(UEFA) Football Thread - Football not Soccer

[Iasius]

Carrie wrote:

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A world cup ? What world cup ?
(maybe if I ignore it, it won't exist )

Personally, I'm torn between expecting Germany to go out early, due to Jogi Löw, and wishing Germany to go out early so we can get rid of Löw. I loathe our coach, but I want (some of) our players to succeed, if that makes any sense.

I'd love to have van Gaal as coach actually (should be very entertaining at least ), he's expressed interest, but hell will probably freeze over before we get a non-German coach.

[Shaytan]

Iasius wrote:

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Personally, I'm torn between expecting Germany to go out early, due to Jogi Löw, and wishing Germany to go out early so we can get rid of Löw. I loathe our coach, but I want (some of) our players to succeed, if that makes any sense.

Oh, that makes sense since we're here in the same position (Domenech ).
It's not this year that we're going to get revenge on Germany (Germany )

[Jax]

Iasius wrote:

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Probably when club football is over and the final friendlies before the tournament/when final squad decisions are being made.

I don't think it would hurt to start one now. It probably wouldn't fall off first page, although it may not see too much traffic before then.

The Tourney starts 11th June so might start it May 11th exactly one month before. PL ends on 9th so many other Domestic leagues will follow shortly and then like you said we will have friendlies and squads announcements to talk about before the main event.

[Jax]

Iasius why do you want Löw to get sacked?

* Euro 2008 runner up

* Q/F easily enough for WC 2010

is there pressure on him from the media?

[Iasius]

Jax wrote:

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Iasius why do you want Löw to get sacked?

* Euro 2008 runner up

* Q/F easily enough for WC 2010

is there pressure on him from the media?

He continues to call up players that are completely out of form. Hitzlsperger (DM) for example: Not good enough to make the first 18 of Stuttgart even when they were 17th in the league, loaned to Lazio where he sits on bench. Meanwhile, he has already ruled out Frings months before the tournament, since then a further two DM players have been injured and will probably miss the WC, but he doesn't care.

His choices for strikers include Klose and Podolski who are out of form for months if not years (a combined four goals in the Bundesliga this season) while he ignores Kuranyi (17 goals) and Kießling (16 goals).

He also seems to have a propensity to nominate players who play at Stuttgart, the club where he was coach a few years ago.

Basically, he talks all the time about how current form matters for nominations and who'll play, but in practice that's not the case. I could mention quite a few more examples.

[Jax]

Podolski is a weird one because his club form is average but he scores left right and centre for Germany.

[Jax]

Rooney limped off against Bayern looks like he could of broken his foot again

[Jax]

Arsenal were just bent over and fucked by Messi for all the world to see . Walcott proves hes a suber sub not a full 90 minute player for either club or country for as long as he remains a winger. Looking at the runs he makes, just poor compare to Lennon who wants the ball more when he plays and is not afraid to run at players..Walcott seems only willing to run when its a break away and won't start one off like Lennon does for Spurs.

Also Messi is good but he would score a lot less against many PL teams due to the fact that we allow tackling in our league, the ref was conned a few times in the 1st half by Barca players.

Barca vs. Bayern final for me.

[V'ger]

exactly, i would rather have a fit lennon and ashley young.
rooney is ok, burst blood vessel in his ankle, gonna rest him agaisnt blackburn

[Iasius]

An update on the UEFA coefficient battle between Germany and Italy:



Germany is just .203 points behind Serie A right now.

Each country's teams get 2 points for each win, one point for a draw and 1 bonus point for reaching advancing to the next round. Those points are divided by the number of participants in the European leagues (CL+EL). Since the EL isn't quite as important, points are halved during the EL group stage and there are no bonus points for reaching the round of 32 in the EL.

The first three leagues get 3 teams directly into the CL and 1 into the CL qualification. The 4-6 countries get 2 teams directly into the CL and 1 qualification team.


Long story short: Germany's Bundesliga is very close to passing Italy in the five-year ranking UEFA uses to determine who gets how many CL/EL spots.



Serie A is .203 points ahead of the Bundesliga. Basically, Germany needs to score three additional points (say Bayern winning in Lyon and progressing to the final) if Inter loses in Barcelona and goes out. If they advance, things get more complicated depending on how they do it.

In any case, this season promises to be a fine battle between Serie A and the Bundesliga for 3rd place.

Next year, the results from 05/06 will be deleted and since Serie A scored 4.92 points more than the Bundesliga in that season, they'd have to do really well to retain their 3rd spot next year even if they don't lose it this year. I suppose Calciopoli really hurt Serie A here.

In any case, while I'm not particularly a fan of Bayern or HSV, I wish them good luck for the remaining games.

[Jax]

Team of the season time and am going to do a PL and World XI...

PL Team of the Season

Hart

Ivanovic
Dunne
Vermalean
A.Cole

Valencia
Milner
Fabregas
Malouda

Drogba
Rooney

World Team of the Season

Casillas

Maicon
Vermalean
Pique
A.Cole

Messi
Fabregas
Xavi
Ronaldo

Rooney
Drogba

[Roger Wilco]

Forza Inter! Well done.

[Jax]

^ He should get kicked in the bollocks for that

Well done to Fulham for reaching it to the final, I bet Zamora dosen't play until that date. However I wanted to talk about this...

UEFA how is it fair that Liverpool get 90 minutes for an away goal but A.Madrid get FUCKING 120 Minutes, what a total bullshit rule when did that come into effect

Madrid didn't score in the first 90 minutes the agg score was level, extra time should not have away goals in them its fucking stupid. How can UEFA bang on about fair play and all of that when there own rules are total bias to the team who are unlucky to be randomly drawn at home in the 2nd leg

FFS only UEFA could do that

[Roger Wilco]

That's the way it works in the European Cup since as far back as I can remember.
Playing the second leg at home has advantages and disadvantages, most people prefer it because you possibly have 30 more minutes of home support.
But that's exactly the problem with not scoring an away goal in the first leg, losing 1:0 is just quite terrible in the EC.

Btw. Atletico Madrid got into the finals by winning only two (2!) matches in the entire competition.

[HappyDayRiot]

Who cares so long as Liverpool got knocked out? Seriously though, they're hardly the first team to fall to the away goals rule. Thankfully I won't have to suffer any AG-inspired trauma in the playoffs. And anyway, maybe they won't have had to play extra time if Liverpool had more than more striker to score goals for them. That was something like their 10th must-win game of the season, and they'd lost the previous 9. People like to wax lyrical about United being a one-man team, but at least in Rooney's absence the others step up and get the job done more often than not. Liverpool without Torres are little short of diabolical this season.

Atletico have definitely got lucky if that's their record - Bayern had a shocking record as well, and they made the CL final. What a crazy season this has been.

Since I've last been here loads of ups and downs have been decided (including Chelsea being champions after last night - as if Liverpool are going to turn up on Sunday!), so the only burning issue now is: Forest, Cardiff, Leicester or Blackpool?

I know only one thing, and that's that it won't be Cardiff. I bought my season ticket this week after much agonising about timing/prices/leagues, so sod's law says it's another season in the 2nd tier even though we're going into the play-offs in excellent form. I can only dream!

Jax I agree with your team of the year. Put Roy Hodgson in charge and it could win every trophy going!