I’d say good on the Athletic player then! One tackle and he’s taken Messi out of the game. His Manager must have been over the moon. Look I love to see good passing football as well. La Liga is probably my favourite league to watch. But do you want football to be non-contact? It’s a contact sport! When I was playing football I played LB, LW and CF. When I was playing in defence I did my best to put the forwards off their game. When I was playing LW and CF I mouthed off as much as possible to try and get my marker to foul me badly.
Now, I am no fan of Ronaldo, but these challenges should never be tolerated in football. It should be an automatic red card. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2Tipn1u9F4"]YouTube - Ronaldo vs Grygera, nice action[/ame]
Generally they are automatic reds. I imagine that either the officals did not see it clearly enough (which is possible) or the ref went easy because it was a pre-season game (although in any situation that tackle should be dealt with more severely).
Soccer should be played with these two mantras in mind: Penetration without possession is a felony. Possession without penetration is mere masturbation.
That's what the refs are for. If it's allowed, it's legal and as fair as life gets. If the better team gets beaten that way, shame on them and all glory to the winner. Life and football in a nutshell.
Exactly. Though better refereeing is also required. Personally, I like one-touch quick medium-short passing and moving into position style football. With the occasional well-placed long ball to players moving into spaces that will naturally appear to surprise and unsettle defences. And the occasional slalom dribbles through the middle towards goal as they invite fouls or lead to chance to score. Defensively is another matter. That should be tough, fast, decisive and always aimed at the ball. If that mean that a player falls over after the ball was played I'm okay with that. If the ref allows it, it's okay. And if you can use the ref to hinder your opponent by occasionally making the ref stop play. Hey...well done if the foul was not reckless. What I really don't like is the holding and shirt pulling. And elbows when heading. And diving. And playacting injury. That´s not how it should be played.
Spoken like a fan of the Dutch national side. I agree that ideal football is centered around the ball and each player should be comfortable on the ball. That is just not how a lot of people play because it is much easier to find ways around the need for premium skill than to sharpen skills (i.e. shirt pulling, diving and for me, set pieces) I hate teams that rely so heavily on set pieces.
Well as a Russian I can say that the staple of our game is combination plays and possession football. Our media seems to think that every Russian club and our NT have to play in Spartak Moscow's style. I personally believe that the higher the passing culture is the better the football.
1) With a pleasant attitude and respect for the opposition and team-mates. With no desire to hurt anyone and with enthusiam to enjoy the game (and to score more goals than the opposition of course) and show a good example to young kids or any viewer for that matter. 2) Largely on the grass - 'if God had wanted the ball in the air he would have put goalposts up there' etc, but with occasional quality crosses and Laudrup type scoop passes as variation. As a Nottingham Forest fan I was suprised one poster said they were an example of what was wrong with English football - in the 70's, 80's, 90's they were known as one of the sides that liked to play 'good football' - the above quote is Brian Clough's - and not argue with Refs etc. Tottenham (with the help of two Argentinians) were very much a footballing side in the 80's but had been advocates of a short passing game as early as the 60's which was successful in Europe and England. I just thought picking Forest as such an example would be like saying the 1950's Hungarians or 1970's Dutch were boring or negative or something (which they definately weren't).
In my opinion, soccer should have a lot of defense with most scoring coming off of counter attacks. This pretty much is just my opinion because I'm a fan of Greek soccer.
Greece has produced a genius or two though, the main one being brought up through the Soviet school of football.