This thread is for any discussion of world football unrelated to players and managers from The Netherlands. If you want to discuss the merits of Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Morinho, this is YOUR thread.
Suarez and Ruiz are spicing up the EPL: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dwE1XmDMTA&feature=player_embedded"]Luis Suarez amazing goal vs Stoke City (League Cup)26/10/2011 - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVot8p0hFyM"]Bryan Ruiz First goal in the Premier League - YouTube[/ame]
haha - I was going to come here and ask if you all saw El Pistolero's goals from yesterday. that first goal was sick sick sick.
Kuijt and Suarez are about the only guys putting in some work for Liverpool. Pretty painful to see how they struggle but its always nice to watch the EPL and realize that we don't have it that bad in the Netherlands in terms of tactical, attacking and entertaining football. I can't believe it but it's the 53th minuten and Suarez looks tired.
With Liverpool the first thing that now pops in my head is that insane 40 million euros deal for Andy Carroll last year. It still boggles my mind.
Yeah, especially considering the fact that he's worthless. They could have bought Bas Dost for €5m and I don't think he's worse than Carroll.
Or Ricky van Wolfswinkel who scores at will in Portugal. I guess Caroll will go down as the Liverpool Sulejmani!
At least Sulejmani was of some use. Carroll is worthless in almost every aspect. They could have gotten anything and it would be better than Carroll. There are plenty of prospect strikers who cost way less than Carroll and are way better. Not to mention Carroll's drinking habits.
Liverpool spent around €85 million or something on Carroll, Downing and Henderson. Who? Exactly. It seems like they wanted to create a British core in their team, which I suppose is not a bad thing, but they got it only at the cost of grossly overpaying for a bunch of very average players.
Yeah well there is a system behind it. I read an article about their purchases after an American investor took over that had and American sport club also (in baseball or football) and how they do the Moneyball thing or something like it (as the point of that book is how with little money you can still get great results and 85 million is not little money ). The players they bought have x many good crosses delivered in the past and Caroll scored x many times with the head so there should be scored x many goals.
It's funny that after City and Chelsea it is Swansea City that has the highest pass success rate and ball possession rate in the EPL.
Didn't Liverpool have the same problem with their previous owners? Who were also Americans and didn't understand a bit of football?
I believe the problem of those guys were that they hated each other (Gilette and the other). This guy at least is willing and trying to think about the sport.
Yes, the owners of Liverpool also own the Boston Red Sox baseball team and that team has been using the Moneyball concept. However this season they did not make the playoffs and fired the technical director who was responsible for building the club. I don't think they have translated this into Liverpool yet as the purchased players are of questionable value. Carroll was injured a lot at Newcastle though he has played a couple of times with the English NT. He certainly should be a capable striker given his height and strength. I suspect he really doesn't like to train hard enough.
They were also owners of an American baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and they spent a lot of money on Liverpool but it was leveraged money and when Liverpool did not make CL money the house of cards collapsed.
Not Dutch... or Dutch...? http://www.goal.com/nl/news/1732/in...42435/vitesse-target-havenaar-eredivisie-mooi Hope you enjoy!
don't want to rehash some really really bad memories - but not getting CL football was just a small small small small part of how bad those guys were. They bought the entire team with leveraged money, took on additional debt, "spent money" (net spend was essentially 10M pounds a year - i.e. selling to buy), then when the world financial market collapsed so did their house of cards. Liverpool was paying 40M pounds a year of interest alone - so the CL money - in the 2 years they were in it with the owners - was already gone before it showed up. those guys literally had Liverpool on the brink of administration. (and please don't fall for the media's portrayal of andy carroll and his supposed drinking "habits" - he's been a model professional at Liverpool and in the last 5 games him and Suarez have really gelled well. Remember you are talking about a 22 yr old that is still coming into his game - he will get much much better over time.)
Sorry, I haven't seen the added value of Carroll yet and I've seen quite some Liverpool games lately. And I don't believe players suddenly start to learn how to play football after they're 22. What exactly are his specific skills, except for being tall obviously?
The US NT plays France in a friendly and 1/4 of our roster for this match is German born (American father/German mother) and play in the Bundesliga. If this trend continues and there are several other promising youth players on our prospective Olympic team, we should changer the name of our team to Die Mannschaft II!! See this New York Times story. You may have to register to view it, I can't remember their policy as we are subscribers to the paper
Holland also has a satellite NT at their disposal being Morocco: Ismail Aissati Karim El Ahmadi Nordin Amrabat Oussama Assaidi Mounir El Hamdaoui Zakaria Labyad Mbark Boussoufa Youness Mokthar Imad Najah Ali Messaoud Many play in the first team or are still very young, talented and getting there. Don't have to tell you Labyad will be there also very soon. They are all born, raised and learned the game playing in Holland. In the next future they could add super talents Adam Maher Anass Achahbar As the Dutch youth development programs are full of Moroccan´s it is possible in the next future that their whole NT will have be born and raised in the Netherlands. However Belgium also has now a bunch of super talented Moroccans that could choose for them, so maybe it will be more of a Dutch-Belgium team.
Yes, it's really quite interesting how this is all developing. The big difference is that none of US/German NT players has spent much time (if any) in the US whereas the Dutch/Morrocan players were born and raised in Holland (most of them???). Of course France is always the classic country for "international" NTs.