Nobody's cheering for the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia. The backers of Newcastle United are the world's richest owners — their wealth, with regards to the global football market, is limitless.
Ricardo Pepi got his second start for Augsburg on Saturday as the struggling Bundesliga side tried to keep up with the superior Bayer Leverkusen.
The young American is no stranger to a struggling team as FC Dallas lost 15 of its 34 games last season, but Pepi also hasn’t had to deal with a relegation battle. Saturday wasn’t an ideal second start for the club as Leverkusen thoroughly thumped the underdogs 5-1 and Pepi was taken off in the 57th minute.
Here’s the Pepi report as I tracked every move and involvement the striker had.
There was a bizarre Ricardo Pepi quote making the rounds in Germany this week. Thankfully, the fine folks at FC Augsburg were kind enough to dispel it as fake. But we still have so, so many questions.
Watching Ricardo Pepi make his first Augsburg start on Sunday against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga, I realized that either Pepi's performance was exactly the same as the debuts of Clint Dempsey with Fulham, Christian Pulisic with Borussia Dortmund and Tyler Adams with Leipzig or that I have a tendency to see exactly what I want to see when hugely talented Americans finally grace the field in Europe.
COLOGNE — Bayern Munich's Robert Lewandowski got a hat trick to make it 300 Bundesliga career goals as he steered them to a 4-0 win at Cologne on Saturday that restored a six-point lead at the top.
The Bavarians, chasing a record-extending 10th consecutive league title, bounced back from last week's loss to Borussia Moenchengladbach and have 46 points from 19 games with Dortmund in second place on 40.
MUNICH, Germany — Bayern Munich keeper Manuel Neuer and winger Leroy Sané are among several players to return for Saturday's trip to Cologne in the Bundesliga but Alphonso Davies will be out for some time with a heart muscle inflammation, said coach Julian Nagelsmann.
The league leaders suffered a 2-1 loss to Borussia Moenchengladbach last week which allowed Borussia Dortmund to close in to within six points. They now want to bounce back as players return following a string of COVID-19 infections.
Ricardo Pepi’s transfer to Augsburg in the winter transfer window means 44 percent of teams in the Bundesliga have an American in the ranks. How many Americans play in the Bundesliga those who don’t feel like doing math might ask?
Here’s the list of eight American players expected to get minutes in Germany’s top flight in 2022.
FC Dallas completed the transfer of striker Ricardo Pepi to FC Augsburg of the German Bundesliga on Monday.
Dallas received a reported $20 million fee, a club record that also makes the 18-year-old Pepi the most expensive outgoing homegrown player in MLS history.
Pepi, the 2021 MLS Young Player of the Year, signed a five-and-a-half-year contract at Augsburg that includes a club option to extend the deal until the summer of 2027.
On Saturday, West Bromwich Albion and Orlando City confirmed that 21-year-old striker Daryl Dike was headed to the Championship side on a four-and-a-half-year deal for a transfer fee of $9.5 million.
Dike again joins forces with French manager Valérien Ismaël, who was Barnsley's boss last campaign when Dike scored nine goals in 19 second division appearances while on loan. Orlando is also in line to receive performance-based bonuses and 20% of any future sale.