Rival watch

Nah!

 

Judas has left Macclesfield after just 8 months.

 

I'd like to be charitable and say it was judicious editing that made him sound so stupid, but given who it is - nah dumb twat.

 

Anti-racism charity Kick It Out has condemned racist abuse aimed at Tammy Abraham after Chelsea's Super Cup defeat by Liverpool in Istanbul.

Striker Abraham, 21, was targeted on social media after his side lost 5-4 on penalties after the match ended 2-2.

 

David Baddiel to bang on about Spurs fans being antisemitic in 3...2...

 

And now Aberdeen follow them, losing 2-0 (again) to HNK Rijeka (who?)

Scottish football

 

Scotland and Croatia are about the same size. Why is it surprising that Aberdeen lose to such a team? Romania is about 4 times the population of Scotland so it is hardly surprising that the Romania champiosn can beat the Scottish ones.

 

Croatian team, currently managed by Igor Biscan

...although let's be honest, after Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split, Croatian teams become pretty interchangeable

 

It's not surprising for Aberdeen to lose to anyone, really. Most people haven't heard of HNK Rijeka, though.
Croatia are currently punching well above their weight as a national team and have produced some fantastic players.
Scotland used to do the same and their club sides were good enough to win European trophies. Not any more.

 

Erm...length of footballing history and relative budgets of respective FAs?

I think it is safe to say that Scottish football at both domestic and international levels has been chronically mismanaged for decades now. For a time, the strength and size of Rangers and Celtic papered over the cracks and gave the illusion of a healthy league, but now that the bubble has burst there is very little left to talk about.

 

Scotland is now performing pretty much exactly how they should be. That's not down to mismanagement it's just that the world is developing around them. The days when a team outside England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France can win the CL are gone (unless Russia or Ukraine get their act together). Even countries with much better footballing pedigrees than Scotland (eg Portugal and The Netherlands) can't win against the tide of money. History doesn't matter.

 

Tell that to the Dutch! Club football is all about money sadly but small countrys can still produce fantastic players. National sides still largely rely on birth rights, although even that is gradually being eroded. Croatia gives the lie to your argument PS and countries like Holland, Scotland, Belgium, Portugal, Romania, & Czech Republic can still produce amazing players. Croatia reached the World Cup Final and that shows what can still be done.

 

My post was about clubs not countries. Countries like Croatia will occasionally do well but Croatian clubs have no chance of winning the CL. Similarly with Scottish Clubs.

 

Ajax?

 

They have not won it for 25 years and probably got as close as they could last season.

 

Not fair PS they could easily have made it.

 

Football existed in Croatia before 1992

Before the breakup of Yugoslavia the top three places in the league went to three of the following four teams: Red Star Belgrade, Partizan Belgrade, Dinamo Zagreb and Hajduk Split, who not only had significantly larger support than the rest of the Yugoslav league and, as the Yugoslav team was primarily made up of Serbs and Croats, they would be able to both attract the top talents in the league as well as have an infrastructure to produce talent as well - although they weren't the only teams churning out talent, as Osijek and Vojvodina were also capable of doing so

So that's why both Serbia and Croatia had a significant leg-up on the rest of the former Yugoslavia in footballing terms post-breakup, as they could continue as they had before as they had been producing players of a high standard for decades by that point because the Croatian league already had Dinamo, Hajduk and Osijek while the Serbian league had Red Star, Partizan and Vojvodina so they not only had the upper tier talent but also the production lines for youngsters while the Slovernian, Bosnian and Macedonian leagues (and, more recently, the Montenegrin and Kosovan leagues) started a couple of steps behind

It's similar to football in the former Soviet Union: the main teams in the league were Dynamo Kyiv, Spartak Moscow, CSKA Moscow, Zenit Leningrad and Dnipro (****ing hell...) Dnipropetrovsk so, post breakup, the Russian and Ukrainian leagues had the infrastructure in place to continue as normal while the Belarusian, Georgian, Latvian, Estonian etc etc etc leagues were a couple of steps back - although in this example, Ukraine becoming independent also led to the rise of Shakhtar Donetsk due to there not being half a dozen Moscow teams between them and a title challenge every season

 

Being owned by a pro-Russia crook who gave them plenty of cash also helped, as people can probably tell by their team full of Brazilians.