Is Atalanta under Gasperini the best run club in the world? They’ve banked over a half billion Euros in sales- Hojlund, Romero, Kessie, Bastoni, Gosens, Bastoni and so on- while being a fixture in Europe. Almost always one of the top scoring clubs in the big five European leagues, they set the record for most goals in a season in Serie A history. The squad is almost always made up of youngsters you’ve never heard of and reclamation projects you forgot played the game. Eight seasons in a row recording a profit while playing extremely entertaining soccer.
Either AS or Marca was attempting to make the case that, because Xavi promised the club that he would not be a problem, there is a chance that he would waive the buy-out that he and his staff are owed. Right...
When he initially announced that he was stepped down after the season, Xavi agreed to waive everything.
Barca really wanted to pay him not to coach them when they could have just let him walk away for free.
Assuming the reporting is accurate and that Laporta was enraged by Xavi when the manager cautioned that the club didn’t have the money to be very busy over the summer, this would be the ultimate flex. Not only do we have the money to be busy in the transfer window, but we can even pay you when we didn’t have to.
Multiple reports of ETH being sacked by ManU after the FA Cup final. I perversely hope they win it just to spite the board’s handling of the whole ETH saga.
I didn't follow closely Xavi's success with tactics and game-planning, so maybe Flick will indeed do more there. Instead, from afar, I thought Xavi's strength was giving young players a chance, building their confidence, and creating the foundation for the future. He seems to have truly launched a handful of careers, and some players into potential stardom. So, perhaps Flick now needs to build on individual talent and create a better team?
This was something Xavi agreed to back in January and in a press conference this weekend he said he would honor. If I was in his shoes, I’d be collecting my salary next season too because of what they put him through.
I’ll let Zoso answer more thoroughly on tactics, but it always seemed like Xavi had a hard time getting players to execute the that he wanted them to. He would say how he wants his teams to play, but the reality of what we saw on the pitch never matched his vision. I’ve been more than a little critical of Xavi as a manager, and I think in the end moving on was the right decision. It’s more how the club handled it all that bugs me (and everyone else).
Chelsea handing out a five year managerial deaT… there must be a German word for “Contract everybody knows is fake but we’re going to pretend it’s not.”
To draw that tangential connection a little closer, the last Chelsea manager to make it past 2.5 full seasons in charge of the club was....Claudio Ranieri from 2000-2004.
For while Fener-Galatasaray is the classic derby, for whatever reason their rivalry with Trabzonspor has been even wilder in recent years.
They’ve always been rivals of sorts because the two cities are rivals. Trabzonspor’s extreme hate for Fener goes back like ten years or so when the two clubs ended up tied on points for the championship but Fenerbahce won on GD. There were some controversial decisions in a late season game between the two clubs that favored Fener, and Trabzonspor fans have felt cheated ever since.
Injuries were bad but ETH spent 400m. It was his squad. He was the guy who blew a king’s ransom on players like Antony and Mount while going cheap on defenders like Evan’s and Malacia.
Isn’t this a reason to keep him around? Unless you have another manager lined up who uses players in a similar way, you will need to drop another £400 million on players for the new manager?
400m is not enough to fix a shitty mid-table squad loaded with overrated malcontents, let alone over 2 seasons. What's the average spend for the giant European clubs over a full calendar year now, 120m or so? Chelsea spent over 1 billion pounds over the same time period and they only really figured things out in the second half of this season. When Ten Hag got there, Bruno was the only reliable, talented player in the squad. The rest are mediocre, or weak-willed quitters, or both. I mean look at this play from Rashford, he was like this all season:
I think they're trying to change that in the long term by having a more sporting director led recruitment model, as many clubs seemingly want to do. Much easier said than done but that's the idea.
Also, since they recognize they're probably not going to be good next year anyway no matter what they do, and they're building for the long term, there's no point in taking the hit of paying off ETH's contract to get rid of him for a marginal short term improvement.
