Football (real)

[betiko]

It's la liga... if you're going to write league in Spanish also write the in Spanish.

Agree with you though.... great to see BARCE win nothing.

Technically it s the Liga BBVA but I don't call the EPL the barclay's premier league.

What does Barce mean by the way? I don't understand.

[betiko]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxITbYGCbE

How the crap is it even possible? Something wrong with the grass? The ball takes a curve, bartra follows the curve but it ends up going straight and bale goes straight where the ball goes. I think it s the whole secret of this. Otherwise it looks like bale covers 50% more distance and still arrives first, it s just nuts!

[Trevor33]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxITbYGCbE

How the crap is it even possible? Something wrong with the grass? The ball takes a curve, bartra follows the curve but it ends up going straight and bale goes straight where the ball goes. I think it s the whole secret of this. Otherwise it looks like bale covers 50% more distance and still arrives first, it s just nuts!

The ball does curve but you have to consider the fact that Bale had started accelerating long before the defender, plus Bale is just faster anyway but getting a head start makes it look even worse or better whatever way you look at it.

BTW Barce is nothing, I prefer it to Barca and it annoys you so win win.

[Pirlo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxITbYGCbE

How the crap is it even possible? Something wrong with the grass? The ball takes a curve, bartra follows the curve but it ends up going straight and bale goes straight where the ball goes. I think it s the whole secret of this. Otherwise it looks like bale covers 50% more distance and still arrives first, it s just nuts!

The ball does curve but you have to consider the fact that Bale had started accelerating long before the defender, plus Bale is just faster anyway but getting a head start makes it look even worse or better whatever way you look at it.

BTW Barce is nothing, I prefer it to Barca and it annoys you so win win.

Barca are just paying the price of having a shitty management. That what happens when you buy no center defenders and expect a young guy to stop a highly-rated winger. If that Bartra guy had some experience, he'd have know better than trying to keep pace with someone like Bale. Hasn't he ever heard of making a tactical foul to stop a dangerous counter-attack? Just my two cents.

[nietzsche]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXxITbYGCbE

How the crap is it even possible? Something wrong with the grass? The ball takes a curve, bartra follows the curve but it ends up going straight and bale goes straight where the ball goes. I think it s the whole secret of this. Otherwise it looks like bale covers 50% more distance and still arrives first, it s just nuts!

Did you ever play football?

Bale gives the ball that effect, by kicking it with .. uhm.. English suck.. the inside part of the left shoe.. a quick kick, the ball takes an effect, and is always touching the grass. When the ball loses strength gravity moves it a bit towards the line because football fields have that fall so that rain doesn't stay in the middle. The effect is minimum btw, he's aware of the fall.

But basically Bale gives that effect to the ball, most likely because if he kicks it any other way from the position he is and with the quickness he wants, the ball goes out.

Why are we talking about the ball anyway? Did you see Bale's acceleration?

[betiko]

i'm looking at it over and over and I still can't figure how he can outrun bartra this bad! bartra had to be completely out of shape and unable to run anymore. I mean even if you are hussain bolt vs any given sprinter, pushing a ball, if you outrun the gun this bad it's because he has a problem. but bartra sucks anway.
incredible goal by bale, of course, but it could ve only worked against a player with an empty gas tank.


taco; it looks like ochoa has very good chances to be marseille's keeper next year; and marcelo bielsa will most likely be our coach. I don't know what to think about all this.

[nietzsche]

I say Atletico de Madrid and Real Madrid advance to the final.

What do you guys think?

[iAmCaffeine]

Agreed, and I was right about all the semi-finals. RM to win.

[Trevor33]

Bye bye Moyes

[JBlombier]

Can't wait for the match to start. I think Atletico will win by at least two goals tonight. We'll see... in a few minutes!

[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.