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2021-22-23-24-25 News Thread

Meanwhile, in ownership news:

Amit Bhatia sold his shares in QPR (after 18 seasons!) and is looking to be a significant minority investor with FSG! 😳 Comments about him from QPR supporters seem almost unanimous in praise of him. This just seems unusual. Maybe portends bad times upcoming at QPR so he wants out? 🤷

www.theguardian.com

Liverpool owner FSG in talks to sell 30% stake to Amit Bhatia consortium for £1.35bn

Liverpool’s owner, Fenway Sports Group, is negotiating a deal to sell a 30% stake in the club to a consortium led by Amit Bhatia for £1.35bn
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
QPR are the Don Quixote of London teams. Forever tilting at windmills, never settled in success. Bad times are always just around the corner, no matter the ownership or management situation.
 
Jurgen Klopp officially took over as German National Team coach. He‘ll make about the same as Nagelsmann, €7 million per year, and his appointment runs through the 2030 World Cup.

The German Federation also appointed Per Mertesacker as Sporting Director. He most recently ran Arsenal’s academy sending Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith-Rowe, Max Dowman, Ethan Nwanieri and others to the senior team. He won the 2014 World Cup as a player with Germany.
 
And he apparently brought in much of the same back room staff as he had at Liverpool, including Pep Lijnders as assistant manager. So happy I can wish Pep well again after his stint at Manchester City. 😁
 
Italy can never be normal, can they? Pirlo set to be the new national coach, but the federation pulled out of the deal over his role as an ambassador for a Russian betting company. And now Maldini and Leonardo have resigned from their positions. Any shock that Pep immediately went "no thank you." What a weird ambitious move to even attempt to go for him. He has no connection to Italy and probably wants a break.
 
So some surprising good news. Poch is apparently staying on as US coach which I'm pretty shocked by, but happy to see.

Bigger news is that UEFA has voted to boycott the world cup if FIFA goes along with it's plan to sell to private investors which should essentially kill the deal and I have to assume is the beginning of the end for Infantino. Feels a little similar to the super league situation of recent history.
 
Infantino losing his job would be a big surprise, considering all the "support" he was reportedly receiving from the member nations re: re-election. Glanced through an article about it just last week. But if that's what happens, I'm all here for it.
 
Yeah, I wouldn’t be shocked to it fall either way when it comes to Infantino. In soccer, federations say and threaten all sorts of things, but we’ve seen WAY too many times that they don’t always vote in line with their public sentiments. See, the federations are every bit as corrupt as the governing body, so a little bit of pork grease tends to go a long way. And nobody has more goodies to throw at UEFA than FIFA. Infantino is nowhere near as skilled in the black arts as Sepp Blatter, but he’s got much the same arsenal of cash … I mean perks … in his vault.
 
Sepp "Bellend" Blatter wouldn't have made this blunder for sure. Gianni just saw dollar signs and just thought, if these grifters can get away with this shit while running the country sitting at the top of the global countries ranking, surely I can get away with it while running an organization that is entirely made of scams and bribes. The problem is this wasn't something you can just bribe enough small countries and go, we have the numbers. If England, Germany, Spain, etc say we are boycotting this, it doesn't matter how many smaller countries you can get on your side, it's dead in the water.
 
I mean … Blatter did MANY corrupt and questionably legal things (and some outright criminal stuff) during his time in change of FIFA, and his predecessors did the same or worse. And plenty of federations made noise about noise about boycotts and walkouts only to turn around and vote for the crooks anyway when it came time to actually do something about it. I expect Infantino to be turfed out, but I’m not holding my breath because of the entire history of FIFA.
 
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