Football Thread No. 9

Pangur Bán;11516568 said:

Total score gets divided by a larger number, which is especially damaging to smaller countries because the quality drops significantly going away from teams at very top. Generally the team qualifying this way is not very good / was not good enough to qualify otherwise.
Look at 1999, when Scotland should have had three teams but had four because Kilmarnock qualified through fair play (#13):
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method2/ccoef2000.html
Without fairplay, Scotland would have finished with 19.5 / 3 (=6.5 points), but instead had 20.5 / 4 (=5.125 points)
As you can see,
http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method3/crank2004.html
That lost 1.375 points cost the Scots a second champions league place in later years.

Now for Scotland this only happened once, but some countries (like Norway) have been devastated over the years by it.

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:brainasplode: What a stupid thing!

holy king said:

well, that doesnt really influence their uefa co-efficient.

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read just below your post:

mitsho said:

Yes, I mistook it as Serbia is good as a national team, but not as individual clubs... Just like Germany on a higher level, and the opposite of England

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See?

mitsho said:

@Thakisis, Isn't the answer to that to have a "education club" where you concentrate on your young players. It works if it works, but otherwise

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Have an education club? A feeder? With what money? What structure? The entire Argentine first division is indebted by about a little over a billion (pesos) and they can't pay it, and that's less than €250 million these days.

Those UEFA Co-efficients are weird, when Newcastle reached the semi final of the UEFA / Europa Leagus they got a lower score (about 24) than the next year when they only reached the quarter finals.

Takhisis said:

Have an education club? A feeder? With what money? What structure? The entire Argentine first division is indebted by about a little over a billion (pesos) and they can't pay it, and that's less than €250 million these days.

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Yes, education club was definately the wrong term, I'm thinking in German over here, you see

I guess that strategy only works with clubs in midsized European leagues, like Belgium and Switzerland who scoop up international talent, add in their own young players (scooped up from the whole nation to the best club) and some local heroes. Players stay at maximum 2-3 years before they go on. I could list up a lot of names for my own club (this year with Swiss players Shaqiri and Xhaka, but also Felipe Caicedo, Matias Delgado or Atouba).

I guess that's more difficult for Argentine clubs since yes, you do need to have solid infrastructure in place and not all clubs can work this way (buy low, sell high). It's also pure luck sometimes.

After all, it's business and I can't give you a solution

@del62 They are not weird at all. They are completely logical even if a bit skewed towards the succesfull and the luck factor is terrible in the qualification games (a few small points here and your seeded, otherwise you're not - which happened to Swiss club Young Boys last year when they were ranked 1st of the unseeded but managed to draw the 1st ranked one of the seeded clubs, last year finalist Braga...)

Is there any chance that the second season you talk about was the year when both Manchester United and Chelsea was in the final? The national score divided by number of participants get added somehow to the club coefficient.

Takhisis said:

Napoli win the Coppa Italia, which is good, and I got to watch Montpellier's match! Does anybody know whether Auxerre will get points docked or something? Not a really great match from a technical point of view but it was to be expected from an already relegated team facing anotherwho'd never won the title before… and with all the trouble the home fans gave.

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No, Auxerre would have gotten match lost 0 - 3 if it didn't end. But the referee got patient because the title was to be deicided upon that match. Montpellier is actually better than what you saw that night. (Belhanda was banned for this match and it's kinda their playmaker).
It's a shame they will prolly see their best players (the one named above, Giroud, YangaMbiwa, etc...) transfered away... and so will prolly suck in the next CL.

Which brings me to this:

@mitsho: you can put Portugal 5th in the uefa ranking since they will pass France.

Meanwhile, Allez PSG!

I hard the ESPN commentators say that the match would be postponed and the remaining minutes played later if the Auxerre fans kept causing trouble. Well…


Blatter's lunacy is again at work, now he claims that we shouldn't decide knockout competitions on penalties and has instructed Beckenbauer to invent a new form of deciding matches. I'm all in for bringing back the golden goal as a trial but the penalties have to stay. Sheesh.

Also, Barça raped Athletic Bilbao!

Uruguay have now stretched their unbeaten streak to 15 matches in a row… with more Eliminatorias coming up next week.

RRRaskolnikov said:

@mitsho: you can put Portugal 5th in the uefa ranking since they will pass France.

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It's the ranking of last season. It was easier to look up as it coincides with the acces list. I would have to write the whole list which I won't But congratulations to Portugal for breaking up the Top 5 leagues, even if they don't do it the financial sound way.... (how long can this go on?).

Takhisis said:

Blatter's lunacy is again at work, now he claims that we shouldn't decide knockout competitions on penalties and has instructed Beckenbauer to invent a new form of deciding matches. I'm all in for bringing back the golden goal as a trial but the penalties have to stay. Sheesh

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I tend to disagree with everything Blatter says as well and blame it on him being a Mountain Goat from the Valais (I revoke his Swissness, Swiss people are normally nice and shy, and not egomanical dictators).

But I do think he has a point in that penalties are not really the best way to solve it. Yes, they result in interesting and tense endgames. But it's mostly due to luck, not? And it does let weaker teams "get to th penalty shots" instead of forcing them to do something for the game. Chelsea did that more than once this Champions League. Maybe an easy solution would be to play the penalties before the match.

So I do like reform in this area, even if it's by far not the most pressing one...

But anyways, it's reform and the FIFA, drink tea and wait up, it's gonna be a long long time before anything moves

Actually, the ones getting there on penalties were Bayern. Chelski won all their ties even though they didn't really deserve to.

Takhisis said:

Actually, the ones getting there on penalties were Bayern. Chelski won all their ties even though they didn't really deserve to.

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funny man, you

Napoli outplayed you and you scored with the only shot at goal, they missed a few chances, then between the two games against Barcelona and the one against Bayern you had seven goal attempts. It's what'd've happened if Levein's Scotland won.

That's what I meant, Chelsea was never the team that "made the game", they never seemed to be the one actively looking for goal chances. It was Napoli, Barcelona and Bayern who "were the better team", Chelsea was just "lucky" with their chances. It doesn't matter that they never actually had to go to penalties, ther other goals were (or "felt" to me) counterattacks.

Not that that's forbidden or not clever, but I wouldn't mind a rule discouraging this sort of play.

Remove the away goals rule. Otherwise, you dig in at home and get away with a 1-1 away draw (this is also valid for Barcelona in 2009 who got away with 'winning' a game with a single clea goal attempt in the whole game.

Takhisis said:

Napoli outplayed you and you scored with the only shot at goal, they missed a few chances, then between the two games against Barcelona and the one against Bayern you had seven goal attempts. It's what'd've happened if Levein's Scotland won.

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You're just annoyed that the team you weren't rooting for won The hate for Chelsea is understood.

It's a bit silly to suggest that a team that:

1. Won their group, even though with 1 game left they weren't supposed to even advance
2. Came back from a 3-1 deficit vs Napoli
3. Came back from a 2-0 deficit vs the best team in the world with their captain redcarded and a right-back playing as a full-back.
4. Beat Bayern in their home stadium, when 1-0 down with only minutes to go.

Not to mention that we are a team in the middle of a rebuilding, right after our coach was fired, under an inexperienced interim coach, with a flop of a striker who can't seem to score.. until he scored against Barca.

Not to mention that Cech saved that penalty vs Robben in extra time.. Not to mention that he guessed the right way in all the penalties (6) in the game and didn't let 50% of them in.

So yeah, I suppose you could say that we "didn't deserve to win", in the sense it was an unexpected victory. But to take that victory away from the players in the name of anti-Chelsea hate is just ridiculous - they deserved it.. Drogba, Ramires, Lampard, Cech, Cole, Mikel, even Bosingwa, Mikel, Torres, Terry, Cahill. They all deserved it and I laugh in the face of all this "they didn't deserve it" hate

Victory was ours and you can't take it away from us.

mitsho said:

That's what I meant, Chelsea was never the team that "made the game", they never seemed to be the one actively looking for goal chances.

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*cough*

Not that that's forbidden or not clever, but I wouldn't mind a rule discouraging this sort of play.

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"Sorry, you can't play the way you need to play to beat a team away from your home stadium. That isn't allowed"

Hilarious comments guys

Takhisis said:

Blatter's lunacy is again at work, now he claims that we shouldn't decide knockout competitions on penalties and has instructed Beckenbauer to invent a new form of deciding matches. I'm all in for bringing back the golden goal as a trial but the penalties have to stay. Sheesh.

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i'm all for a game of musical chairs, six a side, with the crowd doing the singing.

dp -- sorry

warpus said:

You're just annoyed that the team you weren't rooting for won The hate for Chelsea is understood.

It's a bit silly to suggest that a team that:

1. Won their group, even though with 1 game left they weren't supposed to even advance
2. Came back from a 3-1 deficit vs Napoli
3. Came back from a 2-0 deficit vs the best team in the world with their captain redcarded and a right-back playing as a full-back.
4. Beat Bayern in their home stadium, when 1-0 down with only minutes to go.

Not to mention that we are a team in the middle of a rebuilding, right after our coach was fired, under an inexperienced interim coach, with a flop of a striker who can't seem to score.. until he scored against Barca.

Not to mention that Cech saved that penalty vs Robben in extra time.. Not to mention that he guessed the right way in all the penalties (6) in the game and didn't let 50% of them in.

So yeah, I suppose you could say that we "didn't deserve to win", in the sense it was an unexpected victory. But to take that victory away from the players in the name of anti-Chelsea hate is just ridiculous - they deserved it.. Drogba, Ramires, Lampard, Cech, Cole, Mikel, even Bosingwa, Mikel, Torres, Terry, Cahill. They all deserved it and I laugh in the face of all this "they didn't deserve it" hate

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Was with you Warpus until you included Terry in your "deserved it" list. That's just crazy, guy couldn't have done much more to make it harder for his team.

Even if Robben had scored that penalty, Drogba would simply have found another equaliser. You can be sure of that.

Anyone btw share my suspicion that Ribery may have taken extra long with that "injury" in order to distract Robben and stop him scoring the winning goal? Apparently Ribery hates Robben.

He doesn't hate him, he just likes to punch him in the face...

warpus said:

You're just annoyed that the team you weren't rooting for won The hate for Chelsea is understood.

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Erm, no, the only team I rooted for was eliminated by friggan' Malmö and is now trying not to go bankrupt.

If that performance helps get Levein fired, you're welcome, Scotland.

There are a lot of reasons to discount the performance, but that's the best, most fluid play I can remember seeing from a US team. Hopefully they'll look positive against Brazil.

Yes, um, that game… didn't happen. Sheesh, if Lambert didn't post after Hearts winning then he won't psot after this.

Mother of god

Llorente to Arsenal became TT in twitter yesterday

I think that they are rumours (in fact I watch how the rumour was born in an internet forum I am member of) but something smells rotten here.

At about 18:00 a member of the forum wrote that he had met Arsene Wenger in a hotel in Bilbao, that he has a cool guy and so on, Mr Wenger aparently was with his family.

Some hours later some local radios say that there is a press conference called for Tuesday in Hotel Carlton (Bilbao) by Fernando Llorente. It does not sound very well because if there is something related to his contract, it should be done in Ibaigane Palace (clubs HQ).
Some other radios said that they have not received this call, and they have contacted the hotel and there are no press conference programmed for Tuesday, but they can be scheduled the previous day.
Fernando Llorente is a philanthropist, works with several NGOs, so I thought that it must be some act regarding this, but here comes what smells rotten, the club does not know about this act, and aparently, they are very pissed.


If it becames true it would be a strong blow for supporters in a very dificult week for us.
Let see what happens.

EDIT: Fernando Llorente has allready given the lie to the rumour of the press conference. His words have been: "This freaks me out" (Yo lo flipo)