I have no sympathy whatsoever. All teams know the rules. It doesn't matter if the player is on the pitch for the entire game or just one second, he is eligible and shouldn't be anywhere near the pitch. If the ruling states that in the event that such a player is involved it reverts to a 3-0 win to the other team then the right decision was made no matter how **** Celtic were.
It is harsh but rules are rules. Conceding a last minute goal to lose is harsh on the losing team but it happens. Celtic got lucky but {insert team name} were incredibly stupid. They're meant to be a professional club competing in the CL FFS
Well, this is letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of it. As far as I'm aware, they made a silly error in thinking that one of the games the player had already taken part in counted towards his ban, when in fact it didn't. It was an error made in good faith, imo, and not a conscious attempt to gain an illegal advantage (the circumstances of the tie back that up). For me, an extension of the player's ban and a fine on the club would have been sufficient. Don't clubs have to submit their squad details for a game to UEFA for approval? If so, why didn't they pick up on it? High-handed, Draconian punishment, as far as I'm concerned.
I fully agree on the spirit side of it but football is a rules run game. You can't pick and chose when to adhere to those rules. Hell, don't we all criticise the hell out of the FA, UEFA and FIFA for doing just that? Can't have it both ways You are of course right, teams have to submit team sheets before games so why didn't someone point out that he couldn't play? However, the club should have known!
This is my view too, he was supposed to miss 3 games, he missed 3 games. The paperwork just wasn't filled in correctly so he wasn't officially "not playing" he was just not playing. FFS. #kafka
IMO football can whinge about non-gamechanging clerical errors when they get officials good enough to not make gamechanging errors in applying the laws of the game #firstcastouttheplankfromyoureye We can also scrap the foul of "unsporting behaviour" if this is no longer a sport but an administrative exercise
You're a hard taskmaster. I'd mind less if football authorities weren't so bloody useless themselves. They make the rules up as they go along to suit themselves and their current agenda, so to hand out such a harsh punishment for a technicality such as that is hypocritical and more than a little ironic in my view.
We are not talking about a footballing issue though, we are talking about the administration of rules. We are talking about multi-million pound businesses. Each club has a massive admin team. How the **** can something like this happen with competent staff? Even Sunday league sides have to deal with paperwork!!!
I agree the actual rule in this instance is ****. however the rule needs to exist. What if the said player had played the full ninety minutes and scored all three second leg goals? No one would be thinking it was so harsh then.
Yes I would, because he actually already served the punishment of missing 3 games like he was supposed to. Unlike certain fat ****s who get the authorities to appeal on his behalf. Imagine you were sentenced to a year in jail and you went to jail for a year and then as you left they said you didn't sign in when you entered the jail so none of it counted #justice
POT1 Real,Barca,Bayern,Chelsea,Benfica,Atletico,Arsenal,Porto POT2 Schalke,Dortmund,Juve,PSG,Shaktar,Basel,Zenit,City POT3 Leverkusen,Olympiacos,CSKA,Ajax,Liverpool,Sporting,Galatasaray,Bilbao Would of become: POT1 Real,Atletico,City,Bayern,Benfica,Juve,PSG,CSKA POT2 Barca,Chelsea,Arsenal,Porto,Schalke,Dortmund,Shaktar,Basel POT3 Zenit,Leverkusen,Olympiacos,Ajax,Liverpool,Sporting,Galatasaray,Bilbao
This is EXACTLY how it should be. Why should teams who win their respective leagues not be truly recognised with a top seeding instead of watching teams who scrape through qualifying get a top seed spot. Bizarre way of doing it at the moment
Because you end up with half of pot 2 being stronger more formidable teams than half of pot 1. It's almost a punishment to win the league for some countries because odds are you'll get a tougher CL pot than if you came 2nd. (obviously winning the league is reward enough, but you get my point).
See Uefa are dishing out the fines imposed on city PSG and zenit to the other CL and el teams. Anyone got any idea how much we'd get? With there being a lot of el teams around I'd guess not much. Maybe a couple of million each?
