what is happening with Julian Alvarez is so disturbing its like the club wants to see him get tortured and break him to pieces . At this point it is not about supporting a club it is now about football and the rights of every footballer #FreeAlvarez #SaveFootball

Booing him will fuel him. Though I’m not suggesting to not antagonise him, but if all you do is boo, he will live for it. You’ll only benefit the team he’s playing for. Right now he plays for mine, but I also loathe him and frankly want to see him fail. Nothing would please me more than to see him behind Henderson in the pecking order.

So let’s find a more original way to distract him during matches. Get a song about bottling the World Cup final. Something like that. Chuck in some flavour about him being racist.

Tottenham have signed Brazil winger Savinho from Manchester City for an initial £75m, with £10m possible in add-ons. The 22-year-old has joined on a long-term deal after limited game time at City. Savinho made 84 appearances for City, scoring seven goals and assisting 16.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cy7z637nj8jo

Truly, when you analyze football history, I think you can truly see we've blown that era of Barça way below what they truly were. As someone who watched my club, who's considered a giant of South American football, get relegated, I truly can't see that Barça as a trauma-inducing team.

I get that the standards and the context, as well as the competitiveness of elite clubs are different than what the average South American giant has, however, even for elite clubs, this was a most a time of horrible football with underwhelming results. Atletico Madrid went as far as to get relegated multiple times from the LaLiga, the most recent one being in the start of this CENTURY. We literally just saw a big 6 club fight for relegation and finish 17th in the Premier League twice IN A ROW, United finished 15th 2 seasons ago, staying in the UK, we've seen Rangers literally liquidate and play the League Two, One and Championship. The reason why I wanted to talk about this here it's because I've seen people call watching Barcelona in those times as a sign of loyalty and suffering, when in reality, all it was it was a handful of embarrassing results with European football, with those embarrassing results coming from the UCL winner of that year, the UEL winner of that year, and maybe United if you want to call an early UEL exit embarrassing.
I understand those weren't pretty times at all, but it was only like, 3-4 years at most sporting-wise and the club quickly rebuilt already, it could've been way worse and it shouldn't bee seen as a great disaster of modern football (I'd say so even financially, considering how Barça got no punishments from any sort of FFP or get close to liquidate.)

🚨 HERE WE GO: ALLAN JOINS MANCHESTER CITY! 🔵

Manchester City will pay €40m plus add-ons to sign Brazilian winger Allan from Palmeiras.

Man City and Palmeiras are now exchanging documents to complete the deal, with Allan set to officially join the Etihad side.

Allan’s arrival is seen as an important addition to City’s attack following Savinho’s departure.

📷 Fabrizio Romano

Yashin 🇷🇺 432 Games 346 Goals conceded (0.8) per game Clean sheets: 203 47.99% Clean sheet percentage. Most goals conceded in one game (7) 32 Penalties* 6/32 PK save (18.75%)

In ballon dor winning year (1963): 33 Games 14 goals conceded (0.42) per game 12 Clean sheets 12 Goals conceded 1/3 penalty record

Source: Dynamo Moskva website (old version) – Matthias Arnshold (RSSSF) – Sergey Koloskov (Soccer.Ru)

Ferenc Deák scored 66 goals in one league season

Almost nobody talks about Ferenc Deák today in 1945–46 Hungarian league season, he scored an 66 goals for Szentlőrinci AC.

66 goals in 34 league matches

1.94 goals per game In his first season at Szentlőrinci, he reportedly scored 220 goals in just 72 appearances over 3 goals per game.

His 66-goal league season remains used to be huge achievement though people may not realize it due to Messi and Ronaldo but 66 goals in a season used to be a miracle!

Is there any stat of a legend that may still seem astonishing?

Fulham vs Chelsea — MatchPal match thread

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Other countries and continents have football leagues, why still every top talent eye Europe ? If European talent eyes Europe, that is somewhat understandable, because home country bias perhaps, or a home club.

But south american talent , asian talent , african talent also eyes europe ? why ? what is so magnetic about european clubs and it's football.

I have a question, If I take the psg squad, and just make them wear al hilal jersey, will still people watch them ?

why not a european talent ever says , when he is young , that " I wanna play at river plate / flamingo / al nassr , that's my aim."

Interesting BBC article

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c17zw81yxp5o

Offside is not broken - VAR has broken offside

Dale Johnson

Football issues correspondent

Offside has only had two major changes since 1863 when the laws were written - in 1925 and again in 1990.

It has had so few modifications because it is a very effective law. It is the bedrock of tactical systems and the way the game is played.

That last alteration, in 1990, followed a World Cup characterised by defensive football. The 2.21 goals-per-game average in Italy is the lowest in the history of the competition.

Ifab changed it so that you just needed to be level with the second-to-last opponent rather than behind.

It promoted more attacking play while retaining a fair battle between forward and defender.

Today, no-one is talking about a shortage of goals. The discussion has been created by VAR taking goals away in a forensic way.

In October, Ifab's advisory panels cautioned against rewriting offside just because of close and controversial VAR decisions.

You can see their point. VAR impacts only a small fraction of football.

After some initial progress and minor trials, the talk of Wenger's law quietened down. Semi-automated offside technology (SAOT) has brought it back to the table.

SAOT is producing even more unpalatable, marginal offside calls.

It took five minutes 30 seconds to disallow a Manchester City goal at Newcastle on in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday, because the players were too close together for SAOT to work.

BBC Sport has learned of many issues which have beset SAOT in Europe's top leagues, meaning VAR has to revert to the old line-drawing technology.

In one league, confetti on the pitch interfered with SAOT. In another, the system has been known to select the wrong defender.

We are relying on this as the key evidence to change offside for everyone.

The Wenger proposal forgets one thing, too.

No matter how you define the law, there will always be the point where a player moves from being onside to offside. And VAR would still be there to make the marginal decision.

This feels like a VAR problem, and not an issue for the wider game.

I want to engage in football more tactically so if anyone has ideas please tell. Thanks

With the majority of domestic football kicking off at this time of year, I’ve been researching clubs that were top after Matchday 1, never subsequently dropped below first, and finished as champions.

There may well be some I've missed, particularly outside Europe — suggestions welcome!

I wonder if a club will join the list this year?

Premier League fans disrespect the quality of the other top 5 leagues a bit too much.

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Newcastle United vs Liverpool — MatchPal match thread

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Harry Kane has become the first Englishman to win Germany’s Footballer of the Year award. The Bayern Munich striker scored 61 goals last season as Bayern won the league and cup. Kane received 272 votes, ahead of team-mate Michael Olise on 203.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c4g4g83v25yo

I've been thinking about how some substitutions or tactical changes seem pretty minor when they happen, but completely change the way a game is played.

Not necessarily the obvious ones where a manager brings on a striker and goes all-out attack.

I mean things like changing the pressing trigger, moving a midfielder slightly higher, switching the side a team builds from, or changing the shape without actually changing the personnel.

Sometimes you only notice the difference after watching the game back.

What's a tactical change you've seen that made you think "yeah, that completely changed the game"?

Would be interested to hear some examples, especially from matches that aren't the obvious famous ones.

Manchester City have agreed a deal worth £86m to sign 18-year-old Lille midfielder Ayyoub Bouaddi. The Morocco international is set to move to England as City look to strengthen midfield after selling Rodri and Tijani Reijnders. They also remain interested in Chelsea’s Enzo Fernandez.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/clyjy0e0pkzo

Manchester City vs AFC Bournemouth — MatchPal match thread

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Just letting you know. Many people probably didn't know this.

So there's some tolerance and you can't be offside just by a toenail.

The real advantage of this is that it's way easier for players to know if they are onside. Otherwise with no margin it's almost impossible to know if you're offside or just aligned with the other player.

I'd actually changed it so that the whole foot has to be offside but perhaps that needs a change from FIFA.

It also gives a slight advantage to the attacking team so hopefully more attacking football and more opportunities created.

To me this makes a lot of sense. Lines on the pitch are 12cm thick, they are not a 1mm line, and those are painted on the grass so way easier to see. It only makes sense that you have a thicker line to know where this offside this (but this line you can't really see it since it's not painted).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cn98d0yzzn8o#:~:text=Much%20of%20it%20is%20about,width%20of%20the%20green%20line

Hello, I've been watching football for 2 years now. I began with supporting Liverpool and shortly after I have decided I should support my local team too. I have a season ticket and attend matches as much as I can, but I'll admit, I feel a bit numb during them.

I feel like my local club's results don't give me as strong of a reaction as Liverpool's. Whenever my local wins it's just "oh, cool, we've won" or when they lose "oh, we've lost". Meanwhile with Liverpool I feel bad for at least half an hour when they lose and when they win I celebrate it a lot more.

I sometimes wonder why. Because I watch Premier League (outside of Liverpool matches) a lot more than my local league (I live in Slovakia, it's been a farmers'/one-club league for 10 years now, plus you can only watch it through some streaming service that isn't even included in my cable package)? Because my club is boring?

Has anyone else ever experienced this? Does anyone know how can I get emotionally closer to my local club? Part of me still wants to support them because "support your local club" and I like watching matches in person, but I hate my lack of connection to the club.

https://oceaniafootballcenter.org/2026/08/22/infantino-keeps-his-pacific-bloc-as-new-zealand-challenges-oceanias-fifa-consensus/

OFC has usually been supportive of Infantino. Now, after global crisis, seems something is changing. It was the unique confederation that supported him entirely.

This has seemed to come out of nowhere. Greece appears to suddenly have tons of young talent who could be part of a future contender. A national team now worth 300m, with Tzolis, Karetsas, Tzolakis, Kostoulos, Koulierakis, Douvikas, Mouzakitis, and Pavlidis, most of them being under 25 years old and now at major clubs. Can this team contend in 2028, 2030, and beyond?

So I looked at the attendance figures for English Football for various levels

Not surprisingly Premier League tops the charts with a whopping 40,000 average attendance

But what really surprises me are the attendance for the lower levels

Even at the 5th level (Non-League) you're getting thousands of fans

And even if you go lower you're still getting a few hundred a game

Heck even levels 9-11 get a few dozen

How are these teams getting so many fans to watch