El Profesor

The real winner of this deal is São Paulo. They´ll be getting almost 100 million reais. That´s a ton of money for a brazilian club. I like Antony, he´s a very good player. He creates lots of chances with his vision and dribbling on the right side. Being also familiar with ten Hag system is also a plus. Having said that, I don´t like that fee though. He´s nowhere near a 100 million euros player.

I am a dodger fan. haha I love this trade tbf.

FSG sucks so much. They have the best coach in the world and instead of suportting him and giving the squad he deserves to build a winning era, they save money. They did the same thing with the Red Sox, they traded away a generational talent in Mookie Betts for peanuts. I remember Klopp being interested in bringing Paquetá in 2018. It would have been a perfect fit. A shame he went to Milan.

Paquetá is the perfect Klopp midfielder. Despite being more of an attacking midfielder, he really works hard defensively. His game has a lot of intensity and at his best, he is one of most entertaining players in world football. He is inconsistent though, perhaps because his playing style demands so much energy.

That means Guardiola is really counting on Julián Álvarez for the next season. I thought City would loan him for another european club but looks like Álvarez will go straight to the 1st team.

I mean, for Neymar Chelsea would be the perfecf fit. He goes to a league where every game is competitive, unlike Ligue 1. He's the kind of player who loves the big stage and Premier League is the biggest of them all nowadays. There is also the aspect of the physicality of Ligue 1. French football is brutal. If I'm not wrong, he broke his foot twice on opponent tackles. I listed some reasons why that would be a good move for Neymar. As for Chelsea, I think it could make sense if Tuchel is on board. Neymar played some of the best football of his career under Tuchel. Lastly, Neymsr hasn't been a winger for years now, he's lost some pace but he's still an amazing player. His vision and creativity are still there, he still creates many chances for his team.

"All the Small Things".

If I were a Liverpool fan I would be excited. The last time a team made a huge comeback at a UCL semifinal, LFC won the title.

If only PSG and City could buy that...

Definitely. Finals between teams of the same country are generally boring. It's a shame that Ramos left Real this season, would love to see he and Salah going at each other once again.

Real Madrid subs are the difference. Camavinga and Rodrygo with a huge impact.

Fun story involving Zlatan and Raiola:

Our group in 2018: Brazil - Switzerland - Serbia - Costa Rica Our group in 2022: Brazil - Switzerland - Serbia - Cameroon

So much suffering and unintended consequences out of this war.

Well, there's the presidential election this year here and it'll probably WWIII between Lula and Bolsonaro supporters. We should form a TF365 colony in Uruguay.

I hope Villa buys Coutinho. It's the right fit for him.

As a penalty taker, I would fell more confident and comfortable with Kepa on goal. Mendy, considering his frame and form, is more intimidating.

Will Kepa come in for the penalties?

Who´s starting on goal for Liverpool?

I agree. But at the same time, I understand why people do that. Hitler is for us what the Napoleon and the French revolution was to people in the 19th century. Any historical event is measured and compared to Hitler and the World War II. We still very much live in the shadow of that war. By the way, I saw a guy on Twitter comparing Putin´s invasion of Ukraine not with Hitler´s agression of Czechoslovakia but with Mussolini´s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. I agree, that was a very good point. It´s a much better comparison. It was a widely condemned attack and it isolated Mussolini, driving him to the arms of a more powerful ally, Nazi Germany. Before the invasion of Somalia, Mussolini and Hitler didn´t get along very well, considering both had conflicting claims regarding austrian territory. I think the same could happen with Russia. Ukraine will make Russia into a pariah state and will drive Putin to the arms of China.

I was thinking about this question last night. I´ll answer with what I came up. I´m still collecting my thoughts, but this is what I believe it happened. Putin is a predator. He smelled blood on a wounded prey and decided it was safe to attack. I mean, the West can´t reallly hurt him in any meaningful way. An exhausted United States ,from costly and bloody interventions in Middle East is not going to deploy boots on the ground to aid the ukrainians. In Europe, Germany the main EU power, refuses to spend the NATO minimum of 2% in defence. Another good question would be: what difference it makes for Russia if Ukraine joins NATO and the EU? I mean, Poland and the Baltic countries have already joined. I´d say Ukraine is different, for historical and ideological reasons. Russians believe it to be part of Russia. The origins of what is now Russia begin with the Kiev Rus. A democratic Ukraine in contrast to an authoritharian Russia would become a source of instability for Putin´s regime, as young russians would look up to Ukraine as a model to be followed. Much like a communist Cuba attracted thousands of young latin americans during the Cold War, as it from the outside at least, Fidel Castro´s regime appeared to contrast with the corrupt and violent regimes backed by the United States.

As promissed, the reading list: Russian and Ukrainian History: - The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine - Serhii Plokhy - Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine - Anna Reid - Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder - Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine - Anne Applebaum - Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation - Serhii Plokhy - From Peoples Into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe - John Connelly - Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia - Orlando Figes - The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union - Serhii Plokhy - Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis - Serhii Plokhy Present-Day Russia and Ukraine: - Man Without A Face - The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin - Masha Gessen - It Was a Long Time Ago, and it Never Happened Anyway – Russia and the Communist Past - David Satter - Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? - Karen Dawisha -Ukraine and Russia: From Civilied Divorce to Uncivil - Paul D´Anieri - Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism - Paul Klebnikov - One Soldier's War In Chechnya - Arkady Babchenko - Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin - Ben Judah - Russia Without Putin: Money, Power and the Myths of the New Cold War: Power, Politics and the Making of Post-Soviet Society - Tony Wood - Babylon - Victor Pelevin. * (The only fiction book on this list. This looks like a very interesting read of post-soviet Russia society).

The 90s look now a decade of lost opportunities. It was the one chance to make Russia a stable and prosper democracy. A shame. Instead of an Adenauer, what the russians got was financial crisis, humiliation and a drunken Yeltsin. (Later, I´ll post a reading list, with the names of some books that can help us understand this crisis).