[Metaphysical]

villa threw it away. they're chasing a CL place in the league and their squad is starting to show signs of fatigue.

that said, had they not been vagner love'd at villa park they'd have sent a better team here. they didn't REALLY have a chance.

[FCB-Mo]

Metaphysical, on Feb 26 2009, 09:49 PM, said:

OH MILAN. WOE IS YOU.

Whilst also not forgetting Valencia.

Hopefully Man City can win it now

[Metaphysical]

FCB-Mo, on Feb 27 2009, 12:36 AM, said:

Whilst also not forgetting Valencia.

Hopefully Man City can win it now

I did say they both love to f**k up.

oh the hilarity.

city haveta be one of the favourites along with shakhtar (nobody will wanna go there), cska (ditto) and galatasaray (ditto again).

wouldn't discount marseille or hamburg either.

[Patriot_Pride_Worldwide]

The UC is marvelously interesting now. There is no clear-cut favorite and all the teams seem so evenly matched. Too bad Stuttgart didn't make it through, but Zenit just overwhelmed them.

[LaFuriaBlaugrana]

I love the UEFA Cup, you never see this many upsets in the CL.

[yusuf423]

the football is much more exciting as the teams are playing to win as for the most teams in the CL(ie liverpool) are playing not to lose.

[antonk]

Come on CSKA! Dzagoev is a star.

[Metaphysical]

Henry14, on Feb 27 2009, 12:06 PM, said:

Yeah I understand, it's frustrating seeing it happen to teams in a league you are passionate about.

Good news though. If Fifa's 6+5 ruling comes in then the Premiership is fucked . No doubt everyone representing that league will complain that the english youth, albeit strong and fast are not intelligent or technically gifted enough to compete with european youngsters.

there's a reason english clubs are the ones opposing 6+5.

apart from united and villa they would be royally PHUCKED.

madrid's current squad is well below 6+5 but they've got like 3/4 good former cantera products they could get back.

for me the better system would be kids through the cantera (like you must have 7 cantera products in your team or somethin') because that would decrease the insanity of the transfer market and while also leaning towards the national identity idea would also promote multiculturalism and such. of course the problem with that is then you just get a lot more 12/13/14 year-olds being scouted and transferred so they can join canteras.

regarding the spanish problem in uefa comps, it comes down to defending and physicality. it's not even a spanish problem, the italians have it too. in fact all the latin teams do. in the 60's the game was mostly about technique, and bar two exceptional north-european teams (celtic and united) the latin teams owned it. with the 70's came the rise in athleticism, and latin dominance faded almost entirely. for all ajax's technique (they were the transition) you need to be one hell of an athlete to pull off total football.

milan and barca, with their respective dream teams, brought about a brief resurgence of dominance in the late 80's/early 90's. and then real ('98 to '02) did as well sort of. but other than that it's been the odd blip. unless you wanna count juve's buffalo bills' impression at the end of the 90's as dominance.

I think most of it is down to defence physicality. although inter's current problem is unique in that they have all this physicality but no creativity. and their squad is a bloated mess of south american mercs. give jose a year or two to trim it down and get some creativity in and they should be a lean mean fighting machine.

but yeah, everyone else it's a defensive problem. the english (when they're not resting people for the league campaign - how pathetic to value money and league placings over winning a trophy) know how to defend and be organised. the italians do too, usually, but calcio is going through a bad moment. there's not enough actual italians in their defences, so they've lost their mojo.

the spaniards just like to attack and are not the most physical of countries. there's a reason that between ye-ye in '66 and the fourth reich in '98 there was only one european cup win (dream team) and three other final appearances for spanish teams. sure, with the rise of the true champions league era (i.e. multiple entries from each nation) spanish teams have come back onto the map, but even that only really lasted 6 years (real '98, '00, '02 with valencia's two final appearances shoved in there). since then barca's freakishly talented '06 team have won one but that's it.

if barca stands a chance this year it's only because guardiola respects the physical side of the game (hence pique's near ever-presence in the CL) and utilises weapons such as set-pieces as often as he can. adding this to barca's usual repertoire has given them the possibility to make it through the english walls of humanity. real in a sense were just unlucky. juande's small club counterattack mentality would have served you so well in europe but you drew the one team who you can't pull that s*it on, because they are masters of it themselves.

this addition of physicality and defensive steel is also why barca and real are shitting all over la liga.

the spanish clubs will simply have to learn. or risk facing another 20 years with f**k all while northern european clubs walk away with it.

[FCB-Mo]

yusuf423, on Feb 27 2009, 04:31 AM, said:

the football is much more exciting as the teams are playing to win as for the most teams in the CL(ie liverpool) are playing not to lose.

what a crock of s*it. teams play to win? not really, teams see the competition as a burden and fans couldn't give two shits about the competition. Look at attendances in the UFEA Cup and look at how teams like Villa and Spurs took the competition to lightly.

[yusuf423]

true as some teams flopped in an attempt to get better league standing but other than that the other games are more exciting than the CL because the dont put 11 men behind the ball and just play to counter.

[GJ17]

Metaphysical, on Feb 27 2009, 03:56 PM, said:

the spaniards just like to attack and are not the most physical of countries.

Maybe if they play in Europe like they do against Barca, they'd go places.

[Patriot_Pride_Worldwide]

Yea, that's what its all about. Most of the time, you can succeed with hardcore defending and efficient counter-attacks in Europe. It just so happens that a lot of Spanish teams are built to attack and play good football, which is not exactly the winning recipe.