Roiling football blather

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routes

we can delay.ay.ay...
just heard the official world cup song by shakira. it's pretty boring and nothingy... but still it's not quite as eye-wateringly bland as akon's new football charity song i heard yesterday. tbh it irks me slightly that akon is the SA world cup's 'head of music' or whatever...he's Senegalese-American.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
It was bound to happen. I'm not sure who I fancy for the final though - Bayern are a very good team, brimming with confidence now.

Edit: just seen highlights (missed most of the match, sadly) - first Barca goal was offside, but the one that was ruled out, was that for handball? I dont' think it was...
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
It was bound to happen. I'm not sure who I fancy for the final though - Bayern are a very good team, brimming with confidence now.

Edit: just seen highlights (missed most of the match, sadly) - first Barca goal was offside, but the one that was ruled out, was that for handball? I dont' think it was...
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I don't think that first goal was offside. Defender on the far side kept him on - at the very least it was close enough for 'no daylight' to apply. Yep, it was given for handball - ball to hand from about a yard. Mind you, sendiong off was the usual fucking shameless piece of theatrics, so no cause for Barca complaint.

Inter will win final.

Jose knows.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
true - the sending off was absolute bollocks. Really undercuts my appreciation for Barcelona.

Inter are definitely the stronger team, but I can't rule out Bayern. The winning habit is a hard one to break, and theoretically United should have buried them in the second leg, but failed to (ok, Rafael was stupid).

I kinda hope Robben wins it with a stunning strike.

Previous Italian-German finals I can remember (CL, not World Cup) both went to germany:
Hamburg Juve, Borussia Dortmund Juve.
 
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mrfaucet

The Ideas Train
Only saw the last 15 minutes, but from what I did see I'd have to agree with this:

zonalmarking.net said:
And when Barcelona got the ball wide, it was surprising how rarely they looked to create an overlap. With Messi drifting in from a right-sided position and Milito offering no attacking threat, Barcelona only had two players stationed in wide positions - Alves on the right, Pedro on the left. Alves was met by Zanetti with the rest of the side shifting across to cover the space. Pedro was met by Maicon, with the same effect. But the other eight outfield players all remained between the ball and the play when this happened – the lack of an overlap meant that none of the Inter players were never drawn outside by a decoy run. Barca always had ten players to get past, and their tendency to shoot from long-range demonstrated the fact that they were simply finding it impossible to play through Inter.
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It's worth reading the article and the rest of the site as well.

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/04/28/barcelona-inter-mourinho-tactics/
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
mrfaucet said:
Only saw the last 15 minutes, but from what I did see I'd have to agree with this:



It's worth reading the article and the rest of the site as well.

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/04/28/barcelona-inter-mourinho-tactics/
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wow, looks like a great article - looking forward to reading that

"In Inverting The Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson explains how Arrigo Sacchi once demonstrated in a training session how five organised players could hold out against ten disorganised ones – taking his Milan back five of Galli, Tassotti, Costacurta, Baresi and Maldini and pitching them against the club’s best ten attacking players. The 15-minute game finished scoreless, despite the attacking talents of the likes of Gullit, van Basten, Rijkaard, Ancelotti and Donadoni."
 
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paolo

Mechanical phantoms
Found it difficult to single out one Inter player as their Man Of The Match cos it was like they'd gone beyond playing as individuals, like they were one single everyone-behind-the-ball hive mind organism
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Giving Inter Eto'o and enough money to build a new team in exchange for Ibrahimovic doesn't look like such a smart move now does it? In fact it looked like one of the dumbest moves in the history of football at the time so I'm glad it's come back to bite 'em in the arse.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
IdleRich said:
Giving Inter Eto'o and enough money to build a new team in exchange for Ibrahimovic doesn't look like such a smart move now does it? In fact it looked like one of the dumbest moves in the history of football at the time so I'm glad it's come back to bite 'em in the arse.
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At the time it was facepalm territory. It's gone way beyond that now - can't think of a greater fuck-up since the first letters of all the teams who beat Manchester United during the first two months of the 2001-2 season spelled out the name of new recruit Laurent B-L-A-N-C.

Fulham's victory - could it have been sweeter? Welsh and Hungarian strikes to seal it too. How has Hodgson done it?
 
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hopper

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
At the time it was facepalm territory. It's gone way beyond that now - can't think of a greater fuck-up since the first letters of all the teams who beat Manchester United during the first two months of the 2001-2 season spelled out the name of new recruit Laurent B-L-A-N-C.

Fulham's victory - could it have been sweeter? Welsh and Hungarian strikes to seal it too. How has Hodgson done it?
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I'm a Fulham fan and still asking that same question! We're essentially a team comprised of rejects from other clubs really, but Hodgson has an unquestionable eye of character. All the team are good, honest hard working pros who have formed just an unbelievable cohesion and team spirit amongst each other. Since Hodgson has been in charge he's formed an incredibly solid spine of the team with Schwarzer, Hangeland, Hughes, Etuhu, Murphy and Zamora up top. On top of that he's managed to get the very best out of all our creative outlets in Duff, Dempsey and Gera. In short he's somehow assembled a squad of very talented, underrated and intelligent players and immense team organisation, confidence has soared sky high. God my flight to Germany booked up, can't wait!
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Was Duff playing last night? (I couldn't get a proper stream of the game). He was incredibly impressive when I saw Ireland play Brazil - he really had the Brazilians rocking in the first stages of that match.
 
H

hopper

Well-known member
baboon2004 said:
Was Duff playing last night? (I couldn't get a proper stream of the game). He was incredibly impressive when I saw Ireland play Brazil - he really had the Brazilians rocking in the first stages of that match.
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Yeah he was playing, I think he was pinpointed as one of our main threats and effectively cut out of the game, Simon Davies and Gera were obviously key as they couldn't effectively track Davies as he was constantly switching between LM RM AND RB, and he isn't much known for galloping forays into the box as we witnessed last night! I think Dempsey made the difference last night, as apparently did one fan who started "stand up if you still believe" which galvanised the whole support when things were fizzling out and in turn the team. That fan is going to go down as a cult hero in Fulham folklore now!
 
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don_quixote

Trent End
can i heartily recommend scunthorpe united as an away day? what a great day out. football when you don't really care about the result, yet you still get to see your favourite players and everyone is in a really good mood because we're in the playoffs anyway is bloody bloody brilliant. enjoying it before the gutwrenching stuff starts next weekend. VERY NERVOUS. don't really want to go up, but i want to go to wembley and hell if we get to wembley we're playing cardiff or leicester and i DEFINITELY don't want either of them to go up. so that leaves us going up by default. no happy medium here.

oh and the stadium announcer wished us the best of luck for the playoffs which i thought was a really nice gesture.
 
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