Players Play

Well the players certainly don't seem to care about the suspect origins of the Copa America Centenario.  They are clearly into it.  I guess for this collection of countries, regardless of the context, they will play hard.   And recklessly.  And with excessive force.  Through the first 12 matches there were 54 yellow cards and six red cards.  Every match except the two US contests and Brazil-Haiti has seen a minimum of four yellows.

Certainly entertaining so far.  US weren't dreadful against Colombia but they weren't very good plus they were a little unlucky.  The handling call was correct in my view; yeah he turned his back and had no idea where the ball was but his arm was outside the frame of his body.   I never agree with Lalas on these calls but on this one I did.  I don't have an explanation for the Yankee blow out of Costa Rica. For me the 4-0 score seems extremely flattering to the US; I didn't think they played all that much better than in the Colombia match.  Argentina-Chile was a marvelous exhibition of the sport, even if there was a lot of fouling.  I swear they were making tackles on guys going for water.  Mexico-Uruguay was also high on energy; El Tri got pretty ticked when Uruguay leveled the match and kicked into a higher gear in the 3-1 win. The Peru-Ecuador 2-2 draw was a good watch too. 

YouTubeable Moment for the week goes to the cameraman down.  Hope he's okay.


Chester Bankrolled

The board in its infinite wisdom gave me a transfer budget 56 million virtual dollars.  That seems like a lot but it's about middle of the road.  And it certainly doesn't give me license to go out and get anybody I want.  Plus with the maximum salary allowed by the board (about $3 million a year), many of the best players are still out of reach for us.   To top it off, the richer clubs are sniffing around at our younger talent. One of my players got all pouty when I rejected a bid from Atletico Madrid.  Fortunately, I found a moderately better replacement, got a good bid from Atletico and let him go for a net spend of $5 million. Better than having a disgruntled player bringing down the other players.


Oh To Be In France...

Paul Pogba - new Chester Blues acquisition! - leads favored France into Euro Championships

The European Championships kick off Friday with host France taking on Romania.  You know the drill, six groups of four teams, play each team in your group, three points for a win, one for a draw, etc.  Group winners advance.  So do group runners up runner ups second place finishers.  And, so do four "best" third place finishers.  Wait, group stage play winnows the field from 24 down to 16?  That's worse than the NBA regular season.  And just how do you determine the best third place finishers?  Let's go the manual (available here) Section 18.03:

The four best third-placed teams are determined according to the following

criteria applied, in the order given, to the final tournament group matches:

          a. higher number of points obtained;

         b. superior goal difference;

        c. higher number of goals scored;

       d. fair play conduct in the final tournament as defined in Annex C.5.1;

      e. position in the UEFA national team coefficient rankings (see Annex B.1.2.b).

Well a., b. and c. are pretty common.  What's in Annex C.5.1?  Start with 10 points per game.  Deduct one point for each yellow, three points for each red.  For those with inquiring minds, a red from two yellows counts for three points, a red card on top of a yellow (i.e. second offense that would have a been a sending-off even without prior yellow) is four points.  Why do they count down from 10 as opposed to simply adding up the points?  I don't know.  I'm not a soccer administrative person.  At least not anymore. 

Still with me?  We move onto Annex B.1.2.b to read about the coefficient rankings.  That calculation, while not complex math, is involved.  Start with 10,000 points per match.  Why 10,000?  Beats me.  Add points for wins and draws, add points for goals scored, deduct points for goals conceded, add bonus points based on the importance of the competition, weigh matches in the first half of the cycle less than second half blah, blah blah.  If you're really interested, RTFM.  Except I strongly recommend that you don't.  Anyway, the process gets you to a ranking that will be the fifth tiebreaker for the third place finishers.

As for predictions for the tournament, I suggest the following sources:

Sports Illustrated
ESPN FC [features comments from top bloggers from each country]
The Daily Mail
The Guardian [good group-by-group analysis]

France is getting the most attention as a possible winner but Spain, Germany, England and Belgium are mentioned as well.  Belgium will be the main rooting interest here at BFS.

In closing we note that a tournament with venues that include both St. Etienne and St. Denis is probably awesome.