EURO 2012

come on ljungberg barely makes top 20 swedish players of the 00's

was gonna say

the limitation of ibrahimovic (rather than just lacking passion or some tired english criticism) is that he doesn't really adapt well to playing in a team that is only half-functioning, as mancini's inter usually were in the champions league

i think one of the reasons he has just had possibly his best individual season is that milan have become a more simplistic but in some ways more reliable team, so that zlatan will always get at least a few good chances on the break, and robinho and cassano provided clever decoy runs while boateng and zlatan can just overpower defenders

with a more elaborate team like barcelona who depend on intricate passing rhythms to create openings, in more difficult games when these could become disrupted or restricted he ended up completely disengaged from the rest of the team and unable to create chances spontaneously

just like carroll

henry rvp bergkamp pires vieira cole lehmann fabregas gilberto campbell touré sagna certainly all above ljungberg

reyes arshavin adebayor edu rosicky hleb all better players but didn't have his longevity or commitment

seriously calling into question sam's '20 best ILFer' status

'longevity'

no questions about ljungberg's longevity after those photos amirite.

ice cold zing from klata, a+

8 people have spoken
http://forums.soccerfansnetwork.com/showthread.php?53031-Swedens-greatest-ever-player

Ibrahimivic 3 37.50%
Lundberg 0 0%
Larsson 5 62.50%

This thread looks fun!

(though I am not sure who 'Sam' is if not 'Big Sam')

I still think Ibrahimovic's goal feels like the best I've seen this tournament. It's good when losing sides do good things.

amazing to try parsing the reptile logic of phil brown

there are better players in other countries >> england has the best league >> why don't they come to england >> they hate england

I think you're doing him a disservice there. It's more likely his thought process is:

there are better players in other countries >> england has the best league >> why don't they come to england >> they must hate gays

ok i guess i was proven wrong. rvp, a guy who was injured for most of the 00s, was a better player than ljungberg, regular match winner, big game player (only player to score in back-to-back FA Cup finals? scored nearly every game the second half of the 01/02 season to basically win us the title by himself) and consistently amazing winger for about 5 seasons. also a guy who was a great goal scorer in scotland and good sub for barca and utd. because scottish football is comparable to idk the premiership or la liga or serie a.

no, i think i'll just have to disagree with you all. larsson was a very good player but freddie was better.

Glad that Suggest Ban is dead.

The fact that he spent his best years in the SPL definitely diminishes Larsson's career. I don't how anyone could think otherwise

freddie barely existed for five season you clown you

did he ever get offers to go elsewhere? why wasn't he playing at juve or utd or wherever? is there many other examples of great players absolutely slumming it for most of their career, like the best ever player in Polish football or summin?

freddie barely existed for five season you clown you

― I blame the prurience (darraghmac), Tuesday, 26 June 2012 17:27 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you are just trolling, right?

because he excelled in europe and in big games there too, it's not like larsson never tested himself. Ljungberg played as a winger/inside forward for the best footballing unit england had produced in years, he was a good goalscorer with a knack for canny runs but he had it kinda soft too

no sam, i don't think larsson ever got an offer for anywhere else, and yes, yes i'm the troll here

List me ljungbergs five best years pls, stats etc.

if this is some CLUB LEDGEND sentimental stuff above actual playing achievements fair enough but if u can't see how rvp has been a better player than ljungberg idk

The idea that having good teammates at Arsenal is at all comparable to playing in the SPL w/r/t having it "soft" is stupid.

#0 , nobody's claiming that henk's performance at spl level = equivalent of henry's years at arsenal or w/e

We're saying his years of utter dominance at celtic might just >= two great seasons and assorted other injury-wrecked periods of flotsam from ljungberg at arsenal

ya boxall it was a confused point tbf, this bus is jolting me savagely.

Leave it as 'sustained brilliance at an admittedly lower level with plenty of great showings at high level in europe and internationally gives henk a case against epl footnote ljungberg'

1999–00 40 8
2000–01 43 8
2001–02 39 17
2002–03 32 9
2003–04 43 10
2004–05 38 14

Appearances - Goals

His form fell the next season and by 2007-08 he was gone to West Ham

http://www.hottiesoftheday.com/males/athletes/fredrik-ljungberg/fredrikljungberg10.jpg
http://i47.tinypic.com/r889wo.jpg

if this is some CLUB LEDGEND sentimental stuff above actual playing achievements fair enough but if u can't see how rvp has been a better player than ljungberg idk

― dis civilization and its contents (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 26 June 2012 17:32 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

RVP's best two years have been in the past 2 years. I specifically mentioned the 00s, in which he was v. inconsistent even when fit. On his day RVP is a better player, yes. But it took him till long after Freddie left to play regularly to the ridiculously high standard he is held to today.

hmmm not bad, tho he'd have struggled to make utd's team with those stats, presumably that's three or four of the 19 ahead of him tbf

Thanks for making the tournament thread intermittently NSFW though xp.

I like Ljungberg a lot for those first years - good winger. It's kind of hard for me to compare him to Ibrahimovic or Larsson since the latter play well up front and center and I've never seen them play the wings. Playing a CF wasn't Ljungberg's forte but it wasn't Pires' either and I still rate him highly.

I specifically mentioned the 00s, in which he was v. inconsistent even when fit.

― Smothered, Covered and Chunked!!! (a hoy hoy), Tuesday, June 26, 2012 5:41 PM (1 minute ago)

nae fuckin way

he had 38 in 81 games during the last four seasons of that decade, during which he was usually playing as a supporting striker in a 4-4-2 rather than outright #9

near 1 in 2 is an excellent scoring rate for that position, gtfo

(epl only obv)

in any case as said before parsing careers into calendar decades is retarded and useful only for say giving undue prominence to players like ljungberg who have birthdates ending in 7-9

this thread today is a lot like american sports media in the offseason which afaict seems to be full of arduous hard-hitting debate about which wide receiver born in an even zipcode is most likely to have a breakout season or whatever

We could talk about whether Spain are boring.

ha i was going to

did he ever get offers to go elsewhere? why wasn't he playing at juve or utd or wherever? is there many other examples of great players absolutely slumming it for most of their career, like the best ever player in Polish football or summin?

― Smothered, Covered and Chunked!!! (a hoy hoy),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_Carlovich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasilis_Hatzipanagis

we could cite Pele while we're at it

I like this meta conversation about what we could do marginally better than actually doing it.

absolutely pele would be counted. played in brasil and the nasl, nowhere near the highest level of club football. i was just going for the most extreme examples i could remember. carlovich is a bit of a difficult one since no film of him exists, but menotti, maradona, jose pekerman all consider him amongst the most technically gifted of argentinian footballers so i'll trust them. hatzipanagis's story, think it was in an issue of the blizzard, is, from a purely sporting angle, one of the saddest in football.

one of the saddest in football.

Kinda weird story, actually.

I don't necessarily buy Brazilian football being low standard btw. Players didn't go abroad much then, so the English league had the best English players, the Italian league the best Italian, etc. Brazil were the best country in the world throughout Pele's career, so...

Argentina's a bit different, it was a backwater between the war and the seventies aiui

pele crush everybody @ world cups but doesnt really matter because he was "nowhere near the highest level of club football" ?

he was rubbish that time in England. Didn't like it up him iirc

We should start more player 1 v player 2 threads

yes xps, that's a real thing that has been said about Pele

Ibrahimovic-Rooney was a good one. I'd quite like an Ozil vs but not sure who'd be the right foil. Want to say Deco.

also a guy who was a great goal scorer in scotland and good sub for barca and utd. because scottish football is comparable to idk the premiership or la liga or serie a.

No-one said that. His record outside Scotland in European comps and for his country isn't exactly shabby.

In Larsson's peak Celtic years he also scored 1 in 2 for Sweden (and better than 1 in 3 overall). He scored in three World Cups and two Euros. He scored 59 goals in European competition. He scored two in a UEFA Cup Final (against the following season's CL winners). He won the Champions League and played a major part in the outcome of the final. He won the European Golden Boot despite being hampered by goal weighting due to the league he was in. All of this after a fucking horrific leg break.

Of course from an outsider's pov it takes away from his career that he spent most of it in a lower class league but anyone who goes LOLSPL and doesn't acknowledge how brilliant a footballer he was really wasn't paying attention. He remained loyal to a club that he basically owed his career to - people can diminish his career for that if they like but I'd rather thank the fucking guy.