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2021-22-23-24 News Thread

The NWSL Washington Spirit have hired current Barcalona women’s coach Jonatan Giraldez to be their next coach. He’ll join after Barca’s season ends in June. This is his 3rd season as head coach at Barca. They won LaLiga each of the last 2 years and won the Champions League last year after being runners up in 2022. They’re undefeated in the league this year and won all 4 Champions League group stage games this year with a +20 goal differential. This is a huge get for the Spirit.

Also in NWSL, the Seattle Reign are back. They changed their name from OL Reign yesterday. They're still owned by OL Groupe though.
 
andyt said:
Also in NWSL, the Seattle Reign are back. They changed their name from OL Reign yesterday. They're still owned by OL Groupe though.
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Thank goodness. That name branding was SO stupid for a North American market.
 
NWSL draft happened Friday night ... with the usual fireworks and wheeler dealing. The Courage bailed on the early rounds in favor of a big trade and a bunch of allocation money ... mostly spent on getting Ashley Sanchez from rival Washington. Makes sense, since the went heavy on college players last season, and those usually don't pay off until at least year 2. After losing Fox to the WSL, getting a USWNT player like Sanchez is good for the box office if nothing else. They now have to figure out how to play with about 5 attacking midfielders, though.

The league has expanded to four rounds and now includes anyone who is over 18 and registers in the pool. It's widely speculated that they might do away with the draft entirely after the next round of expansion is complete.
 
Jose Mourinho and his entire staff were whacked by Roma. They’re 9th in the table, winners of 1 of their last 6 in the league, 5 points from a Champions League spot. Daniele De Rossi will replace him.
 
VinatieriDefinesClutch said:
Year three Mourinho, it never fails. For as great of a manager as he is and all that he's won, he's never seen a fourth season.
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Yeah I think he’s still a better manager than people give him credit….like at Tottenham I think one of the biggest issues we had was him coming in midway through a season, where ideally I think you want to appoint him in the offseason so he gets a full training schedule in, can make transfers that fit his system, and you can have a great 2 seasons….beyond that, the players get tired of the repetition & lack of creativity they’re able to demonstrate. Same with Conte, imo…and with him you ideally don’t want to be in Europe and only focus on the regular season.

….once that third season hits tho, everyone is exhausted and done with his shit.


I’m the rare Tottenham fan that loved his tenure tho. We had some great spells over those first 1.5 seasons, and every presser was much watch TV. I love the guy.
 
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I don’t think anyone doubts how good he is. He's won hardware at every stop except Spurs, including both stint at Chelsea. He has a career winning percentage over 60%. He just can’t get past the 3rd year. His longest run was his first stint at Chelsea, 185 matches, winning the league twice and both domestic cups and 2/3 of his matches. He was fired 1 month into his 4th season, after winning both domestic cups the year before.
 
As a turnaround guy or to kick a sleepy team into gear, Mourinho is the best in the biz. I've rarely heard anyone say otherwise. But yeah, he's got one gear and he absolutely comes with a ticking clock
 
My god, on Twitter/reddit/talksport/athletic/podcasts he’s near universally viewed as a dinosaur the game passed by long ago.

He hasn’t been viewed as a consensus top 10 manager for a long long time now…but I think he still has top shelf coaching ability if given the right project, and within the proper parameters. Burning a season by having him come in midway through, isn’t it. imo.
 
Yeah, that's Reddit and or Twitter/X ... not real life. If Mourinho was so terrible he wouldn't keep getting top shelf jobs.
 
jeffbear said:
Yeah, that's Reddit and or Twitter/X ... not real life.
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I mean, I was responding to…“yeah I don’t think anyone doubts how good he is”

and

“….Mourinho is the best in the biz (as a turnaround guy), I’ve rarely heard anyone say otherwise.”


which is what I disagreed with, neither of which seem to imply it was talking about “real life” or those making the hirings.


my original point was he’s still a pretty great coach, despite how universally he’s shit on in all those venues of discourse.

jeffbear said:
If Mourinho was so terrible he wouldn't keep getting top shelf jobs.
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I mean, he just got axed at Roma…which for Jose was slumming it.
 
I think the issue is that the game has passed him by a little and because he's kind of an asshole, he wears out his welcome quickly. He had a solid decade of being one of, if not the best manager on earth from his time at Porto through Real Madrid. I think probably his second decade has made people forget exactly how spectacular his first decade was.
 
Montana said:
I mean, I was responding to…“yeah I don’t think anyone doubts how good he is”

and

“….Mourinho is the best in the biz (as a turnaround guy), I’ve rarely heard anyone say otherwise.”


which is what I disagreed with, neither of which seem to imply it was talking about “real life” or those making the hirings.


my original point was he’s still a pretty great coach, despite how universally he’s shit on in all those venues of discourse.




I mean, he just got axed at Roma…which for Jose was slumming it.
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Jebus man ... you know I agree with you on the basic points of this conversation, right?
 
VinatieriDefinesClutch said:
I think the issue is that the game has passed him by a little and because he's kind of an asshole, he wears out his welcome quickly.
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100%

Also like Conte, when he knows it’s going south he makes a spectacle of it blaming everything but himself….(which also isn’t unlike how he draws the criticism to himself to protect his players, during the good times. He’d set himself on fire to be the headline, if it meant protecting his players from the media’s scorn.)

VinatieriDefinesClutch said:
He had a solid decade of being one of, if not the best manager on earth from his time at Porto through Real Madrid. I think probably his second decade has made people forget exactly how spectacular his first decade was.
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Yeah, and honestly he had a really great run at Tottenham for probably 1.25 years…and had us playing better than our talent. (and despite not being the old Jose at Chelsea #2, and Man United, he still had some success.)

….Tottenham fans are weird in that as soon as Mourinho and then Conte were out, people act like they entire tenure’s were disasters….when both had some pretty great results for long stretches. They just both left on brutal terms & had lost the team.

But yeah, you said it all better than I did, agree completely.
 
Sam Mewis announced her retirement from soccer. She said in a tweet that her knee won’t tolerate the impact that elite soccer requires.

She gets a nice soft landing though. She’s joining the Men In Blazers Media Network to lead their women’s soccer coverage. She worked with them throughout the Women’s World Cup, doing live streams at all hours of the day.
 
Sounds like Lynn Williams will be a regular contributor too ... so, Snacks 2.0

I'm looking forward to the interviews, because Sam has a real knack for being fun but keeping it informative.
 
The 2026 World Cup Schedule has been released. All US Group Stage matches will be on the west coast, the 1st and 3rd in LA, the 2nd in Seattle. In a mild surprise, the final will be played at MetLife Stadium in beautiful East Rutherford, NJ. JerryWorld was the odds-on favorite to get the final. They get a semi, along with Atlanta. The 3rd place game will be played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.

 
If this wasn't FIFA then you could assume placing the final at MetLife was a nod to the summer heat ... but the 3rd place game being assigned to Miami gives you a clue. Some sponsor or another paid for it ... which is fine I guess. The the rest of the world, who don't really know anything about the nuances, naturally assume a WC Final in the US would be hosted in LA or New York. The fact that it's actually being hosted in a massive parking lot off the Interstate in New Jersey? Meh ... details.
 
All 3 previous World Cups held in the US had the final in the LA area, 1994 and 1999 at the Rose Bowl, the relocated 2003 tournament finished at the Home Dept Center. Depending on what SoFi Stadium submitted in the bid book, MetLife has a higher capacity, 12,000 more seats. Thats a lot of gate revenue to pass up by playing in LA.
 
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