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Football: A Tale of Two Finals


Corvinus85

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Messi finally has a major title with Argentina. A hard won match, where Brazil lacked good enough creativity and Argentina defended doggedly. Messi is not the hero of this game, and nearly was a villain, as he got too cute or selfish in critical moments.

Anyway, a first for Messi, and perhaps there will be a first in the Euros, too? ;)

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Like I said in the previous thread:

Quote

Brazil doesn't look like a contender for the WC next year. Even though they won the last CA without him, the team is excessively dependent on Neymar, and Tite didn't change his habit of insisting too much on players he knows, even though they haven't been playing well by nation or club, like Everton, Firmino and Fred (yes, Fred is a regular starter for Brazil, and no, no one knows why). 

Everything that I said held true, sadly. Brazil started with Everton, who's been playing badly in the tournament, Fred, who got himself a yellow with two minutes, and was predictably replaced half time by Firmino, who also did nothing, and had no creativity besides ball to Neymar, who did nothing (to be fair, Messi was even worse, Casemiro did a fine job with him).

With Brazil needing creativity, he finally put Vinicius Jr. at 63rd minute (he hadn't played 60 minutes for Brazil yet) and only near the end Gabriel Barbosa, who has been the most prolific striker in Brazil for years, but didn't start two consecutive games with Tite, in a 4-1-5 formation in the end.

Meanwhile, Argentina wasn't really all that much better. There was the clear sense that if Brazil had somehow found a goal before they did, they would have lost the game. Di Maria, Martinez and De Paul did well, though.

Oh, and of course at least Messi has a trophy for Argentina. About time.

 

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Didn't see the game myself, but according to the Argentina manager, Messi played with a minor hamstring problem. Post hoc excuses? Who knows.

Anyway, of Argentina's 12 goals leading up to the final, Messi had four goals and five assists, according to the writeup I read, enough to make him both top scorer and assist king of the tournament.

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17 minutes ago, lacuna said:

Didn't see the game myself, but according to the Argentina manager, Messi played with a minor hamstring problem. Post hoc excuses? Who knows.

Anyway, of Argentina's 12 goals leading up to the final, Messi had four goals and five assists, according to the writeup I read, enough to make him both top scorer and assist king of the tournament.

Yes, clearly the tournament had Messi as standout player, Neymar as runner up and everyone else a very distant third.

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Messi finally got one. He was also clearly the best player of the tournament even though he didn't have his best game in the final. Rodrigo De Paul was also fucking immense. He's going to be a great signing for Atleti and looks to be the perfect Simeone player. Emi Martinez was very good too. What a great couple of years it's been for him - going from being loaned out to Reading and ending up as third choice keeper there to cementing his place as Argentina's #1 and winning the Copa America title.

On a down note, the overall quality of the football at the tournament was not good at all, the state of some of the pitches poor and the standard of officiating was fucking atrocious.

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Kind of wild to see Messi still being this good. The 2010 World Cup Final was on this day 11 years ago. I watched it in Buenos Aires, and back then he and Ronaldo were plastered on every advertisement.

Some things don't change.....

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13 hours ago, polishgenius said:



Fuck me

That Mexico T&T game was rough from go last night. I missed seeing that collision for some reason but saw the aftermath of medical attention and his being stretchered off the field.

 

He's out for the rest of the Gold Cup. 

https://www.espn.com/soccer/mexico-mex/story/4430686/gold-cup-mexicos-hirving-lozano-out-4-6-weeks-after-suffering-head-injury

He also posted a message to his Instagram stories today. 

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What's he going to do though? It's unlikely he's some kind of magician that will fix players who can't put in a decent delivery, so you have to imagine his focus will be on strategies, but surely your creative players already know the kind of stuff that works, in theory.

I guess this is kind of a response to Liverpool having the likes of a throw-in coach, United looking for ways to make marginal gains, but I'm not convinced it will be all that useful.

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6 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

but surely your creative players already know the kind of stuff that works, in theory.


It's not necessarily the creative players that need to drill it. Our deliveries are fine, by and large, it's the movement in the box that is underwhelming both offensively and defensively. And it is about drilling as much as ideas, since at this level you can have all the ideas you want, you're not gonna implement it successfully if you don't get some instinctive reactions down. 

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