2012/13 Soccer Thread

davet010 wrote:

Wouldn't want to play the Russians - although oddly enough the striker doesn't look great. The breaking midfielders are quality though, and even Arshavin seems to have the motivation toggle switched to 'on' for a change.

I'm half-watching because of exam tomorrow. They're great, but seems like this offensive midfield can be found out by solid team. But yeah, they look likely to obliterate Poland and Greece.

I'd like to hear Seedorf, maybe I should switch.

carrotpanic wrote:

Wow, try that hyperbole on for size.

Maybe...

Haha, I just remember very underwhelming matches.

bigred wrote:
carrotpanic wrote:

Wow, try that hyperbole on for size.

Maybe...

Haha, I just remember very underwhelming matches.

US/Algeria lit my fire

carrotpanic wrote:
bigred wrote:
carrotpanic wrote:

Wow, try that hyperbole on for size.

Maybe...

Haha, I just remember very underwhelming matches.

US/Algeria lit my fire :)

Touche, salesman. The ol Donovan tap in.

Yeah, best thing about Euro is that it has (had) 16 teams. On paper Poland - Greece is probably the worst fixture of the tournament and within four first days you have Portugal - Germany, Spain - Italy, England - France. Amazing!

Yowza. 3-1 and 4-1. Could have been 8-1 at this point if Kerzjakov hadn't been skeet shooting.

dejanzie wrote:

Yowza. 3-1 and 4-1. Could have been 8-1 at this point if Kerzjakov hadn't been skeet shooting.

10p says Pavluychenko starts next game. Kerchakov made Samaras look like Lionel Messi. That Dzagoev chap looks quite useful. But I agree with UCRC, they look too predictable and tried coasting along when it was 2-0, a better team than the Czechs would have found them out.

UCRC wrote:

Yeah, best thing about Euro is that it has (had) 16 teams. On paper Poland - Greece is probably the worst fixture of the tournament and within four first days you have Portugal - Germany, Spain - Italy, England - France. Amazing!

And of course, the Gallic Gonk is ruining it for France 16 by banging it up to 24 teams. Can't let that opportunity to make more money get away, and f**k the quality. Just like the World Cup.

Banner of the day.

IMAGE(https://p.twimg.com/Au4ZMJmCAAAW58v.jpg)

Dzagoev is great, but like I said, I see him and Arshavin not tracking back as a potential problem later in the tournament.

I'm hoping that Russia thrashes Greece, beats us 1-0 and we go out of the group with 4 points on goal difference

I didn't pay close attention to the second half but in the first half I though Arshavin tracked back fairly well and Dzagoev did okay. I didn't notice the Czech Republic's fullbacks bombing forward all that often. Second half it reminded me of wingers never tracking back in a 4-2-3-1 in FM11. When Dzagoev did track back he didn't really know what to do. It reminded me of Ben Arfa defending.

Ok, Denmark just ruined my score. We got 61 people participating, about 80 dollars a pop, so the first price is quite a bit of money, and hit yesterday's both matches, even got the actual score right on Poland-Greece 1-1, was at 6pts while everyone else was treading at 4...and now this happens. What the hell?

I'm sure there's people who have no idea about the sport, and they just put Denmark up just for the hell of it. I also put 2-1 up Germany. Hope there's no more surprising upsets like today's match with Netherlands...I'm still shocked...

Hmm, that was a turn-up for the books. Holland seemed more like a collection of individuals than a team, but both van Persie and Huntelaar missed chances that they would stick away most weeks. Robben was both greedy and wasteful, as usual.

Problem for the Dutch now is that Denmark would have been their three point banker in that group. Their defence looked very suspect, and they will get more of a testing from Germany and Portugal. Denmark's defence, on the other hand, was excellent.

Germany 1-0 over Portugal. Germany efficient but not too exciting (is it me, or has Thomas Muller not progressed at all in the last 2 years ?), Portugal had good names on paper but created almost nothing until the last 20 minutes, when they could well have nicked a draw. Lack of ambition cost them, I think.

City target watch....Mats Hummels. Yes please.

Germans looked average when it came to execution, but tactically they were spot-on and now I see them as contenders. Podolski and Muller drifting really wide and then into the box confused Portuguese and I think that if they can up their game individually they will be the strongest attacking team in the tournament (although maybe I should reserve that until I see Spain, right?). Teamwork and mutual understanding is there already and that's always nice to see.

Didn't catch the Holland game, how did that happen?

UCRC wrote:

Didn't catch the Holland game, how did that happen?

Holland gonna Holland, i'm afraid.

Watch, Spain-ITaly's going to be a 0-0 dead rubber.

UCRC wrote:

Germans looked average when it came to execution, but tactically they were spot-on and now I see them as contenders. Podolski and Muller drifting really wide and then into the box confused Portuguese and I think that if they can up their game individually they will be the strongest attacking team in the tournament (although maybe I should reserve that until I see Spain, right?). Teamwork and mutual understanding is there already and that's always nice to see.

Didn't catch the Holland game, how did that happen?

See detailed analysis above

Holland played with the same formation as Man City (wait, don't go yet...) but with one crucial difference - you can't play 2 holding midfielders who are as slow as each other. The Dutch had both van Bommel and NDJ receiving the ball, short passing and slowing down the tempo (but not joining the forward rush), whereas even City no longer tend to play Barry and NDJ together, but have Barry always anchoring while Yaya Toure has licence to push on a bit and join in the attack if possible.

I'm thinking that Holland may drop 1 deep midfielder and have Huntelaar up front with van Persie, certainly against Portugal. I'm also thinking that Afellay might not start against Germany, as he clearly wasn't fit. They'll stick a speed player on the left because Boateng is even less an international class RB than he is an international class CB, and if you are beaten out of a spot by Badstuber, then you are clearly not very good.

Germany wasn't as crisp as I expected and Portugal had some very good chances to tie if not win. I am hoping Joachim gets them more focused going forward as they have another tough opponent in a motivated Netherlands team.

Di Natale, nice. Watch and learn, Balotelli! Also, nice post-goal Seven Nation Army tune, just like jowner wanted. Atmosphere in the stands also seems to be cracking.

edit: Oh, wait, 1-1

@dave, I think Holland has to drop de jong and put Huntellear up top with RvP. They essentially played with 6 defenders and left the 4 attacking players to attempt crosses to 1 man in the box surrounded by 7 defenders. It was a pretty terrible attacking effort if you ask me. Once they had Van Der Vaart and Huntellear in they had a much more cohesive attack. Unfortunately, Huntelear's one huge chance was right when he walked onto the field and he wasn't completely ready to chip it over goalie. Robben was a waste and if I were the Dutch, I'd rather have a workhorse like Kuyt running on that wing.

I haven't watched the Dutch play in qualifying but I know they were very successful in qualifying. Were they just overpowering teams with their skilled individuals up top? I don't see how they could possibly hope to beat the Germans with only 4 attackers.

It's at the same time sad and perversely pleasant to watch Torres f*ck up things time after time.

Both sides looked vulnerable. Spain actually created relatively little against a defence with a brand new LB and a DM playing at CB, and often it was the Spanish who looked shakiest at the back...quite why Piqué is in the team is beyond me, though to be fair if I knew that when I went home I was going to see Shakira in her smalls, I wouldn't be totally focused on football either.

City target watch.

De Rossi - yes, but at DM.
Thiago Motta - Jury still out.

Ireland 1 Croatia 3 - that's 2 hours of my life I won't get back. Definitely the worst teams I have seen so far.

Croatia have two or three good players with some fairly run of the mill back up, Ireland seem to be entirely composed of Premiership and Championship players who belong to second rate clubs for one simple reason - they are not very good. Any back four that contains a Championship player (St. Ledger), a Man U castoff out of position (O'Shea) and the Premiership record holder HMS Dunne (his record being 'most own goals scored in the history of the Premiership') is not going to do well.

Having said that, they do look like the sort of side that will get a result against either Italy or Spain simply by hanging around and being annoying. Might bang a tenner on them getting a 1-0 over Italy.

Slaven Bilic. Anyone ever seen him and this guy in the same room ?

IMAGE(http://trialx.com/curetalk/wp-content/blogs.dir/7/files/2011/05/cities/Kurgan-2.jpg)

To me Croatians looked quite good, but it's hard to gauge how well they can do against serious opposition because Ireland is clearly the worst team of Euros so far.

UCRC wrote:

To me Croatians looked quite good, but it's hard to gauge how well they can do against serious opposition because Ireland is clearly the worst team of Euros so far.

True, but Ireland could quite easily have had a draw out of that - ref missed a clear penalty for them, and they had a few balls pinball around the Croatia box.

Caught the last 20 min of France vs England.

ZzzZzzZzz.

England 1 France 1

Very similar to Italy v Spain..one team more skilful but tapping it about a bit too much, the other more compact and well organised, creating relatively little but in some way the clearer chances.

Don't like the look of the French CB's - wouldn't want to go into an important game having to rely on Mexes.

Didn't think much of Young and Welbeck. Neither of them could hold the ball up, so any clearance tended to come straight back. Loath as I am to suggest it, I'd consider Andy Carroll upfront.

Apparently Jordan Henderson came on. You'd have got the same impact by throwing an empty shirt on.

Fair do's to Ribery..he's as much of a diving cheat in a France shirt as he is when turning out for FC Arrogant Swine. Johnson brushed his face and you'd have thought he'd been punched in the face with a brass knuckle.

I say remove Young and put Carroll up there. They needed to bring Walcott in around the 75th minute to introduce some pace on a tired defense.

Pikey26 wrote:

Caught the last 20 min of France vs England.

ZzzZzzZzz.

I hope for your sake you aren't watching Ukraine vs Sweden....it makes the SPL look like El Classico.

EDIT - And then of course, it got massively more exciting in the second half. Two goals from Shevchenko, helped enormously by Sweden's defenders - the first one saw 4 Swedish defenders and him in the box, and yet he gets in front of the defender.

Both teams look as though England and France should do them over, but they have to take care of Shevchenko and Ibrahimovich. Both goalkeepers looked very poor (and Isaakson IS very poor, I've seen Middlesbrough slam 8 past him playing for City).

Here's the rub though - England now want France to do Ukraine in the next game. There's no way England want to be playing the Ukraine in the last game if both teams have got a chance of going through, because the atmosphere alone will crush them.

davet010 wrote:

Very similar to Italy v Spain

NO