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at how FIFA consistently does the World's Greatest Player dirty
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I saw on another site that Smalling was wearing Red Bull cans and Jagermeister to be a Jagerbomb
Messi winning in Brazil at his peak would be legendary.
I hope this doesn't cause a thread derailing argument, but do you guys have Maradona in your top 3 all time?
I never caught Maradona play besides highlights and a preseason match against the Cosmos but from the research I've done there's no way he's better than Pele, Messi, or CR7. Don't know why Maradona/Pele was ever even a debate. He had that monster run in '86 but never sustained a level of play and winning like that over his career.
If Messi & his Argentine side stay healthy, I think they might get it done in Brazil this summer...
#Emptyhiad
Let the church say, "Amen."I understand that everyone likes a little banter but the stadium has been running on at least 95% average attendance for a few years running, so that's not exactly accurate. But don't let facts get in the way of your fun.
Think Porto want 40 million euros, not pounds. Regardless, they want too much for Jackson, I'll admit it, but this is what we do. Lol
NBC No Longer In The Running For MLS TV Rights, Says Report
Posted on January 9, 2014 by Christopher Harris
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nbc mls NBC No Longer In The Running For MLS TV Rights, Says Report
NBC Sports Group is no longer in the running to acquire the next round of MLS TV rights, which will begin with next season. According to a report tonight in Goal.com, sources are saying that the finishing touches are being made to the MLS rights deal, but NBC Sports is out.
The winning bidder of the MLS TV deal is expected to be announced next week at the MLS Draft. FOX is the favorite to acquire the rights in a deal that could include ESPN. Sources to World Soccer Talk revealed that FOX and ESPN were in discussions about sharing the rights in some capacity, which could include FOX sub-licensing some UEFA Champions League games to ESPN in return for FOX getting more MLS or USMNT games. However, nothing had been finalized as of press time.
Since 2012, NBC Sports has televised MLS games on NBC Sports Network (now NBCSN) as well as a small number of games on NBC. After acquiring the rights to the American top flight league, NBC significantly improved the production value and presentation of the league, including having talent do studio shows and commentate games on-site, in addition to producing additional programming.
Despite all of NBC’s efforts to elevate the presentation of MLS to US audiences, the TV ratings were dismal due to little interest in the league due to a combination of factors — poor quality of play, lack of authenticity and little relevance to soccer fans.
For the 2013 MLS regular season, MLS TV ratings on NBC were down 8% compared to the previous year, while they were down 29% for ESPN.
The 2014 MLS season will be the final year of NBC’s relationship with MLS.
Meanwhile, FOX is focused on acquiring more soccer TV programming with World Cup 2018 in mind. FOX already has UEFA Champions League and FA Cup rights as well as World Cup 2018 and 2022, and has acquired Bundesliga rights (beginning 2015) and European Championship 2016 qualifiers.
Read more at http://worldsoccertalk.com/2014/01/...ls-tv-rights-says-report/#wXwLRav6r1aR5XPV.99
Leandro Damiao transfered to Santos
Leandro Damiao transfered to Santos
At a food bank somewhere in Portugal, AVB weeps.
also, is Nani injured? I only watch United games if theyre on, but the last time i saw him play was the red card against Real Madrid
However, the statistics are clear -- Walcott was playing his fifth game in the space of 13 days. It is a startlingly strenuous schedule, probably unmatched anywhere in top-flight European football at any point this season. Even at the upcoming World Cup, a tournament that notoriously features matches in quick succession and tests a player's fitness levels, there's only an outside chance that a player will compete in four matches in the space of 13 days -- let alone five.
Walcott's knee injury -- which didn’t initially appear to be serious, considering the smile on his face as he departed on a stretcher -- was the third separate injury he suffered in the Tottenham game. His manager, Arsene Wenger, is one of the most intelligent managers around, hailed upon his arrival in English football as a revolutionary physiologist. Perhaps he would have liked to rest Walcott, but this was an important north London derby and he had a striker shortage because both Olivier Giroud and Nicklas Bendtner had also collected injuries over the Christmas period, while Lukas Podolski was only just recovering.
Again, it's difficult for someone with no medical background to reasonably blame fatigue with any level of certainty. Nevertheless, it's worth recalling the opening chapter to the autobiography of Robert Pires, one of Walcott's predecessors as an Arsenal wide man and a player who suffered a similar knee injury back in 2001-02, his best campaign for the Gunners.
"There's always some physical or psychological explanation as to why [injuries] happen," Pires wrote. "This one came about because I had been careless. Maybe I was mentally fatigued ... I just wasn't concentrating. I must have been worn out by the endless run of games, the constant competition ... for injury, read tiredness." He goes onto complain, in some detail, about the physical strain upon players in English football.
Theo Walcott
Allsport
Could Theo Walcott's serious knee injury have been avoided if he wasn't playing so many competitive games over the holidays?
This is the worst time of year for the Premier League.
Statistics from the excellent analytics website StatsBomb prove that injuries have increased rapidly in recent weeks. Meanwhile, using data from the reliable injury source PhysioRoom, it appears around 25 percent of Premier League players are currently injured. Spurs, for example, have 11 players unavailable.
Ahead of a World Cup year, there are frequently calls for a winter break considering that England's chances are seemingly regularly harmed by fatigue. Successive England managers have complained about this issue, but isn't really the Premier League's problem; England are controlled by the Football Association, but the Premier League is an independent body.
It would indirectly help the Premier League as an organisation if England were world champions, but it’s not their responsibility. Their concern, instead, should be that the absurd run of matches over Christmas is harming the footballers and the spectacle of the Premier League. Or, to use an expression they might sympathise with more, it’s harming their "product."
The issue of a winter break won't go away, primarily because it won't happen any time soon, although Christmas football and a winter break aren't mutually exclusive. It seems logical, should England persist with Christmas football, to have a small break in early January. It would be a chance for players to rest, for managers to focus on the transfer window and for fans to take a breather at a time when money is tight.
If not, the Premier League needs to reduce the number of games over the Christmas period. Boxing Day matches are a great tradition, as are matches on New Year's Day. The matches in between, however, are superfluous. There is simply one too many matchday in this period -- games are extremely close together, and moving matches for television can mean one side having a crucial advantage in terms of preparation time. Injuries would surely be prevented if even one game was removed from this schedule.
Allsport
Alan Pardew has been vocal in his displeasure at the festive-fixture congestion given the physical toll it can take on players.
The packed fixture list is nothing new, but the increased pace of football means that such a succession of games has become increasingly dangerous. Watch a Premier League game from just 15 years ago and the contest is entirely different -- it feels like a walking pace compared to matches from the modern era. Today players are faster, passing moves are faster, transitions are faster and tackles are faster. Less contact is allowed, but players still dive in to challenges with incredible force.
English football's overall problem is the insistence on a 20-team league along with two cup competitions. Should England persist with both the League Cup and the FA Cup -- and despite their decline in importance, that format remains preferable -- a move to an 18-team league, replicating the Bundesliga, is preferable.
It's been over a decade since Sepp Blatter proposed that national leagues should be cut to 16 teams, in order to give players more rest. Those moves were fiercely rejected by the leagues and in fact, the opposite has happened. Since then, Italy has expanded from 18 teams to 20. Portugal grew from 16 to 18.
This is one of Blatter's rare good ideas. Cutting two teams from the Premier League wouldn't be a particular loss -- there seems to be a particularly high number of poor sides this season, for a start -- while a reduction of four games would allow more rest over Christmas and around the time of the European knockout stages. It also seems ridiculous that at the end of January and the start of February, there are two midweek rounds in the space of three weeks.
No wonder managers are treating the FA Cup with less regard -- it's the only chance for them to rest players.
"I am not convinced the timing of this historic weekend is conducive to Premier League teams being at their best, with the nature of the Christmas fixture schedule placing unrealistic demands on the players," wrote Alan Pardew in his weekend programme notes for Newcastle's FA Cup defeat to Cardiff.
“Injuries and fatigue are a natural by-product of a fixture list which does not consider the welfare and safety of the players," he continued. "I'm sure both sides in this game will be making changes, because it's unrealistic to expect top players to continue to perform every three days."
Ultimately, such a busy fixture list plays into the hands of the big clubs with the biggest wage bills, and increases the demands upon the smaller clubs -- therefore, the inequality in the division increases.
Some managers, like Jose Mourinho, relish the packed schedule. "It's a period I like," he said recently. "We go into the Christmas period and the accumulation of matches is so high ... I like that very, very much. I enjoyed it when I was in England and I missed it when I was in Spain and Italy." Not every coach, though, can rotate his starting XI and bring Juan Mata, Willian and Samuel Eto'o into the side.
Shaun Botterill/Getty Images
Sepp Blatter's ideas about reducing fixture overload have been surprisingly sensible: trim league sizes to gently ease bloated schedules.
There persists a frustrating faction of English football supporters that insist footballers have no right to complain about their workload -- they're paid well enough, the reasoning goes, they should do their job. But the players are not complaining because they don't want to be playing football. They're complaining because they're unhappy at the elevated risk of injury.
Football is a sport that naturally embraces patience, one that doesn't follow the "more is better" approach. It's probably the lowest-scoring sport in the world; the point-scoring isn't frequent, but when it comes along, it's more meaningful. The same should apply to the number of matches.
It's not unreasonable to expect a fixture schedule that helps, rather than hinders, the standard of play. We should want the most talented footballers to be playing at their peak for the remainder of the season.
One of them, alas, won't be playing at all.