Defensive teams don't score many goals. Barca has this system for a long time and somehow they manage to score over 140 goals a year (in all competitons). 140 being a conservative number as they score in La Liga alone 100 If Barca is defensive then why do more offensive teams score less? Much less
because of Messi. Spain doesn´t have Messi, so their tiki-taka became a boring non-offensive tiki-taka... would only keep possession but wouldn´t do much up front.
Messi scores about 20 or 30 maximum more goals for Barca than your normal world class forwards. So without him Barca still has over 100 goals scored easily which is more than most offensive teams I will not compare 7 + 6 WC and Euro to the what, at least 360 games played by Barca and say tiki taka played by Spain is the real one.
it starts with: "Brazil, tell me how it feels, to have your daddy home" "Brasil, decime qué se siente tener en casa a tu papá Te juro que aunque pasen los años, nunca nos vamos a olvidar… Que el Diego te gambeteó, que Canni te vacunó, que estás llorando desde Italia hasta hoy A Messi lo vas a ver, la Copa nos va a traer, Maradona es más grande que Pelé"
Sorry, I was agreeing with you. The group stages were fantastic for neutral fans, I certainly agree. It is always amazing to me how much more tense the matches become in the knockout rounds, and how much less we see of goal scoring typically as we get closer to the final, probably also due perhaps to better team defending.
Welllll, the quarterfinals were undoubtedly dull but man are the semis getting off to a memorable start! Some guy on ESPN Deportes said it best: This game is so shocking, fans will remember it the rest of their lives. Where they saw it, what they were doing when this happened. 2014 keeps delivering
Brazil, sacrificing itself for the good of the World Cup! We single-handedly managed to increase a lot the goal scoring average!
That was my first thought. Where were you when JFK got assasinated? Where were you when the man landed on the moon? Where were you when Brazil crumbled?
Funny for me '02 sticks out as the best home field advantage of any WC in my lifetime ... Certainly better than '94, '98, '06 and '10 ... I still have that chant from the Korean fans stuck in my head ... You should watch some old footage of that. Sticks out in my mind as one of the top atmospheres I've ever heard or seen on TV or in person.
Didn't they need 8 more goals to be the WC with the most goals scored? They scored those last night EDIT: they needed 12 so 4 more
I was in a german named bar in a brazilian city called Novo Hamburgo, with my german-brazilian wife, and everybody started singing Oktoberfest songs after the match! It was really fun actually
IMO the best World Cup I've followed, which is all of them from 1990 on. One of the oddities is that the two most memorable matches were blowouts...the 5-1 Netherlands v Spain, and the 7-1 semifinal.
Which inflated the goals scored statistic, to the point that this World Cup was able to tie France '98 for most goals scored... I've been watching the World Cup since '82. This was the best one since '86 IMO. Italia '90 was the worst (by far)
most italians are complaining too many goals were scored in this World Cup, that defenses were atrocious. I suppose they rather see perfect defenses and the lowest goal average ever, than lots of goals, which yes, can hardly be scored without errors from defenses.
I remember catenaccio, not my kind of play I like to watch. The Italians have a point I think. A lot of teams where a bit too happy and enthusiastic with their playing style, too much space all over the field. A good defense / or tactic to build the best defense possible is what gets you further, usually.
the fact however is that if defenses are too good, we have too few goals. Football is already a low scoring game... defenses that don´t make mistakes result in even low scoring games. Good flawless defenses are good for the people who have them, not for the neutral viewer.
I know I know Italians admire the beauty of a tactical nil nil draw. I can respect that, but what we had at Italia '90 was far worse: teams basically bunkering for 120 minutes. You had that in the 1994 final as well. It was horrible.