The9

But the Italian and Brazilian FAs don't appear to have a problem with it, so it's a moot point? Italy has a midseason break anyway, albeit a little later than the scheduled dates, Brazil has made so many changes to it's league structures with Apertura/Clausura, league size, relegation rules, Libertadores and Intercontinental Cup interventions and the general randomness that another tweak won't made any difference, and none of the trough-feeders are going to go against an organisation with potential patronage of £1bn, any amount of which they might chuck their way at any point just for going along with things. However, if we're talking about practicalities of a breakaway, the easiest way to do anything would be for UEFA en masse to leave FIFA. Various litigation would ensue with non-European players with contracts at UEFA Clubs who want to represent their country, but that's the main impact and the litigation would be aimed at FIFA for any national ban in FIFA contests for players playing in UEFA-sanctioned games. The elephant in the room is Platini's ambition, does he want to ascend from UEFA to FIFA or challenge FIFA as head of UEFA? The weird "odd seasons" International team League competition he's starting instead of friendlies is a pointer, but to what end does it exist? Presumably only to strengthen UEFA's international money making ability and maximise revenue from nations - but it's still affiliated to FIFA as required by their statutes at the moment.

Navi-X, I think, not that I've ever tried to use it.

What do you mean "if it's true?" it's a direct link to the document from UEFA.

You should start a podcast and have a go at justifying your logic.

I can safely say that's worse than what he did pick. Except maybe up front.

Pretty sure it was on Match of the Day 2 (Chappers, Keown and P Neville) though maybe Sky pundits also said it. But yeah, ridiculous and cynical and the FA should be fining them for bringing the game into disrepute. Only half joking about that...

This is my thing about that comparison: in rugby there is a vested interest in staying up after a tackle, and there's little benefit in pretending to have gone to ground - and all but high tackles are basically allowed. It's not likely to be a foul in the first place. In football there are loads of different ways that contact can be a foul, even accidentally, and there are numerous benefits to going over to make it look like there's a foul. Retaining possession when you might be losing it, a chance to set up a free kick routine, or score a penalty, to get an opponent punished so they're more wary about tackling next time, etc. There's no comparison. Except that time someone in rugby decided blood capsules to pretend players were injured in order to bring subs on was ok, which I haven't seen since about 1990 in football (I think it was Brazil v Chile in a World Cup qualifier and someone chucked a flare nowhere near the keeper, who mysteriously became bloodied). Every time we have this argument, the answer is "stop players doing it" and "refs need to be better at identifying genuine fouls". Somehow - either retrospective punishment, stricter punishment at the time, additional officials, replays, or just having refs give free kicks for "impeding" fouls without players having to actually fall over. For instance, Ivanovic might have got a penalty when Tadic stepped on his foot accidentally, had he not also dived like he'd been shot. Willian getting his achilles raked by Djuricic showed how an injured player legitimately goes down from that kind of contact later in the match.

In the context of the comment above, this is still irrelevant, because Saints aren't, and don't have to.

Given that anyone who does anything will immediately be banned from FIFA and have to set up their own organisation to run their unaffiliated competitions, won't be able to use trained referees, all players will most likely be banned for life from FIFA competitions etc., you can see why.

Actually just had a look at the proposed locations and there's nothing in the West or the South of the country (presumably desert) so the furthest apart grounds from the 12 proposed locations are only 80 miles away from each other. 4 of them are in Doha alone, not bad for a City with under 800,000 people living there (is now the time to mention it's also against FIFA's rules to have more than two stadiums in the same city for a tournament?). Then again, 9 of the 12 stadiums don't exist at the moment.

Er, your maths is awful. Though not aided by the thread title still being wrong I suspect. I think it's a stupid idea and there's no way the various leagues should stand for it, but by November 2022 I'll be all over it as awesome. And watching Prem football all through July 2022 (or maybe June 2023) should be a bunch of fun too. All they'll do is write off November and most of December and stick it either end of the season - every European country which has a mid-season break anyway will just shunt that forward a month. Not sure about the 28 day model (and at least that means they're not expanding past 32 teams before then), though on the off-chance I consider going pretty much all the locations are guaranteed to be within 150 miles of each other, seeing as that's the length of the country (which is also about 50 miles wide). So getting between games won't be difficult - especially as they're not exactly spreading the matches around what is already a pretty small place. So in summary - Qatar generally bad idea, winter World Cup, incredibly stupid, practicalities of going and/or watching World Cup in Nov/Dec, could actually be a laugh. Summer 2022 is going to seem weirdly empty though.

Personally I'd love Bournemouth (for convenience) and Brentford (for the lolz and to see if their loosely Saints-mimicking and uber-Moneyball approach works - also might hang on long enough to go to their new ground). Not really bothered other than that, no new grounds for me in this season's Championship teams now I've done Ipswich. Suppose Norwich would be alright as a mate has just moved there and I haven't been for years. Even Wolves have built that stupid new bit on their north stand since I was last there. To be honest after Bournemouth I'm more interested in seeing how L1/L2 pans out, with the hope that lots of places I haven't been yet end up in L2 next season. Done Carlisle, Burton, Exeter, Morecambe, Crawley, Cambridge, Newport and Bury for the first time in the past 2 seasons, as well as revisiting Fratton and Reading in the name of lower league guff.

There are add-ons for football which can be used as a database of matches to watch pretty much anything in full retrospectively, not sure if any of them allow for downloading but as long as you can get to that, why would you need to keep it?

Kodi seems to be on the level in that it's basically opensource, which is something I can't say for the current hive of spyware which is my streaming app on my tablet... but as it's the easiest interface and the most consistent stream finder I tend to keep it despite all the pop-ups in the tray. I've found my v13 XBMC add-ons getting less and less successful at actually tracking down streams over the past few months. I suspect it may be to do with the streams linking to sites blocked by my ISP thanks to the government's over-active copyright blocking legislation, which I don't recall anyone actually voting for.

There's no logical reason why an American team link would necessitate a longer kit deal with adidas. In fact the only remotely relevant facts there are that MLS has an adidas kit deal for all its clubs (not done by the club itself). Saints are in a much stronger negotiating position as of now for the deal after it than they were even a year ago, never mind the 3 years since the last deal was agreed and it makes a lot of sense not to commit to a longer deal when the possibility of Europe is still there.

Quite!

So much non-kit utter crap on this thread since the last time I looked. And yes, BPL starts with Barclays, just like EPL starts with English. Easy enough to abbreviate and perfectly reasonable to do so wherever you're from. Not convinced on the green for strategic partnership stuff, but it's a weird choice without. Though I do like it, even of it ends up only being green for New Forest and blue for the Solent. Or they could do the Solent Green thing again, and we can finally find out what they serve kids in the Academy...

When it comes down to it, we need to take our chances more effectively when they present themselves, instead of taking that extra touch, or playing that safe pass, or however else we contrive to create opportunities without having shots - but it's not USUALLY from missing chances, it's from missing the chance to create chances. Having said all that, if we play like that for the rest of the season, I don't care how many opportunities we miss, we'll still come 3rd, because we'd win at least 9 matches.

Kodi is the program which used to be called XBMC, just for completeness...

I'm still waiting for that analysis, given his (minimum) 4 stops from all but point blank range...

We didn't create a single chance that a "poacher" would have scored.

Oh the irony, just been back to page 1 and the first style posted is that Northern Ireland shirt which is both the style and pretty much the colour of the away shirt.

Given that Man City own NYCFC, couldn't it be more than just a "partnership"? Are we looking at a massive loss-making FFP fudge? I'd be inclined towards the Seattle link due to the Paul Allen comment (though have no idea how legit any of this is), but as an aside, we used the Portland away as a "Rank Xerox" template early on last year's thread before the own brand news broke, they've worn red and white before (but I'm sure Sounders might too...).

Made up rubbish. There's never been a minimum capacity to join the Premier League - though obviously it makes sense for clubs with small capacities to expand while they have the money and the chance of overfilling it.

Actually... Matches withT Alderweireld W 10 D2 L4 As a %: W63 D13 L25 Matches withoutT Alderweireld W9 D3 L7 As a %: W47 D16 L37 So without him we win 16% fewer matches and lose 12% more. We've won 6 matches more than we've lost WITH him, and only 2 matches more than we've lost without. I would also take his 63% win ratio every single day of the week.