April 2014 Football Thread

[Raziel]

You didn't notice how much nicer its been around here?

[ChesterCopperpot]

No – because I know what his shtick is and I don’t fall into petty stupid arguments with him.

[Jiji]

The powers that be have been pretty lenient with him. What finally made them send him to the corner? Was it the Game of Thrones stuff?

 

Anyway, Barcelona's obituary is being written by all the publications it seems. Must be awful to go a whole year without winning a trophy. If they appeal the transfer ban, that means they can just load up in the summer before it comes into effect for the '15 winter and summer windows, does it not?

 

Edit: Shit, they did win a trophy this year. Sure it was a meaningless one, but it still kind of counts. And they're a whopping 4 points back on the league leaders with 5 games to play, one of which is against Atletico.

[SolidGoldBomb]

This extract from Andrea Pirlo's autobiography, 'I think therefore I play', explains the legendary midfielder's recipe for success when it comes to dead-ball situations

 

Andrea Pirlo is regarded by many as the world's best free-kick taker and one of the greatest of all time. Below he reveals the secret behind his success. I THINK THEREFORE I PLAY by Andrea Pirlo is out now in paperback and ebook.

BOOK EXTRACT
By Andrea Pirlo

I'm Italian, but I'm also part-Brazilian. Pirlinho, if you like. When I take my free-kicks, I think in Portuguese and at most I'll do the celebrating in my native tongue.

I strike those dead balls alla Pirlo. Each shot bears my name and they're all my children. They look like one another without being twins, even if they do boast the same South American roots. More precisely, they share a source of inspiration: Antonio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Junior, a midfielder who's gone down in history as Juninho Pernambucano.

During his time at Lyon, that man made the ball do some quite extraordinary things. He'd lay it on the ground, twist his body into a few strange shapes, take his run-up and score. He never got it wrong. Never. I checked out his stats and realised it couldn't just be chance. He was like an orchestra conductor who'd been assembled upside down, with the baton held by his feet instead of his hands. He'd give you the thumbs up by raising his big toe – somebody at Ikea was having a good laugh the day they put him together.

I studied him intently, collecting DVDs, even old photographs of games he'd played. And eventually I understood. It wasn't an immediate discovery; it took patience and perseverance. From the start, I could tell he struck the ball in an unusual way. I could see the "what" but not the "how". And so I went out onto the training pitch and tried to copy him, initially without much success. In the early days, the ball sailed a couple of metres over the crossbar, or three metres above the sky to borrow from the Italian film of the same name.

Much of the time it went right over the fence at Milanello and I'd end up lying to the fans gathered outside, pretending I'd done it deliberately. "Boys, I want to give you a present," I'd say, glossing over the fact that the session was behind closed doors and they shouldn't have been anywhere near it. As I was speaking to outlaws, I told myself that what I said was neither a sin nor a crime.

The misses went on for several days and by that time the bloke in charge of the kit store was getting somewhat peeved. For him, it was a case of too many lost balls becoming a ball ache as I persisted with my experiments. Days soon turned into weeks.

'The Architect' | Pirlo has scored an incredible 43 free kick goals in his career
 

My own Eureka moment arrived when I was sat on the toilet. Hardly romantic, but there you go. The search for Juninho's secret had become an obsession for me, to the extent that it occupied my every waking thought. It was at the point of maximum exertion that the dam burst, in every sense of the term. The magic formula was all about how the ball was struck, not where: only three of Juninho's toes came into contact with the leather, not his whole foot as you might expect.

The next day I left the house really early, even electing to skip my usual classic PlayStation battle with [Alessandro] Nesta as I rushed to the training paddock. All I had on my feet was a pair of loafers – I didn't need proper boots to demonstrate what I was now convinced was the right theory.

The kit-store guy had already turned up for duty.

"Can you pass me a ball, please?" I asked.

"Get to f***," he said under his breath, almost hissing at me.

"What was that?" I replied.

"I said I saw a duck."

"Right you are. Go on, you fool, throw me over a ball."

Reluctantly, he chucked one across. Mentally, he was already preparing himself for a trip to the woods to recover it. Instead I stuck it right in the top corner, just where the post meets the crossbar.

A geometric gem. I placed the shot so perfectly that it would have gone in even with a keeper. Luckily for our goalies, none of them were around.

"Why don't you try doing that again, Andrea," came a provocative voice from behind. This was now a battle of two against one. Me on one side, the kit store guy and the ghost of Juninho Pernambucano firmly on the other.

"Okay then, spoilsport. Just you watch," I said.
 

The ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. Keep your foot straight and then relax it in one fell swoop"

Up I stepped and unleashed a carbon copy of the previous free kick. It was a thing of absolute beauty, stylistically impeccable. I lined up another five strikes and it was the same story every time. By now it was official: I'd cracked it. The secret was no more.

In essence, the ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. You have to keep your foot as straight as possible and then relax it in one fell swoop. That way, the ball doesn't spin in the air, but does drop rapidly towards the goal. That's when it starts to rotate. And that, in a nutshell, is my maledetta.

When it comes off exactly as I want, there's no way of keeping it out. It's specifically designed to head over the wall before taking a direction that nobody can predict. For me, the best feeling in life is watching the ball fly into the net after it whizzes a couple of centimetres over the heads of the defenders. They can almost reach it, but not quite. They can read the maker's name, but they can't stop it going in. Sometimes a pinch of sadism is the ingredient that makes victory taste that little bit sweeter.

The further away from goal I am, the better. As the distance increases, so does the effect I can impart. The greater the space between me and the keeper, the quicker the ball tends to drop as it hones in on its target.

I can obviously mix things up a bit, throw in a few little tricks to make every free kick unique, but the underlying concept never changes. Scoring from a dead-ball brings me massive satisfaction. It sets me up as an example for other players to follow, copy and perhaps even emulate over the course of time. For them, I'm a Juninho Pernambucano 2.0, a Brazilian with a Brescia accent.

I've never told anyone, but my ambition is to become the leading all-time scorer of free kicks in Serie A.

[SolidGoldBomb]

The powers that be have been pretty lenient with him. What finally made them send him to the corner? Was it the Game of Thrones stuff?

 

Anyway, Barcelona's obituary is being written by all the publications it seems. Must be awful to go a whole year without winning a trophy. If they appeal the transfer ban, that means they can just load up in the summer before it comes into effect for the '15 winter and summer windows, does it not?

 

Edit: Shit, they did win a trophy this year. Sure it was a meaningless one, but it still kind of counts. And they're a whopping 4 points back on the league leaders with 5 games to play, one of which is against Atletico.

 

The whole crisis talk about Barca is hilarious to me, they are still like a top 5 team in the world but they expect nothing less than perfection it seems.  Like you said, they could still possibly win the league even.  And their problems aren't even new problems, their defense has always been relatively shaky and they have needed to buy a couple center backs for at least 2 years now.  It's just so happened that injuries have finally caught up to the back line and left them having to put Busquets & Song in as emergency CBs.  The biggest problem for them is that they signed Neymar for an outrageous price when they should have used that money to sign Thiago SIlva or David Luiz, or pretty much anyone defensive minded. 

 

I think Neymar is their biggest problem this season, his transfer saga has shamed the club and forced their President out, he's a huge disruption on field because of his diving antics, and because his salary is so high it has caused many players on his team to become jealous of him.  They didn't really need him at all, it's just pushed the other quality players like Sanchez, Pedro, Tello to the 2nd team when they deserve to be starting ahead of Neymar, and it's caused lots of internal friction with Messi as well.  

 

You can obviously see how pissed Messi is when Martino plays him on the wing too, like in the CL vs Atleti and in the Copa match vs Real he was non-existent and essentially sulking when he's not played exactly how he wants.  I feel kind of bad for Martino with all the talk of him getting fired already, it's not like he destroyed the team, he's doing the best with what he has, but he's not to blame for 2-3 years of bad transfers and failure to reinforce the defense that caused them to get to this point.

[Jiji]

Between Cruyff and Pep's comments this week, don't be too surprised if Guardiola is back in Barcelona next season.

[SirFozzie]

Cardiff is asking that Crystal Palace's 3-0 win earlier this month be thrown out because someone on the Palace staff (an ex-Cardiff guy) got Cardiff's starting line up days beforehand

[Death From Above]

I wish I could manage a team in crisis that had Alexis fucking Sanchez on the bench.

[Raziel]

The powers that be have been pretty lenient with him. What finally made them send him to the corner? Was it the Game of Thrones stuff?

Finally crossed the line goadig on Rev and Rev just kept plugging away until Ripa had enough. Best thing to happen to the board since Antacular's forced vacation.

[Death From Above]

http://frenchfootballweekly.com/2014/04/16/le50-2014-the-best-prospects-in-french-football/

 

For those who are obsessed over their football manager game, or those that just like reading about prospects, this is a fun PDF for you.

[Swift]

It's funny you mention it. I've been playing FM2006 lately (it's my favourite engine, and I go back to it more than I play the newer ones) and so I randomly pulled out an old issue of World Soccer from 2009 to do some of my own half assed scouting. They had a page dedicated to promising young Ligue 1 players. I was surprised to see Mamadou Sakho in there. No doubt his star has risen, but he's a bit of a donkey to me. It's funny looking back on scouting predictions - in the same issue, they correctly called Wilshere and Lukaku. Some other guys not so much.

 

And since nobody asked - I'm playing as Liverpool in 2006 and so far have signed... a 15 year old Daniel Sturridge (nicely progressing in the U18s), 17 year old Gareth Bale (average in the U18s so far), Sergio Aguero (took forever to sign what with trying to agree a price - 10m quid in the end - and work permits, but he's a star player already, scoring 9 in 18 games in the first team), Leo Messi (broke the bank on him, but in 5 starts and 24 sub appearances, he's been way below average), Falcao (12 goals in 18 games in the reserves) and Alvaro Negredo (my assistant manager hasn't played him once in the reserves). Unfortunately Suarez didn't seem to exist in 2006. With all of that, I won the Champions League the first season, but only came 2nd in the League this season with Chelsea doing a quadruple(!)

 

Usual first team consists of Reina, Riise, Carragher, Hyppia, Carlos Magno (a great Brazilian RB my scouts found), Xabi Alonso as DM, Zenden/Luis Garcia on the left, Alexander Farnerud on the right (a player I sign from Strasbourg every single time I play this game), Gerrard as AM (with Aguero filling in when Gerrard was injured for months at the end of the season) and Cisse and Morientes up front (both banging in goals for fun - 88 for Cisse over two seasons, 57 for Morientes)

 

There should be a FM thread.

[Dewar]

There used to be a FM thread in the computer games forum.

[Death From Above]

I play the online Soccer Manager dot Com which is sort of Football Manager for dummies, but is fine as a free time waster. I've learned a ton about young players just because I get off scouting for my teams, it's educational~

 

My version of Celtic has Messi, Neymar, Isco, Pogba, and Hummels. Because I like trophies.

[The Natural]

Game of the day today, Wolves 5-4 Rotherham.

 

EDIT: Make that 6-4.

Edited April 18, 2014 by The Natural

[sabremike]

Went to the Cosmos home opener last Sunday at Hofstra vs Atlanta Silverbacks. Wynalda is running Atlanta, and it took all the restraint in my body to not go behind their bench and heckle him unmercifully. They drew about 8,000 which is a good crowd for NASL. Stadium is a shithole, I've seen plenty of high school fields that were nicer. Cosmos won 4-0 with (of all people) ex-Metro Carlos Mendes scoring a brace. In 10 seasons with Metro he never had a goal. Offensively they are as good as an MLS team but they are shakey on defense. If they were better on that end they would be comparable to MLS quality. But if we play them in the open cup and field a reserve side they will humiliate us. I would like to think RB would realize that and field a strong side, but this is the same team who just re-hired Marc deGramppe, a guy who knows absolutely NOTHING about soccer and who fired Bruce Arena and fired Gio Savaresse and replaced him with a guy who lied on his resume.

[Randy]

That hand to the face should be the end of Ramires' PL season since the ref didn't see it and the FA will look at it.

[Jiji]

What was that lame ass act Dan used to do? Something, something, Agent Borini, something something.

 

Oh my Christ! Do Jose's home record in the A, Fabio.

[Randy]

lol I thought of the same Agent Borini comment if there was a Liverpool equivelant of Dan.

[Death From Above]

Sunderland are playing like Chelsea with the lead and Chelsea are playing like Sunderland without it.

[Jiji]

 

Perfect. So perfect! Gustavo is a saint.

[Randy]

I think that is one of the worst Mourinho losses for Chelsea. They basically never lose at Stamford Bridge in the BPL, they are 2nd in the table, and Sunderland were favorites to be relegated.

[Adam]

Just want to come in to say YAY.

 

I'm a Derby fan but i've always wanted Liverpool to win the Premier League, especially for Stevie Gerrard. I've always been a huge fan of the team and the fans, the atmosphere at Anfield every time i've been has been something completely different.

 

If they win at Norwich tomorrow, which is very possible, they'll be five points clear with three games to play.

 

High five to the Liverpool fans in this thread!

[Jiji]

That is the first loss in the league at Stamford Bridge for Maureen. To Sunderland. I hope they stay up at the Baggies' expense.

[Raziel]

Fuck. If FSW's vacation isn't permanent, this is gonna be a long fucking summer.

[ChesterCopperpot]