Hungary has landed another prestigious Champions League fixture.
UEFA confirmed Monday that Borussia Monchengladbach’s last-16 home leg against Manchester City will be held at Budapest’s Puskas Arena on Feb. 24. The English club was barred from traveling to Germany due to a local travel ban on countries hit by new, more contagious COVID-19 variants.
Liverpool face RB Leipzig at the same venue on Feb. 16.
“UEFA would like to thank Borussia VfL 1900 Monchengladbach and Manchester City FC for their close cooperation and support, as well as the Hungarian Football Federation for their assistance and agreeing to host the match in question,” UEFA’s statement read.
The opening match of the teams’ doubleheader represents their fifth Champions League meeting. City notched three wins and one draw over the 2015-16 and 2016-17 group stages, outscoring Monchengladbach 11-4.
Each day in January was the same; a dreary procession of minor loan deals and free transfers trundled its way through the month. Even Sky Sports News’ coverage – with its yellow-and-black, crime-scene color scheme and presenter Jim White’s perpetual excitement – struggled to exhibit its usual faux frenzy.
It was an uneventful, forgettable transfer window, and there are two key factors responsible.
The financial restraints brought on by the coronavirus pandemic are one obvious reason for the lack of business. Even the European glitterati are floundering. Barcelona reported losses of €97 million over the 2019-20 season despite playing 71% of their La Liga matches in front of fans, and they’ve desperately slashed wages to obey league-wide salary caps and ensure the club stays afloat.
Barcelona quibbling over around €3 million for Manchester City’s Eric Garcia – 18 months after aggressively pursuing Antoine Griezmann and triggering his €120-million release clause at Atletico Madrid – indicates the club is suddenly toeing a fiscal tightrope, but years of boardroom mismanagement were savagely exposed by the pandemic. Overall, Barcelona’s total debts are reportedly nearing €1.2 billion and there is little spare cash to satisfy the creditors.
The fan-owned (and, many assumed, prudently run) Bundesliga clubs are also on precarious footing: Borussia Dortmund are paying the price of having the biggest stadium in the country, with each spectator-free home match costing approximately €4 million in lost revenue.
Alexandre Simoes / Borussia Dortmund / Getty
Ligue 1 clubs, meanwhile, reportedly face a colossal deficit of more than €1.3 billion after a lucrative television deal collapsed in December.
The Premier League – the plump, ostentatious figure at the head of Europe’s top table – and England’s lower divisions weren’t immune from January’s difficulties. Top-flight clubs spent just £70 million – the lowest sum in nine years – while navigating an extra obstacle on their recruitment drive.
The nation’s football clubs had to quickly familiarize themselves with new rules pertaining to Brexit. These stipulations, introduced on Dec. 1, represent the other main reason for a dry January.
British clubs previously had few transfer restrictions on the continent because Europeans enjoy freedom of labor in countries that are members of the European Union. However, the UK’s divorce from the EU means European players, like footballers in other parts of the world, now need to acquire a governing body endorsement (GBE) to work in the English game.
The point-based system judges players on a range of matters, including the quality of their national teams and how many caps they have, the strength of the domestic league they play in, how their club fared in continental competitions, and youth-team appearances.
Fifteen points are needed to automatically obtain a GBE. Players who score 11 to 14 are referred to an exceptions panel, which has the final say on whether they are suitable for English football.
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Under the revised guidelines, it’s unlikely a superstar such as Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez – named PFA Player of the Year for his contribution to Leicester City’s improbable 2015-16 Premier League triumph – would’ve been allowed to move over because, at the time of his arrival, he was an uncapped player plying his trade in the French second division.
Teemu Pukki, who’s on course to be Norwich City’s top scorer for a third consecutive season, wouldn’t have got “anywhere near the points” required under the new rules, sports business expert John Print recently told BBC Sport’s Harry De Cosemo.
The clubs that seek value around the less-shopped areas of Europe will be most affected, rather than those buying established stars, and plenty of Premier League sides are picking through the game’s bargain bin for the next Mahrez or Pukki.
“I have found three players already who were capable of coming here and they’re not allowed. It’s a shame,” West Bromwich Albion manager Sam Allardyce, who openly backed Brexit, said in early January.
He added: “We’ll do what we can … finding a player in this pandemic is going to be the hardest window I have ever worked in.”
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Furthermore, English sides are banned from signing EU players aged 16 to 18, preventing the stockpiling of talent at the largest clubs’ academies. This will give the continental heavyweights a better opportunity of scooping up the best youngsters before they’re available to English outfits, or simply give smaller teams greater hope of keeping prospects for longer.
“It can really be a game-changer. At the moment, a lot of young talent from Holland and Belgium leave for English academies at an early age,” Johannes Spors, the sporting director of Dutch outfit Vitesse Arnhem, recently told The Guardian’s Ewan Murray. “That won’t be possible anymore, they’ll have to stay until at least 18, and even then they have to meet the points criteria.”
The new rules dictate that conducting local business and, conversely, striking deals in faraway lands should become more commonplace in England. The GBE’s high ranking of youth competitions and certain leagues in South America have made it easier to purchase from that part of the world, and the transfer fees there tend to be lower than those exchanged in Europe.
“There will be some emerging markets; the Brazilian market is one that will appeal to the Championship,” Queens Park Rangers director of football Les Ferdinand told the BBC. “They’ve got a lot of good, young players, but it means going out to Brazil and doing more of your scouting further afield.”
The GBE was introduced to English football in early December, so, on this occasion, the January window might have arrived too soon for clubs to unravel its mathematical equation and recalibrate their scouting networks.
It’s unlikely the exorbitant Neymar-esque fees will return to soccer for a few more windows yet, but there should be new trends developing in the current climate. The pandemic-hit finances and change to the UK political landscape have England braced for an influx of South American youth products, while the standout teenagers in mainland Europe stay put.
UEFA has suspended Ajax goalkeeper Andre Onana for 12 months because of a doping violation stemming from the use of his wife’s medicine, the club announced Friday.
Ajax said the 24-year-old “mistakenly” took the banned diuretic Furosemide in October to deal with an illness. The substance, which is often used as a masking agent to hide other drugs, subsequently appeared in his urine during an out-of-competition check.
An investigation by UEFA’s disciplinary body determined Onana had no intention of cheating, but the appeals body, which has the final say on urgent cases, imposed the year-long ban. Anti-doping rules state an athlete has a duty to know what substances enter their body.
Ajax will appeal the decision in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“We explicitly renounce performance-enhancing drugs, we obviously stand for a clean sport,” Ajax managing director Edwin van der Sar said in a statement. “This is a terrible setback, for Andre himself but certainly also for us as a club.
“Andre is a top goalkeeper, who has proven his worth for Ajax for years and is very popular with the fans. We had hoped for a conditional suspension or for a suspension much shorter than these 12 months, because it was arguably not intended to strengthen his body and thus improve his performance.”
Onana said he mistook his wife’s medicine for aspirin because the “packaging was almost identical.”
Van der Sar described the drug Onana ingested as a “weight-loss product” that “helps to deal with water retention after pregnancy.”
Onana has played 142 matches for Ajax since 2015 and been previously linked with moves to Manchester United and Barcelona.
Earlier in the week, Ajax accidentally omitted club-record signing Sebastien Haller from their Europa League roster. The club admitted it was an administrative error.
An administrative error caused Ajax to leave club-record signing Sebastien Haller off of their Europa League squad, manager Erik ten Hag confirmed Thursday.
“It’s a mistake that should not have happened,” Ten Hag said, as reported by The Associated Press.
Ten Hag said Haller’s name wasn’t checked off on the list Ajax submitted to UEFA.
“Never a dull moment in Amsterdam,” the 51-year-old added. “Of course, he is unbelievably disappointed.”
It’s unclear if UEFA will allow the club to rectify the error.
Ajax signed Haller from West Ham United during the January transfer window, paying €22.5 million for the French striker. The fee is also the most-ever spent on an incoming transfer by a Dutch club.
Haller has made an immediate impact as well. He’s scored twice in his first six appearances for Ajax and has yet to lose a game.
His time at West Ham was far less exciting. Signed from Eintracht Frankfurt in 2019 for €50 million, Haller failed to live up to the billing, recording a modest 10 goals in 48 Premier League appearances.
