Official Football Thread

Barcelona were held to a goalless draw by Slavia Prague. What an embarrassment for Barcelona, but what a great achievement for Slavia Prague. Apparently this is only the third time that Barcelona have failed to score in a home Champions League match against a team from outside the top five European leagues (Spain, England, Italy, Germany, France): a draw against Benfica and a defeat to Dynamo Kiev (neither of whom are mugs by any measure).

Ajax are playing away to Chelsea at the moment with no away fans in the stadium due to trouble caused by Ajax fans in Valencia. Apparently the Ajax fans who were planning on travelling to London decided to go to a Leyon Orient match this week as well or instead but the police got wind of this and rescheduled that match. You just can't trust Dutch people can you @Forostar? :nonono:
 
I have never seen a manager as clueless manager as Ernesto Valverde (Barcelona).
Their best player in the first half was their RB. And what does he do? He moves him to the LB at halftime.

Some interesting results today. Those Chelsea-Ajax and Dortmund-Inter games were pretty crazy.
 
srfc said:
Wow, that Scottish Cup Runners Up medal probably gets a bit overlooked on the mantlepiece now.
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Yeah, I'm sure when he thinks about that match he can wipe away the tears with all the £50 notes he's got from his Liverpool salary. The when he remembers that he was dropped by Celtic as a teenager for being "too small" he can wipe away the tears with some £100 notes.
srfc said:
Big Al responds to the "controversy" in the Belfast Telegraph, the irony being that the Belfast Telegraph are the ones who generated the controversy in the first place.
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Why is a Belfast newspaper weighing in on this anyway? ::) I had a look at one or two of the online articles from the Irish papers about this and they all quoted a few tweets of varying opinions. The ones that made the best point were from people pointing out that the people criticizing Alan Mannus are probably the same people who praised James Maclean for refusing to wear a poppy. I think Maclean was quite entitled to refuse to wear a poppy and I think one or two Serbian players did the same (Vidic and Matic probably).

This anthem debacle seems like a bit of a storm in a teacup and will probably be forgotten by the time the Irish season starts again.

On a topic vaguely but inextricably linked to Ireland, Celtic and Rangers both won in the UEFA Cup last night against tough opposition. Celtic came from behind away to Lazio with an injury time winner to qualify for the next round, and Rangers beat Porto 2-0 at home.

A couple of weeks ago the Celtic fans had some nice banners to welcome the Lazio fans to Glasgow.

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This one depicts Benito Mussolini as a nod to the facist part of Lazio's fanbase. If only @SeventhSonRoberto were still here.

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They also had a display in tribute to the Italian far-left terrorist group Brigate Rosse, which I suspect Celtic fans would liken to the IRA. I think UEFA will be taking some action against Celtic for this.
 
I thought that was really stupid from Celtic, given that the away leg was still to come, putting their own support at risk for the away leg, and lo and behold, 2 lads were stabbed in Rome.
 
srfc said:
I thought that was really stupid from Celtic, given that the away leg was still to come, putting their own support at risk for the away leg, and lo and behold, 2 lads were stabbed in Rome.
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To be fair, Celtic as a club weren't responsible for that stuff. That was all down to the idiots in the Green Brigade who want to politicize everything. Neil Lennon has asked them to leave their politics at home before, but they always have to make a statement. Perhaps they could inspect banners before the match but that might be extremely difficult to do.

It ended up with three people getting stabbed and a bus which broke down leaving the stadium was ambushed by the Lazio Ultras. This is a recurring problem in Rome. Fans of English teams have been attacked on several occasions going back years, and there was the Irish guy who was attacked in Liverpool by an away fan.
 
Black Wizard said:
To be fair, Celtic as a club weren't responsible for that stuff. That was all down to the idiots in the Green Brigade who want to politicize everything.
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True, and also it doesn't excuse the scum who perpetrated the attacks either. Those attacks would probably have happened anyway.
 
Watching Northern Ireland v the Netherlands at the moment, there's a flag which looks like it has two of the lion symbols from British Lion
 
Yay. Finally. After more than 6 years, we finally qualified for a big tournament again! Euro 2020, here we come.

And congrats to Finland for their first time. I understood the whole nation was celebrating.
 
Aye it will be good the see the Dutch back at a tournament, it has been strange not having them around.
Happy for the Finns too, no doubt they will be as much craic as their Nordic counterparts.
 
srfc said:
Watching Northern Ireland v the Netherlands at the moment, there's a flag which looks like it has two of the lion symbols from British Lion
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Orange Derby! I wonder if the lion was the same one as the DUP logo?

Kosovo are hosting England today and giving them a much warmer welcome than a small number of the Bulgarian fans did.

www.bbc.co.uk

Kosovo v England: Excitement for final Euro 2020 qualifying game

England are greeted with enthusiasm and warmth in Pristina as they close out their Euro 2020 qualifying campaign against Kosovo.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

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Nicest country in the Balkans?
 
OK, this match doesn't matter a lot, but at least try ... drawing against Malta at half time isn't acceptable.

I think I'll watch Ireland vs Denmark instead and check the result of our game once it's over.
 
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