The Football Thread

[Ichabod]

Always makes me happy to watch a Guardiola side get demolished

True that, my friend. Guardiola is incredibly overrated and his way of playing can kill football (it's incredibly boring to watch and the counter to it is also boring to watch). I loved watching Heynckes' Bayern, Guardiola's Bayern makes me sleepy...

[Krill]

Slight thread derailment, and probably just about the right side of on topic, but: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sto...e-27210196

[Rowain]

True that, my friend. Guardiola is incredibly overrated and his way of playing can kill football (it's incredibly boring to watch and the counter to it is also boring to watch). I loved watching Heynckes' Bayern, Guardiola's Bayern makes me sleepy...

I have to disagree here. The Bayern till winning their early winning of their League were very interesting to watch.

And quite honestly I take Guardiolas way of playing over Mourinhos any day of the week.

[Brian Shanahan]

And quite honestly I take Guardiolas way of playing over Mourinhos any day of the week.

Or the way the vast majority of English teams are set up, kicking the ball as high as you can, and then kicking your opposition as often as you can before it bounces is both ugly and boring.

[Gaspar]

And quite honestly I take Guardiolas way of playing over Mourinhos any day of the week.

Or the way the vast majority of English teams are set up, kicking the ball as high as you can, and then kicking your opposition as often as you can before it bounces is both ugly and boring.

The thing that's always amazing about this behavior is the way the commentators/media approach it as some sort of test of manhood for the opposition to overcome. I remember a few years back when Fat Sam made some comment about Arsenal "not liking it up 'em." Who likes it up 'em? Find me the team that wants to be persistently fouled, hacked and injured and I'll show you Stoke fans. But beyond them - nobody.

Football is a contact sport, but it isn't bloodsport.

I hate Guardiola because I hate all things Barcelona, but I'd watch his teams play 10 out of 10 times over Mourinho once. And Robben was a horrendous, diving twat for both of them. Plus its a feather for Ancelotti, which makes Mourinho look worse, which is even better.

[darrelljs]

It could be worse, you could have to suffer through all the diving in Serie A.

Darrell

[Gaspar]

It could be worse, you could have to suffer through all the diving in Serie A.

Darrell

I prefer diving to thuggery, personally.

But lets be honest, nobody, not even Italians, watches Serie A.

[Twinkletoes89]

The only defense I have for the 'direct' style of football prevalent in England or for Mourinho is that if every team played the same way, it would be bloody boring and very few teams would do that well because (especially in England) there is a dearth of technical players.

Football is all about results, and so these tactics succeed in getting enough results to get money and prestige in the top division so they persist.

If you put a Guardiola in charge of Crystal Palace instead of when they hired Pulis, they would likely have gone down. The tactics work. We may not like them but more fans would take winning every game like that than losing plenty playing 'pretty football'.

[Gaspar]

The only defense I have for the 'direct' style of football prevalent in England or for Mourinho is that if every team played the same way, it would be bloody boring and very few teams would do that well because (especially in England) there is a dearth of technical players.

Football is all about results, and so these tactics succeed in getting enough results to get money and prestige in the top division so they persist.

If you put a Guardiola in charge of Crystal Palace instead of when they hired Pulis, they would likely have gone down. The tactics work. We may not like them but more fans would take winning every game like that than losing plenty playing 'pretty football'.

You read the English papers too much.

Those tactics don't generally get results beyond a certain point - its why Allardyce and Pulis take bottom of the table sides to midtable but thats as far as it goes. There's a place between Guardiola's pretty triangles and hoof it and hope where most of the successful sides live.

And before we piss on possession football too much, let's not forget Spain and Barcelona won pretty much everything for 5 years+ playing that way. Hoof and hope hasn't ever won a World Cup and won very few major domestic titles in the past 20 years.

Lastly, don't suppose some part of the "lack of technical players" in England might be because technical ability isn't valued the same as it is in Spain or France? There's certainly no natural reason otherwise for those countries to constantly produce Platinis, Zidanes, Iniestas and Xavi's while England still pines for Paul Gascoigne 20 years on that I can see.

[Brian Shanahan]

The only defense I have for the 'direct' style of football prevalent in England or for Mourinho is that if every team played the same way, it would be bloody boring and very few teams would do that well because (especially in England) there is a dearth of technical players.

The lack of technical players is actually a result of the prevalence of direct football. Between them the two Charlies, Reep and Hughes, were behind (mostly by Hughes applying the shoddy theories of Reep in his position of national coaching director) the idea that the best way to play football was to get the ball into a shooting position with three or less passes. Reep "proved" that 80% (the other 20% came from more involved sequences of passing) of goals were scored by sequences of three passes or less using shoddy statistical work, and this supposedly "proved" that that was the best scoring method, despite the fact under his system 88% of sequences of play consisted of 3 or less passes (thus actually proving, if his statistics were proper) that more intricate movements of play were the best method of scoring! Hughes took this malformed idea and in his position of power massively emphasised physique, speed and stamina over technique, skill or intelligence, and as head of coaching development in England, his ideas were taught to the exclusion of all others, just like how catennacio came to be the only tactic taught in Italy for a long time.