Post others in the thread
🏴⚽ FA Cup, Jan 4-7
The FA Cup is the pure knockout tournament for English football clubs of all tiers. There are 64 teams left in it, so 32 matches those days. Arsenal-Liverpool on Jan 7 at 4:30pm local time is notable.
Games listed on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%9324_FA_Cup#Third_round_proper
Spoiler-free Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2023%E2%80%9324_FA_Cup&direction=prev&oldid=1192139800
🇪🇸⚽ La Liga
- Jan 3, Girona vs Atlético Madrid
🏴⚽ Premier League
Fixtures are thin because of the FA Cup. In fact there's just two, but they're both juicy:
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Monday 1st January, Liverpool-Newcastle United, 20:00 local time
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Tuesday 2nd January West Ham United-Brighton & Hove Albion, 19:30 local time
West Ham just beat Arsenal 2-0, are having a great season. Brighton are having a great few decades, were in the 4th tier in the year 2000, now 8th in the top tier. Liverpool are title contenders (it's one of the most competitive title races in this millennium). Newcastle have 1 win 4 losses in their past 5 league games, but are a strong team basically.
🥊 Vergil Ortiz Jr vs Fredrick Lawson, Jan 6
Should be easy for Ortiz, who has 19 fights and 19 knockout victories.
Card and other stats here: https://box.live/fights/ortiz-jr-vs-lawson/
Hot take: a defeat for Newcastle is a defeat for pay-to-win football, because Newcastle are the richest club in the world but haven't converted that into success on the pitch.
That's indeed searing.
Chelsea and Man City already bought trebles, that cat's been out of the bag for a decade.
Newcastle are already spending pretty close to the maximum allowed under UEFA FFP, and the way it's structured based on revenue gives a massive, massive advantage to old money teams.