UEFA to force-feed the Golden Goose

The President of UEFA,
Michel Platini, has hinted that the confederation is considering
dropping the Europa League competition altogether in favour of an
expanded Champions League. The move, mooted for some time between
2015 and 2018, would see the unpopular continental second-tier system
removed as and football's big money spinner double in size to 64
teams.



Platini has proved
somewhat of

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Fernando Torres is not a time-traveller

I don't read much baseball - the odd seminal work like Moneyball, usually - but I make a habit of reading Lookout Landing, the SB Nation coverage for my local major league team, the Seattle Mariners.  Check it out - it's intelligent and funny stuff.

Hot on the topic of now ex-Mariner Chone Figgins trending on Twitter last week (after rumours of his long-impending demise proved true), the

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Abramovich, Benitez and Guardiola: bizarre love triangle

In 2007, Michael
Voss, a former Brownlow medallist, inspirational club captain and widely-touted
Premiership coach in waiting, had announced he wanted a head-coaching gig for
the following season.  In quick response,
three AFL clubs fired incumbent coaches to obtain the hottest leadership property
available in years.  





When fallen league
heavyweights Carlton effectively vacated their

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International break? Give me a break!

It’s international week again and, for the fourth time in as many months since the Euros, the football world lets out a collective “meh”.



Today’s friendlies
mean nothing to anyone.  Except apparently
FIFA, who decided to schedule a round of non-competition internationals to fuel
their dual fantasy that International friendlies are as important to crowds as
the local stuff.



It’s not
that

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Graphic: European football conversion rates

The following chart displays the efficiency of European football forwards my mapping their conversion rate (goals per shot) against the number of shots per game.

The higher on the Y-axis the forward, the more efficient the player in front of goal; the farther to the right on the X-axis, the more shots they generate.  Only players with four goals or more this season were considered (ie. forwards

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Huntelaar a great fit at Liverpool

Reds fans must be salivating.  Liverpool have today been linked with Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, the 29-year old Dutch goalpoacher extraordinaire of Schalke
04.  Should the transfer come to fruition
– which is eminently possible, but a long way off – it would remedy perhaps
Liverpool’s greatest failing so far this term, converting on-ball dominance into
goals.



So far this year, Liverpool rank sixth

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Juan Mata leads (another) Chelsea revolution

It's hard to be mad at anything that
scampers. Likewise disdainful, jealous or irritated. As a word, scamper
is used generally when something flits about in a light-footed
manner, implying that the observer receives some kind of pleasing
entertainment just from the sight.




No-one scampers with malice – it
can't be done. Any attempts veer quickly towards scurrying, or it's
less desirable

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