General Football 23/24

[Chris]

It's absolutely terrible at the moment and it doesn't help with the pundits laughing it off as a bit of good luck, it's almost every sodding game now you see a dreadful decision either costing a side or allowing a team to score or getting away with a shocking tackle.

Can't see it improving either

Feels like every time I turn sky on theres an officating clanger or 5. I'm sure games are harder to officiate than ever but the linesman was looking straight at the Arsenal one for the pen for example. Oliver just watched Rooney try to break Milner's leg etc. Also feels like we never get any in our favour, can't remember an offside goal, dodgy pen or whatever for us. Not that I want any favours, I'd rather games where just officiated properly but if this is the future then....!

[The_weatherman]

Mason apparently having surgery for a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain, hope it goes well for him.

[Bender]

Mason apparently having surgery for a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain, hope it goes well for him.

These injuries are becoming more frequent,time to give players the option to wear Protective Head gear

[SB]

Mason apparently having surgery for a fractured skull and bleeding in the brain, hope it goes well for him.

What actually happened to him bud?

[baitman]

What actually happened to him bud?

him and cahill went up for the same ball and clashed heads, bad contact and injury.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p9J4Cram1Q"]Ryan Mason and Cahill head clash Ryan Mason injury - YouTube[/ame]

[Irishnev]

Supposed to be done talent this lad

https://twitter.com/m_christenson/st...34532585095168

[ame="https://twitter.com/DeadlineDayLive/status/823486137633226754"]https://twitter.com/DeadlineDayLive/status/823486137633226754[/ame]

[SB]

him and cahill went up for the same ball and clashed heads, bad contact and injury.

Ryan Mason and Cahill head clash Ryan Mason injury - YouTube

Thanks bud. That is nasty.

[shanks69]

Rod Stewart doing the Scottish cup draw

Rod Stewart performs the Scottish Cup draw - YouTube

Certainly looks like he was enjoying himself

[dom9]

I found this pretty fascinating.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/sports/soccer/clubs-apparel-neale-mcdermott-adidas.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fsoccer&action=click&contentCollection=soccer&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

Looking for England’s Next Soccer Phenom? The Adidas Scout Knows


MANCHESTER, England — Neale McDermott’s record as a soccer talent spotter is better than most. Long before Dele Alli was Dele Alli, when he was just a 16-year-old of raw promise at the lower-tier team Milton Keynes Dons, rather than Tottenham’s standard-bearer and England’s nascent superstar, he was on McDermott’s radar.

Demarai Gray was another. McDermott knew about him when he was taking his first tentative steps as a 17-year-old with Birmingham City, a couple of years before he made the great leap into the Premier League with Leicester City.

In the frenzied, highly competitive world of youth scouting, where everyone is seeking a fast track to the next big thing, such successes bestow considerable cachet. McDermott’s seal of approval cannot make or break a player’s career, by any means, but it carries more than a little weight.

His phone rings frequently with inquiries from clubs, to solicit his view on this prospect or that, to ask if there is anyone he is particularly excited about. In the eyes of many, his scouting network is more sophisticated and more comprehensive than those of even the Premier League’s giants. In part that is because McDermott is not employed by a single club, but by a brand: Adidas.

The premium on promise has never been higher in English soccer. Last week, it emerged that Manchester City had paid the League One club Southend United 175,000 pounds (about $215,000) to sign Finley Burns, a 13-year-old defender. It was the highest fee ever paid for a player that age. Last year, City paid Watford a fee that could rise as high as £500,000 ($615,000) for the 14-year-old forward Jadon Sancho.

Half a dozen Premier League clubs had watched Burns at Southend. And the practice of investing so much money in so much raw talent is hardly a recent development: Raheem Sterling was 15 when he joined Liverpool from Queens Park Rangers for £500,000 in 2010, and Jordon Ibe, then 16, made the same journey from Wycombe Wanderers two years later. What has changed, though, is not just the prices clubs are prepared to pay, but the ages of the players they try to sign.

Dave Horrocks, the development officer at Fletcher Moss Rangers — the community team in south Manchester that produced Marcus Rashford, Danny Welbeck and a raft of other stars — said scouts from professional clubs now attended not just “most of the games our sides play, but training sessions, too.”

Their focus is on ever-younger age groups. Matches involving 8- and 9-year-old players are scouted, with the most promising invited to take part in training sessions at the professional clubs, with a view to being offered permanent places in their academies. Horrocks complained to one club recently because one of its talent spotters had approached a 4-year-old and his parents in a parking lot, contravening Fletcher Moss’s strict rules.

It is not just the big clubs, however, that are doing all they can to snatch up prospects. If anything, the battle between the sportswear brands, and particularly the market leaders Adidas and Nike, to put their stamp on the next generation is even more intense.

While smaller-scale players on the scene — such as Puma, Under Armour and New Balance — still prefer to focus on securing contracts with established stars, Adidas and Nike both have established talent identification departments, an approach they have honed in America in sports like basketball and football and have since exported to European soccer.

Neil Smillie, formerly a player with Crystal Palace and Brighton, has headed Nike’s department for more than a decade. In 2013, Adidas appointed McDermott to a similar role, and last year the company also brought in a chief European scout, to tie together the company’s scouting operations across the continent.

Many of the brand-affiliated scouts are part-time employees; to some extent, both rely on their leaders’ contacts within clubs to alert them to players of particular talent. Alli is a case in point.

“Karl Robinson, who was manager of M.K. Dons at the time, is a great advocate for Adidas, and he let us know that Dele was someone worth watching,” McDermott said.

Alli agreed to an endorsement deal with Adidas when he was only 16, but his blistering success since then serves to underline the value of building relationships with players before they have come to prominence. “The idea is to make the players fall in love with Adidas at a young age,” McDermott said.

Phil Foden, playing for England in an under-17 Euro qualifier in October, agreed to a deal with Nike at 14. Credit Ronny Hartmann/Getty Images
Just as with the clubs, that age is growing younger and younger. Phil Foden, another Manchester City prodigy, agreed to a deal with Nike at 14; Ben Elliott, a 13-year-old prospect at Chelsea, is reported to have attracted the attention of the company as well. The companies do not try to spread themselves too thin: McDermott estimated that Adidas has “75 to 100” prospects on contract, with 30 or 40 more on looser terms.

For both companies, specific deals with teenagers fall into three categories. Some are so-called kit-only agreements in which players will be sent a certain number of pairs of footwear, as well as other apparel, a specified number of times a season. Others are given store cards, loaded with as much as £5,000 of credit a year (more than $6,000), to spend on the brand’s goods.

Only the very best prospects are paid directly, in deals often negotiated with agents or, for under-16s, signed by their parents or guardians. A vast majority of these contracts are worth a few thousand dollars a year, and typically last for just a couple of years, though a handful of youth players are already drawing five-figure sums to wear boots at a time when playing for the first team, on television, is still years off.

The hope, of course, is that showing trust in young players will help secure their loyalty if and when they go on to become global stars, but the brands do all they can to limit their exposure.

Endorsement contracts contain, as standard, a “matching rights” clause, meaning that a player who decides not to renew a contract cannot entertain offers from rival brands for at least two months after the end of his current deal, and is forbidden to sign with any of them for six months.

During that period, under such clauses, the label has the right to match any offer the player receives; if it is willing to meet the new terms, the player is required to re-sign, effectively securing him at market rate for the duration of his career.

This bit particularly harks back to pre-Bosman football contract norms.

Endorsement contracts contain, as standard, a “matching rights” clause, meaning that a player who decides not to renew a contract cannot entertain offers from rival brands for at least two months after the end of his current deal, and is forbidden to sign with any of them for six months.

[ChesterDave]

Southend not exactly making friends with their treatment of a 27-year employee.

[Irishnev]

[ame="https://twitter.com/jon_legossip/status/824103039506190338"]https://twitter.com/jon_legossip/status/824103039506190338[/ame]

[ChesterDave]

Has it always been the case that the FA don't have the authority to penalise Welsh clubs misbehaviour even though they are playing in an English league?

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/chester-fc-charged-fa-following-12505151

[Irishnev]

[ame="https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/824509669905461249"]https://twitter.com/tariqpanja/status/824509669905461249[/ame]

I have no idea what size these investors are but them having more money is bad for us - they'all charge us double for their players....!

[Bender]

Van Dijk out for months

[Fosterbloke]

Van Dijk out for months

Dick VanOuten..