Fine, I shall do it. I was wrong, the English teams are indeed rather likely to do well. A few points I find interesting…
Is it meaningful for a team to do well when it has virtually no local players? United had two English players, Liverpool had one, Inter had one Italian etc. If England is simply the wealthy cosmopolitan country where all the foreigners come to play football (or Italy if Inter were doing well, as it was in the past), is there any reason to care that they do well?
Could Germany be next up to dominate (again)? The economic situation in Britain seems rather dire whereas Germany are probably best placed (hardly great but still). They have fantastic crowds also.
Does anyone actually enjoy these matches? I found the Inter game pretty mediocre, and the Madrid game was absolutely awful. Both teams were giving possession away like candy, it was painful to see. Are players seriously that nervous? All the teams so far play much, much better domestically, perhaps barring United.
ETA: Dead Cat, I wrote that after seeing the teamsheets, before the game. Fletcher+Carrick+Park+Berbatov alone looks pretty defensive, no? Throw in how they played against Barcelona and it’s the obvious conclusion. I remember the Guardian live match blog thing calling their formation 10-0-0 Obviously they didn’t play like that, but I think it was reasonable to think they would with that lineup.
It was meant lightheartedly. And to answer you, yes it does still matter. Most of us are fans of the club, not the player. That’s why when our favorite player gets transfered we have no problem heaping abuse on him. Take that Dwight Yorke, you Judas bastard.
For a lot of us too, I imagine club is more important than country. I’d take Villa winning the Premier League over England winning the World Cup, I think. Mainly because there would be bound to be one or two United players on the England team at that time.
A goal ratio of 0.75 per game? A searing indictment of Premiership quality, methinks. Ah, but I’m too classy to gloat.
No wait, I’m not. Ha.
For “musing” read “finding a brand new reason to knock UK football because it turns out I was wrong and it isn’t really shit.”
Ah, we loves yer really. Got to admire this sort of singlemindedness.
Mind you, though, the mighty 'Pool do at least have two dyed-in-the-wool Liverpudlians in Gerrard and Carra. I know Henry is from Barcelona, France, and Messi is from Barcelona, Argentina, but are the rest of their team similarly native like these exemplars?
I don’t want to sound like an apologist but Man U do have a fair amount of English players who would, if fit, make it to the first team. I’m not about to claim that someone like Wes Brown deserves to be in the first team but Neville, Hargreaves, Carrick, Rooney, Rio and Scholes are all first team players.
Back not too many years ago, the knock on the EPL was that it didn’t have enough foreign players, so it seemed to much a hustle and bustle game with a lot of vertical movement and not much creativity. Now it’s being bashed for not being English enough?
I found it QUITE entertaining during the weekend to watch the Bolton v. West Ham game, where the Hammers were attempting to impose a very Italian/South American passing game, slow in tempo, while the Wanderers were attempting to impose a much faster-paced game. All this in a mid-to-bottom of table clash with relegation implications. This shows to me that the EPL has grown up. And it’s not like the EPL was the home of the first club to try and dominate through buying up all the top talent.
Discordia, you seem unable to accept that a lack of connectedness in play by a team is the result of anything but ineptness. On the contrary; I think it is one of the surer demonstrations of proper defensive play by an opponent. I can recall back, oh, some 17 or so years ago watching the USA national team play a friendly at Stanford Stadium against the Russian national team. It ended up a pretty sterile 0-0 draw, but one of the things that impressed me at the time was that the Russian defense always seemed to be able to upset the timing of what the USA was doing. Later, when I watched the World Cup matches at the same stadium in 1994, this theme continued to surface. Russia whipped up on the Cameroon national team, which never got into ANY rhythm, and at the same time, couldn’t disrupt the Russian offense at all (result was something like 6-1 IIRC). That same Russian team against Brazil in the group opener was unable to do anything of the sort, as the Brazilian defense simply broke up the Russian efforts time and time again (Brazil 2 - 0 Russia). Was the Russian team inept? No, as demonstrated by their result against Cameroon. But teams with good defensive play make you look bad on offense, by making it harder to do the things that, when your offense is clicking, keep it going.
So maybe it wasn’t that Inter were so inept. Maybe it’s just that Manchester United has good defensive play from the top on down?
I specifically included Inter to indicate I was making a general point, not just slagging the English teams. Overall I’d say Liverpool, Chelsea, Inter, and Madrid are all dreadful at nurturing local talent. I’m certainly not just talking about the English teams.
Barcelona have Puyol, Pique, Valdes, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets off the top of my head, all from their youth team. Messi moved to Barcelona at 11, which is what many of the usual “youth team products” that get mentioned do. Beckham, for example, is usually given as a United youth product, and he joined at 14.
MJinks, yes, United are probably the best of the English top 4 when it comes to nurturing local talent, and I have no problem with them claiming Giggs, just as Barcelona should be able to claim Messi. It’s not about where they were born, but who developed them from a raw kid into a world class talent.
DSYoungEsq, I wasn’t criticising English teams, that’s why I included Inter. It’s just something I was wondering as I noticed how few local (either nationality or product of youth system) players were actually playing. Liverpool/Madrid/Inter/United all had rather few local products.
As for the defensive issue, Inter in the first half (and Madrid in the whole game) were bad. They were making schoolboy errors. I’ve seen them play domestically plenty of times, including teams that gave them a tough time, and they still played much, much better. They didn’t do things like pass the ball (incredibly slowly…) across the backline, for example. I don’t think that has anything to do with their opponents, they just seemed nervous to make an even slightly risky pass. So kind of inept, yeah.
I am of course aware that teams can appear relatively poor due to pressure from their opponents, but I don’t think that leads to the sort of errors that were irritating me. Things like crosses into row z, ponderously passing the ball along the backline etc. They’re unforced errors, in tennis terminology. Domestically, those teams don’t make those sorts of errors so often, even in tough matches. Hence my wondering if they were nervous or something. They were shooting themselves in the foot.
ETA: I’m not including things like United’s very good handling of Adriano & Ibra. That was good defensive work, not ineptness from those players.
You’ve won back my respect with your admission in the first two sentences. My respect is worth very little, I expect, but good work anyway :).
On a couple of your other points - nationality of players has become irrelevant in the club game these days, and I don’t see a problem with that. If FIFA changes the rules so that a player can become eligible for a national team because he plays for a club in that country, then we have a problem, but that’s too mad even for Blatter - isn’t it?
I’m not an economist, but I understand Germany may be in even worse shape than the UK - I believe its economy relies a lot more on manufacturing, and their banks are just as exposed as everyone else. So I wouldn’t be too hopeful there. Football is relatively well-insulated from the economic crisis (at the moment, anyway - if Abramovich, Glazer et al are forced to sell up due their banks withdrawing lending, then we may have a problem) so I expect to English clubs to continue to lead the way in Europe for a few seasons yet.
I watched most of Inter-Man U and found it a lot more entertaining than many other European ties of the recent past, so I think here we’ll just agree to differ.
Fair enough on Man U’s pre-match line-up, I just couldn’t resist a little jibe.
Weymouth of the Conference got thrashed 9-0 last Saturday because the first XI refused to play because they hadn’t been paid in 2009, so a youth team was fielded.
This weekend they are to play York and as yet no team is available.
Youngsters from all over the UK have turned up at Weymouths ground hoping to get a game, I hope they succeed.
Give the lads a chance to show what they have.
In other news, Darlington have gone into administration which is an automatic deduction of 10 points
I suppose having a couple of owners available to focus your dislike on helps Rafa by distracting the fans when things go pear shaped on the pitch.
I can only watch Liverpool on free tv usually but I have to say some of his substitutions really baffle me at times. I agree too about Babel, he always used to look a tidy player to me but now his confidence must be all shot to hell being used as he is.
One thing surprises me though, Liverpool used to have such a good fund of young players available from their academy but now you rarely see one of their up and coming players making it to the squad. Even Sir Alex brings in his youngsters when he gets the chance.
We had one on loan last season, Paul Anderson, and we tried to get him back again this season but he preferred to go to Forest but he seems out in the cold as far as Liverpool are concerned.
Trying to work out what’s going on in Rafa’s head is a pointless exercise but he does seem to have the knack of winning the one off European ties.
Not true I’m afraid. He was born and initially brought up in Wales to Welsh parents. He was qualified to play for either Wales or Sierra Leonne (his grandfather’s nationality).
Eh, O’Neill’s selection shows what he thinks of the UEFA Cup; you’re better off out of it if it buys you CL football next season. Like 'Arry said last week, it’s ridiculous the number of matches that’ve been played just to get to the last 32. 7 more matchdays before it’s decided, 'n all. What a joke.
Oh I agree. Trouble is my pessimism is kicking in and I see us going on a skid that means we have to qualify throught he freaking Intertoto Cup again next season.
I’m not talking about crosses under pressure though. As I said, unforced errors. I’m well aware that Liverpool forced them into many errors (and credit to them for that), but those instances are not what I’m referring to.
It’s not really possible to back up the idea that Madrid were poor of their own accord, vs Madrid were poor due to Liverpool pressure. Anything I propose as something they did abnormally poorly, you can counter that it was pressure from Liverpool that caused the mistake. Ultimately it’s subjective. I’ve watched them play most of their domestic matches, and they haven’t been that poor since Schuster started trying to get himself fired.
villa, that’s what you get for having no squad Playing Young/Barry etc for 90 minutes every game is insane. If Villa manage the top 4 I’ll have to take my hat off at their fitness. Seems more likely they’ll fade fast. Can’t say that upsets me!
Ok, having just watched the Arsenal v Fulham game, I am going to assert that Arsenal ARE playing like crap in the EPL. Well, not “crap” really, but they are not playing any better than a mid-table team. It was painful watching them allow Fulham to knock the ball around for twenty or more passes without even challenging them! That’s NOT the sort of football one expects to see from the red-shirted team in North London.
It was interesting to note that, once Bendtner was introduced, he had a habit of popping up in the offensive third totally unmarked. Not that he did anything with it…
Now I didn’t get to watch the train wreck at the Riverside. Can someone explain what exactly Liverpool think they are doing at this point?
Obviously they didn’t play like that, but I think it was reasonable to think they would with that lineup.
