The Spuds have been kicked out of the Europa Conference League after being unable to fulfill their final fixture due to Covid. Sounds a bit harsh to me, but I guess you can't have fixtures piling up all over the place. https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/breaking-tottenham-out-europa-conference-25742478
Doesn't seem harsh to me BB. The rate of full vaccination amongst the top leagues of Europe is much higher than in the Premier League - so if top Premiership clubs are prepared to take the risk of not having fully vaccinated squads then they should accept the consequences if it goes pear shaped. The rate of full vaccination amongst Premiership players is something around 60% whereas in the Bundesliga it is over 90%.
Spurs probably won't be that bothered to be out. They fielded some weak teams in the first place under Nuno Santo.
But being vaccinated doesn't fully guarantee that someone won't catch the virus - nor does it prevent someone from spreading it. And the club were only following regulations as set out by the EPL. As far as I'm aware, there were no such regulations covering this scenario set out by Europa officials, which is why it took so long to make the decision. If they had made this clear from the start, fair enough - but if they didn't, they can't just make things up as they go along, that's simply wrong. All they are doing is undermining an already pointless competition in the minds of clubs, players and fans alike.
13 players and a goalkeeper is the norm before a game is called off. If that is the case shouldn't the allowed subs be changed as one team might have three available who get regular games, while the other team is simply making the numbers up.
Having seen the highlights there could have been about 3 penalties too! Love the way Kane tried to say it was a fair tackle and he didn’t deserved to be booked at all ! Think these players don’t know what they are saying at times .
I think they do actually. It appears to be ingrained in them to cheat by trying to con the ref over every little thing. Something needs to be done about it, but the problem is what. I think they once tried stopping players complaining by giving refs the power to march them 10 yards towards their own goalmouth - but from memory, few refs used that. To be honest, I think the introduction of VAR has made the players even worse in the way they crowd around referees arguing - and don't start me on the number of ridiculous, hard to interpret rule changes that have been brought in...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59745744 Odd goings on in Italy, the league knew Salernitana could not travel yet did not postpone the match...
I largely agree with this, except being vaccinated does reduce the probability of contracting the virus. As for a pointless competition: nail, head, hit. I wouldn’t be slightly excited if we were in it, in fact, I’d prefer not to be - it is wholly irrelevant. The FA Trophy is a more worthy competition by far.
Spurs did their best to get knocked out in the first place by playing weaken sides ! I suspect Conte wants to still be in the competition so he can play fringe players and see how they do. Even if the game did go ahead Spurs would have to win well to get through .
I quite like the principle of having a third European competition Andy. We were brought up with this when we had the European Cup, Cup Winners Cup and the EUFA Cup - the third of these was quite exciting for us (Kaiserslautern etc.). What is such a phoney competition is the Champion's League, which is not made up of 'Champions'. The day was that when you got down to the quarter final stage of the old European Cup then 8 countries would be represented as opposed to the Premier League and a couple of other financially inflated leagues as it is today.
I agree it's nice for lesser teams to get a chance to taste European football and do well but it's a shame so often the Champions league teams get parachuted into the Europa league distorting the competition. Now you have the likes of Barca, Dortmund and others in a competition they probably don't want to be in. And I suspect Spurs (and Roma as another example) would rather not be in the Conference league although one could argue it is/was a chance for them to win something.. The Champions league is some sort of pan European knock out tournament in all but name. Calling it the European cup would be more suitable!
But the Cup Winners’ Cup had relevance because of whom took part. A competition of winners of ‘cup’ (as opposed to league) competitions - great. The UEFA cup was for those who finished near the top of their leagues but didn’t win because the third competition, the European Cup (now Champions League) was ironically for champions, as opposed to its successor which includes the word ‘champions’! A third league-based competition for teams not even close to winning their league, who didn’t win a cup, is absurd to me. It is a nothingness. We may as well have European competition for everyone who escapes relegation. “Playing European football next season” used to mean you’d had a successful season. It doesn’t any more, imho, which is a shame.
