EURO 2012

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.

Didn't he come down to United for a season and salvage it?

He played 10 games or so in half a season and got a Premier League medal. His "good sub" stint at Barca got him two La Liga titles and a Super Cup and a Champions League medal.

why does he owe his career to them? Suspiciously, there's no Feyenoord section on his wiki page

i was going to do a thread about ozil earlier today after reading this ozil tumblr i posted the goetze/ozil gif from and then thought of maybe doing a thread for winsome football gif tumblrs curated by earnest young women and in the end didn't start either thread

i am thinking about him a lot because he has such great eyes he could maybe threaten the xavi - iniesta tier (which i suppose is the third tier of great players atm) and previously i thought he would plateau some way beneath that

used to think he was too reliant on speed but he is only 23, and his general game is improving

iniesta xavi surely tier 2

Messi is tier 1 presumably

messi, ronaldo, huddlestone

be interesting to see how Portugal's performance in this tournament affects Ronaldo's Ballon D'Or prospects though. Does a Euro trophy + a league outweigh Messi's goalscoring record

separate tiers for messi and pouty ron

why does he owe his career to them? Suspiciously, there's no Feyenoord section on his wiki page

― Number None, Tuesday, 26 June 2012 19:09 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

(from memory) according to him he'd almost decided to quit football after being pushed out to the right wing at Feyenoord then being criticised for not scoring enough despite not playing up front then being frozen out of the team [multiple citations needed :) ]. Wim Jansen knew he had a release clause in his contract (because he gave him the contract, possibly? can't remember how their careers overlapped) and took him to Celtic for very cheap after a contract dispute that Feyenoord lost.

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

― Ismael Klata

when pele started playing football there wasn't a national championship in brazil.

also libertadores early years (1960-80) were dominated by teams from argentina.

jim'll fix yr lazy assumptions about futbol sudamericano

Thread has been enjoyably diverse and off-topic today.

I do think Ozil has a true playmaker's vision, and has also been surprisingly efficient in possession at this tournament. As ZM has observed, for someone who can place difficult long passes so well, it's perplexing that he is not a good finisher, yet.

French midfielder Samir Nasri turned 25 on Tuesday but according to the sports daily L'Equipe, he had better make the most of any celebrations, as he faces potentially a long ban from the national side.
His behaviour at Euro 2012, which included two outbursts at journalists and being deemed by several team-mates as a disruptive influence, is the reason why the squad's 100,000 euros ($125,000, 80,000 pounds) a player bonuses are now under the scanner.
Nasri has also put at risk sponsorship money paid to the French Football Federation (FFF) based on independent polling about the behaviour and popularity of "Les Bleus" during major competitions.
The FFF had already seen each sponsor reduce its contribution by two million euros after the 2010 World Cup, which saw players go on strike and then exit at the first stage, and a threat of a 20 percent reduction if the team's popularity dipped more.
The results of the latest poll are unlikely to make happy reading for either the French football authorities or the players.
L'Equipe estimates that with FFF president Noel Le Graet up for re-election in December, he will want to make an example of Nasri and the Manchester City star could face a ban of up to two years, ruling him out of the next World Cup finals.

Ozil has 49 assists in two seasons at Real. Xavi has 19 in the last two years for Barca. Clearly that only shows a very, very partial element of their overall contributions, and Xavi is probably still the superior player, but Ozil is super-effective at club level.

Pretty sure one of the team-mates who cites Nasri as a 'disruptive influence' is Malouda. They'd be better served making sure he never finds his way into the National squad again.

Ozil has 49 assists in two seasons at Real. Xavi has 19 in the last two years for Barca. Clearly that only shows a very, very partial element of their overall contributions, and Xavi is probably still the superior player, but Ozil is super-effective at club level.

I always feel assists are a bit of a difficult thing to measure. Like how often has Xavi picked the through ball that opened a team up for e.g. Iniesta to square a ball for Messi to tap in? Messi gets the goal and Iniesta gets the assist but Xavi created the chance iykwim. Barcelona's rotation of possession in front of a defence probing for gaps means that assists will be spread more evenly across the team.

Ozil has been killing it for my FFL team as well, he's been very effective for Germany this tournament. He's not at Xavi level but hey he might well get there.

Nasri is a nasty punchable little shit and I revel in his misfortune.

I always feel assists are a bit of a difficult thing to measure

totally. they are completely unmeasurable in fact. it's impossible to say who was responsible for a goal other than the scorer. "assists" seem to me like a stats-obsessed American's take on football.

also because it helps that every man and his dawg has a ff team now, although maybe that is an imported american thing too

I have a weird thing with Samir Nasri where I'm always surprised to see him turn up in any team he plays for. I spent large parts of last season watching Man City and going "huh? Nasri? He's there?" despite knowing full well he plays for them. I do the same when I see him for France. I think my brain just refuses to accept his existence.

re. Larsson, there's some of his autobiography quoted here, which covers his departure from Feyenoord: http://www.thefootballnetwork.net/main/s302/st37269.htm

nasri being a dick who often doesn't perform when you want him to? p old news surely

/embittered arsenal fan

in ten years you'll have him in a top 20 list

Three lines into your link, ailsa, and there's a horrible "always given 110%" :(

I shall persevere against my better judgement.

Four lines in and the author has confused reign and rein :(

After that it's c&p all book extracts - Henrik has a better editor. I just sneaked a peak at his 3rd place play off goal in the '94 World Cup - proper Henrik goal - springs the offside, touches round the keeper, dummies to put the defender on his arse, rolls the ball into the empty net and reels away celebrating.

in ten years you'll have him in a top 20 list

― Ну, там твое место, там сабе будь! (darraghmac), Wednesday, 27 June 2012 11:14 (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

top 20 players city wasted their money on?