They Needed a Minivan but Got a Gio: Reyna at Nottingham Forest (Olf Borussia Dortmund)

Discussion in 'Yanks Abroad' started by jond, Dec 6, 2017.

  1. adam tash

    adam tash Member+

    Jul 12, 2013
    Barcelona, Spain
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    im also thinking CPmust have made it worse after ggg let him back on the field...that egghead was all bone imo
     
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  2. felloveranddidanadu

    Plymouth Argyle FC
    Dec 12, 2009
    Club:
    San Jose Frogs
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    It's not just fields/opponents, it's the trans-continental flights and endless procession of games
     
  3. gomichigan24

    gomichigan24 Member+

    Jul 15, 2002
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I mean Mexico has plenty of Euro based players though. Their current roster includes Vasquez, Nestor Araujo, Guardado, Alvarez, Herrera, Jimenez, Lozano, and Corona. And that's a lot of their key players. And Lainez who is actually currently hurt.
     
  4. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    Complaining about the conditions of the region seems awfully weak to me. Germany, France, etc. have to play in far from ideal conditions in Eastern Europe and the islands, too. Not to mention dangerous ultras.

    You deal with the hand you got.
     
  5. dams

    dams Member+

    United States
    Dec 22, 2018
    The refs and fields in CONCACAF have not even been bad so far this time around. IMO, it's an excuse for poor performance that has been repeated so many times it has become fact.
     
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  6. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    I guess the "we're missing CCV so it's our C team" sort of excuse has run its course.
     
  7. FC Tallavana

    FC Tallavana Member+

    Jul 1, 2004
    La Quinta
    Why don't you go on a playing tour of Eastern European and CONCACAF soccer stadiums and tell us if you still feel France, Germany et al have it just as tough. The playing conditions in Eastern Europe are nearly all better than CONCACAF locations. The flights are shorter, the weather is better (for soccer), the fields are more playable, the refs are more competent, and the opposing teams are more likely to let you leave the stadium with your ankles intact.
     
  8. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    UEFA has had qualifiers (for Euro and WC) suspended due to fan riots, and not just once but several times. When was the last time that happened in CONCACAF?

    You'd be whining for weeks if a flare were thrown to our players in Croatia or somewhere like that.

    Do you know how HOT it gets in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Vélodrome in Marseilles in the summer?

    35°C is not uncommon. And if you have to play Russia, Norway, the Faroes, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, or even Scotland in the winter?

    Do you know how many countries have artificial turf to play their games, due to the weather in winter? Grass doesn't do well when it drops below freezing point, and no one is so dumb to spend thousands of dollars heating up the place for a couple of games.

    The Luzhniki (where the Russians play their home games) has a horrid hybrid turf that is a mix of grass and plastic. Many players have complained about it already.

    As for the refs, anyone who watches the Champions and the Europa knows how many mistakes those guys make. VAR helps, but they let go plenty of fouls when the ones committing them belong to the big teams. CONCACAF is going to have VAR soon, anyway.
     
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  9. laxcoach

    laxcoach Member+

    United States
    Jul 29, 2017
    intermountain west
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    This is old man/dad talk. Athletes don't give a crap about the pitch unless it's a mud hole.

    I never got past varsity HS anything but never, ever considered the fans, the weather or the field. Just the dude that was my job and the overall plan.
     
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  10. NietzscheIsDead

    NietzscheIsDead Member+

    NO WAR
    United States
    May 31, 2019
    NO WAR
    The field absolutely matters.

    Playing in NorCal on a manicured field vs. a central Texas rock garden vs. Oklahoma Astro Turf from the 1980s….it absolutely makes a difference.

    I used to have to peel my shorts off of the strawberries on both of my thighs when playing seasons in some places. Guys do get hesitant and tentative when their ankles and feet are on the line.

    I played with bone bruises on both of my heels and sprained ankles during multiple seasons in Texas because the ground is so hard that it begins to wear bruises on your feet and the fields are hard like cement and uneven, which rolls ankles easily.

    Clods and potholes on hard fields cause the ball to skip in all sorts of directions when it is supposed to be traveling in a straight line, and a field littered with them is really hard to control the ball on.
     
  11. Scotty

    Scotty Member+

    Dec 15, 1999
    Toscana
    But they have Clenbuterol on their side.
     
  12. ChrisSSBB

    ChrisSSBB Member+

    Jun 22, 2005
    DE
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Uh, this is what I would call old man/dad talk.
     
  13. Bruce S

    Bruce S Member+

    Sep 10, 1999
    Completely untrue. The field can REALLY affect the play in soccer.
     
  14. ChrisSSBB

    ChrisSSBB Member+

    Jun 22, 2005
    DE
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    If you are the superior team, you want a big and manicured field with just the right amount of moisture. If you are trying to make things tough for a superior team, grow the grass long or make things bumpy, shrink the width, etc.
     
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  15. Bruce S

    Bruce S Member+

    Sep 10, 1999
    exactly. A shite field makes it a battle, not smooth soccer.
     
  16. laxcoach

    laxcoach Member+

    United States
    Jul 29, 2017
    intermountain west
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Understood and didn't say it didn't affect the game. Said most athletes don't whine about it. Fans do. Post match they can rail on it all they want but it's the same for both sides.
     
  17. russ

    russ Member+

    Feb 26, 1999
    Canton,NY
    Club:
    Liverpool FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    So I was watching a clip of DiStafano.It is on one of the Best player threads.
    Incredible touches and feints with a waterlogged ball on a mud pit with players sliding and sprawling around him.
    Now imagine him on a good pitch.
     
  18. golazo68

    golazo68 Member+

    Dortmund
    United States
    May 21, 2004
    Brazil
    Great post. Yes, the strawberries. I tried wearing bikers pants underneath but always seemed to still get the skin taken off. Our German coach would
    tell us 'water is for sissies' as we played in 90 degree + heat. But I'd look
    at the (American) football team practicing next to me and think 'glad I'm not those guys'.

    I also grew up playing soccer in the 'stone age, neanderthal' 80s when the NASL was going out of business and MISL seemed like the future (funny, eh?)

    During the NASL peak (but before we had enough fields), we practiced in a cow field in which you would have to avoid cow dung and ruts and divvits. More than once, practice got canceled because too many cows would enter the field and refused to leave. I kid you not. Of course, the goals had no nets.

    After NASL collapse (well, our NASL team moved so....), we switched to indoor in fall/winter and one main practice facility was a 30-45 minute trek by car to the indoor horse stables near the Coliseum/Fairgrounds). Some soccer fans converted a couple horse trotting areas to indoor fields but it was dirt floor and uneven and you just had to roll with it. Short field as well for indoor.

    Also, there was (again) some sort of 3/4 field length tin roof place we used to go mid-week, with no heat and we would play whatever the temperature and no turf (dirt)...

    This all because we had 1 indoor facility, owned by an MISL team that had it rented most the time- so it wound up being booked 5am-10pm
    for every league in town. So you had to get your (indoor) practice in where you could.

    We loved the game. And we would play wherever 3 guys could get together. Cones, trees, cows....it didn't matter. It was all about the love of playing. We would start games at 10pm, 5am ....whenever you could get a few guys together.

    So today, I see the manicured lawns, and the physios and the nutrition programs and all the experts and (on and on)........and I think sometimes
    that 'sh*t, I could absolutely play with these guys these days (given what
    we had back then).

    As you alluded...we had to think 3 different ways sometimes just to make a simple pass with proper pace (the divet, the curviture of field, the rock hard ball.
    In a way, it made us better players because it forced us to think well in advance
    of every situation.

    I still remember letting balls run past defenders because the field had no grass + moved fast.... but to set up properly- if you took a couple quick steps towards an incoming pass (and the defender took a step toward you and the ball) you could blow past the defender in surprise and never touch in-coming ball and pick it up behind them haha.
     
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  19. Bruce S

    Bruce S Member+

    Sep 10, 1999
    Players whine plenty about it.
     
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  20. Bruce S

    Bruce S Member+

    Sep 10, 1999
    it would also be the same for both sides if I insisted that they play soccer with a rugby ball.
     
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  21. NietzscheIsDead

    NietzscheIsDead Member+

    NO WAR
    United States
    May 31, 2019
    NO WAR
    This is amazing.

    A youth club team I played for in the 80’s frequently practiced with the local pros from these leagues and others who would come up from Mexico, Central and S. America, or over from Europe.

    Those guys were all great…humble and loved to play. You had to love to play…there wasn’t a thriving pro industry here. We had such a great community of people who were great athletes in an unheralded subculture. It’s what made US Soccer so fantastic and its why I am still interested in the success of the USMNT. Guys were from all over the world and we were all part of this disparate community spread all over the country. It’s why I root for our guys like Earnie Stewart and Berhalter to succeed…because we never believed that we had to sell ourselves short…we believed that we were going to make it happen ourselves. That’s why so many dual nationals loved the US team…because we were building our own thing here that everyone had a stake in, no matter where you were from. It was America. That’s what America was.

    I wish we could take the modern players back to experience the early days of the modern era from this time. They would come out of it with a real love for the US game, the US players, and the sport. The last of those guys might have just retired (Dempsey, Beasley, Donovan, etc). It was a brotherhood of humble athletes who loved to play and loved our community of players from all over the world epitomized by guys like Claudio Reyna.
     
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  22. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
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  23. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    All this talk about Pulisic being injury-prone, but it's Reyna the one who looks like is having a career-ending (or nearly) first serious injury.
     
  24. gomichigan24

    gomichigan24 Member+

    Jul 15, 2002
    Club:
    Manchester United FC
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    I mean it's definitely not close to career ending. He has a hamstring injury where there have been some setbacks in rehab. It's not great but not the end of the world. Tim Weah once missed six months because of a hamstring injury.
     
  25. Suyuntuy

    Suyuntuy Member+

    Jul 16, 2007
    Vancouver, Canada
    I typed that one in a hurry. What I mean is not "career-ending" as in having to retire, but career-ending as a top prospect. The sort of injury that will be nagging him forever and will prevent him to be what he could have been.

    Think Johannsson. Or Amon, Gyau, Onyewu, etc.
     

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