Kaizero

That was said when he was left out of Chile's squad for two friendly matches - he's in their Copa America squad, and playing.

Using Norway as a comparison, we suffered from similar issues when Rosenborg won the league 13 seasons in a row. When you have one "good" team, that team essentially creates a monopoly when it comes to signing all the up and coming young players - meaning the nation as a whole end up losing out on tons of players that would've become at least half-decent footballers due to never making the grade and breaking through at the club with the monopoly. This is just an assumption as I am not too familiar with the Scottish league, but I can imagine something similar is going on in Scotland with Celtic and Rangers "hoovering" up all the talented young Scottish players, resulting in those not breaking through at those two clubs getting discarded without motivation left. After Rosenborg started falling apart, other clubs in Norway have become great at bringing through young players - which has led to us having more quality players than we've ever had. Just a shame we refuse to hire a manager that know how to utilize the fact we have a golden generation of offensive minded/technically gifted players, instead refusing to sack one of the most defensive minded/kick the ball at the big striker managers in Norwegian football history

Why would he want to spend his golden years torturing himself?

Southgate's England in a nutshell: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeggwk3T/

He's in the Chile squad for Copa America and played against Peru, so not that vital after all that he speak Spanish then

Looked that guy up on Wiki and this is an amazing anecdote: "After noticing he was half Chilean whilst playing Football Manager, a group of fans began a social media campaign to get Brereton Díaz picked for Chile."

This TikTok sums up England perfectly: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeggwk3T/ “Sideways. Now backwards. Sideways again. Ouuhh yeahhh! I particulary like it when a player that’s lit up the Premier League all season suddenly act like he’s never seen a football before.”

Switzerland 0-2 Germany Scotland 2-1 Hungary Albania 2-3 Spain Croatia 1-1 Italy Netherlands 2-0 Austria France 2-0 Poland England 1-1 Slovenia Denmark 2-2 Serbia Slovakia 1-3 Romania Ukraine 2-1 Belgium Czech Republic 2-2 Turkey Georgia 2-2 Portugal

He essentially ensures that the keeper cannot make an attempt at diving after the ball. He'd never have saved it but as the rule is structured, the defender, by taking away the keeper's opportunity to dive for the ball - is clearly "interfering in play". Do I think it should be that way when the keeper would have had no chance regardless? Absolutely not, but here we are I think the rules of the game need a massive overhaul and that them not having been properly updated plays a big part in making VAR not function as well as it should. Well, that and English refs being absolute shitstains, of course.

There is not, there are just teams in the "Elite" group that have better overall terms for their sponsorship deals with Adidas than we currently have. As said, the difference in "ranking" 99% applies to what marketing effort Adidas is expected to put in, as well as teams on "lower" rankings not getting certain perks given to the "Elite" group by Adidas. Everything else will have been negotiated on a team-by-team basis. Really confused by why there seems to be so much confusion about this on here, widely available online what the different Adidas sponsorship "levels" include for clubs 🤷🏼‍♂️ Adidas has an overall sponsorship deal with the MLS, which gives the MLS teams the same perks that all the "Elite" teams get, bar worldwide marketing.

Explains why that question hasn't popped up again then

Read the last paragraph one more time, Flamengo is the only non-European "Elite" team. It's not consistent and it's not meant to be consistent, perks given each team vary based on the individual sponsorship agreements. "Elite" status has more to do with separating the level of effort Adidas will put in when it comes to marketing than anything else.

Quick sidenote, "Filippo Inzaghi" is also the answer to one of my all time favourite pub quiz questions: Who's the only player having played in one of the "big" European leagues to have scored against all of the other teams in their league over the course of a single season? Not sure if that's still true though, been more than a few years since I've heard it asked

We are ranked as "Elite" by Adidas. You know by looking at the differences between their "Elite" package vs their "Premium" package, most notably that our kits get promoted globally by Adidas themselves and not just nationally (like they do for their "Premium" clubs). We'll also get a confirmation when we get the away shirt reveal, as "Elite" teams are meant to get a long-sleeve version of their away kit (not the home kit). However, Adidas also operate with a ranking system for the clubs within each of their sponsorship tiers and more perks are given the clubs at the top of those rankings than the ones below. As far as some light online takes me, it looks like Bayern Munchen, Man Utd, Arsenal and Real Madrid form some kind of Adidas "Big Four".

Italy: Filippo Inzaghi France: Zinedine Zidane Spain: Raul Holland: Edgar Davids Germany: Miroslav Klose Brazil: Ronaldinho Argentina: Hernan Crespo Portugal: Luis Figo Norway: Roar Strand

Croatia 2-1 Albania Germany 5-0 Hungary Scotland 0-2 Switzerland Slovenia 1-1 Serbia Denmark 0-1 England Spain 2-2 Italy Slovakia 1-0 Ukraine Poland 2-2 Austria Netherlands 2-4 France Georgia 2-1 Czechia Turkey 2-2 Portugal Belgium 0-2 Romania

Off-topic, but just realized you can literally see the rabbit hole deepen by looking at my list of "to-read" bookmarks that I'll never open again

Just for the record, I'm in no way saying I have an intimate knowledge of the relations between the countries in the region - my knowledge of that is based on having had a few deep trips down the rabbit hole that is ADHD-hyperfocus wiki-binges

Can't understand how most people are opposed to a 32 team tournament for the Euros or a 64 team tournament for the WC - even though that would give us more matches between nations most neutrals would never watch if they weren't happening during a tournament, especially as the ones complaining about the possibility of more nations at the EC/WC almost universally praise the matches between "lesser" sides and say they enjoy watching nations they'd never normally watch 🤷🏼‍♂️

Georgia + Armenia = Friendly Turkey + Armenia/Georgia = Unfriendly Granted, I would think Armenians hate Turks a lot more than Georgians. Erdoğan essentially said Georgias second largest city belonged to Turkey in 2017, and that's just recent history - lest we forget Georgia was under Ottoman rule for centuries. https://eurasianet.org/georgians-wary-of-turkeys-rising-influence-in-batumi That said, in recent history things have been fairly cordial, bar the odd "Georgia should be Turkish" comment from Turks every now and then - but the existence of those views among Turks is why there's tension/distrust/hatred.

It's almost like these two nations have intensely hated each other for hundreds of years.

Apparently the "bother" has been severely exaggerated by media outlets and actually didn't go beyond balled up paper being thrown at eachother by both sides, words being shouted - in addition to an empty plastic bottle (or a few) having been thrown into the air

As a neutral, it really, really, bugs me how shit Southgate is making England play given how offensive and technically gifted most of this generation of England players are

I mean, the guy might have been responsible for this incident: