No I didn't, and yes I did. http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...12-beyond-r-ii.1980389/page-107#post-28880551 http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...12-beyond-r-ii.1980389/page-107#post-28880551 Multiple posts in which I expressed serious concern about Spain and Del Bosque's handling of the transition from one generation to the next. I didn't predict the current debacle, but who did?
Part of the problem when you get such amazing players is how do you balance between them and involving the rest of their team. I don't believe the solution is to prize them as special over the rest. If we press, Ronaldo/Messi should press, if we track back, Ronaldo/Mesi should track back, etc.
You had Spain as favourite to win just a month to the world cup, http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...squad-selection.2003293/page-25#post-30250606 http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...squad-selection.2003293/page-26#post-30258667 http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...squad-selection.2003293/page-24#post-30249005
Ozil an inferior talent to those two for 3yrs before the WCup wasnt pressing or tracking back yet we found a way to always play him I dont think any coach in this world would have current Messi or Ronaldo and bench them because they dont track back
So now its unreasonable to include the reigning world champions in the running? Really? What I did wasn't hindsight analysis. I've already proven that, not sure what else there is to cover.
You didnt rate them because they were world champ you did because you thought they had enough in them both players and coach to win it again. You knew the players that were going to play and still rated them as favourite. To now come back to say "You knew Spainwas going to fail" is revisionism
I didn't say I knew Spain was going to fail. I never said that, what I believe is that it wasn't unreasonable to suggest they could have problems with their aging core. And I did not know that Del Bosque planned on going in with essentially the same thing we saw for the past four years. For all I knew they were planning on playing Koke and Martinez. To suggest I knew something only Del Bosque could know is beyond absurd.
Koke and Martinez would have played for? Martinez has never been a regular for Spain neither has Koke Martinez didnt even have a good club season, So why would anyone expect them to start. In qualifiers or friendlies, How many of those did Koke or Martinez start?
I don't know, but I was expecting at least some evolution from Del Bosque before the World Cup. Didn't really think about what form that would take. Anyways, what are we arguing about again?
I'm so glad Germany got over itself long enough to win the World Cup. It wasn't long ago that Toni Kroos thought he was too good to sit on the bench of one of the deepest talent pools in world football. Jogi caved and we ended up losing to a very beatable Italy. No one player is ever bigger than the team. The problem specifically with Portugal is that the team lives or dies on Ronaldo's performance. I don't want to be a part of a team where my success relies entirely on one person's performance.
Maybe this is because other players are mediocre. Ronaldo, Coentrao, Pepe thats about it. others are mid table quality When Hugo Almeida can still be your starting striker or Nani who hasnt done anything in 3 yrs
I remember arguing with a lot of people on here when I said Portugal wouldn't make it out of their group. Wonder where they are now
I'm leaning towards, we won the cup despite and not thanks to Löw. The u21 champions of '09 in combination with our veterans and the chemisty of the Bayern block, to build the team around, were the key elements. I'm not going to start revering him, because he made no mistakes. But lets give him credit for maturing as a coach and drawing the right conclusions at last. I'll leave it at that, a Jogi Löw appreciatuon thread is awkward enough as it is.
A team loses, the coach gets crucified. A team wins, and the coach gets what, a bottle of sparkling water and an indifferent shrug.
That's just lame generalization. For the majority of his tenure, approximately until Löw lost the 2012 EC semifinal against Italy with his tactics, he basically received no criticism in the German media at all. Sure, a minor word of doubt here and there, but the big tabloids and opinion makers were on his side. Some even tried to blame the lost semi against Italy on Toni Kroos and Holger Badstuber alone (two players who were not that popular at the time). The team always received the majority of the blame in the past and several key players had it even worse. Look at the battering Ballack and later Schweinsteiger and Lahm got in the German press prior to their 2013 CL victory. Ballack was the eternal losers, "Mr. 2nd place", a relict of the past which later became not fit to lead Germany, lacking character and weak, unworthy and destined to fail for Schweinsteiger and Lahm. That's only a portion of what was written about them. It was a disgrace and superseeded anything Joachim Löw had to endure tenfold. If anything Löw and Bierhoff were masters in pushing any responsibility as far away from them as humanly possible. I knew fully well about the reaction my post would get before hand, but this myth which is being created after the WC, the claim that any criticism towards Löw was always over-exagerrated and unjustified, shouldn't be allowed to develop. We have to give Löw credit, about the way he selected a team and nurtured the group towards the final, he also made few mistakes. But to what extent do I have to praise a coach who needed to lose a EC semifinal, to realize that set-pieces are important, that defensive stability has won the majority of tournaments and not hurray football, that benching a player like Müller and relying on Podolski on the left wing, won't win you a title, the list goes on. What about his legacy? Should we blindly say, he won the cup, now he's among the all-time greats like Heynckes (which I read above)? I find that hard to swallow, on the one hand a two team Champions League winner, on the other Joachim Löw with all his shortcomings. On the same level to be remembered for eternity? Well, I'm not so blinded to believe I can reach any of the German NT fanatics on this board anyway, but I said my part.
I agree. But at the same time, winning a World Cup is hard, and our roster did overperform their talent in 2008 and 2010 under his tenure. So while I'm not willing to give him all the credit, because we did consistently show similar struggles throughout his tenure that he never addressed successfully until this World Cup, like set-pieces, like the fact both our CMs in his 4-2-3-1 had a natural tendency to push up simaltaneously, leaving the defence exposed, like the fact that Hummels-Boateng was rarely played as a pairing before the knockout stages, despite it clearly being the best option, he did nonetheless prove himself able to adapt what isn't working so that it does work. At the end of the day, that's all we can ask from a manager. I'm probably one of Löw's harshest critics on the NT board and I will likely continue to be, but I still believe he deserves a fair deal of credit for this win, and some respect as a result. Of course there's overreactions and blowback against the critics, in the aftermath of a World Cup, all the same if we had lost as well, which I don't think equates with hardcore Löw fanaticism, but rather a natural ebb and flow of a fan. But I believe we will eventually settle for a nice equilibrium of "Löw made mistakes, but he did good things as well". And that's an equilibrium I can accept.