2013-14 Club Soccer/Football Discussion Thread

[minionofmidas]

Azzurre, surely.

[minionofmidas]

This was a pre-season "friendly" in all but name. An actual pre-season 'friendly' is the only less relevant footballing event in existence.

[minionofmidas]

Hessians (Eintracht, FSV, Darmstadt) all win their first round cup ties - Darmstadt eliminating Gladbach on penalties.

[minionofmidas]

EL draw is much more important anyways.

To me. Which is all that matters.

[minionofmidas]

Has Frankfurt had to sell a lot of their players?

Hah, no.

Instead Sebastian Rode will leave us for the Bayern bench next year for free (just like Lewandowski, then, except he's a much more humble and intelligent young man and accepted the club's decision meekly). And Schwegler has one more year contract, too and had an exit clause for this year and some much better offers - and of course an Eintracht offer for more money in exchange for a longer contract as well - and decided to do exactly nothing, to serve out his old contract and see what happens. And Jung's contract, too, ends next year (and just like Rode he's young and promising and exceedingly local...) but for this year, no at all core player has left and the team's 'depth' has been upped.

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Indeed. We bought two of them (tho' Rosenthal was a free transfer, actually.)

Surprisingly "doable" draws for the 3 Austrian EL teams:

* Rapid Vienna vs. FC Dila Gori (from Georgia)
* Red Bull Salzburg vs. VMFD Žalgiris Vilnius (from Lithuania)
* Pasching vs. Estoril Praia (from Portugal)

So, the CL qualifier game between Austria Vienna vs. Dinamo Zagreb might actually be the hardest game of those 4.

Well duh, Rapid and Salzburg were seeded, and, let's face it, there've been an unusual number of upsets in early EL qualifying and the unseeded list looked mighty exotic. Austria were actually very lucky in their draw; best non-seeded team (in the minor leagues' champions' half of this thing) going up against the weakest seeded team. They could have just as easily gotten Basel or Celtic.

Speaking of exotic... Frankfurt win a trip to Azerbeidjan.

[minionofmidas]

a) The club plays in Baku. The city of Agdam was wiped off the map for good by the Armenian ethnic cleansers. The former population largely lives in Baku now too.
b) Agdam was never a mainly Armenian town in any way (though the area it is situated in once was Armenian - Tigranakert is just around the corner. Agdam only emerged as a town in the 18th century). It was not even between Nagorny Karabach and Armenia, but just east of it (but is within the not internationally recognized Republic of Karabach, aka the part of Azerbeidjan under Armenian occupation.)

[minionofmidas]

That was rather tasteful of Lief, yes.

Weird game. Every halfway serious Hertha attack turned into a prime scoring opportunity (not necessarily converted - Hertha hit the crossbar three times as a matter of fact). And it's not as if our defense is newly configured or anything

[minionofmidas]

Unless CAS grants an injunction (possible) or even rules in their favor (unlikely, but the injunction would likely end up transferring the ban onto 14-15. CAS moves slow.) it's too late now for other Ukrainian clubs to move up and instead PAOK Saloniki, who lost to Kharkov in the preceding qualifying round, go up against Schalke and Maccabi Tel Aviv, who ought to have gone up against PAOK in the Europa League "play-offs" (the fourth and last qualifying round peeps! Don't swallow adspeak!), are through automatically. Lol ridiculous but, you know, better than letting someone get a free pass to the real $$$$$.

[minionofmidas]

Unless CAS grants an injunction (possible) or even rules in their favor (unlikely, but the injunction would likely end up transferring the ban onto 14-15. CAS moves slow.) it's too late now for other Ukrainian clubs to move up and instead PAOK Saloniki, who lost to Kharkov in the preceding qualifying round, go up against Schalke and Maccabi Tel Aviv, who ought to have gone up against PAOK in the Europa League "play-offs" (the fourth and last qualifying round peeps! Don't swallow adspeak!), are through automatically. Lol ridiculous but, you know, better than letting someone get a free pass to the real $$$$$.

This is going to be a juridical mess. There is another club in the competition that has been banned by the UEFA for involvement in a match fixing scandal, namely Fenerbahce Istanbul. However, the Fenerbahce ban came so early that they could get a temporary injunction from CAS (the CAS will only rule on the case after the play-offs are over).

This leaves two possible developments:
1.) CAS is in time granting a temporary injunction to Kharkov as well, which should happen by Monday at latest, considering the first match shall be played on Wednesday night. In that case Kharkov is in again. As CAS is moving slow, their final verdict will most likely not be out before the group phase, so the injunction will de facto mean a transfer of the ban to 2014/2015. In that case, Fenerbahce could, even if CAS confirmed the UEFA ban, call for "equal treatment", i.e. demand their ban being as well transferred to 2014/15.

Most people already assumed that's what's probably going to happen with Fener (and Besiktas over in EL) even before this new twist.

[minionofmidas]

How the hell does that happen?

(Of course, Podolski as a left winger should be able to play left fullback.)

[minionofmidas]

CAS deciding not to touch Kharkov case. Twice, actually. (Kharkov did a last-refuge "new evidence" appeal after the first anti-injunction decision.)

Will hear arguments in the Fener and Besiktas cases the next couple days, rule on Fener the day before the draw and on Besiktas the day after. Yeah, I very much doubt they win their matches and then get barred for this season.

[minionofmidas]

Does it also have a real name, or is it one of those newly-built, naming-rights-never-unleased thingees?

[minionofmidas]

Does it also have a real name, or is it one of those newly-built, naming-rights-never-unleased thingees?

The Ernst Happel Stadion ? It was named Praterstadion before that.

And the Generali Arena was named Franz Horr Stadion before.

The latter obviously.

I don't know about Austria, but over here, unironically using a company name for a stadium that also has a real name ignifies that you're either a submoron or a sports journalist. Doing it exclusively signifies that you're both (shockingly, not all sports journalists are submoronic by this metric! )

[minionofmidas]

Meanwhile, Schalke are up. (Zagreb need one more goal still. I don't care about Austria Wien one way or another, Rapid being the cool club to prefer in Austria by all accounts (and Mateschitz' private wank, obviously, the one to look down your nose at) and I have friends who do care for Zagreb, so I apologize for having a vague nonviennese preference here.

[minionofmidas]

Or in this case, it would simply be interesting if the Austria enters the CL group stage.

Not that they have much of a chance in that one ...

Yeah, in a small country whose champion doesn't usually go to the group stage, obviously I'd support them getting through as well. Virtually anybody would. (But not if it's the same champion every year and they get to the group stage more often than not. That's when I'd draw the line, as a supporter of another club.)

[minionofmidas]

Ouch. Welcome to the Europa League.

[minionofmidas]

lol

[minionofmidas]

Zagreb advancing to the CL group stage.

LOL.

They were there in 2011-2 too.

Went out with zero points, but.

[minionofmidas]

One more! One more!

If you want overtime and a possible penalty shootout, your only remaining hope today is for Rasgrad to score four times in the last ten minutes.

[minionofmidas]

VIENNA scores in the 82nd.

The madness continues.

Now Vienna back in the CL group stage.

Ninja'd.

[minionofmidas]

Red card for Zagreb, no idea what for, just looking at a ticker here.

[minionofmidas]

Red card for Zagreb, no idea what for, just looking at a ticker here.

It was for a player outside the game who decided to sit down on the coaching seat, which is apparently not allowed ...

Huh?

Maybe something said to the ref. as well or something.


Legia Warsaw scored an equalizer vs Steaua Bucharest (is that the English spelling?) in overtime, meaning Bucharest go on only on the away goals rule.


Yes, Schalke's through. So are Basel and the Arse.

[minionofmidas]

Huh, you're right. That's odd that they'd choose to hold the draws on different days.

[minionofmidas]

This is the poll that showed far more people (like, up twenty points or something) now knew of Mario Götze than before the switch-to-absolute-evil brouhaha but overall fewer people now knew and thought well of him.

Podolski and Schweinsteiger have a - not exactly undeserved, but, you know. Certainly overstated compared to less known footballers - reputation for being not exactly the brighter type of white working class youth. I assume that's reflected there.

I'm rather more surprised how anyone besides his immediate family can fiind anything remotely nondetestable (except maybe sheer footballing skill) about Thomas Müller. The thing's existence is just adding insult to injury.

[minionofmidas]

Thinking about it: Podolski and Schweinsteiger are so ubiquitously known the name registers even with people who don't care one jot about football and would rather not hear about it willy-nilly so much. That should affect the data here.