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Topic: UEFA Champions League Discussion Thread - page 1102. (Read 129814 times)

legendary
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For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.

10 years? That’s ridiculously harsh to be honest. Maybe a couple of years would have been more fair & a higher fine. A 10 year ban just seems like overkill.
legendary
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I personally believe the away goals shouldn't be given the precedence that it is, as it puts more emphasis on attack(goals) and less on defense(clean sheets). But that's the dynamic of the current game and Basel are in a good position, not the best. But they have something to hold onto going into the second leg of the fixture.

It was the problem with the past emphasis on defence, playing like robots passing back and parking the bus all the way to penalties that forced this. I think the impetus on attack is good for the game. I do think and believe defence is all important in football, since I also am a defender (I should say was but let's pretend I still play football). Heart loves rampaging Liverpool but heart also skips when defence is awesome.

And yeah, Basel was not Basel but they did take the lead last night before surrendering 2 late goals, so you never know.

I have a Cluj/Maribor parlay... home wins crucial, so far so good but lots of time left to play.

Edit: And right after I submit AIK level for 1-1 at Maribor hahaha =(
legendary
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I personally believe the away goals shouldn't be given the precedence that it is, as it puts more emphasis on attack(goals) and less on defense(clean sheets). But that's the dynamic of the current game and Basel are in a good position, not the best. But they have something to hold onto going into the second leg of the fixture.
copper member
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Oh, I had few of my posts on the wrong thread, I suppose we were having a combined thread for Champions League and Europa League qualification phase.

Too bad for Basel that they couldn't hold on to their lead with just a very few minutes to go, but 2 away goals could still be something to cheer about, although a win or draw would have been more advantageous to them.
legendary
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Basel were really close from making surprise. They were leading 2:1 until 89 minute, but then PSV made amazing comeback, scored 2 goals and won match. But everything still can happen in second leg.
On Wednesday there are many games without clear favorites - Bate vs Rosenborg, Cluj vs Maccabi, Maribor vs AIK or Dundalk vs Qarabag. Great chance to win (or lose) some money Cheesy.
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For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.
I really don't know this case, and just found out now. Was the Skenderbeu team really guilty in this case, until their appeal was rejected by the  Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne. I am really curious about this problem. And I have searched Google but did not find any articles, do people here have links that tell this problem.
legendary
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I'm also sceptical about Basel win, but I think that draw is possible outcome. It's just first official game for PSV this season and they played only friendly games. While Basel already started their season and already played in national league, so they may be better prepared for this game.
There is another match already started - Plzen playing against Olympiakos and score is 0:0 after 42 minutes. Both teams often playing in Champions and Europa league.
legendary
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Just saw this bit of news, I'm also surprised it didn't get more coverage, maybe time to ditch my news sources because this was important. My own national league has had a bad experience with match-fixing. My state team has never been fingered but there was a year almost the entire squad was caught taking drugs together and we all got fired, we never really recovered from relegation, so equally rotten problems at the heart of all these lower league footballs where semi pros and amateurs who sometimes don't get paid and basically are villains for fans every time... they see a bribe as years of earnings and the same for officials.

Hopefully, they learn from it. The way Juventus hopefully learnt from their own recent scandals. But ugh Italian football.

Anyway. Underdog pick for tonight. How does a Basel upset look? They're playing away and the clear favourites are the Dutch boys who did really well last season in the league, just lost out to Ajax. But their shitty showing in Champions League group stage, and the fact Basel actually aren't a shit team?



Basel is not what is used to be anymore,they are no Champions 20 weeks before their national league finishes.The fact that Young Boys has become stronger lately has done the Swiss Championship a bit more interesting.I think Basel will lose tonight against PSV.
legendary
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Just saw this bit of news, I'm also surprised it didn't get more coverage, maybe time to ditch my news sources because this was important. My own national league has had a bad experience with match-fixing. My state team has never been fingered but there was a year almost the entire squad was caught taking drugs together and we all got fired, we never really recovered from relegation, so equally rotten problems at the heart of all these lower league footballs where semi pros and amateurs who sometimes don't get paid and basically are villains for fans every time... they see a bribe as years of earnings and the same for officials.

Hopefully, they learn from it. The way Juventus hopefully learnt from their own recent scandals. But ugh Italian football.

Anyway. Underdog pick for tonight. How does a Basel upset look? They're playing away and the clear favourites are the Dutch boys who did really well last season in the league, just lost out to Ajax. But their shitty showing in Champions League group stage, and the fact Basel actually aren't a shit team?

legendary
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For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.
It's sad thing for Skenderbeu fans, but I think it's right decision. Fixed matches is cancer of sports and everyone involved into it must be punished strictly. If UEFA gave such big penalty, it means that they had obvious proofs. Albanian football is known well for lot of match fixing cases and there is probably more teams in their league involved into it. I just didn't found information - did individual players of Skenderbeu who got involved in match fixing got banned from football. Because it would be strange if they would be allowed to continue playing like nothing didn't happened.

They are playing for Skenderbeu many of them as they didn't get into teams playing in Europe from Albania because they can't participate,it is complicated but they are playing for Skenderbeu and not allowed to play in teams taking part in European leagues like Champions and Europa League.I used to work in Albania for about 6 months and I can confirm this fixing of the games.Presidents of each team trying to fix games against the bookies and even worse these presidents even trying to bet on correct score when their team was able to play in preliminary stages of these European leauges.
legendary
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Slava Ukraini!
For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.
It's sad thing for Skenderbeu fans, but I think it's right decision. Fixed matches is cancer of sports and everyone involved into it must be punished strictly. If UEFA gave such big penalty, it means that they had obvious proofs. Albanian football is known well for lot of match fixing cases and there is probably more teams in their league involved into it. I just didn't found information - did individual players of Skenderbeu who got involved in match fixing got banned from football. Because it would be strange if they would be allowed to continue playing like nothing didn't happened.
legendary
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For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.

Ten years, really!? This is really a drastic punishment for something that, in my opinion, has not been proven.
It's about their match with Dinamo, and the accusations that they deliberately played badly in defense, right?
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For many fans, sad moments come again today, especially since the Sports Court of Arbitration of Lausanne unexpectedly rejected the appeal filed by Skenderbe on the UEFA decision.  Practically nobody spoke about it.  But the club was removed from the games for ten years and fined.
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Most don't even know anything about these teams since people mainly only know the big four leagues.  Celtic and Rangers are an exception because they are very famous for always winning the Scottish League.
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Celtic is one who will always try to go far
Celtic is a team that I feel is always in the big commission every year. But in the end they will experience a defeat in the last 32 with a bigger European club. Every year will always be so, because we have seen the quality of the game is also different.
legendary
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Got another nice underdog win last night (the New Saints, go you lucky green dragons!) and parlayed it with the right team this time so off to a pretty good CL campaign. The games all look so tight, it's probably good value to go for slight upsets or handicaps, but then you never know.

I'm thinking to back Armenia's Ararat again. They already won and the bookies think they'll play for a draw away, but that does open space for a sneaky goal.

I'll ruminate but my picks are Ararat (16/1), Astana (5/1) and Sutjeska (7/1).
legendary
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@leea @swog Yeah, I know some people think these whipping boys shouldn't be in the group stages even, because of the gulf in quality but we've to remember some of them are actually competing with a fraction of the resources of the big clubs, so even qualifying appearances give them some extra money they could really do with, plus the exposure to compete across borders in club competitions.

Liverpool and England were banned from Europe before and they took a long time to re-establish themselves, so we know it's important to have these competitions as widely open to access as possible without diminishing the prestige and quality. I thought the idea of a breakaway league was terrible it should just be a balance carefully maintained.

And look at clubs like RS Belgrade shaming Liverpool last season. Or Young Boys smacking Juventus. I love these games.

P.S. I got one of my underdogs right last night (hooray Armenia) but I had to parlay it with Crvena Zvezda heh heh.
legendary
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Sometimes I do feel pity for the teams who are at this qualifying stage, because it is almost just a game to see who will be the last placed team in the Group Stage! But as you point out,,, there are good teams too, Celtic is one who will always try to go far, and we saw how a few of them caused upsets before. And it is a chance for small countries to enter a big competition,,, even group stage is a few millions in prize money, to help buy a new star maybe;)

Yeah we have seen Fc Astana from Kazakhistan to enter the Champions League group stages before and for a small country and a relatively small club reaching this stage means a lot to them.They win a good decent amount just for playing the group games and if they win any of the group games the monetary reward is even higher.
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Sometimes I do feel pity for the teams who are at this qualifying stage, because it is almost just a game to see who will be the last placed team in the Group Stage! But as you point out,,, there are good teams too, Celtic is one who will always try to go far, and we saw how a few of them caused upsets before. And it is a chance for small countries to enter a big competition,,, even group stage is a few millions in prize money, to help buy a new star maybe;)
legendary
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This is just the pre qualifiers, so it's no surprise that some do not recognize majority of the teams squaring up against each other. There are a couple of names which stands out from the rest, mostly due to previous appearance in the finals of the UEFA competition.
As we advance to higher rounds the tournament would get more exciting and there'd be many exciting clashes to stake on.
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