Football Is Too Hard For Me To Understand

[Peter]

On this day,

People still make rude comments about Marcus Rashford wanting children to be able to eat.

Manchester City pay £100 million for Jack Grealish who will share silly haircut duties with Foden.

Mike Ashley steps aside from the wrong part of his business empire.


Still - the FA Cup Qualifying starts on Saturday!  Come on Thornaby!

Edit:  Cup starts on Friday - and features the New Salamis - I kid you not!

[citoyen]

Also on this day…  a footballer threatens to leave his bankrupt employer in order to blackmail the sport’s national governing body into abandoning their rules on financial propriety.

[Peter]

D, is this Messi-related (I haven't kept up)?  If so, I don't think Lionel is bright enough, so it will be his dad, I should think.  Maybe a different story?

[citoyen]

Yes, Messi related. I don’t pretend to really understand what’s going on, all I know is that the whole business has a very rotten smell about it.

[Peter]

I'll have a look (clothes-peg going on nose now!).

[Peter]

It's hard to see how the Messi brand can call Barcelona's bluff:  if they are nearly bankrupt, how will they pay him?  As for clubs coming in for him, I would have thought even the Americans would be wary of someone who brings such financial baggage.  At Messi's age, one significant injury could put paid to the TV income.  And I doubt if there is a team in the world except for Real, Barcelona and Manchester United that has anything like a big enough global following to make shirt sales significant.  But I'm hopeless at being a gangster, so I may have it all wrong.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

There should be a special name for professional football to distinguish it from the game where two teams meet on a pitch to have a game of football and the winner is the team that scores most goals.

[DuncanM]

Barcelona can probably roll the loans onwards to avoid being bankrupt.  They've done it successfully for years. Also, if they are allowed fans in the ground again their turnover will go up this year.

The Messi thing is that La Liga have a hard salary cap based on a percentage of the club's turnover the previous season, and they won't let you register any new players if you are over it. Because of Covid, their turnover last year was significantly down, but their wage bill is huge. That means that they need to get players off the bill before they can officially register the new signings from this summer - Messi, Aguero, Depay, Garcia(?). I don't think those numbers can be squared, even with Messi taking a giant pay cut (don't feel too sorry for him, it's from 45m Euro to 20m Euro a year). So if La Liga won't budge, Barca aren't going to be able to keep Messi, even if both the player and the club want to make it work.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Not too much boring stuff on football transfers, please

How much is too much?

[citoyen]

It's hard to see how the Messi brand can call Barcelona's bluff:  if they are nearly bankrupt, how will they pay him?

From what I've read, it seems more likely to be a case of Barcelona and Messi being in cahoots to call La Liga's bluff - they want La Liga to abandon their salary cap rules. After that, they can probably find a way to cook the books and come up with the money to pay Messi.

The question is whether La Liga can afford to let Messi leave, given the whole organisation's parlous financial state.

I've even heard it suggested that other clubs might pitch in to pay Messi's wages, such is La Liga's dependence on Messi.

And I doubt if there is a team in the world except for Real, Barcelona and Manchester United that has anything like a big enough global following to make shirt sales significant.

If he does leave Barcelona, City or PSG seem the most likely destinations to me - they might not be able to offer him the highest salary, but with their owners, there are ways round that to ensure everyone gets what they want.

[DuncanM]

City and PSG (and maybe Chelsea) are the only european clubs with bottomless pockets. PSG have been courting him for ages - I think City have moved on and Chelsea haven't really been in the conversation over the last year or so. So the logical destination would be PSG. Whether that would mean they would listen to offers for Mbape (he's out of contract next year) would be an interesting question.

[De Sisti]

It is baffling to me why footballers, who score goals, intentionally (or otherwise) try to shorten
their careers injuring themselves going to ground, sliding on their knees. Just ask the Man Utd
manager.*

*He was once quoted as saying his playing career was shortened by an injury he sustained celebrating the winning goal he scored in the 1999 champions league final.

[nuttycyclist]

I've never understood football.

As far as I can work it out "players" have to dive and pretend to be injured, "fans" have to be rude, offensive, and cause vandalism to anywhere they go.  Back when I was in the office colleagues were proud to create new offensive chants for the evening's game, refer to the selection as "who are the scum playing?"; and I've been on a train where a father was inducting his young son into the mindset as we went past a stadium by saying "who plays there?  what do we do to them?   we kill them!"

The only thing I know for certain is that if it comes on the telly box I change channel.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Once when I used to go to watch Ipswich in the glory days of Bobby Robson I could only get into the away team end.  They were Newcastle United. It was a fantastic game when both sides were scoring.  I got on really well with the fans from the Toon and really enjoyed being stuck at the wrong end.  If it had been Millwall Dockers I'd not have dared. 

[citoyen]

I've never understood football.

As far as I can work it out "players" have to dive and pretend to be injured, "fans" have to be rude, offensive, and cause vandalism to anywhere they go.

I've never understood cycling.

As far as I can work it out "cyclists" have to take drugs, and "fans" ride round in gangs blocking the road to stop cars getting past, even though they don't pay road tax or have insurance, riding on the pavement and knocking old grannies over, and going through red lights.

[nuttycyclist]

I've never understood football.

As far as I can work it out "players" have to dive and pretend to be injured, "fans" have to be rude, offensive, and cause vandalism to anywhere they go.

I've never understood cycling.

As far as I can work it out "cyclists" have to take drugs, and "fans" ride round in gangs blocking the road to stop cars getting past, even though they don't pay road tax or have insurance, riding on the pavement and knocking old grannies over, and going through red lights.

As demonstrated on the tour-de-france with all the allegations of enhancements and the stupidity of people jumping out in front of the riders.

[Cudzoziemiec]

And I thought this thread might look into the details of the latest iterations of offside rule, handball rule and the mysterious fact that you can't be offside from a throw in. Also, how is it decided whether a free kick is direct or indirect?

[nuttycyclist]

My late* junior school teacher coached netball.    She clearly understood the offside rule when teaching us futpool - if we went outside the white lines on the playground then we were offside.


*as in departed as opposed to standing outside the classroom in detention for lack of punctuality

[Mr Larrington]

I've never understood football.

[…] "fans" have to be rude, offensive, and cause vandalism to anywhere they go.  Back when I was in the office colleagues were proud to create new offensive chants for the evening's game, refer to the selection as "who are the scum playing?"; and I've been on a train where a father was inducting his young son into the mindset as we went past a stadium by saying "who plays there?  what do we do to them?   we kill them!"

My brother-in-law, the highly-esteemed and foopball-obsessed Dr Davis, does none of these things.

[Beardy]

I went to a futboll match once, my father took me. To give you an idea of the timeframe, I sat on my father’s shoulders to watch George Best playing in red against a team in orange (ironically, given Best’s heritage) who I believe we’re Wolverhampton Wanders.

A couple of years ago I went to Portman Road hospitality suite for a wedding reception, that being the second time I’ve been to a professional futboll ground. I don’t watch the game on TV, so it was no great loss when Sky* bought up the coverage. I suspect being totally crap at it when I primary school might have had an influence on my life long ambivalence towards the game.


*I did investigate subscribing to $ky when F1 went, but decided that although the cost of F1 was reasonable, it was an incremental cost,on top of a load of crap that I didn’t want.

[Kim]

I'm suspicious that the problem is that (amongst other things with the same name) there's football (n. 11 players chasing a ball around) and there's football (n. shibboleth for toxic masculinity).  There's also football (n. eleventy bazillion dollarpound entertainment industry) and football (n. a funny old game), and it's often hard to tell the difference.

[Peter]

That's possibly because it's a difference of two halves, Kim.

[FifeingEejit]

I went to a futboll match once, my father took me. To give you an idea of the timeframe, I sat on my father’s shoulders to watch George Best playing in red against a team in orange (ironically, given Best’s heritage) who I believe we’re Wolverhampton Wanders.

A couple of years ago I went to Portman Road hospitality suite for a wedding reception, that being the second time I’ve been to a professional futboll ground. I don’t watch the game on TV, so it was no great loss when Sky* bought up the coverage. I suspect being totally crap at it when I primary school might have had an influence on my life long ambivalence towards the game.


*I did investigate subscribing to $ky when F1 went, but decided that although the cost of F1 was reasonable, it was an incremental cost,on top of a load of crap that I didn’t want.

I went to East Belfast for a friendly between Dundee United and Best's old team Glentorran, it was erm "interesting" despite playing in Tangerine we wernt required to use the Linfield entrance (an armoured and fences isolationary walkway) and Linfield fans trying to sneak in with us seemed to be easily identified.

The match programme contained a multipage attack on the IFA for agreeing to upgrade Linfield Windsor Park as National Stadium, Gelns stadium despite being 2nd biggest side in the IFAs leagues was about the level of quality of the then Scottish 3rd division team Albion Rovers, who despite playing in coarbeige somehow and disappointingly lacked being on the receiving end of serious fires caused by bored neds, for insurance money

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[Pingu]

...Wolverhampton Wanders...

Er...

[De Sisti]

I went to a futboll match once, my father took me. To give you an idea of the timeframe, I sat on my father’s shoulders to watch George Best playing in red against a team in orange *

Blackpool/Norwich/Hull/Watford?


*I've included yellow.