The Official Football/Soccer Thread: 2017-2018 Season
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franni:
21st Century Paul:
Let me remind the coach is not a player , is not part of the team,
I think he is a part of the team a kind of glu
no, he is not part of the team... actually he's less important than people thinks... actually is a figure designed to blame any failure..
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21st Century Paul:
It seems there's another controversy with Aragones in Spain, this time with Torres. Torres: "If he (Aragones) has got something to tell me, tell it to me now". It seems that when Torres was substitued he didn't shake the hand of Aragones, waiting for him, throwed away the clothes for players that don't play, and did angry gestures.
After Villa scored his third goal he went straight to Torres on the bench and hugged him in celebration. "Much was said before the game about Torres, and whether or not he's suitable for this squad, but we see how misplaced that is now. Therefore I want to dedicate my third goal to him because my first two were in a large part down to him. The first, you all saw that, and the second it was him who opened up space for Iniesta to pass through." Celebrating the first goal... And the third goal... For his part, Torres said... "That was a great performance from a great player. It speaks volumes for him. We are partners and there is no competition between us. We have the same objectives and the key thing is that we're able to lift the cup at the end of the championship."
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21st Century Paul:
franni:
21st Century Paul:
Let me remind the coach is not a player , is not part of the team,
I think he is a part of the team a kind of glu
no, he is not part of the team... actually he's less important than people think... actually is a figure designed to blame any failure..
Just because he doesn't kick a ball doesn't make him that much less important. Obviously, it comes down to how the players perform. But if a coach doesn't make the correct tactical substitutions/changes during the course of a match it could mean the difference between winning, drawing or losing. Rijkaard last season is the perfect example. The coach is a very important part of the team.
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I mean, the players already know what substitutions should be made and how they got to play. Sometimes it works better when they don't listen to the coach... Well, Rijkaard set a kind of automatic pilot coaching... but I think that no matter the XI and substitutions, the result would have been the same. For instance Guardiola himself was a coach inside the field when he was player, he told everyone where they should place themselves, etc. or what to do with the ball in that time. Usually the captain is the coach on the field, the leader, like Guardiola, Raul, Di Stefano, Cruyff, Pele, Beckenbauer, etc. The coach is seen for the players, like "the man out there", like an external boss who's not doing their job really, usually a team has 1 or 2 men the other players trust, respect or so, and it's them who make decisions on the field. Like I guess Carvalho is when he said Simao had to kick that free kick when he discussed with Cristiano yesterday. BTW I changed my captain from Cristiano to Luca Toni, I hope he scores 2 or 3 tomorrow yet. Italy needs it.
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Austria : Poland 1:1 Referee Webb of England literally buried Poland alive when he ruled an unjustified penalty kick for Austria in the.... 93rd minute I can say no more
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Pawel:
Austria : Poland 1:1 Referee Webb of England literally buried Poland alive when he ruled an unjustified penalty kick for Austria in the.... 93rd minute I can say no more
Unjustified penalty, gimme a break! They shouldn't have pulled Prödl down, simple as that! What was so unjustified about it? The goal by poland was clearly offside, by the way! So much about that bad referee and his blind assistants!
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21st Century Paul:
Netherlands show!
We will see if that will happen again tonight in the Holland versus France match.
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anna_medlicka:
Pawel:
Austria : Poland 1:1 Referee Webb of England literally buried Poland alive when he ruled an unjustified penalty kick for Austria in the.... 93rd minute I can say no more
Unjustified penalty, gimme a break! They shouldn't have pulled Prödl down, simple as that! What was so unjustified about it? The goal by poland was clearly offside, by the way! So much about that bad referee and his blind assistants!
Webb should have ruled two penalties against Poland for the good measure, the one he did, in the 93rd minute, and one more, say 92nd minute :
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ElvisBondCelebrityCosmos:
21st Century Paul:
Netherlands show!
We will see if that will happen again tonight in the Holland versus France match.
We already have the bagette, fromage and vin ready
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Pawel:
Austria : Poland 1:1 Referee Webb of England literally buried Poland alive when he ruled an unjustified penalty kick for Austria in the.... 93rd minute I can say no more
And Poland goal was in one of the biggest offside I've ever seen. Do you believe FIFA is a Mafia and the ones in the best places are not the best at all? well.. or maybe not, these are the best referees in the world... oh well... excuse me.. the best referees in Europe.
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franni:
ElvisBondCelebrityCosmos:
21st Century Paul:
Netherlands show!
We will see if that will happen again tonight in the Holland versus France match.
We already have the bagette, fromage and vin ready
Netherlands show! History repeated all over the Euro Cup, the most skilled team is the one that wins, no matter if the other defends better or if they're taller or stronger or whatever. The team that usually pass the ball better is winning. Italy is not much better in passing than Romania, but better in all the rest (especially in defending, like France...), but this doesn't seem to matter much. Passes are being more accurate than usual, for players we already know... I don't know why but this ball favours good passes. It may sound silly but tennis players can tell a lot about the differences of playing with certain tennis balls, this is the same. So it's supposed to be the Euro Cup of Spain and Netherlands... and maybe too of Portugal and Croatia. A matter of balls.
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21st Century Paul:
franni:
ElvisBondCelebrityCosmos:
21st Century Paul:
Netherlands show!
We will see if that will happen again tonight in the Holland versus France match.
We already have the bagette, fromage and vin ready
Netherlands show! History repeated all over the Euro Cup, the most skilled team is the one that wins, no matter if the other defends better or if they're taller or stronger or whatever. The team that usually pass the ball better is winning.
4-1!... Indeed.Good.
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Right now in 30 minutes. Sweden vs Spain. The kick and rush vs the "tiqui-taca". The English, Swedish way vs the Brazilian, Spanish, Holland way... The long balls vs the jogo bonito. I hope Iniesta has ideas today. Casillas has wings . Puyol becomes a wall. Xavi controls the match , Villa does a happy ending to the balls , Torres is not possible to stop , the team ends like friends, and I don't have to or or... . Or... and we won't have to miss the smartass striker (There's a big Swedish painting on the Stadium: "We like Paella, We like Spain, We like Raul") see you 2:
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I get up of the sofa, to come here... and "Goal of Villa"... anyway for me the match= too many silly passes, no vision of the game... not searching for the empty spaces between Sweden players, whether in players going to that spaces or in passes putting the ball there. Only Fabregas tried to do it, even going to the wing. Anyway 2-1 but this is not enough to pass quarterfinals. When Ibrahimovic was on the field there was a lot of troubles for Spain, a tougher team maybe will be too much for Spain. No more silly passes. Search for the empty spaces, not passing to who's already with 2 defenders around. Great tutorial, Michael Laudrup "the great the only" ("it's the empty space!", the blank, where the attacking player can be alone)
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I felt Spain needed to try long shots like what Romania did against Italy. Aragones also should've probably brought on Dani Güiza to have some height in the box. Instead they kept trying to walk the ball into the area where Sweden had set up shop and weren't letting anyone in. But it was a deserved win given Sweden's tactics and the denied penalty at the end of the first half. Greece-Russia going on now. A draw or a Russian victory will give Spain Group D and avoid Holland for now.
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I would prefer Holland now rather than France and Italy. It would be boring too with those two. Besides all the people in the Sweden area there has been a lot of moments with the ball on the area when if there was around there "you know who", he would have got the ball and probably scored, but Villa and Torres are not that kind of forwards. Italy, France or Romania in quarterfinals, never passed for Spain in any international tournament since 24 years ago.
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Raul is no longer on the national team. He's too old and he's never done anything in the past. Time to turn the page and get over it. It's getting very tiresome. : Spain's main problem is in defence. Sergio Ramos had another terrible performance.
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Greece 0-1 Russia Spain wins Group D!
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I don't agree Raul is the past at all. An even less he has done nothing at all... but that's a different story. But if you miss Guiza I miss Raul too. Maybe I ask too much of the team and I expected them to be almost like 10 Laudrups... I think that the ball passing was quite bad for being Spain. Some are saying this has happened to Spain after receiving the goals on the tournament. After Russia's 3-1 and after Sweden's 1-1. A kind of an old paralysing fear.. that leaves the team kind of numb. I think all the team went mad after receiving the goals. Or is it asking too much? They seemed tactically silly in the attack not knowing where to pass. Maybe it's cause of Sweden was defensive and it had to be an ugly playing or maybe it's because of Spain, I don't know.
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21st Century Paul:
I don't agree Raul is the past at all. An even less he has done nothing at all... but that's a different story. But if you miss Guiza I miss Raul too. Maybe I ask too much of the team and I expected them to be almost like 10 Laudrups... I think all the team went mad after receiving the goals. Or is it asking too much?
I don't "miss" Guiza. I just think that since he's on the bench and the team couldn't penetrate the defence on the ground, he perhaps should've been brought in to see what he could do in the air. After all, he did lead the league in scoring. No use in mentioning Raul because he's not in the squad. We can sit here and think about him and talk about him all we want, but he's still not in the team. That's like saying, "I wonder how England would have done if they had qualified". Why bother asking when they're not here? Although given Howard Webb and his crew's performance in the Austria-Poland match, it can't be said that the English haven't made their mark in this tournament. Considering you'll turn off a mtach if it isn't entertaining within the first five minutes, I'd say you're asking too much of players and teams in general.