Premier League prepares for Covid summit as Man City show class

London (AFP) – Coronavirus forced the postponement of a swathe of Premier League games this weekend but for leaders Manchester City it was business as usual.

Pep Guardiola’s men hammered Newcastle 4-0 in one of only four games to take place, while Liverpool lost ground with a 2-2 draw at Tottenham.

Chelsea also stumbled again, held 0-0 by Wolves at a foggy Molineux, but Arsenal continued their recent resurgence, crushing Leeds to press their credentials for a top-four finish.

AFP Sport picks out three talking points from the action in the English top-flight.

Covid crisis

Premier League clubs are meeting on Monday to discuss the fast-escalating Covid-19 crisis, which threatens to derail the season.

Managers have called for clarity on the criteria used to call off matches, with growing concerns over the integrity of the competition.

Manchester City have already played three games more than Tottenham, who had a two-week break before Sunday’s home fixture against Liverpool.

The Premier League last week said it intended to “continue its current fixture schedule where safely possible” as calls for a circuit break intensified.

But that was before a series of fresh postponements left the weekend programme looking threadbare.

Covid-hit Chelsea asked for their match at Wolves on Sunday to be postponed, a request that was turned down by the Premier League, leaving manager Thomas Tuchel frustrated.

The Premier League has a huge call to make during the busiest time of the English football calendar.

Is Premier League a two-horse race?

Until recently it looked as though Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea would be locked in an absorbing three-way tussle for the Premier League title.

But Chelsea now find themselves six points behind defending champions City, who have won their past eight league matches.

Second-placed Liverpool had a chance to close the gap to just one point after coming from behind at Tottenham to lead 2-1 but Son Heung-min snatched a late equaliser.

Recent Premier League seasons have been characterised by an absorbing head-to-head battle between City and Liverpool, who have both set standards that nobody else can match.

It seemed as though Chelsea had joined that elite group after winning the Champions League in May but they are now looking shaky, with a coronavirus outbreak and damaging injury list taking their toll.

The draw at Wolves means they have won just two of their past six games in the Premier League as their rivals have hit top form.

Newcastle struggles

Eddie Howe started his Newcastle reign relatively brightly but recent results make grim reading.

The Magpies have now conceded 11 goals in their past three matches against Leicester, Liverpool and Manchester City and remain three points from safety having played two games more than Watford, who are one place above the drop zone.

Newcastle did not make their job any easier at St James’ Park on Sunday by gifting City the opening goal with some woeful defending in their 4-0 win.

The club’s wealthy new Saudi owners will almost certainly invest significantly in the January transfer window and the deals made could make or break their season.

The entire campaign could hinge on their run of fixtures early in the New Year, with games coming up against fellow strugglers Southampton, Watford, Leeds and Everton.

If they do not find form, one of the world’s wealthiest clubs could be playing in the second-tier Championship next season.

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Covid-hit Chelsea ‘deeply disappointed’ after failing to have Wolves game postponed

London (AFP) – Chelsea said they were “deeply disappointed” after the Premier League rejected their request to postpone Sunday’s match against Wolves due to a coronavirus outbreak in their squad.

Thomas Tuchel’s side are already without Romelu Lukaku, Timo Werner and Callum Hudson-Odoi due to positive Covid-19 tests.

The Stamford Bridge club are understood to have lost more players to positive tests on Saturday, leaving the Londoners travelling to Wolverhampton with a makeshift squad for the 1400 GMT kick-off.

Ben Chilwell has been isolating due to a positive test, but was already sidelined with knee trouble.

Jorginho, Kai Havertz and Ruben Loftus-Cheek were not on Chelsea’s team bus on arrival at Molineux.

Tuchel had already admitted Chelsea could be pressed into starting Mateo Kovacic and N’Golo Kante ahead of schedule on the midfield pair’s return from injury.

Kovacic only came out of isolation on Friday and has not played since October due to hamstring trouble, while Kante has not featured since November with a knee issue.

“We are deeply disappointed that our application was rejected as we felt we had a strong case for postponement of today’s match on the grounds of players’ health and safety,” said a Chelsea spokesman.

The European champions’ request is understood to have been rejected because the Blues were deemed to have had enough players to fulfil the fixture according to Premier League regulations.

Five of Saturday’s six Premier League fixtures were postponed, with Everton’s clash with Leicester on Sunday also called off.

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Century-old game of button football a cult sport in Hungary

Budapest (AFP) – Flicking a coin-shaped disc around a table-top, Hungarians still adore the simple sport of button football, a game they invented a century ago.

“It’s a traditional national sport, like petanque to the French or baseball to the Americans,” Attila Becz, who runs a museum dedicated to the game, told AFP.  

The game is played on a large polished-smooth table depicting a soccer pitch with both players controlling a team of discs with a combination of strategy and dexterity.   

Players are round and are moved by pressing a pick, finger, or comb on its edge, one turn at a time.    

In the 1960s and ’70s before the spread of computer games 65-year-old Becz played the game as a child and began collecting the button players from the age of eight.   

“In summertime we played football on the streets and in empty lots, then in wintertime button football indoors, there wasn’t much else to do for a football-mad kid,” he said.   

Decades later he opened what he calls “the world’s only” button football museum in Szigetszentmiklos close to Budapest.  

Rows of cabinets in the small hall display memorabilia including antique buttons from the 1920s and sets of plastic ones bearing the images of modern-day stars.     

Photographs on the walls show legendary players like Pele and Ferenc Puskas crouched over button football tables, testament to the game’s popularity through the decades.    

“Foreign coaches introduced football to Hungary, then Hungarians took the wooden tactics board used for showing football tactics and made a game out of it a century ago,” said Becz.    

“Back then there were different rules and they used real coat buttons that could slide across a table,” said Becz while handling an antique shiny button from the 1920s.   

Buttons were first mass-produced in the 1940s, with player photos stuck on from the 1950s.   

“It was a golden age for both button football and Hungary, led by Puskas, were at the peak of world football then,” said Becz.    

Although typically played by pensioners, button football retains a cult status among younger generations with about a thousand players in Hungary registered in over 30 clubs according to the game’s governing body.

At a tournament last month in a Budapest community hall a competitor Edvard Katona, 28, told AFP its appeal lies in its simplicity compared to rival video football games.      

“It’s like an analogue version of the FIFA console game for us,” he said.

Button football is also popular in Brazil where it has a similarly long tradition although played there with different rules.  

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Lyon bar fans from away matches after Cup tie flare-up

Paris (AFP) – Ligue 1 club Lyon have barred their supporters from attending away matches until further notice following the latest incident involving their fans led to the abandonment of Friday’s French Cup match with Paris FC.

The club said in a statement on Saturday that “more than ever we must eradicate hooliganism and ban all those who are enemies, by their acts, of football.”

It is the second match this season involving Lyon fans which has had to be abandoned — their home league game with Marseille was called off after the later’s captain Dimitri Payet was hit on the head with a plastic bottle.

This week’s game saw flares fired off between the two sets of supporters and fighting around the stand containing the Lyon fans leading to people spilling onto the pitch and the referee called off the match at half-time.

Lyon were being held 1-1 by the Ligue 2 outfit.

“Until further notice and until the light is shone on who the perpetrators are, Lyon have decided to forbid our supporters to travel to away matches,” they said in the statement.

Noel Le Graet, president of the French Football Federation (FFF), denounced the incidents as “intolerable” and the hooligans had to be “chased from sporting venues.”     

“The right decision was taken by the referee to stop the match as quickly as possible, he reacted very well in what was a difficult situation.

“These groups of pseudo supporters, who are at the root of these incidents and the violence, have no business being in a stadium.”

The latest bout of hooliganism came just a day after the French government announced new measures to combat the rising tide of violence in French football stadia.

Among the measures was matches will be called off definitively if a player or official is injured by a projectile thrown from the stands.

They also demanded that decisions as to whether a game should be called off due to other reasons — such as fighting between rival fans — be taken within half an hour.

Also that such decisions were reached without club presidents being involved — Jean-Michel Aulas, Lyon president, received a five-match ban on Wednesday over his behaviour regarding whether the Lyon-Marseille match should resume.

Plastic bottles are neither to be sold or allowed into stadia by July 1 at the latest.

Ligue 1 and tier two clubs must also have security measures in place from the 2022-23 season against projectiles being thrown, which the regional police chief can order them to install for particular matches.

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Where to find USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina on US TV

If you’re trying to find out how you can watch USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina, you’ve come to the right place.

The game will be shown on FS1 (English-language). In addition to the TV viewing options, you can watch the game via several different legal streaming sites on your computer, smartphone, tablet or over-the-top device such as Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Apple TV.

Here are all of the details of where you can watch it on television and via legal streaming:

Match: USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina

Genre: Sports

Looking to watch USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina online from your home or on the go? If you live in the USA, there are several options to catch all the action.

We Recommend:

US Only.

 

Who: USA vs. Bosnia and Herzegovina
What: International friendly
When: Game kicks off at 8pm ET / 5pm PT; Saturday, December 18, 2021
Where: Live on FS1, UniMas, TUDN, fuboTV, Sling Blue, Hulu + Live TV and Vidgo (free trial)

 

 

With fuboTV, you get 50+ channels including A&E, ABC, AMC, BBC America, BBC World News, beIN SPORTS, beIN SPORTS Connect, beIN SPORTS en Español, BET, BET Jams, BET her, Big Ten Network, Bravo, CBS, CBS News, CBS Sports Network, Cheddar Business, CMT, CNBC, Comedy Central, Comet, E!, Eleven Sports, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, Food Network, FOX, FOX Business, FOX Deportes, FOX News, FOX Soccer Plus, FS1, FS2, fubo Sports Network, Fuse, Fight Network, FYI, Galavision, Golf Channel, GOL TV English, GOL TV Spanish, Hallmark Channel, Hallmark Drama, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, HGTV, History Channel, IFC, Lifetime, LMN, Local Now, MLB Network, MLB Network Strike Zone, MSNBC, MTV, MTV2, MTV Classic, NBA TV, NBC, NBCSN, NFL Network, NFL Network RedZone, NHL Network, Nuestra Tele, Olympic Channel, Outside TV, Oxygen, Pac-12 Network, Paramount Network, Pop TV, Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, Stadium, Revolt, RTP Internacional, Sundance TV, SyFy, Telemundo, Travel Channel, TUDN, TV Land, UniMas, Universal Kids, Universo, Univision, USA, VH1, Viceland, Weather Channel, WeTV, Zona Futbol.

The fuboTV app is available on Windows PC, Mac, Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Apple TV, Android phones/tablets, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Kindle, Chromecast, Samsung Smart TV and Xbox One.

fuboTV streams select games from Premier League, Copa America, Euro 2020, Gold Cup, Olympics, Liga MX, World Cup, Women’s World Cup, MLS, UEFA Champions League (in Spanish), Europa League (in Spanish), Primeira Liga, Ligue 1, Turkish Super Lig, UEFA Nations League, Ascenso MX, African Champions League, Africa Cup of Nations, Copa Libertadores, Copa Sudamericana and more.

fuboTV offers a 7 day free-trial.

To find out when soccer games are on, download the free Soccer TV Schedules App which includes listings of all of the live soccer matches available in the United States (available on Apple iOS devices and Android devices).

Courtesy of World Soccer Talk, download a complimentary copy of The Ultimate Soccer TV And Streaming Guide, which features details on where to watch all of the leagues from around the world on US TV and streaming.

 

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Premier League ‘paranoia’ over Covid lottery

London (AFP) – Aston Villa manager Steven Gerrard on Friday revealed his “constant paranoia” over the medical status of his players after the spiralling coronavirus crisis forced a glut of Premier League postponements.

Five of the 10 matches due to take place on Saturday and Sunday have been called off, taking the total number of postponed top-flight fixtures over the past week to nine.

Villa’s clash with Burnley was still due to go ahead, but Gerrard admitted that could quickly change after two matches this week were postponed just hours before kick-off.

“There’s certainly a constant paranoia,” said Gerrard. “Even now we are playing in 24 hours, I have a team I want to play, but it could change.

“I’m actually scared to look at my phone at the moment because every time the doctor calls me something changes.”

Premier League clubs are due to meet on Monday to discuss the crisis, with a split emerging over whether to temporarily halt the season as a firebreaker for infections or to carry on.

The surge in virus cases in the middle of the most hectic period of the English football calendar has aggravated the chaos, with some managers voicing concerns over potential harm to the integrity of the competition.

Four rounds of Premier League matches are due to the played between this weekend and January 3.

The English Football League (EFL), which oversees the three divisions below the Premier League, is also suffering. Nineteen matches have been called off this weekend, with just 17 going ahead.

Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp said it could soon become impossible to maintain the schedule as squads become over-stretched by Covid absences and injuries.

The Reds were without Fabinho, Virgil van Dijk and Curtis Jones for their 3-1 win over Newcastle on Thursday following suspected positive tests for Covid.

“With reduced squads, smaller squads, you cannot play that schedule,” said Klopp.

– ‘Crazy stuff’ –

Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel said he could be forced to make “crazy” decisions in rushing N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic back from injury due to infections at the club.

Romelu Lukaku, Timo Werner and Callum Hudson-Odoi missed Thursday’s 1-1 draw with Everton after testing positive.

“No more positive tests but the lottery starts again tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon,” Tuchel said on Friday.

“Maybe we are forced to do the crazy stuff that we wouldn’t normally do. But what’s normal? We miss key players and we find solutions.”

Manchester City’s preparations for Sunday’s trip to Newcastle have been disturbed by an inconclusive test result for manager Pep Guardiola.

Guardiola now has to wait for the result of a PCR test before knowing if he will be able to lead his side at St James’s Park.

Struggling Newcastle could benefit from a halt to the schedule.

The Magpies are second-bottom of the table, but will be able to turn to the resources of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund in the January transfer window to try and dig themselves out of relegation trouble.

“A decision needs to be made to ensure integrity is maintained in the competition. I think it is on a knife edge,” said Newcastle boss Eddie Howe.

Ahead of Arsenal’s trip to Leeds on Saturday, Gunners’ coach Mikel Arteta called for clear rules on when matches should be postponed.

Arsenal’s opening game of the season went ahead at Brentford even though they had a number of positive cases in the squad.

“We need more clarity on why those games are not being played and what you need to not have a game played, so you can maintain the fairness of the competition,” said the Spaniard.

The EFL revealed on Thursday that 25 percent of its players did not intend to get vaccinated despite surging numbers of coronavirus cases in Britain.

Sports minister Nigel Huddleston said footballers should get the jab because it was the “socially responsible thing to do.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” he said. “The overwhelming majority of those seriously ill from Covid in hospital are unvaccinated.

“The most important thing anyone — including footballers — can do to protect themselves, co-workers and loved ones is to get vaccinated and get a booster.”

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South America to join UEFA Nations League from 2024: Boniek

Warsaw (AFP) – South American nations will be able to join the UEFA Nations League from 2024, UEFA vice-president Zbigniew Boniek has said, in a move that would undermine FIFA’s planned biennial World Cup.

“This is the last Nations League in this format,” Boniek said in an interview with the Polish sports news portal Meczyki published on Thursday.

“From 2024, CONMEBOL will join the Nations League. I don’t yet know in what format,” he said.

“It’s being worked on,” he said, adding that “this will make the Nations League even more important”.

CONMEBOL is the continental governing body of football in South America, bringing together 10 countries including Argentina and Brazil.

Contacted by AFP, a UEFA spokesperson said that “UEFA is working on a number of projects with CONMEBOL, including a joint Nations League but nothing is finalised and no decisions have yet been made”.

Boniek, a Polish football legend who played for Juventus and Roma in the 1980s, also coached the national team.

Appointed chairman of the Polish football federation in 2012, he left the post this year to join UEFA.

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