3 I have been pushing Mamardashvili (madness we did not sign him last year, the same, 2 and 3 years before that, for Tchou (summer 2021) and Camavinga (summer of 2020) both of whom I spit the dummy over when our fucking shit scouts said they lacked quality to sign them then.........GRRR) IF an EPL team like Citeh or Pool grab him I am going to go into meltdown, and I predict he will haunt us for years if he ends up there Oblak (since Cuntois left (we waited one year too long, he had renewed, and he told us to piss off, so we panic-bought fucking shortarms (Kepa) But Oblak is now 31yo, 32yo in half a year, so not in our 'age target' group, even for a starting keeper, and he will not come here I wager as IF it takes 2 or 3 more years to get back to 'deep in CL' level, he would be 34, 35 right when we start to be a beast again) Diogo Costa (I became convinced of his quality the last 9 months or so, and the Euros have cemented that further, despite his smaller size) plus, as an aside, if we are talking keepers, long ago, when he was at Roma (years too late now) Alisson Becker (the summer BEFORE Pool signed him for massive money), who some of my Brasilian friends tipped me off to ages ago

Chelsea https://thedailybriefing.io/i/146357102/Chelsea Samu Omorodion to Chelsea remains a priority, with some contacts remaining in case Atletico Madrid change their stance - more info in Fabrizio Romano’s latest column. Renato Veiga will undergo a medical as a new Chelsea player early next week, then sign a long-term deal at the club until June 2032. Victor Osimhen transfer to Chelsea in a swap deal? Two other players could reportedly get involved… Riccardo Calafiori wants Arsenal, after the agreement on personal terms around €4m net salary on five years deal. Calafiori is keen on linking up with Mikel Arteta but the club-to-club agreement with Bologna is still being negotiated. Chelsea were interested but have now signed Renato Veiga who can play as LB.

Chelsea https://thedailybriefing.io/i/146300866/Chelsea Chelsea agree deal to sign Portuguese talent Renato Veiga from FC Basel! 2003 born left footed versatile defender/midfielder set to leave Basel training camp to join Chelsea. Package will be worth €14/15m, personal terms agreed. Here we go. More details on exclusive Renato Veiga story. €14m fee, there will be NO sell-on clause or add-ons. Veiga will undergo medical and sign in the next hours, deal done. Key detail: Chelsea see him playing as left-back, centre-back and midfielder. Si Phillips exclusively breaks down the reasons why Neil Bath is leaving Chelsea and what happens next. Understand Chelsea have appointed Achirou Gaoh and Seyi Olofinjana to oversee operations in Africa. Chelsea want to cover Africa in the best way possible with scouting, and appointments are now completed.

sell him asap

I know! horrorshow ankle breaker style shameful brutish play

Ugarte with the winner btw

so wish Ecuador had taken out the Argies

down go Brasil they missed two pens

a horrid football match

pens

so much disgusting diving

red card on Uruguay still nil nil https://cdn.xsportbox.com/embed77/?event=stack.html&link=1&domain=&force=https%3A%2F%2Fbestsolaris.com%2Fsolaris.php%3Fpostid%3D60370&ask=1720317600&lgt=3&noplayer=0

I know next to nothing about him the Swiss league and Portugal B teams are hardly my strong point Renato Veiga: The Portuguese Jack-of-all-trades Shining at Basel https://breakingthelines.com/player-analysis/renato-veiga-the-portuguese-midfield-talent-shining-at-basel/ Club: FC Basel Nationality: Portugal Position(s): DM, CM, LB, CB, Preferred Foot: Left Height: 6’3”/190cm Age: 20 Strengths: athleticism, physicality, aerial duels, long passing, recoveries, tackling, vision, shooting Areas for Development: decision making, consistency Whilst Sporting have solidified their reputation as one of the top talent generators in Europe, they’ve equally allowed a lot of promising young stars to slip through the cracks. From Ricardo Pereira to Santiago Arias to Matheus Pereira to Merih Demiral, we’ve seen quite a few players excel after departing the Estádio José Alvalade, and the latest to do so is Renato Veiga. The son of former Cape Verde international Nélson Veiga, he began his career at Sporting’s academy before heading to Real S.C. in 2013, where he would spend six years before returning to the Portuguese giants. He would make his way up the youth ranks for Sporting and Portugal, and today, he is the captain of Portugal’s U-20 team. However, unlike most of his international teammates, Veiga has went abroad for his development and reaped the rewards. He departed Lisbon for the first time in his career in January 2023 on a one-year loan, racking up 13 Bundesliga appearances for Augsburg, only for the German side to cut his loan short in August. Two weeks later, Veiga joined Basel on a four-year contract, with the Swiss Super League side paying a fee of €4.6 million whilst Sporting retained a 10% sell-on clause. Veiga didn’t take long to make an impact, with Timo Schultz including him in the starting line-up for his league debut. Veiga scored a free kick as Basel picked up a 2-2 draw against Zürich at the St. Jakob-Park, prompting the Swiss Super League to name him as the Player of the Week. He’s been able to kick on and lock down a starting spot for Basel, mainly playing as a defensive midfielder whilst also filling in at center back as well as more advanced midfield roles. The jack-of-all-trades is skilled at long passing, averaging 12.39 long pass attempts per 90 which places him in the top 3% of midfielders in Europe, whilst he successfully completes 4.93 of those (top 8%). Whilst that 39.8% success rate doesn’t exactly catch the eye, it’s clear that he’s skilled at picking up the ball from deep areas and switching play to the flanks, a deep-lying playmaker who’s comfortable at spreading the ball around the pitch. Veiga is not only a jack-of-all-trades, but an aerial duel specialist as well. At 6’3″, he can dominate his opponent and make himself a nuisance when it comes to challenging for set-pieces, long balls or goal kicks. He is winning 1.90 aerial duels per 90, putting him in the top 10%. Don’t let his imposing physique fool you though: Veiga is a nifty technician who can maneuver his way out of pressure. Whilst he isn’t the tidiest on the ball, Veiga is a powerful dribbler who is capable of barging his way through an opposing midfield and progressing the ball into advanced areas. He is constantly looking to take on his man, as evidenced by various statistical metrics. He attempts 2.11 take-ons per 90 (70th percentile), completing 1.41 per 90 (87th) which rounds out to a success rate of 66.7% (97th) Veiga is constantly putting in a shift and working hard out of possession in order to win the ball back. The Portuguese youth international utilizes his long strides and noticeable speed to close down attackers, putting his long legs to use by making clean tackles. He is averaging 8.45 ball recoveries per 90, putting him in the top 1%, and it’s no surprise that this defensive nous has seen him become an indispensable figure in Basel’s midfield. He’s a physically imposing athlete who has the pace and stamina to not only protect his defense, but also support his attacking teammates, and his vision and passing accuracy enables him to pull the strings from deep and pick out teammates with inch-perfect long balls. Whilst it didn’t quite work for him at Augsburg, his versatility certainly was put on display with the youngster playing at left back, center back, defensive midfielder and central midfielder. Veiga is capable of operating as the left-sided center back in a back three thanks to his ability to progress play via his ball-carrying and passing, but he’d also able to fit in as a left back in multiple roles. Whether as an overlapping left back who supporters the attack and whips in dangerous crosses, or as a defensive left back who will shift into the backline as a third center back, or as an inverted left back who can drift inside and pick out passes between the lines, he’s more than capable of following in the footsteps of his father and becoming a seasoned defender. Moreover, Veiga could work well as a deep-lying playmaker in a double pivot, where he would be paired with a natural defensive midfielder and thus have the freedom to carry the ball forward and utilize his powerful running skills. He could even be deployed in a #8 role that gives him far more creative license and attacking freedom, where he could burst into the opposing box with regularity. At 20 years of age, Veiga has already developed a well-rounded skill set, combining a strong passing ability with impressive ball striking, powerful running and aerial dominance. It’s traits like these that have seen him make his mark for Portugal at the U-19, U-20, and U-21 level, and they could very well see him earn a big-money move out of Basel in the coming years, with the player’s contract set to expire in 2027. Veiga wasn’t able to make his debut for Sporting’s first team, having been faced with tough competition from the likes of Hidemasa Morita, João Palhinha, Matheus Nunes, and Manuel Ugarte. With the Leões signing Morten Hjulmand from Lecce to replace Ugarte, the writing was on the wall and Veiga elected to depart his boyhood club on a permanent transfer as opposed to going out on loan again. It has been nothing short of a catastrophic season for Basel. They lost on penalties to FC Lugano in the quarterfinals in the Swiss Cup, they lost to Kazakh side Tobol in the second round of the UEFA Europa Conference League qualifiers, and their form has been even worse in the league. Fabio Celestini took charge on October 31, becoming their third manager of the campaign and their fifth since the start of 2022/23, but the ex Switzerland midfielder has been unable to turn the tide thus far. With three matches remaining, Basel currently sit 10th in the table, three points above 11th-placed Grasshoppers and 10 points above 12th-placed Stade Lausanne Ouchy. After 33 matches, the league splits into two groups of six teams: the championship group and relegation group, with the teams playing every other side in their group once. Whilst the last-placed side automatically goes down, the the relegation play-off will see the 11th-placed team take on the second-placed team of the Swiss Challenge League across two legs. After a summer that saw them lose various key players including Andy Diouf (Lens), Zeki Amdouni (Burnley), Wouter Burger (Stoke City), Riccardo Calafiori and Dan Ndoye (Bologna), Basel’s uninterrupted three-decade spell in Switzerland’s top-flight is in grave danger of coming to an end. It is a daunting challenge for Celestini, and he’ll be tasked with staving off the drop without Renato Veiga, who will miss the next few weeks with a severe ankle sprain.

delete

Chelsea’s midfield: Where does Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall fit in, and where does it leave Conor Gallagher? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5614215/2024/07/04/chelseas-midfield-where-does-dewsbury-hall-fit-in-and-where-does-it-leave-conor-gallagher/ For better or worse, the bold, new Enzo Maresca era at Chelsea has its symbol: Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, the Italian’s biggest individual success story in Leicester City’s run to promotion from the Championship last season and a £30million signing who promises to shake up the midfield pecking order at Stamford Bridge. Dewsbury-Hall had a breakthrough 2023-24 campaign, registering 12 goals and 14 assists in 44 league appearances — the first time he had got to double figures in either category in a single professional season. Despite ostensibly being a No 8, he emerged as the secondary goal threat in Maresca’s revamped, post-relegation Leicester team, scoring only three fewer non-penalty goals than Jamie Vardy. “Kiernan is probably the player that, since we have started, has improved more than the rest,” Maresca said of Dewsbury-Hall last November, five months after he got the Leicester job. “He has the calmness that that kind of player needs. He’s fantastic with the ball, he knows when to attack and what to give the team. He is so dangerous near the box and has the quality to score or assist from anywhere.” Dewsbury-Hall may not have been targeted solely because of Maresca — a productive 25-year-old available at that price will always be an attractive value proposition to Chelsea’s co-owners Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly — but given his pre-existing relationship with their new head coach and intimate knowledge of his tactical system after their year together in the second division, expect him to play a lot. This necessarily means that others in the Cobham midfield stable are going to play less. So, who is most vulnerable to losing minutes on the pitch as a result of Dewsbury-Hall’s arrival? Let’s take a closer look… The first thing to establish is the role Dewsbury-Hall played at Leicester under Maresca, who favoured a 4-3-3 formation which morphed into a 3-2-4-1 arrangement in possession, with one full-back inverting into midfield and the two midfield No 8s pushing high up ahead of the ball. Dewsbury-Hall was the left No 8, tasked with providing incisive passes, direct runs and a supplementary scoring threat from the left half-space. Sometimes this entailed drifting into more of a No 10 position, receiving the ball on the half-turn and then playing a pass through to one of Leicester’s attackers — as he does here for the assist on a goal by Abdul Fatawu against Southampton: The graphic below highlights that Dewsbury-Hall did the bulk of his chance creation in these central areas just outside the opposition penalty box: At other times, Dewsbury-Hall was the one stretching the game for Leicester, leveraging his speed to run in behind while Maresca’s nominal No 9 dropped deep to link play and draw out opposition centre-backs. The sequence below shows Swansea City being carved open by a sharp vertical passing move that ends with Dewsbury-Hall racing through to score: Against deeper-lying defences, Dewsbury-Hall was encouraged by Maresca to crash the penalty area from midfield, particularly when Leicester worked the ball into crossing positions. Here, against Coventry City, he manages to connect with an inviting delivery from the right-sided No 8, Dennis Praet, and guide a header inside the far post: The graphic below illustrates that almost all of Dewsbury-Hall’s goals from open play were scored from similar spots in the left half of the penalty area, usually as the result of well-timed runs from his advanced-midfield starting position: Maresca kept Dewsbury-Hall high up the pitch when Leicester did not have the ball, often shifting into more of a 4-4-2 shape with his left-sided No 8 pushed up alongside his striker to lead the first line of pressure. The sequence below shows it working to great effect against Cardiff City, with Dewsbury-Hall’s initial press prompting two ill-advised opposition passes infield, yielding a costly turnover just outside their penalty area and a shooting chance, which he converts: As with his attacking role in Maresca’s system, Dewsbury-Hall’s defensive contribution was overwhelmingly focused on the left half of the pitch: All of the above makes it clear that Dewsbury-Hall will not be competing for minutes with Moises Caicedo, who will be the starting No 6 in Maresca’s system. The same goes for any of the other candidates to play at the base of midfield — namely Romeo Lavia, Andrey Santos and Lesley Ugochukwu. Maresca wants Dewsbury-Hall for that left-sided No 8 role, which puts him into competition with Chelsea’s array of more progressive midfielders. Enzo Fernandez is an interesting case, not least because his sphere of passing influence has tended to skew towards the left half of the pitch in his Stamford Bridge career to date. That will have to change if Dewsbury-Hall becomes the preferred option on the left of Chelsea’s three-man midfield. Fernandez faces a bigger adaptation to thrive as a No 8 in Maresca’s system, since operating ahead of the ball rarely seemed to maximise his passing excellence under Mauricio Pochettino last season and frequently left him unable to help the team’s transition defence. GO DEEPER Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall to Chelsea: The Athletic 500 transfer ratings Maresca often selected Wilfred Ndidi, traditionally a midfield destroyer, as his right-sided No 8 to add teeth to Leicester’s press. To meet the physical demands of that role in and out of possession, Fernandez will need to show he has fully recovered from the hernia which limited him for much of 2023-24 and is back in peak condition. There are no such concerns about Conor Gallagher, who could provide much the same energy, tenacity and all-round contribution as Ndidi, while building on his improved scoring form in the final stretch of last season. But there are approximately 106 million reasons to be confident that, unless his form completely falls off a cliff, Fernandez will be in the first-choice midfield. Chelsea view Gallagher as more defensive and box-to-box than Dewsbury-Hall, and have not ruled out giving a contract extension to the academy graduate, whose current deal expires next summer. Yet despite their differences, there is enough overlap between the two to conclude that this signing makes selling Gallagher more palatable. Dewsbury-Hall’s aptitude for leading Maresca’s press from the front offsets the potential loss of Gallagher’s greatest on-field attribute. He is also a rare match in terms of durability, having incredibly only missed one game due to injury in a Leicester career that goes back to his debut in January 2020. Then there is the financial element; coming from the Championship, Dewsbury-Hall is almost certainly earning a lot less than what it would take to renew Gallagher after a career-best season. It would be difficult for Chelsea to get less out of Lavia this season than they did in an injury-wrecked 2023-24, and the Belgian’s technical profile makes him a potential option for the right-sided No 8 role, as well as an alternative to Caicedo in a deeper position. Dewsbury-Hall will fancy his chances of holding down a starting position as Chelsea’s most advanced midfielder in 2023-24, particularly given the inexperience of the other obvious first-team options available. Carney Chukwuemeka and Cesare Casadei have four Premier League starts for Chelsea combined, while recent £19million signing Omari Kellyman has even less professional seasoning. Casadei did not even play in front of Dewsbury-Hall at Leicester while on loan there last season. Chukwuemeka would likely have featured far more for Pochettino’s Chelsea were it not for a freak knee injury suffered against West Ham last August, though still managed to score two of the club’s best goals of the season either side of that setback. He has the talent to make a real impact at Stamford Bridge in 2024-25, underscoring Chelsea’s reluctance to allow him to leave on loan. But the biggest threat to Dewsbury-Hall’s place in Maresca’s starting XI might come from a slightly unexpected source: the club’s reigning player of the season, Cole Palmer. While most often deployed on the right by Pochettino, Palmer spent large swathes of his breakout 2023-24 campaign drifting into the No 10 position to function as the brain of a dynamic attack. He has all of the required attributes to function as Maresca’s left-sided No 8 in and out of possession, and this may well have been Chelsea’s Plan A if they had succeeded in signing Michael Olise from Crystal Palace. Maresca could still go to a similar alignment with Noni Madueke on the right flank, but the history of coaches rekindling their working relationships with key players from their previous clubs heavily indicates that Dewsbury-Hall will be a regular starter for Chelsea — particularly in the early weeks and months, as the Italian works to make his system second nature to his players.

Chelsea agree deal to sign Renato Veiga from FC Basel https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5618375/2024/07/05/Chelsea-transfers-renato-veiga/ Chelsea have agreed a deal with FC Basel to sign Renato Veiga. A fee of €14million has been agreed between the two clubs with no sell-on clause. A medical has been scheduled in London with the 20-year-old Portugal Under-20 international expected to sign a contract until 2032 with the Stamford Bridge club. A left-sided centre-back, left-back or a No 6 in midfield, Veiga is expected to be used an inverted full-back and is viewed as a perfect fit for Enzo Maresca’s system. Maresca, formerly of Leicester City, replaced Mauricio Pochettino in charge earlier this summer. Veiga made 26 appearances in all competitions for FC Basel last season, scoring two goals and adding a single assist. Should a deal progress he will join Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, Tosin Adarabioyo, Marc Guiu and Omari Kellyman as new signings at Chelsea this summer. GO DEEPER Chelsea's aggressive youth recruitment means days of signing players at peak are over Why Chelsea are signing Veiga Analysis by Chelsea correspondent Liam Twomey The acquisition of Veiga is another sign of Maresca’s influence on the recruitment strategy led by Chelsea’s co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley, following the arrival of Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall from Leicester City. Veiga, unlike Dewsbury-Hall, is not a player Maresca has worked with before. He does, however, fit a specific profile that the Italian is looking for to help implement his style of play at Stamford Bridge: a left-sided defender who can invert from full-back into a defensive midfield role when Chelsea are in possession. Marc Cucurella is also viewed as capable of performing that role, having been deployed in a similar manner by Maresca’s predecessor Mauricio Pochettino in the final stretch of last season. Veiga, however, offers a more aerially imposing option: at 6ft 3in tall (190cm), he addresses what some have identified as a relative lack of height in Chelsea’s squad. Maresca will assess Veiga in pre-season and judge whether he is first-team ready or requires a loan spell to aid his development. He is essentially one year behind Riccardo Calafiori, who became a breakout star for Bologna last season after moving back to Italy from Basel in the summer of 2023 and has been widely touted as a transfer target for Chelsea in recent weeks. Veiga’s modest transfer fee reflects that. Chelsea consider him an excellent value proposition, particularly considering that he is taller than Calafiori and has a cleaner injury history. Above all he is the type of flexible, multi-positional player increasingly prized by progressive, possession-focused coaches like Maresca.

Several clubs in the race for Todibo https://thedailybriefing.io/i/146270218/several-clubs-in-the-race-for-todibo I'm not aware that Jean-Clair Todibo wasn’t interested in a move to West Ham. I understand that West Ham were never going to bid for him without guarantees on the player side, and though he was keen on the move the problem was on the price - which is still considered to be too high. The race for Todibo remains open, and there are several clubs interested.