Campfire Football

There are some really interesting match ups in the Europa League. I would say they are less predictable than the Champions League ties. Some exciting sides still alive so who can get to the Elite Eight?

Giroud and Delle Alli got on their bikes. Lio Messi put on his weekly magic show. Mendy's curler crushed Atalanta's hearts. Stuart Dallas embodied Ronaldinho. Some great goals but some difficult 90 minutes to sit through for the reward.

Darren Drysdale is a referee in the English League (L1 & L2). He recently became famous for squaring up face to face with a player before giving him a yellow card for abusive language. He will receive a ban, no doubt, but it's a thankless job, being a football referee. They take abuse at all levels so something needs to change.

So far my predictions are intact, just. Liverpool are not a terrible team overnight, Dortmund get by as Erling Haaland blitzes Sevilla. Mbappe bags a hat trick against Messi's Barcelona, and Juve stumble but survive.

The Champions League is back! This round of 16 is tasty and the matchups are mostly quite difficult to call. But I've decided to put my mouth on record here and see how clairvoyant I really am.

There were so many games with story lines this weekend. Too many, almost. I mention the Liverpool "crisis" but spend some time running down some of the goals of the weekend. There were some pearls out there which deserve a YouTube search. I end with the Bayern Munich vs Arminia Bielefeld round up, because that was quite a bit of fun.

Domestic cup matches across Europe this weekend, and most matches were poor. Atalanta beat Napoli 3-1 with some class and quality, but that was almost it. Thankfully Everton and Spurs served up a 9 goal thriller to make up for the rest of it. I'll offer my perspective on the 9 farcical goals that were scored on a defensive level, and supplement that with some audio clips from Jose and some pun...

VAR is not ruining the game. The misuse of the tool has been the main problem. It seems as if the officials feel a need to get involved, slow the game down, and nitpick highly subjective decisions, when they are supposed to wield this power to overrule egregious calls. Some audio clips from Scott Parker, David Moyes, Craig Burley, and Frank Leboeuf to supplement my views.

I guess we all saw this coming. It wasn't fun for me as a Chelsea fan who has admired Lampard for years. He gave a lot to the club in his brief tenure. So how did it all end? There were warning signs from last season, 5 key matches that sealed his fate, disagreements on recruitment with the board, and the looming cloud of 200 Million Pounds spent on players who were not delivering. Good luck t...

Welcome back to Campfire Football! I was out with a computer failure for 2 weeks. Horrible time to miss one football story after another. But I am back! Today, a little recap of Drunk Football in the 2020/2021 season from around Europe, Granada vs Barcelona (3-5 Thriller) in the Copa Del Rey, and a word on the racial abuse players have received online.

Today I go over some thoughts on the Frank Lampard Sack Saga and where the situation may actually stand. Then it's on to games of the day. Chelsea's Women beat Manchester City in a Continental Cup thriller. Real Madrid fell to 4th tier Alcoyano, Juve beats Napoli in the Supercopa thanks to an American, and the Manchester clubs went through tough tests to get all 3 points.

Bayer Leverkusen against Borussia Dortmund was a cracking game of two halves. A real contest. Leicester against Chelsea, less so. Leicester were efficient and good enough. Chelsea were not. As a Blues fan, this was frustrating and I'll tell you why.

The governing bodies and authority figures have decided to ban goal celebrations where players touch each other. Why? Well, Covid of course. But does that even make any logical sense? Is stopping a celebration doing anything except virtue signalling and posturing? I don't think so, and neither does John Nicholson of Football365.com. See his article here: https://www.football365.com/news/footba...

Some big matches are duds, like the Liverpool vs Manchester United match. But some are dimes, like Inter Milan and Juventus. They played a good match, as did the Chelsea and Manchester United Ladies. Tanguy Ndombele scored a pearler, so did Lauren James, and the Brozovic-Barella-Bastoni B-trio showed that Conte spirit to keep the title race in Serie A hot.

It's winter football at its best. Snow in Turkey, a 1980s Elland Road throwback pitch, 1 - nils where you were certain there would be goals, and the early match with Sam Allardyce on the touchline turned out to be the Premier League thriller.

In youth football, the learning process to get kids back out onto the field has been on a steep curve. We have needed to adapt, collaborate, communicate, and in the end, try to create a culture that is geared towards the health and wellness of the players. I watched a webinar called Navigating Return to Play Protocols Across State Lines and Political Subdivisions. Some great insights from Vince Ga...

I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in on a Q&A with Jose Mourinho. This was a real treat for this convention. The Special One talked openly about a range of topics: tactical evolution of the game in recent years, technology use in modern football, what Spurs did for each player during Covid Lockdown in March, how he feels about getting into international management, and what he thought a...

I saw Jose Mourinho do a Q&A this morning. It was incredible. Fascinating. I need a day to synthesize the information. So, I watched Seth Taylor from Ianni Training conduct this talk: "Parent Drama and Player Trauma: The origins and solutions to the largest problem in youth soccer." As a coach, I have an opinion on this. Keep kids in the game. Do your part. I'll do mine if you let...

It's the second leg of the Copa Libertadores semi-final between these two teams. Palmeiras won the first leg 3-0 away from home so River needed to really bring it in this game to make it interesting for the neutral. And wow, what a game it turned out to be. It had absolutely everything!

Here's the second installment of the United Soccer Coaches Convention Series. Today I watched Emma Hayes, Chelsea Ladies Coach and her Assistant Denise Reddy discuss "The Pathway to Scoring Goals" which I very much enjoyed. Then I saw Collen Hacker deliver an inspiring talk on "Coaching Mentally Tough Athletes: Are They Born or Made?" A lot more of the organizational, culture,...

I am attending the United Soccer Coaches Convention this week. It is remote so I get to watch amazing discussions, panels, and interviews on a variety of topics related to the game. Today I saw Tyler Adams, Kelly O'Hara, Jordan Morris, and Crystal Dunn talk about adversity and versatility. Then I watched a talk about Dynamic Investment in Women's Football so I'll give my takeaways from...

I forgot to spare a thought for Shalke, who snapped one of the worst winless streaks I've ever heard of, Chelsea men and ladies won, and FA Cup magic from Marine, Crawley Town, and Spurs.

Football from all over today. Ligue 1, La Liga, Bundesliga, FA Cup, Serie A. I watched a lot of football and stuck with teams that are my "neutral's picks." Here are a few teams from different leagues that I recommend looking into if you are trying to broaden your horizons. There are also some feel-good stories that we can all use right now.

Here's another while I'm on Recordinho mode. If you don't watch the Bundesliga and missed the match between Borussia Moenchengladbach and Bayern Munich to watch Liverpool's first team thrash the Aston Villa kids, I've got you covered. The reality is that even though the Bundesliga seems like a formality because of Bayern's annual dominance, the football is fantastic between...

The FA has made this story more noteworthy with a statement released this morning regarding Edinson Cavani and the ban he received for his Instagram post that caused a lot of controversy. Anybody who was offended by his post, I have no issue with that. I just wanted to offer a perspective on why we should be more sensitive to cultural differences before taking punitive action against somebody who...