Arena "The Beautiful Game" - The Official JCC Football (Soccer) Thread.

BeIn Sports also has Copa Libertadores

ESPN+ (best value in soccer) also has Dutch Eredvisie, USL, A-Leauge (Australia), and the Danish Superliga

 

Was just about to post about Ings, beat by minutes again.


And yep, Villa going good guns, they need to replace Grealish and heavy rumours linking to Cantwell which is a strong probability. Risk of losing Watkins though as Spurs sniffing in the event Kane does move on

 

I’m really tickled by the idea of a super-canny Villa front desk that uses their Grealish windfall to force their way into consistent levels of competition. I kind of hope that’s what happens.

ASTON VILLA - CHAMPIONS OF EUROPE

 

Fanatiz is a good deal for getting BeIN Sports and a few others like GolTV, but we ended up almost only watching LaLiga via it. So when LaLiga moved to ESPN+ (which is growing a lot) we cancelled Fanatiz.

 

OK

So...who is coming second next season then?
My money is on Chelsea

 

If United don't get a CDM in then they'll not match or better last year's finish, even with Varane & Sancho.

Chelsea will have Tuchel from the start this time, Liverpool are rested and should have their best players back (at least until AFCON).

 

https://talksport.com/football/9223...l-barcelona-turnaround-contract-negotiations/

Looks like Messi could be leaving Barca after all


edit

https://www.fcbarcelona.com/en/foot...2207655/leo-messi-not-staying-at-fc-barcelona

Barca have just confirmed

 

Who currently could pay him apart from PSG?

 

Bayern could afford to pay him, but they almost certainly wouldn't.
Chelsea could pay him. United could.
MLS could get creative with ownership stake as part of compensation to bring him stateside.

 

He was prepared to take a 50% cut down to 250k per week at Barca, more clubs than you think will punt for around there if they want him

 

Wasn't he on 100mil a year?

Even halved that's pretty much 1mil per week.
Messi getting 500k would already be a problem
United will never pay that, they have enough trouble already with De Gea on 350k
And Sanchez was a big problem on 400k

Messi would destroy the pay structure of even the biggest clubs, that's why Barca had to let him go.

 

It was understood the Argentina star agreed to take a 50 per cent pay cut in order to agree a new five-year contract.

Now Catalan radio outlet RAC1 says Messi is no longer happy with what would’ve been a £250,000-a-week reduction,

250k/50% = 500k so he was on around the 500k per week mark.

He may not have been happy with dropping to 250k but he was clearly open to a lower salary so 300k with bonuses or similar. The big clubs can still afford him


Sanchez was a big problem because he was getting silly money and was playing like a conference player. If he'd been putting the effort in AND performing the players would have had less of an issue, it would have existed but it would easy for management to point out performances and say "play like that and get a rise"

 

Paying Messi huge wages just because he's Messi could wind up the same way.

He's still a quality player, but can he have the same impact at 34 in the PL that he's had in the far less difficult La Liga?

United don't even want to pay Pogba 400k a week to stay, he's a WC winner.
As is Varane, with 4 CL titles on top of that.

Pep will appeal because he used to coach Messi and City are the only team he could potentially work well in as a false 9.
And he'd be much cheaper than forking out 100m+ for Kane or Haaland in addition to wages.
KDB earns nearly 400k per week at City, would they pay Messi more than that?

 

Plus who knows if Barca was actually able to foot a "full-throated" 250k with bonuses and everything given what's likely to be an abysmal budget this summer. Their statement explicitly cited the La Liga financial rules and there's apparently a 5D chess theory floating around that this is some kind of roundabout way of putting pressure on La Liga to change those rules, which seems wild to me but, eh.

It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

 

No but I think they'd match it and a one or two year contract would not be an issue for a lot of clubs especially when you consider the merchandise and other sponsorship he could bring with him

 

It's ironic that he's not going to be staying now, even though they at least appeared to have been getting along and he agreed to a huge pay cut to stay and help the club's financial issues... whereas before he had that pretty bitter and public feud with them, where it seemed much more like he actually wanted to leave.

 

Wasn’t that under Bartomeu? He must like the new regime more.

And apparently Laporta is holding a press conference in an hour explaining why this is all down to La Liga rules. I wonder if that 5D chess theory is actually on to something.