I don’t think the referee has the authority to kick a player in the nuts.
That’s fucked up.
Jeez, Messi, you’re still a great player, not a has-been. Yes, that retirement league is a lot richer, but it also means closing your eyes to the shitty human rights in the place (don’t worry, you won’t be subject to them, as virtual royality).
But, yeah, I get it. It’s why Brittney Griner played in Russia: WAY more pay. And I know the big clubs are a bit tight on money these days and don’t really need someone to sell shirts. The analytics favor investing in young cheap players who can be sold for more money later.
And Real Madrid has now completed a 4-0 demolition of Barcelona at the Camp Nou.
Unstoppable. Barcelona is a 2nd rate European club right now. They got completely outclassed. RM were not even in 1st gear. Totally coasting during the night.
RM is definitely headed for another win in the Champions League. Chelsea will get run over next round. Only Man City, Bayern, and Napoli are realistic opponents.
Isn’t the second rate club 12 pts. clear in the table? I’m no Barca supporter, but 12 pts clear is likely leading to a league title. What odds are you placing RM to win CL at as “definite” winners? If odds match up with the word definite, happy to take a bet on this one.
Don’t question an elite RM fan with actual facts about a low class Basque club.
Arsenal is top of the EPL…
But they would get nowhere in the Champions League.
Same thing really.
CL is what matters to RM and Barcelona.
That, and their attempt to form an American-style league.
Boehly & Co are not very good at soccer.
They just hired Lampard…
Chelsea is a mess of a team. Owners don’t have a clue.
They are making Spurs look good (never thought that would be possible).
Chelsea is continuing to self-destruct in the EPL because the new owners have no clue in regards to how to actually create a proper team.
1-0 losss against Wolves.
They will be very lucky if RM doesn’t put 5 past them at a minimum.
IFYP
Looks like City will very likely beat Bayern.
They just won 3-0 at the Etihad.
Thats going to be near impossible to overcome in the 2nd leg.
Inter beat Benfica 2-0, so they are also likely to go through.
So its probably going to be:
Inter vs Napoli
RM vs City
Thats a pretty good set of games.
RM just ran over Chelsea at the Bernabeu 2-0
This was expected.
AC Milan beating Napoli 1-0
This was a surprise.
As I said:
It was utter destruction of Chelsea by Los Blancos.
4-0 on aggregate (2-0 and 0-2) with RM not even bothering to shift from 2nd gear in either game.
Citteh awaits in the semis. Now THAT will be a challenging game.
I will actually be rooting for Madrid since it would be great to keep the elusive title from City (same as PSG). Napoli really lost their way once they got the large lead in Serie A and seemed to get distracted. Can’t really get up for either Milan team.
Manchester Derby as an FA Cup Final for the first time.
OK, here’s a dumbass thinking that coaches know the LOTG.
“We had the best coaches in the world in the room,” Ceferin said. "We showed them a situation where a ball hits the hand of a player and we said penalty or no penalty, half said penalty, half said no penalty.
“Those are coaches of the best teams in the world. I think that the referee on the pitch should decide because otherwise we don’t need a referee anymore. We can just have a machine that says handball or no handball, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it. We have to, and we will start working on that to tell the referees that they have to decide if it’s a natural move or not, and so on.”
Um, referees already do this. Do you not know how referees, at ALL levels of soccer, do this?
Now, a machine that can determine a player’s intention, which is a lot of what goes in to handball calls? It would be interesting to see an AI machine for that.
It could begin with some number of seconds (less than one, I think), based on speed and distance of the ball strike, in which a player could reasonably move their arm out of the path of the ball. It would also need to define natural arm positions, which changes based on the player’s movement.
But, you know what works better? A competent referee’s decision, backed by a VAR and the referee’s second glance at the video, for goals and penalty shot situations. The competency part is the major issue.
The board, which includes managers such as Carlo Ancelotti and Jose Mourinho, plus former players like Paolo Maldini and Luis Figo, was approved by the UEFA executive committee to give independent opinions on football-related topics.
This week it issued recommendations after discussing the handball law, specifically the aspect that states that not every touch of the arm or hand with the ball is an offence.
“The Board recommends that UEFA should clarify that no handball offence should be called on a player if the ball is previously deflected from his own body and, in particular, when the ball does not go towards the goal,” it said.
“On the same notice, the Board recommends that not every handball should automatically lead to a caution after every shot at goal, as anticipated by current guidelines.”
The Board also said UEFA should contact football’s law-making body, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), to amend the law on sending off players for handball decisions.
It suggested that a player should be sent off for denying a goal-scoring opportunity only if they “deliberately and intentionally” touch the ball with their hand or arm.
“In case of other handball offences, the players should only be cautioned,” it added.
More suggestions that are already part of the LOTG, telling me that they have not read the LOTG often enough. (I go through them every year, present changes in a PowerPoint to referees in my fiefdom, and answer questions weekly when they arise.)
Ceferin also repeated his dislike for the current offside rule.
“Two centimeters of offside is not offside for me,” he said. “We have to see if the line should be thicker.”
Or, use better higher resolution cameras. I mean, if the camera can show someone 2 cm’s offside, it’s fricken’ offside. How the lines are drawn, however, getting the shoulder/arm delineation is the harder task (IMO).
MLS 2021 Golden Boot winner goes ape-shit all over Real Madrid.
I’d paste the ESPN story, but ESPN seems to be down, at least for me.
The funny thing about the AI determining hand ball intent is that the AI would start with a single human or a small group of humans providing enough specific examples that they agree upon to start the evaluation process. There is no objective data set to start from so the machine would likely be consistent with the person that did the initial evaluations. Since it is unlikely that that there would be unanimous committee selections for all instances, there would still be variance. Offside would be different. They could put electronics on shoulders and feet and write the rule such that it could be objectively measured. I do not like the line drawing in many cases now since offsides does occur at angles. They would need to get the over-field camera like the ones used over the huddles in the NFL but wires would have to be high enough to avoid long balls.
Manchester Derby moved up a few hours. Not that we’ll see it here on regular old cable.
Might as well move it to Manchester or Liverpool, since there is a Beyoncé convert at TOT that night. And the WUCL is that night in The Netherlands. All those rival fans getting back on trains afterward… don’t want to be the train police that night.
Wrexham looking to put The MLS out of business, luring retirees to their club.
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