News Sports, Anyone?

kio

kio

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TheTrain said:
The super league is official:

thesuperleague.it

The Super League

The Super League is a new European competition between 20 top clubs comprised of 15 founders and 5 annual qualifiers.
thesuperleague.it thesuperleague.it

This will be a very fun week fellow football fans!
Click to expand...
Fuck everything about this. At this point professional football is nothing more than a money laundering scheme with zero integrity and consideration for the sport and fans.
 
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EdwardTivrusky

EdwardTivrusky

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You mean "Legacy Fans". that's what the fans who don't want to watch the same 12 teams every week are called by the ESL apparently.
They're going after fans who want to watch celebrity "superstar" football.
 
yuraya

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If they go through with the Super duper League then the domestic leagues should just make their own NIT style tournament in the end and maybe let the winners of that enter the ESL with those 5 remaining nonfounder spots. Something like that would still give meaning to playing games.

The problem is with founding members being in their own domestic leagues. What would even be the point. They get to cruise and do nothing because they qualify automatically for ESL. That is the real issue they need to fix. Put a target on their back and give teams double the points for beating them. Also maybe fine teams a lot for resting players. That would be funny.

Also if they do franchise style drafts for teams they can also penalize teams for tanking on purpose to get first pick. Like in NBA if you have worst record you don't automatically get 1st pick..you still have to go through lottery so there is no guarantee.

EDIT: Also I couldn't help but laugh really hard after reading that these teams got 4 billion just for being founders of the league lololol. So 400million per club as a participation award wtf. That is not counting all the billions and billions of euros they will collect from network deals all around the globe once this thing kicks into gear. This thing will be pretty massive long term and owners are drooling at all of it.
 
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EdwardTivrusky

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There were statements that the American owners really, really don't understand why relegation is a good thing which is why the "Founding Teams" are exempt and only the 5 "Guest Teams" can be relegated or removed. lol. What team wouldn't take $400 million dollars just for turning up? Especially Spurs and Arsenal who are mediocre at best at the moment i've read.

Yeah, it'll be huge around the world yet soulless but who cares as long as it rakes in the cash for the investors as it tours the planet each week?
 
kio

kio

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I honestly think those monetary figures are bloated and don't represent the real word returns these companies, because they aren't clubs, are going to get. Plus there's 2 gigantic issues that might arise in the next few days/weeks that will remove a lot of the percieved value most of these companies have:
  1. If the manager and player bans from UEFA and FIFA competitions is legal I have very few doubts a lot of them will jump ship. Remove the star players and managers from these teams and a lot of their value is lost.
  2. I overheard somewhere that governments can forbid teams from using their original names when it references a town or something connected with the country, for instance Man. Utd couldn't be named "Manchester" anymore. Dunno if it's true but it seems plausible enough. Forcing the teams to rename themselves will also be a big blow because a lot of theirt power is tied to their name/brand.
 
EdwardTivrusky

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I don't think the younger generation this league is aimed at give a shit about the history or community side of things. They just want to see superstars performing for them and won't really care what the name is. They're not buying houses or any of the big ticket items our parents bought because they're too expensive so many of them have disposable income they will spend on concerts, holidays, clubbing, Disney and iTunes subscriptions etc. They are the ones this league is aimed at, the people who will turn up twice a year, treat it as an event and spend a shit-ton of cash on their favourite celebrities and merchandise.
 
kio

kio

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This isn't aimed at the younger generation or any generation at all, it's aimed at the global market players that currently are the US, China, Japan and Middle Eastern oil countries like Qatar or UAE.
The whole concept is selling big named matches between big named clubs with big named player and coaches to those markets. The idea is to have a Real Madrid vs Juventus in Shanghai and the following week have a Barcelona vs Man Utd in Texas. It's just a despicable and cynical way of using player's skills to fill shareholders' pockets even more. It's just a way to treat players like circus animals for the enjoyment of the masses.

edit: and don't get me wrong, there's a LOT wrong with UEFA and FIFA and both need urgent and dire changes but at least the integrity of the sport remains somewhat intact.
 
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Pommes

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Well it looks like the Super League is already crumbling...
Did they really think that there would be no (big) protests? :dizzy-face:
 
EdwardTivrusky

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I've read that too.

They must have known there'd be pushback, why fold so quickly?
Why were they calling existing supporters "Legacy Fans" if they weren't prepared to move on and court the new demographic they had identified and just leave the old fans behind?
Why abandon the ESL if there was more money in it than the existing leagues?
Was it an elaborate and expensive negotiating tactic for more money from existing leagues? But why?
Maybe the players themselves said they weren't interested? But surely the big nameplayers were consulted before this deal was tabled?

Why have the backing of big money-men if it's so easy to reverse course? Was it all smoke and mirrors?
I know nothing about football and the ruling bodies etc but this does seem too polished to be a PR stunt to me.

It's really odd. Wait and see what news is revealed over the next few days and i'm sure there'll be investigative sports journalists digging about behind the scenes. If it fold, It's too juicy a story not to look into.

Also, if it does fold i think it'll show up again in a few years. There's too much money to be made or at least some people think there is.

Existing ruling bodies need to get some sort of reforms going on too, they ain't perfect saints either.
 
Pommes

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EdwardTivrusky said:
Also, if it does fold i think it'll show up again in a few years. There's too much money to be made or at least some people think there is.
Click to expand...
I am not sure.
There are some reasons to do it now: Money is extra tight (because of Covid) and there are no fans in the stadiums (also because of Covid).
I would expect that there would be even more and concentrated push backs from all organized fan groups in that case.
Stuff like burning the flag of the club or targeting the club owners. Things could get ugly.

EdwardTivrusky said:
Existing ruling bodies need to get some sort of reforms going on too, they ain't perfect saints either.
Click to expand...
We need a complete change of the current system. Sadly we wont get it with or without the Super League.
 
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fearthedawn

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Curious as well to see what the press can dig up on this one.

When they announced it my first thought was "that huge paycheck should cover all the extra security they're going to need for a while" and figured they'd be prepared to walk through both figurative and literal fire to get this done because if that's the first thought my stupid brain had surely the owners had to know what's coming...
 
kio

kio

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I really hope these clubs suffer some sort of heavy penalty. Either take some points away, fine them or anything else but this can't simply be swept under the rug and move on like nothing ever happened. These actions need to have consequences.
 
LEANIJA

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good riddance to the super league! a stupid idea by greedy people that do not understand european football even though they worked in it for a long time.


kio said:
I really hope these clubs suffer some sort of heavy penalty. Either take some points away, fine them or anything else but this can't simply be swept under the rug and move on like nothing ever happened. These actions need to have consequences.
Click to expand...
i know what you mean but the teams (players and managers) had nothing to do with it, that's all on the owners. agnelli, the glazers, kroenke, john w. henry... and of course perez, who wanted this for a long time.

real madrid, barcelona have massive debt. there's a reason manchester city was the first to drop out: they dont need the money. real & barca do...but fail to see the real problem is the constant inflation of transfer fees and player salaries. there should be a cap to those, and it should be way lower than what we see now. no player should earn millions a week - no matter how good they are.

i also hope that the changes to the champions league will be reverted (because theyre absolutely stupid) and we will someday see a return to a format where we wont have half the group stage filled with clubs from just 4 countries.

perez is right on one thing: the system right now doesnt work. but the way he wanted to fix it was completely wrong. he wanted to funnel even more money to the rich & big clubs and thats exactly the problem he fails to see.

i think we should drain them and redistribute the money among all the other clubs. and honestly, if real madrid were to go away tomorrow, i would not miss them one bit. i dont think i would really miss any of those clubs. if they mismanaged their money, thats on them. the players would find other clubs, the fans as well. football will live on, with or without greedy people. shame about their history, i guess, but then again ... shrugs there's always new history to make


too long, did not read: it all boils down to capitalism not working and people not getting that basic fact.
 
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NarohDethan

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Such a weird change to introduce. If you're a midfield team, you might as well be done lol
 
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NarohDethan

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Three races, three different pole positions. At last, some excitement! Also, happy to see VET out of Q2 hell.
 
crimsonheadGCN

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www.resetera.com
www.mlb.com

Mariners offer vaccinations during games

SEATTLE -- The Mariners became the first team in Major League Baseball to make COVID-19 vaccines available to fans attending games at T-Mobile Park, a plan that was put together in less than one week via a partnership with the city of Seattle and Sounders FC, which began executing a
www.mlb.com www.mlb.com

This is a great idea. Hopefully more teams follow suit.
 
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Kurt Russell

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Man, River Plate had a fucking week, huh.
20 players got Covid after an ill advised trip to Colombia for the Libertadores (they had to play while shots rang outside and tear gas got into the stadium a few times, but Conmebol is Conmebol, so they forced them to play in Colombia instead of postponing or moving the match elsewhere).
Then they had to play a Superclásico (our biggest football rivalry, River vs Boca) with a reserve keeper who'd never played for the reserve (youth system).
Managed to take that match to a draw (Boca had a goal that should have been disallowed due to a previous very obvious foul, but whatever, that's AFA for you) and we lost on penalties.

Then we had to play for the Libertadores, and we had ZERO goalies because Conmebol, once again, decided to be Conmebol and refused a request to add the reserve goalie to the list (the 4 goalies in the list have covid). So we had to play a match with an injured midfielder (Enzo Pérez) as goalie, and 10 other players. No subs, most of the players were either 2nd line players, or in the case of two of them, reserve (youth system) players who'd never played a minute for the first team.

Guess what? We won that match 2-1. No goalie, no subs.
FUCK Conmebol, and all hail Gallardo and the team. And Enzo.



Absolute legends.
 
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Joe Spangle

Joe Spangle

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I'm pleased England faces Germany next.

As a 40+ year old Englishman I've seen Germany knock us out of pretty much every football tournament that there has been and so can go into this match with zero expectations of winning. If we do win its going to be a massive achievement and then its definitely coming home, if we don't then meh, another loss to ze Germans and a good learning experience for any young England fans that we actually aren't really that good at international fooseball.
 
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