European Football Thread

[hugobomb]

Real 2-0 down at home. Conte may be getting that phone call very soon.

[Malenko]

They lost 2-1 at home. Depending on other results they may end up seventh with 9 games played.

[Baddar]

Henry's managerial debut hasn't gone well. 2-1 loss at Strasbourg. 

...at least I think he was in charge for this one. 

[GoN_]

So Barcelona just crushed Real with a 5-1 win at Camp Nou. And if there were any doubts, Lopetegui is pretty much finished.

 

It sure seems like it was worth it to ruin Spain's World Cup for this.

[Lineker]

Quote

Cristiano Ronaldo has revealed a shift in his relationship with the Real Madrid president, Florentino Pérez, convinced him the time was right to call time on his glittering nine-year stint at the club.

The Portugal forward, who joined Juventus for around €100m in July, departed Spain as Real’s all-time leading goalscorer having helped inspire the club to 15 major trophies, including four Champions Leagues and two La Liga titles. The club claimed the transfer had been instigated “at the will and the request of the player”. Ronaldo, in an interview with France Football, has suggested Pérez’s attitude towards him had changed.

“I felt it inside the club, especially from the president, that they no longer considered me the same way that they did in the start,” he said. “In the first four or five years there, I had the feeling of being ‘Cristiano Ronaldo’. Less afterwards. The president looked at me through eyes that didn’t want to say the same thing, as if I was no longer indispensable to them, if you know what I mean.

“That’s what made me think about leaving. Sometimes I’d look at the news, where they were saying I was asking to leave. There was a bit of that, but the truth is that I always had the impression that the president would not hold me back. If it had all been about money, I’d have moved to China, where I would have earned five times as much than here [at Juventus] or at Real. I did not come to Juve for the money. I earned the same in Madrid, if not more. The difference is that, at Juve, they really wanted me. They told me that and made it clear. They showed me that.”

Asked whether the manager Zinedine Zidane’s decision to leave after overseeing a third successive European Cup win had influenced his move, Ronaldo said: “My decision to leave was not based on his departure. That being the case, it’s one of those little things that made me feel a bit better in terms of what I thought of the situation at the club.”

The 33-year-old, who scored 44 goals for Madrid last season and has seven for Juventus, is aiming to win the Ballon d’Or for a third year in a row. “I think I deserve it this year … Yes, I dream of winning the Ballon d’Or for the sixth time and passing, in this case, Lionel Messi.”

Ronaldo is the subject of a criminal investigation by Las Vegas police and a separate civil action after an allegation of rape made against him by Kathryn Mayorga. He strenuously denies the allegation, which Mayorga, now 34, claims took place in the summer of 2009.

She alleges the footballer assaulted her in a Las Vegas hotel in 2009, then used “fixers” to stop her pursuing criminal charges – including paying her $375,000 “hush money”. Police confirmed the original case was closed in 2009 due to Mayorga not disclosing details but it was reopened in September after she went public, inspired, she said, by the #MeToo movement.

“Of course, this story is interfering in my life,” Ronaldo said. “I have a partner, four children, an ageing mother, sisters, a brother, a family with whom I am very close. Not to mention my reputation, which is that of someone exemplary ... Imagine what it means when someone accuses you of rape, whether you have all that or not. I know who I am and what I did. Truth will out one day. And the people who criticise me or seek to expose my life today, who make it into a circus, these people will see.”

[Gazz]

Lopetegui sacked.

[Liam]

2 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Lopetegui sacked.

Such an impressive fall from grace in the past four months or so.

[Malenko]

Apparently Sporting has fired another manager.

To be fair to the board, they are 2 points behind the league leaders and haven't reached any of the cup finals yet! You had to see it coming.

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/12-teams-we-cant-wait-be-football-manager-2019

They got it right. It his a challenge, but I'm pretty sure FM forgot to implement a feature where your job status is "Very insecure" right from the start when you decide to manage them.

 

[FLiam]

So there’s some big football stories breaking.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/football-leaks-manchester-city-paris-saint-germain-gianni-infantino-a-1236277.html

https://interaktiv.tagesanzeiger.ch/2018/giannis-game-en/

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/financial-fair-play-manchester-city-and-psg-pact-with-the-sheikhs-a-1236414.html

Main points are that:

- Platini and Ifantino helped launder around €1.8bn through PSG.

- Man City avoided harsher FFP penalties thanks in part to Nicolas Sarkozy.

- A European Superleague is incoming.

Fifteen separate news organisations around Europe have been coordinating the story. It’s pretty big. 

[FLiam]

Another thing:

“The reports of the coming weeks will also reveal the positive doping tests of a multiple Champions League winner as well as the tax avoidance models of some Premier League titans."

[MDK]

17 hours ago, Liam Mk2 said:

- A European Superleague is incoming.

I hope so. Might make English football competitive again.

[Lineker]

15 minutes ago, MDK said:

I hope so. Might make English football competitive again.

Settle down Donald.

[MDK]

Shush you. You don't like it because Spuds aren't invited to the party.

[FLiam]

Arsenal have said that they are not one of the clubs that have agreed to the proposal. 

Probably because they see this as a chance at actually winning a domestic league title again. 

[Baddar]

A hat-trick for Aspas last weekend. His first two goals were half decent...

https://www.facebook.com/ElevenSportsUK/videos/2157959121122916/

[DavidMarrio]

3 hours ago, Baddar said:

A hat-trick for Aspas last weekend. His first two goals were half decent...

https://www.facebook.com/ElevenSportsUK/videos/2157959121122916/

 

[FLiam]

Arsene Wenger could become AC Milan manager according to various reports.

Strange, as I thought he and Gazidis didn't get on that well.

[FestiveJack]

On 06/11/2018 at 15:10, Liam Mk2 said:

Arsene Wenger could become AC Milan manager according to various reports.

Strange, as I thought he and Gazidis didn't get on that well.

The new owners are apparently big fans. It would be a shame for Milan to get rid of a club legend like Gattuso, who is on course for them to return to the Champions League for five years or so.

[Lineker]

Quote

The French Football Federation has said its ethical council will look into Paris Saint-Germain’s recruiting policy after club scouts illegally profiled the ethnic origins of potential young recruits.

The federation said the council would have the right to ask the French league disciplinary commission to step in when its investigation was over.

Its move came as the French league of human rights filed a discrimination lawsuit against PSG with a state prosecutor. It said it was doing so “to punish the culprits and [establish] responsibilities at the club”.

PSG acknowledged that forms with “illegal content were used between 2013 and 2018”. But it declined responsibility for implementing the policy after the Mediapart news website reported on Thursday that PSG’s non-Paris-based scouts listed the ethnic origins of possible recruits according to four categories: “Francais” (French), “Maghrebin” (north African), “Antillais” (West Indian), and “Afrique noire” (black African).

Mediapart and the French TV programme Envoye Special said a young black player was overlooked by PSG because of his colour. After an investigation based on the Football Leaks documents, Mediapart alleged the 17-year-old midfielder Yann Gboho, who plays for France Under-18s, was disregarded by PSG aged 13.

France’s sports minister, Roxana Maracineanu, expressed “dismay” at the revelations while Nathalie Boy de la Tour, the president of the French league, said “such practices are unacceptable”.

PSG’s deputy CEO Jean-Claude Blanc pledged to get to the bottom of what had happened after an internal investigation was launched by the club last month. The club has said its management was not aware of the racial profiling and that it was done in secret.

In a statement on Thursday PSG said: “Paris Saint-Germain reaffirms its firm condemnation of all forms of discrimination, racism or ethnic monitoring. Forms with illegal content were used between 2013 and 2018 by the training centre’s department responsible for player scouting outside the Île-de-France region. These forms were introduced at the sole personal initiative of the head of this department.”

[DavidMarrio]

Dortmund/Bayern game was really good. Dortmund came from behind to win 3-2

Leaves Bayern 7 points behind them now and 3 behind Gladbach