It would be awesome if he returned to Dortmund, but it's unlikely.

never ever. btw, dortmund will be coached by marco rose from mönchengladbach next season, announced today.

The Bundesliga would be the best competition in the world by miles if it wasn't for Bayern Munich, who completely distort the league.

Really hoping the Canadian Premier League will be able to have some fans in attendance, as they have announced a projected 2021 season start date of May 21-24 (Victoria Day long weekend). I assume teams, if required to have reduced crowds, will give preference to season ticket holders; but in Atletico Ottawa’s case, we play in an enormous (for CPL standards) stadium which could easily hold all season ticket holders as well as some casuals such as myself, without being anywhere near over-crowded.

Good to see some corporation clubs like Salzburg, Leverkusen, Hoffenheim and PSV Eindhoven being eliminated in the EL round of 32. Also interesting that Leicster got eliminated by Slavia Prague despite getting 0-0 away in the first leg, but then losing at home with 0-2. Milan needed the away goal rule to eliminate Red Star, and the two games between Antwerp and Rangers contained no fewer than a total of fourteen goals as Rangers went through with 9-5.

Anyway, here's the draw for the round of 16:

Ajax - Young Boys
Dynamo Kyiv - Villareal
Roma - Shakhtar Donetsk
Olympiacos - Arsenal
Dinamo Zagreb - Tottenham
Manchester U - Milan
Slavia Prague - Rangers
Granada - Molde

Unable to secure the promise that they’d be able to play in front of anything more than family and friends, all English Leagues from Step 3 and below have decided to abandon the 2020-21 season
https://southern-football-league.co.uk/ ... ue-System/
On the bright side, this means that my ancestral home team Wantage Town will avoid relegation yet again

And indeed, history repeated itself as Rangers secured the title.

Do you think that Olympiacos will eleminate Arsenal again? As an Arsenal fan it will hurt if OSFP goes through... but then again I am Greek and although I don't support Olympiacos I would love him to move forward and score some UEFA points.

At last UEFA-lona got knocked out fair and square from the UCL. Shows how bad their shape is and how Messi has transformed the team into his ego feeding circus.

The draws for the quarter-finals are done:

CL:
Manchester C - Dortmund
Porto - Chelsea
Bayern Munich - Paris Saint-Germain
Real Madrid - Liverpool

EL:
Granada - Manchester U
Arsenal - Slavia Prague
Ajax - Roma
Dinamo Zagreb - Villareal

Surprisingly, Dinamo Zagreb eliminated Tottenham despite losing 2-0 in London in the first leg.

Repeats of the 2018 and 2020 finals there. Hopefully some payback on Ramos and Real will be served. Got the feeling Chelsea are going to win it though.

As an Arsenal fan I do not know what to expect. We lost 0-1 to Olympiacos even if we got through... I hope we have a good result with no away goals on Slavia's side.

Spurs have good material but Mourinho is a trash coach.

The biggest news since this thread was started is the announcement of twelve clubs starting a Super League. The response from UEFA and the various leagues has been to warn those clubs that they will be excluded from their domestic leagues and that Super League players won't be eligible for their national teams.

A good response in my view. If some giants want to do their own thing, exclude them from their current competitions. Some are discussing now how to handle the even the current season regarding those clubs.

Also good to see Germany being completely against it, with both Bayern Munich and Dortmund dismissing the idea of Super League.


And now he's fired.

I’m a little confused about terminology. The current Champions League is really more like a Cup tournament than a league, but this Super thingy, from what I’ve read, would mean the teams leaving their domestic premier leagues and playing in this new one instead. And the only way in is making enough money. Am I wrong? It sounds monstrous.

Yes, but they are going to change the format to make it more like a league. But this is a huge let down. And I have lost all respect for Arsenal which was one of my favorite teams ever, but I have also gained huge respect for Bayern, Borusia and Porto for telling them off. The sport is making a lot of money so I really don't understand all this greed. Yes, sure all of the teams are actually in debt, but it's only because they turned it into a business model which operates on spending money they don't have to one up each other. I hope this fails badly and all these teams are forced to beg to be brought back.

In Sweden we have a saying that goes something like "joy of harm is the only true joy" and that's sort of what I hope happens if this turns into a reality. The league failing massively and the teams would only be let back to start in the lower divisions.

Nope. The ESL is supposed to replace Champions League and Europa League for these teams, with them still being in their domestic leagues and cups. That's the initial thought at least. And with 15 of the 20 teams not having to qualify for it or anything, like they will have to with CL and EL. This whole thing is to make the rich even richer, leaving the smaller teams even further behind and stripping smaller clubs like Leicester, West Ham, Atlanta etc. of the chance to qualify for a huge cup (CL/EL) and generate much needed finances for themseves.

The whole thing is absolutely disgusting, and FIFA and UEFA have to do something about it no matter if this whole ESL shitfest happens or no. There has to be actual punishment that hurt these teams now. For all we know, this might just be a hoax used as leverage for the clubs involved to make some huge changes in CL and whatnot. But it doesn't matter if it is a hoax or they go through with it, they need to be punished.

FIFA won't do anything. Their statement was basically "can't we just all be friends and play nice?" UEFA really can't do too much about it either. They believe they can have the clubs barred from their regional competitions, but I think you will find they don't. They can ban players from playing in the Euro championships, but nobody really cares about that competition. The EPL have condemned the 6 clubs, but haven't done anything beyond that.

It is interesting that JP Morgan are on board with this. This tells me that the clubs really believe they can launch this competition.

This is nothing new by the way. Talk of some kind of competition dates back to at least the 90s that I can recall. The Champions League expansion back in 1997-98 was a direct response to threats of a Super League type competition. In the 2000's you had the "Group of 14" that were talking about the same game. UEFA, the EPL, the Primera Liga and Serie A have been complacent for too long, and this is the result.

This is exactly how I feel with regards to football and the obsession with money. They were all too happy to sit back and line their own pockets when it was to their benefit. Now they're possibly going to miss out on a load of revenue, they're kicking off. Not saying that's the only reason they're angry, as this Super League is a terrible idea, but I do have to laugh at them taking the moral high ground. They've all been complicit in football becoming the cesspool it is. The European game needs major reform.

Exactly - the masses of fan angst coming out is also risible - the same people who were demanding the heads of managers because 'we missed out on Europe' in a given season, are now crying because their teams want to play in a European league ? Hypocrites, the lot of 'em

The project seems to be plunging already. As mentioned earlier, the German top clubs turned it down, then Benfica and Porto did so as well. And now Chelsea and Manchester City have withdrawn their involvement, and rumor has it that Barcelona and Atletico Madrid will do the same. And the CEO of Manchester United have resigned.

Good!

People need to watch out though, these ides seem to come and go with some regularity. Remember they also remade Champions League so that it actually isn't a Champions League anymore. Today it is much loved but when it happened it was sure made that way for profit for the tv-companies and the bigger clubs.

It's basically dead at this point. All of England as well as AC Milan have begun the withdrawal process from the project. Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus can have their own competition among themselves.

I love how off the back of this UEFA announced changes to the Champion's League format, to add more matches with random match ups to give more chances of "blockbuster big matches" that ESL tried to do.

They actually agreed to it before the ESL was announced. Agnelli, the chairman of Juventus was also the president of the ECA, which is the clubs collective union. He agreed on behalf of the clubs, to the new UCL changes, then had the ESL clubs withdraw from the ECA, before resigning and announcing membership with the ESL.

Also, the new changes to the UCL effectively guarantee the big clubs membership every year. If these changes were to occur from next season, Liverpool could finish 7th in the EPL, and still qualify for the UCL.

Well I woke up to watch Man Utd vs Roma, and fell asleep at half time with Roma being up 2-1 (the game started at 5am here in my local time) . I woke up just after the 90th minute and thought "what the fuck just happened" seeing 6-2

Old Trafford gets stormed, and the biggest match of the English league calendar gets postponed. I am looking forward to seeing what repercussions United face for this. Abandoned matches generally get awarded to the opposition as a 3-0 win.

Also, the hilarity of Sky, in the same week where they praised protests against the Super League, now condemn fans for doing the same thing, specifically for no other reason other than it affects their schedules.

José Mourinho has just signed with Roma.

AS Roma to win Serie A next season

33/1 on West Brom staying in the premier league; not as steep as I thought it would be. Big Sam is always worth a tenner at this point in the season - not sure what he'll do though, short of taking hostages.

He'll be relegated this weekend. The surprise for me with Big Sam is that he's still got his job. I would have thought he would have he would have worked out how to get sacked by now so he can still brag about having never being relegated.

You're not wrong there - he's been in the news talking a big game, when he could be out selling players for kegs of bitter or whatever corruptuon the old goat is into this week.

Am I the only one that loathes Jose Mourinho? Every successful team whom he coached was already in a good shape before his arrival. The two UCL titles were a mix of luck and a generally great bunch of players. I find his style old fashioned and his techniques redundant.

Also in my book how can someone be called a great coach since he has NOT found and promote a SINGLE player?

I don't know anyone that actually likes Mourinho any more, or anyone who rates him as a top tier manager at this point. Everyone who used to find him amusing or charming now thinks he's a knob.

His reputation in Italy is still largely intact. Remember, he really did do the impossible with Inter Milan. That has not been forgotten, nor really tainted by his more recent work since Real Madrid.

Mourinho basically is going through what most good/great managers go through after a certain point: he's become out of touch and outdated. It's only natural. The game changes throughout the years and new managers with new ideas show up each generation.

What makes people dislike and joke about Mourinho more is because he's arrogant and can often be a crybaby and toxic as well. That only makes him less endearing to people, especially when he loses. It's one thing to love or respect an arrogant asshole when he wins, but when he doesn't... makes you wonder why the hell he's so full of himself in the first place.

Also, Mourinho has always been more of a results type of manager than an innovative one. He won a lot of trophies, but didn't really change the game from a tactical standpoint. I think his influence is stronger in the way a manager deals with the press. And nowadays, with social media being the beast it is and with famous people being watched 24/7, that has gotten much more difficult for people like him. A personality like him becomes more easily overexposed.

So I'm not susprised he's struggled to adapt to the current times.

Moving to Tottenham was already the first sign that the cream of the crop elite clubs no longer wanted him. And now, with the move to Roma, he has pretty much confirmed it.

Anyway, has anyone here played any of the recent football manager games? I haven't played one in nearly a decade. I've heard they gotten more complex and nowadays it takes longer than ever to play the game.

My PC can't run the mroe recent games of the series, so I'm thinking of getting the Touch version of the latest FK game on the Switch. It has all the same teams, completions and players of the base game. So I don't really mind if it lacks some of the bonus features of the pc version of the game. From what I gather, it's not a poor man's version of the game but a version that trims down the fat of the main game to make it more straightforward and able to run more smoothly on the Switch. Also, a PORTABLE FM GAME? Jesus. I cba already imagine the hours of my life I might waste on it LMAO

That brings back some sweet memories, I haven't played Football Manager since 2004 - many sleepless nights playing that game!

Last night Sporting CP won the Portuguese League for the first time in 19 years. It is their 19th title overall.

Wow that is a nice statistic.

The LaLiga title fight cannot get tighter. Atletico won today and have a 5 point advantage but even with this everything is possible. It is just that neither of the 3 teams has proved to be stable enough at this point. Like Barca resulted in a 3-3 yesterday


And to conclude OSFP won their 46th title for the Greek Super League. This is their 8th title in the last decade, their 15th title in the last 20 years. All of the other Greek football teams result in an accumulated number of 39 titles. I love Greek football