Part 117: Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2020-2021
Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2020-2021July 1, 2021
We know the English Premier League had a pretty exciting final stretch, but was that true around the rest of Europe and the world?
Even if we had beaten Derby and Manchester City at the end of the year we'd have still finished a point behind Manchester United. My decision to rest players for our FA Cup final is fully vindicated. Hopefully Manchester United pick up where they left off, still excellent but not the unequivocal best team in the world that they were for an 18 month span coming into February 2021.
Newcastle comes right back up, as I expected. They were too good a team to stay relegated for long. QPR wins the promotion playoff, which I'm sure their supporters are hoping for in real life this coming weekend.
Well, well, well. Look who finally got promoted to the Championship. Perhaps some day they'll actually get to the Premier League, where I can renew my annual stomping of all the hopes and dreams of little city Tackleford. Leicester is the last place team, they went into administration and were docked ten points. It's a caution to the real world Leicester, which just made the Premier League and has their Thai owners talking about how they're going to spend £150m pounds to become a top five club.
That will never cease to be enjoyable.
I admit, I was pulling for Newcastle in the final. Earning a Europa League spot and getting promoted in the same year would have been an impressive comeback from the disappointment of 2019/2020.
I didn't realize it, but our U18's won the Group 2 youth league this past year. They were knocked out of the U18 Cup by Manchester United in the quarterfinals, which should instill in them the proper hatred of the Red Devils.
Barcelona and Real Madrid have split the last four titles in La Liga, while recent upstarts Granada climb back into the Champions League. Granada's recent history bears a lot of similarity to Wrexham, they were a lower division club before climbing the promotion ladder repeatedly and then storming onto the European stage not long after their final promotion. They've bounced around in the top half of La Liga since, we need to make sure we avoid that fate and don't stagnate.
Italians got to witness a wildly exciting title race that came down to the last day of the season. Both Napoli and Juve were leading AC Milan into their final matches. Both Napoli and Juve lost on Saturday, May 8th, and thus allowed themselves to be overtaken by Milan on the final day of the season. Meanwhile, Liad Eliav won't be playing in any European competitions if Inter can't do better than 10th place. You could have been playing Champions League football this year if you cared more about clubs that weren't just trading on past glory, kid.
Dortmund has now won four straight Bundesliga titles. Bayern Munich has yet to recover from their stumble in the 2017-2018 season. They're reduced to selling good young players for less than their full value to young upstarts like Wrexham.
PSG has now won eight straight titles. France is a battle between several good teams for second place, while PSG only really cares about winning another Champions League trophy.
Benfica win the coin flip this year between themselves and Porto for the Portuguese league.
One of our prospects, centerback Marc Jansen, helps AZ Alkmaar to fourth place, they can only dream of where they might have finished had he not missed over a month with a serious injury.
The Old Firm rivalry is back! Rangers top the Scottish table for the first time since they were forced to start all over in the bottom rung of professional football. Celtic can't rest on their laurels any longer, the SPL returns to being a Glaswegian grudge match. Meanwhile the hapless Hearts get sent down to the lower leagues, making one half of Edinburgh sad and the other chuckle with schadenfreude.
Bayern aren't completely hapless, though I'm sure they're wishing that the Europa League trophy carried qualification for the Champion's League as it will in real life.
Take a good look, folks. I want us on this bracket next year. Winning would be a shock, but there's no reason why we can't get to the quarterfinals if the draws are favorable.
Over in the New World Toluca win the most recent Mexican league title, while Club America finally rights the ship and finishes respectably.
DC United over the LA Galaxy! What is this, 1999?
I'm not sure why the Argentine Primera only has 19 games listed for last season, but regardless of the reason Boca won. Velez finished second thanks in part to the wonderkid we just signed from them.
Corinthians gets back to the top of the pile for the first time in six seasons, but no one other than they, Palmeiras, and Sao Paolo have won since the I was first hired as a coach. Gremio wins the Campeonato Gaucho for the fifth year straight, those jerks at Internacional ain't nothing.
The Libertadores have yet to finish, but of the four semifinalists just one comes from outside of Brazil. Everyone should be pulling for underdogs Deportivo Cali, who hail from western Colombia.
Cameroon toppled Ghana, South Africa, and Nigeria en route to their fourth cup and first in 19 years, and earned a spot in the 2021 Confederations Cup.
The Confederations Cup involves the continental champions of the various football federations (UEFA, CONMEBOL, etc) as well as the winner of the last World Cup and the host of the next world cup. The players for those teams got to run around in 120/50 F/C heat as a dry run in advance of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The Emirate's players certainly couldn't take the heat, losing all three matches. The Swiss proved that their 2018 World Cup triumph was no fluke, and the golden age of Swiss football remains in full bloom.
In July and August the CONCACAF Gold Cup will be contested to see whether Mexico or the United States get to brag about beating their fiercest rival, and the U20 World Cup will be held, featuring the best teen talent in the world.