It is true that the better car mostly shows its driver better than a driver of a less powerful car. However when it comes to assessing the drivers by assuming they have the same cars then we can witness really interesting things. Drivers like Verstappen and Hamilton can still be ahead of the others under the same conditions. But for example Perez is a candidate to be left behind by a few drivers on the grid due to making simple mistakes despite having really good driving skills.

The most skillful drivers would still be in front of the others in that case. But I don't think we would see such thing like same cars in F1 so this will always go on like this seemingly.


Ocon was on podium yeah but it was the Monaco GP. As the track isn't much available to overtake the others qualifying session is very important. It is mostly the decider of the race result as well. Ocon finished qualifying session in 4th place and Ferrari's strategical mistake helped Ocon capture Leclerc's place on podium.

The result of the Wales - Armenia match was a really surprise one. Wales must have an odd like 1.30 to win that match but they lost 4-2 home. I didn't see the same Wales which resisted Croatia really great in the first group match and stole one point. Their being unbalanced can really be a big help for Turkey, agreed.

However Turkey made me really worried last night. I was like that was it after they conceded the 2nd goal while there wasn't much time left. Thankfully they found the strength in themselves to get ahead once again to win. It is still 3 points in the end but they need to play better than that to be more convincing.

I also said yes to that question so it was a big relief too.  

Whoever owns Manchester United one thing is certain that they really need significant additions to the squad. At least this is needed if Erik ten Hag is planning bigger for the club for the near future. This season they showed how capable they can be by defeating even the league champion in Old Trafford. They were really impressive in home matches against top clubs in the league.

But this squad isn't still quite enough to compete harder for the Premier League and Champions League titles. Maybe you can give the Arsenal example but it isn't a thing we see very often. They have a really young squad so they also need some serious additions to keep consistency.

As a result Manchester United need to be really careful about their expenditures as well from now on. Otherwise they might find themselves spending a huge sum of money on an average player such as Maguire.

Sevilla's dominance isn't unbreakable in the Europa League. Several teams have showed this to us in the recent years. Since the 2016-17 season there have been quite many different champions. Two of them were even Premier League teams which were Chelsea and Manchester United. As a result I wouldn't like to see Liverpool's chance much lower than Sevilla next season. It is all about how much Liverpool can balance the EPL and EL at the same time. They just need to increase their concentration level.

Because this was one of the main problems why they seemed better in the Champions League than the EPL this season for a while. And of course the right transfers should continue to be made as well.

Topa sahip olmayla malesef iş bitmiyor. Türkiye hala tam olarak istediği oyunu ortaya koyamıyor. Bir de yıllardır forvet kıtlığı yaşanıyor. Burak Yılmaz ile seneler geçti adam milli takımı bıraktı ve yerini alabilecek çok fazla alternatif yok. Enes Ünal şu an akla gelen gerçekten yetenekli denilebilecek tek isim belki de ama onun da çapraz bağları yırtıldığı için yıl sonundan önce dönmesi beklenmiyor.

Aslında hem orta sahamız hem de kanatlarımız çok yetenekli oyunculardan oluşmasına rağmen Letonya karşısında hala hiçbir şeyin değişmemiş olması üzücü. Belki skoru koruyup 2-1 yeneriz ama bu oyun gelecek maçlar için alarm veriyor. Gruptan ilk 2 sırada çıkabilmek için çok daha iyi oynamamız lazım.

Of course I talked about it confidently by assuming the new owner would allocate an enormous transfer budget for the club as it is oil money we are talking about. I made this assumption by looking at the Newcastle example though. Because 80% of the club is owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment now. And moreover Newcastle's budget was said to be around 1 billion euros once.  

Maybe Manchester United's budget might not be that big but still I assume it would be at least a few hundreds of million dollars. This should be more than enough for Erik ten Hag to build the kind of a team he would like freely. If he can do this then this team should be ready to play bigger in all the tournaments they are in.

It is happening again. Unbelievable. Turkey are again struggling to have a comfortable lead by at least two goals against Latvia. Despite getting ahead first they still couldn't prevent the equalizer early in the second half. Turkey are again the highly dominant side generally but the second half didn't start in that way at all.

I see Umut Nayir in the at the centre of the attacking trio. He had a good season in his domestic league but I don't think he deserves a place in the starting eleven under normal conditions. Enes Unal's injury is really unfortunate otherwise I'm sure we would have seen him there. Cenk Tosun is also not even in the subs. I hope Turkey can still use this superiority to their opponent to win.

Edit: Turkey have just scored and got 2-1 ahead.    Cengiz Under has scored the goal and hopefully this can be enough for getting that win.

Real Madrid için bence altın bir fırsat bu. Ronaldolu o mükemmel zamanları geri getirebilecek sayılı özel yeteneklerden birisi Mbappe. Başkan Florentino Perez ise Mbappe'yi transfer edeceklerini ama bu yıl bunun olmayacağını söylemişti. Aslında tam da şu an ihtiyaçları var desem yeridir. Çünkü Benzema ile yollar ayrıldı ve şu an güçlü bir forvet ihtiyacı var.

Mbappe bir forvetten daha fazlası olarak takıma ciddi oranda liderlik edebilir. Vinicius Junior ile beraber çok güzel bir ikili haline gelebilirler. Benzema ayrılmışken tüm sorumluluk Vinicius'un üzerine kalmış gibi oldu. Eğer PSG bir anda Mbappe'yi satışa koymazsa artık Real Madrid bu yaz mantıklı bir forvet transferine bakmalı. Eğer ciddi paralar harcamak istemiyorlarsa Vlahovic bence değerlendirilmesi gereken bir seçenek.

Dusan Vlahovic didn't have a pretty good season but his market value still didn't change significantly. He still seems to be in demand according to Transfermarkt. In Allegri's system Vlahovic just can't do his work very effectively and consistently. He can't get enough opportunities to score more goals that's why there is a significant number of drop in the number of goals he scored this season.

However as I said he is still in demand by top clubs. The first clubs in need of a solid and promising striker come to my mind as Bayern Munich, Manchester United and Real Madrid.

- Bayern Munich and Manchester United can really prepare an offer for him. Because he is really skilled and he could be the cheapest striker at this level seemingly.
- Real Madrid have been waiting for an opportunity to go for Mbappe. But he recently said that he is eager to stay for one more season according to Fabrizio Romano. As long as PSG don't force his sale because of his not planning a contract extension Real Madrid might also join the race for Vlahovic maybe.

Spain were actually not in a very comfortable position during the match. Therefore it wouldn't be fair to say that they won without problems. Because Italy couldn't take advantage of really critical goal chances. Frattesi could have scored a goal with an amazing assist if he wasn't offside. Frattesi had another big opportunity in the second half but he targeted Simon with his shot. I can also say that Morata was really disappointing. He wasted big opportunities and in one of them the goal was like nearly empty.

Le Normand played his first official national match in his career but it started like a nightmare. Because he caused a penalty on Zaniolo's shot. This match could have gone to extra time though if the ball didn't hit two Italian players and found Joselu in a wonderful position to score.

I was also indecisive about picking one of them but my instincts said "Go for yes!" to me.    There have been many times one's first instinct really happens but maybe this isn't such time and we will both win.  

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USA defeated Mexico and I'm really happy with it. I was expecting a quite competitive score rather than 3-0 though. It was a match with so many incidents and cards as well. I counted 9 yellow cards and 4 red cards which is really insane. The red card amount is divided in half for each team by the way otherwise I don't know what more could have happened in this match.

I don't know if changing manager very often is good for any team. I'm saying this for Ajax here for example. After Erik ten Hag we have seen 2 more managers in a really short time period. Heitinga's contract is also coming to an end and he is about to be replaced with a new manager. Because he was just expected to manage the team as good as possible until the end of the season from January.

The new manager Maurice Steijn has only one achievement which is a second tier championship with VVV-Venlo. It is a mystery whether he can bring this team closer to Erik ten Hag's times for now. Ajax aren't like Dortmund as they are used to becoming Eredivisie champions quite often. Therefore I think they should be even more careful with their management decisions.

Arda Güler's future is still unclear. Fenerbahçe fans must be hoping to see him stay for a longer time period. To be honest I hope to see this. Because his release clause is only around 18 million euros which isn't much at all. A club that aims to help this kind of skilled youngsters reach their potential can simply sign him for this amount.

I assume he wouldn't be attracted to a contract extension either for now. I can understand that while there are really big clubs being speculated with making an offer for him soon. I have seen the latest rumour as Benfica on Transfermarkt. But if he will really leave then I would like to see him at clubs such as Ajax and Dortmund. Because this kind of clubs are great for a skilled youngster to improve his skills faster.

The 1-1 tie between me and arallmuus goes on for now. But the next two questions can make some difference in the score for us.    USA - Mexico match is in a couple of hours and USA are the favourite side @2.26. It might be a really close competition between these two teams but hopefully USA can win this. They were quite impressive in the last World Cup.

When it comes to the 5th question related to Euro qualifiers the only team I'm a little worried about is Turkey. Because Latvia has been a really challenging team for them for a long time. When I checked their head-to-head history I saw that Turkey won only once in 6 official matches.

About Havertz topic I think Chelsea want too much money for him now. A demand like 75 million pounds isn't very reasonable I think. This is even an amount more than the one they signed him for from Leverkusen which was 80 million euros. Havertz couldn't put more onto his performance much since the time he joined Chelsea.

His market value has even dropped from 81 million to 60 now. The thing I understand from this situation is that Chelsea must be really wishing to hold onto Havertz this summer. While they are trying to strengthen the attacking area of the lineup they might not be keen on letting him go now that easy.

Real Madrid don't have any interest anymore because they weren't eager to pay any higher than 50 million pounds. I don't expect Arsenal to sign Havertz either unless Chelsea drop down to a more feasible amount.

Yeah I'm also curious about Manchester United's potential for next season from now on. As of Sheikh Jassim's taking over by paying billions of dollars, the transfer window should be much more active for Manchester United side. If they make big transfers to aim more titles next time then I will see Manchester United as one of the serious title contenders in the Champions League.

They are in search of a striker for example. Harry Kane's name has been called with them a lot. But according to The Guardian, they have lost their interest due to not being keen on paying an amount over 100 million euros.

Let's see if they can bring back Alex Ferguson's times who won the CL trophy twice with them. 

Indeed Red Bull dominance wasn't this much big at the beginning of the season last year. Because Ferrari were really doing great in those times despite the downfall some time later. But now Ferrari couldn't even make a decent start to the season. Leclerc was able to fight for the win with Verstappen in the first times of the previous season. However now we see no other driver at other teams who can do the same.

Perez was doing good at the beginning and I wondered if we would see an in-team competition during the season. But this didn't last long either. It is mostly because of Perez's own mistakes recently.

I hope so as well. If they win the Nations League trophy at the end then I would have more faith in Modric to continue with the national team. I would really like to see him in Euro 2024 if they get past the qualifiers without problem. Because Modric is still the backbone of Croatia midfield. It wouldn't be easy to find an alternative to him who can play as good as him. There aren't so many alternatives to him in the current squad now.

Modric is actually keen on continuing his career for at least one more year with Real Madrid. Maybe he can think the same for the national team as well.

I have checked the weather report in Montreal in a more detailed way and seen that there is rain expected during the whole race weekend. This might cause some surprising incidents to happen in qualifying at least maybe but we will see. It is quite hard to predict how the race would end under rain. Can Verstappen still win by a huge gap just as he did in the Monaco GP or not?

The latest race in Canada was quite competitive between Verstappen and Sainz in the last laps. Verstappen was able to win the race anyway by a slight margin like 0.993s after a late safety car. Let's see if we will see such competition again in this race as well.

What was passing through Koeman's mind? I still couldn't understand. In extra time De Jong played as a centre-back and Virgil van Dijk played as a centre-forward. While Netherlands got this much close to winning a trophy home after long years it was a fiasco for them to concede 4 goals from Croatia.

When it comes to Croatia they are maintaining their amazing performance. One should raise their hat to 37-year-old Modric for staying on the field for 120 minutes and shining like a star.