Activate Another Lever and Still Lose to a Madrid Remontada - The Small Teams Thread

I’ve thought about this recently. Looking at international sides too. Is it really that the quality of player just isn’t what it used to be? I can’t think why that would be

 

I always thought that they can get away with good lawyers. I really have nothing to say.

 

Colombia women trash Panama 6-0


Crazy how much growth we’ve seen in the sport in the last 5 years

from being in the receiving end of those thrashings to being the ones handing them out

I believe Colombia at this point is right behind the super powers, sort of like Croatia in men’s

crazy

 

I think it's because there is more focus on speed and efficiency. Some of the roles have almost disappeared, like it was mentioned before, to much focus on certain type of players.

Nations that have a huge talent pool are focusing on producing sellable players as soon as possible. Players are being overcoached, and asked to produce immediately.

Thinking of a lot the great players from before, they didn't bloom at 18. They grew and kept growing and expressing themselves.

 

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39518959/ex-barcelona-player-dani-alves-jailed-sexual-assault

Dani Alves gets sentenced to prison for 4.5 yrs. Always seemed like a p.o.s. Now it gets proven in court. Ratface.

 

Dani Alves is just another example of those who virtue signal the most are the biggest POS. He'll probably bring up racism at some point to justify his sentence. Screw him.

 

See why I told you not to get excited about Arsenal yet..... will probably make it past Porto in the return leg at home.... but my point was that you can't just come out and act like Arsenal is suddenly a big CL team.... Long way to go.

 

Alves being jailed for 4 years is brilliant.

Barca DNA

 

And at Afcon since Christmas.

The problems are many: No Spalletti, Osimhen unavailable, Kvara a shadow of his prior year self, 4-3-3 not as effective without Kim, 3-4-3 helped with the defense but we had no offense without a target forward (see Osimhen availability), key players holding out to leave on free transfers at the end of the season and either putting in bad performances or being kept off the field because they want to leave, bringing in value players who have talent but spent a long time injured in the previous season and didn't come in form, offseason spent dicking around with contract extension negotiations (Kvara, Zielinski, Osimhen) that didn't get signed and taking forever to find a coach, on and on.

And een with all that we're underperforming the circumstances.

 

Yes, still a long way to go. But the bottom line is Arsenal is a contender to win the CL this season, Atletico isn't. This week's results didn't change that.

 

I don't know how prison sentences are in Spain but in alot of European countries you can get out after serving half your sentence. So Alves might even be out in 1,5 years.

 

People who have been watching this sport longer than I have, let me know if I'm veering down the wrong road here, but one thing that feels particularly pronounced in today's game is these super team squads having super team type depth. We're talking about "where does Rodrygo* fit into all of this" in talks about signing Mbappé, and think about how many teams out there - good teams, Champions League-level teams - Rodrygo could join tomorrow and he'd be written into the XI with a Sharpie. Look at the benches of clubs like us and City and Bayern in recent years and how many of those players you could say that about, or are players who might be starters for their international teams but aren't getting regular starting minutes with their clubs.

Players don't get better by sitting and watching and only kicking the ball during training sessions, they get better when they're on the field during games and doing their thing and executing shit for themselves under pressure. So many of the world's best players are on stacked teams when playing time is limited. There's 990 minutes of playing time in a game for an entire squad, obviously 90 of that is tied up in the 'keeper, there's only so much of it to go around and get everyone involved and happy and feeling like they're contributing and getting better game over game.

I mean, again, I don't know if this stuff - to this degree - has always been the case in this sport, so if I'm wrong then please quote me and tell me so and don't go around repping this post. I don't want to be spewing misinformation. Further, if this is the case, I don't know how to "reverse" it; a lot of this is driven by more and more money being funneled to fewer and fewer clubs, with more leagues getting left in the shadows by the day. The 5th best league in the world is routinely called a "farmers league", both the Italian and German leagues are often given poor reception by many football fans today...more and more eyeballs seem fixated on what's happening in England. It's not a good development. The sport as a whole needs all these leagues operating at their best, it's much healthier. We need more modernization in the Brazilian and Argentine leagues as well. All these leagues need each other, they're only enemies when their teams meet in European (or South American) competitions, not otherwise.

I dunno, just my perception of things.

*Rodrygo really does seem like the guy who always draws the short end of the stick in these things...the guy who gets pushed into his less preferred position when Vini plays, the guy who's influence is lessened when he's not the protagonist, the guy who is likely to lose playing time the most with an Mbappé signing, etc., but that all is really its own post.

 

Don't forget that Alves has been locked up throughout this process out of fear of him being a flight risk to Brazil - no extradition treaty between Spain and Brazil - so he also gets time served credit for that. I dunno if you were taking that into account but feel like it's worth making explicit just to be sure.

 

I am actually proud of my ability to judge character. I knew Alves was an asshole since the first time I had the displeasure to see his face.

 

Same in the UK, depending severity.

You can serve half your sentence in Jail and then on a licence upon release, like an ankle tag.

He’ll still be tarnished with being a sexual predator though and no club / person / whatever would want anything to do with that.