If anyone's watching Goltv right now, did you just see this; Real Madrid 2 - Hamburger 1. That isn't right, is it?
It's Hamburger SV as in "Hamburger Sport-Verein" (Hamburgian(?) Sports Club). So, yeah, Hamburger on it's own is funny, and wrong.
He's 19, IIRC. I don't understand why we are selling Granero and not keeping this guy. Great game by Diarra, Robben, Guti, Salgado... Great result considering the defenders we had.
I really enjoyed the match. Is only a preseason game, but i was desperate for football!!! And Real is showing a very solid team. It seems we do not need too much things from last year. And if Robben is fit all the year...
I didn't see the second half, but while he was good going forward in the first half (I always enjoyed watching him go forward), his defense was really weak and it caused us some problems - which to be fair weren't made smaller by Javi Garcia at CB.
awesome, we're on top of the table madrid +5 juve +4 hamburg +1 that shite english team, oh yeah arsenal big fat ZEROOO
Not much of a drinking game after all. The Sky Sports announcers only mentioned C Ronaldo twice - I guess that situation is a sore point with the English. I thought Salgado played great in the first half. He stole the ball and made the assist and two of his open field tackles broke up goal scoring opportunities. He seemed to run out of steam in the second half. Diarra looked good. Garcia looked surprisingly comfortable as a central defender. What a cross from Callejon. Good game.
How are the points calculated. I tried to figure it out from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirates_Cup. But failed, miserably.
Either Marca or AS reported recently that they were really advanced in their preseason training and ahead of the rest of the squad, so it's not really that surprising. But it's still nice to see them do good for us. I'm with you on this one. I thought Salgado was poor defensively. It seems also clear that Javi García isn't a CB.
Javi Garcia looked petrified every time the ball came near him. He apparently had a poor first game and today's performance could well be down to nerves following that. Let's not start writing off players in preseason....I'm guessing we remember some of the Pepe quotes from last year eh? But yeah he was poor....as was Baptista. In contrast to Javi Garcia, I thought Parejo and Callejon both looked extremely assured in posession and Robinho took over from where Robben left off. Salgado struggles against pacey players running at him, but defensively he reads the play well and twice saved our asses with great covering tackles...as well as looking good in attack. We are way off full fitness but I thought the team is starting to play from memory...we look as though we know what we are trying to do at all times. Considering we were without Iker and you could argue our entire first choice backline...together with us being 2 or 3 weeks behind Hamburg's preperation, I thought we looked ok.
Why the boo's, cause he's ex-Manchester???? EDIT: Never mind, I remember the Keown incident now BTW if anyone has highlights please post them, thanx .
With Pepe you sort of saw there was CB material there if his head cooled down. No matter how much I look at Javi García, I can't see much aptitude for the position. Yeah, he's tall, but it's not the same to go for headers in midfield than to fight it out with physical forwards like Olic and Guerrero. And he has good ball-handling and passing, but that should be a bonus, not the defining characteristic of a CB. And his positioning is awful, or at least it was today. That's just like a pyromaniac rescuing the cat while the building he set fire to burns down.
What's wrong with GolTV? I watched the game on it this morning and plan on doing the same tomorrow...
Agreed, probably the benefits of maintaining a coaching staff and squad relatively unchanged (or with positive reinforcements), and exactly the reason why we all hoped Schuster would be successful and establish some continuity here. This is the way to build a team into a dominant force. Although I watched on a crap stream, I must say again Diarra looked pretty confident and smooth out there...I'd love it if he could push Gago to improve even further. I'd like to state again, I don't see how DelaRed, Diarra and Javi Garcia ALL fit into this squad...Baptista for other reasons is still a question mark. I think we still may see a departure or two before the summer is over.
Javi Garcia seems to be the one that doesn't really fit. I see De la Red as a very versatile midfielder, he can play as DM or even as a pseudo attacking midfielder. I think this makes him more useful. I just don't see Javi Garcia getting many minutes if he's just the 3rd string DM, especially considering his displays at CB so far this pre-season. All that said, I still think he could develop into a solid DM, just not sure he'll get a chance to do it with us.