European Leagues.

Started by laoislad, August 11, 2012, 10:19:15 PM

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laoislad

#45
Quote from: muppet on October 18, 2013, 11:17:17 PM
Quote from: laoislad on October 18, 2013, 10:54:00 PM
Quote from: Tony Baloney on October 18, 2013, 09:15:41 PM
Anyone watching Hoffenheim v Bayer Leverkeusen tonight?! Seriously strange "goal" scored.

Ball clearly hit the side-netting but went through a hole in the net into the goal and the ref gave it! :o


Yer man that scored must have been a f**king Biffo...They have previous.

Kerry did it against Tipperary IIRC.

HISTORY often hangs on fickle twists of fate. Go all the way back to 1981 when Offaly and Laois were usually neck and neck in their Leinster hurling championship clashes.

A thrilling and controversial match between the midland rivals ended in a 3-20 to 6-10 win for the Faithful men on their way to the All-Ireland title and the counties have experienced starkly contrasting fortunes since then.Could it have been different? Offaly's Padraig Horan bagged a controversial 'goal' that day -- which he later admitted was wide -- and in September of that year, Liam McCarthy took up residence in Offaly."The game was very tight and I remember cutting inside and having a bullet of a shot that went just the wrong side of the post," he recalls."I remember being absolutely disgusted with myself and then I heard Johnny Flaherty (Offaly corner forward) shouting and looking to claim a goal. The umpire had ducked and the shot went through the side netting so when he looked up it was in the back of the net so he gave the goal.""Anyone who has asked me about it since I have told them the true story."According to Horan, that game "made Offaly." After conceding six goals, it prompted management to change their 'keeper.Christy King made way for Damien Martin, who had won the county's first hurling All-Star 10 years earlier in 1971. That switch would have extraordinary repercussions as Martin made a stunning save to deny Galway late in the All-Ireland final. It seemed as if it had been all written in the stars for Offaly.On Sunday the teams meet again. Offaly are looking for their 14th consecutive championship win over the O'Moore side and, should they achieve that, their reward is a date with All-Ireland champions Kilkenny."I suppose in some ways you are on a hiding to nothing (playing Kilkenny). But it goes in swings and roundabouts. I would fear that hurling has gone back a little bit. Okay, you have the likes of Cork, Kilkenny and a few others who are still playing well, but the rest are a long way off," affirms Horan."You have to be careful with the likes of Laois and Offaly or all the work that has been done will be undone. I was at a meeting recently and we were told that more people than ever are playing hurling. That may be the case but the skill levels seemed to have dropped."Horan's son, Diarmuid, will line out for Offaly at the weekend, while another son, Cathal, withdrew from the panel to concentrate on his final exams. Offaly hurling is at a low ebb at the moment. They lost all of their Division 1B matches including a defeat at the hands of Laois.The experienced players from their 1998 All-Ireland success have all but gone. Gary Hanniffy, the last link to the victorious 1998 starting side, hung up his hurley for the last time after Birr's club final defeat earlier this year. In fact, only Ger Oakley, a sub in '98, remains. So, a clean slate on Sunday for both sides then. History changed because of Padraig Horan and the width of a post.Another fickle twist of fate could change things again.




To make things worse it was my uncle who was the Laois goalkeeper that day.
When you think you're fucked you're only about 40% fucked.

Minder

"When it's too tough for them, it's just right for us"

Tony Baloney


All of a Sludden

I'm gonna show you as gently as I can how much you don't know.

Asal Mor

Interesting stuff there Laoislad. Laois really weren't far off in the early 80's. A good few very narrow defeats to teams that went on win the All-Ireland.

ballinaman



5.30pm Saturday Borussia Dortmund v Bayern Munich



Hummels,Subotic, Marcel Schmelzer, Lukasz Piszczek all out through injury so that's 1st choice back 4 gone and Ilkay Guendogan gone too means that Dortmund will be up against it. Dortmund are 4 points behind at the moment.

Ribery who cracked a rib for France and  Schweinsteiger are out for Munich.

laoislad

Barca beaten at home tonight. Doesn't happen that often!
When you think you're fucked you're only about 40% fucked.

SHEEDY

Quote from: laoislad on February 01, 2014, 08:16:33 PM
Barca beaten at home tonight. Doesn't happen that often!
1st time since april 2012 when real Madrid beat them. 25 consecutive wins at the nou camp since then.
nil satis nisi optimum

Main Street

Straight red for Ronaldo  in A Bilbao v R Madrid, this evening,  play acting had been escalating with gay abandon for a while.
But considering Ronaldo's  chronic history of  play acting to getting opposing players sent off, it's more a case of chickens coming home to roost.

"It's been a fabulous game all along" Gerry Armstrong.

rodney trotter

Atletico Madrid lead La Liga outright for the first time since 1995-96 after an impressive win over Real Sociedad: http://bbc.in/1blcg4E

Rossie11

Cant find a champions league thread so will use this one.
Massive match tonight between 2 teams with 14 European Cup between them

Good article here from Graham Hunter on the battle of wills between Pep and Bayerns hierarchy

If you didn't put a common-sense filter on some of the nonsense spoken after Real Madrid beat Bayern Munich 1-0 in last Wednesday's Champions League semi-final, you'd be left wondering: 'Did Barcelona really win 15 trophies under Pep Guardiola and have Spain definitely won the last two European Championships plus the World Cup in between?'
L'Equipe splashed their front page with a picture of 'their' scorer, France international Karim Benzema and the headline: 'Real Politik', going on to suggest that Madrid had given Bayern a base lesson in effectiveness and realism.

Franz Beckenbauer, for the second time in the Champions League knockout stages, chided Pep Guardiola's gameplan, stating post-match: 'Possession means nothing when your rival has all the chances to score. We can be thankful that we go back to Munich only 1-0 down.'
Sky television experts continued to chew over this idea that if a team has dramatic possession figures, but doesn't score, then the gameplan is at fault - the manager doesn't understand the concept of 'sterile' possession.  Really. Honestly.

It all seemed as if some in football have been waiting for the Guardiola/Spain football brand to falter, for just an instant, in order to yell: 'See! Told you that defending and counter-attacking was the way all along...!' What none of this post-match tosh took into account was the stark fact that, despite Madrid winning by a goal, Bayern's gameplan yielded everything except that equaliser.
Setting aside possession (something in which Guardiola puts biblical faith anyway but was especially keen to dominate in order to prevent Madrid counter-attacking more often and scoring more), Bayern had more shots at the target than Madrid and considerably more efforts on target, too.

Statistics are no more than a guide, not the be-all-and-end-all, but in light of the short-sighted attacks on his tactics Guardiola must have been grinding his teeth furiously in the knowledge that compared to Madrid's nine attempts at goal Bayern had 16, compared to Madrid's seven on target efforts Bayern had 11... and what's more the Germans had six efforts on goal blocked, too.
Arjen Robben: 'It's a shame we've not scored. Centimetres make the difference, as we saw with Mario Götze's chance in the second half. If one of our chances goes in we'd say we've had a good result.' Bayern's possession was never 'sterile', they just lacked a cutting edge.

Few took into account that Madrid had won their previous four home matches with Bayern, regularly scoring two or three goals, or that Carlo Ancelotti's side hit Schalke and Borussia Dortmund for a total of six goals at the Bernabéu in the last few months.
NB: That's the Dortmund side who have twice defeated Bayern this season.

Guardiola opting for 'control' of possession was reasonable on the night, based on the idea that if Madrid couldn't get the ball then their lightning counter attacks might be fewer in number. What the German champions lacked was the killer touch in front of goal. Guardiola's fault?
Whether or not you answer 'yes' to that question - bear this in mind.
Pre-match, Guardiola explained: 'We won our league a little while ago and that' s caused us to drop the intensity of our rhythm a little. We aren't facing this Madrid match in our best moment. We've had to play some league matches with nothing at stake and that cuts away at your competitiveness. Madrid are fighting for the league and they just won the Copa. 'Compared to them we'll really have to raise our level.'
He was right on the money. Add his reading of the situation to the tactics via which his team controlled the ball and the fact that they had significantly more chances on goal than Madrid and there's a case to suggest that Guardiola and Co didn't actually do all that badly.
But there's something more fundamental at stake here.
Of the four semi-finalists last week only Bayern played outright attacking football, front-foot stuff with an attacking lineup and an offensive mentality.
So it's incredible that it offended so many people.
Chelsea, understandably in the circumstances, parked the bus and took a commendable draw back to Stamford Bridge. Should they go through to their fourth UEFA final in six years then there'll be few who complain about such tactics.

Diego Simeone's Atlético press, harass and are defensively terrifically well organised.
But their style is not to flow forward, to play on the front foot or to ensure that there is aesthetic entertainment for the paying fan or neutral viewer. That's not their concern. Winning is.
As for Madrid, their goalscorer admits: 'We played very "tactically" and we surprised them on the counter. We were super conscious that Bayern is a team which likes to have the ball. So we had to defend as a group, stay really organised and be rapid in the counter attack.'
Nine times European champions, seeking La Decima, yet both praised and preening for winning off the back of 36 per cent possession at home.
Their former manager, Mourinho, must be green with envy. Had he tried this the likelihood is he'd have been hung, drawn and quartered in the media analysis, by fans and certainly by those above him in the boardroom.

Thomas Müller pointed out: 'Imagine! Real Madrid pull everyone back to within 40 yards of their own goal - at home! That showed us massive respect.'

Yet it's Guardiola whose team lost, who is being criticised around Europe and who appears to be far less far down the line of changing from Jupp Heynckes' direct, aggressive, high-pressure, winger-driven football to the emblematic positional play and fast-flowing passing game which appeared to gain him, Barcelona and Spain to some extent such affection from 2008 onwards.
The Catalan admits: 'I'm aware that I'm attempting something counter-cultural here in Germany. Here they like the way Real Madrid played against us, the counter-attacking football of Borussia Dortmund. But Bayern hired me, my style of football.'

One gets the unavoidable impression that there's more than just a place in the Lisbon final at play in Munich's AllianzArena on Tuesday.

A football philosophy is under the most unrelenting and unforgiving scrutiny.


Billys Boots

Thanks for the article Rossie11.
My hands are stained with thistle milk ...

Captain Obvious

Defending Champions league winners on the way out. Good night Ramos and Real Madrid.

Captain Obvious

Great break away goal 0-3.  :o

EC Unique

The Madrid boys will be enjoying showing up Pep.  ;D