Soccer XLVI: The Rumour Mill Keeps Spinning

[Alex.]

With any luck he will be living in one of Her Majesty's Special Houses soon enough.

[Horus Ex Machina]

Baxus,

He already has history. He forced through a move to Ajax in a similar manner.

I guess others clubs just can't imagine that it would happen to them too.

He's the Terrell Owens of... um...football.

I just call it calcio. And I don't speak a word of Italian either...

[polishgenius]

The Suarez thing is much like the Tevez situation. I mean he's behaved badly at every club he's ever been at apart from his brief stint at West Ham, yet people continually take chances in case he turns out good for them. And briefly, he will, then trouble. I suspect the same will be true of Suarez.

[Faraday]

*shrug* Tevez was a good signing for Man City, even missing half the season he still helped them win the title and scored vital goals. Suarez definitely performs on the pitch, you just have to hope he doesn't go full nutjob and get banned for eating someone's face or something, I guess.

[Horus Ex Machina]

Klinsi is officially banned from the Gold Cup final against Panama.

http://www.usatoday....-final/2591617/

He should sit with the Outlaws. F CONCACRAP. 'Couple things,... CONCACAF can help themselves by organizing a Gold Cup outside the US and making the 2016 Copa America Centenario happen. Let's hope that Jeff Webb can improve on his predecessor.

[Alcibiades]

CONCACAF is a joke. Will Klinsmann be allowed to manage the team via cell phone? I'll always remember the images of Fergie up in the stands with a big white telephone that was essentially a "massive fuck" you to the FA, haha.

[polishgenius]

CONCACAF is a joke. Will Klinsmann be allowed to manage the team via cell phone? I'll always remember the images of Fergie up in the stands with a big white telephone that was essentially a "massive fuck" you to the FA, haha.

Genius.

[Horus Ex Machina]

Genius.

:thumbsup: Absolutely perfect! They should even have the PA announcer say "Paging Jurgen Klinnsman, call on Line 1, Mr. Klinnsman, there's a call on Line 1."

[Alcibiades]

I love the goofy wire on that phone too. :cheers:

[Calibandar]

Watched Dortmund vs Bayern tonight, German Super Cup.

4-2 to Dortmund, first defeat for Bayern under Guardiola from what I hear.

Great game to watch, clearly Dortmund doesn't look any worse without Gotze, even though his Armenian replacement didn't even play. With Bayern I do wonder what the first 11 for the more important games will look like, there is so much competition. I guess one of Schweinsteiger, Kroos and Martinez will certainly not play. Thiago is a lock as no.6. If like tonight Mandzukic stays in as the no. 9, there's Mueller, Ribery, Gotze and Robben fighting for 2 or 3 spots. Though I think Mueller could play as the no.9 as well, they should try him there instead of Mandzukic if somehow Mueller fell out of the first 11.

[Winterfell is Burning]

I haven't seen the game, but I think Guardiola is more likely to use Gotze as the false 9, with Müller, Thiago and Ribery in the midfield.

[Alcibiades]

Oh why didn't I go to RFK tonight?

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Watched Dortmund vs Bayern tonight, German Super Cup.

4-2 to Dortmund, first defeat for Bayern under Guardiola from what I hear.

Great game to watch, clearly Dortmund doesn't look any worse without Gotze, even though his Armenian replacement didn't even play. With Bayern I do wonder what the first 11 for the more important games will look like, there is so much competition. I guess one of Schweinsteiger, Kroos and Martinez will certainly not play. Thiago is a lock as no.6. If like tonight Mandzukic stays in as the no. 9, there's Mueller, Ribery, Gotze and Robben fighting for 2 or 3 spots. Though I think Mueller could play as the no.9 as well, they should try him there instead of Mandzukic if somehow Mueller fell out of the first 11.

I havent seen the game, but one the reasons that bayern dominated the midfiepd was how well Martinez and Schweinsteiger won the ball back with a combination of physical play and intelligemt positioning. I think Guardiolas tryung ti replacw Bayern's physical dominance wuth Barcas passing dominance, but they don't really have a Xavi equivalent, not even Thiago.

Against a lesser team they can dominate possession, but against a top side, Thiago doesn't protect the def3nse as well as Schweini or Martinez, but he also can't control the game like Xavi or Busquets.

[Alcibiades]

Oh why didn't I go to RFK tonight?

That'll teach me to get excited :(

[Raja]

Him and Leon Knight need to have a get-together.

Not sure if the board has seen it, but

is my favorite thing about Leon Knight. I don't even know if that's him, but I'd like it to be.

[Old-Growth]

"It's both football and soccer. I don't see the point in grumbling about it."

Many forum members are from the US: they might get confused :) If they are soccer fans, they might think the thread was about American style football and avoid it; if not they might expect it to be about that other kind of football and be surprised and probably displeased when they open the thread.

[Horus Ex Machina]

For the most part the American football threads have been labeled "NFL" while football remained "Football" and everyone seems to get the difference. Truth told, most Americans, and even those who hate the sport, know that soccer is called football abroad. They may not know exactly why or even that American football is a distant cousin of soccer, but they know about the word.

[Calibandar]

I havent seen the game, but one the reasons that bayern dominated the midfiepd was how well Martinez and Schweinsteiger won the ball back with a combination of physical play and intelligemt positioning. I think Guardiolas tryung ti replacw Bayern's physical dominance wuth Barcas passing dominance, but they don't really have a Xavi equivalent, not even Thiago.

Against a lesser team they can dominate possession, but against a top side, Thiago doesn't protect the def3nse as well as Schweini or Martinez, but he also can't control the game like Xavi or Busquets.

I read a very interesting article on Grantland yesterday, questioning whether Bayern Munich is ready for Guardiola. Obviously many people question it, and shout about it, but this article actually goes into what the difference is between those two teams, which I thought might actually show why it could be problematic.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-triangle/post/_/id/69665/how-will-this-seasons-bayern-munich-pep-squad-compare-to-barcelona

For Barcelona, possession was the building block for everything they do. So many words have been spilled about their tiki-taka style under Guardiola that it seems almost silly to rehash. The basic idea was that you use short passes to keep the ball and carve up the defense like a Thanksgiving turkey until eventually they all spontaneously fall down and let you (and by you I mean Lionel Messi) walk the ball into the back of the net.

With Bayern, possession isn't t the starting point, it's the finish line; it's the result of their domination of other teams, not the cause.

Bayern won last season because they outshot the opposition, pure and simple. They shot the ball, won it back, and shot again, over and over and over. Guardiola preaches keeping the ball until you cant help but score, but hes inheriting a team that excels at pounding away, battering ram style.

When you stop to break down the numbers its truly astounding how little Barcelona actually shot. They averaged 13.9 shots per game last season, only sixth most in La Liga, and less than one shot more than the league average. That would be unremarkable if they didnt keep the ball for a truly mind-blowing 69 percent of the game.

Combine a barely above average number of shots with bananas-high possession and you get a team that plays really, really slowly. When some soccer snobs claim to be just so over; tiki-taka, and describe it with words like metronome, machine-like, and joyless, this glacially patient pace is generally what they're responding to.

Barca shot only once every 4:28 that they were in possession of the ball. That's the slowest shooting rate of any team in the five biggest leagues in Europe. Bayern, on the other hand, led the Bundesliga in shooting, averaging 17.1 shots per game along with 63.7 percent possession. The German champions averaged 5 percent less time with the ball, but still managed more than three shots more per game, shooting more than a minute faster than Barcelona; once every 3:21 they had possession

___________________________________________________________________________________

Guardiola might be great at Bayern, in fact he probably will be, but there is no doubt the Bayern Munich team that takes the field this season will be drastically different than the one last year, maybe not in personnel, but certainly in approach. Is not a matter of picking up where they left off. Players will have new tactics to learn, new roles to play, perhaps even a shift in positions. There will be a period of adjustment and steps backward to be endured during the learning process. Despite the accident of having similar possession statistics, the Bayern of last year is nothing like the teams Guardiola built. Of course the scary thing is that by the time Pep is done working his magic, this team could be even better.

[polishgenius]

There's a lot of good points there, but I do think he's wrong about the reason Bayern won (though he touches on it in passing). It's not because they shot, it's because they won the ball back, constantly. They were amazing at it, perhaps the best I've ever seen. I think that could be the real difficulty - Pep popularised the high-pressure game, of course, but what his Barca did and what Bayern did last season isn't quite the same. Barca would just rush the opposition the instant they lost the ball, put as much pressure on as fast as possible. Bayern would let them have the ball for a bit while they organised, then all press in a co-ordinated movement. If Pep tries to impose his more haphazard style, their defence cold get more open.

We'll see, though, I guess.

[Faraday]

It'll be interesting to see, Dortmund look as strong as they were last season -- and I think they'll be a real threat, so the League should be interesting.