But what difference does it make for Liverpool now? I think that loss against Toulouse doesn't really matter and it could also be observed that Liverpool wasn't playing the best they could. The fans aren't supposed to like that they lost, but in realistic terms Liverpool is going to finish that group as the first. They would have to have a whole lot of issues to mess this up and not finish first.

But down the line I think that Liverpool is one of the few candidates that can be deemed favorites to win the Europa League. But favorite doesn't mean they will, it is just that they are probably the strongest team with the highest tension in their national league besides Bayer Leverkusen.

The problem from not having enough time to rest is indeed becoming more serious as all competitions are supposed to be expanded further. Did anyone know that the Champions League groups will become bigger I think next season? I don't have the exact details now and I am a bit lazy to look them up, but as far as I know there will be more games in the Champions League as well. The total number of games that a professional player has to play is approaching an insane number and there are all these journeys from hotel to hotel. The games with their national teams are supposed to be more stressful as well when international tournaments are spread throughout continents and many countries.

I think this is still a major difference between the Europa League and the Champions League. What Sevilla has done in the Europa League last season given how they played in La Liga, is a very rare occurrence. There have been teams not doing that well in their leagues, but still did quite well in the Champions League. But the way that Sevilla was winning round after round in the Europa League while struggling in La Liga so hard that they temporarily had to be thinking about the relegation zone, I think this is not something I have seen happening in the Champions League.

I did not expect Sevilla to do particularly well in the Champions League for that reason. At some point if a team is constantly fighting quality battles, it is because they don't have enough of it and in the Champions League, having quality is a must.

But this is kind of a short-sighted way of looking at things. I am not offending you, but there are so many young players that do not get injured. It is a factor and I agree with that, but players are also extremely different in responding to physical stress and sometimes it is just plain brutal attacks against a joint or other part of the body, which doesn't have much to do with fatigue. But I think all these games with the national teams are too much because there is not only all of this qualification stuff for the World Cup and the European Championship, but also the Nations League and then sometimes friendly games. I think this could be reduced, but I guess there is money involved and every organization wants a piece of the pie.

Real Madrid is going through this with Vinicius Junior as well and know what it means for a player to be out for such a long time. It's nasty for everyone.

I don't know why everyone is surprised by this decision. Actually, the FIFA reserves a maximum of up to €7.5 million for one play up to 365 days, which equates to €20,548 per day for an injured player if they get injured during the World Cup qualification games during the 2023-2026 period.

All of this can be read here. 

This has nothing to do with giving an advantage to Barcelona exclusively. This is an agreed upon program established by the FIFA after reaching consensus among all participants. The program is called the "Club Protection Program".

It's questionable whether these Financial Fair Play issues are distracting Manchester City in any way because they are living and performing with this sword of Damocles over their head for so many years now and nothing happened. I think they got used to these allegations, the pressure and also any ongoing investigation, but for the sake of fairness I think that now the time has come for some justice when they punish Everton so hard. For Everton this can have existential consequences and the EPL authorities knew what they were doing when they issued this sanction. But now everyone is rightly asking how they will treat Manchester City when it turns out that they have violated those FFP rules.

Those teams don't have any order for their competitions whatsoever. The fact that the Bundesliga and the Premier League is their main business is because it is their main business. But nobody from those clubs provides a ranking as to how much effort should be put into any of those competitions. Ask them whether they want to win the Europa League and the domestic league titles. They will answer that they want to win it all. You are suggesting that they play with less intensity in the games in the Europa League to play with more intensity in the domestic league. I guess that is what you really think, but it is gibberish.

But I think nobody here talked to the team or how did you find out that they don't want to be in the relegation zone? Because you said that you know for sure.

40 points is an objective that would (almost) guarantee them to stay in the league as it is a threshold that I think has barely been reached in the history of the league by a team to inevitably stay in the league. But still they should better play it safe than be sorry later on.

Given that Lyon was one of the strongest French clubs in the past, their goal must be to get some restructuring going very soon. They have been more in the midfield of the table in the last few years and the last time they finished top three was in 2018/19.

I think franky1 mentioned something that is important to note when making up our minds about someone claiming to be most philanthropic philanthrop in the world. When Bill Gates says that, everyone should know that he is building an entire corporate empire around agriculture, pharmaceutics, gene-editing businesses and many others.

Please note that this is no criticism Bill Gates is supporting these industries. It's great, someone should do it and someone has to do it for the sake of enabling people around the world to live a better and longer life.

But it is often portrayed as being an act of altruism and this is where franky1 now chimed in with some important info. There is nothing bad with bringing this up because I am sure that most people read headlines about billionaires giving away their fortune exactly as franky1 implied they would read it. 

These exceptions keep us thrilled until the end of those competitions as this is why we are watching the games even though there might be a big favorite and an underdog. The Leverkusen story doesn't need to be talked about again for last season Europa League as Roma was an undeserved finalist. But again this is the same, a team that is better is not necessarily making it to the next round and this is why you are right. There is no such thing as a guarantee that we will see Liverpool and Bayer Leverkusen in the quarterfinals. The chance is quite high that they will be there, but it is just high, not 100%.

There are still 27 games left which is a total of 81 points to be played for. The maximum I found that someone ended up in the relegation zone was 40 points. It usually is around 32-35 points and there are some years when it was much less than that. But let's assume 40 points would be the safe aim to go for here.

They would need 33 more points out of the last 27 games. That is like winning 9 games and 6 draws. This doesn't sound impossible to me and they also have a lot of home games to come as well. When you look at the table at a specific moment, it could apparently look worse than it is. Though it is bad of course, but when they adjust their goal to remaining in Ligue 1, which they have probably already done, then they know what to do and see that this can be done.

Ok sure these international games do have some special charm of course and when there is something at stake like in important qualification games or at the World Cup or other big tournaments, I think everyone likes to watch their home countries, but also the big nations like France to play. But what I don't like is when players are nominated that just returned from an injury and haven't even yet played a whole game for their club.

The most recent example now for an injury with long-term consequences is Gavi from Barcelona. I have no evidence for that, but sometimes it feels like these injuries happen more often in relative terms when they play for their national teams than when they play for their clubs. I know this is only subjective, but I guess it feels like that because the national teams play only sporadically whereas the players are gone then for 6 months and you read about it all the time because the club is missing the player.

But I saw that Haaland didn't play for Norway and I wonder who intervened there to give Haaland a break because Norway was qualified already. That's the difference. I am sure Haaland wanted to, but I assume that Guardiola reached out to the Norwegian coach and negotiated with him about giving Haaland a break.

You can't ever have an idea when you have great ideas to talk about anyone who knows how this one is feeling great and OI don't ever want to feel like this is wrong:!

I guess everyone is the same and can't wait for all these international games to be over and we can finally go back to Premier League business. Since this game is waiting for us, it is even better to look forward to the first weekend after this break. It is Guardiola against Klopp and these two guys know each other for a very long time. I am pleased to see that Liverpool is not in weak form as they have been last year and this game will carry a lot more excitement than it did when Liverpool was so far behind Manchester City that it hardly made any difference whether they won or lost.

But for anyone who is interested here you can check out the head to head statistics. It is quite even. I knew they had great fights in the past but I thought that Manchester City was ahead in the last five years or so, but no it is quite even. The last Premier League match ended 4-1 in favor of Manchester City. I don't think it's going to end like this on the weekend.

As I can't tell how interested you are in football and how much you follow the games, it's probably worthless to talk about those games when my assumption is that you don't watch them.

Without a doubt was that group quite hard for Bayern Munich and if you were to ask the players, I tell you that they will say that this was a whole lot of work they were going through and that some games were about to end in a draw or loss.

The game against Galatasaray was Galatasaray only. Bayern Munich didn't take place until the second half of the second half, yes, you read this correctly. I don't know exactly but it took Bayern Munich 65 - 70 minutes to get into the game. Before that Galatasaray could have long won it.

The game against Manchester United and Copenhagen were both close and Bayern was behind until late in the game against Copenhagen.

When a team won every game in a group, it doesn't mean that the group was easy.

I belive oin this guys who are the beste ever and when you talke aboute Galatasaray and how they are a team that can beat you, I don't really know how this is going to happen.

Prediction 2: $37,542.42
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But only winning one title has never been enough at Bayern Munich to have a secure position as a coach. Bayern Munich pays a lot of attention to the interpersonal abilities of a coach and if they see that Tuchel keeps distancing himself from the club DNA, I wouldn't be surprised if they sack him at the end of the season unless he delivers some remarkable results and they have no choice but to allow him to continue.

From what I understand about the club Bayern Munich, I think they put a lot of emphasis on the interpersonal abilities of a coach and Xabi Alonso would be that kind of guy they are usually looking for.

I get what you mean when you say that the midfield is the most important part. I think it depends on the team's style. But the saying, if I recall that correctly, usually goes like this:

and I believe it is from Alex Ferguson. I think that statement makes a lot of sense. There are some clubs that have been extremely successful because they had the strongest defense in the league. Atletico Madrid, Juventus Turin for some years and others as well.

But the midfield is the most important part for Manchester City because Guardiola trains his players so they can fill several positions at once and be more flexible than any other team. He likes to have have defensive midfielders, central midfielders and offensive midfielders and he likes defenders with midfielding qualities. This means for Guardiola the midfield is definitely the most important part of his team. I think that is also why they are having some difficulties recently.

I read on a website that he is the first at such a young age (24 years old) who scored 300 goals in his professional career before reaching the age of 25. This is a huge achievement and if he stands at the top of that list, it also has some individual reward character. He is still running after the other, official trophies, but I think if he leaves PSG and goes to a club with higher prestige and more chances to win the Champions League, he will also be awarded with best player of the year titles.

But this also means something for PSG as a club. Having Mbappe under contract is not just having a good striker under contract. Mbappe means a lot to PSG and the recognition value of the club. I think the transfer saga Mbappe - PSG is not yet over! By the time when January, February is over I will get my popcorn out again!

Sometimes we can see abrupt endings from any good team, but for different reasons. For instance, if Liverpool and Bayer Leverkusen play against each other in the quarterfinals, I fear we have to accept that one of them has to go and it doesn't really have to do with their performance. Maybe that is the preliminary final game of the competition so to speak. And then one team will lose and nobody will remember the reason why. It was because the two best teams met each other in the quarters.

That's why I hope that they can avoid to be against each other for as long as possible. Hopefully not before the semifinals. But with some luck in the drawings, I agree that Bayer Leverkusen will be around in the Europa League for a few more rounds at least.

The teamwork on the field is remarkable and the emotions that the coaches bring into the mix are also indispensable for their success. The Copenhagen coach looks like he would suffer from several heart attacks over 90 minutes and this is what electrifies the players as well.

But it is quite simple for Manchester United to be put into realistic terms; if they don't win the next game, it is over for them in the Champions League. Of course a draw would still keep them alive, but they would need a win in the game against Bayern Munich and a draw in the last game between Copenhagen and Galatasaray. That's not going to happen and I don't believe that Manchester United has a 30% chance to win the game against Galatasaray. I think it will end in a draw in a best case scenario for Manchester United.