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2013/2014 Soccer/Football Thread

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Suarez was the perfect CF for Arsenal and yes something around £55m would have been enough. The release clause is now £120m for English clubs (x3 Arsenal's bid!).

btw, this is the best I've seen Cazorla play. I prefer seeing him in the hole and Ozil out wide like today.
 
Caz plays like a dream off the striker, when a two footed player gets going it's just great to watch. He's got a great shot on both feet too, better than Ozil so I think he suits playing centrally. But I don't know how you'd play the two of them in a team without one of them shunted out wide. Having said all that I'd take Cesc back any day of the week for any price. Selling him to Barca still feels like a dagger to my heart...
 
If we had any quality striker instead of Giroud, we would have a +2 goal difference in every match. God damn, he's a slob.

Solid match though, glad we got the breakthrough earlier than later, although Newcastle didn't look as strong at the back than I was expecting. So eh.

Every time Giroud fucks up an Özil play, I cringe and feel secondhand embarrassment. Ramsey, Cazorla, Ozil..literally the perfect line. The dynamics, flair, aggressiveness, and ability to actually cut through defenses rather than doing the typical Arsenal way of passing it around the 18 for 5 minutes at a time.
 
I'd love to see Wenger try Podolski up front again for the last 2 matches, given Ramsey's unbelievably improved shot I'd be tempted to play him behind with Caz and Ozil floating about. Arteta + Flamini shielding the defence. It never hurts to have a good tackler high up the pitch either.

Also look at the relegation zone, it's looking really really bad for the bottom three especially Cardiff. Oh well a season in the PL was a decent enough achievement. And wtf happened to Fulham, went from having Dembele and Clint Dempsey and Berbatov to having Woodrow and Kasami and Kvist... And where the fuck is Mitroglu lol! And why did he move to Fulham???
 
Cazorla is just plain better then Ozil and has been for at least 2 years.

Arsenal are still a top class striker, a really good holding midfielder, a set of balls and a decent medical team away from challenging for the title.

Man City - Aguero
Liverpool - Suarez
Chelsea - Diego Costa
Arsenal...Giroud
 
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latinoheat said:
Cazorla is just plain better then Ozil and has been for at least 2 years.
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Lmao. I don't want to end up in another "Is Toure overrated" kind of debate but I mean come on.

Anyways on another note, Juventus have now won 30 out of 35 this season in the league. Whatever you may think about the league(it is a complete mess) they have been amazing for 3 seasons now. The Cl run this season was more of a freak accident and they will be competing next season.

Roma, Juventus and Napoli will represent the Italian league well next season.
 
Cardiff have a 3 point banker next week don't they?

and next seasons strikers?

who knows if Suarez will stay or even if Costa will go to Chelsea
 
Cazorla is top quality but he has a really different style to Ozil. Ozil is more of a seeing the bigger picture creative player while Cazorla is silky smooth but never tries any ambitious passes, he prefers them short. You can probably tell that Ozil has more football 'intelligence' with his choice of touches and passing but Cazorla can make the ball stick to his feet, likes faster short passes and is a more exciting player to watch imo.

Pardew was talking about winning the next game lol, he needs a win badly and Cardiff have been horrific lately as well so I guess it's a 3 pt banker for both teams or in other words a guaranteed 0-0 and last on motd.
 
ModestGarchomp said:
Lmao. I don't want to end up in another "Is Toure overrated" kind of debate but I mean come on.

Anyways on another note, Juventus have now won 30 out of 35 this season in the league. Whatever you may think about the league(it is a complete mess) they have been amazing for 3 seasons now. The Cl run this season was more of a freak accident and they will be competing next season.

Roma, Juventus and Napoli will represent the Italian league well next season.
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they haven't exatcly been blowing through the euro league... i think their performance in europe this year is (while worse than they really are) more indicative of decline in their domestic competition... They are absolutley destroying Serie A but have are not serious contenders for the cl... and thats sad to see Italy fall that far... Be interesting to see if they can get it together, and if they can't whether it will impact the next generation of the national team.
 
Imanalt said:
they haven't exactly been blowing through the euro league... i think their performance in europe this year is (while worse than they really are) more indicative of decline in their domestic competition... They are absolutely destroying Serie A but have are not serious contenders for the cl... and thats sad to see Italy fall that far... Be interesting to see if they can get it together, and if they can't whether it will impact the next generation of the national team.
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I think it's fair to say that they have been good enough for the league this year but ever since the beat Roma they haven't performed at a level of their ability. Their performance against benfica was much better and really should of scored more(pretty much dominated the second half).

I really think Serie A will have teams competing in the CL soon rather than later. Roma, Napoli and Juventus are all moving forward in the right direction. Roma in particular already having a plan to build a stadium and actually own it unlike the majority of teams in Italy atm. The one thing that these clubs, including Florentina is that they smart people running these clubs unlike the rest of the league. The talent is there but the management of their resources have been abysmal.
The Calciopoli scandal didn't help either.
 

Good analysis by Gary Neville and Carra on Chelsea's defensive and time wasting tactics. Also, mentions how ''19th century football'' as Jose calls it allows you to always have 10 men behind the ball by lumping the ball forward at every instance.

We really need to start expecting teams to start playing like this against us. On Sunday, we didn't know how to deal with it. Hopefully, we will learn from it and know how to break down dem double decker buses.
 
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Nosferalto said:
We really need to start expecting teams to start playing like this against us. On Sunday, we didn't know how to deal with it. Hopefully, we will learn from it and know how to break down dem double decker buses.
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We know that teams will play like that against us (we have known all season) and we never learned how to break them. Winning the next two games will be harder than beating Atletico tomorrow because there's no such thing as extra time in the league. Hopefully, this will change next season.
 
Fr33kickz said:
This has probably been asked like 400 times. But any World Cup predictions?
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I'd say it's a bit early to make predictions if only because there can still be injuries and stuff like that (ie there are a few Spanish players injured/not in form like Alba or Thiago Alcantara), but anyway:

Semifinal 1: Brazil - Germany
Semifinal 2: Spain - Argentina/Belgium - Not sure which one to pick between those last two because I haven't watched Argentina for like 3 years... Both are good teams, but I think Argentina has the edge if only because of their experience. If Spain hasn't lost before semifinals then they should defeat either team.

I actually reckon that Uruguay is better than Argentina and Belgium and should be on the semifinals, but they would face either Spain or Brazil on quarterfinals... Most likely Spain as I don't think Uruguay will lose to England. If Spain isn't at their best (and even if they are), Uruguay has a high chance of defeating them btw.

And the final would be won by Germany because it would be a bad omen to say Spain will win the whole thing.

Side note: I have been predicting World Cup results since 2002 and I have always predicted Germany to reach the top4, so I'm going to continue with that tradition. My top4 prediction is assuming logic follows in round 1 (it won't) and depending on the upsets (mainly Switzerland defeating France in round 1, which could result in France playing Argentina instead of Germany in the playoffs) everything can change. If France doesn't get top seed on their group, I think they'll reach semifinals.
 
Alonso missing the final is going to be huge.
Ramos needs to come off as well before he has a Ramos moment.

To sum up the match so far;
Poor defending at corners
Brilliant Counter attack for Ronaldo to score the third.
 
Luckily for Real Madrid, neither of the two chances that fell to Ramos were penalties. You'd think that Guardiola would have worked harder on defending set pieces after his experiences with Barcelona.

Edit: And Ribery should've been sent off.
 
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The better team went through. Real defended brilliantly with the aid of Bayern being poor.

It's going to be fun reading all those comments about how Possession is overrated and whatever. The fact of the matter is that if Bayern were better, the tie would of been closer.

It will be interesting to see how Pep goes about dealing with the team for the final against Dortmund and then for next season.
If Ribery continues to play the way he has I don't see him retaining a starting place in the team.
Thiago was missed.

Real were brilliant over the two legs and deserve to go through and will be the favourite against either Atletico or Chelsea.
oh and Modric>Yaya
 
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