Madridistas All Over Copa And Euros Collide While Colombians Dominate - The Other Teams Thread

I'm of the opposite mind. It leads to some clubs getting notable advantages over others.

For example, you guys having to go to Anfield, rather than them having to make a return, and/or them having to go to madrid. Meanwhile, some other clubs have a tougher road than POOl.

It makes advancing more about the draw than the form.

I hate the addition of the extra matches, and the schedule congestion, and the extra workload, all to fit in the "no hoper" clubs into this competition.

Honestly, who wants/needs to see Young Boys or Bratislava get curb-stomped over and over in the UCL? Maybe the UCL "no hoper" clubs would have a fighting chance to compete if they were relegated to Europa, as they used to.

 

This Champions League did not become interesting until Match Day 4 when the picture became clearer. For us, this league became interesting only because we were playing poorly and losing games. I became concerned after the Milan game. However, we (and Manchester City too) never fell outside the elimination bracket. Team such as us or Manchester City only needs to sneak into the playoff, and peaks after February.

I am not sure how I feel if I am a Liverpool supporter. It would be nice to be the number 1 seed, but it actually makes not much difference between the first or 8th seed. In recent years, I discovered there are no easy games in the knockout stage of the tournaments. Some of our best years were playing against the top teams round after rounds. As I said, Manchester City can finish as the 24th team and win the whole thing.

In the old days, only 16 teams qualified for the knockout stages after 6 matches in the Group stage. Now, we have 24 teams. Normally, I would be complaining of too many playoff teams, but if there were only 16 playoff teams and 6 games, we would be out. So, I am not complaining for selfish reason.

 

I think he's very good at somethings but completely falls apart when it doesn't go his way. CA and Zidane for me are on another level, they dealt with the pressure and things not going their way and have gotten things mostly right. I know we all get frustrated with CA but comparing him to someone like Pep is a real eye opener.

 

Guy had to spend over a billion pounds to win a CL with City. He's a fraud.

 

It’s not impossible, you just literally gave your opinion on Zidane (again) in a negative connotation (again …) .

Thinking Zidane’s legacy is in any form insignificant amongst Real Madrid fans isn’t controversial here, it’s controversial everywhere.

 

You make a valid point about the sample size, but it's equally fair to highlight that Zidane won the biggest trophy in club football three times in a row. I think many people (though not you) who argue that he "only succeeded at Real Madrid" tend to conveniently overlook the unprecedented achievement of winning the Champions League three consecutive times. If I were Zidane, my response would simply be: "When you can name someone else who has done that, then we can have this discussion."

 

He's taken over a team worse off than current City twice with most demanding a fire sale before his second stint

 

So, we have Guardiola, who has only succeeded while coaching the best player in the world in his prime, coaching a team without rivals in Germany (failed to win the CL with them, though), and as the coach of a team with infinite money. He's considered a genius.

Then, we have ZZ, who coached Real Madrid during the prime years of KCM and BBC and won 3 UCLs in a row but also coached a very turbulent Madrid and got the best of a weird mix of seniors and youngsters, winning a Liga title with a highly tactical and "Italian-like" style. He's considered lucky.

Guardiola and ZZ never got the same treatment from the media. Guardiola and Aragones/Del Bosque exploited a style of football that worked for a good stretch but never worked again after other coaches devised countermeasures.

ZZ returned to a BBC-less Madrid and won.

Guardiola never won a single thing without Messi, without disputing a 1-horse race, or without infinite money.

 

I’d also consider the diluted EPL of the last 6 years. Liverpool were the only marginal team that could rival City during this run.

Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal and Spurs were all in a deep shambles for quite some time.

Just by attrition alone of those clubs Pep had a head start in the title races.

 

Yeah, I was not talking about fans, but the media in general. Read again.

 

Pep guardiola won 4 PL in a row. 6 in some 8 years there.

On a footballing cycle level he has over achieved. No coach can sustain more than 3-4 year success continuously at any club.

 

Come on, in this case a I don’t know is a negative indeed. I’m not trying to be difficult but anything else than placing Zidane amongst the best managers of this era is a controversial take.

European champions for 1,000 consecutive days under his helm at the club. As legendary as it gets. Him coming back briefly (winning La Liga) and leaving again doesn’t diminish his legacy. For me it adds to the the legend further that he’s just rejected all these multi million euro deals left right and centre since leaving his post with us.

He’ll never manage City. Might manage France, might manage Marseille, might manage us again in the future, perhaps Juve, he’s not interested in this whole managerial career carousel.

 

I understand that Pep is one the greatest league coaches ever, but if we look a bit closely on this we can see that except his time at Barca all of his league titles was won at the Bundesliga when he coached Byaren when even coaches like Tuchel and Niko Kovač won the the league their with Bayern.
he got to only 2 finals and 3 semi finals in 8 years and won only 1 UCL. and his first semi final was after 5 years he coached City and he always gets the easy draws at the UCL knockouts(it's also happened to him at Bayern).
But you know what they say, winning the league when you spent 2 billion on players makes you the GOAT but winning 3 UCL in a raw or wining 5 UCL with 2 different clubs and 5 different squads it's luck.

 

Florentino also won it 3 times in a row, and 7 times total with 3 different coaches, so clearly Zidane is just a cog in the machine here. Except nobody thinks the team won any title simply because Florentino watched from the best seat in the house and chose the players and coach on the field.

I think the very valid and supportable point is that the fact the guys other managers have won the CL multiple times with multiple teams (Ancelotti, Hitzfeld, Guardiola, etc.) put a layer of between themselves. Carlo also won a CL with the BBC and 3 CL's with Madrid difference being he did it with two completely different Madrid teams, tactics, etc, and he won it 2/3 with Milan.

There is at least some "luck" or "chance" involved and Zidane if Zidane wasn't "lucky" he was fortunate to take over a team that had the most talented and deepest squad in the world at the time (and maybe ever) which had as good or better "chances" or odds of winning as any other team.

Mou took over a team that was getting eliminated in the first round every year, Carlo took over a team that was celebrating "semi final trophies", Zidnane took over the la decima team + Kroos, James, Asensio, Lucas Vasquez, Kovacic, Hakimi, Theo, Keylor.

 

Once Zidane is back he’ll have a chance to gap Pep to more CL tiles and catch Carlo, it’s fine for the media to not have him at the very top everyone has an opinion.

I personally really like that he’s just faded back into the smoke after leaving us. Just a personal preference of mine though.

 

Would the media give us the same accolades it would give Pep and City if they had won three consecutive Champions League titles? The media often seems suspicious of La Liga and tends to overhype EPL and Premier League teams, regardless of their actual performances—mirroring the sentiment of many fans. The only objective measure we have is the results, as even the money spent to achieve them is difficult to quantify. And yet, I hear people dismissing discussions of our most recent Champions League threepeat as "bringing up the past," only to turn around and brag about Pep and City’s victory, which predates our most recent CL trophy which also often isn't respected.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if people said Zidane is scared because he knows he can't keep it up and unlike other managers who do show up, Zidane is hiding. football commentary by paid commentators and fans alike is the worst.