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ere are now 320 more opportunities for players to sign south of the border. Thats likely to have a s
Topic Started: Oct 10 2015, 03:02 AM (4 Views)
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LONDON -- Protecting 2-0 leads from their last-16 first legs, Barcelona and Bayern Munich are huge favourites to advance in the Champions League this week when they play return matches at home. Yet theres enough evidence to suggest Europes two heavyweight teams still have plenty of work to do. Barcelona has lost three of its last six matches in the Spanish league, giving Manchester City renewed hope the two-goal deficit may not be too much to bridge. Arsenal, meanwhile, heads to Bayern having won 2-0 at the Allianz Arena in a round-of-16 second leg last season. In this weeks other second legs, Atletico Madrid leads AC Milan 1-0 and Paris Saint-Germain is 4-0 in front against Bayer Leverkusen. ------ Here is a lookahead to the games in Europes top knockout competition on Tuesday and Wednesday: BAYERN MUNICH vs. ARSENAL Bayern is heeding the lesson learned from losing to Arsenal at home in the last 16 last season, when only away goals ensured progress before it went on to win the title. Another 2-0 loss on Tuesday would level the aggregate score. "If we let Arsenal have the ball, well have big, big problems," said Bayern coach Pep Guardiola, who otherwise has little to worry about. Guardiola had a full squad to choose from for Saturdays 6-1 rout at Wolfsburg. Defender Holger Badstuber was among the 20 players to travel after recovering from tearing the cruciate ligament in his right knee. The win was Bayerns 16th in a row, setting a new record in the Bundesliga, where the side is undefeated in 49 games. In inspiring Arsenal to a 4-1 win over Everton in the FA Cup quarterfinals on Saturday, Germany playmaker Mesut Ozil returned to the kind of form that persuaded the Gunners to break their club record to sign him from Real Madrid in the summer. ------ ATLETICO MADRID vs. AC MILAN Atletico Madrid will have two reasons to feel good about its chances to advance past AC Milan on Tuesday. First, leading scorer Diego Costa will be well rested after missing Saturdays Spanish league win at Celta Vigo due to a one-game suspension. Diego Costa scored the winner in Atleticos 1-0 first-leg victory at Milan. And second, David Villa has found his scoring touch after firing home two well-taken goals with Diego Costa unavailable over the weekend in Atleticos 2-0 victory in Vigo that kept it in the Spanish title chase. Coach Diego Simeone may opt to return to aligning both strikers as he did earlier in the season after not playing Villa in the first leg in Italy or in a recent derby against Real Madrid. Milan has lost its last two Serie A matches but has Mario Balotelli back from a shoulder injury that has sidelined him since the first leg. ------ BARCELONA vs. MANCHESTER CITY Barcelona is playing its worst football since the end of last season, when the team limped to the Spanish league title. After apparently being rejuvenated under first-year coach Gerard Martino, the side has dropped points in five of the last nine rounds to go from pacesetter to chasing Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid. With its domestic title defence in question, failing to protect a 2-0 first-leg advantage over City at the Camp Nou and an early exit from Europe would be nothing less than disastrous for the Catalan club. The match comes four days after Barcelona lost 1-0 at relegation-threatened Valladolid, when only Lionel Messi appeared up to the task. Barcelona midfielder Sergio Busquets said his team needs to rediscover "the desire to win every game." "We have had enough after this loss," Busquets said. City, meanwhile, will be hoping to build on its winning momentum since lifting the League Cup. It will have forward Sergio Aguero back from injury to help. ------ PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN vs. BAYER LEVERKUSEN PSG is all but qualified for the quarterfinals and this gives coach Laurent Blanc the chance to give some of his key players a breather for the return leg against Leverkusen. Only a monumental collapse will see the German side through but with Zlatan Ibrahimovic in a hungry mood and PSG scoring freely, it seems another hiding is the more likely scenario for Leverkusen, which has lost five of its past six games. With a tough match to follow on Sunday against in-form Saint-Etienne, it seems Blanc is already preparing ahead. "We have an important game against Saint-Etienne coming up," he said. "Whatever team is selected, theres always the same desire to win. Its important for the big teams to have this." 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JOHNS, N.Theres a long tradition of Canadian Football League coaches and general managers bemoaning the lack of quality Canadians to fill out their rosters, a complaint that grows louder each season as injuries mount. Which is why, despite its relative lack of star power, the upcoming CFL Draft (Thursday at 3pm et/Noon pt on TSN and TSN.ca) is such a critical part of building a winner in three-down football. But these days, CFL teams must deal with something which their predecessors a generation ago rarely, if ever, had to be concerned about: losing the best Canadian talent to the National Football League. Back when the Edmonton Eskimos were in the midst of their Grey Cup dynasty in the last 1970s, there was one Canadian – Pittsburgh Steelers kicker Roy Gerela – playing in the NFL. Among those whod played high school football in Canada there were none; Gerela had played his in Hawaii before moving on to New Mexico State. Which means that Gerela aside, all of the very best Canadian football players played in the CFL. Period. Compare that to today where, after the drafting of Boise State defensive end Tyrone Crawford (Windsor, ON) and Baylor centre Philip Blake (Toronto) there are likely to be at least 15 Canadians on NFL active and practice rosters by the start of the 2012 season, and possibly more. Thats like removing an entire team of elite Canadian players from the CFL and asking teams to backfill with marginal prospects who need years of development to become pro-ready. There are several reasons why Canadians in the NFL are no longer such a rarity. Until the mid-1980s, the salary disparity between the CFL and NFL was often insignificant. And in fact, because of the value of homegrown talent to CFL teams, Canadian players could often make more money starting in the CFL than they could as backups in the NFL (By comparison, the NFL rookie minimum salary today is $390,000 and even players on NFL practice rosters take home $97,000, far more than any Canadian CFL rookie will make). But the degree of Canadian talent and the chance to make far more money in the NFL means that for two consecutive seasons, the outstanding Canadian in the CFL – Andy Fantuz a year ago and Jerome Messam this season – has signed in the NFL (Fantuz was cut after a short stay with Chicago, returned to Saskatchewan, and recently signed a free agent contract with Hamilton). Another factor is that a lot of young Canadians grow up these days focused on makingg the NFL, going to great lengths to close the gap between themselves and young American players, with extra coaching and training, playing summer-league football or attending camps south of the border.dddddddddddd And then theres technology. A generation ago, a Canadian university player would have to be spectacular to attract the attention of NFL scouts. But today, with physical testing stats and video available everywhere via the internet, teams south of the border have a quick way to investigate Canadian prospects without ever leaving home. NFL scouts arent allowed to attend the CFLs Evaluation Camp where the best Canadian university players parade their talents. But they can all check out the results via the web. Which is part of why there were a record six Canadian university players who signed NFL contracts in 2010. The challenges this presents for CFL teams at this time of year are well documented. GMs are leery of wasting draft picks on players whose opportunities to make it in the NFL mean they may never play professionally in Canada (Danny Watkins, O.J. Atogwe, Israel Idonije and Nick Kaczur were all high draft picks of CFL teams that went to waste). But its a problem that only figures to get worse for CFL teams in the future, thanks to a small but significant change the NFL passed on Monday when it expanded its off-season rosters from 80 to 90 players per team. While the size of NFL rosters remains the same (teams can carry 53 players and dress 45 on game days), there are now 320 more opportunities for players to sign south of the border. Thats likely to have a significant effect on players from the Canadian university level who sometimes have the physical assets to play in the NFL but lack the training and development to compete at that level right away. With 10 more invitations for training camp, teams can afford to take a flyer on those kinds of players. Which means that trying to determine which Canadians will end up in the NFL just got a little bit tougher for CFL teams. And the chances they will have to wait on a particular draft pick for a minimum of 1-3 years just increased. The growing number of Canadians earning a living in the NFL isnt a bad thing for Canadian football in general and certainly not for Canadian players who seek the kind of financial compensation available only in the NFL. And its something worth keeping in mind the next time you hear how hard it is in the CFL to find good Canadians. wholesale jerseys cheap nfl jerseys china Cheap NFL Jerseys cheap authentic jerseys cheap nfl jerseys china ' ' '
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