International Football thread

[Aidan11]

100% win record, no one will ever beat that!

He got that by the skin of his teeth as well.

[Aidan11]

We need a manager who is squeaky clean - no skeletons.

I nominate Ryan Giggs.

[Aidan11]

He might have actually resigned rather than be sacked.

[st_brendy]

Southgate for four games as caretaker appears to be the talk.

Number one criteria on the job description: Take the captaincy off Rooney
Number two criteria on the job description: Drop Rooney from the starting XI

Yep, FA have confirmed Southgate for four games.

So long as he doesn't mess them up, I'd expect him to get the job fulltime. Possibly with an experienced head to assist him, say Hoodle (not Harry though, cannot see them going for Harry in any capacity).

[st_brendy]

David Moyes might want to start fearing for his job.

[yuppie]

Crazy situation. Got to laugh really.

[Gingerfinch]

David Moyes might want to start fearing for his job.

He probably was anyway!

[budgetmeansbudget]

I thought we'd scraped the bottom of the barrel with Allardyce, but we've gone through the bleeding bottom of it with Gareth no hoper penalty missing Southgate.

Just as well I couldn't give more than a brass farthing about the England football anymore. Crap manager for a crap team.

[bigfluffylemon]

Ok, I'm a bit late to the party here (English football not being covered so much down under), but what the actual f@@@ is going on here?

I don't really understand any of it. Why was the newspaper doing this (and the Tele, no less. Geez, it really has gone into the gutter in the last few years. It's the sort of stunt you'd expect from the former News of the World)? What exactly did Sam do wrong other than flapping his mouth of with people he didn't know very well? He didn't accept the job and made a point that it would have to be cleared with the FA, so I'm not seeing corruption here.

This whole situation seems really, really strange.

[mikesiva]

A case of the press using a rather languid point to sell a story that has no real depth? Im not a fan of Big Sam and hate the idea of him being National team manager, but has he really dont anything wrong here?

All Sam is really doing is potentially making money on an advisory basis by telling someone what is pretty much 100% obvious..... that you cna buy a player who is third party owned as long as the transfer ends with 100% ownership in the new club. Nothing dodgy about that, its perfectly above board and legal. He is just trying to sell the fact he has insider knowledge to make money from people he assumes are rich and throwing cash at him for his superior knowledge. Rather than say "seriously, are you stupid", he makes the point out to sound like he is really clued up and knows how things operate. In short, he sees 400k in cash to sound intelligent, and does his part to come across as worthy of that payment.

As soon as the conversation turned to darker matter that were illegal, Sam clearly becomes embarressed and comments that he doesnt want to hear anymore on the matter, and asks the people to save the discussion for when he isnt around. He also calls the person involved an idiot for raising the topic, and in no uncertain terms makes it known he has no desire to discuss such things.

The only thing here is the fact that Sam drinks his wine in a pint glass, which I personally celebrate him for, and the fact that is it wrong to sell your skills to someone else without your employer knowing?

If you think it is wrong, then fine.... but no more than a slap on the wrist.

That's the way I see it too.

[Aidan11]

A case of the press using a rather languid point to sell a story that has no real depth? Im not a fan of Big Sam and hate the idea of him being National team manager, but has he really dont anything wrong here?

All Sam is really doing is potentially making money on an advisory basis by telling someone what is pretty much 100% obvious..... that you cna buy a player who is third party owned as long as the transfer ends with 100% ownership in the new club. Nothing dodgy about that, its perfectly above board and legal. He is just trying to sell the fact he has insider knowledge to make money from people he assumes are rich and throwing cash at him for his superior knowledge. Rather than say "seriously, are you stupid", he makes the point out to sound like he is really clued up and knows how things operate. In short, he sees 400k in cash to sound intelligent, and does his part to come across as worthy of that payment.

As soon as the conversation turned to darker matter that were illegal, Sam clearly becomes embarressed and comments that he doesnt want to hear anymore on the matter, and asks the people to save the discussion for when he isnt around. He also calls the person involved an idiot for raising the topic, and in no uncertain terms makes it known he has no desire to discuss such things.

The only thing here is the fact that Sam drinks his wine in a pint glass, which I personally celebrate him for, and the fact that is it wrong to sell your skills to someone else without your employer knowing?

If you think it is wrong, then fine.... but no more than a slap on the wrist.

That's the way I see it too.

He was telling these "businessmen" how to bend the FA rules though while negotiating a nice large sum for himself. Bad enough for any manager but worse when you're manager of England.

This appears to be the tip of the iceberg and the newspaper is trying to expose the managers who are taking illegal payments. 8 more have been suggested by the paper although no names mentioned. I can even remember back when Alan Sugar accused Brian Clough of taking a bung for the sale of Teddy Sheringham.

Whether anything further comes from this investigation remains to be seen.

[Gingerfinch]

Sam had two choices. Leave or be pushed.

Gareth Southgate's name fills me with dread if I'm being honest. BUT, can he do any worse than some of his predecessors?

[Aidan11]

Sam had two choices. Leave or be pushed.

Gareth Southgate's name fills me with dread if I'm being honest. BUT, can he do any worse than some of his predecessors?

He doesn't look like someone who could control all those egos in the dressing room. I may be wrong though.


Incidentally I've seen the name of the 8 managers and most are no surprise although a couple of names are (assuming it's true of course).

[sussexpob]

He was telling these "businessmen" how to bend the FA rules though while negotiating a nice large sum for himself. Bad enough for any manager but worse when you're manager of England

Sorry, but I have to ask, have you read the actual transcript and know the rules that the conversation is related to, or are you reading the papers headlines and assuming they are telling the truth?

[Aidan11]

He was telling these "businessmen" how to bend the FA rules though while negotiating a nice large sum for himself. Bad enough for any manager but worse when you're manager of England

Sorry, but I have to ask, have you read the actual transcript and know the rules that the conversation is related to, or are you reading the papers headlines and assuming they are telling the truth?

The Transcript...

Allardyce's agent: "Is that third party ownership a problem though?"
Sam Allardyce: "It's not a problem."
Telegraph reporter: "Yeah, well, I mean there are, there are ways..."
SA: "It's not a problem."
Reporter: "...there are ways around that, as I understand it, or ways through that."
SA: "(inaudible) and er (inaudible) they've been doing it for years."
SA: "You can still get around it. Obviously the big money is here."

SA: "What they would be better doing is, making sure they've got the ownership and the agent. So they own the agent, the agent works for them, as well. 'Cause then the agent, if he gets sold on again, the agent will get more money if he gets sold on again."
SA: "You get a percentage of the player's agent's fee, that the agent pays to you, the company, because he's done that new deal at that club again, or, they sell him on and you're not getting a part of the transfer fee any more, 'cause you can't do that. But ... but you get - because of the size of the contracts now, the contract'll be worth 30, 40 million, at 10per cent."

His agent: "Yes, I understand that."

SA: "And you get, you get, you've done a deal with the agent where you're getting 5 per cent of the agent's fee. Which is massive for doing about two hours work, like."

Allardyce's financial adviser: "But you're, you're setting up a fund to buy the economic rights, effectively, of these players?
Agent: "Third party ownership, yup."
Reporter: "Certainly in the places where we can do that, yeah."
SA: "Third party ownership is only banned in this country because, because we have..."
Financial adviser: "And France, and France."
SA: "And France yeah."
SA: "You can still get around it."

The bits in bold are quite clear. The England manager is telling these guys how you can bend the rules relating to TP ownership. These are Sam's actual words. Now Sam may not have done these kind of deals himself but the fact he knows about them and is telling people about them is conduct unbecoming of any manager, let alone the England manager.

He may have just been a bloke trying to be clever shooting his mouth off after a few drinks but the damage is done and there was no way he could continue.