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Official: Tonali Banned 10 Months

Tonali's suspension, Everton under investigation, and of course, El Clásico.

Author

Heman Duplechan
October 27, 2023

Hi all 🙂

Before we start, quick shoutout to River Plate. With yesterday’s huge win vs. Independiente they went top of the table and extended their home win streak to 20 straight wins, an Argentine football record. We’re gonna talk about the Argentine league more soon, and I wanted to make up for it by saying something good that happened.

Today we talk about:

  • Everton, and why they’re facing a potential 12-point deduction for FFP violations

  • Argentina’s top league, and why they continue to just “not do” relegation during select years (told you).

  • El Clásico, and how both teams are looking ahead of Saturday’s showdown. Get excited.

But first, here’s your FRONT THREE.

Cue dramatic news music

The Front Three

Tonali banned for 10 months. Well, it’s official: Sandro Tonali will have to sit out almost a year (and miss the Euros, assuming Italy make it there) for betting on matches. Yesterday Gabriele Gravina, president of Italy’s Football Federation (FIGC), confirmed that the 23-year old’s legal team reached an agreement with prosecutors in Turin. Big blow for Magpies fans, Italy fans, and everyone in between. Do you think the ban was justified? Reply to this email and let us know.

Everton facing 12-point deduction. Ah, the FFP Reaper strikes again. Also, since the circumstances are different, I’m not going to mention any of the following words in today’s discussion:

  • What

  • About

  • Manchester

  • City

  • 115

  • Charges

To be clear: no official report has been released, but it goes without saying how big of a deal any point deduction would be to Everton, who has been narrowly avoiding relegation over the past few seasons. Also, if you look over some of Everton’s most recent transfers (both in and out), it makes sense. I guess this situation begs the big question: how do you get in FFP trouble and still suck?

Bulgarian fans protest football federation. Fans gathered in Bulgaria’s capital of Sofia. The goal of the protest? They want Bobby Mikhailov, the Bulgaria Football Union’s President, to resign (for real, this time). Let me explain.

You see, the Bulgarian national team has suffered its fair share of controversy recently. Here’s a few examples if you’re interested:

  • October 2019: The Bulgarian Football Union is charged by UEFA for fans shouting racial slurs at English players during a match

  • Soon after, Borislav Mihaylov resigned as president, until suddenly coming back into power 18 months later after it came out that the federation never actually accepted his resignation.

  • January 2023: (Then) Manager Georgi Ivanov made headlines for making (and standing behind) a statement expressing that players “with other skin colors” should not play for the national team.

A Facebook page called ‘Resignation of the BFU led by Bobby Mikhailov,’ has reportedly gathered over 5,000 followers in less than a day. On top of that, fans of ultras from some of Bulgaria’s biggest clubs have pulled together to organize further protests, with another big protest said to be taking place on November 16th during Bulgaria’s home Euro 2024 Qualifier against Hungary.

Rival clubs coming together to protest the Bulgarian Football Union

Argentina’s Primera División Could Suspend Relegations…Again

Pictured: Claudio Tapia, President of the AFA

Yesterday, reports surfaced that the Argentinian league may go back on its word and suspend relegations.

If you’re not aware of how the Argentinian league handles relegations, it’s definitely one of the more complex systems in world football (especially when their federation changes the system close to every year). This article explains it more in-depth, but here are the basics:

  • Relegation is determined by a system called promedios, which entails dividing a team’s total earned points over the past three seasons by the number of games played over those seasons (114 for the Primera División) to get an average number of points earned per game

  • The number of teams chosen to be relegated at the beginning of the season that have the lowest points per game are relegated.

We weren’t kidding when we said that the system changes almost every year. In fact, the AFA has made major changes to its relegation rules seven out of the last eleven years.

Here is every major change to the relegation rules made by the AFA, Argentina’s Football Federation, since 2012:

2012 - AFA changed relegation rule: now bottom three teams (avg wise) are directly relegated

2014 - AFA suspends relegations

2015 - AFA changed relegation rule: now only bottom two teams are directly relegated

2016 - AFA changed relegation rule: now only bottom team is directly relegated

2017 - AFA changed relegation rule: now bottom four teams are directly relegated

2019 - AFA changed relegation rule: relegation suspended for COVID until 2022

2022 - AFA changed relegation rule: now bottom two teams are directly relegated

Imagine if every league changed their relegation rules this often. And it doesn’t stop there.

For 2023, the AFA announced that they would not suspend relegation, but that they would instead:

  • Relegate three teams: two by promedios, one by general table

  • In 2024 they could relegated three teams: two by general table, one by promedios

  • They would reduce the league to 22 teams by the year 2029

If upheld, this would not only suggest that the plan from the federation is to have a more consistent relegation system, but to also phase out promedios.

However, if the recent reports are true, then it means the AFA is planning to promote three teams and have 30 in the league by 2024. In other words, they would be planning to suspend two of the three relegations they promised for this season.

Why does the AFA continue to suspend relegations?

  • Claudio Tapia, president of the AFA has outwardly expressed a desire to get rid of promedios, as the system was designed to favor the country’s top clubs. However, four of Tapia’s six vice presidents are from River Plate, San Lorenzo, Boca, and Independiente…aka, Argentina’s top clubs.

  • Past AFA presidents have also shown a desire to expand its top league, which can only happen if teams are promoted from lower leagues without other teams going back down

  • Some of people who run the smaller, relegation-threatened clubs still have great influence within the federation, which could point to why the number of teams relegated has seemed to change so arbitrarily.

We’ll continue to keep you posted with updates on this situation, but one thing’s for sure: trying to understand Argentina’s domestic leagues reminds me of this scene from Family Guy.

Enjoy.

El Clásico Is Almost Here!

That’s right folks, it’s almost time to sit down and watch one of football’s greatest yearly traditions. Well, that is, unless you live in the United Kingdom, apparently. For those of you non-Brits, there’s a law in place that prohibits stations from airing matches from 2:45pm-5:15pm local time.

We at Today FC, of course, would never encourage streaming games illegally, and our official stance on the matter is that we denounce the use of websites like the following:

It’s illegal, we don’t stand for it, and we strongly discourage anyone watching the match there for free.

Injury Report

Madrid fans can breathe a huge sigh of relief. Jude will play. As for Barca fans, while they will certainly miss some key players, Joao Felix is expected to play after picking up a knock against Shaktar so it’s not all bad.

Here’s the full report:

OUT:

Pedri (Barça)

Jules Kounde (Barça)

Sergi Roberto (Barça)

Thibaut Courtouis (Real Madrid)

Eder Militao (Real Madrid)

Dani Ceballs (Real Madrid)

QUESTIONABLE:

Robert Lewandowski (Barça)

Raphina (Barça)

DOUBTFUL:

Frenkie De Jong (Barça)

Arda Güler (Real Madrid)

How’s Each Team’s Form?

This is an interesting one. While Barcelona is technically unbeaten in all competitions, draws are the reason Real Madrid sit a point above them, top of the table. For Barca, goals are not the issue. However, they’ve proven too often that they need at least two and three goals to win matches, which is not a great habit to get into heading into one of the most important matches of the year regarding their title defense.

For Madrid, the midfield has never been an issue. If they lose this match, it’s going to be because of a Kepa mistake, combined with another no-show from their strike force. Vinicius is still coming back from his injury, but Rodrygo hasn’t provided nearly enough this season, and Joselu has shown himself to be wasteful at times. Not to give a cop-out answer, but I have a feeling this one could go down to the wire.

Match Prediction

The Catalan Giants are banged up and their star tallysman Lewandowski likely won’t be 100% if he plays. I have to go with my gut here. Real will field the stronger team and Bellingham is in such great form, how do you bet against him taking control of his first matchup against the Blaugrana? Los Blancos have been a smidge leaky at the back recently so I’m going to say 2-1, Madrid takes the three points.

Full Time. Take care, and make sure to surround yourself with friends as loyal as Union Berlin’s supporters. This video came out of supporters consoling the team following their 1-0 loss to Napoli on Tuesday. Like, this is some Ted Lasso shit.

Take care ❤️

More Good Stuff 👍

Morecambe away fans were treated to meals and lodging after their bus broke down: https://twitter.com/MorecambeFC/status/1717263945625440431

Felipe Cardenas wrote a great feature on Colombian star Linda Caicedo in The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/4998139/2023/10/25/linda-caicedo-soccer-colombia/

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