Zem

Yeah, I have to imagine Hart was planning to pick him in the second round before he got sniped at the last minute. Ruby is a solid player though, so it's hard to be upset.

Nah, playing in a small stadium in some random outlying neighbourhood or suburb would seem minor league. Playing at Ottawa's best sports facility, the Mecca of sports in Ottawa for nearly 150 years, is how a field sport gets taken seriously in this city. Heck, even the Senators played there for a short time in 1904. There's no good reason to not play at Lansdowne unless you can't afford to and you'll get better attendance than playing anywhere else. I don't understand how anyone could think that a club might be seen as "minor league" for playing at the best available facility, if anyone is going to call your club "minor league" it'll either be because they play at a smaller, crappier facility or because their actual attendance numbers are low, not because they're low relative to the stadium's capacity. When the Fury turned pro in 2014, they started playing at Keith Harris Stadium at Carleton University while renovations at Lansdowne were being completed. Despite being pretty central, well-connected to public transit and only a short distance from Lansdowne Park they only sold out the 3,000-seat stadium twice in five matches. When they moved to Lansdowne at mid-season, the opening match drew 14,500 and even excluding that match, they averaged well over 4,000 a game for the rest of the season.

Raheem Edwards as well, I think he would be one of the most obvious MLS players to make the move to the CPL after only making four appearances this year. A great player held back by a knee injury at the start of the season and then frozen out of the lineup since June.

It bears pointing out that he only signed until January, so #JacksontoCPL is still a very real possibility https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/50083376

Portugal Vitoria starts for Moreirense against Famalicão. Update: Went 90 in a 3-3 draw away; he scored from the penalty spot in the 85th minute to tie the game after they had been down 3-0 in the 64th minute. That's goals in back-to-back games for him.

Hahaha yeeep, pretty much the spin everyone was expecting. Perhaps if they had someone who knew literally anything about soccer running the organization instead of an accountant, a lot of OSEG's problems could have been avoided.

Wow, I didn't realize the facility would be done so soon. Great news!

The window opens on Monday, so presumably sometime this week. Likely today or tomorrow.

I don't think Village is surprising, Pacific could really use a more reliable keeper and I can't imagine he would want to be a backup at this stage in his career, having just made his pro breakout at 27. Starostzik is very surprising, he was really their only consistent player at the back all season (although in fairness MacNaughton improved massively over the course of the season). I have to assume that Staro expressed his intention to leave the club ahead of time, unless they just weren't confident in his ability to stay injury-free.

I assume that might include re-signed players, not necessarily new signings. Exciting nonetheless though!

I don't see how we definitely keep Perea but only keep Guti for novelty, they had very similar seasons overall. Both were held back by injuries and Perea was good at the start of the season and frustratingly poor toward the end, while Guti was the opposite. I reckon we could go either way on both of them, maybe with a full preseason and good health we get the better Perea or Guti for more of next season, or we could just find a replacement who is probably just as likely to do well. Frankly I would see Perea as the much more uncertain one since he's 33, only managed to score two goals from open play in all competitions and the last time he did so was in July. Sukunda I can only see being resigned as a flexible depth option, he was also quite disappointing overall. I feel like career-wise he might be better off looking for somewhere he'll get a good shot, rather than being stuck behind Bona, De Carolis and Garcia/Guti/Kourouma. Also, we're obviously keeping Rampersad unless he decides to sign somewhere else, his tandem with John was one of the few highlights from the last few months of the season.

Davies currently leads all players in the game with 5 successful tackles; no other Bayern player has more than 1. He's definitely doing his part off the ball this match.

Davies is being credited with the assist on Lewandowski's goal! Now 2-1 Frankfurt.

No, not at all; but Hoy is Canadian, so he doesn't necessarily need to be an important starter in the CPL like Valour were expecting of Hoyle. He'd be cheap and he has a good bit of experience under his belt, which could be interesting to some clubs in the league.

He graduated from Oakland in 2016, spent a year in Australia and has been playing in NZ ever since, not much else to it. He could definitely be of interest to some CPL clubs though.