The point gap between Verstappen and Leclerc has gone up to 98 now. Perez has also left Leclerc behind in the driver standings now. Ferrari are just experiencing the nightmare in a season they could have done much better than this. But it is their fault mostly at the same time. Making the right decisions would have kept the championship race between Verstappen and Leclerc alive now. The last race was another disaster and I don't have expectations from them in the remaining races anymore.

The Dutch GP is closing in on us. It is this weekend and it is the home GP for Verstappen also. I expect nothing different than a Verstappen win here like he did last season.

I'm really speechless at the moment. I never expected Vitality to stay this much weak against G2. While saying weak, I mean that their nearly losing the series by the second map was a sign of weakness. And on last map, Vitality had big difficulties. Mirage is more like a CT-sided map as you know but Vitality played the CT-side really poorly which made things harder for them to make a comeback. If they were able to win the 29th round G2 were going to stay eco or half-buy maybe and they would have one last chance by OT.

After seeing HooXi's clutch and jks' improved performance I was already afraid of Vitality to lose the series. Spinx was really inadequate on Mirage and this hurt the team quite much too. Vitality still have a chance for Fall Final stage maybe but they just made things more difficult for themselves when they could have won right here.

Trabzonspor found two critical chances in the first minutes of the match but couldn't take advantage of any. The first half was really poor for Galatasaray. Seferovic can really be one of the worst strikers in Galatasaray history. He is just useless as you must have seen how he wasted all the chances he got. Gomis entered before it was too late but he also couldn't benefit from two important chances. But I won't blame him because he has been the player who is saving the team so far. Mertens also missed an absolute chance and his shot was so poor.

In short, Galatasaray still need a new striker transfer. Maybe the finances might not be good now but there is nothing else to do now. They don't have any problem on finding so many goal opportunities. But as for finishing, they are terrible now. This was a match they would have won normally if they had a good scorer in the team.

Liquid have already entered among tier 1 teams by having a place in top 10. Liquid's incredible climb to this level since the beginning of the year has been like a dream. They have the ESL Pro League and RMR qualifiers ahead and being successful in these tournaments can carry them even to upper positions in the ranking.

We didn't get wrong about NIP by the way. They really made it after 3 maps were played. On Overpass, sjuush and stavn had really poor performances and this was one of the factors Heroic couldn't fight back against NIP much for winning the series. Heroic joined BIG and Astralis in Blast Premier Fall Showdown to have one last opportunity for Fall Final.

I have heard that Manchester United are trying to sign Osimhen from Napoli now. However Napoli's demands are really extraordinary.  

Napoli demand 120 million euros + Cristiano Ronaldo + Ronaldo's full salary to be paid by Manchester United.

This is just insane! Hopefully Manchester United won't say okay to this but I'm still doubting their decision. Because they are known as a team which like to spend a lot of money on nearly any kind of player. They have made many teams rich already.    Napoli must be demanding these because of the intention of showing that they aren't willing to sell Osimhen to any team at the moment. So Ronaldo had better forget about joining Napoli side and the dream of playing in the CL soon.

Actually things aren't going to be easy about this probable transfer. Because according to a report by Transfermarkt, Ajax have turned down an offer worth 90 million euros this time. Ajax are very determined not to sell him while getting close to the end of the transfer window and the beginning of the Champions League at the same time. But he has clearly stated that he wants to leave Ajax now.

Ajax are known by selling this kind of skilled players after not much time passes. But on the other hand they let very important players go already in this window. They don't want to lose him too otherwise Manchester United's last offer was very favourable for them actually.

https://www.transfermarkt.com/ajax-have-turned-down-euro-90m-offer-from-man-united-for-antony-quot-i-want-to-leave-quot-/view/news/410210

The GOAT did the best thing he does and caused Bottas to be out of the race. 

The touch between Hamilton and Alonso just cost Hamilton the race. Alonso blamed him for pushing his luck too much by trying to overtake him from outside. It must be a big disappointment for Hamilton after having a poor qualifying session also.

Verstappen is really unstoppable now. He is climbing the positions like nothing and it looks like he is going to win the race under normal conditions. It is too difficult for Sainz to keep him behind while Verstappen is much faster than even him. It is only the 10th lap and Verstappen is nearly in the 2nd position already.

Arsenal were nearly going to lose points against Fulham in a match they fully dominated. Mitrovic scored a shocking goal and Gabriel made a really big mistake in that. He played with the ball for longer than he should do and Mitrovic punished him for that with a decent shot. However this didn't affect Arsenal even a bit about their playing dominantly. Gabriel still redeemed himself after that by scoring the winning goal of his team. The match was all about him actually.    Maybe football is one of the most loved sports because of containing this kind of nice stories in itself.

Odegaard proved his quality once again in this match by scoring another goal. He has been the most impressive player of the team for two weeks. It was his 3rd goal in the 4th league match. But I'd like to appreciate Ramsdale also for this match. Because he made important saves to help his team. He is showing that Arsenal have made the right thing by signing him after Leno started to be unreliable.

I predicted a Heroic win for this series but Liquid eliminated them by 2-0 after Vertigo and Overpass. I was okay to Heroic's losing the first map but Overpass was winnable for Heroic also. They just lost both maps without making a big effort. jabbi had a really bad day by having only 9 and 7 kills on these maps. Liquid are in a great form these days. The team performance is very impressive. When we check the stats of this series we can easily see that everyone played his role in the way it should have been.

Now Heroic is NIP's opponent and the series is tomorrow. The winner is moving on and honestly it will be a very close series. But if we consider the head-to-heads, NIP have a huge dominance. They won all of their last six matches. If they manage to use this to their advantage their win might be a good option to bet on.

OG are on a very impressive run at the moment. They have done a great job against tier 1 teams for two rounds. First eliminating FaZe and now doing the same against Astralis. Beating Astralis by 2-0 is a big success also for them because Astralis have climbed to the 4th position in the ranking. It was like we started to see the old dominating Astralis back. flameZ take responsibility today by being top fraggers of both maps and he was the player of the game.

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Heroic - Liquid and NaVi - Vitality are up next. Heroic and NaVi would be good choices at 1.65 and 1.50.

After having a great season in the La Liga with Pellegrini we are going to watch Betis in the Europa League. They missed the Champions League opportunity slightly too. I only see Roma in their group which can make things more difficult for them. Betis are going to be one of the teams I will follow closely. Because they are also one of the favourites for the title. As it isn't easy for them to qualify for the CL in the La Liga they can take this tournament very seriously to join the CL groups directly.

Arsenal and Manchester United are going to be the biggest candidates for winning the title. Arsenal have already started great to the EPL. Manchester United are newly recovering after the Liverpool win and they really need to reach the CL at the end of this season. The third biggest favourite is Roma of course. It was a great run in the Europa Conference League with Mourinho last season.

To tell the truth Perez is still doing a really good job in general. Because he is right behind Leclerc by only five points in the driver standings. He can even leave Leclerc behind this Sunday as Leclerc is going to start from the back. Perez is doing his best to help Red Bull stay at top in the championship race. He sometimes struggles to be consistent in races but I appreciate his effort until now. It is early to tell if Verstappen-Perez can be like Hamilton-Bottas at the end of this season. But Ferrari's mistakes are also paving the way for Perez to do just that.

As for my prediction about the winner of this Grand Prix, I think that it might be a chance for Sainz. If he fails then one of Perez and Hamilton can do this.

Actually you have a point but I assessed the situation considering all of the teams in a group. Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Inter all are very strong now but there is a weak team in the group like Plzen also. However we can still watch great matches between those three teams. For example, Inter made difficulties for Liverpool in the CL last season. Maybe they can do the same against Bayern Munich and Barcelona in the matches in Italy especially. But I still don't think they would be able to leave any of those teams behind in the group. If Barcelona were playing like in the previous season then maybe Inter would have a big chance to be more successful than them now. Because even Benfica were playing better than Barcelona then.

I'm shocked to see that FaZe lost to OG in the series by 2-1. There were many positive signs on Mirage. Inferno was also one of FaZe's best maps but OG won by 16-11 there. Nothing has ended for FaZe yet of course because they are going to be in the last chance stage. They're going to face Astralis-OG loser. FaZe hopefully wouldn't repeat their mistakes and use this chance for the benefit of themselves.


For Vitality - G2, I also think Vitality is a favourable choice. Maybe G2 beat BIG but it was due to BIG's being out-of-form in the recent times. Vitality are playing better as a team and not all of G2's players performed well in the last game. HooXi still needs to improve his game. Maybe he is the IGL but this score contribution was too low from him.

As for Liquid - NIP, Liquid might be able to win by a slight gap. NIP aren't having good days as they are struggling to beat even top tier teams recently.

It is the "World Cup" but we haven't seen any team out of Europe to become the winner of the title for so many years. The last year it happened was 2002 in which Brazil won the cup. Just think about it there have been twenty years since that time. This shows how much Brazil and Argentina especially were away from their performances in the old times. These two teams were accustomed to being the champions quite often before the 2002 World Cup. It was even under the domination of South American countries much before. But football has changed too much after a certain point and they've been left behind by European teams.

For the World Cup in this year, maybe especially Brazil and Argentina can be successful. They both have solid game strategies and efforts recently. At least one of them has the potential to reach the finale and that team might be Brazil.

It looks like we believed in BIG's team performance too much.    I'm very surprised to see that G2 won by 2-0.

They won 16-8 and 16-7 on Vertigo and Dust2 respectively. These are very easy victories for G2 so there must be something really wrong with BIG now. I don't know how their performance can drop this much after having a great time period. I remember the match that they defeated FaZe in a big tournament which they were playing very good as a team. XANTARES was always talking about how much disciplined team BIG were about preparing various strategies for each one of their opponents. But now things are broken for them.

We have watched a very positive side of Fenerbahce today. They already had a big advantage but they still didn't want to make do with that. This 4-1 victory has carried them to the group stage very easily. Irfan Can was the most impressive player of this match. His second goal in the match was very classy. They would have scored even more than this as they missed many more chances also.

This is a good sign for them before the group stage. If they get lucky about having a favourable group also, they should be able to continue on their way without big issues.

In addition to that, Fenerbahce are having matches with many goals lately thanks to Jorge Jesus. I think over 2.5 goals would be a great choice for their matches these days.

The groups have been drawn in the Champions League:



Honestly I don't see any "group of death". But Group B might be the most complicated one anyway. Even the fourth seeded team which are Club Brugge can get surprising results in the matches. It is very difficult to predict which teams would qualify for next round.

I can't imagine what Trabzonspor would do in Group G if they were able to eliminate Copenhagen. I don't expect any success from Copenhagen in that very tough group.

My favourite teams to advance to next round group by group are like this:

Group A => Ajax, Liverpool
Group B => Atletico Madrid, Porto
Group C => Bayern Munich, Barcelona
Group D => Tottenham, Marseille
Group E => Chelsea, Milan
Group F => Real Madrid, Leipzig
Group G => Manchester City, Dortmund
Group H => PSG, Juventus

Blast Premier matches are on again.

Today the biggest match is clearly G2 - BIG. Both of these teams had unsatisfying results in the group stage and this is the last chance for them. The loser of this round is out of the tournament completely. G2 have taken a step and changed two of their players in their main roster. They still need time to have a solid chemistry of course. BIG are more stable when it comes to making changes. Krimbo is the only change and it's been a long time since then. BIG are a more prepared team in terms of strategies also.

I think that BIG can benefit from G2's current condition and eliminate them. But as for a score prediction, I'm favouring a 2-1 BIG victory.

Turkish teams have big difficulties in convincing their young talents to stay and play in the Turkish Super League and the Ahmetcan Kaplan transfer was a very good example for that.

We all know how much teams like Ajax love to search and find this kind of talents to fill the team with them. Of course they have a great academy also as some of you said. But they like to do research like e.g. Dortmund do also. These teams are characteristically the same actually. The difference between them is Ajax are becoming the champions of their league while Dortmund are in Bayern Munich's shadow in the Bundesliga. But I know that the priority of these teams is to help the young talents reach their potential rather than building a team that can become the champions every season.