I am pretty much for anything that gives us less soccer at this point. City is back on again in about 3 weeks for the who cares Club World Cup which potentially goes until July 13th and then the Prem kicks off again August 16th until next May again and then straight into the World Cup.
How can I miss something when it’s never gone? It’s become so ridiculous the amount of matches they are expecting out of players so yeah, I’d be all for a smaller Champions League, but the greediest of people at UEFA will make sure it goes the completely opposite direction.
This has been the first couple of years where I have taken pretty significant breaks from watching, I was completely burnt out after the Euros and then it just keeps right on trucking.
I think it is pretty club-dependent but it is normal to rotate squads for domestic cup games (especially the EFL cup) but I don’t think anyone really knows what to do with the Club World Cup… It used to be a small six team event that was just a one-weekend money grab, now it is a full-on tournament that FIFA is trying to build to somehow compete with UCL and has 32 teams.
Add in the international fixture crunch, new Nations League Tournaments, etc. and there just hasn’t been a ton of free space.
Even the new format added extra games though, right?
Everyone plays 8 group games vs. 6, plus the playoff round now I think.
It’s bigger fir sure but I don’t think the two extra fixtures are a massive workload difference
And yeah, FA and Carabao early rounds are generally very rotated - assume Copa Del Rey, etc are the same
CL generally is a major test of club depth, we’ve seen the mid-week European fixtures break smaller clubs that get in (Newcastle last year, Brighton in Europa)
The vibe I get from the Club WC is the European teams are using it basically as summer scrims and the South American teams are approaching it like the super bowl.
Also I think the point about more games is a bit overblown. There used to be 22 teams in the EPL, (4 more games per year) FA Cup matches could go to a SECOND replay if tied twice, as I said Champions League had 2 separate group stages.
My beef is really more with FIFA continuing to expand everything and cram as much as they can into the breaks on the calendar.
The only nice thing about it is we can basically just blow-off the CONCACAF qualifying going forward with 6 freaking teams making it instead of 3 and a playoff. Like the world really needs to see 90 minutes of Nicaragua sh!thousing Portugal to a 0-0 card fest.
I’m sorry but it’s so rare to see a guy ring-Chase and then see the team he left IMMEDIATELY win the ring he left to chase (and the team he joined do shockingly poorly))
Mbappé is a bit of an enigma … an incredible goal scorer (31 goals in the Liga this year) but doesn’t want to defend at all, and needs to be the focal point of the attack or seems to lose interest. He’s nearly won two World Cups so it’s hard to say he’s not a winner, but he’s a tricky guy to build around.
It’s funny when you lose “the best goal scorer in the world” and score significantly more often
(Mbappe is hardly the first S tier scorer this occurred to - Tottenham’s scoring increasing the year after losing Kane while Berlin’s declined another example)
I love Mbappe, but as far as number 9s go, he’s more of the 7-9 variety than the 10-9 variety. Which is great and all, but it’s not what this Real Madrid team needed. Mbappe needs someone to play off of – a hold-up 9 like an Olivier Giroud, for example. But Vini needs that, too, and they ultimately just kinda wasted a year of both of their primes. Benzema and Vini were fabulous together, but Mbappe isn’t that kind of forward. We’ll see what Xabi Alonso ends up doing with these two.
But yeah, PSG were just gorgeous to watch. Ruthless pressing team, really quick in transition, confident, played with some panache. I would have loved to see them against Barcelona, or the treble-winning Man City squad from two years ago, if we’re playing hypothetical finals. Inter just had no chance.
Patrick Ewing