bombshell report today that Mbappe has accepted a contract extension... 1 hour later his camp denies. Little reminder to Qatar that sportswashing ain't cheap!

not sure if the same can be said about whomever is running clearlake captial.

i assume they'll spend this summer to appease the fanbase. who knows what happens after that.

if boehly is able to run the team like the dodgers chelsea is going to be a solid team to root for.

but hey, that's just me.

Chelsea would be owned by a consortium, meaning all the businesses
within that consortium will have a say in the direction of Chelsea.

Chelsea should have been given to the fans like Real Madrid
and Barcelona, and then allowing the fans to select a president.

Roman is going to walk away empty handed, after investing billions and
his passion into Chelsea. He broke no laws and they took his team away
from him. He has not lived in Russia for over a decade, and he severed his
association with Putin years ago.

22 years as an owner, and just like that his ownership was removed.

and not a "consortium" of the same faces. Only difference is they're local rich guys.

Real Madrid is owned by over 100,000 socios (supporters/fans), and they
have ownership until they die. Regardless of them being rich, they are true
Spanish supporters of the club. They are not some investment conglomerate
or consortium that is ONLY in it for a profit.

Real Madrid is a NOT FOR PROFIT private company. By being owned by
supporters, Real Madrid cannot be purchased or sold for any amount of
money, nor can the company be dismantled.

There is a huge difference....think before your snark.

Barca and Real would be sold in MOMENTS.

This club has been membership owned since its inception.

120 years!

Damn club had socios even before the team was put together.

That has always been the Spanish model for football ownership.

So your bank hypothesis is some made up crap.

they would have had their asses wound up into a SAD ten years ago. They're carrying astronomical levels of debt that can't possibly be maintained, hence Florentino pushing for a Super League every couple of years.

>

Wolves scored the equalizer at 6:20. Game should have been over.

I’ll take the point, and we are still 4 points clear.

Lukaku with the Brace.

Chelsea has officially been sold to a guy name Todd. Dude looked
totally out of place in the stands. Yuck.

if these people dont want to be replaced by accomplished young talent from Ajax then they need to wake up

if im ETH im not even off the field after my last game before im in the ear of Alvarez/Mazraoui/Timber/Gravenbirch/Antony. even Donny is gonna get a nice long look this summer and nobody has made a compelling case to stay.

How much personnel control is ETH gonna have? Enough to shift most of the roster? Do a real start from scratch rebuild? Is there any kind of plan there?

legit "oh he want us to run THIS much and try this hard for the rest of the season. aw hell naw we just gonna collect these checks"

all you can do is laugh at this point. wasted energy being sad/mad/etc.

came home, saw the score. shook my head.

just watched the highlights. effort just completely non-existent.

30 min left, but...uh oh.

Still, it very easily coulda been worse

What’s wrong with you, mate?

You got Spurs, Newcastle, Everton.

CFC have Leeds, Leicester, Watford.

Draw with Spurs, beat Newcastle, beat Everton (who will be safe by then and therefore less dangerous): 73 points.

CFC lose away to a desperate Leeds, draw with Leicester, and obliterate Watford: 71 points.

I def agree re: everton being safe

No team having arse

One more to play, at Boreham Wood. Must-win, obviously. Good thing though is that Halifax have Stockport away, which is as tough as it gets, since Stockport are looking for automatic promotion. Which they'll probably get, which is good cause I'd rather the Moors have Wrexham in the playoff.

League 2 would be...massive.

Probably go straight back down though. But still.

1 minute in, scores goal. his movement alone is so helpful to the squad.

just. stay. healthy.

-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

Shinji Kagawa
Mikitahryan
Aubameyang
Jadon Sancho

Hmmm...flops?...or MU and Arsenal just suck?......I say all the above!

Dudes are not built for the EPL. Germany is a physical league but not
as physical as the EPL

I didn’t want Havertz, nor did I want Werner, but they are here so I ride
with them. Havertz has actually improved, Werner has it all, just
can’t find the net. Verdict is still out.

But Bundeslinga players are overrated when it
comes to playing outside of Bundeslinga

he could flop for sure, but i think it'd be way more mental than physical. that dude is BIG and strong.

just seems like the exact thing Citeh is missing to dominate the league for years as long as Pep stays there.

*fondly dreams of dominating the league for years*

*wakes up from that dream to the current nightmare*

Grealish would have thrived in Ole's formless chaos and been exactly the guy to take charge of their attack. He'd have put up video game numbers feeding Ronaldo and/or Cavani. (That said, Villa were trying like crazy to get Jack to go to ManU or some other elite club besides City but Grealish and his agent dug their heels in).

While Sancho is a readymade replacement for Sterling- and he works best in a highly structured team.

without Havertz and Ziyech youd be looking up at Arsenal and Tottenham

Chilwell/Alonso/Reece/ Mount are the main reason we won last season.



With Havertz and Werner this year, we have UNDERACHIEVED , because
Werner has missed sitters, and Havertz is inconsistent. Neither have yet to
live up to they price tag. Like Is said, the verdict is still out.

Ziyech? He came from Ajax. That’s not Bundesliga. And he is injured most of the time.

Allison almost repeated Adrian's mistake in the 7-2 last season just now.

You always have to come back later to take that EXPECTED L.

they were VERY solid last year.

i know Bamford been hurt most of the season but it can't be JUST that.

and selective starts here and there, like today. It was a good start
for him.

Lukaku is in great form right now.

Mount scored...most likely CPOY again.

Top 4 pretty much locked! Let’s get another trophy against Liverpool.

...and generally playing like knuckleheads was the best Arsenal strategy today.

>...and generally playing like knuckleheads was the best
>Arsenal strategy today.

Damn.

Gabriel hamstring injury may well be the end of it for arsenal getting 4th

There is no other way.

Mourinho got Tammy destroying everyone. Dude has 26 goals for Roma.
We got a buy-back clause....we need to exercise it.

Tomori should have never been sold. That’s Lampard’s L.

Losing Rudiger and Christensen wouldn’t be such a big deal if he were still here.

to then buy those guys back for titanic fees.

by my count he has 2 goals in 9 games against Inter/Milan/Napoli/Juve (the 9th was a cup game), 13 against everyone else. 5 against 5th place Lazio tho, so theres that i guess.

and his 8 goals in Europe have come in the conference league, so his next step needs to be scoring in the games that get Roma over the hump.

quality, whether in the championship league, EPL, or Serie A.

And it just isn’t about his scoring. It’s about his movement and hold up play in
all games. Stats don’t tell the whole story on how well he is playing.

He has become the first English player to score 10 goals in Serie A. He will be
up for player of the year for sure.

>He will be
>up for player of the year for sure.

You do know what UP mean, as he will be up for player of the year? I didn’t
say he will win.

First Englishmen to score 10 or more goals in series A?

Shitttt. He will get nominated.

he will get zero consideration for that award

Highway fuckin' robbery on the transfer fee too.

jesusfuckingchist.

he made significant contributions to Bayern's 2020 treble and earned himself a CL medal

i think thats the part that would bother me the most

I know none of you give a flying fuck about Serie A but that Coppa Italia final vs Juventus was a hell of a match

Ivan Perisic is STILL putting in work

No Conte No Lukaku No Hakimi No Problem



>bombshell report today that Mbappe has accepted a contract
>extension... 1 hour later his camp denies. Little reminder to
>Qatar that sportswashing ain't cheap!

hate to see so much ref controversy but that was a hard fought contest

unfortunately, this mornings developments seem to indicate Perisic has agreed to terms with Chelsea

hes been so good this year that they wanted to extend him even with Robin Gosens back to full health, but if he wants to play as much as possible Ben Chilwell is a much less imposing roadblock than Gosens

such an underrated player. he was there everytime Bayern needed something in the CL run 2 years ago.

>hate to see so much ref controversy but that was a hard
>fought contest
>
>unfortunately, this mornings developments seem to indicate
>Perisic has agreed to terms with Chelsea


I’m not even mad anymore …this is the life of being an Inter fan

>
>such an underrated player. he was there everytime Bayern
>needed something in the CL run 2 years ago.


I was cheering for Croatia a few years ago just for his sake , he deserves the 💰

like i said...Gosens is super legit. youre gonna LOVE him.

Glad the season is over. Re-tool.

Peace out.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

*pssst, Mason Mount is a bum*

about as usual.

Chelsea played a hell of match, that went to Penalties. Mount was one of the
best players on the pitch. Pulisic missed three clear shots in front of goal, could
have easily scored 3 goals. We are good. Mount missed a penalty, but his year was
stellar. 11 goals/ 10 assists in the EPL!


We ‘re headed to CL next season

MU is headed to Europa, if that. So sweat out 6TH place.

Play the reserves, the kids, random dudes off the street v. Burnley, let them win 9-0 or something and go above Everton, then try to injure De Bruyne in the first 15 and hold on for a desperate 1-0. Everton go down, Liverpool win the chip. Surely that's what he wants.

And honestly if our finishing was better against Liverpool, we'd have already ended the title race.

But how fantastic would it be to stop Man City's title party and ruin "the nights that Grealish moved for."

Id take it. With both hands

Obviously the way it unfolded is…what they deserve.

It’ll all good. Yeah Hopefully kroenkes make good on tielemans and especially Jesus

Not a lot of money in reality, but when it comes to having a betting bank roll it
is. .. that’s like 15 units( 1.00 = 1 unit).

Your squad can’t even beat Newcastle.

This season has been surreal for me. They haven't been this exciting since the 90's.

Newcastle has been deadly at home this season. Wor Flags are the bomb. If you did not see the pre-match, you should check it out.

Arsenal, please beat the brakes off of Everton to make up for this loss.

Howay The Lads!

Back in the day with Demba Ba and Pappis Cissie ...to this
day Pappis 2 goals at Stamford bridge are the greatest goals
I’ve ever seen scored at the bridge by an opponent.

That season was a ton of fun but also the beginning of the dark days.

It’s prolly cause I’m old, but that’s a team (along with Leeds) that belongs in premier league

Barcelona v Lyon. 1:00 pm EST.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxgii5f9u4YgXCeubCozbEA

Will Barcelona assert their dominance or will Lyon put them in their place after the blip last year ending a 5 year run? Will my Canadian Buchanan be able to shutdown American upstart Macario? If you don't watch I don't know what to tell ya. Women's FA cup final was probably more exciting than the men's, and Chelsea won and someone never mentioned it.

The player's agreement the USWNT and USMNT signed this week was a pretty big deal. Sharing lots of stuff.

Lyon is back like they never left, just comfortable in finals even with a bigger traveling Barca fanbase. Feels like PSG are the only ones who know them enough to stop them on occasion.

Bacha's a badass. I realized I tried to create some fake Canada/USA drama with players on the same team lol at least we both won.

ngl i wanted him to go but the level of asshurt from their side is too funny

>ngl i wanted him to go but the level of asshurt from their
>side is too funny

shit is embarrassing

...but it isn't the choice I would have made, or would have thought he'd have made, if he wants to win more than L1 titles.

I suppose the money difference was probably significant.

same story at Real. you arent a legend if you win the league, and if you dont youre a bitch

PSG is going to win the CL eventually, and more group stage games benefits them more than any other prestige club in the world specifically because the bottom half of L1 is easy to navigate

Four CL titles in the last decade and a chance for a 5th next week, versus none.

the next year got to the semis by avenging their final loss

this year lost the same exact way man city did, to the same exact team

also, it seems slightly disingenuous to lump 5 years of ronaldo into 5 years without and then act like the success has been evenly achieved across ten years.

this is the first time theyve done anything without him in Europe, and they got smoked by an Eredivisie team in the interim.

Clearly your level of emotional investment in where Mbappe plays soccer next year far exceeds my own. I simply asked a question about his decision.

its sports talk

Real could have won last year as well. They reached the semifinals of the CL
And they won 2 la liga titles without Ronaldo. So Real being totally dependent
on Ronaldo or winning solely because of Ronaldo is a far exaggeration, because Benzema and Bale were just as important.....and Benz is proving that he might just
be even more important.

Real hasn’t skipped a beat. People thought Real Madrid would fall off the face of
the earth after Ronaldo left. ...And the team is loaded with young talent.

Yeah, one more thing, they are playing in the god damn CL final.

SMH

they were mid for 4 years, and now they are having a team of destiny season with their over-30 midfield having a renaissance season

Ronaldo left and the very next year they got ripped apart by an Eredivisie team in the rd of 16. thats not "skipping a beat" to you? cmon lol

2019/2020 La Liga title
2020/2021 La Liga runner ups
2021/2022 La Liga title

2021 CL semifinalist
2022 - playing for CL title

Yeah, that’s not skipping a beat.

>also, it seems slightly disingenuous to lump 5 years of
>ronaldo into 5 years without and then act like the success has
>been evenly achieved across ten years.

starting something new doesnt erase the contemporaneous happenings of something old

BS for a decade.

He is French so I get why he stayed at home, cool. The English do it all the time.

But he has zero chance of winning CL at PSG. And anyone who understands soccer
knows that.

There is zero competition in Ligue 1, so they will never be battle tested. As soon as
they face real competition in the CL, they get tossed.

Neymar is broken down and PSG wants to ship him out.
Messi is OAF

He will be the new Ibra....score a ton of goals for PSG but no major trophies

i get picking the biggest bag possible but people act like he wasn't going to be making goo gobs of money at Madrid either. it's about the ambition in this sport when you're at his level and trying to be an icon and this move tarnishes him somewhat for me.

>i get picking the biggest bag possible but people act like he
>wasn't going to be making goo gobs of money at Madrid either.
>it's about the ambition in this sport when you're at his level
>and trying to be an icon and this move tarnishes him somewhat
>for me.

"Tarnishes" might be too strong a word for me, but yeah, I guess money talks. Dunno...he's only 23, so maybe staying in France comes into it too.

Weird also that I feel like Madrid is the much more likable club these days...

Sure L1 is JV compared to la Liga, but is winning la Liga with Real really something that would get him the Ballon d’Or and move him to another echelon? He’s always been very conscious of history and his place in it; I think for him finally bringing the trophy back to his hometown might count as the bigger accomplishment, especially after all the misery of the past few years. And it would be clearly his doing as the undisputed leader which wasn’t necessarily the envisioned outcome when him and Neymar showed up.
Also Benzema has at least a year or two at a high level, even though him and Kyllian mesh pretty well (at least before Benz went all spurned lover on IG lol) it’s not a given that Mbappé would achieve the role he’s looking to as far as making history, and that’s even before considering Vinicius’ emergence.
Point is, he’ll still be just 26 when the new deal expires, this wasn’t a now or never proposition for RM but they are so caught up in their spin that at this point it’s easier for them to go cry on Chiringuito than explain to their fans that they never did actually get a firm yes from his camp.

i still judge it as a poor legacy move and time will dole that out as PSG will not win the CL in this time. i have no doubt of that and i hope we are still all on here discussing footy when it comes to pass.

winning La Liga is a superior move and would absolutely get him closer to the BDO. the general higher level of their competition and the team he'd be in would bring him closer to the CL as well.

he wins the CL at PSG he becomes a legend in France. He wins one in Madrid, not so sure.
I’m just giving you the justification from the home front, not saying he made the right call or not.
I was fine with him leaving and it’s a bit sickening to see the kind of money Qatar throws around but obvs I’ll take three more years of boy genius. And as someone who tries to not take sports too over-seriously, I am getting months’ worth of joy from the Madrid saltiness

especially if the consensus is that its easier to to win at Real

just wack touches all over the place

Real Madrid you're up to do your part now in the final

jesus christ

- We need to acquire two CBs.

- Sign Declan Rice or Kalvin Phillips. Kante is old, and
Kovacic is injury prone. We need to solidify that area

- acquire another striker

The core of the team is young, healthy and still very much hungry.
We just need to make a few tweaks here and there to go after another CL
title.

Kobe would be elated if he was alive

what a ride for the Rossoneri the last decade

at least 8 people in my girl's family was weeping tears of joy lmao. First Inter, now Milan, next up Napoli?

fuck Juve as always.


https://theathletic.com/3309989/2022/05/22/the-story-of-milan-pioli-and-the-love-affair-that-saw-them-crowned-serie-a-champions/

The story of Milan, Pioli and the love affair that saw them crowned Serie A champions
James Horncastle
May 22, 2022
55

Save Article
Stefano Pioli can still remember where it all began. The chilly mornings at Casteldebole where a freshly retired player began a new career as a coach in Bologna’s academy. Up until tonight, his only national championship had come while in charge of their Allievi — the students, as the under-17 age group is known in Italy. “There was Mourad Meghni (nicknamed the “petit Zidane”) and Francesco Della Rocca. I’d go pick the lads up in a mini-bus, have breakfast with them, take them all over.”

As career highlights go, only keeping Salernitana up in Serie B two decades ago ran it close. That all changed at the Mapei Stadium on Sunday night, a place Pioli knows well enough after losing a promotion play-off as Sassuolo coach in 2010. Who would have thought he’d be back 12 years later, a relative stone’s throw away from his hometown Parma, to celebrate the biggest night of his football life.

As 16,000 travelling fans twirled flags of Daniel Day Lewis’ Bill The Butcher and Heath Ledger’s Joker in the away end, as red silhouettes bounced up and down in flare-lit stairwells and the ultras sang their favourite song, “Interisti vaffanculo” (“Inter fans go fuck yourselves”), Pioli and his players celebrated Milan’s first Scudetto since 2011, the last swansong of the Berlusconi years, the beginning of a dark age. It has been a long road back here, to dousing each other in champagne and singing: “Siamo noi, siamo noi, i Campioni dell’Italia, siamo noi.”

Few people tipped Milan to win the title this season. The constant upward trajectory of the last two and a half years wasn’t a persuasive enough case. Finishing winter champions in back-to-back seasons apparently counted for nothing too. Pioli found it a “strange situation.” “No one in the industry thinks we can win the Scudetto,” he observed, “and yet you keep asking me whether I believe we can.”

Why couldn’t Milan? “The numbers are clear,” Paolo Maldini said. Milan’s legendary captain turned technical director wanted the team to channel that scepticism and prove their doubters wrong. “At the start of the year, some people didn’t have us down as finishing so high, but we have to use that as motivation.”

The expectation was normal service would be resumed and Juventus would win the league upon the return of a guaranteed serial winner like Massimiliano Allegri. Forecasts had the Old Lady down as favourites to re-take her crown from Inter in the aftermath of Antonio Conte’s departure, the painful sales of Romelu Lukaku and Achraf Hakimi and Christian Eriksen’s ineligibility to play in Italy after the Dane needed an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) fitted following the cardiac arrest he suffered at last summer’s European Championship.

The season itself laughed in the face of the predictions. Juventus were abandoned by Cristiano Ronaldo and were winless and in the relegation zone in mid-September. Napoli didn’t lose until the end of November when Victor Osimhen’s eye socket and cheekbone got smashed, other injuries hit and the Africa Cup of Nations started. Inter went from being seven points off the lead to having the chance to go seven points clear at the beginning of February only to lose the Derby della Madonnina in the space of a few seconds, recover and then despair as back-up goalkeeper Ionut Radu made a mistake in Bologna so astonishing it still beggars belief.


Serie A has, in short, been crazy this season. Drunk, you might say. It is to Milan’s credit that they never lost their heads, and retained a sober perspective even when things went against them. That was the case against Spezia at the turn of the year, when referee Marco Serra ended up in tears after calling play back rather than giving Milan the advantage. Serra wrongly disallowed Junior Messias’ legitimate goal just moments before the visitors went up the other end and scored an unexpected winner at San Siro.


Referee Marco Serra is confronted for his mistake at San Siro (Photo: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Although Maldini complained about the league’s decision to give a junior official a game with a lot riding on it — and there were certainly some emotional reactions on the pitch — Milan were sporting in defeat. Zlatan Ibrahimovic consoled Serra, telling him to: “Show everyone how strong you are and bounce back.”

Milan followed the same advice. The consistent, largely unflappable nature of this Milan team was a differentiator this season and these qualities should not be taken for granted. Milan’s first and so far only defeat on the road came in Florence in November, when stand-in goalkeeper Ciprian Tatarusanu dropped a cross at Alfred Duncan’s feet and Matteo Gabbia got eaten alive by Dusan Vlahovic.

It was the one night Pioli’s squad players let the side down, a squad that Hellas Verona’s coach Igor Tudor claims is only the third or fourth-best in the league. Milan’s depth could still be deeper and better but it continues to be underestimated. The Fiorentina game was the last Tatarusanu had to deputise for the magnificent Mike Maignan who, in case you’ve forgotten, spent a month on the sidelines recovering from wrist surgery in the autumn. Ibrahimovic has barely played at all, starting for the last time four months ago, while Simon Kjaer was ruled out for the season as early as January when he tore his ACL playing for an already depleted Milan XI in an impressive 3-1 win over Roma that underlined the spirit and positivity running through this group. At that time, even Fikayo Tomori went under the knife to repair the meniscus in his left knee, coming back in no time at all like Franco Baresi did when he suffered the same injury at the 1994 World Cup.

It could have all fallen apart over the winter, particularly with the out-of-contract, Barcelona-bound Franck Kessie flying to Cameroon to participate in the Africa Cup of Nations. At a time when Juventus invested €70 million in Vlahovic and picked up Denis Zakaria for a knockdown price and their “cousins” Inter were signing Robin Gosens from Atalanta and got cover for their strikers in the form of Felipe Caicedo, Milan did nothing in the January window other than back chief scout Geoffrey Moncada in the acquisition of teenage striker Marko Lazetic from Red Star Belgrade. Lazetic filled the hole opened up by the departing Pietro Pellegri but he was signed for the future rather than the here and now.

The window itself felt like a missed opportunity but Milan had not spent it sitting on their hands. A deal had been agreed with Lille and Renato Sanches only for a last-minute complication to bring about its collapse. The lack of activity was another reason to doubt Milan, who were graded down in La Gazzetta dello Sport’s transfer ratings and underestimated once more.

In the end, it mattered little. The business they had done earlier in the season paid off. Business that also had its sceptics, particularly around the club’s disciplined approach to expiring contracts.

Gigio Donnarumma left Milan a year ago, ultimately choosing to double his money at Paris Saint-Germain rather than stay at the club he supported as a boy. Milan had offered him a raise, one that would have preserved his status as the highest-paid goalkeeper in Serie A. The wait for an answer was long and when the deadline came and went, Milan were not bluffing nor unprepared to sign a replacement.

“Maybe everyone puts the blame on me without looking at the other side of it,” Donnarumma reflected, “But to summarise, let’s just say that the last phone call from the club was to inform me they had signed another goalkeeper.” That goalkeeper was Maignan. Rather than follow the crowd, which tends to think clubs should just give a star player whatever he wants as he approaches free agency, Milan respected their budget, backed their model and activated the Maignan signing last May.


Maignan has impressed after being bought to replace Donnarumma (Photo: Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Naturally, when Donnarumma was named Player of the Tournament at the Euros later that summer, some second-guessed Milan’s decision just as they would when rivals Inter agreed to give Hakan Calhanoglu the money Milan didn’t think he was worth to switch allegiances and replace Eriksen. The vindication is immense, particularly in the case of Maignan, who arrived from Lille fresh from winning Ligue 1 for a bargain fee of €14 million on roughly half what Donnarumma had already been earning. Arguably no goalkeeper since Alisson has made as big an impact on a team in Serie A. Maignan’s assist for Rafael Leao against Sampdoria highlighted his elite distribution skills but no one should lose sight of how good he is between the posts.


If Milan have the best defence in the league, with Maignan accumulating 17 clean sheets in 32 appearances, credit should go to the whole team, not to mention Tomori’s front-foot defending. But StatsBomb data, specifically the Goals Saved Above Average metric, shows Maignan has prevented almost eight goals (7.68) an average keeper would be expected to concede this season. San Siro is his house and no one comes in without his permission as he joked with the valet before the Madonnina in February, when Maignan denied Denzel Dumfries and ensured Milan stayed in the game long enough for another summer signing to flip the grudge match on its head.

Milan had wanted Olivier Giroud for a number of years. The veteran World Cup winner was signed for next to nothing and would, in theory, split the goalscoring burden with Ibrahimovic. How they would get on was a source of some debate but Giroud is the ultimate team player and respects Ibra. He even told a story about how his friends once bought him a Zlatan/Barcelona shirt while he was still making a name for himself in Ligue 2 with Tours.

After scoring a brace on his home debut against Cagliari, back injuries limited his game time and the wisdom of having a 35-year-old alternate with a 40-year-old up front perhaps would have been questioned a little more had an agile forward line of Leao, Ante Rebic and Alexis Saelemaekers not put Milan 3-0 up in Bergamo in the team’s first statement win of the season against Atalanta. But Giroud came good, lifting the curse of the No 9 shirt which had loomed over Milan ever since Pippo Inzaghi’s retirement. Time and again he helped decide the biggest games of the season. His brace against Inter and winner in Naples were emblematic of Milan’s unexpected superiority in the mini-league between the sides in the uppermost echelon of Serie A, with six wins, three draws and only one defeat against the top six.


Giroud has been an astute signing for Milan (Photo: Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
While attention may still be drawn to the old heads of Giroud and Ibrahimovic before him, Milan had the youngest team in Serie A last season and if the newly-crowned champions went to another level this season it’s because the kids they signed did too. Unless you followed the Under-19 Euros in Armenia, few people had heard of Pierre Kalulu before Milan signed him on Moncada’s recommendation. Lyon would regret not extending his contract after that tournament and lost the versatile defender for a small amount of compensation. Kalulu was captaining his country at youth level and Bayern wanted him as an understudy for Benjamin Pavard. He could be the new Thuram and has done so well in Kjaer’s absence to keep Milan’s captain Alessio Romagnoli out of the side that there’s a debate about whether Milan need a Sven Botman or Gleison Bremer when his partnership with Tomori is this promising.

The little fanfare there was around Kalulu contrasted with the hype generated by Sandro Tonali. Long tipped as the next big thing in Italian football, he struggled at Milan last season so much so that the club allowed the option to sign him on a permanent basis to expire. An original deal with Brescia worth €35 million was re-negotiated for a knockdown price of around €20 million with the sweetener of a kid from Milan’s academy, Giacomo Olzer, thrown in for good measure. Tonali also humbly agreed to a pay cut for a second chance to play at the club he supported as a boy.

Tonali is not the player you think he is. The 22-year-old may resemble Andrea Pirlo, but he doesn’t play like him. He isn’t even Milan’s best midfielder. That’s Ismael Bennacer when he’s fit and healthy. Tonali’s game is about athleticism, hunger and desire and the progression he’s made this season makes him not only the most improved player on the team but one of the faces of the Scudetto. His stoppage-time winner away to Lazio and brace the other weekend in Verona, a place where Milan have thrown away league titles in 1973 and 1990, were moments of tremendous magnitude.


Tonali is one of Milan’s most improved players this season (Photo: Silvia Lore/Getty Images)
Setting up his goals at the Bentegodi was the player Milan have looked to more and more as the season approached its climax. This is the year Rafael Leao finally started to fulfil his immense potential. Ibrahimovic once remarked how the winger was the only player he couldn’t get through to at Milanello. “I couldn’t motivate him,” the Swede said. “No one can help him if he doesn’t help himself. Going into this season, though, he changed completely. He figured out by himself what he needed to do.” Pioli has drawn up some excellent game plans over the course of the campaign but increasingly Milan’s tactics were as simple as selecting the Surfer emoji and saying Palla a Rafa. Get the ball to Rafa, a player Pioli feels ready to compare with a young Thierry Henry.

Only Kylian Mbappe, Adama Traore and Allan Saint-Maximin have completed more dribbles in Europe’s top five leagues this season and Milan’s left side with him and Theo Hernandez is the team’s principal strength in attack as was apparent in the huge 2-0 win over Atalanta last weekend. The sky is the limit for Leao, who will hopefully release a new track to commemorate the Scudetto.

Milan’s revival should be a blueprint for fallen giants everywhere. When the hedge fund Elliott repossessed the club from the enigmatic Li Yonghong in July 2018, it was on the brink of insolvency and going to the wall in the same way that Parma and Fiorentina had in the past. The situation Elliott inherited was so bad Milan had to accept a ban from European competition for failing to fulfil the break-even requirement in UEFA’s financial fair play regulations. The squad was too big and inefficient with high-salary players (remember Lucas Biglia and Pepe Reina?) depreciating rather than appreciating in value. If you’d said Milan would win the title within four years, people would have laughed and it’s not like things picked up right away.


Rafael Leao has become crucial to Pioli’s game plan (Photo: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
On Sunday, the club came full circle. Beating Atalanta last weekend felt particularly poetic, given that only two-and-a-half years ago Milan lost 5-0 in Bergamo. It was their worst defeat since 1998 and the project seemed to hit rock bottom. Saelemaekers was in the process of joining the club at the time from Anderlecht but no one connected with Milan has been allowed to forget that defeat. “A fan came up to me the other day and said: ‘We still remember the 5-0’. It’s a big game and the defeat two years ago was huge. I think it’s important to give everything for the fans for what happened two years ago and for the title.”

Pioli is convinced that “this Milan was born out of that 5-0. From then on we knew what we needed to do.” Ibrahimovic and Kjaer arrived days later in one of the most transformational January transfer windows ever. Known as Ibracadabra in Italy, the Swede has worked magic. You often hear about legends of the game going to clubs at the twilight of their careers and making those around them better. Ibrahimovic did that at Manchester United in a way Cristiano Ronaldo hasn’t and his impact at Milan in this regard is truly remarkable. Standards were raised at Milanello so much so that even the baristas bringing him coffee felt on edge. He provoked the talented kids that Milan signed, challenging them to be better and taking the pressure off their shoulders.


Ibrahimovic’s presence has lifted the Milan squad (Photo: Nicolò Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
For a year, Ibrahimovic’s numbers were up there with Erling Haaland and Lewandowski, a mind-bending comeback when you bear in mind the knee injury he suffered at United and the two seasons he spent in MLS. But his role in restoring a winning culture to Milan has been an intangible benefit no one predicted. The team began to come together soon after he arrived but the project was still at a delicate stage. In February 2020, the shadow of Ralf Rangnick was cast over Pioli in the papers and when Milan lost to Genoa in the last game before lockdown, the speculation escalated. A week after Milan’s chief executive Ivan Gazidis denied the reports and wished to project a united front to La Gazzetta dello Sport, Zvonimir Boban, the chief football officer, granted an unauthorised interview to the same paper suggesting otherwise and was dismissed.

That all feels like an awful long time ago now. Pioli has spoken about how reassured he was by Gazidis and the rest of the executive team that no decision had been taken and the job was his to win. Today’s game against Sassuolo also has a lovely symmetry to it in that it was the fixture in 2020 when the Rangnick rumours were finally laid to rest once and for all and Pioli signed a new deal. In retrospect, that is quite the sliding-doors moment.

Milan’s players were already singing “Pioli on fire” on bus rides home and they haven’t looked back since, gradually getting better and better. Another shrewd January signing, Tomori, gave Milan a new dimension enabling the team to defend higher and press more effectively. The reward was qualification for the Champions League for the first time in seven years. Tonight they are champions again.


(Photo: Danilo Di Giovanni/Getty Images)
Ibrahimovic, if he chooses to retire, can go out on top. He was the star of the last Milan side to win Serie A, a side that also knocked Inter off their perch. For him to do it again more than a decade later, having promised on his return to restore the club to glory is special. For Maldini to be triumphant as a player and now as a director with his son Daniel continuing the dynastic line, even scoring in the 2-1 win over Spezia back in September, is the stuff of fairytales too.

On the one hand, for a club of Milan’s history and tradition, the Scudetto feels overdue and yet this achievement wasn’t expected and still seems ahead of schedule within this particular project. It’s to Milan’s credit, that they were ready and waiting in the event Inter and Juventus slipped up. Going out of the Champions League in the group stages undoubtedly helped, but Milan still had to hang in there and deliver. As surprising as the Scudetto is, it does at least follow a neat trajectory and represents a pivotal teachable moment for the game in Italy. At a time when other clubs are posting record losses, being recapitalised or seeking emergency finance, when transfer business has come under investigation up and down the league and Samp’s owner Massimo Ferrero even got arrested, Milan have not only been conspicuous by their absence from those stories and controversies, they have managed to extract more performance while spending less and are an exemplar of what a well-run sustainable club should look like.

The non-conventional, data-driven, counter-cultural approach taken by Elliott has succeeded. A hedge fund that found a club in hell has led the Diavolo out of the Inferno and into heaven, with Red Bird giving serious consideration to paying more than a billion to take Milan off their hands in what could potentially be the most expensive takeover in football, pending an even bigger one involving Chelsea.

After the game at the Bentegodi last week, Ibrahimovic gathered his team-mates around him and gave a speech. “At Milan they only remember the players who won the Scudetto and the Champions League,” he said. “If we want to be remembered, we have three games left. Now there are two, so let’s give it our all.”

Milan are champions again.

Milan are champions for only the third time this century.

Milan are Serie A’s third different champions in three years.

Milan will be remembered.

“I’m in love with my players,” Pioli said.

And they’re in love with him too.




>bombshell report today that Mbappe has accepted a contract
>extension... 1 hour later his camp denies. Little reminder to
>Qatar that sportswashing ain't cheap!

really made me fall in love w/ soccer and if there's any team in Italy I "support" it's them.

Thus, I always wanna see AC Milan succeed. Glad to see them climb back to the top. It's been a process.

We don’t do certain stuff here. So please don’t come in here adding long
swipes from websites making the thread longer than what it needs to be.
We simply post links and keep it moving.

This isn’t a basketball or American football thread. We keep it short and sweet,
and it’s been that way since the 2000s.

Don’t be that guy...and it’s about Serie A at that, which makes it even
worse. No one gives a fock about Serie A.

You lame ass Roman abramovich John Stockton Groupie.

this was you a year ago

https://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=8&topic_id=2734997&mesg_id=2734997&listing_type=search#2736350

Stupid cunt. (using that EPL lingo just for you)



>and it’s been that way since the 2000s.


You appeared on this website like an STD in 2014

I’ve been a poster here since 2008....I had another AllStah ID that got lost.

jerseytornado can verify that because of our back and forth battle during the “disgrace
game”. ...as well as everyone else. Your ass was not part of that era.

>I’ve been a poster here since 2008....I had another AllStah
>ID that got lost.
>
>jerseytornado can verify that because of our back and forth
>battle during the “disgrace
>game”. ...as well as everyone else. Your ass was not part of
>that era.
>
>
>
>
>

post how I want, and where I want, you lame cornball

Charter member. Eat a dick.

I've spent EXTENSIVE time in england and Chelsea fans are the biggest bandwagon shitheads among all the epl fanbases. gross.

garbage club devoid of any true and meaningful tradition

You’re very good with using vulgarities, though. Good for you.

Your experiences? Dude, sit down somewhere. You’re illustrating
that you’re a noob.

Anyway, you weren’t in these neck of the woods in 2009. Hell, you just
really started appearing in these threads.

Just don’t muck them up like you do football and basketball threads.
That’s all I’m saying.

2 fingers. Peace.

Everyone loves the swipes except you with your garbage nokia brick 🧱 that makes you have to edit every post


>
>

you bitching that someone is posting *paywalled* articles

just say thanks and KIM

>

And, naturally, they choked.

so we can see in big moments...but the Serie A fan in me wants him to stay



>And, naturally, they choked.

He's given them everything. He doesn't have forever. He deserves some nice silverware.

dropped 8 of 9 points btwn April 10 and April 24

This was the year we laid the foundation and we still got objectively better. And who knows, maybe we bring home that prestigious Conference League trophy!!!!!

Not exactly Porto '04, but it's something!

A huge injection of talent is needed this summer, and that will come (esp if we flip Tammy for ~100 or so). We can truly build something around Pelle, Zalewski, the young defenders, and, hopefully, Tammy. Some real midfielders coming next, I hope. And then... LFG.

no offense but I thought he'd go higher than Villa ;)

So you guys are a shoe in for 15th again.

Congrats. Well done.

I don't know why you're so grumpy. Was it watching Milan raise the title ahead of your beloved Juve? Or reports that Lewy wants out of Bayern?

to the PL. Facts

Live with that.

I have fond memories of their time at Villa. And I'm sure he had a big say in the improved defensive organization from Bruce's tenure to Smith's. But so did the decisions to stop relying on Whelan and Jedinak, two defensive mids, as center backs, as Bruce did. So did the decision to bring back Jed Steer from loan to be the consistent keeper. So did the decision to run Grealish and McGinn as twin-8s in a 4-3-3, which got both more involved in the attack. There's a lot that went right that season, and JT was a big part of it.

Why he decided to throw away a promising coaching career to push NFT Apes is anyone's guess.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/23/hybrid-of-guardiola-and-klopp-tactics-now-dominate-european-club-football
Guardiola-Klopp tactical hybrid now dominates European football

The era of attrition ended in 2008 but since then the Manchester City and Liverpool managers have adjusted their approaches

Perhaps what has been most striking about this season from a tactical point of view has been the degree of consensus. Money can skew games and there always remains the possibility of a brilliant player upsetting theory by doing something brilliant, but for those clubs who have a notion of an underlying philosophy of play it’s fairly clear what that looks like: a high offside line, a coordinated press and a capacity to retain possession when required.

There has been a tendency to portray Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp as opposite poles, one focused on retaining the ball and one on regaining it. That is not unreasonable, although each has edged towards the other over the past couple of seasons. Perhaps what is most significant is that nobody really questions the axis by which they are judged. The age of attrition, of Greece winning the Euros, of José Mourinho, Rafa Benítez and Alex Ferguson in the Carlos Queiroz years, feels a long time ago.

Football changed in 2008, and not just because that was when Guardiola was appointed manager of Barcelona. Before then the knockout stage of the Champions League had only once yielded more than three goals per game; since then the average has only once dipped below three.

It was then that a number of factors came together. Improvements in pitch, kit and ball technology had, for some time, meant that at the highest level a first touch could be taken for granted. The liberalisation of the offside law pushed back defensive lines. Intimidatory tackling had largely been eliminated. That meant there was more space which allowed diminutive technical midfielders who might previously have been bullied out of the game to flourish.

Suddenly it became possible for the bigger teams, who were becoming relatively bigger than they ever had been before, to exercise greater control over games than ever before, to worry about manipulating space, Guardiola’s juego de posición, rather than having to scrap for midfield survival. That in turn led to significant discomfort when big sides met and one found itself unable to get the ball. One of the reasons Manchester United players lost discipline in the 2009 Champions League final was a sense of humiliation at having “only” around 40% possession.

The following year, Mourinho’s Internazionale would show it was possible to win (or at least to lose narrowly enough to win on aggregate) with just 19% possession. Sitting back, holding position, allowing the opposition the ball but only 30 yards or more from goal became a viable way to combat the possession sides. Football began to look at times like handball. But there was another way, which was that promulgated by Klopp, who disliked the passivity of bunkering down, hoping nobody pinged a long-range drive into the top corner or suddenly dribbled past three players to score. That was to press hard and high in a coordinated way and look for turnovers and rapid transitions.

Guardiola’s teams pressed but not with quite the same intensity or with quite the same immediate view to the counter. They would break if the opportunity was there, but if it wasn’t, Guardiola was perfectly happy for his sides to reset and begin the process again, something he said could take 15 passes. Guardiola was about control and Klopp about chaos.

But as Guardiola’s Champions League hopes have regularly been undone by opponents playing on the break, he has had to adjust to counter the counter. In part there seems a clear intention to retain five outfield players behind the ball at all times, but there is also more of a gegenpress, which in turn has increased City’s threat on the counter. Klopp, meanwhile, seeing the accumulated fatigue – physical and mental – of constant heavy-metal football, has taken steps to control games more, which was one of the drivers behind his signing of Thiago Alcântara, perhaps the most characteristic Guardiola player there is.

Thomas Tuchel, Antonio Conte, Stefano Pioli, Xavi, Julian Nagelsmann, Thomas Frank, Brendan Rodgers, Gian Piero Gasperini – the vast majority of modern managers lie at some point on the same spectrum. Exceptions, among top clubs, are rare and tend to be the result of a fascination with celebrity, often allied with grotesque mismanagement. Even had he had greater authority, Ralf Rangnick would have struggled with a squad struggling to accommodate Cristiano Ronaldo, whose destabilising presence at Juventus is a reason they have gone back to the familiar comforts of Max Allegri.

The Fiver: sign up and get our daily football email.
Real Madrid, so far, have been a fine example of how great players can suddenly turn games that seem to be going against them, but Paris Saint-Germain are the most interesting example of celebrity culture, the acquisition of a luxury front three necessitating the employment of a grimly industrial midfield that militates against fluency. The only real philosophical outlier is Diego Simeone at Atlético Madrid, although with each passing season the sense grows that that is a retro project of diminishing returns.

It’s rare in the modern game that the lines are so clear. Guardiola implemented a style of play that capitalised on changed conditions, Klopp found a way of countering it, Guardiola reacted and what has followed is a synthesis of gegenpressing and juego de posición.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/comment-why-chelsea-should-be-relegated-from-the-premier-league/C636B75PROKC2OUFRCXGPEKLUU/

As Roman Abramovich is finally sanctioned the questions stack up. Such as: why did it take so long for the government to acknowledge officially the Chelsea owner's links with the murderous tyrant in the Kremlin? And: how do the legions of city lawyers who have protected him from legitimate scrutiny for the past 20 years sleep at night? (Presumably on very expensive beds purchased with his fees). Plus: have the football authorities at last appreciated that allowing the sale of a significant cultural asset to a businessman irredeemably bonded to a despot might not be the brightest of ideas? (Are you watching Newcastle)?

But the more pressing question is this: what now happens to Chelsea? If the money that has propelled them upwards for the last twenty years has now been deemed to be stained with the blood of the citizens of Kyiv, Mariupol and Odessa, not to forget Aleppo, Tblisi and Grozny, will there be any direct repercussions? Not just in terms of restrictions on ticket, merchandise and player sales. But on the pitch. After all, fans of Derby County, Reading, Bolton, Portsmouth and the rest have all seen the consequences of dodgy finance played out in point deductions and subsequent relegation scraps. In Scotland, Rangers were obliged to start again at the bottom of the league pyramid as soon as the full range of their monetary mismanagement became apparent. And, for all their interesting political allegiances, as far as we are aware no one at Ibrox was supporting a maternity-hospital-bombing despot.

Thus far, the only indication we have of the Premier League's approach to punishment is that, were the restrictions imposed by the government to become so stringent that it meant the club was obliged to go into administration, then they would suffer the standard nine-point deduction from the league total. But is that enough? Is there not an argument for a substantial deduction to be made immediately? True, give or take the odd Financial Fair Play misdemeanour, in his time Abramovich did not break the rules as they stood. But what his friend is doing in Ukraine has put everything into fresh perspective. Surely the scale of his financial doping is such that further action is not only appropriate but morally essential. If the owner is now deemed a pariah, the actions he has taken during his time in control have been cast into a fresh and more illuminating light.

For sure, it can be plausibly argued that such a penalty will mean nothing to the ultimate target of any restriction: Abramovich himself. His association with the club is over. He cannot accrue any benefit from its sale. He will never again be able to watch Chelsea in action in England. So, given the substantial assault on his pocket, why would knocking league points off the team do any good? Rather, the ones to suffer would be the players, staff and fans, who cannot be held responsible for the owner's assumed malfeasance.

Except that claim holds good for any punishment for breaking the money rules: the damage is always largely collateral. Bolton fans were not remotely responsible for the reckless behaviour of the club's previous owner, but they were the ones obliged to watch their team sink down the divisions as a result of what he did. At Derby, the supporters did not spend way beyond their means: that was the previous owner. Yet, because of the concomitant points deduction, they are required to watch their team scrabble to avoid relegation to the third tier, their support tested to its limit.

Chelsea's fans, even those embarrassing themselves by singing Abramovich's name during the minute's applause for Ukraine at Turf Moor last weekend, cannot be reckoned accessories for the unsavoury dealings of their club's owner. Yet they would be the ones most hurt by such action.

But that is not the point. What the Premier League needs to do here is show an understanding of its own responsibility. Abramovich's ownership has now been deemed far more tainted than that of Derby's Mel Morris or Bolton's Ken Anderson. Or even Craig Whyte at Rangers. Thus there is an urgent need to demonstrate a recognition that this cannot be allowed to continue. That our football clubs can no longer be so easily transferred into the hands of singularly inappropriate owners, nodded through at the first realisation of the scale of their bank account. It may have taken 19 years, but finally here is the chance for those in charge of the game to show they have grown a bit of a spine. The truth is Chelsea got where they are today because, for the past two decades, they have been bankrolled by a man closely associated with a war criminal. The least the football authorities can do is immediately recognise that link. And, more importantly, then ensure, in the way they oversee whoever it might be that takes on the club next, that it never happens again.

Leave it up to you to do juvenile stunts.

In addition to his work at The Telegraph, he's written for the Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Independent, the Sydney Morning Herald, MSN, Yahoo, and numerous other outlets.

And it has not been proven that Abramovich has ties with Putin. Roman moved
out of Russia years ago, and the only political affiliation he did have is when he
was a governor of a small province in Russia. That was back in 2008 I believe.

So the writer is just trying to push a non-factual narrative. That’s it. It’s an
accusative article with no proof or facts.

Well respected journalist, you say? Says a lot about you and him. You would fall
into that English malarkey.

So stop the bullshit

Putin is a dictator with his hands in every Russian billionaire's shit.

you think Roman and Putin have NO TIES?

you're delusional.

Do you know the difference between the two verbs?

When you accuse someone of something you afford the burden of proof,
so where is your proof? You don’t have any.

There is more proof that he isn’t affiliated with Putin than there is that he is
affiliated with Putin.

England invaded Iraq with America, which was labeled as a war crime by the UN.
Millions of Iraqis were killed, and that region was obliterated.

Did you stop watching English soccer? Did you stop watching MLS?
No

Was England sanctioned?

No

So stop the bullcrap.

No. I’m not delusional. I just know the rules of law, and you don’t.

and autocorrect messes up a lot.

"insults."

>No. I’m not delusional. I just know the rules of law, and
>you don’t.
>
>

We are the courts? We are the judges? We are the jurors?
There aren’t any.

The only reason England went after him is because he didn’t speak out against
Putin or the war. Man hasn’t lived in Russia in about a decade, and he chose
to stay on the sidelines at the time.

Now, it just needs approval from the British Government.

Newcastle is owned by Saudi Arabia, where mass executions are daily affairs, and the SA government has no reverence for human rights. That is a direct link to the illegal and unfair treatment of human beings.....The British government says nothing, because they are in bed with SA, just like the Americans are.

But yet in still they persecuted Roman for unproven associations with Putin, and
he refused to comment on the war.


This whole situation is a joke, and highlights the hypocrisy and prejudice that exist
within the British government.

Did a decent job at Anderlecht, though it seemed like his time had run its course.

When was that added as a club European title?

This is getting ridiculous.

Tammy is Tammy. Chelsea DNA forever, so excellence will always show.

I’ve always been a huge Tammy fan......still hoping we buy him back.

However, there are just too many euro club tournaments, to the point where
the game is becoming diluted. There is a CL champ, a Europa League champ,
and now there is a Europa Conference League champ?

Fantastic end to the season. Doesn't matter that we won the Plumbers & Janitors Invitational... it's the best we've done since '17. Easily.

And make no mistake. Mourinho managed his ASS off. There is some talent on this team, but not much. And absolutely no midfield to speak of.

We'll fix that next.

>Fantastic end to the season. Doesn't matter that we won the
>Plumbers & Janitors Invitational... it's the best we've done
>since '17. Easily.
>
>And make no mistake. Mourinho managed his ASS off. There is
>some talent on this team, but not much. And absolutely no
>midfield to speak of.
>
>We'll fix that next.

I hate Conte but how can you not respect the resume? Glad he's out of Serie A again, lol

a few years ago i thought he was on the verge

Which might be a kind way of saying he got figured out *shrugs*

Excellent taker of free kicks & pens, great motor (usually)... average at everything else. Not a great distributor, fairly weak defender. He also suffered greatly from pairing with Cristante, who is basically the same player but more prone to fuckups.

Veretout definitely picked it up a little to end the year but if he can get something like the move to Newcastle that's been rumored that would be best for everyone.

Diego Carlos is heading to Villa from Sevilla for way less than his presumed release clause.

Got Coutinho for way less than the previously agreed fee. Got Kamara in as soon as the season finished. Now this.

Gates shut? Tear gas?

so ridiculous

Wouldn’t put it past him to have fucked up this one too

>Wouldn’t put it past him to have fucked up this one too

benzema was in an offside position, but that doesn't matter if he gets the ball as a result of a deliberate action by an opposing player.

so then it comes down to what is a "deliberate action" and i believe a tackle falls under that BUT it SOUNDED like VAR said because the Liverpool player didn't contact the ball w/ the leg he attempted to, that it came off the knee of his OTHER leg, then it wasn't deliberate.

and i typed all that to say i have no idea. sounded like they were making it up as the went.

but if i'm understanding those rules correctly then in my book it's a goal. the action was deliberate and shouldn't matter that it didn't turn out exactly how the Liverpool player planned.

fortunately, it didn't end up turning the outcome of the game.

how can anyone be offside with an outfield player in the goal mouth?

Is it offside if the player is behind the goalkeeper? If the goalkeeper is the second-last opponent and you are behind him, you will be deemed as offside. However, if there are 2 players behind the goalkeeper, you will only be offside if you are ahead of the second-last opponent.

So, in this case, there were two guys behind the keeper (not offsides) but Benzema was beyond the second last one (so offsides) but it wouldn't have been offsides (I assume) if the Liverpool player (i believe it was Fabinho) had actually made the tackle (aka foot to ball) and then it went to Benzema, vs. Fabinho missing at it going off his knee to Benzema.

all this to say ^^^^^ is why people clown soccer. ngl.

The goalkeeper actually counts as 1. So if you are behind the gk, you need to have 2 Field players ahead of you to be onside.

No Ronaldo!

No problemo!

Hazard gets a CL title....

Ancelotti the greatest coach ever!!

And Fock Liverpool!!!

like most here I’ve seen him play countless times, whether for RM or la Roja, and I can’t remember him being as dynamic and locked-in as last night