https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...how-us-owners-have-fared-in-european-football How US owners have fared in European football Arsenal: A- Aston Villa: A Chelsea: F Liverpool: A By many measures, Fenway Sports Group (FSG) are the perfect modern soccer owners. Since taking over Liverpool in 2010, the Boston-based conglomerate has pushed the club back to the top of English and European soccer, winning seven major titles in nine years under Jürgen Klopp. FSG’s data-driven approach has allowed Liverpool to punch above their weight in the transfer market, although the club has still spent big on the likes of Virgil van Dijk and Darwin Nunez. Meanwhile, Anfield has also been extensively renovated and expanded with a new £50m training ground built in Kirkby. This summer, however, represents a crossroads. Klopp is gone and Richard Hughes will take over as the club’s new sporting director in a couple of weeks. Mohamed Salah could be the subject of interest from Saudi Arabia again while Trent Alexander-Arnold and Van Dijk are entering the final year of their contracts. FSG have a lot on their plate. Manchester United: F When the Glazer family bought Manchester United in a controversial leveraged takeover in 2005, the club was the jewel of the Premier League. United rarely went one or two seasons without winning a title and were consistently competitive in the Champions League. They had the greatest manager in history, some of the most talented players in the world and England’s best stadium. With the Glazers at the helm, though, the club has crumbled. In fact, Old Trafford itself is literally crumbling and has become a symbol of the rot that has taken hold at Manchester United. Rivals point out the club has still spent aggressively in the transfer market in recent times, but there has been no coherent strategy to underpin this spending – not to mention the fact that these signings were largely funded through United’s own revenue, loans or structured payments. That the Glazers were so willing to hand over sporting control of Manchester United to Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos for a minority stake earlier this year proved how little they cared about the success of the team. They turned English football’s biggest powerhouse into its most tragic punchline.
Liverpool are confirmed to be in Pot 1 for the new Champions League‘s league phase, which means they will avoid six other high-profile opponents. Next season’s Champions League will be the first since expanding to a new 36-team competition, which follows the ‘Swiss model’ of a league format replacing the group stage. That means more fixtures – including eight ‘group’ games against different opponents – before splitting off for a traditional knockout phase. Liverpool will not learn their opponents for the league phase until the draw on August 29, but they now know who they have joined in Pot 1. Despite the new format, clubs are still split into four pots, with each club facing two teams from each pot – one home, one away – in the league phase. Pot 1: Man City, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain, Liverpool, Inter Milan, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Barcelona Pot 2: Bayer Leverkusen, Atletico Madrid, Atalanta, Juventus, Benfica, Arsenal, Club Brugge Pot 3: Feyenoord, Sporting CP, PSV Eindhoven Pot 4: Sturm Graz, Brest https://www.thisisanfield.com/2024/...-opponents-as-champions-league-pot-confirmed/ ============================ I haven't been focusing on this new format at all. can someone explain to me how these 2 things can both be true? 1. we will "they will avoid six other high-profile opponents" (in Pot 1) 2. "clubs are still split into four pots, with each club facing two teams from each pot – one home, one away"
I don't think they necessarily rule out playing against at least one team from the same association - if that league has four or more champions league spots. So we might for example draw Man City out of "Pot1" as one of our two "Pot1" games in some future selection. Because this year there are only two EPL "Pot1" teams, my guess is that they'd instead re-select if we were matched with Man City this year. I haven't yet found out how exactly they will decide whether to allow a same association pick to go through or not. This probably has something to do with the order in which they make the selections, and how many same-league teams are in each pot. For example this year the Bundesliga has three "Pot1" teams, so you'd think they are virtually guaranteed to play at least one other Bundesliga side from "Pot1." The other way this might work is that selection of same-league teams is solely based on the number within any given pot, but who knows... it looks like these selection rules could get quite complicated quickly.
Liverpool has pulled clear of Manchester City, Manchester United and Arsenal after becoming the first Premier League club to reach a significant milestone off the pitch. The Reds have announced they have reached 10million subscribers on YouTube, leaving its top six rivals behind. Liverpool first launched the channel in 2005 and has pulled in fans with its exclusive behind-the-scenes content from matchdays and training. United is next in line with 9m subscribers, with City remaining in third with 7.4m. The growth of Liverpool's commercial activity and unique content has secured double the amount of subscribers as Arsenal (4m) and Chelsea (5m). https://www.liverpool.com/liverpool...rpool-manutd-mancity-arsenal-chelsea-29273915
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/12/...iverpool-eras-tour-beatles-anfield/index.html In a pub just a stone’s throw from Anfield stadium, where 60,000 fans gather regularly to watch Liverpool Football Club, bar staff are preparing to serve a very different clientele. The Sandon has been catering to the soccer crowd for more than a century. On Thursday, it expects to welcome Taylor Swift fans heading to Anfield for the first of the superstar’s three “Eras Tour” concerts in Liverpool. Ceri Smith, floor manager at The Sandon, says concerts like Swift’s infuse the 154-year-old pub with a “completely different” atmosphere. “It’s mainly girls wanting to dress up and (bachelorette) parties wanting to go to the concerts,” she told CNN, adding that the pub had hired a Swift look-alike to sing karaoke, and set up a glitter face-paint stall for customers. Smith expects the concerts will give a “massive” boost to the pub’s finances, as well as the legion of bakeries, fish-and-chip shops and hair salons in the Anfield neighborhood, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) north of the center of the city. Local officials expect the concerts will boost the economy of Liverpool — one of the most deprived cities in the United Kingdom — just as the Eurovision Song Contest did last year. That week of concerts, club nights and other Eurovision-themed events generated nearly £55 million ($70 million) in additional spending in the northern English city, according to a report by Amion Consulting commissioned by Liverpool City Council. The so-called visitor economy, which includes bars, restaurants, hotels and tourist attractions among other venues, provides a sizable share of the council’s income. Almost 50% of the business rates — taxes on commercial properties — collected by the local government come from such businesses, according to Harry Doyle, a senior council official responsible for health, wellbeing and culture. “The fact that Taylor is coming to Liverpool… it’s a huge coup for us,” he told CNN. Liverpool ONE, a complex of more than 170 stores, bars, restaurants and hotels in the city center, forecasts that Swift’s three shows will attract 100,000 additional visitors to the area, generating an extra £12 million ($15.4 million) in spending. The ‘Swift lift’ It wouldn’t be the first time Swift sprinkles some of her economic fairy dust over the cities she visits on her mammoth tour, which kicked off in March last year in the United States. Average sales in restaurants within a 2.5-mile radius (1.6 kilometers) of Swift’s concert venues in the US soared by more than 68% over the days of her performances, according to the Mastercard Economics Institute. Fans also boosted average spending on accommodation by 32% within a 10-mile radius (16 kilometers) of the concerts. Natalia Lechmanova, chief European economist at the institute, said Liverpool would likely feel the “Swift lift” more strongly than London, where the singer is scheduled to perform for eight nights over June and August. “We have found in the US that smaller cities have experienced a bigger (economic) impact than larger cities,” she told CNN. “Filling up a 60-80,000-person stadium in a city like Liverpool is a big deal: It is the event taking place that day, while in London, even if Wembley (stadium) is full, there’s still a bunch of other cultural events going on.” Taylor-mania Liverpool City Council has pulled out all the stops to welcome Swift, partnering with local artists to create a “Taylor Town Trail” — 11 art installations dotted around the city representing the singer’s distinct albums, or musical eras, including a moss-covered grand piano for the “Evermore” album and giant hearts for the “Lover” era. The University of Liverpool is also hosting a conference, dubbed “Tay Day,” on Wednesday to “debate, discuss, and deconstruct Taylor Swift’s musical, social, and economic impact,“ according to its website. The event will end with a “critical karaoke” session, in which researchers will perform Swift-related essays to one of her tracks. This excitement around Swift’s visit is reminiscent of another mania that swept Liverpool six decades ago at the height of The Beatles’ popularity. The legendary band of four Liverpudlians played their first concert at the city’s Cavern Club in 1961. The frenzy that ensued and became known as “Beatlemania” reached its zenith in 1966, according to National Museums Liverpool, when fans’ screams often drowned out the music at the band’s gigs. “(Swift’s) got a huge following, just as The Beatles did,” said Doyle at Liverpool City Council. “You can’t quite greet artists off a plane at an airport anymore like you used to back when The Beatles were huge, but I’m sure if you could Taylor would have that same reception.” “She’s probably the biggest pop star on the planet right now,” he added. In 2015, UNESCO designated Liverpool a City of Music because of its rich musical heritage. Besides The Beatles, the city has spawned bands such as Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Atomic Kitten. Kevin McManus at Liverpool City Council, who works on supporting the city’s music sector, hopes Swift’s concerts will raise the profile of Liverpool’s small, grassroots music venues — the “lifeblood” of its music sector. In recent years, music venues in Liverpool, like in the rest of the country, have faced the “double whammy” of the coronavirus pandemic and a cost-of-living crisis that has forced many people to spend less on entertainment, he told CNN. “People are more choosy about when they go out because they’ve got less money to spend,” McManus said. “But we need to protect (grassroots venues) or we don’t get the next generation of superstars. That’s the reality. Everyone starts somewhere, even Taylor Swift.”
FWIW, Jurgen’s going. (To Taylor Swift, probably not The Sandon). I’ve been to a lot (probably not all) of the pubs around Anfield and I know The Sandon takes a bit of a bashing by times for being too big, corporate, super-pub, not a local etc. Not all of those criticisms are wrong, but for my money, the back bar, not the main bar, the back bar in The Sandon is up there as part of a perfect match day experience.
Re the Taylor Swift concerts at Anfield , I think it's another example of some very clever commercial marketing business from the club. She has millions of fans who have probably little or no interest/knowledge of football or Anfield before these concerts . As one of the guys on the Anfield Wrap says , if they can get her to wear a Lpool jersey during the show well we may just sell a few more.