All-Purpose, Never-Ending Soccer Thread

Thanks, I'll be ordering soon. Should I drop your name for a discount?

2-2 at the break thanks to Nakamura's freek kick in the 43rd.

Also, I completely missed this news about Barcelona putting UNICEF's logo on their shirt. What a great, great thing for the club to do.

 

Fake Madrid is laying an egg, down 2-0 to Lyon.

 

I_W, check your PMs.

I am very very upset right now. I am buried and cannot watch the Man U/Celtic fixture. It is up to 5-goals total!

 

Excellent second half of the match. Celtic impressed me, especially the crossing of Nakamura and their keeper. The announcers were pretty generous with their criticism of certain players (ex. Wes Brown), which I liked.

 

To me, Jack Bell is the guy who wrote that horrendous "Hey man, I liked covering the Cosmos when I was younger, therefore the NASL RULED and was great for soccer in America!" article for the well-meaning first issue of Striker magazine. And I find his stories to lean a bit to the pompous side, so putting him and Arena in a room together must have been a fasicnating experiment until that great "You were always a breath of fresh air!" question.

But of course Mr. Bell certainly knows his soccer, and this was an interesting interview. Will be interesting to see if Arena, who has won big everywhere he has been, will rachet down his personality if the Red Bull turnaround isn't quick. Or if he'll just continue to allude to "previous ownership" not knowing what it was doing.

 

Mas resultados de la liga campeones...

Olympique Lyon beat a tired, slow and disinterested Real Madrid 2-0
Aresenal used an early van Piersie dive (shocker) to beat Hamburg 2-1
Benifica and Copenhagen tied 0-0
Man. U 3 beat Celtic 2 in the best match of the day
Oporto and CSKA Moscow tied 0-0
Lille and Anderlecht tied 1-1
AC Milan beat AEK Atenas 3-0

I set aside a good chunk of my day to watch Real play yesterday and I was beyond pissed with how they mailed it in.And it's becoming more and more evident that Beckham can't handle the pace of today's game anymore. Subbed out in the 52nd minute...

 

Have to chime in on Beckham here. Was there ever a time when he was a game-changing player?

IMO he was nothing more than a dead-ball specialist who did well for himself by using his image to turn into a rockstar. It was the best thing any England manager has done in years when McClaren dropped him completely after the World Cup.

Style and some highlights over substance for his entire career.

 

Totally agree. It tooks balls for an English skipper to drop Beckham and McClaren finally showed he had them. As a wing player, he's completely worthless now: can't keep up with the opposition, can't play balls in the air...

What I was so surprised with yesterday with Real was how BAD Fabio Cannavaro looked. He was burned horribly on the first goal by Fred.

 

No one complains about Aaron Lennon's ability to play balls in the air. It's simply not Beckham's specialty. He's still the best crosser of the ball in the game, and the best at taking free kicks. He works hard, too, as he did in the second half of England's Paraguay win.
He's not especially mobile. And that's making it harder for him to go 90. But it's easy to forget Man U trebled with Beckham as a huge part of the squad, that it dominated the Prem in 2003 with Beckham as a huge part of the squad, that he scored the decisive goal under enormous pressure in England qualifying for WC 2002, that he had a hand in 3 of the 6 England goals at WC 2006. And that Man U hasn't been worth a damn since they showed him to the door.
What does the man need to do?

 

That would be great, except that he's not to best dead-ball specialist in the World. For each goal against Greece, there were ten that went into the wall or over the bar. His free-kicks at the World Cup led to one own goal, and one cross for Peter Crouch for which the space was created by Lennon. Gerrard has been more than adequate in filling his shoes.

Yes he was a part of the Manchester teams that had success, but that was more about the lack of comeptition in the Premier League, which has really improved since he left, and the loaded sqauds he was on. You don't see much of a drop in the way they've played since he left, only Chelsea using Abramovich's money to overtake them.

The only way you can say he's missed is if you think he could have made a difference for United the past three seasons. With the way he's played for Fake Madrid and England, you can only say no.

 

Gerrard's a pimp. I still get goosebumps when I watch the FA Cup final against West Ham when he got filthy from 45 yards out on a lazer in injury time.

If you watched any of Real's game against Lyon you would see a tired, slow and rapidly fading player who has no business playing big minutes with a premier club.

 

C_R, I still get goosebumps from that Gerrard goal, too.

And gotta continue the love for Becks that Twoback started. Stick a fork in him now, for sure, but he was an integral part of the '99 treble squad and, for almost a decade, unequivocably the best set-piece player in the world.

He had a niche, but he was great at that niche. Similar to a Tony Gwynn in baseball. Couldn't do everything for you like a Willie Mays (Ronaldinho), but what he could do he did at a Hall of Fame level.