Mini-January-Break Ends

In Today’s CleanSheet:

• Headlines 📌

• TopTen ⚽🥅 - David Letterman

• HotTopic 🔥🔥🔥 - Manchester Derby and SI

Headlines 📌

• Match Week 23 start next Tuesday.

• FA Cup. The all-England soccer tournament enters the Round of 32 with matches running Thursday - Monday. Catch them on ESPN+.

• Moose Cup. Carabao Cup (EFL Cup) is a competition for the top 4 leagues in English Soccer. This is not the highly respected FA Cup - the competition for ALL clubs in England. The second leg of the Semi-Finals were played this week. As a reminder:

  • Middlesbrough surprised Chelsea 1-0 in the first leg. A nice story for “Boro” of the Championship League, but a short story as Chelsea dominated leg 2 6-1 to advance to the EFL Championship.

  • Liverpool took a 2-1 lead into the second leg at Fulham, scored early, conceded at 78’ and held to win 3-2 and advance to the EFL Championship, scheduled for Sunday, February 25 at Wembly Stadium in London. A chance for both clubs to claim a “Cup”.

• Tactics. Corner kicks are not just a “fire the ball into the box and hope your guy gets on the end of it” kind of play, although that is sometimes how it works out. Here is a great 15s clip on X showing some of the action that resulted in a goal for the Gunners.

• Tennessee Titans. Brian Callahan was recently hired as the Titans head coach and immediately quoted Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool’s Manager) - showing again what the CS has talked about in the past, EPL Managers are great and make a big difference 😀.

• Maddison is back for Tottenham, he was definitely missed in the midfield.

• January Transfer Window. It’s been quiet. Good article from SkySport talking about it. Just $34M has been spent and $2M sold. Last year $780M spend/$105M sold.

• On Holiday. Came across this post on X @SiriusXMFC asking for supporters' photos and recommendations for where you go to watch your teams play around the world. Head out there and post your pics and send a copy to CleanSheet and we will post them and include them in a future Newsletter!

TopTen ⚽🥅

Top 10 Video’s the CS Hand Selected for you from X, that make you say, “What the F@#% did I just see”. SOUND ON recommended.

10 - AFCON Security - Assault! (@trollfootball)

9 - For the Single Guys - A Keeper (@internetHOF) - Watch to the End.

8 - Wide Right - Korean (@barstoolsports)

7 - AFCON Energy - TEAM. (@MenInBlazers

6 - Emotion of Sport -not the coach, the Syrian INTERPRETER & INTERVIEWER (@football__Tweet)

5 - Gaffer Impersonation - Nailed It (@eurofootcom)

4 - Subs getting after it - Aussie Rules (@worldsoccertalk) - First 30s only.

3 - Someone has too much time on their hands - The Joneses (@bryasgunn)

2 - 10 years, $5B - WWEflix (@GutiWraslin)

1 - Jersey✅, Face Paint✅, Wig✅, Snack✅, - Chicken⁉️(@namibiansun)

Hot Topic 🔥🔥🔥

Manchester Derby (wiki) and Sports Illustrated

With the news of the demise of Sports Illustrated (outkick article) it was kind of a surprise reading and SI article about a big move within the Premier League last week.

• Manchester Derby. Since 1890 there have been 39 players who have played for both United and City, just 13 of those players have played since 1933 and the last time a player was transferred directly from one to the other was 1962. Point is, these clubs, separated by 4 miles, do not like each other and do not typically do business together. Hence the surprise with the following announcement:

  • Omar Berrada FROM CITY to UNITED. Omar is the FORMER Chief Football Operations Officer at City who left to become the new Chief Executive of Man United. The move has been described as a “masterstroke” by United. Expect the dominos to start to fall as Omar will be restructuring the club and hiring a new director of soccer and a recruiting specialist.

  • Lots of questions on the timing with City facing FFP allegations under Omar’s watch. The consensus is, this was a great step up for him and he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

  

  This seems to be the sentiment.

Ironically - one of the first articles that popped up in my stream was from Sports Illustrated…..So, in honor of the demise of Sports Illustrated - here is their article on the move.

Speaking of Sports Illustrated - Started in 1954, SI was the go to source for sports. Great writers, great pictures. Wonder why they out of business…. might it be they lost their direction?

If you happen to have a stack of SI’s in a box in your basement - you may want to go digging for some covers. Pele’s rookie card sold for $1.3M. There are only 4 copies of the SI with Pele on it from 1975 - they are worth a lot.