[Football] Europa League

Slum_Wolf said:

Didn't see anything but with Anderlecht also in Europe I wonder if it was just for scheduling/pitch reasons.

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You are probably right, I'd totally forgotten that Anderlecht weren't in European competition last season.

El Turi said:

Is it fair for one man to be playing against Chelsea? Noah is already 3-0 down.

Edit: 4-0

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To be fair, most weeks it's only one man playing for Chelsea, so....

Ali_rrr said:

Honestly class this and a 2-0 win against Hearts to go with it.

For context, Heidenheim's rise is like ours. Slowly but surely managed to get successive promotions and the manager has been the same since 2007 when they were in the 5th tier of German football. A proper club.

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What we also have to mention is their squad is consisting mostly out of German players. They only have four foreigners. Two are Austrians, one Brazilian (interestingly also has Luxembourg citizenship) and then a Danish striker they've signed this summer. Five other players have double nationality but were all born in Germany except for a 18 year old Bayern loanee wonderkid Paul Wanner who was born in Austria (he's playing for German youth NT teams though) but has come through BM academy and is also the youngest player to play for Bayern in Bundesliga.

Just a wonderful story. Their manager (Frank Schmidt) you've mentioned became the longest-serving manager at a single club in German football history in September 2023. And another interesting fact is the most they've ever spend on a player is 3,5 mio. euros. So from that perspective they are also a big rarity in modern day football, especially for a club from a top 5 league.