I’m sure some of you saw this morning (afternoon in Europe) that Jasse Marsch was fired at Leeds, one of the sole Yank trainers among big European leagues.
His success at recent clubs has been limited, at best. Think they’ll say “well, that Berhalter guy did ok for the USMNT in the WC…maybe we’ll give the yanks another shot.”? Somehow I doubt it, but I’d love to see the Leeds-US love story continue now that three of the USMNT’s best play for Leeds and they’re fighting for survival.
Opened a new thread since we haven’t had much non-UCL talk about Europe in here in some time…
Feel free to follow on with random ponderings and happenings from whatever league(s) you follow. Doesn’t even have to be big 5…@shendm has shared all sorts of interesting stuff from Kosovo’s league, what’s the latest there?
I’ll use this to post some funny stuff from our football league from time to time.
This happened a few years ago but I always laugh at this, especially as this manager is the most disliked figure from opponent fans because of his cocky attitude. He is a quite successful coach btw.
He was on live TV after the match and a fan obviously cursed at him, he then cursed back with something like: Do you want to s m d? F your mother’s p… lol
The funniest thing is how he went from that anger to continuing normally with the interview.
I live something like 50% of the time in Uganda. So I follow the Ugandan Premier League. Is the quality of play good? No, not really. Many of the teams are pretty dysfunctional financially. But its still just fun to see local football. Oddly, the history of teams is that they often grew out of club teams linked to major ministries or businesses… Now, they’re all professional players, but most kept the original allegiance. So you have a team, URA, that is for the Uganda Revenue Authority and nicknamed the taxmen. They also have Maroons, or Prisons, which has their field at a prison.
Not much of a point here besides that live football is always awesome and its fun going to games, meeting the diehard fans and watching the less glossy products we find on our teles.
oh, and i just realized this was “random happenings around europe” and screw that Ryan! you’re better than that. why should we only care about europe?
but to draw that link, since i follow ugandan football, a ugandan guy recently got signed to play in europe (which is rare). so he’s mostly riding the bench playing for Dundee United in scotland. and that’s led me to start semi-following them as well (they’re fighting against relegation, but have started playing a bit better lately).
Fair enough. And I’m with you, I love going to watch live football, I’ve been to football matches on four continents across many more countries, but if I’m honest when it comes to the telenovela of watching football, tracking players and sales and wins and losses, there’s nothing that exciting outside of Europe that’s really all the engaging unless you’re living there.
For example, one of the places I’ve followed a bit over the years, Morocco. How many of you guys even know Wydad, also known as WAC? Or Raja? Two of the best clubs in Africa, playing in one of the best leagues in Africa… Moreover, WAC was the youth club of Bounou, and yet nearly no one on this forum had likely even heard of them.
So anyhow, I may be better than that, I dunno, but it’s also just hard to keep interest in leagues beyond Europe unless you have a particular reason to follow a club or a league. I got really deep in Liga Deportiva Universitaria de Quito, LDU Quito, of the Ecuadorian league, back when they were winning big things like the Copa Libertadores and the Sudamericana, but over the years just didn’t find the league all that compelling to watch. Not sure if it’s player quality or that I never got fully plugged into what I call the “telenovela effect” ( ie. football is like telenovelas for people who are too cool or masculine to watch telenovelas, in that part of the reason you watch football is the same reason people get hooked on telenovelas: you got hooked with a given character or storyline and no matter what direction the plot goes, you always have some storyline you’re following, or a club, or a player, or who slept with who, to stick with the parallel with telenovelas). But regardless, I just couldn’t ever really find football outside the big 5 all that compelling, and in reality for me, my big 5 is basically the big 2. England and Spain.
actually, Raja is playing Vipers, a top team from Uganda (for whatever that’s worth) in the African champions league. and Raja actually once had a Ugandan player transfer from the KCCA team.
Additionally, in a highschool exchange in Ecuador I once went to and LDU Quito game. there was a brawl… that’s all i remember.
As this thread now relates around the world, I just want to add that I watched the Superbowl in replay just an hour ago. I’m not into that sport but I can see the attraction, Kansas deserved it but Philly made some really nice crunching tackles, ouch!
Just watched the highlights, and the craziest thing about that match’s scoreline is that 1) it was 0-0 until like 43’. And 2) that ManU actually had quite a few chances and seemed to create danger fairly regularly in the whole match.
I think the bloodbath Sevilla took was actually more reflective of the match played than the 7-0 of the Liverpool vs Manchester United match.
PS - Gakpo continues to be a true marvel of a player. If he had stayed at PSV, we would not be in Europa League anymore.
So . Chelsea is going to finish the EPL closer to relegation positions than to European positions. What’s the chances they’re in big financial trouble next year? And what are the chances they have many “levers” left to pull?
The team in blue and white had to win in order to stay in the league. It was obviously rigged but the scorer made it harder for the opponent’s team goalie to camouflage by shooting straight at him… he had to improvise at the split second lol.
Uefa will most likely ban both clubs in the near future once the investigations are over.
If Manchester City wins tonight, Italian clubs have lost every single European club final this year.
If also Italy makes it to the Nations League final in a few days and loses that aswell, well, Italy would’ve lost every single European cup final within a single month hahaha. Bella ciao.
Montiel got another yellow card. Thankfully, this time for another team. We can be thankful for that. Sevilla thanks you for your service, Nottingham Forest!
Random happening. Hell of a game recently between Genoa and AC Milan. Great announcer, even without knowing Italian (I don’t), it’s a lot of fun to follow the announcer’s antics along with the wild stuff going down in the game.
PS - Ocampos has competition for his goalkeeping legacy.
The thing I find curious, is that if in european football they start to count all cases of an attacking hand ball as a offensive foul. Like they did to deny Adria Pedrosa his goal, then for what reason does Pulisic goal stand, besides favouritism and Italy foes their own thing. They will never be consequent and games are ruined by var in my humble opinion.
