Wednesday 1/03

Franklin Munoz
January 03, 2024

🆕🗓️⚽️ Happy Wednesday and Happy New Year! Here’s to hoping that in 2024, you achieve all your goals and at a minimum, you start your year off better than Wayne Rooney. The Manchester United legend lasted a total of 83 days as Manager at Birmingham City. The team is owned by American owners Knighthead Capital, where Tom Brady is an investor, and have decided to part ways as their team is close to the relegation zone.

Giveaway: Wake up and smell the coffee. Just in time for the Holidays, our next giveaway will be a $30 gift card for our favorite coffee brand- Kickoff Coffee. As always, each friend that you refer to subscribe to the newsletter is an entry to our raffle. Best of luck!

The People
Introducing The People’s Puskas Award

Via Giphy

🏆⚽ The Puskas award is named after a legendary striker from the 1950s. In 2009, FIFA introduced the award to recognize the most beautiful goal of the year. You can watch a compilation of all the winners through 2022 here. The award typically awards high level soccer goals by some of the world’s elite players- but how about rewarding those amateur players that also score beautiful goals that are worthy of recognition?

That’s exactly what Danish sports company “Veo” has planned for this year. There are plenty of viral videos throughout the year highlighting beautiful goals that are scored in local leagues from all over the world. They currently have narrowed down the nominees to 16 goals- you should take a look for yourself, perhaps you might see someone you recognize being nominated for this year’s People Puskas Award.

Check out the full list here

Tuesday Recap

Premier League

La Liga

Coppa Italia Round of 16

UEFA
Another No-Go on Super League?

🙅‍♂️👻 Only third day of the year and the Super League is back out? Weeks after showing signs of a second life, the European Super League is already at risk of being cancelled for a second time. Back in April 2021, 12 European clubs unveiled their proposal to create a Super League akin to UEFA’s Champions League, however the proposal was scraped after heavy public criticism. A number of clubs have rejected the concept, including Bayern Munich and PSG. But, in Early Dec. 2023, the European Court of Justice’s ruling revived the European Super League, which is currently backed by Spanish behemoths Barcelona and Real Madrid.

💼😟 Can Super League handle the truth? Even with the blessings of the Court, Real Madrid and Barcelona may have some trouble finding participating teams to join the their cool super league. The Federation Italian Giuoco Calico (FIGC), the governing body of Italian football, has approved a clause to prohibit Italian Clubs from joining the to the Super League.

Serie A titans, Juventus, AC Milan, and Inter Milan were all on board with the Super League back in 2021, but have since pulled out.
The FIGC will not allow any Italian teams to join any competition other than UEFA, FIFA, and domestic FIGC official competitions.
Prior to FIGC’s probation, many Italian clubs have already took a position against the Super League including AS Roma and Atalanta.
Napoli was not originally part of the Super League project, but reportedly favored the idea of it.

🦁👎️ Premier League follows Serie A. Shortly after the European Court’s ruling, the Premier League has released a statement reiterating its opposition to the European Super League. In reaffirming their position, the Premier League noted that open competition underpins the success of domestic and international club competitions.

Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of United Kingdom has vowed to ban Premier League clubs from joining the Super League The Sunak government made clear that forthcoming legislation, the Football Governance Bill, would be used to block British clubs from joining any new league.
Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham Hotspur were the Premier League clubs originally involved before withdrawing their involvement.
Manchester United reiterated their withdrawal, noting that they are fully committed to working with Premier League and UEFA structures.

🫢😨 Beginning of Another End? With two of Euro’s biggest leagues out, and many clubs terrified of upsetting FIFA and UEFA, it seems very unliekly that the Super League will come to existence. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that this will be the last we will hear on the Super League. After all Flo Perez is historically known for getting what he sets his sights on.

Quick Bites 🍕

11 Documentaries To Watch

By now, you have probably watched the Welcome To Wrexham documentary that highlights the story of how Ryan Reynolds and Robert McElhenney bought a tiny club in Wales. The Athletic curated a list of other documentaries that should be on your radar as well.

Check out the full list here

Manchester United and Dortmund in talks Over Sancho Loan

Exiled Manchester United player looks to be on the move this January transfer window. His last game for Manchester was back in August and hasn’t seen the field since due to his fallout with the coach.

Read the transfer news here

3 Red Cards for Getafe in One Game

Mason Greenwood, on loan from Manchester United, was one of the players that was shown a red card for Getafe this Tuesday in their 2-0 loss to Rayo Vallecano.

Read the full story here