[demonrail666]

I assume he's treating the Derby job as an initial step towards becoming a coach, rather than as a way of extending his playing career, and I don't see a Prem club being interested in him on those terms. He doesn't strike me as obvious manager material either, but stranger things have happened.

[choc e-Claire]

Y'all may laugh about the dysfunctionality of your own leagues, but the Australian one has a new team that doesn't even have a proper base, and won't for several years.

It was literally part of a property developer's scheme...

[demonrail666]

So Liverpool v Norwich kicks off the new season.

HT: Liv 4-0 (Hanley og; Salah, VVD, Origi)

Liverpool deserve to be ahead but the score's a bit harsh on Norwich, who've been better than it looks

--

FT: Liv 4-1 (Pukki)

Too little too late. Liverpool didnt score but were in 2nd gear with the game already won. Norwich really weren't bad, though.

[demonrail666]

Well that went well

[h8kurdt]

When you're facing a team like City you can't get downbeat about it. They're something else for sure. Everton'a sounded as exciting as you can imagine. It actually made me glad I was at a christening today.

[demonrail666]

Yeah, Man City were brilliant. Simple as. In the 1st half West Ham were actually pretty good but once they went in front it was just an avalanche. VAR was all that stopped it being even worse.

Didn't see the Everton game but it sounded very cagey

[_tunic_]

whoopsie! The roof of the AZ stadium has collapsed due to heavy wind (and possibly due to the heavy solar panels that were placed on it). Their next home match is on Thursday for the Champions League. It will need to be played elsewhere, and probably other upcoming home matches in the next month(s) too.
Fortunately there were no people inside when this happened

 

There's a rumor going on in the press that PSV is trying to get Ribéry. It would be great, but I don't think they will manage to succeed

[!@#$%!]

holy fuck

[_tunic_]

Yes indeed Holy Fuck, Ribery coming to PSV! Ha, it didn't happen, he was too expensive. Which I could have told them beforehand, but I was never asked



Here's a Google translation of a news article from this morning on the collapsed stadium. Wow, this will be a cesspool that will last for a few months.


Some more background info if you're interested: Look up the names Dirk Scheringa and DSB Bank. He has a history in collapsing

Former alderman: Nobody wanted to hear that something was wrong with AZ stadium

What happened in 2006 in Alkmaar? Were matters covered with the mantle of love to realize the AZ football stadium at all costs? There were indeed question marks about safety, but hardly anyone in Alkmaar wanted to hear it.

It seems 2006 all over again in Alkmaar. The discussion about whether the stadium of football club AZ was safe flared up again after a part of the roof collapsed on Saturday. ,, We warned about it at the time. In the meantime, I have requested all documents, investigations and reports from that time from the municipality, "says Victor Kloos, party chairman of OPA, Independent Party Alkmaar, the largest group in the city council.

In 2006, Kloos was alderman for Safety. He fell from his chair when he saw a secret report about the fire safety of the football stadium, which was almost finished at the time. The report circulated in the town hall. "Very special that as an alderman for Safety I didn't have it." That report was from construction and fire expert Ynso Suurenbroek. Suurenbroek commented on fire safety and the robustness of the construction that he described the day after the roof collapsed as a "spaghetti construction". In his view, it was a matter of time before the roof would collapse.

Revoke or leave

Kloos: "It was shortly after the elections and I was an alderman and a council member. Our group asked questions about the robustness of the construction." Kloos got a head start from the mayor and fellow aldermen, because as alderman he had whispered the critical questions to the OPA fraction. "I had to withdraw the questions or I could leave. But I refused." Kloos's attitude was "unusually destructive" and "out of all proportions," the other members of the college ruled. Kloos was rocked and OPA was not allowed to participate in the negotiations for the new college as a punishment.

The sitting college of mayor and aldermen, without the dismissed Kloos, ignored Suurenbroek's report. Kloos: "If I am very honest, I have never really understood why. I think they just didn't get the report at the time. The college just wanted the stadium to come and was not waiting for discussion." Dirk Scheringa, then owner of AZ and financier of the stadium that was named after his DSB Bank, according to Kloos knew about the report from Suurenbroek.

Stamping

OPA gave it up to get the critical report on the agenda. "The city was happy that Scheringa wanted to start this stadium. All of Alkmaar really wanted a new football stadium. We also. The city council had agreed unanimously. There was no majority to discuss Suurenbroek's report, we had made our point and then you become a piss mustache if you go through. Or it is explained as if you are against AZ, and we are not at all."

The construction of the stadium continued, in accordance with the criticized construction. That construction was "optimized" by Ingenieursgroep Romkes BV. Costs had to be cut for millions of euros. The AZ stadium still adorns the company's webpage as an aptitude test. Name giver Simon Romkes sold the company in 2013 and now runs a smaller company with his son. He throws the phone down and refuses to answer questions about the construction of the collapsed roof that he has calculated.

At the municipality of Alkmaar, according to spokeswoman Ellen Duijn, the 2006 reports are being searched for with all their might. According to football club AZ, a building permit has been granted for the solar panels on the roof, which also includes a recalculation for the construction. The municipality has not yet found that permit. However, it appears from the Safety Declaration for the KNVB for the 2019/2020 football season that the building and home supervision department of the municipality last inspected the stadium's "structural safety" in April last year.

Pisket steel

Andries Broersma, who was involved in the construction as a chief engineer and was later asked by the municipality of Alkmaar as the construction supervisor, states that the construction calculations from that time were good. When constructing a project, it is ultimately the contractor who translates the construction drawings, he says. "Then building is also trust. You must assume that the prescribed steel is used and not Romanian piping steel."

According to Broersma, it is impossible to check every screw in and the quality of the steel supplied. Moreover, the necessary things can go wrong during construction. "If a construction worker with a box of bolts at a great height has to connect two profiles with six bolts, and he does not get one properly because the platform is shaking in the wind, he might just hit him." If the bolt fails, the force is distributed to the other five and they are not calculated. "It happens. That is the practice. No builder has the time or money to wait until the wind is quiet again. "

Investigation

It is still unclear why the roof has collapsed. A construction error? A loose bolt? Inferior steel? Wasn't the construction good? OPA is now the largest municipal council in Alkmaar and Kloos wants the bottom stone. "The book was closed after my resignation, but will now open again after thirteen years." He thinks it is still going too far to say that he was right in 2006. "First I want the investigation that makes AZ wait, and I also hope that the Dutch Safety Board starts an investigation. If something alarming comes out of it, the Suurenbroek report must be on the table. Then there is plenty of political discussion again."

Kloos was again the alderman in Alkmaar from 2011 to 2018 and had security in his portfolio for the last four years. Security in the AZ stadium was never an issue at the town hall again. "Apart from the warning we gave at the time, the roof collapsed like a thunderbolt in a clear sky."

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by _tunic_

Yes indeed Holy Fuck, Ribery coming to PSV! Ha, it didn't happen, he was too expensive. Which I could have told them beforehand, but I was never asked

hahaha. i was so shocked by the photo i did not notice the ribéry part (unless you added later)

thanks for the translation... let’s see what it says

—

wow... sounds like right out of “the wire”

[!@#$%!]

barely catching up with the world here— coutinho on loan to bayern from barcelona

[_tunic_]

The 10 nominees for the FIFA Puskás Award have been revealed. My vote would be for Billie Simpson. Brilliant goal, and it's always good if the underdog wins from the Messi's and Ibrahgods.


About the collapsed stadium roof: the current conclusion is that it was caused by bad welding connections. And that it had to be done cheaply. Their next home match for the Euro league will be in the Twente stadium, which is on the other side of the country

[h8kurdt]

Tbf, Messi has never won a puskas award.

[!@#$%!]

^ is that for the most awesome goal of the year? does zlatan win it every time?

[demonrail666]

Originally Posted by _tunic_

The 10 nominees for the [url="https://www.fifa.com/the-best-fifa-football-awards/news/cast-your-puskas-award-vote-now"]Billie Simpson. Brilliant goal, and it's always good if the underdog wins

I'm all for the underdog but was that even a pro game?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUfmyySHDEc

[demonrail666]

Watched Everton v Aston Villa

Not trying to score points, given West Ham's iffy start, but Silva has a real problem this season, working out where Everton's goal's are gonna come from.

[h8kurdt]

It was the same issue as last year though so it's nothing surprising. There were some terrible performances by Everton last night, Gomes being the main one for me. How he was kept on for the whole game is beyond me. The massive plus for me was Kean. At 19 he looked light years ahead of some the more experienced players on the pitch. Hopefully Richarlison can find his scoring boots again too.

Having said that all credit should go to Aston Villa. If Everton had played with half the enthusiasm Villa did they'd have been alright.

[h8kurdt]

Great piece about David Silva I thought some of you might dig

Pep Guardiola misjudged David Silva back in 2010, but not as badly as Real Madrid.

Guardiola admitted on Friday that he didn’t think Silva would do well in English football.

“He’s a technical player, he’s not playing box-to-box,” Guardiola said. “My image of England from the outside, I thought, ‘Maybe he’s going to suffer’. But I was happily, happily wrong.”

At least Guardiola eventually got to benefit from Silva’s talents, unlike Madrid, who blew their chance in frankly strange circumstances.

Everything was in place for Silva to move to the Santiago Bernabeu for about £30 million from Valencia. Florentino Perez set the ball rolling after a game between the two sides in the Spanish capital at the end of 2009-10, when he went down into the dressing room area, flanked by two of his nephews, to make a beeline for the playmaker. When Silva emerged, Perez approached and asked for a photo and an autograph for his relatives. Slightly confused and perhaps eager to get onto the team bus as soon as possible (some things never change), Silva gesticulated to his suitcase. Perez called for a Madrid delegate to take care of it: “Take the suitcase to the locker room, because next year David will be with us.”

Silva smiled sheepishly, took the picture and made his way home, and in the weeks that followed he became more and more open to the transfer. But once everything was in place, Madrid suddenly backed away and called it all off. City made their move and the rest is history – on Sunday at Bournemouth he played his 400th game for the club, in his 10th and final year.

“He’s been a fantastic servant to Manchester City,” Paul Power, who played 445 games for City between 1975 and 1986 and was the last player to reach the 400 milestone, tells The Athletic. “I think it’s more difficult these days to be loyal to one club. In my day, the directors of the club dominated the situation, so if a player wanted to get away he probably wouldn’t be able to. Nowadays if a player wants to get away, it’s usually quite easy for his agent to find a way. In those circumstances, he’s been fantastically loyal to City: he’s never caused a problem, like the situation with (Leroy) Sane at the moment.”

Had Madrid handled themselves better a decade ago, perhaps they would have stood a chance of taking him from City. In the weeks that followed Silva’s move to City, the reasons for Madrid’s change of heart were reported in the Spanish press. At this point, they make for surprising reading. It was said that Madrid carried out a complete study of his character and decided not to sign him because of concerns about his private life. He did not carry himself with the “required dignity” for Real Madrid. There were even rumours they felt he drank too much alcohol and was too much of a partier.

Were they watching the same David Silva?

“I don’t know where those rumours came from,” Silva said several years later, with his first Premier League title in the bag for City. “I have a clean conscience and I have always been a professional. That situation didn’t make me angry but it did seem very strange to me. There was interest and perhaps they wanted to end it with that. I’m very happy with the decision that I made.”

There is no doubt that everybody at Manchester City feels the same way. It did take him some time to adapt to life in England – he had a quiet first few months and did look as small and shy as perhaps Guardiola expected, but he became more comfortable as he and his family began to learn English, while a close friend, David Quintana, joined him in Manchester and eventually earned a position at the club looking after first-team players off the field.

Since then Silva has not looked back, although he pretty much is now as he was back then: he lives a quiet life with his family, especially so after the premature birth of his son Mateo, a period of his career which again proved his non-footballing qualities. When he’s with friends – he is very close with one City physio – he’ll often be playing La Pocha, a Spanish card game (you can download the app and try it out).

You’d have to go very far to find anybody connected to City with a bad word to say about Silva. Power’s observation about his loyalty to the club is typical of the praise that comes his way – after the consistently impressive performances, which have had fans wondering for years how they will replace him, everybody goes back to his character.

“I don’t just think he’s a clever player – everybody knows he’s a clever player and that he creates situations for other players – but he’s also a brave player,” Power adds, harking back to bygone eras. “I think there are two types of bravery, there’s the Mike Doyle centre half type brave, who will put his body on the line to prevent a goal, but there’s also bravery where you take the ball under pressure, you know you’re going to get clattered but you still put that pressure on yourself, and I think David is that type of brave. He chases the ball down, he does the defensive side of the game when the opposition have got the ball. He’s the complete attacking midfield player, really.”


These are the reasons he is now captain. After Vincent Kompany’s departure the City players took a vote at the start of the season, and decided to honour Silva, who plans to leave next season after 10 years, by giving him the armband.

Kevin De Bruyne was one of those who voted for him: “He came out on top and I think that’s normal,” the Belgian told The Athletic. “He’s been here for nine years and everybody has great respect for him, and everybody showed that.”

It may sound obvious but Silva is said to be genuinely delighted to have been chosen as captain, as he recognises that show of recognition by his team-mates. As you might expect, he is not a Kompany-type captain.

“Vinny is very vocal,” De Bruyne said. “David is very low key but when he speaks everybody listens. I think everybody has his own type of leadership and I think he is somebody who tries to control it in the game and maybe do it more in a silent way.”

There may be an element of surprise in the “listen to David” mantra: sources suggest that he doesn’t talk often, so when he does, it’s unusual, but always useful.

He is fiercely protective of the club’s young players, too, certainly with Brahim Diaz (a bond strengthened by the Spanish connection) before the 20-year-old joined Real Madrid. If any young player needs advice, Silva is on hand and, if he feels one of them has been unfairly treated, he has not been slow to fight their corner, even at the expense of arguing with senior players.

He has been a very positive influence on Phil Foden, the man who may one day step into his shoes. The two have worked closely on the training ground in recent years, and while Foden, 19, does not need any pointers on his technique, Silva often takes time out to explain why he does certain things in matches or in training: if it creates space for team-mates, or confuses opponents. Sources close to Foden say this has been invaluable, as these are the lessons you only learn with experience.

And what experience Silva has, both good and bad. Having won titles under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, Silva was struggling with injuries in the months that led up to Guardiola’s arrival. He usually needed injections to get him through matches, despite telling staff that he needed to manage his game time to fully overcome a persistent ankle problem.

Guardiola’s first season was a struggle for many, and some of those who did not understand his methods found themselves moved on. Guardiola felt that Silva, however, fully grasped what he wanted to achieve after their very first meeting together. The Catalan had done his own research ahead of his arrival in England, speaking to Silva’s previous coaches in Spain – they did not highlight anything that came up in Real Madrid’s character report.

Silva has shown his qualities throughout his time with Guardiola, so much so that he played every three days towards the end of last season, despite again having to tell staff that he needed to manage his game time, with age and weary legs now the primary concern.



His form suffered and this season he will not play every week – last weekend he was on the bench against Tottenham – but his worth to this team is unquestioned and he showed that again on Sunday. Guardiola spent the week in a foul mood, with even those close to him advised to give him a wide berth, so it was no surprise he turned to Silva again as he looked for a win on the south coast.

“It’s easy to play with him,” De Bruyne added. “Obviously we’ve played a lot of times together and I have a good connection with him. He makes football look easy: when you look at him, he is always in control of the game and I think that is his biggest quality.”

Many have called for Bernardo Silva to simply slot in and take his place, but that is to show a lack of understanding of their respective strengths, and David Silva’s role in the team. He is the hub for the entire left-hand side, the go-between for the left back, the defensive midfielder, the left winger and the central striker. He gets the ball in tight spaces and gives it to somebody else, the quick exchange often proving enough for a team-mate to dart in behind the opposition defence.
.

[h8kurdt]

And the rest

City have made the close-range tap-in their go-to goal under Guardiola and it is no surprise so many of those come from cut-backs from the left-hand side, where Silva presides. He is not always the one making the assist, but he is usually the one engineering the chance. Look at the first goal at Bournemouth for an example. It is probably no coincidence, either, that most of Sane’s good games have come with Silva in the side, and that many of his bad ones have been without Silva next to him.

Ilkay Gundogan is probably best suited to take on that role in the coming months, but the expectation – and certainly the hope around City – is that Foden will one day do it.

But there’s a long way to go this season and there’s still an awful lot that David Silva can still give. Madrid’s loss has been City’s gain

[_tunic_]

the most important news of today:


Donny van de Beek is dating the daughter of Dennis Bergkamp, the same man that discovered him as a kid.