⚽ General Football News - 2020-21 Season Open Thread

OFFICIAL: Aston Villa closed their training ground after a Coronavirus outbreak


Aston Villa’s FA Cup clash with Liverpool has been thrown into doubt after a significant outbreak of coronavirus at the club.

The club confirmed a ‘large number of first-team players and staff’ returned positive cases in the first round of routine testing on Monday and then even more positive results were produced among the squad in further tests on Tuesday.

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Voting rules for the All Football Player of the Year 2020

VOTE for the AF Player of the Year 2020 is about to start! Please follow the rules below and have fun when you participate in it!

  1. Deadline for Voting: 13:00 CET, Jan 16

  2. You can vote for 3 players and each of them will get points (1st=5points,2nd=3points,3rd=1point)

  3. The player who gets the most points will win the Prize!

  4. You can check out how many people have voted for each player but not the points he got

  5. You can vote for only one time

  6. Please vote before reaching the deadline

  7. Feel free to share your result and canvass for your players!

Finalists for the MVP:

Lewandowski

Kimmich

Neuer

Messi

Ronaldo

Ibrahimovic

Son

Neymar

Mbappe

Ramos

Mane

Van Dijk

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Golden Shoe 2020-21: Lewandowski, Ronaldo and Europe’s top scorers

Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, or Robert Lewandowski - who will come out on top this season?
The race for the 2020-21 Golden Shoe is on as the best strikers from across Europe look to boost their goal tallies and be crowned the contintent’s No 1 sharp-shooter.

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Salah gifts oxygen tanks to coronavirus sufferers in his hometown hospital1610220785799

Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah’s incredible acts of charity have continued after gifting oxygen tanks to the hospital in his hometown.

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Lionel Messi has now scored 48 direct free-kick goals for FCBarcelona in all competitions (37 in LaLiga), one more than Cristiano Ronaldo in his profesional club career (47).

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Erling Haaland has now scored 25 goals in 25 Bundesliga games for Borussia Dortmund.

He’s out-performed his xG by almost seven goals. :robot:

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Manuel Neuer has been named German footballer of the year :no_entry_sign:

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#on this day in 2006
Alessandro Del Piero become Juventus record goalscorer.

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Alfie Devine
16 years and 163 days old
Tottenham’s youngest ever player
Tottenham’s youngest ever goalscorer

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Ronaldo equals Josef Bican’s record as joint topscorer in football history

After scoring Juventus’ third goal in the match against Sassuolo on Sunday, Cristiano Ronaldo became the joint top scorer for official goals in football history.


Cristiano Ronaldo scored the third goal in Juventus’ 3-1 win over Sassuolo on Sunday and with that he became the joint-highest scorer for club and country in the history of the game. With 759 career goals, Ronaldo equalled Josef Bican, the Austrian-Czech striker who played between 1931 and 1955.

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Son Heung-min has been outperforming Lionel Messi & Cristiano Ronaldo since 2016

Forget Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Robert Lewandowski. Tottenham’s Son Heung-min has delivered a statistical anomaly that sets him out as bar far the deadliest finisher in Europe.
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The way Son is performing in comparison to his expected goals (xG) is simply remarkable and eclipses all of football’s top marksmen since 2016.

Perceived wisdom is that eventually, players and teams performing above or below their xG will eventually turn the tide and the score will be about average, regressing to the mean.

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Interesting way to deduce perceived wisdom with regards to deviation to xG regressing to the mean.

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:nigeria:Ndidi :thought_balloon: On Life Hustling:

“I did different things. Sometimes, I hawked pepper, sold water (sachet), tomatoes and fruits for my mother.

"But I became famous for selling groundnuts. They call me the groundnut boy.

“I did all these things to support my mother.”

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The 2007/08 UEFA awards:

Chelsea’s Frank Lampard: Best midfielder
Chelsea’s John Terry: Best defender
Chelsea’s Petr Čech: Best goalkeeper

What a pic :heart_eyes:

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The best playmakers of last decade, according to IFFHS :dart:

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Diego Simeone has been voted the best men’s coach of the past decade by the IFFHS🥇

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In 2016, Chapecoense were on a flight to a game when a crash killed 71 of the 77 people on board.

The team were relegated in 2019 to the second tier of Brazilian football.

On Tuesday, they won promotion back to the top division.

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Mamadou Sakho: “I lost my father when I was 13. Soon I had to become a man. For me, it wasn’t an option to play football, it was a must. Someone asked me if it was difficult to be PSG captain at 17, for me the hardest thing was to become captain of my family at 13.”

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Mamadou Sakho- Great respect! :raised_hands:

What an inspiring story! Success is measured by how high you bounce back when all seems lost after you hit the bottom.

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Barcelona REJECTED the chance to sign Cristiano Ronaldo for £15m in 2003

Barcelona presidential candidate Joan Laporta has fascinatingly revealed how the club turned down the chance to sign Cristiano Ronaldo for just £15million in 2003
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