Footballers and CoronaVirus

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/davidlammy/status/1244643013298700290?s=21[/URL]

[EIM]

He's a good lad. Did collections for the homeless at Christmas too.

[Furtho]

Gotoku Sakai, formerly of Stuttgart and Hamburg, now with Vissel Kobe, has tested positive for coronavirus.

[fatbear]

I see many, including Piers Morgan whose “essential” travel includes going to work when we’re advised not to, are having a go. Do we actually know why he was out? He may have been going food shopping.

The BBC reports "Grealish said: "I got a call off a friend asking to go round and I stupidly agreed"."

[fatbear]

The Daily Mirror's take on Grealish https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/footb...emier-21782193

[Ray de Galles]

Sixty-six non-league clubs send open letter to FA over expunging season

[JM Footzee]

A question - they're meant to be doing another rejig of the non-league pyramid this summer, aren't they (so they can get to 1-2-4-8-16)? I assume that's been called off for a season?

Also I don't really understand why games have to be expunged from the record. Sure, cancel the seasons if need be, but why pretend a club hasn't played those games/the player played them? We should be able to acknowledge that league table mean nothing, that the top scorers chart means little, while still acknowledging that Jamie Vardy has 19 goals this season.

[DCI Harry Batt]

That has been put off until the following season, JMF, yeah.

[Felicity, I guess so]

In Grealish’s defence (not a phrase I’ve ever used before) if he was ‘wearing a hoodie and mismatched slippers’ he was clearly WFH and social distancing in the same style as many of us

[jameswba]

Not footballers being infected with the virus, but my local club MSK Zilina went into administration yesterday. Their version of events is that they had asked their 15 highest-paid players to accept pay cuts, but that the players had gone straight to Slovakia's players' union to seek advice rather than respond directly to the club. The club then terminated their contracts with immediate effect, as well as those due to end in June. Players later appeared in the media, or on social media, to add that the proposed cut was one of 80% and that it been communicated in a circular email as non-negotiable. The very highest-paid are said to earn around 10,000 Euros per month. An 80% cut would still see them earning double (or more) what, say, a mid-career Slovak teacher picks up, but even so.... .

Not sure what will happen next or even what to feel about it all. The club say they will finish the season (if the season finishes, which is looking more and more unlikely) and, since, they have based their entire business plan around developing young players through their academy, they should be left with a playing-staff to continue from there. Whether in the top division seems an open question.

I've had a season-ticket for 16 years so I should feel something about this, but I don't, really. At least, not yet. As I was thinking of posting in the 'missing football' thread, football and all the talk around it seems irrelevant just now. But if/when it does all get going again, I imagine I'll miss not having a local side to watch. There'll be other clubs going the same way anyway, I think we can be sure of that.

[Jah Womble]

Have to say that I don't see how Grealish being some kind of supposed 'role model' has much to do with this - the ruling applies to everyone. But then Morgan seldom gets these things right.

Wonder how long it'll take before somebody blows the whistle on the other PL players involved?

[ursus arctos]

jameswba, the non-Slovak coverage of this that I have read tends to refer to be the club being liquidated

Is the nature of the proceeding such that they could continue to field a team whenever play resumes? Wouldn't they qualify for Europe based on the current table?

[jameswba]

Slovak word is also liquidation (likvidacia). The club (company) will cease to exist under its current name and in the business register once the process is complete, but in Slovakia I think that's unlikely to mean demotion if it immediately reforms. They are currently second in the table, so would indeed qualify for Europe as things stand. The club said it had 52 professional players before these 15 were laid-off, but the others will nearly all be 18 or under.

[ursus arctos]

Thanks very much.

I think the confusion (such as it is) arises from the fact that liquidation would mean automatic relegation in most/all Western European leagues.

[Ray de Galles]

Sixty-six non-league clubs send open letter to FA over expunging season

There are now over a hundred clubs as signatories to the open letter.

[G-Man]

And Champions Dinamo Brest laboured to a 1-0 win at Slutsk after drawing at home in their first match against a newly promoted side. Last season's third placed team, Shakhtor Soligorsk surprisingly lost at home in week one, although should have won by a lot more than 2-0 at Gorodeya yesterday. It's exciting times for league football in Belarus !

I suppose I have my favourite Belarus team organised: Slutsk.

[elguapo4]

BATE Borisov have lost their first two league games this season. Dundalk manager Vinnie Perth claims he saw that they were in decline when Dundalk beat them,...in July 2016!

[ursus arctos]

Slutsk was three quarters Jewish at the turn of the 20th Century

[Satchmo Distel]

Memorial Book:

https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/slutsk/slu-xi.html

[Foot of Astaire's]

I must admit to getting pretty irritated with the various stories coming out of football today
"Wages of non playing staff to be cut" citing Spurs amongst others, at the same time as quoting the PFA warning against cutting players wages.

[Sporting]

Barcelona's players have voluntarily agreed to a 70% salary decrease while the crisis lasts at the same time as promising that other club employees will receive their full wage packets (making financial contributions). Yes, they can afford it, but it would be nice for others (some have, it's true) to make similar gestures.

[Jah Womble]

I must admit to getting pretty irritated with the various stories coming out of football today
"Wages of non playing staff to be cut" citing Spurs amongst others, at the same time as quoting the PFA warning against cutting players wages.

You'd expect it from someone like Ashley, but, yeah, my lot really need to sort their sh*t out.

If this isn't an opportunity for football's top end to give something back, then frankly I've no idea what it would take...

[Satchmo Distel]

It's absolutely cuntish when you look at these numbers:

[URL]https://twitter.com/danroan/status/1245031333648351232[/URL]

[Antepli Ejderha]

Football also continues in Nicaragua, surely someone has watched this.

[ursus arctos]

They have been trying to play with gloves and surgical masks.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/apr/01/players-afraid-nicaraguan-football-continues-coronavirus-crisis