Latest news with #Fluminense
The Citizen
11 hours ago
- Sport
- The Citizen
Sundowns receive high praise from ex-Dortmund star
'If Sundowns can take care of Dortmund's attack ... then there's an opportunity for them to win this game,' said the former Bafana and Dortmund winger. Delron Buckley believes Mamelodi Sundowns will give a good account of themselves against Borussia Dortmund at the Fifa Club World Cup on Saturday. Picture: Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix Former Borussia Dortmund winger Delron Buckley believes Mamelodi Sundowns have what it takes to pull off a surprise result when they face the German giants in the FIFA Club World Cup on Saturday. ALSO READ: PSG stun Botafogo after Messi lights up Club World Cup Dortmund were held to a goalless draw by Fluminense in their tournament opener, but the Bundesliga side remain firm favourites going into the crucial Group F clash at the TQL Stadium in Cincinnati. Sundowns lead Group F Buckley, who spent four seasons with Dortmund between 2005 and 2009, has backed the South African champions to rise to the occasion. Sundowns currently lead the group with three points after edging Ulsan HD 1-0 in a tightly contested encounter on Wednesday. Sundowns will be eager to build on their strong start and secure a result that could see them progress to the next round — and Buckley is confident they can rise to the challenge. 'Not up to standard' 'When I watched the game Dortmund (against Fluminense), they were not up to standard. They didn't play the football that we know them for,' Buckley said on Radio 2000. 'You must also take note that Fluminense are also a good team and they are not a team that you are just going to walk over. I could see that Dortmund were taking strain and as the coach said that the heat was taking its toll on the players because they are not used to playing in those weather conditions in Germany. 'When they have their Bundesliga season, it's cold and it's raining. This is why I believe that Sundowns will have a chance to probably pocket three points because Sundowns are used to playing in such weather conditions. 'When I saw them (Sundowns) playing and the way they were running with (Teboho) Mokoena in the middle and (Themba) Zwane, they were running non-stop for 90 minutes in that kind of weather.' 'That is because they are used to it and if Sundowns can take care of Dortmund's attack because they have quick players up front. If they can just deal with that, then there's an opportunity for them to win this game.' The former Bafana Bafana international enjoyed a long spell in Germany, featuring for clubs including VfL Bochum, Arminia Bielefeld, Mainz 05, and Karlsruher SC. He also represented South Africa at the 1998 and 2002 FIFA World Cups. Buckley believes the quality within the Sundowns squad, combined with their tactical discipline, means they could compete in top European leagues. 'A different level' 'Sundowns are a kind of team that has progressed in the past years and the football they are playing is on a different level. I don't think there's another club in South Africa that plays top attractive football,' Buckley concluded. 'I think the way they are playing, they can compete in the Bundesliga. When I said the level here in South Africa is third division in Germany, I didn't mean the team because if you see Sundowns when they play in the champions league, they compete on such a high level. 'The football they play is so attractive to watch that you can take Sundowns and put them in the Bundesliga or maybe Spain, and they will compete and do well. On the other hand, it's not a coincidence because it boils down to finances. ALSO READ: Lunga unfazed by underdog tag ahead of Dortmund clash 'If you have the money to buy players, if you have the finances to run a team properly and have scouts to fly to Brazil to watch training sessions and come back to implement it at Sundowns, then you are going to be a top successful team.'
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
2025 FIFA Club World Cup: Fluminense vs. Ulsan HD Preview with Tim Vickery
Ulsan HD need to shake off the loss to Mamelodi Sundowns and now focus on Brazilian giants Fluminense in the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. Paul and Matt look ahead to this crunch clash for the Horangi as the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup Group F reaches matchday two. We hear from South American football expert and journalistic giant Tim Vickery for his thoughts on Fluminense. Where to Watch
Irish Examiner
17 hours ago
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
As Club World Cup hands out riches, a plan is needed for those left behind
While a dozen of Europe's elite clubs were chasing the American dream, 170 of their less garlanded peers gathered for a barbecue next to Lake Geneva. They had converged on Uefa's headquarters to attend the qualifying round draws for next season's continental competitions; Tuesday night was time to get together, perhaps to speed-date representatives of the team you had been paired with or simply to cut loose before a labyrinthine summer spent journeying in search of league-phase football. Borussia Dortmund were slugging out a goalless draw with Fluminense while the meat hit the grills, but 'Club World Cup' is a dirty formulation in Nyon's corridors of power. Any available screens showed action from Uefa's own U21 Championship and alternative sources of entertainment roamed the pastel green lawns. A caricature artist did the rounds, stopping at the table occupied by Aleksander Ceferin and putting his pencil to work. The picture for these smaller clubs may be similarly distorted, but the humorous aspect is lacking. Uefa were correct to trumpet the event's symbolism in their pre-draw publicity: a vibrant collage of European football life was present, from the storied names of Red Star Belgrade and Rangers to Iberia 1999 of Georgia and Estonia's Paide Linnameeskond. However, beneath the collegiality it is impossible to escape the sense of a majority being left far behind, with ideas to redress the balance painfully few and largely inadequate. Most of Europe's clubs stand no chance of keeping pace with a top-level juggernaut that has unhitched itself and careered away. Some occupy an untenable half-space, unable to seriously challenge those in the big five leagues while crushing domestic opposition with the money on offer from the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League. Nobody is squarely to blame for trends that owe much to late-stage capitalism and geopolitical forces, but there may be a less charitable outlook towards those who fail to act. There is particular concern that the revamped Champions League, for all the triumphalism around its 36-team group format, will have the variety squeezed from it. Nineteen of its slots will be filled by English, German, Spanish and Italian clubs in 2025-26, six from the Premier League alone. For proud institutions such as Malmö, Dynamo Kyiv and Panathinaikos the hopes of tracing a path to one of the seven playoff qualifying berths are achingly remote. European football's top-heaviness is little secret, but alarm bells ring louder when consequences begin to rear up lower down. In the qualifying rounds only the Armenian club Noah and Pafos, from Cyprus, are debutants in the Champions League. That is the lowest figure for 14 years, according to research carried out for the Union of European Clubs (UEC), and indicates that the monotony felt closer to the summit is becoming a consistent theme domestically. Should that be exacerbated the fear is that, as one figure at a leading club suggests, national leagues in their current form will be living on borrowed time. The example of Serbia is instructive. Red Star, who have won eight consecutive titles, will earn a basic £16m (€18.7m) if they follow projections and reach the league phase. If the qualifying rounds proceed as expected their three compatriots in the Europa League and Conference League will fail to get that far. Novi Pazar or Radnicki 1923, their representatives in the latter, would take no more than £1m from that best-case scenario of elimination at the playoff stage. Read More Kylian Mbappe admitted to hospital with acute gastroenteritis The pattern would only be reinforced. There will always be clubs of wildly varying size, but the disparity in funding has never been starker. For Red Star's part, they and their equivalents can only gawp at the bare minimum of $12.81m (€11.16m) European sides will receive from appearing at the Club World Cup. In most cases that figure will be multiplied several times over by its conclusion. The clear danger is that three strata are emerging in Europe, separated by financial chasms that have become impossible to mitigate. Solidarity payments, a subject of fierce bargaining annually, are one of Uefa's ways to soften the divide. Clubs absent from European competition receive 7% of the annual £3.7bn revenue from those flagship events, a further 3% being allocated to those eliminated in the qualifying phase. It is certainly well meant, and has increased markedly for the current three-year cycle, but will not disturb the status quo. Creative solutions are needed and it caught the attention last month when the UEC, formed in 2023 to represent non-elite clubs, unveiled its plan for a 'player development reward'. Under that scheme, another 5% of revenue from club competitions would be redistributed to the teams whose academies developed those competing in them. It has been taken seriously enough for European Leagues to discuss it in depth last week. Any European club not playing in the Champions League proper could benefit. UEC's formula, devised with Transfermarkt, takes into account the on-pitch time by each player and the prize money they have helped generate. The Italian fourth-tier club Pavia, where Federico Acerbi came through the ranks, would have earned £275,000 thanks to his 670 minutes en route to last month's final with Inter. In 2023-24, nearly 1,500 clubs would have benefited from this kind of payment. Jude Bellingham's success with Real Madrid would have handed Birmingham £827,000; Vorskla Poltava, struggling in Ukraine, would have received £679,000 (€795,000) for their club's successes; MSK Zilina, trailing behind Slovan Bratislava's Champions League earnings in Slovakia, would have taken £1.3m (€1.5m). At the top end, Ajax's remarkable production line, picked off so frequently, would have earned them £4.6m. Neither UEC's plan nor any other, including Uefa's welcome £200m (€234m) pot for clubs with players at the past two European Championships, will mend things alone. But it would be a step in the right direction, perhaps helping narrow the gap between those two layers under the elite. Football beneath the ultra-privileged minority will only thrive with integrated incentives that reward clubs for their contributions to the ecosystem. Maybe that, even more than the prospect of a Champions League winner from those clubs assembled by the lake, is a pipedream. In greeting the new European season Ceferin rightly hailed the diversity of the scene he oversees; perhaps Uefa's appointed artist could have warned him what happens when, for all anyone's good intentions, a work of beauty is defaced for ever. Guardian
New York Times
18 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Shilton v Fabio: Who really holds the world record for senior appearances?
Brazilian goalkeeper Fabio Deivson Lopes Maciel, who is representing Fluminense at the Club World Cup, began his career in 1997. Since then he has played 1,375 official, senior games of football. It is a remarkable number and testament to his talent, drive and longevity. English former goalkeeper Peter Shilton, whose career lasted from 1966 to 1997, is the only other man to have played more than 1,350 official games of senior, top-level football. Advertisement Shilton's total — which has been the world record for decades — is, according to him, 1,387 matches. Guinness World Records — the authoritative reference book and website that lists and collates records in a variety of different fields — say he played 1,390. So what is Shilton's real number? And how far behind is Fabio? Or has the Brazilian already surpassed Shilton? Here, The Athletic explains the situation, defines an official, senior game and lays out the facts concerning both men's totals. Firstly, which matches are classed as official and what level of competition do they have to be in to reach this threshold? In club football it is largely obvious — pre-season friendlies are not official matches but, once they are over, every game within a recognised competition (so excluding winter-break friendlies) played by a club's first team is classed as official and added to the record books. For the purposes of working out who has played the most official games in the sport's history, matches played for amateur clubs or for clubs outside a country's national league system (e.g. in regional leagues) are not counted as they are not classed as top-level fixtures. When it comes to international football, any match played by a country's senior first team is classed as official unless explicitly stated otherwise by FIFA — but age-group appearances (e.g. for England's under-17s) are not. This is why matches at the Olympics, where squads are made up of players who were under the age of 23 at the start of the calendar year with three exceptions permitted, are not included in players' career stats (even Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't count his goal at the 2004 Olympics for Portugal in his overall total). So, let's start with Shilton. How many official games did he actually play in a career that saw him appear for Leicester City, Stoke City, Nottingham Forest, Southampton, Derby County, Plymouth Argyle, Bolton Wanderers, Leyton Orient and the England national team? According to the English National Football Archive, an online database listing every official game played in the country's history, Shilton, now 75, played 348 games for Leicester, 121 for Stoke, 272 for Nottingham Forest, 242 for Southampton, 211 for Derby, 43 for Plymouth, two for Bolton and 10 for Leyton Orient. Shilton was also on the books at Wimbledon, Coventry City and West Ham United towards the end of his time as a professional, but never appeared in a competitive game for those three clubs. This means he played 1,249 games in his almost 31-year club career. Add in the record 125 England appearances he made from 1970 to 1990 and that takes him to 1,374 matches. So why does Shilton himself, in the biography section of his X account, state the total as 1,387? And why do Guinness World Records, on their website, have it as 1,390? Advertisement The 1,387 figure likely includes 13 games that Shilton played for England's under-23s team from 1968 to 1972, with four of those matches coming after his debut for the England senior team. England under-23s played from 1954 to 1976, before becoming the under-21s side that still exists today. So while established players featured in these games it is a stretch to class them as senior matches and therefore it seems reasonable not to include them in players' career stats — just as other international age-group matches aren't due to the fact they are not appearances for the senior team. As for Guinness World Records, their figure of 1,390 likely includes 16 games in unofficial or regional cup competitions, such as the Nottinghamshire FA County Cup and Derbyshire FA Centenary Cup that are not classed by the English National Football Archive as official matches. Guinness World Records did not provide a breakdown when contacted by The Athletic. This, therefore, leaves the former goalkeeper on 1,374 official, senior games of football. Now, to Fabio and that figure of 1,375 that he has to his name. The 44-year old has never played for a club outside Brazil and has not represented the national team. His 28-year career (and counting) has seen him appear in official, senior games for Uniao Bandeirante, Vasco da Gama, Cruzeiro and Fluminense. According to Globo, Brazil's biggest daily newspaper who have gone back through Fabio's career in detail, including contacting clubs for information, the goalkeeper played 30 games for Uniao Bandeirante, 150 for Vasco da Gama, 976 for Cruzeiro and is currently on 219 games for Fluminense. Fabio did also play for Athletico Paranaense in the late 1990s, but all of his appearances for the club, according to Athletico Paranaense, came in youth games. Advertisement Adding up the official games he has played for the senior first team at each club puts him on 1,375 matches, one ahead of Shilton. However, as The Athletic's Jack Lang has pointed out, Fluminense are accepting Shilton's figure of 1,387 so will mark the milestone when Fabio, all being well, eclipses that number later this year. This is why there was no fanfare when Fabio played against Borussia Dortmund at the Club World Cup in New Jersey on Tuesday. Yet it does appear after carefully assessing the figures available that the Fluminense goalkeeper has now played the most senior games in the history of football. Shilton posted on social media in 2023 about the prospect of his record being broken and while the Englishman is fiercely proud of his landmark, it appears there is nothing but respect between the two goalkeepers. I'll be the first to congratulate Fabio Deivson Lopes Maciel @FluminenseFC this great goalkeeper is only 52 games short of breaking my world record for the most official appearances as a professional footballer…. He's getting close ! ⚽️@FIFAcom — Peter Shilton (@Peter_Shilton) December 23, 2023 How long Fabio goes on playing is anyone's guess, but as Fluminense's clear first-choice No 1 he will presumably be confident of hitting the 1,400-mark. There is one important footnote, however. Portuguese superstar Ronaldo, who is 40 and still playing for club and country, has appeared in 1,281 official, senior games in his career — a figure bettered by only Fabio and Shilton. The Al Nassr forward is likely to be able to play in Saudi Arabia for as long as he wants and, perhaps more pertinently, is 62 short of 1,000 career goals — a milestone he is desperate to achieve. Only time will tell if he ends up surpassing the goalkeepers ahead of him. What is all-but certain though, is that it will be Fabio, not Shilton, whose record Ronaldo will try and chase down. (Top photos: Getty Images)
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Silva's impact on Chelsea youngsters still visible with Chukwuemeka reunion
Thiago Silva may have joined Chelsea in the twilight of his career as a 35-year-old in 2020, but his impact over the four seasons he spent at Stamford Bridge is still visibly impressing for Fluminense in their Club World Cup opener against Borussia Dortmund, Silva shared a moment with Dortmund's Chelsea loanee Carney Chukwuemeka on the pitch at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey."My boy, how good to see you mate. I love you," Silva posted on his Instagram, external story along with a picture of the two embracing. Chukwuemeka and the Brazil legend spent two seasons together between 2022 and may turn 41 in September but his incredible durability was on full display against Dortmund. He captained Fluminense and showed all of his quality and experience in an immaculate performance to secure a clean sheet in the 0-0 was not the only young Chelsea player to benefit from playing alongside him in the latter years of his career in West London, in which he made 155 appearances and won the Champions League, Club World Cup and Super Silva's departure from Stamford Bridge, Reece James - now Blues captain - labelled him, external "A true brother" and "One of the best players to play the game and an even better person".Fellow defenders Levi Colwill and Trevoh Chalobah both credit the seven-time French Champion with helping their careers. Colwill has spoken of the impact, external of playing alongside Silva after basing his game on him while growing up and Chalobah commented "idolo" - Portuguese for idol or hero - under one of his final Instagram posts, external as a Chelsea any in Enzo Maresca's young squad need inspiration or motivation to progress in their careers, a fine starting point would be to tune in to Fluminense's remaining games in the United States - and keep a particular eye on their number three.
