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The Commentator
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A player standing behind their penalty-taking teammate, mirroring their moves as they run-up to strike the ball. If the penalty taker side steps or does a stutter penalty, the player outside of the box does too in synchronisation. Is it superstition, a ploy to put off the keeper or just a tactic to be ready and in the right place for a rebound?
Youri Tielemans has history of doing a ‘ghost penalty run-up’. In the Premier League match against Ipswich, he copied Bruno Fernandes has he ran up to take a penalty, and at his previous club Aston Villa he was known to do the same.
The 3rd competition in England, it involves the 92 clubs in the Football League. It is also known as the EFL Cup, and is currently called the Carabao Cup (the current sponsor). In the past it has been named the Milk Cup, Coca-Cola Cup, Carling Cup, Littlewoods Cup and Worthington Cup. This is all the clubs from the Premier League, Championship, League One and League Two. The competition begins in August, with the teams playing in European competition entering at the 3rd round stage. The competition runs through till late February/early March. There is no VAR until the semi-finals, and there is still the quirk of two-legged semi-finals, with home and away ties. The winner qualifies for the next season’s Europa League.
Liverpool hold the record for most wins in the League Cup, taking home the trophy 10 times. In recent years Manchester City have dominated, winning it 5 times during the Pep Guardiola era.
To 'Park the Bus' means to play an ultra-defensive style. Often used to describe teams lower down the table when they play the top sides, digging in and playing 5 or 6 players at the back in the lowest of low block tactics. It leaves little space between the lines for attackers to exploit and relies on an aggressive defensive mentality with bodies on the line to block shots, stop crosses, and nullify any attacking play from the opposition side.
'Park the Bus' first became a popular phrase after José Mourinho used it to describe Tottenham Hotspur after a 0-0 draw with his then Chelsea side in 2004. He complained that Tottenham had "brought the bus and left the bus in front of the goal". It would later be used as a positive term to describe well-drilled, defensive teams who got good results using the tactic, much like Mourinho's later teams. In fact, in 2010, after a brilliant defensive victory for Inter Milan against Barcelona, Mourinho joked that his side "hadn't just parked the bus, but has 'parked the plane' because they were reduced to 10 men".
The Premier League is the top division of English football. Founded in the 1992/93 season, replacing the old Football League, it consists of 20 teams with 3 teams relegated and replaced with 3 teams promoted from the Championship (the English second division) every season. The Premier League has become the biggest and most popular league in the world in the last twenty years, with a global audience of nearly 5 billion people across 212 territories, and a broadcasting deal worth just over £9 billion. The Premier League is where the best players play, the best managers ply their trade, and the fastest, most exciting football is played.
Manchester United are the most successful team in the Premier League era, winning the title 13 times.
The Community Shield (formerly the Charity Shield) is the English season curtain-raiser that is played between the winners of the Premier League and the FA Cup the previous season. If a team wins the double of both Premier League and FA Cup, the other team in the Community Shield will be the runners-up from the Premier League. It is traditionally played at Wembley Stadium, although in some seasons the game has been played in Cardiff and Leicester. The fixture exists in other countries as a Super Cup of some sort, and also in European competition as the European Super Cup (a match between the Champions League winners and the Europa League winners).
In the Premier League era only 8 teams have won the Community/Charity Shield and gone on to win the league that season.