Thing is the deal said the money should go to the victims of the war; not specifically Ukrainian victims. Sure the invaded party are traditional the victims of the invasion in question.

But I think Roman wants to drag out the whole thing. I don’t think the other Oligarchs are happy if he gives money to any non-separatist Ukrainian. Meanwhile the UK government cannot sanction it if even 1 million pounds of the money goes to grieving Russian mothers. So the money are stuck in limbo because RM’s assets are frozen not seized.

So I think it’s more a question of political convenience

Not saying it never happens. But many footballers are kinda-injured all the time. Makes sense they need a game off once in a while.

Broadcasters think they get more money this way.

Idk. Messi and Ronaldo has dominated for countless years and Ronaldo also won it when he was at Man Utd (first time around).

I think there are a couple of things this year. Like KDB, Rodri and Haaland all splitting the man city votes. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that some people think KDB or Rodri was better than Haaland. Man City are an incredible team and individual awards is more achievable when you are the undisputed star your team.

Henry 2003: Nedved was also insanely good in that period. I get why some people thought Henry was better; but there wasn’t daylight between the two players.

Ultimately individual awards in team sports are a bit weird.

several of them are either at Real Madrid or angling for a move there. It’s just much better pr to praise the Real Madrid legend rather than his Barcelona rival.

Remember these kids might be capable of looking up to both legends at the same time, which is probably the case for the most part.

Also the world has been split more or less in half over the two stars, when these young guns grew up. Just randomly half of them would gravitate more to Ronaldo and it’s not that significant that you can name a large group of players looking up to Ronaldo.

I don’t think you should read too much into it.

Not a big shock that the owners of the 20 clubs aren’t the best people to police the 20 clubs.

I think the money are still sitting in a bank account, but yeah.

Yes and no.

The closed league isn’t great there isn’t a lot of jeopardy in the relegation battle that isn’t there.

Regular season where you don’t win if you win it also isn’t for me.

The entire draft system and lack of youth commitment from teams…. Well your development can be rather disturbing in both systems.

Yeah it’s true. The opportunity for another Leicester has all but evaporated, if Barca/Real miss out in La Liga it’s because they fucked up and not because Atletico did well.

Ajax or Porto wining Champions League is also a distant memory of a time that used to be.

Us sports also has issues. No relegation and the incentive to sometimes loose games in order to get a better draft pick. Premier League is exciting from day 1-20 because even if the champions are crowned in may, the European spots and relegation won’t have been sorted.

It should be Man udt. Simply because they have the highest wage bill.

But I think Chelsea.

Their owners might not know a lot about football but they at least trying to learn and they know high revenue isn’t a guarantee if they keep underperforming.

Also it seems healthier to be a Chelsea manager than Man Utd ditto.

Pep has always been really good at managing minutes without getting his players pissed and the club signs new players regularly.

A bit more consistency might have made one or two seasons of theirs slightly better. But this way they always have fresh legs and minds.

I would get with two big breaks in a year. Geography simply means certain places are unsuited for football in June.

But yes group international games into one or two periods every year and that’s it.

Things take time. In isolation I don’t think it’s a surprise that amount needs time to settle into a new role.

Yes. If you give him a job he is suited for he will do it really well.

Zlatan to Barca

Fabregas to Barca

Beckham to real Madrid, when they sold Makelele to make room.

Robbie Keane to Liverpool.

Tough to say for sure. It’s probably someone like idk Riauelme who got limited by other aspects of his game and didn’t always have the best team mates to convert his through balls

Better distribution of the money. Including international tv deal. Potentially even the part of the European tv money. And not just in the premier league, you need to reduce the gap from PL to championship and from Championship to L1 and from that to L2 and maybe even to National League as well.(gosh it’s both good and bad that England is football mad).

This should make the incentive to overspend in order to move up a tier smaller and clubs can run more sustainably. And allow teams to do more long term planning and not hire 9 new players if they win promotion. Now this doesn’t impact the top so much as the bottom; but it’s the most important change.

In the top we probably have to wait it out until Abu Dhabi gets bored and hope the Saudis gets bored before they take over. We did see this with China where the central government from one day to the next decided to just stop private citizens from investing in football and Inter had to sell out some very good players.

We could make a hard salary cap that fits what - say - Spurs or Palace are capable of sustaining. That way you almost all clubs would have a fair chance of getting into Europa and big legacy clubs would regularly miss out. Problem is that if KdB then get a private sponsorship deal with Ethihad Airways or something… it’s tough to police efficiently.

Yes and no.

It’s tough to get from the current setup to a fan owned model. The private owners have legal right to own what they have bought, government seizing asset owner by private individuals isn’t necessarily a great thing. At to that many owners are foreign and even foreign states so the diplomatic head ache would be far greater than many MPs would care to take on, let alone a PM.

Football clubs are important cultural institutions in their local community and beyond. It makes a lot of sense that they shouldn’t be run as for profit businesses by soulless American hedge funds, investors trying to turn it into the NBA or the play things of ultra rich kids or Russian gangsters.

But if we got to that point would it be great?

Well we have seen foreign clubs being fan owned or partly fan owned make very shortsighted decisions. Fans are impatient and will tend to favour decisions where you overspend now and figure that it will make more money in the long run; but it doesn’t always go like that(Barcelona and Schalke says hello). Private Owners also tend to do this, but then investor can pay the bill(though sometimes they don’t. But that can be sorted with some salary caps.

In the BuLi the non-Bayern teams struggle to find the investment needed if they are ever to catch up with Bayern.

Funny enough we have also seen the fan owned giants in FCB+ RM being the most gung ho about adopting more business like decision making, being ruthless in pursuing International Super League and putting pressure on UEFA, La Liga and anyone else in their way.

I would like fan owned clubs; even if it does mean Man Utd gets back on top with their bigger fan base.

No it’s not particularly when you go from a greedy Six member to a local club.

If you were a glory hunter you’d probably have picked Citeh or Real

He was very good. There are a few things counting against him; he had the bad luck of being from Nesta’s generation and his move to Madrid didn’t work out very well because that club was in its clownery phase. (Leave it to Real Ma-fucking-drid to still win titles during their clown periods, take notes Liverpool, Chelsea and Man Utd!)

Serie A at the time had so many great central defenders that other than Nesta they struggled to stand out individually. Maldini is an exception because he started at LB and moved in so everyone knew how great he was by then.

In 2006 WC Cannavaro really showed how great he was and that probably had to do with Nest being out injured. Not that Cannavaro was good, but he caught some many eyes compared to his previous career.