** European League Thread (Spain/Germany/France etc) **

Pigeon_Killer said:
This sentence says everything anyone needs to know about your knowledge and opinion of players, clueless and not worth reading.



UEFA European Under-17 Football Championship Golden Player: 2006
UEFA European Under-17 Football Championship Top Scorer: 2006
2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup Golden Ball
2007 FIFA U-17 World Cup Bronze Shoe
Fritz-Walter-Medal 2008 in Gold (Category U18)
Bundesliga Team of the Season: 2009–10, 2011–12
FIFA World Cup All-Star Team: 2014
FIFA World Cup Dream Team: 2014
FIFA World Cup top assists: 2014
UEFA Champions League Team of the Season: 2013–14
Silbernes Lorbeerblatt: 2014
UEFA Team of the Year: 2014
FIFA/FIFPro World XI: 2014
IFFHS World's Best Playmaker: 2014

Just highlighted the individual awards he's won over the course of a season but you get the picture.

Imagine what Bayern and Germany could've achieved with a player that actually contributed to the team :eek:
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David Luiz got into TOTY. Just let that sink in.
 
Kroos, another master class on show from him against Juve, dominated in midfield, won the ball, made thinks click, he was simply brilliant.... oh wait, no that was him not tracking runners, doing incredibly little work, making 5-10 yard passes anyone else could, providing little. There were specific points where Juve were counter attacking you could see him first miss the run he should track, then spot the player up his speed for a few yards then give up.. on at least one occasion Kroos doing that should have resulted in another goal for the guy he ignored but the cross was terrible.

Player of the year lists, individual awards in general, they are laughable. Rather than talk about his actual performance(s) and discuss points, maybe highlight some things he actually did during the game that helped the team..... you brought up random lists that mean nothing.

Be in a big team(and MANY players end up in such a situation without too much merit, some with no merit at all) and you WILL receive individual and team awards because of who you play with. You can also receive some you do deserve, in Kroos's case, largely undeserved.

He can pass well, he has talent, he just has Ozil style "someone else can do that" attitude, which makes him a waste of space. Imagine if Busquets just believed he was too good and stopped bothering to defend, regardless of how he COULD perform, he would be a waste of space because of how he actually was currently performing. It doesn't matter if Kroos had a great game last year, 5 years ago, or was the best player in the world, this year he's been crap, offered little and takes up a spot on the pitch where other players would offer a hell of a lot more.
 
Madrid getting beats from Valencia. Ronaldo just missed a penalty. Bale has looked good.

I know that Ronaldo has scored a lot of goals again this season but whenever I have seen him play this year he has been poor. The quality of players around him and the fact that he is a selfish **** must have a massive part to play in his stats.

Personally I think Madrid would do better if they weren't set up as a Ronaldo feeding machine.
 
He isn't selfish, he's the highest assister in the team. He does get more chances and takes more shots, that is how football works. Someone is the designated goal scorer, normally the best scorer, and the chances are made for them, welcome to football.

As for getting beats, it's almost insane that Real aren't thrashing Valencia, they've hit the woodwork 4 times and had so many chances, shots, being incredibly close to a goal over and over again. Valencia's first goal was entirely against the run of play, the second was from a set piece. Of course, Bale did a really nasty elbow in a guys back, clearly on purpose... could have been a red for the recklessness/dangerous nature of it IMHO but the ref didn't really see the intent.
 
Certainly lost his freekick mojo, but then most people don't score from them often. Honestly, still worth him taking them, same way every power punch takes a little out of a boxer.... Ronaldo's helping by hurting the guys in the wall :p

Another header that should have been a goal. 19-20 shots I think, 4 hit the woodwork, plenty of exceptionally good chances and the penalty. How they are losing this I don't know. Valencia aren't bad but Real should have scored 4 or 5 of the chances they've had so far.


EDIT:- did anyone else completely forget that Pepe Reina was at Bayern? He got sent off today and Bayern lost again. WHy on earth did he go there, of all the clubs in the world you wouldn't go to if you actually wanted games or a chance to start, Bayern has got to be the stupidest choice possible.
 
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So if the last two rounds of La Liga are suspended, what does this mean for the league? Does this effectively end the season and the table is taken as it stands? Or will the rounds be played at a later date once everything has been resolved?
 
drunkenmaster said:
Certainly lost his freekick mojo, but then most people don't score from them often. Honestly, still worth him taking them, same way every power punch takes a little out of a boxer.... Ronaldo's helping by hurting the guys in the wall :p

Another header that should have been a goal. 19-20 shots I think, 4 hit the woodwork, plenty of exceptionally good chances and the penalty. How they are losing this I don't know. Valencia aren't bad but Real should have scored 4 or 5 of the chances they've had so far.


EDIT:- did anyone else completely forget that Pepe Reina was at Bayern? He got sent off today and Bayern lost again. WHy on earth did he go there, of all the clubs in the world you wouldn't go to if you actually wanted games or a chance to start, Bayern has got to be the stupidest choice possible.
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Surely Reina went there only because of Pep?
 
Milan lost 3-2 away to Sassuolo, Milan came back from 2-0 down before conceding one and having two men sent off, oops.

Milan under Inzaghi have 46 points, the most they can get now is 52 which would only take them 8th and only if they improved their GD by 10. So 9th is their realistic maximum now. 3 points behind 9th, 6 points behind 8th and only 5 points ahead of 16th. Everyone down to 16th(who also have a game in hand) could get by Milan before the season finishes.

Terrible season for them, again it's worth pointing out, first half of season last year 22 points, manager gets fired, Seedorf takes the second half of the season and gets 35 points for 57 total. INzaghi now can't beat that total even though the first half of the season as a complete disaster.

Seedorf masterminded an awesome turn around, Inzaghi has only been marginally(very) than the guy they fired before Seedorf. Getting rid of Seedorf was a monumental mistake.
 
Honestly, I genuinely believe it's at least partially a race issue. Seedorf was deemed best option short term... but long term they preferred other options. They could obviously have let Inzaghi take over originally instead of Seedorf but I think Inzaghi is Mr AC Milan and they probably thought with a terrible first half of the season the best anyone could achieve is an average start and maybe didn't want to tarnish Inzaghi with that. I think they felt like Seedorf was going to be a scapegoat but who the players would probably respect and somewhat improve their season with. Berlusconi and several others in/around the board fairly frequently say racist things.

AS for personnel, it makes it hard to compare. Though Inzaghi has had 16 goal 4 assist Menez that Seedorf didn't have. When you look at Menez's goals and assists, almost every goal was crucial to their wins and draws. He's been fantastic for them, without him I suspect they would have been utterly screwed.

In terms of who left, you would see a list of those who left this year you could only even attempt to say two players went to bigger clubs. In most situations you could say bigger clubs took their best players, but in this case those two players are Torres and Balotelli, Milan were looking to get rid of both and got good money. They replaced them with Menez who has been great and Destro in January who was getting decent interest around Europe.

http://www.worldfootball.net/teams/ac-milan/2015/6/

I would say in general they improved in several areas, they have some injuries but I'm sure the team had injuries last year as well.
 
Barca champions. Real had a good game though one stupid goal and one late consolation made it look closer than it was. A 7th league hat-trick in one season for Ronaldo, assist as well and created another chance that Marcelo headed in a hilarious/ridiculous manor.

They needed Barcelona to not win though, one moment of magic from Messi, a goal and the title was decided.

Sociedad are getting ' Moyes'd ', more and more boring, got spanked by Granada. One win in the past 9 games, 4 draws, 5 losses. His record is in general very poor. Sociedad have a very good basic team, losing Griezmann was a huge blow without buying a decent striker and Vela being injured pretty much all year on and off. Even so, they just aren't attacking and that was their strength. Moyes keeps trying to hang on to games and failing. Improvement over the last manager but he was abysmal, he took over early enough that he should have seen them pushing for a Europa league spot this season, if not getting one, instead they are bottom half and not playing well. Seems intent on bringing in English players for the fight and defensive heart he thinks the team needs. In Spain it won't work, he's destroying the attacking mentality and wants to bring in players to suit his style rather than adapt to suit the team/fans/clubs style... as expected. Hope he gets told to shove off in the summer. Bring in an attacking manager, a couple of strikers and push to win games again.
 
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drunkenmaster said:
Barca champions. Real had a good game though one stupid goal and one late consolation made it look closer than it was. A 7th league hat-trick in one season for Ronaldo, assist as well and created another chance that Marcelo headed in a hilarious/ridiculous manor.

They needed Barcelona to not win though, one moment of magic from Messi, a goal and the title was decided.

Sociedad are getting ' Moyes'd ', more and more boring, got spanked by Granada. One win in the past 9 games, 4 draws, 5 losses. His record is in general very poor. Sociedad have a very good basic team, losing Griezmann was a huge blow without buying a decent striker and Vela being injured pretty much all year on and off. Even so, they just aren't attacking and that was their strength. Moyes keeps trying to hang on to games and failing. Improvement over the last manager but he was abysmal, he took over early enough that he should have seen them pushing for a Europa league spot this season, if not getting one, instead they are bottom half and not playing well. Seems intent on bringing in English players for the fight and defensive heart he thinks the team needs. In Spain it won't work, he's destroying the attacking mentality and wants to bring in players to suit his style rather than adapt to suit the team/fans/clubs style... as expected. Hope he gets told to shove off in the summer. Bring in an attacking manager, a couple of strikers and push to win games again.
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Agree with this, mostly anyway. Moyes is an inherently defensive manager and has hurt Sociedad because of it. They used to attack with pace and power but they're a shadow of the team they used to be. Griezmann leaving and Vela being injured has been particularly bad for them. La Liga is full of great attacking players and also full of merely good defenders in most squads with some awful ones in there too. Sociedad should be pushing for Europa league and top half of the league every season.
 
Yup, ultimately what Sociedad need is, a fit Vela for the season and to be looking for very attack minded, fluid, technical Spanish/German/Dutch attackers. If Moyes tries to bring in the workhorse type english players he's rumoured to be looking at he'll utterly destroy the team.

I also somewhat think Moyes is responsible for Vela, he had a situation rather similar to RVP at Utd. Where he was rushed back in for the short term emergency fix when clearly not recovered from his injury, he then played him far too long and had him miss another bunch of games. That was after I believe also playing him when he only had a slight niggle in the first place. He has a habit of mismanaging injuries and focusing on near term results over the right decision for the long term.

As a huge fan of the way Vela plays it was sad to see him miss so much of this season and it will be a huge shame if his reputation goes down as a result of getting stuck at Sociedad under Moyes. Two or even three seasons in a row he was voted in the top three attackers in la liga, ahead of Ozil, Di Maria and Griezmann, amongst many others. He till this season had 13-16 goals and 10-11 assists or something per season, noticeably above Griezmann. I honestly think if he went to Athletico he would have done exactly as well as Griezmann. Just bad timing really, he got stuck at Arsenal for years, only got that final deal away from Arsenal maybe last summer(he transferred before but there was some clause, it was effectively a loan and they paid something like 8-9mil more to make it a fully fledged transfer). So he didn't have the option of leaving this year which in terms of career would certainly have been best for him.

Like I said for Sociedad and Vela, not to mention a few other players, their best option is to get shot of Moyes this summer and bring in a manager with the right mentality. it's actually a shame, Sociedad is the kind of club that would have been perfect for Martinez instead last summer. LIke Enrique doing a great job at a lower club in La Liga really would be a good stepping stone to a Barca job in the future. Martinez, La Liga and Sociedad would have probably been a match made in heaven.
 
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