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Football: Mo Please!


AncalagonTheBlack

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4 minutes ago, mormont said:

Not having watched it, I wouldn't have said it wasn't exciting: and I didn't. In fact I said I'm sure it is exciting.. 

Forgive me for thinking you were being sarcastic after just saying you and the rest of the world had no idea what the sport was. 

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We know what the sport is- most of us just don't have it cross our conciousness enough to know what the Stanley Cup is.

On the other hand:

19 minutes ago, mormont said:

But it's really not that silly to suggest that the most successful and popular team sport in the word has that status for a good reason. 

 


I'm never going to argue against the exciting-ness of football, but its immense popularity has more to do with its simplicity to play (that old chesnut that all you need is a ball) and its working class base than any inherent advantage in excitement over other sports.

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14 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

We know what the sport is- most of us just don't have it cross our conciousness enough to know what the Stanley Cup is.

Okay cool. Forgive me for thinking he was being sarcastic when he just said he and the rest of the world have no idea what the Stanley Cup is. 

Which was a bizarre comment to make seeing hockey is pretty popular in lots of different countries but whatever this is a weird discussion to be having. 

Edit: 

 

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15 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

Which was a bizarre comment to make seeing hockey is pretty popular in lots of different countries

:dunno:

It's popular enough but outside of countries where it's actually A Thing it doesn't get enough attention for people to know the name of the main trophy for it, especially since it's essentially limited to two nations neither of which are in Europe.

I'm not sure why that bothers you. I wouldn't freak out if someone told me they don't know what the Six Nations is?

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43 minutes ago, mormont said:

Not having watched it, I wouldn't have said it wasn't exciting: and I didn't. In fact I said I'm sure it is exciting.

It does, however, strike me as a strange thing to bring up a much less successful and popular sport in response to ME's post, and to say that this makes his advocacy for football as the most exciting sport in the world a 'silly' thing to say. You might think the Stanley Cup is more exciting than the last week of football matches. You might be right. But it's really not that silly to suggest that the most successful and popular team sport in the word has that status for a good reason. 

The fact that the sport is popular is due to more factors than it being exciting to watch. Football is definitely not the most popular sport in the world because it's super exciting. Most of the time it's slogging through 90 minutes of game time to catch a couple of glimpses of greatness.

Football is the most popular sport because it can be played by almost everyone almost everywhere. You need a ball and a couple of t-shirts to act as goal posts and a few friends and you have yourself a game.

More than half the countries in the world don't have the proper climate for ice hockey, and even in those that are you need ice rinks and a lot of rather expensive equipment if you want to play. As a result, it's nowhere near as popular as football.

I mean, last week City didn't manage to make a single shot on target against Liverpool in the quarterfinal match of the best club competition in the world. How on Earth can that be seen as an example of exciting?

On the other hand, you have a match between LA Kings and Las Vegas that ended 0-1 and saw teams take 30 and 28 shots on goal, respectively and goalies giving a great performance. Let's not even start on hits, blocked shots, stickhandling etc.

We all love football here, but saying it's so exciting that no other sports compare IS silly, and that's an understatement. ;) 

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7 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

I'm not sure why that bothers you. I wouldn't freak out if someone told me they don't know what the Six Nations is?

Rugby's another example of a sport that's often more exciting than football. ;) 

EDIT:

That might be because I've only seen a handful of rugby matches (mostly in the Six Nations or World Cup) so I didn't really get the chance to watch boring rugby's matches.

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It doesn’t bother me and I definitely don’t think I’m freaking out by responding to some internet comments. When I read Mormonts comment I interpreted it as him basically saying “yeah sure how can hockey be as exciting as football when it isn’t near as popular” which I thought was kinda idiotic. My bad if my interpretation was wrong, wouldn’t be the first time.  

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9 minutes ago, Mark Antony said:

When I read Mormonts comment I interpreted it as him basically saying “yeah sure how can hockey be as exciting as football when it isn’t near as popular” which I thought was kinda idiotic.


I do think that's he was saying and I disagreed a bit above, just felt your response that we should know what the Stanley Cup is coz Hockey is popular in some places was off the mark as well. It isn't that popular overall - it's just that excitement doesn't really have a lot to do with the difference.
And also apologies, that last post was more aggressive in tone than I meant it to be.

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1 hour ago, JordanJH1993 said:

I did not watch the whole of Roma vs Barcelona, but I believe they set up with a 3-5-2 formation. However, even if they set up like this against Liverpool, I'd fancy Liverpool's forward line to do more damage to Roma's backline than what Barca's did on Wednesday.

 

They set up with a back three in the 2nd leg but I'm sure it was a back four in the 1st leg. Either way Salah vs Kolarov is a mismatch in terms of pace unless Di Francesco has Kolarov play very conservatively. United managed to keep Salah quiet by having Young stay back. The midfield battle should be interesting though. On paper Roma have the better midfield with Strootman, De Rossi and Nainggolan while Liverpool have the most dangerous strike force of the remaining sides.

I think Roma's best bet is to set up conservatively and look to play on the counter. Maybe even look to overload the midfield with a 4-3-2-1 and try to cut off the passing lanes to Mane and Salah. Having a go will probably result in Liverpool sewing up the tie in the 1st leg like they did with City.

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20 minutes ago, polishgenius said:


I do think that's he was saying and I disagreed a bit above, just felt your response that we should know what the Stanley Cup is coz Hockey is popular in some places was off the mark as well. It isn't that popular overall - it's just that excitement doesn't really have a lot to do with the difference.
And also apologies, that last post was more aggressive in tone than I meant it to be.

No worries and you’re right I was perhaps a bit defensive about the popularity(or lack there-of) of Hockey lol. 

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36 minutes ago, baxus said:

Rugby's another example of a sport that's often more exciting than football. ;) 

EDIT:

That might be because I've only seen a handful of rugby matches (mostly in the Six Nations or World Cup) so I didn't really get the chance to watch boring rugby's matches.


There was a fairly long while where too many teams (at least at national level) turned into grinders and the sport was getting problematically dreary as the influence of England's RWC winning team became overwhelming, but that tide seems to have reversed now. I haven't followed it consistently for a long time but it seems to be getting more consistently exciting.
Also, everyone owes it to themselves to watch this from a few years ago.

ETA: Jonah Lomu is in my top three most exciting athletes of all time to boot, along with real Ronaldo and Roy Jones. This definitely had to do with the timing of all three careers during my impressionable years, but still.

 

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1 hour ago, baxus said:

Rugby's another example of a sport that's often more exciting than football. ;) 

EDIT:

That might be because I've only seen a handful of rugby matches (mostly in the Six Nations or World Cup) so I didn't really get the chance to watch boring rugby's matches.

The latter is definitely a factor. There are a lot of boring rugby games.

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56 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

The latter is definitely a factor. There are a lot of boring rugby games.

I'm sure there are, since I don't think there is a single sport without boring games/competitions.

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7 hours ago, JordanJH1993 said:

Looking at their recent permanent appointments - Van Gaal, Heynckes, Guardiola and Ancelotti - they were all Champions League winning managers. With Bayern having no real rival for the title in Germany, you would imagine that the Champions League is their main priority. With that in mind, it makes sense why they appointed people like Van Gaal, Guardiola and Ancelotti, even if despite their success in the Champions League with other clubs, none of them managed to succeeded in Europe with Bayern.

I am not disagreeing with you, that Kovac doesn'T look like a first choice pick for them. However three out of the four managers you mentioned spoke German. Van Gaal is Dutch, and Dutch and German are linguistically speaking very close (if I wanted to tease our Dutch boarders a bit, I'd go as far as calling Dutch some weird German dialect). So I have yet to meet a Dutch that doesn't speak German to some degree. Guardiola used his sabbatical in New York to learn German extensively (like I said before), and he is able to speak it. In a way Guardiola paved the way for Ancelotti. The rational was exactly what you mentioned, proven CL winner, which could give Bayern the final push for a CL run. But generally speaking, check the Bayern managers for the last 20 years or so, the only one who didn't speak German was Trappatoni (at least during his first tenure there). If you use German language as a requirement for the job, then the list of potential high profile managers grows pretty thin. Had Peter Bosz stayed at Ajax last year instead of crashing and burning at Dortmund this year, he might have made it to their short list.

Kovac only signed a two year contract. So if that appointments fails, then they will probably go after Nagelsmann (or somebody else) next year.

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Roma will be a tough tie.  They have a great keeper, a battling midfield and Dzeko available for the long outball.  I expect them to sit deep in a 4-3-3 and look to play it long over our press. 

I would guess that neither Bayern and Real would have been inclined to sit deep for long periods. 

Roma are in a tight battle for CL qualification still.  I wonder how they’ll approach the balance of remaining league games vs. CL.  I’m guessing at this point they’ll go for broke in the CL.  It’s a long time since they had a chance like this. 

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1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Roma will be a tough tie.  They have a great keeper, a battling midfield and Dzeko available for the long outball.  I expect them to sit deep in a 4-3-3 and look to play it long over our press. 

I would guess that neither Bayern and Real would have been inclined to sit deep for long periods. 

Yeah, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Roma are obviously the weakest team on paper left in the draw but they're still a good side and unlike Bayern and Real they probably won't be inclined to play into Liverpool's hands with giving them opportunities to press high or counter easily.

Still, you aren't going to get an easy ride in the semifinals of the Champions League.

1 hour ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Roma are in a tight battle for CL qualification still.  I wonder how they’ll approach the balance of remaining league games vs. CL.  I’m guessing at this point they’ll go for broke in the CL.  It’s a long time since they had a chance like this. 

I'd be very surprised if they don't go all in to win the Champions League. It'd probably be the biggest moment in their history and Italian football's not quite as cutthroat as the Premier League in terms of getting into the Champions League so missing out for a season probably wouldn't be the end of the world.

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5 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Imagine if we had won the league in the last 91 years or the FA cup in the last 63. 

Trying to... nope. Can't do it.

4 hours ago, polishgenius said:

We know what the sport is- most of us just don't have it cross our conciousness enough to know what the Stanley Cup is.

On the other hand:

 


I'm never going to argue against the exciting-ness of football, but its immense popularity has more to do with its simplicity to play (that old chesnut that all you need is a ball) and its working class base than any inherent advantage in excitement over other sports.

While football's simplicity is perhaps a necessary condition for its popularity, I don't think it's sufficient. Its relative paucity of scoring (goals) means that you get a statistical greater chance of upsets. It's a localised team sport, which means fans (often; not exclusively) have a geographical connection with their clubs (which isn't really the case with sports like motor racing and cycling), which again allows for history and traditions to develop beyond the scope of a single athlete's career. However, it also has room for individual brilliance (arguably to a greater extent than many other team sports). There is something about a sport where the players can't use the most naturally appropriate appendages for the task (i.e. arms and hands) which elevates the greatest feats of that sport to another level. Football at its best approaches art in a way that other sports just don't (figure skating is only arguably a sport).

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7 minutes ago, Mme Erzulie said:

Football at its best approaches art in a way that other sports just don't (figure skating is only arguably a sport).


I can roll with that, although I'd argue that boxing can and does approach art (and has been vastly popular in the past though is currently less so for fairly obvious reasons).

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2 hours ago, Notone said:

I am not disagreeing with you, that Kovac doesn'T look like a first choice pick for them. However three out of the four managers you mentioned spoke German. Van Gaal is Dutch, and Dutch and German are linguistically speaking very close (if I wanted to tease our Dutch boarders a bit, I'd go as far as calling Dutch some weird German dialect). So I have yet to meet a Dutch that doesn't speak German to some degree. Guardiola used his sabbatical in New York to learn German extensively (like I said before), and he is able to speak it. In a way Guardiola paved the way for Ancelotti. The rational was exactly what you mentioned, proven CL winner, which could give Bayern the final push for a CL run. But generally speaking, check the Bayern managers for the last 20 years or so, the only one who didn't speak German was Trappatoni (at least during his first tenure there). If you use German language as a requirement for the job, then the list of potential high profile managers grows pretty thin. Had Peter Bosz stayed at Ajax last year instead of crashing and burning at Dortmund this year, he might have made it to their short list.

Kovac only signed a two year contract. So if that appointments fails, then they will probably go after Nagelsmann (or somebody else) next year.

I wasn’t meaning so much that he doesn’t seem like a first choice, more that he seems a different type of choice to what they have normally gone for.

It looks as though, by going for Kovac (and the other names linked), they have abandoned their recent trend of appointing a proven Champions League winning manager. This is fair enough, given that experienced managers like LvG, Guardiola and Ancelotti all failed to win the Champions League. 

I quite like to see when big clubs go for a younger, up and coming manager, rather than seeing the same big names make their way through Europe’s top clubs. So, despite not being a fan of Bayern Munich, I hope it works out well for Kovac, and I respect them for choosing him.

As Chelsea are likely to be in the market for a new manager in the summer, I would much rather they took the route Bayern have, than what Chelsea tend to do, which is go for whichever flavour of the month is available.

The most talked about manager linked with Chelsea is Luis Enrique. He was incredibly successful at Barcelona, of course, but I’d much rather Chelsea took a chance on someone like Eddie Howe, for instance. 

50 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

I'd be very surprised if they don't go all in to win the Champions League. It'd probably be the biggest moment in their history and Italian football's not quite as cutthroat as the Premier League in terms of getting into the Champions League so missing out for a season probably wouldn't be the end of the world.

I think Roma are in quite a lot of debt, which is why they’ve recently sold a lot of their best players, such as Pjanic, Rüdiger, Salah. They probably would have sold Džeko to Chelsea for the right price in January.

I’d still say they would prioritise an opportunity to win the Champions League, but qualifying for next year’s competition will be vital for them, too, as it would be a big loss for them to miss out on the Champions League money.

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2 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Roma are in a tight battle for CL qualification still.  I wonder how they’ll approach the balance of remaining league games vs. CL.  I’m guessing at this point they’ll go for broke in the CL.  It’s a long time since they had a chance like this. 

Hells yes, they already did, even though they were down 4-1 against barca. That said, a lot rides on this weekends derby as far as cl goes. If they win, their situation will be fairly good going forward. 

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