The best, once again. Hala Madrid!
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Arsenal fans, by far the most outraged and outspoken about all this, collecting $65 million a year straight out of Dubai while screaming “sportwashing” from the top of their lungs has been interesting. And yes I get the difference between owning and sponsors, but dirty money is dirty money if that’s the way it’s being called. Can’t have it both ways.
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Do you think that Emirates airlines is funneling money to Arsenal with a “sponsorship deal” that is magnitudes more than market value? Does Emirates Airlines have any ownership stake in Arsenal?
Said I understood the difference. It’s still $500 million plus in the latest deal to the club from the UAE while still claiming the squeaky clean moral high ground. Not abolishing or defending anything City spent while playing catch up, just noting Arsenal isn’t sponsored by a local soup kitchen.
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The issue is not (at least to me) sponsorship from companies in middle eastern countries. Don’t know why that’s considered dirty. It’s the state- ownership of clubs who funnel money through their other owned companies to the club. THAT is what I consider dirty and has nothing to do with the region of the world.
The obvious difference isn’t that Emirates is distinguishable from the UAE government in general (it’s not, Emirates is 100% owned by the UAE), it’s that one is owned by the UAE, the other merely sponsored. They’re both forms of sports-washing, neither particulaly appealing. I find the “sports-washing” charge in cases like this (vs, for instance, Qatar hosting the WC) to be a bit thin - owning some sports teams isn’t an advertisement for a regressive country like this the way granting them a WC or an Olympics is, or the myriad players willing to take money from the Saudi league. Nearly all sports owners are people I have large quantities of contempt for (I’m not going to tell you the Kroenke’s are awesome, the source of their money is Walmart (whom he married into))…they all suck, this is most often just sports fan stuff people do to act like their rivals are actually immoral and not just…their rival.
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Emirates Airlines is actually owned by the Dubai Government, which is a separate entity than the UAE government
Great start to the Copa cycle giving up a 6th minute goal vs Colombia.
Make that 2-0 in 18 minutes. Can’t even get the ball clear. Not entirely blaming GGG here as the players are just outclassed, but they are funneling us through the middle and the two holding mids are getting eaten up. Try something different.
Firm test against a good team with mostly your top guys and it’s over 20 mins in…
On the flip side, never going up get any better beating up on Guatemala and Costa Rica. Does show how far behind we are and how potentially overrated this “golden generation” is.
Turner has sucked majorly though since moving overseas. Sitting on the bench in England has done him zero favors.
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That fell apart quickly. Embarrassing lazy errors out of the back line all game, GGG gave them nothing to break a simple high press with and we just completely wilted and got tore up late.
Missed our chance at Bielsa last spring and there’s really zero reason to think this team can win a knockout game in this Copa or the World Cup.
Also Matt Turner is completely cooked. Time to move on there.
As the parent of a GK…watching the defense just hand free shots to Colombia has not been fun.
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Isn’t the knockout round 32 teams now? Seems like at home we could easily do that
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I keep forgetting they added more teams. I don’t even know what the brackets look like now so maybe 1 knockout game, but definitely not easily. Colombia is on a heater and playing well, but that match could’ve been 8-1 if they didn’t drop the press after half for awhile.
GGG needs to alter his system or have some type of failsafe when we play the super elite teams. He can’t just do the “play our game” thing. Bob Bradley, for all his faults, would bunker and counter and frustrate the super attacking pressing teams and try and hit on one of the 3ish chances we would get on breaks and at least we stood a shot. When we just line up and play the “may the best man win” game, its not going to be us once we reach a certain level of opponent.
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Holy wow. 1-5 is a total disaster. I’m fairly pessimistic, I think, in the sense that I think US is like a 15-20 squad globally but this is a serious message from S America. Yikes.
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Can’t really argue with any of this. Gio had some nice balls forward, Puli was giving them fits on the edge of the box and Haji was dangerous for the first 25 minutes of the 2nd, but pretty much everyone else sucked.
Hopefully not as embarrassing vs. Brazil on Wednesday. Mexico managed a 3-2 loss vs a lot of their B team, I think we will be getting the A version.
Yeah, pretty fair summary. Turner wasn’t good…not sure I agree that he could have stopped three of the goals though. When you’re facing unguarded guys inside the 18 you’re in trouble. The first goal was shaky for sure.
To me, the scoring for the back line could have been harsher. The careless turnovers and unmarked guys were shocking.
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I’m opposed to Cardoso getting a 6 also, it was 2-1 and we were looking halfway decent before he didn’t feel the pressure from behind. Just can’t give the ball up in this situation, no awareness or urgency and was lazy getting back. (Also Tillman just out for a Sunday jog).
I’ll be the first to drag GGG when his gameplan is poor, but he had them ready tonight. Played really confidently out of the back after a sketchy first 15 minutes and really could’ve won that. Great stuff from Turner all night, Ream was pulling strings back there and Musah was finding space getting out of the press. Actually used the fullbacks rather than playing everything through the middle trying to get out and packed the box and tried to quick counter which is exactly what you should do vs these south American powerhouses. Huge confidence builder going into the Copa. That was Brazil’s A+ squad and we looked like the better team at times.
Where I thought there was maybe one who deserved 7+ out of 10 rating vs. Colombia, you could make an argument for 8 guys with that high of a rating tonight.
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Huge bounce back tonight
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