Arena "The Beautiful Game" - The Official JCC Football (Soccer) Thread.

Urgh, zonal marking

 

Maradona took Argentina to the next level in '86. I remember watching that WC and acknowledging (much as it hurt to see the Hand of God goal at the time) that Maradona was absolutely unbelievable. He could single-handedly undo any other team's tactics on his day because he could skip away from challenges like they didn't exist. Only Michael Laudrup came close to that in that WC in terms of individual brilliance IMHO. But even then, a highly-fancied Denmark were quickly undone by Spain in the second round and Emilio Butragueño's snatch-and-grab performance.

In terms of individual brilliance, Maradona did it against the very best.

 

Cavani the super-sub wins it for United.

Much better second half, I don't know what the half-time team talk was but it obviously worked.
Players dug deep after being 2-0 down, kept pushing for the win even at 2-2.

 

Cavani, the focal striker type who I said you needed because the Martial/Rashford all wide play was going to struggle against some teams and you needed someone who could enable you to do something different.

You still need to move Ole on and get Poch but at least he realised at half time that his front pair needed changing

 

Stupid to give away set pieces against a team with someone like Ward-Prowse who is great at them.
Asking for trouble, poor marking didn't help.

At least Ole has a bit more quality back-up now to turn games around, which he didn't have before.
Got to be careful with the hectic upcoming schedule not to get player burnout

 

Sell Pogba in Jan though.

 

I don't think anyone will buy him in Jan, he'll be expensive and I doubt the likes of Real Madrid or Juventus will want to spend that until they're in stronger financial positions

It'll be summer.
And he's a useful squad player given the fixture list.
It looks like VDB is injured so creativity in midfield will be needed

 

Would have done that in the first half if the finishing and decision making was better.

 

Cavani showing the rest of our supposed forwards how to be an actual forward. With actual proper forward movement in the box and actual proper forward runs in the box!

 

Aside from Cavani, you don't actually have any forwards, they're all wide attackers. Martial, Rashford and Greenwood are all better coming in from the flanks, this is why you don't need Sancho, you need a younger version of Cavani

 

Martial did very well as a striker last season. He needs to work on his movement more.

Greenwood is obviously a striker, made to play out wide because there aren't really any RW options.
He's too selfish & unaware to be a winger a lot of the time, as a natural finisher he's suited to being fed the ball up front instead of having to create more for others

 

Yeah, thats not a major tournament

 

This is why I don't like this line of thinking. If the Lesser Higuain brother could finish in a cup final, Messi would have at least one of either a World Cup or a Copa America in the bag already.



So, we are knocking Messi because Gonzalo Higuain can't finish, but (elsewhere in the thread, not you Rich) we're giving Ronaldo credit for his team winning a Final, when his team played all but 25 minutes without him?



I'm not necessarily saying Messi > Ronaldo. I'm saying the argument "Messi hasn't won a Major International Trophy" is a terrible way to try to distinguish between them.

 

It's the main way people distinguish between Maradona & Messi

 

Clearly directed at me which is fair

I also started he was part of a team that won a major tournament, not the reason that Portugal won the tournament. I am fully aware he missed most of the final.

He was however instrumental in getting them to the final and by and large doesn't go missing when playing for Portugal whereas Messi is often criticised for not performing in an Argentina shirt and the backlash from fans is the reason he frequently retires from international duty.

The international stage ins't the be all/end all which is why I stated Ronaldo's achievements in other leagues first when compared to Messi at Barca and only Barca


Messi vs Maradona? I do think Maradona would eclipse both Ronaldo and Messi if he'd been brought up in this era as he was doing the Messi stuff back in the 80's when it was too easy to scythe someone down and get away with it (England failed to do that for a couple of goals he got though ) whereas now he'd be lapping up this lower contact level football thats played and with modern fitness skills and less coke in his system he'd be immense

 

@heels1785


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Tottenham’s tops once again.

 

How the hell is Luis still allowed on the pitch? Never mind the fact that he's just become a father, so he needs to stay healthy for family reasons, there's all the discussion of heading and concussion, and he's freaking bleeding all over the place! I thought there was a blood rule??

 

I suspect it'll be a significant discussion point on MotD tonight and talksport tomorrow

Significant head injury, you take the player off and sub a player on. There should be no exceptions for this