Danny Rose was reportedly gutted when he heard he was not going to Greece, home of the Marathon...until it was explained to him that it was home to a 26 mile race not the chocolate bar After an excellent 1st half and a professional 2nd half against Zaha FC on Saturday hopes are high that we might not be utter dross in our opening CL group game this season. There is a lot of concern about Pochettino as he hasn't threatened to quit for over 2 weeks and has been seen smiling at press conferences. Eriksen has been told he needs to Crete lots of chances...and Kane has been urged not to myth any chances as the could be the first step on the Rhodes to another CL final. After last year's heroics the playing of the CL theme will be mousaka to the the player's ears Greek teams run around for the full 90 mins cos they are much feta than they used to be () Spurs were teŕrible in the first 3 group games last season, gaining just one point but in fairness that's more than Chelsea and Liverpool combined have got in this year's competition...oh and Ross Barkley
The good news is that bellowing THIS IS PIRAEUS doesn't make for a particularly intimidating pre-match team talk
It's not stupid, it is unfair and a disgrace. Having us play the early game after playing in Greece on the latest possible date for CL football is unfathomable unless you want to limit the chances of our team. Fact is we have a fairly big squad now, so we should cope, but if the PL supported each team equally, then this wouldn't be allowed. More consideration of European and other Cup games and their schedules must be written into future football contracts. Not like tonight is a late rearrangement, TV companies have had plenty of time to amend their schedules. If I recall, haven't BT rescheduled these matches to 12:00 Sunday in the past to allow for travelling issues.
A more equitable solution would be for UEFA to : 1. spread all games over the tues-thurs window. So in one group round a CL/EL participant may be playing on tuesday, but thursday the round after. 2. agree with domestic leagues that there must be, for any sequence of games D1 + E1 + D2, a min time gap between the FT of one game and KO of the successor fixture. Broadcasters will have to schedule accordingly.
UEFA would love that, but no major domestic league would allow it. In the pre CL era, I cannot remember whether all UEFA games were played on wednesday (it seemed to be so) .
The key phrase here is "a min time gap between the FT of one game and KO of the successor fixture. Broadcasters will have to schedule accordingly" this is the answer. I'm not sure about including CL teams in Thursday fixtures (it's part of the punishment for missing out on qualification).
It's hardly unique, either: in the 2010-11 season we played at the San Siro on Wednesday night, yet had the Saturday lunchtime kickoff against Everton Can the morons whose job it is to feed the fixture list into a shredder on Sky's behalf not understand how the concept of time works, or do they merely not care?
1. That is the problem (creating the notion that the EL is a "punishment" ) . 2. PL teams in the CL still end up with sunday fixtures anyway, even when neither they nor their opponents are in the EL.
IIRC we played Seville on a Thursday at 9pm in the EL and had to play Chelsea in the early KO on the Saturday. We stayed in Sevilla. They let us train there on Friday morning and we flew home in the afternoons .
