The Battle For Europe
A look at the Premier League run-in after Chelsea’s win over “champions elect” Manchester City and ahead of West Ham’s Sunday game at home against Everton:
ManCity unexpectedly lost 1:2 against their future opponents in the CL final (with Aguero missing a penalty and Chelsea scoring in injury time), which meant that they will have to wait at least until next week’s game against Newcastle to be crowned PL champions. However, if the Sky Blues lose at St James’s Park next Friday, they still could be leapfrogged by Manchester United in the last three rounds if the Red Devil’s win all their remaining games…
That’s quite unlikely, but well, who would have thought that Leicester would be defeated by Newcastle 2:4 on Friday night?
This unexpected result could mean that West Ham could still make the Champions League despite fourth placed Chelsea being on a very fine run and difficult to be caught. In a discussion on BT-Sports Glenn Hoddle as well as Rio Ferdinand said they think that Leicester (after suffering that shock loss against Newcastle and having very difficult games ahead) could finish outside of the Champions League places with West Ham capitalising. What a finish to this season that would be!
Come on you Irons!
Wie kann man nur….
… mit so einem hässlichen Auswärtsdress in einem Semifinale antreten?
Roma 3-2 Man Utd (5-8 on aggregate): Solskjaer’s side through to Europa League final!
The Champions League final will be an all English affair with Manchester City and Chelsea meeting in Istanbul on 29 May. But with Arsenal having been eliminated by the “Yellow Submarine”, the Europa League final in Gdańsk three days earlier will see a match between Spanish side Villarreal (under former Arsenal boss Emery) and Manchester United.
The “yellow submarine” which eliminated the Austrian representative Salzburg in the first knockout round of this season’s competition, are the only club from the continent that made a final this year preventing a repeat of 2019. In that year both European Cup finals were played between English outfits when Liverpool and Tottenham were the opponents in the final of the Champions League in Madrid (2:0), and Chelsea and Arsenal played the final of the Europa League in Baku (4:1).
This year’s finals will be played in Istanbul and Gdańsk. The CL Final is rumoured to be played in front of 19,000 spectators, while in Gdańsk 9,500 fans will be allowed into the stadium.
Fußballklubs unter Denkmalschutz!
Nach dem Super League Desaster wird es neue Regeln für die Fußballklubs geben. Wie groß der Ärger über die Gründung der schließlich schnell gescheiterten Super League ist und wie sich über Jahre angestaute Unzufriedenheit mit den “billionaire owners” der Klubs nun entlädt, zeigte der Stadion-Sturm von ManUtd Fans am Wochenende. Das erste „Geisterspiel mit Platzsturm“! Und die Forderung der Fans, die überall lauter wird, heißt Mitsprache! Wie bei einem unter Denkmalschutz stehenden Gebäude sollen die Eigentümer der Klubs damit nicht mehr tun und lassen können, was sie wollen (aus The Telegraph):
Malcolm Clarke, chair of the Football Supporters’ Association, said that a “seismic” moment had arrived and stressed that the Government’s review into football, which will be overseen by former sports minister Tracey Crouch, must lead to meaningful fan involvement.
“[A football club] is a bit like a listed building,” Clarke said. “Just because you own it doesn’t mean you should be able to do what you want with it. What this whole episode shows is how frustrated supporters are. If the ‘rebel six’ have done one good thing for us, they have pushed those issues right to the top of the political agenda and public agenda in a way that some of us have been trying for decades.”
Fit (and Rich Enough) for Office?
The Times on Sunday reports that Prime Minister Johnson has told friends that he needs to earn about £300,000 a year — twice his salary — to keep his head above water. Johnson’s salary puts him close to the top 1 per cent of UK earners. Yet he makes less than Angela Merkel’s £267,000 or Joe Biden’s £290,000. Luxembourg, with a population roughly equivalent to that of Sheffield, pays its prime minister £200,000.
Good News From UK
The Telegraph reports that Britain is no longer in a pandemic, as new data showed the vaccination programme is reducing symptomatic Covid infections by up to 90 per cent.
In the first large real-world study of the impact of vaccination on the general population, researchers found that the rollout is having a major impact on cutting both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator on the Office for National Statistics Covid-19 Infection Survey, said that Britain had ‘moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation’ where the virus is circulating at a low, largely controllable level in the community.
The new research, based on throat swabs from 373,402 people between December 1 last year and April 3, found three weeks after one dose of either the Pfizer or AstraZeneca jab, symptomatic infections fell by 74 per cent and infections without symptoms by 57 per cent.
By two doses, asymptomatic infections were down 70 per cent and symptomatic by 90 per cent.
Back to normal – a short-lived slogan
In the FA Cup semi-final 4,000 supporters were allowed back into the stands at Wembley. But this “back to normal” was very short-lived because only one day later the plan of twelve clubs to found the European Super League turned European football upside down (from The Telegraph).
Six English clubs together with Real, Barcelona, Atlético, Juventus, Inter and Milan declared that they had founded a new competition in European football called European Super League. The new league would play in midweek and its members would pull out of next season’s European Cups. As an immediate consequence, Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City were in danger of being thrown out of the Champions League and Europa League semi-finals on Monday night as football authorities, fans and the Government declared war on the European Super League.
The four remaining English clubs in Europe were warned they could be expelled from their respective competitions as soon as Friday, while the likes of Harry Kane, Raheem Sterling and Marcus Rashford were facing a ban from playing at this summer’s European Championship.
Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur were also rendered footballing outcasts, along with Real Madrid, Barcelona and the rest of the “Dirty Dozen” clubs behind a plot that has sparked arguably the biggest outcry in the history of the game.
The backlash against the largely-closed competition has intensified as:
- The Government vowed to do “whatever it takes” to stop the Super League, which was also denounced by the Duke of Cambridge.
- The Premier League called a meeting of its remaining 14 clubs that could see action taken against the so-called ‘Big Six’.
- Bruno Fernandes became the first player from a Super League club to cast doubt on it while Mesut Ozil and Ander Herrera spoke out against it.
- United executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward was branded a “snake” by the president of Uefa, who described the rebel tournament as “a spit in the face of all football lovers”.
- Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain and Porto refused to sign up for it and the Champions League reforms were passed by Uefa.
- A YouGov poll found 79 per cent of football fans opposed a Super League and just 14 per cent supported it.
- The Super League began legal action to prevent the competition being killed off before it began.
That action failed to stop unprecedented steps being taken to do just that, including to ban what Ceferin dubbed the “Dirty Dozen” from the Champions League and Europa League – potentially even from the rest of this season’s competitions.
“My opinion is that as soon as possible they have to be banned from all our competitions and the players from all our competitions,” he said.
West Ham United also expressed vehement opposition to the proposal for a Super League after consulting with the club’s Independent Supporters’ Commitee.
UPDATE: “Power to the people” – the Super League seems to be off before it has started.
The move of six Premier League clubs to join the “cartel” of 12 European clubs has been unanimously condemned by the FA, the rest of PL clubs and especially by the fans! Manchester City and Chelsea were the first to pull out of the ESL on Tuesday, and later in the evening it was announced that all the Super League clubs were about to disband the Super League.
It also emerged that Andrea Agnelli had resigned at Juventus and that Ed Woodward would resign from his role as executive vice chairman of Manchester Utd. This man of confidence of the Glazer family, who was very much in favour of the ESL, will be gone and so is the idea of a Super League.
This could be a “watershed moment”in football. Coming together and fighting against the “big six” and the “cartel – that achieved victory within one day. This could be the beginning of smaller clubs and the real fans winning back power from the big money clubs, and football could change for the better maybe.
Tonight the football fans have won a battle – but how are they going to win the war? (talkSPORT)
The seismic but ultimately farcical attempt to launch a super league will be remembered as a pivotal moment in the sport’s history. The moment when many in football, having seen the wealthiest clubs consolidate more power and wealth over years, finally said ‘enough’ and fought back. But the game is not yet over, and future battles lie ahead (BBC).
Prince Philip’s Send-Off At St George‘s
The Duke of Edinburgh who died on 9 April, on Saturday found his temporary rest (until the day when Queen Elisabeth dies and they will be buried together and join the late King George VI in their tomb) in St George’s Chapel within the perimeter of Windsor Castle.
Nearby to the Chapel is the building of St George’s House. It was there where Prince Philip co-founded an organisation which is not known so well as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an other NGO the Prince had helped to found in the sixties:
In 1966 the Duke and the then Dean of Windsor Robin Woods founded “St George’s House” which takes its name from the building and is committed to “effecting change for the better by nurturing wisdom through dialogue”. The organisation brings together people of responsibility and influence in business, government, society and the church to consult on contemporary issues with the purpose of investigating means of overcoming challenges in contemporary society through dialogue.
St George’s House featured, albeit in a fictionalized series of events, in the seventh episode of the third series of the Netflix series The Crown; “Moondust”.
West Ham v Leicester
In Mark Noble’s 400th Premier League game and 524th for West Ham in all competitions, two goals from Jesse Lingard in the first half and one from Jarrod Bowen at the beginning of the second one meant that West Ham again had a three goal lead.
This was the third game in a row in which the Irons had a three-nil advantage, and we knew that if they were able to hold on to their lead, they would be back in a Champions League spot – above Chelsea and Liverpool!
But it got very very tight again, when Leicester pulled two back courtesy to Iheanacho, but West Ham could see the game out – and won again with 3:2, like they had done on Monday against Wolves.
Now with an other win within seven days, the Hammers continue to be fourth and sit just one point behind Leicester in third.
Jesse Lingard’s stunning form since his loan move in January helped David Moyes to set his sight on taking West Ham into the Champions League for the first time, but it will be a tough task with Declan Rice out with a knee injury until May. Antonio is injured too and this afternoon Cresswell and Noble had to be substituted due to injury in the second half.
Match report (BBC): https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/56629084
Premier League pays tribute
The Premier League is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
As a mark of respect, players will wear black armbands, flags at clubs will fly at half-mast and there will be two minutes of silence before kick-off at all Premier League matches played across the weekend.
West Ham will play Leicester at home on Sunday afternoon.
EXTRA TIME 
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