I think what Puli is going through is what any player would go through in his form. Best thing for him is to put his head down, watch game film, find out what is not working with his game, tweak it, train hard, and be a good teammate. If that means a spell on the bench and a late sub appearance in games for the last part of the season, that that's what it is. To me he seems like he made of some pretty sterner stuff, and I would assume he's going to react in a positive way from this adversity. People can be surprising though, especially teenagers with greedy agents, so one never knows. Stoeger was right to pull him though. Although I don't buy that he was awful, he was the obvious choice to remove for Rolls Reus. He had the look of someone who was a little panicky with the ball. Clearly suffering for confidence, IMO. He was also getting bested for quickness and at times pace. Not sure what is up with him.
I think the vast majority would subjectively rate the Bundesliga higher than Serie A. Objective rankings are more reliable but subjective have greater potential to be valid because it can fill in gaps. One of them in UEFA coefficients is that it's based on a brief window and a minority of teams in the league. Another one is Transfermarkt league valuation, and they are virtually the same per team, while Bundesliga are superior at integrating from their system as we have regularly discussed.
Maybe not top to bottom, but Italy is currently better at the top -- it's a lot easier to be 2nd in Bundesliga than 2nd in Italy, obviously.
This doesn't matter. So their mods are bad. That has nothing to do with the fact that the mods here allow some freedom and even some ribbing. That's how it should be.
We're bigger than that, Duke. Atalanta went down Pulisic's side to pin him back and force him to start the offense further back and because he is less likely to make a good defensive play than Schurrle. On offense Pulisic started badly but was doing fine before long. Let's put things in perspective: Dortmund started 1 goal ahead in the aggregate and the goal they gave up was a corner (when will they do something about this?). At that stage, all they had to do was score 1 goal in the entire game and win. They did that by subbing in their best fresh player who is a World Champion International ffs, in a do-or-die Europa League elimination game. Dortmund's recent turnaround over all makes it clear that Pulisic wasn't the problem to begin with. He has to play better and he will.
Agree with all this but I will point out that Reus was left off the 2014 WC Winning squad a few days before flying off to Brazil due to a last minute injury.
Game today v 10th ranked Augsburg. My guess is he starts on the bench given that Reus was given a 30 minute sub appearance last week. Although you could see Schürrle given a rest with upcoming round of 16 Europa league coming up. 12:30 FS1.
Thanks for the heads up. But 12:30? That's Mountain, which is by far the time zone with the lowest population in the continental U.S.
Yes but clearly an important time zone for those of us that live here. Population can be so overrated.
Not sure how many of you have been watching but the first half was the most entertaining Dortmund side without CP I've seen all year. If you starting living in isolation right before Klopp left and this game was the first time you watched Dortmund since, you'd assume Jurgen is still there. The three Germans up front (Reus, Schurrle, Gotze) were all on exactly the same page, and everyone looked like they were having fun. Reus makes such a difference. They played more team football today then they have all year. The only player not fully functioning with Dortmund in this game was probably Piszczek.
the second half, by comparison, has been abysmal. giving away the ballcheaply, struggling to combine, totally lacking in ideas and becoming ever nervier in defense. bad from dortrmund
Funny how perception works: IMO, Augsburg is playing better than Dortmund and deserves to turn the game around. They got 12 shots to their 6 and 5 shots on goal to 1 by Dortmund.