Turner
Dest Richards. McKenzie. Jones
Johnny. Adams Tillman. Luna
Aaronson
Balogun
Players I would have liked to see (that didn’t pull out)
Tolkin
Yow
P Aaronson
Zendejas
I believe they could still make Club World Cup right? Play-in vs LAFC?
When is the game?
May 31st it looks like.
Also let’s get weird, add Miljevic
Zendejas was on the prelim roster unlike McKennie and Weah
What kind of sucks about hosting the WC is this team could really use the qualifying reps under Poch. I get passing up the Gold Cup because the calendar is insane, but I’m just having trouble seeing these guys get any matches that mean anything prior to the next summer. At least in the CONCACAF, you get a few matches with some pressure, coasting in on friendlies doesn’t seem ideal.
Anyway I don’t hate the gold cup shirts this year.
Whatever became of Freddie Adu?
This will sound like an “old guy rants at cloud” rant, I know … but the Champions’ League was cooler when it was actually reserved for league champions, one per country. There are enough other European competitions for the rest.
What other European competitions that matter are there other than the UCL?
If only league champions went to the UCL, the Europa League would be more meaningful, and by extension the rest. Instead we now have a Champions and Pretty Good Teams League and a bunch of afterthoughts.
The worst is that some European league champions don’t even qualify directly, but have to go through the preliminaries in the summer, while a 4th-place team in England that finished way off the pace gets in with an autobid.
I wasn’t watching in the early 90s, but the fact that the big leagues have grown so much financially makes it hard for me to think that it is diluted in the current format.
I feel like we all want Real Madrid and Barcelona in the UCL. Man United and Liverpool… oh wait.
But the tournament is unquestionably better with say … Chelsea in it than the league winners in Belarus and Andorra, right?
It’s not necessarily that it’s diluted as that it’s just not very fair, sporting-wise, to the vast majority of the UEFA confederations.
Are we implying a lack of hype for Chelsea v Betis in the UEFA Conference finals
I guess it depends on what “fair” is… The team that finishes 4th in the prem is definitely a better team than the champions of the 46th or 51st best league in Europe.
There are too many national federations in Europe for every champion to get into the CL. But there is definitely a point to the complaint that national champions of 3rd tier leagues (Scotland) are treated worse than 4th place finishers of first tier leagues. It’s true that competitive game state would be worse but I agree w @jemblue that the line today is too far toward best teams/best games vs “champions”.
I also think the straight seeds for CFP is bad too. I thought it was awesome that Boise got a top 4 seed. Although I kind of would have preferee that they had a home game.
The CL is a consumer product
Plenty of non-big-four teams get in
They will always sell Madrid/Man City or Inter/Bayern far more easily and for more money than Young Boys/Rangers