I didn't get what you meant by this... Well, it seems like a second divison swiss team like FC Lausane was too powerfull for Lokomotiv. So Lokomotiv ends their european campaign with 0.5 points contributed to the Russian ranking. That's a bit less than the 10-20 you were expecting...
arrembimba, why do portuguese posters always have such an insane chip on their shouldesr? nothing to do with an inferiority complex? 1) i never said that braga hadnt done well, they have done amazingly well 2) if you look elsewhere, i have said i think portugal may even end up with the best coefficient for this year, and have been saying for a while i think they are looking at a major resurgence in league strength over the next few years. remember, you come from a very small, very poor country who deserves nothing more than to finnish last in everything they enter. this is why they very rarely win anything, ever, and why they cannot retain any of their even half good players. hope that has really annoyed you.
I think they would relish it because they'll just win the home-leg 4-nil if needed. Take today's Utrecht - Celtic match for instance.
I didn't want to sound like that. I know the limitations of portuguese teams. We (people + media) put a lot a pressure in our biggest teams, both in portuguese competitions and europe. It really is insane, considering how poor €€€ our teams are (even Benfica, Porto and Sporting) compared to the competition they face in Europe. I know you didn't. What you said was that Celtic's problem was the lack of money. I disagreed and said their problem was how they spent their money. I read your post saying that about Portugal. Unfortunately, I don't agree. The portuguese league is weak and always will be (compared to Spain, England, Germany, Italy and France). That won't change. The weaker teams in Portugal will always be much weaker. Sometimes one of them (like Boavista or Braga) will cause some upsets for a few years, but that's it. Maybe Braga will manage to be competitive for a little longer than Boavista, who knows... It didn't lol. Most of it is true anyway.
you seem to forget that we made 4 wins out of 6 this year so we have done our bit for Portugal we were unlucky we came up against Belorussia champions who are in to their 25 league game of their season while we have just started ours, in the 2 2nd half of both games it really showed.
I'm not forgetting anything. Even though Maritimo won 4 games, they still went out of Europe early. 4 points is still good considering it's Maritimo though. Trust me, it would. There's alot of people here already demanding that Benfica finishes 1st because we drew Lyon's group. I prefer to be less optimistic, so I only ask for 2nd place. But anything less than that would be a massive shock.
And why? They lost two of their best players, have a horrible domestic form and Schalke is a good team. Also Lyon is way more experienced in CL than Benfica and was always better than them in the last years, so why should anyone demand that Benfica finish above Lyon?
More experienced yes, but last year, Benfica > Lyon. I don't think too many would argue that, especially considering Benfica beat the French champions (who didn't turn out to be Lyon) last season, in France. There were only a handful of teams that were able to beat Benfica last year and we were only undone against Liverpool because our coach was a complete fool in the return leg at Anfield. With all that said, I'd be extremely shocked if we finished 1st, and would completely expect a 2nd or 3rd place finish. I'd even go as far to say that I'd expect a 3rd place finish simply because of how awful we've been but from what I've heard, Schalke have some internal problems of their own to take care of.
Why? Because that's how things are here in Portugal. In Portugal it's just not acceptable for Benfica or Porto to be knocked out by any other team that isn't Barcelona, Real, Chelsea, Man Utd, Arsenal, Liverpool, Inter, AC Milan and Bayern (and now City as well i guess). Losing against anyone else is not acceptable and is enough of a motive for the press to start questioning everything in the club (manager, formations, players etc) and heads will roll. So if Benfica doesn't end up top 2 in the group, it'll be seen as a massive failure. As for Benfica's domestic form it'll get better... hopefully.
Btw, I forgot to say some days ago to thank Boca Fan for keeping the ranking updated. Unfortunately, I don't have the patience anymore to post results of each match. RANKING POR------------36.796 RUS------------36.374 UKR------------36.216 I think Benfica will get better once the major issue of goalkeeper (Roberto) is fixed and another element is added to the midfield. Creativity might not be as strong as last season though...we'll have to see. In normal conditions Benfica has what it takes to go through the group phase. FC Porto looks solid as I expect a good campaign in Europa League, the very least to the quarter-finals. Nicolás Otamendi will cement the CB area and make them stronger. Sporting is not impressing with their gameplay but have been effective lately. According to the press they're looking for reinforcements, so we'll see. Braga's campaign was impressive...and would of been more if their defense didn't relax or get that heart pumped so much. If the coach manage to keep their head cold, then they can do some damage. I can imagine 2nd place, but due to their lack of experience, 3rd would be already be a good feat. Marítimo did less than expected. I understand that you feel your team is being overlooked verde-rubro, but beating the likes of Bangor City is not something to be proud of. Their performance against Borisov was defensively hedious on both legs (and even Bangor City scored a total of 3!). To be honest I think Nacional - your rivals - could of done a better job. In conclusion, I'm certain that Portugal will get the 7th place this year. Closing the gap was a priority and if we don't end 6th, then we surely will in the next year.
Once again you are completely wrong. BTW welcome to Year 3 of me completely calling the "Fact or Fiction Russia is the 6th Best League in Europe" thread to a T. This is the year they go back into the wilderness and after next year will be fighting to stay Top 10. Portugal and Netherlands are the two country's that can claim to be the 6th best league in Europe, that's a fact and a fight we have with each other. Russia, Ukraine and Turkey can duke it out for 8th.
Nah, the Portuguese are among the best posters in this forum. The UEFA/Europe forum would suck without them! The ones from Canada and USA who claim Portuguese heritage are another story, however.
I agree completely with GoodDead. Portugal and the Netherlands are the traditional countries who should fight for 6th place although to be fair it's hard for us, the Dutch, to keep in track because in Russia, the Ukraine and Turkey more money seems to be involved and we all know that money improves the chance of success in football. Still, last season and early in this season we had some good results already in Europe so I hope we can even earn more points this year and move some places up in the UEFA co-efficiency list.
Benfica 2 - 0 Hapoel Tel-Aviv København 1 - 0 Rubin Twente 2 - 2 Internazionale Bursaspor 0 - 4 Valencia #6 Portugal 37.196 #7 Russia 36.374 #8 Ukraine 36.216 #9 Turkey 33.050 #10 Netherlands 32.296
Arsenal 6 - 0 Braga Marseille 0 - 1 Spartak Moscow Real Madrid 2 - 0 Ajax Shakhtar Donetsk 1 - 0 Partizan #6 Portugal 37.196 #7 Russia 36.707 #8 Ukraine 36.550 #9 Turkey 33.050 #10 Netherlands 32.296
Portugal is clearly the 6th best league, sorry Russia and Netherlands. The only problem was the (atypical) annus horribilis of 2005/2006 where Portugal won only 5.5 points (PT already has 5.2 and the year is already starting, I see this being easily a 10 point year at least). Now that it's gone we will be back where we belong. PT and RU now have both 4 teams left and PT's points are divided by 5 while RU's by 6. That can make a big difference come end of season. I also see PT's team's doing on average better than the remain 4 RU ones (even without the division difference). All in all, it seems like everything we said in the "Is Russia the 6th best league?" thread is coming true. Year after year.
"6th best league" and "6th best coefficient" are two different debates. Sure the UEFA coefficient method is a decent ranking system, but if we're talking about differences of 2 or 3 coefficient points, that's really well within the margin of error (and we're really talking here about differences of 0.5 points). Especially when you consider this system totally ignores the quality of teams in the bottom-half of each league. The Russian league is switching to an Autumn-Spring schedule in 2011/12 which should help them perform better in Europe.
Or make them exit earlier. I'm not the one fooling myself that the coefficient is a perfect measure of the league. I said Portugal was the 6th best league even when Russia had the 6th best coefficient. Also, the Netherlands has a better league than their ranking shows. What I'm just saying NOW is that the two finally match. As for the bottom half, there is no proper way to measure how the two leagues fare because they never play in the same tournament. We can go on and on, but in the end you have look at a level playing ground and only the European games can give you that.
Only in the numbers and actual events has what I said come to pass. Other then that everything I said in that thread hasn't materialized Nacional beat Zenit to get in the EL last year. Nacional.....from Madeira....with no money. Nacional. That alone should of been enough to shut up the Russian lobby but w/e the same people chiming in favor of Russia will be the same ones in 2 years saying they never meant that Russia will be the 6th best league in 5 years but that they previously were the 6th best team 5 years ago.