BREAKING/BROKEN NEWS
You will be shocked, shocked, to learn the 2034 World Cup is going to be held in … Saudi Arabia. Niall McVeigh has all the latest news.
SIMPLY THE BREST
While the mere mention of their name invariably prompts no end of schoolyard sniggering, forced double entendres and lewd banter from Kate, Thierry, Jamie and Micah in the CBS studios, others who might be of a mind to treat Brest as some sort of b@nter-club should do so at their peril. A tiny local team for local people based in Brittany, north-west France, the Pirates are currently enjoying a fairytale run through the group stage of Bigger Cup, a competition in which they have already shivered the timbers of Sturm Graz, Salzburg, Sparta Prague and PSV, drawn with the German champions and lost just one of their six games to date, away at Barcelona. For a team who only achieved promotion to the French top flight five years ago and whose annual target is the avoidance of relegation, the very fact they are even in Bigger Cup is something of a miracle, while their current lofty status of fifth place in the 36-strong qualification table with just two of their eight group stage matches left to play is beyond the wildest prayers of the most cliched, modest local fisherman.
Unable to play Bigger Cup ties in their own stadium because it is too run-down and ramshackle for Uefa purpose, Brest have been hosting games at League 2 side Guingamp’s Stade du Roudourou, where they added the scalp of PSV to an already impressive collection on Tuesday night. They had to ride their luck, with goalkeeper Marco Bizot pulling off a passable impersonation of an octopus to make five hugely impressive saves, while the woodwork also came to the French side’s rescue on two occasions. Having fallen behind to Julien Le Cardinal’s first-half strike, PSV were given hope through the award of a spot-kick, only for the decision to be overturned after a visit to his pitchside monitor by the match referee. “PSV are a big European club with a great history, bigger than us but in this match, it’s no great feat,” tooted defender Brendan Chardonnet. “Our victory is deserved. There’s always something to do. We’ll be going to Germany [to face Shakhtar Donetsk] to take the three points and if we can qualify directly for the last 16, we won’t want to miss out.”
Owned by local businessman Denis Le Saint and managed by Éric Roy, a former Sunderland midfielder, Watford director of football and French TV pundit who was offered his current position after 13 years out of the management game, Brest stand to trouser a minimum of €11m in prize money should they finish in the top eight of the qualification group, which along with the €9m they’ve already earned from their four wins and a draw will help pay for the new stadium they’re building and hope to have ready next year. Sadly, it will not be open in time for the visit of Real Madrid, who Brest welcome to their rented digs for their final home game in January. Having already vastly exceeded their pre-Bigger Cup ambition of winning a single group game, it is not yet inconceivable that the third biggest team in Brittany could wrap up their fairytale run to the knockout stages by eliminating the European champions.
LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE
Join Scott Murray from 8pm GMT for hot Bigger Cup MBM updates from Arsenal 3-1 Monaco, while Simon Burnton will be on deck at the same time for Juventus 2-1 Manchester City, and Taha Hashim will guide you through clockwatch coverage of the night’s action in Women’s Big Cup (also 8pm).
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“As a football manager the hardest thing is the loads of daily choices you have to make. Short term, long term. Popular decisions, unpopular decisions. Weekly having to disappoint players because you can only play 11 and have to disappoint 14 others. You need the backing of the club if you want the team to go from average, to good, to better, to top. This reselecting and developing of a team is necessary thing to do to make these steps” – nothing gets the antennae twitching quite like a cryptic post on LinkedIn during the early hours, such as this from Aston Villa Women’s boss Robert de Pauw, whose future is understood to be in serious doubt after a less-than-stellar start to the season.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
Here is an idea I’ve been incubating for quite a while now. I suggest that Premier League clubs are seeded for the FA Cup third-round draw. Year after year we get all-Premier League ties when most clubs below that are hoping (desperately in many cases) to land one of the big boys and boost their coffers. TV only add to the farce when they decide to televise the all-top-flight tie (see Aston Villa v West Ham this year) and awarding the rights/fees to clubs already financially better off. Elitism in football continues to get worse by the day” – Tony Dunbar.
Further to Jonathan Kendal’s missive on FC United (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), I’d like to note (as a founder member of AFC Liverpool) that the benefits of non-league are not just financial. The sense of community among fans, players and staff at clubs below the professional-ish league is worth the (low) cost of entry itself and would warm even the cold heart of a Fifa official. I implore those that don’t already have a second team to look for a local one in a lower division and enjoy yourself, or at least get rained on watching a 6-0 thumping for less than a mortgage payment for a change” – (not that) Andrew Tate.
Ah, Jonathan, get real. Your proposed model of supporting football offers me nothing. Why on earth should I support a club I can only read about by struggling to find an informed local paper that Reach hasn’t destroyed, when I can have constant vacuous clickbait piped into my very phone? Why should I actually bother going to a match and smelling Bovril and turf when I can go to a generic pub and drink the same overpriced lagers, and have constant hyped factoids deafeningly boomed into my ears? Why should I exert myself to travel to an away game when I can sit at home with football blaring in the background, while I distractedly scroll on about Strictly or Timothée Chalamet or some death that’s nothing to do with me? Look, I just want to don expensive nylon and claim to be into football without needing to support a team I ever go and see or even live anywhere near to. That way, when every game gets moved to the Middle East, I won’t even notice the difference” – Jon Millard.
Fulham certainly are coming up in the world. Not only did we appear in yesterday’s letters but we also got an honourable mention in David Squires’ latest take on modern-day football. Whatever next? By the way, please note that the Spursy equivalent term is Fulhamish and has long been established, in fact it’s the subject of a very well-produced podcast and more” – Marisa Cardoni (and others).
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … (not that) Andrew Tate, who wins a copy of the new David Squires book, Chaos in the Box. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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