Rennes against Boys: the UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE 2020/2021 thread

“Jamie, you couldn’t even name top five women’s players so don’t tell me you watched me play.”@AlexScott did not hold back on @Carra23 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/VJgvi7xyiY

— Champions League on CBS Sports (@UCLonCBSSports) November 4, 2020

United turned over by Erdogan’s boys.

Atrocious performance again

A loss to Everton and I think/hope Ole is gone

Madrid currently losing to Donetsk again. As it stands, they’re third, level on points with Shakhtar. Depending on how the other game tonight goes, Shakhtar could potentially be playing an already eliminated Inter last.

RBS vs Lokomotiv has been great fun.

Lokomotiv penalty, brawl, Salzburg goal in two minutes.

lol, 2-0 Shakhtar.

i don’t understand how they took the tying goal off the board in the inter match... like i literally don’t get it

Embolo was fractionally offside, which usually wouldn’t matter as he didn’t touch the ball, but he was blocking the vision of the goalkeeper so was considered ’active’.

ah ok. seems like a crazy subjective rule. somehow the VAR toothpaste needs to be put back in the tube

sadly it's here to ruin football forever now

That Inter shirt is fucked up

Some game this in leipzig

Jesus keeper

Yep, straight down the middle.

tbh, you could have been talking about either keeper though.

Unsighted and a clean strike but like

xp keeper made a good recovery of the second incident tho

Great fun of a game that

No idea how Fred's gotten away with that

Well that was inevitable

Bizarre not to have subbed him at half time.

Giroud has scored four vs Sevilla.

Ole genuinely has the worst in-game management I've ever seen

It's killing us

Lazio bottling it against a 10-man Bruges.

2-2, Bruges need to win and have been absolutely dominant.

They hit the crossbar!

Leipzig didn't

lol

Ole has sussed that this team plays best overturning an opposition lead

AWB is getting absolutely murdered out there

Doesn't know where he is

playing 7 defenders and Angelino has the freedom of the pitch

Bahçeşehir have walked off saying Pierre Webo was racially abused by the fourth referee.

Başakşehir even.

Surely Solskjaer gets his cards now

Embarrassing from United.

he still won't

what even is Harry Maguire

Great stuff by Başakşehir and PSG.

Ever get the feeling you're being trolled?

Hmmmm.

I hate that I was made to care about that

So fucking thrilled to see that after Sunday's parliamentary elections, where a previously unknown, batshit far-right party made up of Iron Guard worshipping, ethnonationalist, christopath covidiots whose leader is a literal ultra somehow managed to garner 9% of the popular vote – in no small part thanks to expat voters, a quarter of which apparently want nothing more than to trade Ludovic Orban for Viktor Orbán – some racist shit-for-brains referee puts Romania back in the spotlight.

You know it’s bad news when pom shows up in a footy thread #sadlol

Disgraceful.

it was willi orbáns night

Tbf he reportedly said 'negrul', which means 'the black guy'. While referring to black players by the colour of their skin is, uh, insensitive, to say least, it's also important to note that 'negru' in Romanian is not a racial slur in and of itself – it just means black (masculine).

As has been repeatedly pointed out though, why would he be referring to him like that at all, rather than as 'the assistant coach, him' *gestures*

That's the crux of it, yes. No one in Romania thinks that's racist because, well, Romania is a racist af country like all of its Eastern European neighbours, so the aforementioned far-right anti-Western party (AUR) will score some extra points in the collective unconscious tonight.

Anyway, I just wanted to point out that he didn't use the n-word per se, since that's how it was seemingly reported at first.

LJ otm, referring to a person by calling out his colour is nagl. He'd not have said 'hey whitey' if the assistant had been white, surely, to call on him. It annoys me immensely yet it's completely unsurprising to read a lot of footy fans going 'but negru isn't racist! it's pc gone mad!'. Finally a team had the balls to just say 'enough of this shit', to walk the walk after every match starts with 'no to racism', with the opposite side showing solidarity no less. That's class imo.

For sure, but it's also worth noting that the majority of Romanians have never seen a black person in real life, have little to no knowledge of Western colonialism's history, and are thus simply too ignorant to approach such matters with the required sensitivity. To my mind, there is a difference between a Western European saying this is an instance of PC culture gone mad and an Eastern European arguing the same thing, doubly so if they're not expats, because my anecdotal sense is that 95%+ of Romanians just don't get it at all, including the least overtly fash ones.

Beyond that, however, and to the extent that we are collectively incapable of acknowledging the murderous racism that we've inflicted upon the Roma and Jewish communities within our own country over the centuries, it seems clear to me that these 'attenuating circumstances' conceal a stubborn unwillingness to engage with issues of race in general, greatly decreasing whatever leftover sympathy I might have as a Westernized expat. Not to mention – and this, too, is key – that Colțescu himself should have known better insofar as he belongs to that minority of Romanians who have indeed interacted with black folks before, and because an international match calls for international mores, including in one's own mother tongue. The fact that he, unlike most of his compatriots, was directly privy to the aforementioned context yet drew no lessons from it is damning, and he fully deserves the flak, even though he will no doubt continue to paint himself as a hapless victim now that he has the entire nation's backing.

i mean in short part of that is the old "honest mistakes are fine, but if you don't listen when you're corrected then you're a dick" thing, which is hardly unique to eastern europe but is super poisonous as a political tool

Of course this is being used as an opportunity to argue that WE'RE the real victims of racism here, so there's definitely a pattern, yeah. *sigh*

Well, Romanians are not the real victims of racism but there's a scale, an on one end there is a referee who may or may not intended something despicable and on the other there's Erdogan, the Qatari owners, the French political class, all with well worked racistographies that are crying foul. When they are painting the Romanian as some backwards non-cosmopolitan redneck who can't possibly save himself from being decent, it rings as hollow and it rings as racism. I support the players decisions to walk off the pitch, but anything above that is hypocrisy, and I'm sad the players won't protest that.

Erdogan in particular can go get stuffed, but our community dgaf about racism unless it targets us specifically, so while I have no doubt that some Westerners are using this as an excuse to continue dumping on Romanians in general, there is also no question to my mind that the majority of Romanians are utterly unable and/or unwilling to question their own prejudices. France, for all its flaws, is still a less racist nation than Romania in 2020.

yeah well the most racist comments I've heard in Montreal have all come from Romanians.

I keep thinking of a West Ham supporter I heard on the radio after Leverkusen had put them out of the Europa League: "Bundesliga? It's like the Scottish league innit?".

an absolutely brilliant away performance, rarely lost intent to break and threaten either and so resolute in defence

everything you want in a team, that. some of the hold up play was of the very highest order.

fantastic reffing performance as well

Started off wanting Bayern to win but as the game wore on I thought why am I supporting Bayern Munich ffs? Anyway Neuer being to one to fuck it up was hilarious, Tuchel taking off Kane was pathetic now come on ye Dortmund!

Can Real play as badly again in the second half? I hope so!

Snakey last minute winner from Real, I'd say. Bastards.

I know I know.

I'm team Dortmund here

A couple of times BD made mistakes in midfield, reckon it will happen again and real will snatch something.

Real doing what they do - ride their luck, soak up the pressure, rely on individual brilliance. I hope not, but it feels inevitable.

and there we go

to be fair it's a great goal

Bastardos

it is OVER

Gave that one away. Oh well.

Boo!