timelets

Aston Villa won the Europa cup today, their manager's fifth with his third club. Unai Emery (1971, AV) is one of Spanish-born football managers who over the last 10 years achieved great success in Europe. Others would be Pep Guardiola(1971, MC), Mikel Arteta(1982, Arsenal), Luis Enrique(1970, PSG), Xabi Alonso (1981, Beyer L.).

What's the Spain's secret? Arguably, football is the most successful industry in the country. Is it the competition between Real Madrid and Barcelona that stimulates excellence?

In Montreal, Canadian fans are booing the US national anthem at the Four Nations hockey tournament.

Fuck trump.

upd 3 fights in 9 seconds.

fuck trump

upd McDavid! Canada 1 US 0

upd Well, it went downhill after that. Final score: Canada 1 US 3

On a totally unrelated subject. Last season Harry Kane was the captain of Tottenham and he scored a bunch of goals for the team. In summer he became a free agent and signed with Bayern for a cool E100M fee. Everybody thought that Tottenham was finished.

Not so fast. With Kane gone, other Tottenham players are scoring at a nice pace and the team is at the top of the Premier League. Moreover, they are playing well as a team, which is definitely the work of their manager. Of course, Tottenham got lucky in the controversial game with Liverpool, but hey in sports "they don't ask how you score; they ask how many." In the meantime, Kane is providing the much needed scoring for Bayern. Not much adjustment was needed for him to become productive for the team.

I can't remember any other case where the departure of the best player improved both his former and the current teams.

When I was a kid I always dreamt of scoring a goal like this one. Never happened though.

Financial Fair Play was introduced by Uefa to prevent clubs in its competitions from spending beyond their means and stamp out what its then president Michel Platini called "financial doping" within football.

Clubs need to balance football-related expenditure - transfers and wages - with television and ticket income, plus revenues raised by their commercial departments. Money spent on stadiums, training facilities, youth development or community projects is exempt.

https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/51510284

I really like the term "financial doping."

This call in the last seconds of the Raptors game was even better than the famous Mexican "Gooooooooooooool!!!!"

https://twitter.com/sung_minkim/status/1127750672110112773

The average NFL career is short — about 3.3 years.
Quarterbacks fare longer, with an average career span of 4.4 years.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-backup-qb-who-gets-paid-a-lot-to-never-play/

That would explain the importance of systems and set plays