Football (real)

[JBlombier]

Well, that sucked...

[DiM]

one of the most boring matches of this season.

[Pirlo]

I think Atletico were too conservative... I believe they should have risked it in the final 15 minutes, at least to seize the opportunity of Petr Cech's absence, and he could be back next week. The way Atletico attacked wasn't great and it made it easier for the Blues defenders.

[nietzsche]

but now Chelsea HAS to win in Stamford Bridge.

I think it's still undecided. But without Cech, Lampard, Terry (I'm not sure if Hazard and Etoo will be ready), it's going to be hard, I think Atleti is still favourite even after today's tie.

[betiko]

i'd be surprised if the winner comes from this semi final. but i will be sporting whoever reaches the final, I have a bit of sympathy for both teams and I hate RM and bayern (although not as much as before lately, their players/directives are kind of alright this season)

[Pirlo]

Why Guardiola just can't learn from his past mistakes?

[betiko]

Why Guardiola just can't learn from his past mistakes?

humm... guardiola's past mistakes:

titles not won:

year 1: bollocks (6/6 titles)
year 2: lost the copa del rey AND lost the champion's league (2/4 titles)
year 3: lost the copa del rey!!! (5/6 titles)
year 4: lost the liga and the champions league! (1/3 titles)
year 5: lost the german supercup (3/4 titles, 2 still in play)

guardiola has not won a total of 6 trophies in his whole career, I guess out of all the coaches out there, he is definitely the one that needs to learn the most out of his mistakes!
joke aside, yeah, 70% posession and so little goal ocasions is ridiculous. I think I saw that only 3/13 shots were between the posts too. This is far from over though.

[Pirlo]

Why Guardiola just can't learn from his past mistakes?

humm... guardiola's past mistakes:

titles not won:

year 1: bollocks (6/6 titles)
year 2: lost the copa del rey AND lost the champion's league (2/4 titles)
year 3: lost the copa del rey!!! (5/6 titles)
year 4: lost the liga and the champions league! (1/3 titles)
year 5: lost the german supercup (3/4 titles, 2 still in play)

guardiola has not won a total of 6 trophies in his whole career, I guess out of all the coaches out there, he is definitely the one that needs to learn the most out of his mistakes!
joke aside, yeah, 70% posession and so little goal ocasions is ridiculous. I think I saw that only 3/13 shots were between the posts too. This is far from over though.

your perception is cool, but look deeper... His Barcelona included the most amazing stars, it's definitely not his fault that he got the best players in the world, but it would be ridiculous to let rookie mistakes lose you the Champions League over and over. know what sucks? when you repeat exactly the same mistakes over and over. He just seems to be overconfident and willing to demolish his opponents no matter if they got some tricks to stop him. Remind me why he had to be the attacking side in 2010 semi-finals against Inter when the game was in Italy. didn't he repeat the same risk in 2012 against Chelsea? and once again last night?

[nietzsche]

I like the score, 1-0.

Real Madrid had some chances to increase the advantage but, maybe it's better they didn't. They will play the other match as if it was tied. Real Madrid has to go to Germany to score at least 1.

[betiko]

Why Guardiola just can't learn from his past mistakes?

humm... guardiola's past mistakes:

titles not won:

year 1: bollocks (6/6 titles)
year 2: lost the copa del rey AND lost the champion's league (2/4 titles)
year 3: lost the copa del rey!!! (5/6 titles)
year 4: lost the liga and the champions league! (1/3 titles)
year 5: lost the german supercup (3/4 titles, 2 still in play)

guardiola has not won a total of 6 trophies in his whole career, I guess out of all the coaches out there, he is definitely the one that needs to learn the most out of his mistakes!
joke aside, yeah, 70% posession and so little goal ocasions is ridiculous. I think I saw that only 3/13 shots were between the posts too. This is far from over though.

your perception is cool, but look deeper... His Barcelona included the most amazing stars, it's definitely not his fault that he got the best players in the world, but it would be ridiculous to let rookie mistakes lose you the Champions League over and over. know what sucks? when you repeat exactly the same mistakes over and over. He just seems to be overconfident and willing to demolish his opponents no matter if they got some tricks to stop him. Remind me why he had to be the attacking side in 2010 semi-finals against Inter when the game was in Italy. didn't he repeat the same risk in 2012 against Chelsea? and once again last night?

well, so now his barcelona was just about the players and the game style he brought had no effect? you are telling me yourself that he had his own gamstyle...
were xavi, iniesta and messi half as good under rijkaard? messi was too young, agreed, but rijkaard had a top notch ronaldinho and a very decent thierry henry.

against the inter in 2010 in the home game, there was the volcano thing in iceland and all flights were cancelled. barcelona had to make the whole trip from barcelona to milan by bus on the last minute and didn't have the chance to train as they were supposed to before the game. 3-1 for inter,and in barcelona with 1-0 during almost all the game, the second one didn't arrive but it was very close, it was all about defending.

Against chelsea in 2012, barcelona failed a penalty and messi and company were just failing every single ocasion. that 2012 chelsea was probably the luckiest champion's league winner ever, being outplayed each round and "rolling 6s" all the time as a CCplayer would say.

the real question is: who'se bayern is more impressive, heynckes's or guardiola? answer is the german's, he played more vertical and direct and his team was more dangerous.
here is the thing: this year they won the league way too early and they are over relaxed, even getting but kicked by the borussia the other day. they are warned. now can they make it?

1-0 is very difficult to overcome, but there is definitely still a good chance for them. If they win 3-1 with 70% posession again what will you say?

[DiM]

i think it's wrong to judge the quality of a coach only by the trophies he won. barca and bayern are 2 of the best teams in the world. it's far easier to get results when you have fenomenal players. great coaches somehow manage to win against all odds. if simeone manages to win CL with atletico, it will be an amazing performance, similar to mourinho's porto back in 2000. if guardiola wins CL this year it will be just a normal/good performance. nothing spectacular or unexpected.


however this doesn't mean guardiola is not a great coach. he might very well be, it's just that he hasn't had the chance to train a smaller, weaker team.

as for mistakes, guardiola's biggest one is that he seems to be inflexible and sometimes incapable of quick reaction. other teams can go from a very defensive approach to a full blown all out attack tactic, all in the span of one game. you can see this at real madrid, or at chelsea and plenty of other teams. however the teams trained by guardiola start with one strategy and keep doing it at the same pace for the whole duration of the game. when it works they win with 5-0, when it doesn't work, you get the impression that they could keep playing for several more hours and still not score.

for example last evening bayern started the game with its defenders 40 meters from their own goal, retaining possession in the opponent's half and giving real huge spaces on the counterattack. why? because that what bayern does regardless if it's against real or hoffenheim. thing is this works wonders vs hoffenheim cause they suffocate in defence and end up conceding lots of goals but when the defence is very tight bayern seems to be very sterile and if that team is real and has perfect players for counters, then you're asking for trouble. and ancelotti knew this would happen. had bayern started a bit more defensively real wouldn't have caught them on the counter and furthermore real would have been forced to come out and attack thus exposing themselves.

as a personal note guardiola also is to blame for trying the same tiki-taka shit that he used at barcelona. in his first interview as bayern's coach he promised he will adapt to bayern's mentality and not change the system that jupp heynckes had in place. we can clearly see now that he changed his mind and that bayern has lost quite a lot of its magnificence, the play style is no longer eye-catching and in some games it's down-right boring.

i'm a bayern fan and i'll be one long after guardiola will be gone, but i have to say that regardless of how many trophies guardiola will win with bayern, i'll still prefer heynckes' style.

and since i'm also a real madrid fan i have to say that this result of 1-0 leaves the outcome wide-open. both bayern and real have 50/50 chances of going to the final. and my biggest regret is that this isn't the actual final. i would have preferred for real to meet chelsea and bayern to meet atletico and then see real-bayern in the final act. it's something i keep hoping for every year.

[Pirlo]

i think it's wrong to judge the quality of a coach only by the trophies he won. barca and bayern are 2 of the best teams in the world. it's far easier to get results when you have fenomenal players. great coaches somehow manage to win against all odds. if simeone manages to win CL with atletico, it will be an amazing performance, similar to mourinho's porto back in 2000. if guardiola wins CL this year it will be just a normal/good performance. nothing spectacular or unexpected.


however this doesn't mean guardiola is not a great coach. he might very well be, it's just that he hasn't had the chance to train a smaller, weaker team.

as for mistakes, guardiola's biggest one is that he seems to be inflexible and sometimes incapable of quick reaction. other teams can go from a very defensive approach to a full blown all out attack tactic, all in the span of one game. you can see this at real madrid, or at chelsea and plenty of other teams. however the teams trained by guardiola start with one strategy and keep doing it at the same pace for the whole duration of the game. when it works they win with 5-0, when it doesn't work, you get the impression that they could keep playing for several more hours and still not score.

for example last evening bayern started the game with its defenders 40 meters from their own goal, retaining possession in the opponent's half and giving real huge spaces on the counterattack. why? because that what bayern does regardless if it's against real or hoffenheim. thing is this works wonders vs hoffenheim cause they suffocate in defence and end up conceding lots of goals but when the defence is very tight bayern seems to be very sterile and if that team is real and has perfect players for counters, then you're asking for trouble. and ancelotti knew this would happen. had bayern started a bit more defensively real wouldn't have caught them on the counter and furthermore real would have been forced to come out and attack thus exposing themselves.

as a personal note guardiola also is to blame for trying the same tiki-taka shit that he used at barcelona. in his first interview as bayern's coach he promised he will adapt to bayern's mentality and not change the system that jupp heynckes had in place. we can clearly see now that he changed his mind and that bayern has lost quite a lot of its magnificence, the play style is no longer eye-catching and in some games it's down-right boring.

i'm a bayern fan and i'll be one long after guardiola will be gone, but i have to say that regardless of how many trophies guardiola will win with bayern, i'll still prefer heynckes' style.

and since i'm also a real madrid fan i have to say that this result of 1-0 leaves the outcome wide-open. both bayern and real have 50/50 chances of going to the final. and my biggest regret is that this isn't the actual final. i would have preferred for real to meet chelsea and bayern to meet atletico and then see real-bayern in the final act. it's something i keep hoping for every year.

Couldn't agree more..

and betiko... Yes blame the volcano all you want.. ofc it wasn't Guardiola's fault that a volcano hit in 2010, but it's definitely his fault to not take that into consideration. He tried to outplay Inter at Guiseppe Meazza, and he might have done, but conceded 3 goals. don't tell me how unlucky they were in the 2nd leg.. the same shit happened in 2012.. trying to outplay the hosts when he just could have waited for them to come out. Chelsea would have probably risked it in the 2nd half had the 1st half ended 0-0... last night's game felt like a deja vu

If you ask about Rikard's Barca, I thought they won the 2006 CL and dominated pretty much before Ronaldinho started to become a mess. that probably explains why Guardiola got rid of him once he arrived, which is a +1 for him.

[betiko]

and I don't agree. A coach that win tons of trophies is necesairly a good coach.
his job is to win, and we all know that a good team is not just a sum of good players. we all know how football is; and we've all seen enough football to give tons of examples of great teams on the paper that just didn't work out.

guardiola's choice isn't as easy as you guys are presenting it. joining the bayern last year was close to professional suicide; they had won everything. first thing guardiola does is to lose the german supercup (the lamest of all the titles in play); that team had won absolutely everything the year before, just like his 2009 barça and they are the only 2 teams in history to have achieved a "perfect" and he knew from the start that he wasn't going to do as good as heynkess.

Can you remind me the outcomes of the classicos while guardiola was head coach of the barça? If you are right that often, i see no reason to go on again and again.

and pirlo: if you want to be legendary and not just win, you try to do it with style; the 2009-11 barça will be remembered as the best team ever, probably.
Only a tactical genious and fantastic man leader such as mourinho stopped them.
in 2012 they wre burned out, it's a different story.

[Pirlo]

and I don't agree. A coach that win tons of trophies is necesairly a good coach.
his job is to win, and we all know that a good team is not just a sum of good players. we all know how football is; and we've all seen enough football to give tons of examples of great teams on the paper that just didn't work out.

guardiola's choice isn't as easy as you guys are presenting it. joining the bayern last year was close to professional suicide; they had won everything. first thing guardiola does is to lose the german supercup (the lamest of all the titles in play); that team had won absolutely everything the year before, just like his 2009 barça and they are the only 2 teams in history to have achieved a "perfect" and he knew from the start that he wasn't going to do as good as heynkess.

Can you remind me the outcomes of the classicos while guardiola was head coach of the barça? If you are right that often, i see no reason to go on again and again.

and pirlo: if you want to be legendary and not just win, you try to do it with style; the 2009-11 barça will be remembered as the best team ever, probably.
Only a tactical genious and fantastic man leader such as mourinho stopped them.
in 2012 they wre burned out, it's a different story.

I dun think DiM says he's not a good coach.. does he? I believe he means to say he's an overrated coach, I could be wrong though.

FYI, Guardiola agreed on joining Bayern in March or April 2013.. i.e. before Bayern had won everything. He probably wished they lost to Dortmund last May.. who knows!

You are right about it's hard to manage and select out of a galactic team, and this is the best aspect of Pep. He's great at handling the dressing room, but I believe he's relatively poor on the pitch, especially in the crucial moments when he needs to make a serious change but he'd rather stick to his classically predictable "tiki-taka" routine.

[DiM]

A coach that win tons of trophies is necesairly a good coach.

i don't think anybody said he's not a good coach. at least i didn't. what's questionable here is whether he's a great coach or not. so far, despite all his trophies i have my doubts. he has the same style regardless of team and he never changes tactics during a game regardless of score.

a great coach will get results with any team by employing different tactics according to the players that he has. a great coach will also know how to change his tactics during a game to conserve a result or to make a comeback.

imagine pep guardiola being handed a team like atletico madrid. do you really think he'd have any success with the same "pass the ball till the opponent dies of boredom" tactics? i seriously doubt it. he'd surely have to come up with something different. and so far he hasn't shown us that he knows anything else.
maybe after bayern he'll pick up an underdog with players that aren't suited for tiki-taka and he'll come up with something totally different and amaze the whole world. then there will be no doubt he's a great coach. but so far he's just good in my opinion.

[nietzsche]

If Barcelona's team of the last four years were the first one that I saw play when I was four years of age ... with their serenity, winning 5-0, 6-0 … I would have played tennis.

I agree with DiM and Pirlo.

[betiko]

i was typing a reply yesterday and it got erased with te stupid ipad..

right now just wanted to comment about villanova's death!
shocking, RIP; I don't know, I thought that someone this young and involved in sports was the kind of guy that could defeat cancer...... incredible to think that less than a year ago he was coaching barcelona...

side note: just heard about giggs beaing head coach of united today too... is this a few days old?

[Trevor33]

You mean you don't follow the news of the badge you're wearing?

Glad Moyes is gone.

And agree with the other guys regarding Pep, imo he can't be considered great until he builds a great team. Doubt he'll say at Bayern lost enough to do it either.

[nietzsche]

You mean you don't follow the news of the badge you're wearing?

Glad Moyes is gone.

And agree with the other guys regarding Pep, imo he can't be considered great until he builds a great team. Doubt he'll say at Bayern lost enough to do it either.

I really thought they were going to give him another year. Manchester UTD actually got a break with the team not qualifying for the Champions League next year, because then they could rid of the contract without paying Moyes too much.

[DiM]

i'm a united fan and despite not liking our current position and the way the team plays, i think sacking moyes was wrong. what's the point of sacking him with 4 more games to go till the end of season? couldn't they have waited for the season to end, then break the contract? weird.
SAF was great, he had been doing miracles with a rather poor lot of players (compared to other PL teams) but Moyes was clearly in over his head. main problem was he lost the locker room. i heard van gaal will come but i'm not sure if it's just a rumour or not. we'll see.

[betiko]

i'm a united fan and despite not liking our current position and the way the team plays, i think sacking moyes was wrong. what's the point of sacking him with 4 more games to go till the end of season? couldn't they have waited for the season to end, then break the contract? weird.
SAF was great, he had been doing miracles with a rather poor lot of players (compared to other PL teams) but Moyes was clearly in over his head. main problem was he lost the locker room. i heard van gaal will come but i'm not sure if it's just a rumour or not. we'll see.

Real madrid + man united + bayern munich fan.... (and steaua and ac milan right?)
I wonder what s the fun of picking the best historic club of each country and so blatantly suck on winners... Obviously unrelated to your history with the city, a crush, how they were founded, their fans, or any such thing. I can t possibly understand how a club that always wins and always has before you even heard of it for the first time can be remotely likeable Funny cause these are all the clubs i hate the most on this planet (+Sevilla fc). If they don t win anything for 15 years what?

the Funniest thing is that i m talking with 3 of these guys.

[DiM]

i'm a united fan and despite not liking our current position and the way the team plays, i think sacking moyes was wrong. what's the point of sacking him with 4 more games to go till the end of season? couldn't they have waited for the season to end, then break the contract? weird.
SAF was great, he had been doing miracles with a rather poor lot of players (compared to other PL teams) but Moyes was clearly in over his head. main problem was he lost the locker room. i heard van gaal will come but i'm not sure if it's just a rumour or not. we'll see.

Real madrid + man united + bayern munich fan.... (and steaua and ac milan right?)
I wonder what s the fun of picking the best historic club of each country and so blatantly suck on winners... Obviously unrelated to your history with the city, a crush, how they were founded, their fans, or any such thing. I can t possibly understand how a club that always wins and always has before you even heard of it for the first time can be remotely likeable Funny cause these are all the clubs i hate the most on this planet (+Sevilla fc). If they don t win anything for 15 years what?

the Funniest thing is that i m talking with 3 of these guys.

you forgot about olympique de marseille

must i have a history with the city to root for a certain club? if this was the case, there would be no international fans, right?

i started watching international football in 1990. before the revolution in december 89 it was really hard to get footage of teams from outside the country. so basically 1990 and the coppa del mondo hosted that year by italy were the starting point for my international football experiences. there were players that i saw and fell in love with (for example jean pierre papin) so i automatically started looking at their team's games and step by step i started rooting for them.

also if you know your football you'll notice that the teams i'm rooting for weren't and some still aren't the best in their leagues.

for example back in 1990 man united had just 7 titles and the last one they had won, dated back to 1967. liverpool had 18 titles so if you were correct about me picking the best teams then i should have chosen liverpool, right? they were the reigning champions for that year.

or ac milan. back in 1990 juventus had the most titles, and even now juventus still does.

marseille didn't have the most trophies either.

[betiko]

hey, note how you never said anything about AC milan, or (steaua), I just guessed those so your excuses are not valid! :p
No one knew how many titles had each team in those days, too young and no internet; the champion's league, the UEFA cup and the cup winner's cup were the the only open windows to international football. AC milan was the best team of those years so obviously you were sporting them and not the juve.
Ok, I must admit that being a man united fan in 1990 was not the same thing, as liverpool was the best (and everton probably the second best??). Question is were you really a man united fan in 1990 or more around 1994? lol
I didn't follow at all EPL at the time, it just became popular around me when Cantona then Ginola started playing there.

regarding Marseille: I'm an OM fan myself, but i wasn't too much into it in the glory days (90-93) when we were the best team in europe along with AC Milan. Marseille is my hometown, but I started really supporting them when they got sent to second division after the 93 scandal (wasn't too much into football, liked more NBA until then). And maybe Saint Etienne had more domestic titles than marseille (and still has) but you can't possibly compare what saint etienne and marseille were in those days. The legendary Saint Etienne died in the late 70s early 80s and unless I'm wrong you never witnessed it. The club has been running after it's past glory ever since, they only won a french league cup last year which was their first trophy in over 30 years.

So more interesting: how was steaua's champion's league title celebrated under ceucescu back in the days? did he turn that into a political event? (can't remember exactly but it was between 86 and 88 correct?)

[DiM]

does it really matter how or why i became a fan of a certain team 24 years ago? does it make me less of a fan if i fell in love in a team when it was in its glory days? should i be a bragging snob if i chose to root for an underdog?
i think the most important thing is that for 24 years i've been supporting that team regardless of how many titles they managed to grab. take OM for example. i started rooting for them cause i liked papin and soon after they were relegated for match-fixing and a dark period begun. i had to wait almost 2 decades for them to win the french league again. plenty of opportunities for me to start liking another team and yet i didn't so your argument that i chose only the best teams is invalidated for a second time.

as for steaua's success it surely was a political success. anything back then was political. they won champions cup (currently champions league) back in 86, followed by the supercup. then in 88 they reached the semifinal and in 89 they were trashed in the final by ac milan with a whopping 4-0. that was the year i first saw the dutch trio from ac milan and i was mesmerized. i didn't even see it live, i saw it on a vhs tape that my dad brought one day and we played it on a crappy vcr at a reasonably low volume so that the neighbours wouldn't hear us and rat us out to the police. fun stuff.
according to you after falling in love with ac milan's dutch trio i should have said: "f*ck them, they play awesome, in fact they play so awesome i should start hating them and root for an unknown team. i know, i'll hate ac milan and become a sassuolo fan"

[Trevor33]

i'm a united fan and despite not liking our current position and the way the team plays, i think sacking moyes was wrong. but Moyes was clearly in over his head. main problem was he lost the locker room.

Read that again and tell why it was wrong to sack him? I've been saying from day 1 it was the wrong appointment... Moyes has won nothing in his career, he is a decent coach who will get a job again at Villa and make them a mid table team again but nothing more.