I'm a fan of my hometown's club Chemnitz, the Chemnitzer Fußballclub (CFC) since I can think and my dad took me to their matches.



Formerly called Fußballclub Karl-Marx-Stadt they won the GDR championship in 1967 and played the "DDR-Oberliga" (GDR's premiere league) almost uninteruppted from 1962 to 1990. After the "Wende" (old BRD + DDR = new BRD) they mostly played the third/fourth league, at times even the "2. Bundesliga". Now "3. Bundesliga" since 2011.

Right now I'm listening to the match Wiesbaden - CFC, CFC leads 2:0 for now!

I also like the TSV 1860 München (living in Munich since 2015). So of course I don't like the FC Bayern München!

1860 also got a really great club hymn:

That was me. And what's wrong with that? I can tell you that literally 90% of the people I've ever discussed football with had a favourite foreign team, sometimes even more than one. Not to mention the fact that it's very common for example for Ultra groups to have friendships with Ultras of other teams. And there cases of strong friendships between clubs, like Schalke with Nüremberg.

I wasn't talking about you if that's what you think... But people I meet in general and posts online in general, testimonies from others about water-cooler conversations and so on. And as mentioned, media-maintained falsehoods. By the non-knowledgable I was more refering to people I and Festivus talked about, who call themselves fans of club X or care about the sport for a limited time per year or during a big international cup, and who will still regurgitate various claims with little to no truth to them, thus spreading myths about various club profiles. And even about players, various supporter groups, how "dangerous" it is to go to games, and many other aspects of the sport.


Ultras have friendships but they don't go to games between their own team and their friendship team being equally happy regardless of result. If you believe that, you don't know the first thing about the ultras culture. Also, we've touched on degrees of sympathy with other clubs and so on in this thread so I'm not gonna repeat myself about what's common and fine and what's ridiculous.

Funny how you didn't say a word about the fact that there are loads of people who support more than one club. You probably don't know anyone who do, but I sure do.

I said we've dealt with that here before. About some degrees of sympathy vs. having a second team in the sense that one is equally happy regardless of result if those teams meet. It's very common to where I come from to sympathize with some foreign teams but not nearly to a degree where some other team is on an equal emotional level as ones real team.

Fine, just understand that it's not "ridiculous" to equally support more than one team, OK?

Not to the same degree. It's highly counter-intuitive to the fundamental idea of competitive sports about winning and loosing to cheer at a team scoring and then cheer at the same team conceding a goal in the same game. And call yourself a supporter of both teams as they concede goals you cheer over. Hence it being ridiculous.

I used to care more about people who support 2 different teams, thinking they weren't watching football the right way, but as I got older I stopped caring. People are free to do whatever they want. However, it depends. I mean, if you like two teams from two different countries and/or continents it's totally fine by me, but if you equally support, let's say, Arsenal and Manchester City then that's a little weird.

I once met this guy who equally supported Benfica and Sporting. Also met a guy once who supported both Porto and Sporting, claiming to be unable to choose, and he was already in his 20s. Dude, no one's gonna take you seriously if you do that

Actually, I only celebrated Sporting's goal, as it wouldn't make sense to celebrate BVB's goals, since Sporting was playing at home. Sporting ended up losing, but I came home happy anyway because I wouldn't mind BVB winning the game. It was a win-win situation for me.

Yeah, I've met people like that, who can't decide which club they support, though I think that's more common with young people.

The first example(Benfica and Sporting) was a guy I met back in 6th grade. So I guess that's understandable. But the guy who supported both porto and Sporting was already in his 20s, so I imagine he had already been watching football since he was a kid. It seems counter-nature to get into football when you're a kid and not get quickly attached to a single club.

Can't say I've ever had a foreign side I've been crazy for. I liked Milan and Arsenal when I was a kid but it was mostly a FIFA/PES thing and liking their players. Henry, Bergkamp, Maldini, Inzaghi, Gattuso... who didn't like those guys?!

I also liked Real Madrid for a brief period when Figo joined them(me and my brother still own his RM jersey to this day!), but that was a long time ago.

I had a friend from high school who had been a Sporting fan when he was very little (early 90's, that is) just because he liked Sporting's goalkeeper! Then when that goalkeeper left, he became a Benfica fan.

The fact that we all know less rigid support for one team is much more common among young children backs up what I'm saying. But if I had called the duo-supportership "childish", then people would have been offended...


I liked a bunch of teams when I was a kid, including Milan and Manchester U. It was even the thing to have one team per country during some childhood years. If someone would have asked the 10 year old me who I support in Georgia, I would have said Dinamo Tibilisi without knowing of any player or anything in that team. But even then there was zero doubt that Djurgården was forever the only real one, so had Djurgården met Milan or Manchester U, there would have been no cognitive dissonance what so ever. Only DIF. And as I grew older, the sports outside of Djurgården came to be much more about sympathizing with the underdogs, or prefering one team over another in the context of specific games or specific competitions where Djurgården are not participants. As we've touched on before.

Where I come from, the less serious sympathizing is sometimes called "hobby support", whereas the real one doesn't really have a name like that but is much more about identity and a life-long bond. So you could say as a kid I hobby supported Milan. I don't anymore. Now I even often prefer them to lose so that some historically less fortunate teams may establish themselves at the top of their league and get to play in Europe and so on. Also I strongly dislike their connection to Berlusconi. Whereas if Djurgården would have every bad person in history support them, it would never effect my support for the club, since a club is much more than the individuals associated with it, such as players, coaches, fans, etc. if that club is ones real club, not just a hobby-supported one. People come and go, the club remains.

Those are definately some great players I liked alot as well. Especially the last three ones were part of my favourite edition of Milan, around when they won the Champions League in 2003. Though I remember even the following year, I found it way more cool that Deportivo La Coruña made their great comeback against Milan in the Champions League. Which by the way was a great edition of the CL regarding underdogs, since three of the four semi-finalists were Porto, Monaco and Deportivo La Coruña. Very unusual. Maybe the fourth team Chelsea was unusual too but they had just started their Abramovich era so it wasn't as surprising.

Gattuso is probably my favourite meatball type of player of all time. And they had another good meatball in the squad at the same time in Cristian Brocchi, who was sort of a lesser Gattuso. Quite nostalgic to look at their squad from back then, which raises alot of memories about both real football and games like FIFA and CM/FM:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%8 ... nformation

Shevchenko, Dida, Pirlo, Ambrosini, Serginho, Nesta, Costacurta, Rui Costa, Seedorf... And of course the aforementioned Ibrahim Ba who two years later very surprisingly played for my Djurgården.

And you also mentioned Henry and Bergkamp. Both were nice aspects of the World Cup '98 which is the first football competition I remember really following. People often describe it as boring edition, but I'm forever fondly nostalgic towards it.

I also don't really care. People can do whatever they want. I'm convinced that fans who are actually interested and attend games grow more fond of one club over the other as well. In my case Hammarby will always be my club. I grew up supporting them. With West Ham United it started as a hobby team but has grown with each year. Obviously its not on the same level. As I said before I have lived in London but there is no way I'm feeling a part of the Hammers culture in the East End as I am growing up in Stockholm close to Hammarby.

Well yeah, if you ask a big football fan here, chances are he might have a favourite in each country.

I never liked Manchester United, to be honest. It's probably one of the foreign clubs I like the least.

Yes, I too I always like to see teams from smaller leagues such as Holland, Belgium, Romania, Greece, Czech Republic, etc. doing well in European competitions.

I lived in a GameCube household, so when PES was at its height, I was playing FIFA 2003, FIFA 2004 and FIFA 2005. Didn't care much about FIFA 2003 but played A LOT of FIFA 2004 and 2005 thanks to their career modes. After Benfica, C Milan was usually my most picked side in football games.

CM? I had 00/01. Fun times were had. As for FM, only played 2009 and 2011. I still own 2011 and have good memories with my Leverkusen and Cameroon save. I stopped playing it after I went to Athletic Bilbao.

As for PES, I've only owned 5. Bought it when we got a PS2 Slim for 2005 Christmas. I liked the game a lot, despite not having as many teams as FIFA games already had at the time. Had a pretty fun Master League with Arsenal and a good Eredivisie with PSV where I won the double.

If you want to be technical, I was already playing PES in the 90s, since ISS games were made by Konami as well. ISS Deluxe and ISS 98 were pretty fun games and haven't aged too badly. But my all time favourite football games will always be Sensible Soccer and Nintendo World Cup. I don't really like sports simulators nowadays. They're more about the graphics, roster updates and licenses than about gameplay. Haven't bought a football game since PES 5.

World Cup 98 is also the first international tournament I remember. Only some games, though. Denmark crushing Nigeria, Croatia beating Germany and, ofc, the final. Also, man it's weird how Jamaica was in that World Cup. And me being 7 years old at the time was sad Portugal didn't hadn't manage to qualify. WC98 is considered boring, really? People usually say that about WC90, WC2002 and WC2010. It seems many people love the 1994 World Cup.

The football competitions I have the fondest memories of are Euro 2000 and Euro 2004. Euro 2000 was when Portugal really established itself as a reputed national team. Portugal 3-2 England is a game I won't forget until I die. Euro 2004 is considered one of the weakest Euros of all time, apparently, but I loved it despite us losing the final which sucked. But I loved seeing all the different fans in my city at the time.

World Cups have been kinda poor. European club seasons are too long nowadays which makes a lot of top players reach the WC tired as hell. Plus they don't get as much money in those tournaments compared to what they get at clubs, so I guess many play unmotivated when they already have signed up for bigger clubs in the top leagues.

Bayern can't beat Hoffenheim, means RB Leipzig can match them in points if they beat Mainz tomorrow. If it happens - both at 24 points - we'll see what happens the week after, when Bayern travels to Dortmund while Leipzig travels to Leverkusen. Slim but realistic chance of Red Bull at the top of our league that match day. We're fricken Austria now.

Turned on the Leipzig game for a bit after watching Liverpool destroy Watford (Arsenal in fourth now, for fuck's sake), and Leipzig are 3-1 up so they're level with Bayern.

The Swedish season ended today. We won a nice 5-2 win in a snowy away game. Finished on 7th place (out of 16) after sacking the coach during the summer when we were at like 13th and replacing with an Englishman named Mark Dempsey who during his career as a player did a game for Manchester U. One place worse than last season and we've been cemented in the middle for several seasons now. Only if we spend the winter strengthening the defence may we aspire for top places. Interesting is that we only drew once during the entire season, and even that one game came very close to not being a draw.




Well, now I don't either. Today I just see them as another representation of alot of what's bad with how modern football is run. Although in a choice of who were to win the PL I would pick them over for example Manchester C, which was a very mediocre club until some rich guy decided to step in out of nowhere. Also with United there's a nostalgic fondness to people like Sheringham, Giggs, Stam, Yorke, Andy Cole, Peter Schmeichel, Alex Ferguson, among others.


I don't remember all the editions of FIFA and CM/FM I've played but I've played alot of FIFA and CM/FM. I was first much more of a FIFA player and then became all about the manager games instead. I never owned a PES but remember when trying them that there certainly were a different and somewhat better feeling to it than FIFA. But manager games are good because one can do other things while playing, whereas with FIFA/PES and such you have both hands on a controller.


It may be weird that Jamaica was in WC98 but I believe it was even weirder that Trinidad and Tobago went through from that same qualification area for the WC06. I think the opinions of 98 being boring has to do with low tempo or something. I don't remember much of the quality, but I'm just fond towards with for nostalgic reasons. About Euros I'd say the last one is the worst of the ones I've watched. Because of all the added number of teams, mainly.

I don't think those tournaments suffer so much from unmotivated players as much as we being used to watch teams that are very well-organized because they play together all year, and then at the less common national gatherings the lesser playing time together shows in the quality, effecting everything from passes, timing, tempo.

Well, the Portuguese season started in August, currently being in its 10th fixture(there's 34 of them) so there's still a long way to go.

Yes, understandable. I, too, find it hard to empathise with most EPL sides due to all the Arab/Russian/American billionaires who own them. I was happy with Leicester City's last season win, despite being owned by a foreign guy, since their budget is quite low compared to the usual suspects.

City actually used to have a lot of good support back in the day. They used to sell out stadiums when they were in the Championship. Of course nowadays they've attracted lots of foreign supporters. They've had lots of cash for a while, since about 2007 or 2008, I think? But nobody cared about them until their 2011/2012 season... the one where they won the title, obviously.

I, too, prefer FM like games to football simulators since those games are more challenging. In FIFA/PES a crappy team can be lethal on the hands of a skilled player or when the CPU difficulty is set at the highest. It's not so much about how talent players are(well it does matter to a certain degree) but more about how skilled the human player behind the controller is. Hence why I prefer more arcadey games such as Nintendo World Cup and Sensible Soccer. They're not realistic at all but damn they are fun.

Ah Trinidad and Tobago. They were in the 2006 World Cup yes.

My first FIFA was 95 or 98 for the Mega Drive/Genesis but didn't like it. ISS Deluxe for the SNES was miles better even though it only had national teams. I got FIFA 2001(PC version) and it was OK, I guess but I still don't get it how it had temas like Qatar and Mauritius and not Portugal's national team or any Portuguese club, but whatever.

The last Euro wasn't that great but still better than the 2002 and 2010 World Cups. Those two tournaments were baaaaad. 2010 in particular was awful. And the vuvuzelas made it even worse.

To be honest, my least favourite Euro was probably 2008. It was just meh and not memorable at all. Hell the 2007-2011 period was pretty boring for national teams as a whole, imo.

Btw, Dembo, whatever happened to Swedish and scandinavian football in general? It used to be somewhat good in the 80s with Malmo and IFK doing some cool things in Europe. Benfica used to have some good Swedish players such as Matts Magnuson, Stefan Schwarz and Jonas Thern. And also a Danish player named Manniche at the time as well. I also remember Rosenborg reaching the CL group stage every season and Benfica struggling in a UEFA Cup match-up against them back in 2004(nowadays we'd probably win both games 6-1 on aggregate lol). Denmark was never very good on a club level but their national team won Euro 1992 and Laudrup is considered a football legend.

Without knowing too much about the time before I started really following it, which was in the late 90's, I'd say there are more clubs that can compete now on both domestic and international level. With a higher amount of clubs winning the league, there's not as much room for economical development far beyond the other clubs. Which is actually good from the perspective of the domestic league being interesting rather than like in Scotland where everyone know Celtic will win the league. Though to some extent Malmö have drifted away economically now by winning three of the last four years, and reaching the CL two times. But for many years different clubs would win. For example during the seven years 2005-2011, seven different clubs won the league. I don't think there are many leagues for which that can be said about.

As far as international competition, there are more countries with clubs with good economy and developed ways of producing domestic and finding good players abroad. Today you may face a team from Kazakhstan in a European qualification game and they may have some good unknown South American players or whatnot who they could not have afforded some decades ago. And there is more money in smaller clubs abroad and more developed scouting, so that talented players may be detected earlier and move earlier. Today a star player in the Swedish league may be bought by a club in the English second league, Chinese league, Chinese second league, MLS, Russian league, etc. because there are more clubs now with more money, often from a rich owner. And also older players abroad have more countries and clubs being stronger competitors for their skills during the end of their career whereas in the past they would have gone back to Sweden or gone back earlier. So both young and old players today have way more clubs and countries seen as attractive career moves than a few decades ago.

Also the performances by Malmö and Gothenburg you're referring to may have to do with somehing like a golden generation of players which sometimes happen.

yes, the Bosman ruling really made it harder for the smaller leagues, but still you see teams like Basel from Switzerland not doing badly at all in Europe. Just like Ukrainian sides did OK for a while as well, with Shakthar winning the UEFA Cup some years ago. Portugal also has been able to remain consistent as the strongest smaller country out there. We even managed to get a 4th place in the UEFA ranking a couple of years ago, ahead of Serie A, and Benfica and Porto were in the top 10 in 2015. The Netherlands, which used to be the strongest smaller country alongside football, on the other hand, has struggled in the last decade, despite PSV having had a decent CL run last season.

I think it's a matter of having good potential players and good infrastructures and people working to make them good players in the future. I guess Scandinavian countries have just struggled at that. Euro 2004 was good for the top Portuguese clubs due to building new stadiums/infrastructures as well. Plus, we can also get South American players more easily when they're young. This is work that takes some years to see good results. In the late 90s/early 2000s Portugal was doing poorly in Europe, with Benfica going through their worst period(two seasons without qualifying for European competitions) and our champion needing to qualify in order to get in the 02/03 CL group stage, so we've come a long way since those times when it seemed we were heading down the Romanian/Czech Republic/Greece/Belgium/etc. leagues. Ofc we're not as strong as other leagues are and a lot of our UEFA ranking points come from Europa League performances, but our teams have beaten sides with higher budgets than ours such as Spurs, Newcastle, Schalke, Man City, etc. in the last 5 years or so. EPL really haven't had the best results in Europe in the last few seasons. it's really incredible how a 10M population country like ours can have several European trophies in our resume The only small European nation that can top us in that are the Netherlands. Certainly better than a country like France, although now they have PSG and Monaco full of cash, so let's see if it's a matter of time or not until they win European trophies.

That being said, our football has lots of issues. About 99% of the country's population supports one of the big 3. Unlike in Sweden, only 5 different teams have managed to win the league here, 2 of them being smaller clubs that only won it once each. One of those championships was won by Belenenses already in the 40s. I don't know how attendance rates are in Sweden but here they're bad. Even the big 3 struggle often and don't always sell out their stadiums. When our team go through a bad form, we tend to say "fuck it, not paying for this". We have a saying here "In Portugal, people don't like football, they like clubs", which is a statement I kinda agree with.

I'd say people in Sweden go to football for their clubs rather than for the football. Sweden is ranked low and the quality is not impressing. And the attendance rates differ alot. It can be 20 000 at one game and 2 000 at another. For one and the same club it can be 16 000 at a game during mid-season and half of that towards the end if there's not much to play for.

About Shakhtar Donetsk it's important to remember that they are owned by an oligarch. Although in the battle of rich man clubs in the European competitions, it's more fun when clubs like that succeed rather than the ones from bigger leagues or the ones more commonly succeeding.

About results in the Euopa League, it's important to remember that not all clubs bring their best team for those games. Alot of the time, the priority is the domestic league, where it's often considered better to reach a CL qualification position than to go far in the EL. Alot of English and Italian clubs in particular seem to almost always not care about the EL. With some exceptions here and there.

I'll support Sporting tomorrow. Dortmund must finish first in the group.

Which is a bad strategy, imo. Especially for Italian sides, considering Serie A hasn't exactly been achieving very impressive results in European competitions lately. Clubs like Fiorentina, Roma and Napoli should take EL more seriously since they're not exactly winning the Scudetto every season and much less are their contenders for the Champions League trophy.

Um, that's in a couple weeks time, there's international games first. First Germany play San Marino on Friday.

It's not that they think they will be contenders for the CL trophy. It's that it's more in it for them to just reach the CL than to go far in the EL. So if the choice for a club is to finish on a position that qualifies them for the CL, they will choose that over going far in the EL with the risk of having tired/injured players for the domestic games and finish just under the CL qualification places. Unless you win the EL, since recently they decided to give the winner of the EL a place in the CL the following season. But that's a high gamble. Sevilla managed to do so last season.

The interest of the individual clubs go against the interest of the league in this case. It will be difficult for Serie A to win back the fourth CL spot if not performing well in the EL. But the clubs aspiring for CL places in the league are often involved with the EL, causing a priority problem.

Yes, the CL gives you a lot more money, although now that winning the EL allows you an automatic spot in the upcoming season's Champions League group stage, mid-table English/German/Italian/ teams should care a bit more about the competition, especially if, by January, their way too many points behind the top 3. But whatever, it's their choice. The matter of fact is, if you fall from the CL into the Europa League and/or if you are a somewhat strong team, it is considered a failure if you play in the EL and don't win it. While getting knocked-out in the CL's QFs or SFs really isn't seen as a huge failure, especially if you get knocked-out by an equally strong side.

And Serie A is 4th atm, actually. And in a couple of years or so UEFA will change the rules a bit and automatically let the top 4 of the 4 higher ranked leagues in the CL group stage. I'd love to see Portugal(and if not us, maybe Russia, Ukraine, Holland) to grab that 4th spot by then. Ofc, at this rate, UEFA might as well just make a super league involving English/Italian/Spanish teams and Bayern München and PSG, considering no one wants to watch a Benfica vs. Dynamo Kiev or a Sporting vs. Legia Warsaw outside of those teams fans and a select few others. That doesn't appeal Americans and Asians who support Liverpool and Barcelona and can't point Portugal or Poland on a map. Whenever a "lower team" knocks out or beats a better ranked one from the top leagues many people are like "bah these teams in the QFs? I wont' watch them then" assuming they just got lucky or something and are actually crappy. I guess people care too much about names and the status quo, but names can be "gained overnight". Renato Sanches is a more well-known name now than back when he was at Benfica still, per example.

This UEFA rule change will also make clubs like Arsenal even more lazy. They can just finish 3rd and 4th forever or for years that they'll always reach the group stages and make profit. Kinda funny how a club like Arsenal manages to be so popular and considered a big club despite them barely winning anything. Even when they became a top club with Arsene Wenger, Henry, etc. they never managed to win the CL. They only have a Cup Winner's Cup, I believe, won already in the early 90s. It's a shame football is heading down a path where winning trophies is becoming more of a secondary thing than a priority, especially if you're from a league with a good ranking.

Of course, we're also part of the problem ourselves. Sometimes I'll watch a top league game and can't say I've ever watched a Crvena Zvezda vs. Partizan derby, per example. And some people from smaller countries also bitch whenever a team like APOEL, Genk, FC Basel, BATE Borisov, etc. reaches the Last 16 or the QFs claiming "what is a team like this doing in the CL? they'll just get crushed!". I'm also not naive enough to believe that it's possible to go back to the pre-Bosman ruling football and having teams from Romania and Ukraine reaching the CL final just like that again. As a guy from Sweden, a country with a not so prestigious league, I'm sure you can somewhat relate to what I'm saying and pardon me for venting a bit lol. Regardless, the way football is heading(getting way more americanised to boot...) is quite disappointing and I shudder to think how it will be like in 2-3 decades. Euro 2020 being held in several different countries is also a retarded idea and the 2022 World Cup being held in Qatar is also a big rip-off.

Oh fuck, I didn't check the date, I thought things just get on as usual.

What I don't like about international breaks is not the quality of the games (well, except when it's San Marino), but the density of interesting games. In regular league weeks there's a dozen games I follow the scores out of interest, not just how Dortmund and Oldenburg are doing but also how the competition is doing, how poorly HSV and St. Pauli do this time, how well teams stand up to Bayern, who might make the jump from the 2. Bundesliga to the top league, how Klopp is doing with Liverpool, how German national team players are doing (mostly just checking on Özil since his form is a big factor in what makes or breaks the national team), how the Real/Barca rivalry plays out, etc. and the German performances in the CL and EL on top of that. Lots of interesting stuff to follow. In international breaks I look at two Germany games at most, maybe read a blurb on how Oranje plays its recent "the HSV of international football" role, and that's it. It's boring. So little that interests me. Maybe a quick look at which big team from South America might not qualify for the World Cup since both Brazil and Argentina have been flirting with danger, but I check that maybe 2-3 times a year and it just fills ten seconds each time looking at the results/table.

And on the other topic here, I think in principle the Europa League in its current form is not a bad idea and could be made to work to interest both the participants and the fans, but with UEFA not exactly being a beacon of competence my faith in them making it as attractive as it could be if managed well is not particularly high. Maybe something good comes out of the battle of the "smaller" (Swedish, Dutch, etc.) European leagues vs the Champions League reform that gives them an even smaller choice to participate.

Yeah the devlopment is definately going int he wrong direction for alot of aspects of football. And the new rules making it harder for clubs from smaller countries to reach the CL is one of them. About the EL... I think in its current format it's forever going to have that split between clubs that are super interested in it and clubs that are there without wanting to. It's in the nature of a tournament which some clubs reach via losing. Whether it's losing in the CL qualification or in the group stage. And then there are clubs from smaller countries that would be very happy just reaching the EL group stage and super happy to advance from it. Perhaps if no club reached it via being eliminated from the bigger tournament, it would lessen the number of participating clubs uninterested in it. Though it wouldn't get rid of that completely.

Bet UEFA with their overthinking minds would solve it by making it more complex, like giving clubs from the EL the chance to advance into the CL - including the teams relegated from the CL group stage, so it would have to be later on, but if they made it later on, the clubs would go back to the CL after the first knock out stage was already played and half the teams already eliminated giving the EL teams kind of an advantage, but try to think like a Platini type of guy and develop an ultra complex system that absolutely nobody understands that somehow gives everybody a chance for everything but gives richer leagues an advantage but gives poorer leagues the same chance but does it so retardedly that instead of everyone being happy in the end everyone is just pissed at UEFA. Intentional run-on sentence to reflect the absurdity of the thought process I expect as a solution in the end.

One of Europa League's main issues are its games being on Thursdays. Usually just 2 or 3 days before a domestic league fixture. Also, why the need for a group stage even? And remember when it had 5 team group stages with just one game between each teams? lol although it meant teams only had to play 4 games instead of 6.

Platin actually had some good ideas back in 2008/2009 with trying to make the Champions League having more champions. I believe there's a pre-qualifying round for "non-champions" even. But yeah, both FIFA and UEFA are full of shit. And letting 4th places into the group stage of a competitions called "CHAMPIONS League" is a travesty. And here I thought things had improved a bit with them allowing the champions of the top 7-8 leagues to go directly into pot 1. That came in handy for PSV last season. Otherwise they'd probably have landed in a group with Barcelona, Bayern or Real Madrid and possibly not have qualified for the knock-out stages.

Although, to be honest, it's not just the Bosman ruling and UEFA that can be blamed for this. Remember that we live in the watching games at home era since season tickets are usually expensive and even single tickets for the occasional match are in many countries as well. So the TV deals and sponsors also help certain teams getting stronger than others.

Football has always been a business, obviously, but it didn't really start seeing itself as one until around the late 80s/early 90s. We're seeing football at a full force globalised phenomenon at the moment. In the late 90s/early mid-2000s it still was barley tapping into new markets. I sure as hell didn't see Australians, Americans and Canadians claiming to be fans of the sport all over the internet lide I do nowadays. There seems to have happened something around 2010 or 2011 that suddenly made many people from those countries interested in football. It can't be the 2010 World Cup since the quality was so poor and furthered the "why don't they score moar goals in soccer~!" stereotype. I thin Man Utd were truly the first globalised football club. Already in the 90s when they still had Beckham, they were already collecting fans in East Asia. I would not be surprised if there people even in North Korea who recognise the Manchester United crest.

I also see transfers getting more and more out of control. Remember in the late 90s when transfers were getting higher ever year but then, more or less after 9/11, they begin to slow down again? Until fairly recently, the record transfers were still Figo's and Zidane's to Real Madrid, I believe. I also remember Man City trying to sign Cristiano Ronaldo from Man Utd back in 2008 or so for 100M and people were like "that's crazy, no one has that much money". Well transfers have been getting more and more inflated lately, so an 100M transfer will eventually stop being a shock.

They won last season too and this season they are in the same group as Bayern Münich and Atletico Madrid. And indeed will not advance to the knock-out stage.

im a football fan.
My main team is Fc Twente because im fron Twente. We've had a rough couple of years due to financial issues but we are doing alright this season.
The other team i support is Galatasaray because they used to have a player with whom i shared a first name. The reasons you start liking things because you are a kid.

There are a couple teams i have a soft spot for like PSV(i remember the last hiddink era very well) and Barcalona. Always appreciate upsets and teams that play proper attacking or exciting football. I like atletico madrid for example but hate classic italian defensive football.

World Cup qualifiers this weekend as mentioned before. I'm thinking it's possible Oranje may beat Luxembourg, but it remains to be seen. It's funny that after the Euro Cup debacle they end up in a group with the strongest France since 1998 and a strong - even without Zlatan - Sweden. It's gonna be fun to see how our beloved neighbours fare this time.

Tomorrow we'll know more about Iceland's chances to join an even bigger tournament. Croatia isn't the force it used to be, but of course they're the clear favourite.

Portugal lost to Switzerland in their first qualifying game. Let's see if that score doesn't bite us in the ass at the end of the qualifying stage. If we make it, I don't believe we'll win the World Cup, but then again, I never thought we'd win Euro 2016 until we got past Croatia. So I'll never say never from now on. I'd like to see my country lift the World Cup trophy before the eyes of the whole world before I die. Tough but also hardly the most unrealistic dream ever. Of course, that means we need to invest more in our formation. The big Portuguese clubs usually have more foreign players in their squads than Portuguese ones. It seems Benfica has been more interested in its formation lately and Portugal has a young generation with some potential now. We've finished first in our U-21 Euro qualification group, a tournament that will be held next year in Poland. Let's see how it goes.

Netherlands are an odd side. They usually play attractive football for much of many people's delight but eventually end up getting knocked-out. In 2012 they didn't make it past the group stage(well, to be fair, they always lose to Portugal!), in 2014 they had an OK run, but people were deluded by their 5-1 win over Spain in their first game. Just like people were deluded by their 4-1 and 3-0 wins over France and Italy, respectively, in Euro 2008. 2016... they didn't make it, even with 24 teams.

i think the netherlands were quite good in 2014. The level in that WC was higher than in any tournament since forever. 2012 and 2016 went so badly because of mentality issues i think. There were/are enough players who are very capable but somehow it didnt really work out. I also remember the 2008 tournament and it felt like that something broke mentally in the team after one of the key players lost his child during the tournament.

I used to follow La Liga in the late 2000s but that interest kinda waned away. I've been an ardent follower of the EPL for a long time. As some of you may already know (as evidenced by some of the posts in the Sports thread), I'm an Arsenal fan. I've been one since the Invincibles (yeah, we all say it). This current season is starting to take a dip for Arsenal, the curse of November lives on. Reports say that key players like Bellerin and Sanchez are injured right before a big game against ManU. I reckon, the title race is still pretty open. My gut says Liverpool has a very strong chance of winning it this time.

Well, very famous guy having a test training with Dortmund soon - not for marketing they say but because he wants to look more concretely into a football career after ending his career as the fastest sprinter in history.

Who? Usain Bolt? Didn't he have tryouts at Manchester United some years ago?

Yeah, Usain Bolt. He still speaks of his dream to play for Man U.

Man, I wish Latvia were stronger. Somehow Hungary needs to be in second place at the end of the qualifiers because no Ronaldo would double the quality of the World Cup.