Liverpool has moved to betting favorite for Champions League at +350. Madrid, Arsenal and Munich are close behind. Man City, favorite up until 2 weeks ago is still 6th choice at +700. Who is still betting on City?
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Canadian intâl and former Colorado Rapids center back MoĂŻse Bombito, currently with Nice, listed as the fastest player in Europeâs top five leagues.
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Alphonso Davies 
has slowed down a bit I guess. Although he is only 24 he has been plagued by injuries. His former speed beat the current 36.2 kph.
EFL Cup semiâs will have Referees mansplain the calls over the PA System.
Stupid. Everyone sees what the Referee has seen, and they will know how he interprets it by his decision. No need to waste time talking about it to fans. No one stops watching the sport because they donât understand a call. It is a pretty simple sport to follow.
Wading through the hot mess of ESPN+ to have my morning background noise be Spurs playing at The Lamb Ground reminds me that if/when I get over to England for work, I might have more fun watching a lower-level game, rather than trying to score tickets for a Premier League match.
On my last couple trips I have looked for that. The only game that was a possibility was a day I couldnât do it. QPR was hosting Millwall. We were in that part of town. Police were out in full force and Millwall fans were pouring from tube.
Going back in September and have 5 days or so.
Just be aware buying tix is not the same. You either have to sign up w teams member site (most are free) and see if they have something available. Buying from third party can be dicey. Had one not work, had one with split tix but one didnât work and got sent another but it took some time and another where it worked fine.
This. I have successfully gotten tickets via joining the fan club and via third party. The fan club is the way to go if you can get your hands on them that way. Only did third party once, and it worked out but was quite expensive. Iâve also gone to international matches other ways a few times (via a friend getting tickets locally and via corporate tickets).
Millwall is the team in Bermondsey right? Not surprised there was a lot of police. It has loyal followers. When I went to the beer mile in Bermondsey I always made sure to praise millwall first.
My daughter lived in Bermondsey some years ago. It was an interesting part of London then. It is now pretty gentrified I expect.
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This is one of the main reasons I have never taken my family to SA, Dubai, or UAE.
Me, too. The other is money, and the other still is that they are brutal monarchies, and no one (except the monarchs) has any rights.
And, it is also possible that whatever they did â touching foreign women inappropriately (in our opinion) â was legal.
Wondering what the teams get from this, and can a team decline the SuperCup invitation?
Looking through table for CL, the last match day could be crazy. There will be at least a dozen teams playing for the bye and a bunch of teams playing for their lifeâŚincluding City and PSG. A draw in that game tomorrow and at least one could be cooked. RM draws tomorrow and they will have a game on their hands next week (it wonât happen though - expect 2 clinical wins).
Seems the new format is turning out to be exciting. Fuck those people who found it âtoo confusing.â Just made their jobs harder, imo
In the olden days, teams only played three other teams. Easier to scout, or at least a lot less time doing it, and can concentrate more time for each team.
FCB pulls one late. Thriller.
The Next Round â the âKnockout Phase Play-Offsâ â is pretty interesting as well. Instead of a simple #9v#24, there will be a draw for #9 versus either #23 OR #24, with the non-drawn team playing #10. And so on.
If NOR cannot properly use VAR, then sure, dump it.
That is not happening in too many other places.
Is there someone in NOR that is looking at each VAR use and deciding if it is correct or not? Like ESPN does with the EPL? Like some âcommissionâ does with the EPL?
VAR is not having as much positive impact. Offsides calls take too much time and are using angles to estimate very small variances. The penalty review causes more diving w little consequence (was a yellow in tonightâs USMNt game for diving). Still no consistency on yellows and especially second yellows. Liverpool lost a lead due to blown VAR. There is not a crazy number of saves from horrific, season changing type calls. The goal technology is most meaningful. If VAR was scrapped I wouldnât care.
CHE gets a schedule break, even though playing in UEFA: Conference League had only six matches, still has the 9th-24th places in a play-off. They get two fewer matches AND off for the play-offs, since they came out on top of the âLeague Phase.â
MCI pull through, get to play RM or BAY. Great.
Three French teams are in a âdrawâ so two have to play each other. Winners play LIV or FCB.
Wow, these idiots get paid to say these things:
From a mathematical standpoint, taking 24 of 36 seems reasonable given the required unbalanced (as opposed to the Group concept of teams playing exactly the other teams twice each) schedules. Giving the top 8 two matches off should be considered a reward that all teams should aspire to earn, for taking the competition seriously.
I think using the UEFA coefficients to make the pots might be outdated, as AV being put into Pot 4 due to their lack of Euro play meant that some teams played against three actual top teams instead of only two.
One insightful remark:
Olley: One interesting losing group from this format is the club analysts. One high-placed source rightly pointed out to me a couple of months ago that the analystsâ workload has almost tripled, because instead of working on three group stage opponents, they now face eight. That may have been a contributing factor in the number of upsets and high-scoring games in the group stage.
Seems familiarâŚ
Same guy offered this âimprovementâ:
Olley: Reduce the group stage to 24 teams. Then, top eight go through, middle eight face a playoff and bottom eight are relegated. More jeopardy, higher quality, better product.
Um, that makes 12 teams for the knockout, not 16 or 8. Unless you get four teams from the Europa League.
For this to work, youâd need: top 12 advance, next 8 playoff, bottom 4 out or relegated.
28 would make this work: top 12 advance, next 8 playoff, bottom 8 out or relegated.
30 would work: top 8 advance, next 16 playoff, 6 drop.
But, 36 is doing the same. Lowering the number of participants would allow for fewer matches, but I think 8 works well for having unbalanced schedules. More matches means slightly more (actuarial) credibility in the standings.
Looking at the table: 11 was the cutoff, a little less than half the max, and GD was certainly the key if, as a team, you are close to the cutoff (three at 11 made it, one did not). GD was important above the cutoff as well for placement purposes and playing âworseâ teams later, so racking up goals and preventing them is key in this tournament.
Format was improvement.
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