Futebol

Chrono, how are you feeling lately about The Arsenal? Today was a lot of fun and I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the NLD this weekend.

I went to the bar yesterday and they had Chelsea-Spurs and El Clasico on. Those were probably more entertaining than Arsenal ripping through an open Bournemouth team. 

I'm pretty dispassionate about The Arsenal this season, but I'm enjoying the team. The "turnaround" the team went through at the beginning of the year was overstated. I think this is a three year process for Emery to change the dynamic of the team. 

Right now, Arsenal is the club that takes other clubs underperforming talent and gives them a happy place to chill. Laca, Auba, Mhki, Ozil years ago. Other top sides didn't really want these players, so we were able to scoop them up. Now they get great wages, get to live in London, and play in a relatively low pressure environment for a top club. Emery's challenge is to turn up the heat. That's why dropping Ozil as he has is actually essential. Ozil shouldn't be frozen out, but he needs to be challenged. The whole squad needs to be consistently challenged.

Losing Ramsey is a blow to the quality of the team, but he isn't needed for this project moving forward. The mistake was not getting a large fee for him. The discussions with Monchi are interesting. As I've said before, I think Arsenal need to put egos aside and become the right kind of selling club, so perhaps that is a move in this direction. If someone came in and offered 50 million for Guendouzi after next season, that's the kind of sale you absolutely have to make. The club should actively be looking out for those types of deals.

We need to be on a Spurs-type project: buying high ceiling players for moderate fees and developing them into world class players. Sell players who are talented, but won't make a long-term commitment.

Torreira is great, Xhaka has looked improved. Sokratis is fucking awesome and a good mentor for Mavropanos. Auba and Laca keep things fun for everyone during this transition period. We need a new young CB and a new old CB. Emery has been decent with youth (though I think our academy has been overrated for a long time). We need to hit on a lot more value pickups from Spain and France in the next few years to inject quality while we lower the wage bill by moving on older players.

I love The Arsenal and hope we finish 4th. Bring back Mou!

Well, Man City just won the league.

If Chelsea, Manchester United, and Liverpool never won another game I would be satisfied

Leicester City too, glad Brandon took a big fucking L in his first match

Frustrating NLD, Spurs were shit and we should've took it

I'm still buzzing about Inter winning that Derby game.

DAZN will be streaming all Premier League matches next season. That is kind of awesome and I’ll be signing up.

That's really good news actually. Hopefully that also carries over to their Italian streaming services because it's been a real pain in the ass having to deal with shitty illegal streams this past month. Any idea how much this service costs per month? I'm thinking about starting a free one-month trial tonight so that I can watch Inter's game tonight against Genoa and also the Derby d'Italia at the end of the month.

Feeling pretty good about Arsenal right now but I think people are really overlooking the difficulty of some of their remaining away fixtures... We shall see.

I thought you were attending a language school in Italy

I am?

Bonucci is cancelled

Dude is fucking garbage. Honestly, Allegri's post-match comments were somehow even worse and people seem to be giving him a pass. To have that sort of composure at the age of nineteen is unbelievable and the fact that neither the manager nor the team captain has his back on this is totally fucked.

The regularity in which this stuff is happening lately is really sad, but the response from players like Sterling and Kean has been outstanding.

Sterling has to be the single most important athlete in Britain at this point, right?

I do follow the Championship, largely because I support a team that plays in it (hopefully going up at the end of the season) but also because it's of a high enough standard to be worth following. Perhaps you'd get the most enjoyment out of following a Premier League team outside of the big six? Staying up at the end of the season is their aim and since the majority of them will it carries a lot of potential reward.

Man City and Tottenham were not top teams when I was growing up, and there could potential be others vying for Champions League spots in the distant future, but unfortunately money is a very big factor and MC only managed to ascend to league winner status several years after being bought by a UAE royal who is literally the deputy prime minister of his country.

I do not personally know anyone who watches anything below the Championship and on the rare occasion I have I haven't found it to be an enjoyable experience.

It's a really good question and something that I thought a lot about before picking a team. I hate the idea of bandwagoning so the idea of supporting one of the "Big Six" teams always kind of bothered me. I eventually settled on Arsenal because North London seems like a place I would like to live, Arsene is awesome, and I knew they were a team that was kind of transitioning and it would be a while before they could legitimately compete for Premier League titles again. The biggest reason why people in the States primarily follow these teams is because their games are televised. It can be a huge pain in the ass to find Crystal Palace games sometimes, for example.

The English lower leagues seem a lot more popular than in other European countries (although in Italy there are a lot of people who follow Serie B). I don't watch it but the Championship is supposed to be a really fun and competitive league. It would also be relatively easy to follow as well because ESPN has the rights, I think, so you can stream all the games with a $5/month ESPN+ subscription. Also, you shouldn't have a problem finding news about the league or specific teams within it. Muddy Knees Media, which is a Podcast company, puts out a weekly show on the Championship that I am sure would be enough to keep you informed of everything going on.

I would be pretty weary about supporting a team further down the league pyramid because it would be pretty difficult to find reliable ways of watching games. But if you did, I would be sure to pick a club with some pedigree and previous Premier League experience. You could maybe go with Portsmouth or Sunderland? And if your main interest is to just to get some insight into how relegation battles impact the psyche of fans, you can't go wrong watching the Sunderland documentary on Netflix. It's quite good.

I agree with Soma though. Your best bet is rooting for a team that is mid-table in the Premier League. Newcastle is a team that I really like. They should have won the Premier League about a decade ago but choked. They used to consistently be in the Champions League but have a terrible owner who has basically ruined the club. They are a good team to start following now because once Ashley sells there is a possibility of them rocketing up the league and being a Champions League contender again. The stadium is always a great atmosphere and the northeast are really crazy for football in general. Wolves were promoted last year and have an ambitious project currently underway. Leicester would be kind of stupid to start supporting now because they're miracle already happened and there isn't really anything that can top that... Crystal Palace is interesting. They have awesome jerseys, Zaha is one of the more exciting players in the league (and a really fucking great dude as well), they play in South London so you could go see them play if you ever visit the capital on vacation, and everyone always says Selhurst Park is a great place to watch a game.

I hope that helps? There are a shit load of options. I'd just start watching football and eventually you'll stumble across a team, or player, or fanbase, that attracts you. Football is fun as hell.

Also the MLS is definitely a fucking joke, but I think what Atlanta United have accomplished is really impressive. It's no longer just a retirement league. The fact that coaches like Frank de Boer (who was kind of desperate after miserably failing at his last two jobs... but still) are accepting coaching jobs in the league is probably a good sign. Apparently Cincinnati was finally allowed into the league and their fans are apparently great.

But yeah, I honestly couldn't imagine watching that shit every week.

At the start of every MLS season I’m like, “OK this is the year I’m going to follow the league, watch a bunch of matches and maybe attend a couple.”

And inevitably it will be about 35 minutes into the opening match and I turn it off and realize it’s garbage and not worth my time.

AJAX!

Fucking hell the Champions League is buck wild!

These semi-finals are

Can’t wait to watch 2 legs of Liverpool & Barca.

Uhh... I don't really know. It's a huge problem here in Italy and you're definitely right that these sorts of public displays of racist taunting would be not permitted in the States. Last weekend you had Lazio fans unfurling banners with "Honor to Mussolini" written on it and they racially abused Bakayoko for the entire game. Yeah, it's obviously a minority of fans who are only getting all of this attention because their actions are abhorred by the mainstream of Italian society, but it's still appalling that nothing is doing to proactively stop this from happening. Lazio's current owner (their fans are notoriously right wing and racist) has done more than any other owner to combat this stuff. His life is constantly threatened because of it (he lives under almost constant police protection last I heard). So it's not like everyone is just looking the other way when this stuff happens.

The biggest issue is that Italy's major institutions, including the league itself, isn't doing enough to address this. And there are definitely political parties and figures within the country that are comfortable stoking the flames for their own gain. I wouldn't say that Italy is any more or less racist than the United States or other continental European countries, it's just the racism here is manifested in different ways. In the States its more discrete and insidious.

I was optimistic after the first 45 that Liverpool would pull one back and get out of Camp Nou level or maybe down 2-1.

But the greatest player ever destroyed them and they were so shook any chance they had was just totally wasted.

That Messi goal was special. I thought VVD was pretty bad in that game. He was partially at fault for both of the other goals. If Salah had buried that chance it wouldn't have been that bad of a result for Liverpool. I still think they aren't totally out of it. Remember that Barcelona choked really hard last year against Roma and they generally struggle away from home in the Champions League.

Dembele really should have put it out of reach at the end. Barcelona would be an absolutely lethal squad if they could get more consistent production out of him and/or Coutinho.

I am getting kind of excited for tonight. Arsenal are probably going to fuck this up though.

Enjoy this, Nick. What an incredible performance.