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DETROIT – Dustin Johnson lands this week in the Motor City with ample motivation, even though there won’t be a major trophy on the line for another month.

Johnson is the highest-ranked player in the field for the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic, slotted behind only Brooks Koepka in the latest standings. Koepka has made headlines in recent weeks surrounding his focus or lack thereof at non-major events, having sandwiched a PGA Championship win and U.S. Open runner-up around middling finishes in Canada and Connecticut.

But having captured his 20th career Tour win earlier this season, Johnson doesn’t seem to have any such issues. The former U.S. Open champ is making his 14th start of the season this week, a lighter load than many of his peers, and he believes that schedule is part of his key to ensure he brings his best to each event.

“I focus on whatever week that I’m playing, no matter if it’s a major or the Rocket Mortgage Classic here in Detroit,” Johnson said. “I prepare just like it would be a major. I’m coming in, I want to contend, I want to put myself in a position to win no matter what week it is.”

Johnson turned 35 over the weekend, and he’d likely trade a few from his trophy collection to bump his major title haul closer to Koepka’s quartet. But he remains proud of an ongoing streak, having captured at least one victory in each season since 2008. That run was extended in March when he notched victory No. 20 at the WGC-Mexico Championship ahead of runner-up finishes at both the Masters and PGA Championship.

“It’s very tough to win out here no matter what week it is,” Johnson said. “Whether it’s a major, a FedExCup event, WGC, they’re all very difficult to win. So I’m very proud of myself for winning every year on Tour so far, and hopefully I can keep that going.”

Potential worker strike looming at Rocket Mortgage Classic

Published in Golf
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 06:08

DETROIT – A potential strike that could mar the PGA Tour’s return to Detroit after a decade-long absence has been described as an “attempt to score political points” by Detroit Golf Club president Andy Glassberg.

According to multiple reports, a group of seven groundskeepers and mechanics have threatened a work stoppage ahead of the Rocket Mortgage Classic, the first Tour event in Michigan since 2009 and the first-ever held within Detroit city limits. The employees have reportedly worked for the past year without a contract and have accused club officials of not acting in good faith during the negotiation process.

With the professional spotlight on the club for the first time in its 103-year history, tensions have flared.

“Come (Thursday) when the tournament starts, we’re going to do what we have to do,” Kevin Moore, president of the local Teamsters union that represents the workers, told the Detroit Free Press. “Demonstrations, strikes, whatever is at our disposal.”

Glassberg released a statement that outlined the club’s offer of a 4 percent pay increase, one that would pay workers 17 percent more over the life of the contract. But Moore told the Free Press that after going through federal mediation that offer amounted to a $500 signing bonus, and that a subsequent union request for a 3 percent increase that equaled $0.45 per hour was denied.

The union reportedly filed an unfair labor practice charge last month, and Glassberg walked out of negotiations on June 14.

“It’s unfortunate that the union representing seven of our employees chose this time to score political points for their bosses in Washington,” Glassberg said. “Their attempt to distract from an event that raises money for local non-profit organizations and burnishes the image of Detroit is sad and ineffective. No union in Washington can cast even a vague shadow on this extraordinary tournament, nor will they succeed in their attempt to pit DGC’s amazing employees against each other.”

Tournament officials reportedly have an undisclosed contingency plan in place should the workers decide to strike in advance of Thursday’s opening round.

DETROIT – As Gary Woodland stepped to the 10th tee Wednesday morning to kick off his first post-Pebble pro-am, he was greeted by an unfamiliar qualifier.

It’s no longer just “Gary Woodland on the tee.” This morning, and every one from here on out, he’ll be addressed by various starters and announcers as Gary Woodland, 2019 U.S. Open champion.

“I just wasn’t expecting to hear that. I was out here thinking about what kind of shot to hit,” Woodland said. “I tell you, that doesn’t get old. I love hearing it.”

Woodland will have plenty of chances to hear it over the coming weeks and months, as he begins to settle into life as a major champion. That begins this week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, where only Dustin Johnson sits ahead of him in the latest world rankings.

With Tiger Woods dipping his toe back in the major-winning waters and Brooks Koepka seemingly snagging every other available trophy, it’s been a while since there has been a player in Woodland’s shoes: an established name with multiple wins, who will now forever be remembered for the triumphant fist pump he authored at Pebble Beach, even if he doesn’t hit another shot.

It’s a wonderful promotion to receive, and one that any other player on Tour would envy. But it’s also not without its pitfalls, as the recent history books are riddled with talented names who struggled to either live up to the billing of major champ or shoulder its burden.

“You’ve got to learn the word ‘no’ real fast,” said two-time major winner Bubba Watson. “Six months will go by real fast, and if you don’t say no, you’ll be tired. Six months from now, he’ll be exhausted. And with (three) young kids in his life, he’s got to watch it and make sure he saves his energy.”

Watson went nearly two years without a win following his maiden triumph at the 2012 Masters, winning at Riviera just before slipping into a second green jacket. It’s been a similar dry spell recently for 2018 Masters winner Patrick Reed, who has yet to lift a trophy in the 14 months since his major breakthrough.

Last year he, along with Francesco Molinari, made the ascent Woodland is in the process of making, and he concurred with Watson’s outline of a six-month adjustment period.

“There’s a learning curve that comes with winning your first major that you have to get used to. Just more obligations, more things, more spotlight,” Reed said. “Just being able to compartmentalize and kind of be able to manage your time really well, because it takes some time to get used to.”

To Woodland’s credit, he’s aware of the adjustment ahead and plans to lean on some of the experienced team members around him to maintain level footing. His agent, Mark Steinberg, has shepherded Woods through 15 previous major titles, not to mention Justin Rose’s U.S. Open and gold medal wins. His caddie, Brennan Little, was on the bag for Mike Weir when he won the 2003 Masters.

“Management of my time’s the biggest deal,” Woodland said. “Unfortunately, you try to be a nice guy but sometimes you’ve got to find a way to say no, and that’s easier said than done for me sometimes. So hopefully I’ll rely on making Steinberg the bad guy.”

Granted, not all players adjust to the label of major winner at the same speed. When Johnson finally shed the monkey off his back at the 2016 U.S. Open, he estimated that it took him all of a day to get used to his newfound billing. He got right back to work two weeks later, rallying to win the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational in his very first start after Oakmont.

“It wasn’t anything that was out of the ordinary, just because I had been so close and felt like I should have won a few before that. And a few after that,” Johnson said. “It was something I felt like I deserved, I earned, so it didn’t feel any different.”

But Woodland’s major pedigree was of a far different magnitude prior to his breakthrough. He hadn’t cracked the top 10 in any of his first 27 major starts, and he had never finished better than T-6 in any of the four biggest events.

Even something as simple as a nine-hole practice round upon arriving Tuesday afternoon at Detroit Golf Club featured a revised timeline, as Woodland found himself underestimating the newfound demand for his signature.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had the autograph requests that I’ve had,” he said. “It’s hard to say no, especially when somebody’s out there and they’re asking. It would have been hard for me to hear no when I was a kid, so you try to make time and prepare for that, I guess. I don’t know if I blocked in the amount of time to do that yesterday.”

The autograph requests aren’t going to slow down anytime soon, as Woodland will continue to hear echoes of congratulations from every corner of every course he visits for the foreseeable future. After summiting the mountain in emphatic fashion less than two weeks ago, he now embarks on his next chapter in the never-ending pursuit of greatness.

At the very least, he’ll have extra reason to smile on the first tee when the starter begins to call his name.

“He’s going to have a challenge that he’s going to have to face,” Reed said. “But it’s a challenge that every player wants to have.”

DJ's won so many times he can't even remember

Published in Golf
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 08:13

DETROIT – Sometimes you have so many PGA Tour wins under your belt that they start to blend together.

Such was the case Wednesday for Dustin Johnson, who had a tough time keeping straight some of the 20 Tour victories he’s compiled since 2008. The issue started when Johnson was asked about how Gary Woodland might be adjusting to life as a major champion, with the two men headlining the field this week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

A question about how Johnson fared in his first start after his 2016 U.S. Open title at Oakmont drew only a momentary pause and a sheepish grin.

“Honestly, I don’t even remember,” Johnson said.

After some prompting, he was reminded that his first start post-major victory went pretty well. It was at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, moved to late June because of the Rio Olympics, and Johnson shot 66-66 over the weekend to hold off Scott Piercy by a shot. The back-to-back wins highlighted a run of six straight starts in which Johnson didn’t finish worse than a tie for ninth.

“It was Akron? And I won there, awesome,” Johnson said. “I mean, that was a long time ago. And then Akron, it was before the Olympics so the schedule was all weird. That’s probably why I don’t remember.”

DETROIT – Rickie Fowler has been a busy man this week, and the Rocket Mortgage Classic hasn’t even started yet.

Fowler was on-site Tuesday at Detroit Golf Club, playing a nine-hole practice round before participating in a three-hole celebrity challenge where he teamed with Blair O’Neal, Kid Rock and Detroit Red Wings star Justin Abdelkader. He and Kid Rock, or “Bob” as Fowler called him in post-round remarks, also played the Wednesday pro-am together before Fowler kicked the tournament off with a “Shot for Heroes” ceremony where he was joined on stage by a Make-A-Wish participant.

The inaugural edition of this event doesn’t have an actual host, but at this point it might as well be Fowler, whose endorsement relationship with title sponsor Quicken Loans is years in the making.

“It’s special to be a part of a tournament and kind of, I guess, in a little bit of a host role,” Fowler said. “For me, it’s just been fun to see it all come together. There is some extra stuff that we do through the first few days, but like I said, I think it hasn’t really felt like work or anything like that where we feel like we’re invested in this event and we want to see it succeed.”

Come Thursday morning it’ll be time to get down to business for Fowler, who rued some missed opportunities en route to a T-43 finish at the U.S. Open. While he captured a win early in the season at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and snagged a top-10 finish at the Masters, he feels a little stuck in neutral after failing to contend at the last two majors.

This will be Fowler’s last domestic start before heading to Europe for the Scottish Open and The Open, and he’s hoping to put his name on the leaderboards around Detroit for his play in addition to his hosting skills.

“I was a little off on the game I feel like PGA (Championship), Colonial time. Didn’t have many putts go in at the U.S. Open,” Fowler said. “I feel like everything’s really close to being back where it was. You don’t want to just kind of coast to the finish line, you want to finish the race off hopefully with a really high note.”

Curacao claim shock Gold Cup quarterfinal berth

Published in Soccer
Tuesday, 25 June 2019 23:28

Jurien Gaari scored a stoppage-time equaliser as Curacao held Jamaica 1-1 at the Gold Cup in Los Angeles on Tuesday and booked a surprise quarterfinal for the tiny Caribbean nation.

Curacao had a nervous wait after the early match in Group C, but their progression was confirmed when El Salvador crashed out with a 4-0 loss to Honduras in the late contest.

The latter result put Jamaica top of the group on five points, with Curacao, population 160,000, claiming second on goal difference ahead of third-placed El Salvador.

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Jamaica will play the runner-up of group D, either the United States or Panama, who are locked on six points ahead of their match on Wednesday, the U.S. with a vastly superior goal difference.

Curacao will meet the winner of Group D.

Shamar Nicholson scored for Jamaica in the 14th minute with quick reflexes but could have had a hat-trick by then, having already missed a point-blank header and sent a shot crashing against the post.

Jamaica squandered several other chances, while Jarchinio Antonia missed a great opportunity for Curacao late in the first half when he dragged a shot wide.

Just when it seemed Jamaica would not pay for their profligacy, Curacao equalised in the 93rd minute when defender Gaari smashed a 25-yard strike into the corner after being set up by Leandro Bacuna.

Curacao almost completed a smash-and-grab victory when substitute Elson Hooi missed a long-range shot by millimetres with virtually the last kick of the match.

Trump invites USWNT to WH after Rapinoe barb

Published in Soccer
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 09:22

President Donald Trump has invited the U.S. women's soccer team to the White House, regardless of whether they win the World Cup, after Megan Rapinoe's assertion that she is "not going to the f---ing White House."

Rapinoe, who has described herself as a "walking protest" to Trump's policies, made her recent comments about a potential White House visit to soccer magazine Eight by Eight.

"I'm not going to the f---ing White House," Rapinoe, the team's co-captain, said during the interview, which was posted to the magazine's Twitter account Tuesday. "No. I'm not going to the White House. We're not going to be invited. I doubt it."

Trump responded Wednesday morning with a series of tweets.

Trump called out Rapinoe earlier this week for her protests during the national anthem, telling The Hill in an interview Monday that he disagrees with her actions.

After Rapinoe started kneeling during the anthem, the U.S. Soccer Federation adopted a policy that requires players to stand during it. Now she stands, but she has been criticized for not singing and putting her hand over her heart like other players.

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Rapinoe, who scored two goals Monday against Spain to help the U.S. reach the World Cup quarterfinals, previously stated that she would "absolutely not" visit the White House in an interview last month with Sports Illustrated.

"I am not going to fake it, hobnob with the president, who is clearly against so many of the things that I am (for) and so many of the things that I actually am," Rapinoe told SI. "I have no interest in extending our platform to him."

Fellow U.S. star Alex Morgan also has said she would decline an invitation to the White House, telling Time Magazine that she doesn't "stand for a lot of things the current office stands for."

"We don't have to be put in this little box," Morgan told Time in an interview published last month. "There's the narrative that's been said hundreds of times about any sort of athlete who's spoken out politically. 'Stick to sports.' We're much more than that, OK?"

Rapinoe, Morgan and the U.S. team will face host nation France in a World Cup quarterfinal Friday in Paris. Rapinoe is set to address the media Thursday.

What kind of MLS expansion franchise would you build?

Published in Soccer
Wednesday, 26 June 2019 11:42

With six new franchises joining Major League Soccer since 2015, two more coming online next season and four more joining the league in the years to follow, expansion is a constant in North American soccer. On Saturday, two of the freshest faces in the league (in Minnesota United and FC Cincinnati) will meet (4 p.m. ET, ESPN), providing us a chance to compare the visions of two young ownership groups.

Looking at the strategies and success of MLS' latest expansion clubs, whose blueprint would you use if you were awarded a franchise of your own? Would you prioritize developing promising talent to sell at a profit like Atlanta United? Would you make a splash on the global transfer market like New York City did? Would you build a state-of-the-art stadium like Minnesota's Allianz Field?

Take our quiz below, detailing how you'd build your own expansion franchise from the ground up.

This is the most difficult offseason Chelsea will face in 16 years.

The five-time Premier League champions have sold star attacker Eden Hazard to Real Madrid for a fee starting at £90 million, and while the January capture of 20-year-old American winger Christian Pulisic for £57.6m will help soften the blow, Chelsea won't be able to make any further additions to supplement an aging squad. A transfer ban will prevent the club from signing any players from other clubs over the next 12 months, and while Chelsea are appealing the verdict, the club can't expect to throw around Roman Abramovich's money this summer.

Thankfully, there's an alternative. While the various Chelsea teams play and train in and around London, there is a shadow Chelsea side wearing different kits dispersed throughout Europe.

Every year, owner Roman Abramovich's club sends out dozens of players on loan, many of whom were signed without ever having much of a prayer of making regular appearances at Stamford Bridge. Just about every top-division club sends players out on loan, of course, but Chelsea have weaponized the system to build what amounts to their own player investment vehicle.

The Chelsea Loan Army has likely been a source of significant profit for the club, but it's about to become even more important. With Abramovich no longer a regular presence at home matches, plans to expand the Bridge delayed, and an impending two-window transfer ban, the club may end up depending on some of the players they would typically loan away. With the title-winning squad of 2016-17 aging and dismantled, Chelsea will need the Loan Army to keep the club in the top four.

Since the 2005 season began, Chelsea have sent players out on loan 450 times, or an average of just over 32 loans per season. Compare that to the other Big Six English clubs, who have averaged 20.6 loans per season over that same time frame, with Manchester City (389) the only other Big Six club to top 300 loans over that time frame. That gap is only growing wider; Chelsea has made 278 loans over the past six years against an average of 133 for the other top five sides. Chelsea has relied heavily upon loans to develop young talent for sale. Now they'll need to hope that those same young talents can supplement an aging roster facing a transfer ban.

Let's start by looking back at where this all started: the beginning of the Abramovich era.

The origins

It wasn't too long ago that Chelsea were actually strapped for cash. At the turn of the 21st century, they were one of the most indebted clubs in Europe thanks to a combination of significant wages, an inability to offload players in a temporarily depressed transfer market, and the interest payments on a £75m Eurobond to help develop Chelsea's ground.

By the spring of 2003, Chelsea were £90m in debt and forced to play two matches in 48 hours because they desperately needed the £600,000 from Sky's live coverage of a match at Stamford Bridge. Then-manager Claudio Ranieri was unable to spend any money on transfer fees that year, which was the last time Chelsea would go 12 months without spending any money on fees before their upcoming ban. Reports after the fact suggested Chelsea were about to default on their Eurobond and "plunge into financial crisis." Then Abramovich stepped in and transformed the club overnight, wiping those loans away.

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In an era before Financial Fair Play, there had never really been somebody like Abramovich running a Premier League team. Jack Walker had poured his own millions to win a title with Blackburn Rovers in 1994-95, and Mohamed Al-Fayed did the same with Fulham to help Chelsea's local rivals rise through the lower divisions to the Premier League, but Abramovich's spending utterly transformed the league.

Over the next two years, Abramovich spent £302m on players while making just under £4 million on sales, according to the transfer fees quoted on the website Transfermarkt. The difference amounts to £298 million, which would be equivalent to £450m in 2018 after accounting for inflation. Abramovich spent so much on West Ham's players alone that the Russian reportedly saved the Hammers from going out of business.

Unsurprisingly, Abramovich also made management changes. He sacked Ranieri after one season and replaced him with Jose Mourinho, fresh off a Champions League title with Porto. Mourinho promptly won the Premier League in his first try. For recruitment, Chelsea added legendary scout Piet de Visser before paying around £8m to poach Frank Arnesen away from Tottenham Hotspur after a "purely social" meeting on Abramovich's yacht in June 2005.

With the first team settled and Arnesen holding a reputation as an excellent scout of young talent from his time at PSV and Spurs, it's clear his job was to identify would-be stars and get them to Chelsea before they became prohibitively expensive. It didn't necessarily go well -- Arnesen would become embroiled in multiple tap-up scandals and would eventually leave the club in 2010 -- but the Chelsea Loan Army begins here.

The brigade

In general, Chelsea ship out three different sorts of players on loan each year.

Academy products. While Chelsea can point to John Terry in the past and the hyphenated likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Ruben Loftus-Cheek as recent graduates, most of their academy products typically end up struggling to make the grade and often go out on loan.

This includes would-be stars like Josh McEachern and Michael Mancienne, who were often thought of as future Chelsea first-teamers before making moves elsewhere, as well as future Premier League starters like Neil Etheridge, Nathaniel Chalobah and Jack Cork. The latter went on seven different loans with six different clubs before being sold to Southampton for just over £750,000. Now, Transfermarkt projects Cork's transfer value to be somewhere around £15m.

Chelsea have generally not profited a huge amount from selling academy talent, with the £9m they're about to net from Ola Aina's transfer to Torino as a notable exception. They rejected a reported £35m offer from Bayern Munich for Hudson-Odoi before the 18-year-old tore his Achilles, although that move could still be on over the summer if Hudson-Odoi doesn't sign a new deal with the club.

Chelsea have also released several talented academy products, including future Welsh international Chris Mepham, who was let go at 15 before eventually sealing a £12m transfer to Bournemouth. One of the drawbacks of signing dozens of young players without giving them time in your first team is that you struggle to identify who will make the grade or are unable to keep the transcendent talents around, as we'll see in some moves Chelsea would be happy to later on take back.

Established players on the fringes of the first team. Early in the Abramovich era, this was the domain of world superstars like Hernan Crespo, Juan Sebastian Veron and even Andrei Shevchenko after they failed to impress. In more recent years, veterans like Victor Moses and Loic Remy have left on loan.

More often, though, this has been a home for young players who broke out in another country and were brought directly into the first team on a large fee, only to lose their place and leave to further their development. Usually, this coincided with a change in manager given that Chelsea have gone through 12 different managerial appointments in Abramovich's 16 years at the helm.

The most notable of these young players, as any Chelsea supporter will bemoan, is Mohamed Salah. Chelsea signed the Egyptian from Basel for £14.9m in the winter of 2014 after Salah, 21 at the time, scored the only goal in a 1-0 Champions League win over the Blues. Salah then played 501 minutes with the first team during the second half of the season, scoring twice, but when Mourinho observed that the Premier League was too much for Salah, he sent him on loan to Fiorentina and then the following year to Roma, who took up their option to buy Salah for £15m after the season. You know how things have gone since then.

There are several current players on the books who would fit into this category, including Michy Batshuayi, Kurt Zouma and Abdul Rahman. It might feel as if their times at Chelsea are finished but remember that Moses spent three years on loan at Liverpool, Stoke, and West Ham before eventually finding his place under Antonio Conte and then being loaned again when Maurizio Sarri came in last season.

Young players signed and sent on loans, often over and over again. This third group of Chelsea loanees is by far the largest and the most unique element of their Loan Army. Using Transfermarkt data, I can find exactly 100 Chelsea players who were signed from another club at a young age since the summer of 2005; 46 of those players went on two or more loans during their time with the club and 27 of them went on loan at least four different times.

The ultimate example of Chelsea's loan policy is goalkeeper Matej Delac. After an impressive debut season, the Croatian keeper was signed from Inter Zapresic in the summer of 2010 for £2.7m. As an 18-year-old, nobody expected Delac to break through to a Chelsea first team with Petr Cech in goal, but the 6-foot-3 keeper surely couldn't have figured what would happen next.

Delac spent eight years at Chelsea. He went on loan 10 times while making more children (one) than appearances for Chelsea (zero). Seven times, Delac went to preseason training with Chelsea only to leave on loan shortly thereafter. By the time Delac left for AC Horsens on a free transfer in the summer of 2018, he was Chelsea's longest-tenured player without ever once suiting up for the club in a competitive match.

You can imagine how strange this must have been for him. Chelsea have some infrastructure to support their loanees -- they've had Eddie Newton and Joe Edwards as "loan technical coaches" at different points, and there are suggestions former club legend Claude Makelele is in line to take over the job next -- but these are players who essentially have little say in where they're going to play from year to year if they want to grow during their prime years as footballers. The closest contact the players might have with the club or one another is a WhatsApp text group.

Delac is the most extreme example, but he's hardly the only one. Joao Rodriguez signed from Quindio in 2012 and went on loan nine times in seven years across six different countries without making a Chelsea appearance. He was released in January.

Among slightly more notable players, Ryan Bertrand was signed from Gillingham's academy as a 16-year-old in 2005 and went on loan seven times around starting for Chelsea in a Champions League final before eventually leaving for Southampton in a £12m deal. Patrick Bamford and current Chelsea players Tomas Kalas and Kenneth Omeruo also hit the seven-loan mark, although Kalas (Bristol City, Rangers) and Omeruo (Leganes) are both rumored to be leaving Chelsea this offseason.

The most significant players to join this branch of the Army are three global football superstars, all Belgian players signed out of the Jupiler League.

During the summer 2011 transfer window, Chelsea shelled out £13.5m for 18-year-old Anderlecht striker Romelu Lukaku, who had scored 31 goals in the league over the previous two seasons. They also paid a little over £8m for 19-year-old keeper Thibaut Courtois, who had just led Genk to a league title. During the subsequent winter window, Chelsea returned to Genk and paid an additional £7.2m for 21-year-old Kevin de Bruyne, who went back to Genk on loan for the remainder of the campaign.

None of those three are still with the club. Lukaku played 199 minutes in the Premier League with Chelsea as well as loans to West Bromwich Albion and Everton, with the latter signing him permanently for £31.8m. De Bruyne made it into only 132 minutes of action before being loaned to Werder Bremen, and when he failed to impress Mourinho upon his return, Chelsea sold De Bruyne to Wolfsburg for £22m.

Courtois had the longest career with Chelsea, of course, but even the goalkeeper spent nearly as much time on loan with Atletico Madrid as he did with his parent club. Courtois spent three seasons on loan with Atleti -- and ended up playing against Chelsea in the Champions League when a poison pill of £2.5m per match was deemed illegal -- before making his way back to Chelsea to replace Cech. Courtois spent four years with the Blues before forcing his way into a transfer back to Madrid, this time with Real, for £31.5m.

Were these transfers successful? From the financial side, and in the short term, absolutely. Chelsea paid about £28.8m for these three players and sold them for £85.3m, making a profit of £56.5m. In the long term, though, Everton and Wolfsburg sold Lukaku and de Bruyne to the two Manchester clubs for slightly more than £161m in combined transfer fees, far more than Chelsea netted on their own sales.

From a football perspective, it's hard to argue Chelsea wouldn't have been better off holding onto the three Belgian stars and building their team around them and Eden Hazard, whom the club also sold to Real earlier this month. It's easy to blame Mourinho for not valuing De Bruyne and Salah, but while the Portuguese manager certainly deserves criticism, it's also realistic to point out just how difficult it can be to figure out who is going to make the leap from good to great in their early 20s.

We'll see this echoed in the big picture about Chelsea's loanees.

The profits

If we're just looking at that third group of talent, players signed by Chelsea at a young age who went out on loan before becoming regulars in the Chelsea first team, the returns are extraordinary.

Chelsea signed 100 such players and paid a total of £127.3m to bring them to London. When they left, Chelsea took home £193.6m in transfer fees, for a cool £66.3m profit. In addition, Transfermarkt values the players left on Chelsea's books who qualify for that third group as worth £94.6m, including Andreas Christensen (£27m) and the trio of Ethan Ampadu, Marco van Ginkel, and Mario Pasalic, each of whom are valued at £9m. Add in those players and Chelsea have turned a profit of more than £160m in cash and player value on their speculative transfer strategy.

Admittedly, calculating the value of this strategy isn't as simple as counting up Transfermarkt estimates. Some players don't have transfer fees listed, although they're typically more obscure and less likely to have inspired significant sums. More notably, Chelsea have been responsible for paying the wages of these players, which can add up quickly. It's unclear whether Chelsea was able to get the loaning clubs to pay their players' wages when they left, which could make for a significant difference.

On the other hand, while Transfermarkt has some loan fee estimates, there's far less information on loan fees than there are on permanent transfers. I didn't include loan fees in my calculations. Those fees could turn out to be significant; take Charly Musonda's loan to Celtic, which reportedly saw the Scottish champions pay £6m in fees and 100% of Musonda's wages of £40,000 per week. If Chelsea are paying Musonda £45,000 per week to sit on their bench and train in Cobham, they're losing more than £2m per year on his transfer.

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He's surely not the only Chelsea loanee subject to meaningful wages and/or loan fees, which makes this analysis incomplete. Bamford, for one, was reportedly on £40,000 per week and insisted that would-be loaning clubs set him up with Sky Sports in his temporary accommodations. It's unclear whether Chelsea were paying for that during his time with the club.

Chelsea's work also ended up creating transfer opportunities for other clubs. The likes of Fabio Borini, Lassana Diarra, Scott Sinclair and Thorgan Hazard all left the club for modest fees before sealing big-money moves elsewhere. Nemanja Matic was sold to Benfica as a £4.5m makeweight in the David Luiz swap, only for Chelsea to pay £22.5m to bring him back two-and-a-half years later.

Presumably, Chelsea would have secured sell-on fees for some of their departing youngsters, which also isn't factored into our financial analysis, but the club clearly would like to have kept some of those youngsters going on loan before for more money years later.

At the same time, there has been an obvious disconnect between this strategy and actually promoting those players into the first team. Chelsea haven't trusted their young players to actually make the step up, not too unusual among big English clubs, even when the future superstars I've mentioned managed to do so immediately after leaving. During the 2018 season, only two Chelsea players who were signed at a young age and went out on loan as members of the club played at least 500 minutes for the Blues in the Premier League: Loftus-Cheek and Christensen, neither of whom were regular starters. (Christensen started each of Chelsea's 15 Europa League appearances, but strangely started only six times in the Premier League.)

The change

One player who might spur change throughout the market is Jadon Sancho. City failed to open up a spot on the wing for Sancho and while a similarly skilled player in years past might have waited his turn or gone on a series of loans, Sancho instead refused to sign a contract extension. City subsequently sold Sancho in 2017 to Dortmund for just over £7m and in his second season with the club, Sancho scored 12 goals and 14 assists while stealing a starting spot away from Christian Pulisic, who chose to move to Chelsea. Transfermarkt now estimates that Sancho is worth £90m.

As teams have gotten smarter and become more concerned with resale value, teenagers and players in their early 20s have become more valuable to retain and expensive to acquire. In the 1992-93 season, which was the first year of the Premier League, the 20 largest permanent transfers acquired players whose average age was 25.4 years old. Last season, that same figure was down to 23.6 years old.

Prospects like Musonda and Bamford were able to command significant wages and meaningful loan fees before getting into the Chelsea first team. If that continues to be the case, Chelsea will have to change their model. Young players might not be as willing to wait in the reserves for an opportunity or go on a series of loans when the alternative is to move to another league and play competitive football on a weekly basis. The likes of Brahim Diaz have followed in Sancho's footsteps by leaving for foreign clubs, and Hudson-Odoi might be next.

Chelsea have enjoyed financial success with their Loan Army, but they might need to actually start giving their top young talents a clear path to first-team football if they want them to stick around. For several reasons, 2019 is likely to be a year of transition for the club and their youth philosophy.

The future

While Chelsea signed the aforementioned Pulisic in January and immediately loaned him back to Dortmund for the remainder of the season, the American is set to be Chelsea's last notable signing for the next 12 months. Chelsea is appealing a two-window transfer ban laid down by FIFA for 29 incidences of breaching Article 19, which deals specifically with players under the age of 18.

In other words, Chelsea's transfer ban is probably driven by this very transfer model although it seems as if there should be a way to do something such as this legally. Given that the club made hundreds of millions of dollars on transfer fees in the process, they might also have seen a possible two-window transfer ban as an acceptable punishment for tapping up young talent. Other big clubs have dealt with bans, including both Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Of the 20 players who played 100 or more minutes during the title-winning season in 2016-17, six are left, and the only one who won't turn 30 before the 2019 season begins is N'Golo Kante. The club has brought in younger players since, but Antonio Rudiger might miss the start of the season after undergoing knee surgery, while both Hudson-Odoi and Loftus-Cheek have to overcome serious Achilles injuries. Jorginho might follow Sarri back to Italy.

Most importantly, Chelsea sold Hazard to Real. No other player on their team managed more than eight goals a season ago, and while they added Pulisic to take over Hazard's spot on the left wing, he isn't the same caliber of player as the Belgian superstar. The names Chelsea would rely upon for goals -- Olivier Giroud, Pedro or the possible loan return of Gonzalo Higuain -- are past their prime.

Chelsea also need to find a manager after essentially selling Sarri back to Italy for £5m after one difficult-if-successful season. As a club with a penchant for firing managers and no way to upgrade an aging side for 12 months, you can understand why there hasn't been serious interest among the world's most promising managerial candidates. The most frequently rumored candidate is club legend Frank Lampard, whose managerial debut with Derby last year took them within one game of the Premier League. Lampard's assistant was fellow former Blue Jody Morris, who was previously the coach of Chelsea's Under-18 team. Guess where they might look for new talent in the middle of a transfer ban.

The new (or returning) faces

Mason Mount. You have to start with the player who played in the Lampard role while learning from the man himself in the Midlands last season. The comparisons between the two are perhaps a little generous to the 20-year-old, but Mount racked up nine goals and four assists in 3,321 minutes for Derby last season, throwing in two goals in the League Cup for good measure. Assuming that Chelsea are without Loftus-Cheek to start next season, Mount could figure in the squad rotation alongside Ross Barkley as creative options in midfield.

Fikayo Tomori. Chelsea's other Derby loanee, Tomori was named Derby's Player of the Year out of central defense. The 21-year-old took a leap forward in his first full season away from Cobham, using his pace and anticipation to make 702 defensive interventions, which ranked fourth in the division. Central defense isn't quite as pressing of a concern for Chelsea at the moment, though, and Tomori might be a year away from serious first-team consideration.

Kurt Zouma. Signed as a 19-year-old from Saint-Etienne for £12m and inserted into the first team, Zouma struggled and lost his place when Antonio Conte came to town. Chelsea signed Zouma to an extension and then shipped the Frenchman off on loan to Stoke and then Everton, collecting nearly £16m in loan fees in the process. Now 24, Zouma improved during his time on Merseyside, and Everton seem interested in signing Zouma on a permanent transfer.

Under normal circumstances, it might make sense for Zouma to follow in Lukaku's footsteps and make his move to Everton permanent. With Rudiger injured and David Luiz now 32, Chelsea probably will want to bring Zouma back to Stamford Bridge to play alongside Christensen. Even if he's not a regular starter, Chelsea will need depth given their participation in four different competitions over the course of the year. If Zouma does leave, it could indicate Chelsea plans to keep Tomori in the fold.

Tiemoue Bakayoko. A prized capture two years ago from Monaco at £36m, Bakayoko was marginalized by the arrival of Jorginho and shipped off to Milan on a year-long loan. Milan was reportedly so frustrated by Bakayoko in the fall that they considered returning him to Chelsea early, but the Frenchman turned things around and began to impress during his year in Italy. Milan doesn't seem likely to pick up their £31.2m option to buy, and if Chelsea do sell Jorginho, Bakayoko probably would figure into the Blues' midfield rotation. If Jorginho stays, Chelsea could look to loan or sell Bakayoko permanently.

Michy Batshuayi. Still just 25, Batshuayi has now played for five clubs since the beginning of 2016. The Belgian was quietly productive during his initial run with Chelsea, scoring nine goals in 715 minutes across the Premier League and Champions League, but when Batshuayi failed to impress Conte, he was sent on loan to Dortmund during the January 2018 transfer window and promptly scored nine goals in 1,168 minutes.

Batshuayi's 2018-19 was less impressive. He scored only once in 522 minutes with Valencia before his loan was cut short, then chipped in with five goals in 757 minutes for Crystal Palace. Add those figures up and he has scored 24 goals in about 35 games' worth of minutes at the top level. Batshuayi is clearly a capable scorer, but it remains to be seen if he'd be preferred over someone like Giroud, who signed an extension to stay with Chelsea.

Tammy Abraham. Lampard might also lean on his Chelsea and Championship roots to prefer Abraham, who scored 26 goals for Aston Villa in the Championship after racking up 23 for Bristol City during the 2016-17 season. There might be reasonable concerns about Abraham's ability to score at the highest level, given that he scored only five goals in 1,721 Premier League minutes while on loan to Swansea during the 2017-18 campaign, but Abraham's still only 21 and just scored for fun in a lengthy slog of a league. It seems more likely that Chelsea will consider selling Batshuayi while pushing Abraham into the first team, especially if Lampard has a say.

Reece James. Another one of the Championship favorites, James impressed as Wigan's right-back last year. The 19-year-old chipped in from a defensive role with three goals and three assists, and he was named Whoscored's man of the match seven times, a figure topped by only two players. Like Tomori, James won his club's Player of the Year award.

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Marcotti explains why Lampard is 'low risk' for Chelsea

Gab Marcotti says similarities between Frank Lampard and Maurizio Sarri's style's of play would make the Derby County manager a low-risk signing for the Blues.

James is extremely likely to start the season with Chelsea, although it will sadly be for the wrong reasons as he suffered an ankle injury while playing for the England under-20 team and is expected to miss three months. James seems to be in line to compete as the club's eventual replacement for Cesar Azpilicueta, but if the injury keeps him out for months, Chelsea might prefer to send James out on loan in the January window and continue to use Azpilicueta and Davide Zappacosta at right-back instead.

So, will Chelsea be OK next season?

It's easy to look at Chelsea's prospects for 2019-20 and project doom and gloom. They've lost one of the best players in the history of their club, and arguably the best player in the Premier League, and replaced him with a 20-year-old who spent most of the year as a reserve for Dortmund. Their two brightest young stars snapped their Achilles and the club can't sign anyone for 12 months in a league where virtually every one of their rivals for a Champions League berth are likely to spend heavily this summer.

Oh, and if they hire Lampard, they'll have a manager who has all of one year of experience. The owner who bankrolled their success doesn't have an English visa and is no longer paying for his corporate box at Stamford Bridge.

The last time Chelsea were entering a less auspicious offseason was in the summer of 2003, when they were bailed out by Abramovich and turned into the most fascinating club in England. They won't have the same sort of dramatic upheaval this offseason, but as Sancho's success in Germany showed, you can't know whether your prospects are capable of excelling unless you actually give them a shot in the first team. After years of using their checkbook and scouting system to find talent for other teams, Chelsea might finally reap the benefits of their Loan Army for themselves this season.

Their opponents are still technically battling for one of those semi-final spots, but for South Africa the post-mortem has already begun. How did two years of intense planning, which featured serious blooding of hopefuls and all manner of contingencies, including letting David Miller keep for a few games in case Quinton de Kock got injured - how did all that manifest in this train wreck of a campaign?

And what does it mean now that the dream is dead? What happens to the coaches and senior players? South Africa had had success in ODIs in the past year, winning five successive bilateral series, but does that mean anything without a half-decent World Cup to show for it?

Head coach Ottis Gibson's contract runs to September. Who deserves to stay as they attempt to build for the next cycle?

"It's a bit tough for all of us - we haven't performed as well as we would have liked and we have to suffer the consequences of that," assistant coach Malibongwe Maketa said ahead of the match in Durham against Sri Lanka. "We are willing to take responsibility, but hopefully we will be judged on more than what we have done here. A lot of good work was done before. Hopefully that counts for something.

"If heads do roll then we can look back and say we've given it our best shot. We came here to win and it hasn't happened. We want to make sure we leave Cricket South Africa in a better place than when we took over. It might not look like it now, but we think we have contributed."

Although coaching staff are clearly thinking about their jobs right now, there are still two games to play before South Africa return home to face consequences. For the likes of Imran Tahir and JP Duminy, who had announced their ODI retirements before the tournament, the games against Sri Lanka and Australia are a chance to bid farewell on at least a mildly pleasant note. The remainder are attempting to salvage pride and stem negativity.

Senior players - Hashim Amla and Faf du Plessis in particular - may find themselves under the microscope when the tournament ends regardless of what happens in these games. But two wins, perhaps, would temper the scrutiny a little.

"What's left to play for is really ourselves," Maketa said. "We've dedicated the last two years to coming here and win the tournament. We can't let two weeks' work reflect badly on us. We need to make sure we really finish strong. As much as we're playing for millions of people back home. We need to make sure we walk away from this World Cup and justify why we're here.

"The way we see ourselves representing our country, we want to make sure that we finish off on a high. We've got a few players who are finishing after this World Cup. Two victories here will go a long way, rather than just one victory. That will be our legacy of the World Cup, and we don't want to let ourselves down."

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