Random footie

[Durhamfootman]

Man Utd are getting used to shipping 4 goals a game

now the women are doing it as well as the men

this time it hands the WSL title to Chelsea

[Gingerfinch]

Women's Cup Final next week. My money is on City, who have been arguably the best team since their injured players have returned. This means of course that Chelsea will win by three!

[Durhamfootman]

[Durhamfootman]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/africa/62049926



even allowing for match fixing, I'm not sure how it is physically possible to score 93 goals in the second half of a game

[Durhamfootman]

perhaps they thought no-one would notice

[alfie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/africa/62049926



even allowing for match fixing, I'm not sure how it is physically possible to score 93 goals in the second half of a game

Playing against Monty Python's Long John Silver Impersonators perhaps ?

[Durhamfootman]

as it happens, I'd not heard of the long john silver impersonators football match, so I went online and couldn't find anything that would let me play it.

[sussexpob]

as it happens, I'd not heard of the long john silver impersonators football match, so I went online and couldn't find anything that would let me play it.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3cd13t

at the end....last 2 mins

[Durhamfootman]

Cheers

very good

[sussexpob]

Union beat Glasgow Rangers this evening in the champions League qualifiers... Great game, and Union could have ended it on the night but a few chances went missing. Probably get annihilated at Ibrox, but was still a great atmosphere and game.

Sadly, a small minority of Rangers hooligans dressed in black and displaying separatist banners tried their best to spoil the atmosphere pre-game for both sets of supporters by starting trouble, but they were marched away by a large group of Glasgow lads telling them they were letting the club down.

After the game both sets of supporters sang together on the train.... I guess there is always a 1 percent there to ruin it for everyone. Never hard to spot either....

[sussexpob]

As time goes on, Barcelona look more and more doomed. This weekend, La Liga confirmed that the club could not register any of the 7 players who signed contracts for them this summer(5 new purchases and 2 contract renewals) due to overspending on their budget, and with a few days to the new season its increasingly hard to see how they will be able to work round it. At the moment, several players havent even been paid for July and June, and the scale of their debt means they are in deep trouble.

La Liga set a rule whereby Barcelona have to sell 4 times the value of players in order to register players. Barcelona signed over 150 million transfers this year, and sold only one player for 20.... their net transfer expenditure means they need to find 600 million to register said players.... and thats before the fact that they need to cut the wage bill by 144 million for the year before even considering adding new players (who are said to be worth 3 times more than the players they have moved on in wages, so that cut amount is said to be closer to 200 million).

To do this, Barcelona sold a large portion their TV rights to a third party for future years for a reported 667 million. Even on its own, this deal is massively damaging to the future business, as they are selling revenue in future years to stay afloat now.... the fact the money generated is being largely ploughed into players and wages is unthinkable. Their debt is out of control and interest on their debt worses with every passing day..... yet they cut their revenues, and took on more debt? How does this end?

A revelation at the weekend made this deal eye wateringly bad. The truth is, Barcelona seem to have attempted to play a little game of cooking the books with some accountancy fraud. Far from selling the TV rights directly, they setup a third party company to buy the rights, a company owned by Barcelona and the rights buyers, Sixth Street Sports. Six Street only put up around 450-500 million, well under the billed amount sold for and a catastrophic undervaluing.... Barcelona put up the rest, but the problem is this is phantom money. They basically loaned the subsidiary company 150-200 million euros of money that never went anywhere, then claimed that the third party company paid that money back to Barcelona, in doing so trying to artificially show that the club had made that money as a profit, and not in fact that all the payments never actually existed and all they were attempting to do was loan themselves money that didnt exist on paper.

The net effect is La Liga seen through it and rejected it as a profit, opening calls about apparent fraud activity. And even worse for Barcelona, the phantom payment on the books will open them up for tax liabilities on the apparent profit.... to the tune of 50 million Euros. All in all, their attempts have blasted another huge tranche of tax debt onto the club.

Word coming out in Spain is that Laporte has pretty much gone mad. Even yesterday as these relevations came out, Chelsea stated that Barcelona were trying to buy Marcus Alonso with the player missing their game at Everton because he wants to leave. Bernardo Silva at City is also in a similar boat... they are STILL trying to buy players?? I mean, its beyond comprehension at this point.

And while the club does all this, they are attempting to bully those players they dont want out the club. Samuel Umtiti and Martin Braithwaite are being smeared in Spanish press for having the audacity of turning up to work, and not accepting simply to tear up their contract for no money in return. Both seem to have taken the principal stand that they wont be bullied out of the money they are owed, while Barcelona have stated openly both players will be sacked for gross misconduct unless they agree transfers elsewhere - the misconduct is apparently not caring for the good of Barcelona football club by accepting to leave for free.

And even this morning Laporte said he will not be selling Frenkie De Jong, despite interest. Well, if the plan to raise money is to spend more and refuse to sell anyone, then what happens? This is stupidity on a different level.

All this raises questions about what FIFPro and UEFA are doing. Leeds Chairman came out to say Barcelona have not paid a penny on the Raphinha deal, and its clear other clubs are experiencing the same. If Barcelona dont pay 67 million pounds by August 31st, technically Leeds can sue... and the player? Well the window for transfers will be gone, leaving the player unable to play and Leeds in a position where they can void the deal, but lose the player to unregistration... this could apply to Lewandowski and others.

And Barcelona are way over FFP.... like mentally over. A Champions League ban or fine, cut from Europe, a La Liga ban or fine for breaching its rules.... I mean, without CL revenue worth 100 million a year, Barcelona are DONE. Totally DONE... smoke them a kipper, but they wont be back for breakfast.

A total sham. The club need to sack Laporte and stop this Caligulia like madness now before he drags one of the greatest sporting institutions ever to exist down with him.

[sussexpob]

The Leeds Chairman is promising a game changing court case if they dont receive the money. Its hard not to feel sorry for them - a club like Barcelona forced the play to threaten striking in order to facilitate a transfer Leeds didnt want, and now they face losing their best player and not actually getting paid for it.... and quite rightly as the Chairman states, why is that fair? Why are Barcelona able to buy players with monopoly money? How can they make deals while not paying their players in the summer?

This stinks... something needs to be done about it

[Arthur Crabtree]

A revelation at the weekend made this deal eye wateringly bad. The truth is, Barcelona seem to have attempted to play a little game of cooking the books with some accountancy fraud. Far from selling the TV rights directly, they setup a third party company to buy the rights, a company owned by Barcelona and the rights buyers, Sixth Street Sports. Six Street only put up around 450-500 million, well under the billed amount sold for and a catastrophic undervaluing.... Barcelona put up the rest, but the problem is this is phantom money. They basically loaned the subsidiary company 150-200 million euros of money that never went anywhere, then claimed that the third party company paid that money back to Barcelona, in doing so trying to artificially show that the club had made that money as a profit, and not in fact that all the payments never actually existed and all they were attempting to do was loan themselves money that didnt exist on paper.

I know business operates above the law, but maybe this is illegal.

[sussexpob]

Came out literally since I posted this that Barcelona have announced that certain players contracts were extended using "criminality" and that they will unilaterally consider these players current deals to be null and void.... and subsequently only pay those given a pay rise in recent years on the lower end of the spectrum.

Obviously no reasons or evidence has been provided.... this just gets madder and madder

[Durhamfootman]

Football finances have been so out of control and for so long that for the last 10 or maybe even 15 or 20 years, I've been expecting football to eat itself, to explode with the kind of nuclear holocaust that would take many, many years for some sort of life to even begin to return to it. Astonishingly it just hasn't happened the way I imagined it would, so maybe this is how football eats itself.... one club at a time