Vesper

Atalanta are bonkers they want €100m (£86m) for Rasmus Højlund hard pass at that price MANCHESTER UNITED LOOK SET TO MISS OUT ON £86M ATALANTA STRIKER RASMUS HOJLUND - PAPER ROUND Manchester United may be frustrated in their pursuit of Rasmus Hojlund as Atalanta want £86 million for the forward, while they face competition from Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea in the hunt for West Ham midfielder Declan Rice. Elsewhere, Chelsea are negotiating for Moises Caicedo, and Tottenham are keen on Crystal Palace's defender Marc Guehi https://www.eurosport.com/football/transfers/2023-2024/manchester-united-look-set-to-miss-out-on-86m-atalanta-striker-rasmus-hojlund-paper-round_sto9661155/story.shtml UNITED RELUCTANT TO PAY FOR HOJLUND The Mirror reports that Manchester United are not prepared to pay the asking price for Atalanta’s Rasmus Hojlund. The player had been seen as an alternative to Harry Kane but is valued at £86 million. The paper states: “The Red Devils are eyeing more firepower in the transfer market with Erik ten Hag seeking to bring in a major No. 9 and potentially a young forward. Hojlund would be seen as the latter, but his rapid rise at the Serie A outfit means they have placed a huge price tag on him.

what I meant was IF we waived big money in front of Leipzig, they might sell him on it is a long shot, but I wanted to include him as I rate him that is why I said

Roméo Lavia is 1.81m, 5-11, not a man mountain

I so hope this Stake bullshit is fake news. It is madness to get involved with such a dodgy shit crypto gambling firm.

seems dodgy Stake.com deadline nears: Billionaire founder sued by ex partner over marketing of world’s biggest crypto casino https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/from-runescape-to-high-stakes-the-biggest-crypto-casino-stakecom-sued/ A celebrity party hosted by crypto casino Stake has become a key element in a lawsuit filed by the founders’ former partner who has alleged that he was muscled out of his fair cut. In September, Stake threw a party in New York to celebrate the release of the film Amsterdam. At the party, A-listers like Drake, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rami Malek and Margot Robbie played poker with Stake-branded chips and were offered Stake swag bags, according to the complaint. It also alleged that celebrity endorsements were a cornerstone of Stake’s marketing strategy, which also targets Americans, despite the nation’s strict anti-gambling laws. “Stake uses United States-based individuals to attempt to lure players into playing games on Stake.com,” the complaint said. Edward Craven and Bijan Tehrani are the founders of Stake.com. They and the gaming site’s CEO, Mladen Vuckovic, have been named as defendants in the lawsuit filed by the founders’ former business partner, Christopher Freeman, in a New York court. This week, the deadline for them to respond to the allegations runs out. Freeman initially sued the three for around $400 million last summer, alleging that they had cut him out of profits from two businesses: Stake and another gambling site called Primedice. Freeman claimed both were his idea and his work helped build them. In January, Freeman added to his complaint with broader allegations, saying that Stake uses a confusing corporate structure to dodge regulators and that its marketing was targeting consumers in places where gambling is illegal. Freeman alleged that gamblers in prohibited jurisdictions use virtual private networks to skirt geoblocking in their countries. He claimed that not only is Stake aware of this, but that Craven and Tehrani have actively encouraged the practice. “Not only is Stake.com availing itself to the markets in the US and New York, but in its effort to penetrate those markets, it is apparently unconcerned with taunting regulators who want to prevent illegal online gambling in the United States,” the updated complaint said. In an emailed response to DL News, Craven said the complaints against Stake and its founders are “entirely without merit” and that the three defendants do not expect the case to go further. Much at Stake Stake has been very profitable and is conservatively valued at $1 billion, the court filing said. The crypto casino’s users can bet using Bitcoin, Dogecoin and Litecoin transactions as well as other digital assets. Craven, at 27, is one of Australia’s youngest billionaires. He owns one of the country’s most expensive properties, a mansion in the plush Melbourne suburb of Toorak. US-born Tehrani and Australian Craven told the weekend magazine of The Australian how they met as youngsters through online gaming. Like many gamers in the mid-2000s, they spent hours every week in the online role-playing game RuneScape. RuneScape is often credited as a kind of a crucible for web3 talent. Tehrani and Craven told The Australian how they not only sold the game’s in-game currency for real money, but also operated a kind of casino within the game’s world. In 2011, the game’s developers banned them, but not before they had both made about $100,000 each, which Craven told the magazine was enough to help his parents buy a coffee shop business. The experience also taught the duo the skills needed to build and launch the gambling website Primedice in 2013, according to the article. In his complaint, Freeman told a different story. Freeman said he and Tehrani met as kids, as they grew up in Connecticut and went to the same schools. He also claimed that Primedice was his brainchild. As a freshman in college, he had wanted to develop something that could rival Satoshi Dice, a simple Bitcoin-based game and he suggested to Tehrani around 2011 that they partner on the project. Tehrani agreed and then brought on Craven as a third partner without consulting Freeman. This was typical of the kind of bullying he’d taken from Tehrani since they were kids, Freeman said in the court filing. Freeman alleged that Craven and Tehrani worked together to minimise his share in Primedice and then later to cut him off from its profits. The former business partner said that they had muscled him out despite him having contributed more work and expertise than Craven, who Freeman claimed lacked the technical skills to code the site. However, Freeman didn’t stop there. He also claimed that Stake.com too was his idea first and that it partially leveraged his intellectual property. He accused the other two of lying to him to ensure he was never part of the business. Stake.com also includes a game that directly competes with Primedice, the complaint added. Craven told DL News that while Freeman “had a degree of involvement in Primedice,” he rejected the notion that Freeman had any involvement in Stake. “Stake was founded by myself and Bijan Tehrani in 2017 to provide players with the best possible online experience,” Craven continued. As of 2023, Stake.com features a range of virtual slot-machines, as well as live games like blackjack and poker. Players “bank” – make deposits and withdrawals – in cryptocurrency. Stake launched a site in the UK in 2021, though the UK version accepts only fiat transactions. Broader allegations Stake is a domain through which players bet with crypto, but it’s also an intentionally opaque network without any real organisational structure, a set of people, companies and relationships “gathered to enable illegal gambling”, according to the complaint. Stake’s gambling licence is issued to an entity in Curacao and the company has associated entities in Serbia, Cyprus, Australia and the Isle of Wight. A major aspect of Stake’s marketing is its splashy celebrity and athlete sponsorships, particularly footballers – including Argentine legend Sergio Augero and English Premier League club Everton FC – and Ultimate Fighting Championship fighters. Celebrity associations with crypto have come under fire since the collapse of exchange FTX. This does not appear to have slowed down Stake: in January, the crypto casino signed a deal with Alfa Romeo’s F1 team that could see its cars sporting Stake livery. But Stake’s highest-profile celebrity endorser is probably Canadian rapper Aubrey Drake Graham, better known as Drake. Drake regularly livestreams his gambling on Stake. An article in the gaming trade press reported that he had bet north of $1 billion in the first six months of his relationship with the casino. Freeman’s complaint named the artist as a person of interest. This is a term that has no legal meaning, but it does mean, Australian media reported, that the musician could be called as a witness should the case go to trial. The “Hotline Bling” singer appears to be named in the complaint as his partnership is one example of how Stake’s marketing has allegedly edged into questionable legal territory, such as targeting people in the US. Craven told DL News that “Stake prides itself on maintaining the highest standards of compliance and on keeping its community safe. We are constantly innovating, testing and challenging ourselves to ensure that your know-your-customer and anti-money laundering checks, as well as safeguards against illegal or problem gambling, remain the best in the industry.” The defendants have until February 9 to respond to Freeman’s complaint. Freeman’s counsel declined to comment to DL News.

for the right price, sure we cocked it up for him before though

just covering every angle

do NOT loan him to an Italian club!!!!!!

CF will very likely come from one of these 10 Victor Osimhen Harry Kane Lautaro Martínez Dusan Vlahovic Randal Kolo Muani Jonathan David Gonçalo Ramos Rasmus Højlund Nicolas Jackson Benjamin Sesko as for Ivan Toney (idiot, have to wait)

Every GK valued at over 5m euros on the planet that are rated as good enough according to some the ones in bold blue are the only ones we have a shot at and are good enough to be our starter IMHO this is in order of TM valuation strike thru means not available italics I do not want Gianluigi Donnarumma Diogo Costa Ederson Mike Maignan Thibaut Courtois Alisson Gregor Kobel André Onana Jan Oblak Marc-André ter Stegen Robert Sánchez Emiliano Martínez Giorgi Mamardashvili David Raya Unai Simón Álex Remiro Illan Meslier Dean Henderson Alban Lafont Anatoliy Trubin Alex Meret Nick Pope Matvey Safonov Guglielmo Vicario Odysseas Vlachodimos Marco Carnesecchi Ugurcan Cakir Bono Dominik Livakovic Bart Verbruggen Lucas Chevalier Predrag Rajkovic Maarten Vandevoordt Vladan Kovacevic Kacper Tobiasz

I made my case already, zero mention of race Samuel Eto'o 2006 with a lot of evidence as to why

great players can come from shit footballing countries look at Håland and Martin Ødegaard from Norway or Alphonso Davies (mini slump aside) or Jonathan David (who we hopefully are doing a deep dive on for CF) from Canada or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and perhaps Giorgi Mamardashvili from Georgia

he has insane explosive burst

I almost always do in here too much I am sure, lolol

Imagine what a football power the US would be if post WWII they have went full association football culture instead of their best athletes (best on the planet in many cases, and they also have SO many superb athletes in sheer numbers as they simply have a massive population to draw from, 335 million and growing) being pulled into basketball and yank football

I am not a dude, and because it went on for so long with other posters, I, as a mixed race black female, feel I have some agency to voice my opinion as to it all

Your profile says you are from Mexico perhaps you should deal with the racism there against us black folk first rather than trying to dismiss bias out of hand Memín Pinguín for instance: In Mexico, how erasing Black history fuels anti-Black racism https://theconversation.com/in-mexico-how-erasing-black-history-fuels-anti-black-racism-175315 In early 2021, a Ghanaian migrant known as Faruku died in the northern Mexican city of Tijuana, near the Mexico-United States border, of an apparent stroke. This was after being turned away from a hospital and later being asked to pay for an ambulance before it would assist him. A report from Refugees International notes that the circumstances “suggest medical racism” — negligence of care informed by racism. Recent reports by other migrant rights and advocacy groups describe various instances of anti-Black racism as medical negligence in immigration detention centres in Tijuana and also in the southern town of Tapachula. Faruku’s story has drawn attention to the plight of African and Haitian migrants in a state of limbo since 2019, when the U.S. first enforced laws forcing asylum-seekers trying to enter the country from Mexico to first await a Mexican court date. It’s also drawn attention to anti-Black racism in Mexico, which is not only widespread, but a pillar of Mexicanness. Long denial of Black history Anti-Blackness includes the long denial of Black history in Mexico that affects the country’s more than 2.5 million Afro-Mexicans. According to 2015 figures, about two-thirds of the country’s population that self-identifies as Afro-Mexican also self-identifies as Indigenous. Anti-Black racism in Mexico has been historically perpetuated by the legacies of slavery and the existence of a racist colonial-era racial caste system, and a modern nationalist myth that has associated true Mexicanness with being mestizaje. That means “mixed race,” a racial and cultural mix of Indigenous and Spaniard. This ideology has romanticized a state-defined idea of Indigenity as anchoring authentic Mexican identity, even while the state enacted policies to assimilate and marginalize Indigenous Peoples. snip

Kim Min-jae is not the best CB on the planet I would take every one of following over him Rúben Dias Ronald Araújo Josko Gvardiol Marquinhos Milan Skriniar Matthijs de Ligt Alessandro Bastoni Éder Militão (he improved a lot the last 2 years, I no longer consider him a major issue for RM) António Silva (next great Portuguese CB IMHO) William Saliba Sven Botman Jurrien Timber (he grew to 6 feet tall and has speed to burn, today is his birthday, turned 22) If VVD and Alaba were 3 years or so years younger then them as well Giorgio Scalvini, 19yo, 1.94m is perhaps the next great Italian CB

RIP

all but Makélélé and Desailly were born and raised in France and those last two basically are French as well, as they were raised in France, as both moved to France when they were each only 4 years old

thank you I had not yet read this when I said the same about Eto'o in 2005/06 just now

Samuel Eto'o in 2006 (Fabio Cannavaro won) Eto'o won a treble (CL and La Liga included) with Barca (and Pichichi Trophy as La Liga top scorer and was La Liga POTY) 52 total goals produced (40 goals and 12 assists) for club and country (and Cameroon played far fewer games than in other years (such as 2000-2002 when he won back to back African Cup of Nations plus won the Olympic gold medal), and he also played no friendlies) also in that period he won African Player of the Year ESM (European sport writers) Team of the Year FIFA World Player of the Year Bronze Award FIFA FIFPro World XI UEFA Team of the Year CAF Team of the Year UEFA Champions League top assist provider African Cup of Nations top goalscorer UEFA Club Forward of the Year

we desperately need a class DMF