So, the Quakes really need to beat LA at Stanford, and again in LA in August. The sad thing is that the West is wide open this year and the Quakes could still realistically make the MLS Cup final. But they either need to fire the coach or send him to a re-education camp so that he plays the proper players using tactics that showcase their talents.
I love watching Almiron play. He is worth the price of a ticket. I wonder how long ATL will go before selling him.
Who do you compare Almiron to? Hubby and I were debating whether Almiron plays like Pulisic (hubby's opinion) or Messi (my opinion). Plus he always has that incredible smile on his baby face.
Messi may have more goals but Ronaldo has had more parties (partidos), and that's what's really important in life after all.
A little of "A" and a little of "B" plus a wicked soccer mind, Atlanta scored huge when they grabbed him.
I kind of get it, though, since Messi is a player who became great because he had to overcome some physical limitations. He's obviously one of the best players of all time, but if you look at him, you don't see that initially. He is not big, he is not especially fast, there are no obvious signs that he would be a great athlete. Thankfully for him, he was skilled enough in other areas that the his talents were recognized despite not looking the part. Most players have to overcome some type of limitation in order to be successful, and in this day and age, I think it's easier to imagine that. You can find guys with "flaws", if you will, and they can become very good. You can mold those types of players since practically every player has some sort of fault. What's impossible to replicate is a player like Ronaldo. He had every physical gift one could have, so you look at him and it's clear he was going to be a top level player. Now, clearly that doesn't always come to fruition, but there would be no reason to think he would not be a top level player based on even just a little bit of footage of the guy. Guys like that are incredibly rare. It's like trying to find another Mike Trout. You can't create a Mike Trout, it's as if he was born into the world as the perfect baseball player. Ronaldo is like that. Now, I don't think comparing upcoming players to existing players is a particularly useful endeavor anyway. I think it's harmful to development to put pressure on them by comparisons to great players. They should be looked at as individuals. Sure, you can compare features, skillsets, tendencies, those kinds of things, and see if they can find success in ways similar to other players, but direct comparisons are mostly just done by commentators who have to sell something, rather than people who know anything about actual player evaluation.
Yeah, I think that's part of it. Ronaldo is 6'1" and all that technical ability. Most soccer players are more like Messi's size, so it seems more natural to compare to Messi. The other thing is that Messi is maybe just a little bit better on balance then Ronaldo. So when you think of the "The Next" you want to compare with the very, very best.
Actually he is very fast, just not as fast as the fastest players in the world (but he's in top 5%). He also has the quickest first step of anyone (his power to weight ratio is off the charts, but I can't find the video where they measured that... there is something out there, this is the best I could find quickly): http://www.espn.com/espn/thelife/bodyshots/?guide=messi The first step and power is one of the main reasons for his success. But the other skills are just as ridiculous: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lionel-messi-is-impossible/
Fair enough, I wasn't trying to say he was slow, necessarily, only that his talents are not as obvious by look as they are with someone like Ronaldo. As I said, there is no doubt he is one of the greatest players, but the obsession with finding the next Messi is a kind of psychological thing more than a practical exercise in finding players with a similar skillset. It's a talking point for pundits and commentators, not scouts or data analysts. That isn't to say comparisons to other players are totally irrelevant, only that in the context of the soccer world, it's mostly just to generate hype for young talents and not based in any kind of reality. The public sphere of soccer is kind of a wasteland of useless "information". Being so popular, everyone thinks they know everything about the game and so they just start talking. But Messi being who he is, one of the most famous players, he's a go to for comparisons. It would be like every hitter up and coming hitter being compared to Barry Bonds whether or not their skillset matched his in any way.
A slew of misinterpretations led to a false story that Arturo Vidal had insulted CR7 Ronaldo in advance of their Confeds Cup match. This story is a great example of mishaps in language: https://www.socceramerica.com/article/73953/lost-in-translation-the-alleged-arturo-vidal-insu.html
That's pretty funny, actually. The company I work for does quite a bit of work with companies from various Spanish speaking regions, and the topic of how to properly translate something into Spanish for a particular customer comes up a lot, for reasons very similar to the issue pointed out in the article. Translation is a difficult job, but in this case, I doubt the press tried very hard to make sure they were accurately recounting what Vidal said. The more sensational interpretation, the better.
I'll be quietly rooting for Sac Republic FC tonight as they take on LA in US Open Cup action.... The match will be broadcast live on Sports 1140 KHTK The Chicago vs Cincinnati has now been moved to ESPN....I think a 5pm start here locally.... If work prevents me from going to Quake match guess I can catch a stream of it online...
Ike Opara, you know, the guy that wasn't good enough to play for us, will probably get defender of the year 2017.
We was constantly injured. When he was healthy he was decent, but his passing was bad...very bad. On the other side, he was good in the air as a target on set pieces and scored a handful of goals.