****ing International Breaks I know I'm getting old because it says so under my username - perhaps my memory is going but I don't recall there ever being so many disruptions to the league programme as there are now. Less than a third of the way through the season and we're already on our third one. What's the point? All we do is get players injured and then have a fixture pile-up in the run-up to the next one. Anyway, rather than bang on about it all over the board I thought I'd give it its own nice little thread so that anyone who feels the same way can join me in a pointless rant and maybe keep it all in the one place. Of course, anyone who thinks they're a great idea can put their case also. Does anyone like them?
I thought it was a thread about people telling fibs. Disappointed now lol. I ****ing hate them as well. We not long ****ing had one!! How many injuries this time round ffs
I purposefully committed a grammatical atrocity with the possessive apostrophe (RHC will be all over it) in the hopes that it wouldn't look like fibs. Can't win.
No i don't. I find them utterly pointless. England will play USA is a meaningless, pointless friendly where wayne rooney will waddle about FFS. There's no world cup for 4 years so zero point playing usa at all. Now there's a Croatia game which is now just as pointless as England can't win group and can't really be relegated in this stupid national league. We played Spain twice and Croatia once already. Its actually even MORE boring seeing the same games repeated. I reckon attendances will be down and this tournament will be scrapped. Brazil play Uruguay Friday, . they then play cameroon on Tuesday but get this... both games are in england!!! both are friendlies so both are utterly pointless. One is even in the mk dons stadium! I just fail to see the point.
It didn't look like fibs. Indeed, I admired that you capitalised the FIB and pluralised with a lower case 's'. You could have used periods, as in F.I.B.s, but not using them is more acceptable than a false possessive apostrophe, which some grammarians argue can be used for things like CD's if you really have to but it seems pointless when it should be clear in the way you've used it. And the possessive apostrophe is used incorrectly far too often to be acceptable with acronyms - "we serve hot pie's all day." I like this idea of a Nations League - or Nation's League for those eating hot pie's - to make friendlies more interesting. I thought maybe it meant friendlies were a thing of the past and I suspected this England vs. U.S.A. game was part of a diplomatic arrangement to grease the wheels for a post-Brexit trade deal. Sport can't separate itself from cultural and political life and often has a lot to contribute. Let's highlight that old gripe about there being too much money in football and it's all about the money and how ****ing much for a shirt? International football is less tainted, with the players donating their wages to charity. I say let's have fewer league cup games. What a pointless Donald Duck tournament that is. Cut the Europa back. Stop doing the dirty work for Scudamore and his lackeys for more money with more club games to broadcast more of the time. I recognise the problems the breaks cause for clubs but that's not the FIBs' fault, it's the fault of those who're milking the sport for all they can with more and more club commitments. Having said that, I grew up English in Scotland, so the home internationals were as tasty as a Liverpool-Utd match and meant as much - school on Monday morning was going to be Heaven or Hell - so maybe I just have a different perspective.
I used to enjoy the home international tournaments - there was a bit of bite to them. It's just the repeated disruption of the league programme that I get fed up with. I'm just getting back into it when it stops again and the momentum seems to be lost. Frustrating, a sort of footballus interruptus.
It's not International breaks per se that are the problem rather the fact UEFA won't have pre qualifying for "lesser" nations plus will declare any & everywhere a country i.e. Andorra , San Marino , Gibraltar , Faroe Islands. The effect of this is to make all qualifying groups bloated from 4 teams to 6 or 7 leading to the large number of scheduled breaks. To compound this they have now added another "tournament" in the Nations League .
tbh I would agree that if the teams would get together at the time the world cup is on or whenever and play off then having a much reduced calender of internationals would be a good thing. there's a lot of semi pros or teams who never go to tournaments that should have to pre qualify. I think concacaf or whatever it's called now has prequalifiers in the caribbean islands etc. I don't see what right Gibraltar or Andorra or others even have to a full group slot. if groups were down to 6 qualifying games or even 8 max then I'm sure you could reduce impact on clubs. plus it would make a cap more meaningful.
It's all about money. I don't think all these made up tournaments are switching people on to football either, quite the reverse. Another thing to consider, the smaller clubs with their one 'star' being an international player really suffer because even if those players don't get injured, they come back fatigued. The bigger clubs have more strength in depth to be able to cope, the smaller clubs, not so much.