Originally posted by rodo
View Post
-
-
Nice to see at the start of that clip, that Roberto Carlos is still trying those absurd 30 yard freekicks that never go anywhere near goal
Comment
-
what a loosers. turkish football is ****e.Comment
-
Did Harry Kewell spark anyone out?
Thanks very much for being ‘This Mornings’ Farmer’Comment
-
In response to dww's earlier Hoffenheim post
Schadenfreude reigns as Germany turns on the Hoff
Despite their pre-Christmas heroics, inflated egos, infighting and injuries look set to ensure the title of Worst Autumn Champions in Bundesliga History is the only one Hoffenheim will claim this season
Raphael Honigstein Monday 13 April 2009 13.34 BST[Guardian]
"The time for dreams is over," said a dejected Selim Teber after the 3-0 home defeat by lowly Bochum. If only it were. For TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, 2009 has so far proved one long, endless nightmare. Nine games in a row without a win have seen the new boys fall to sixth place in the table and acquire the sort of record even DJ Ötzi fans wouldn't want: Hoffenheim are officially the worst autumn champions in the history of the Bundesliga.
Before the Bochum debacle, manager Ralf Rangnick had adopted drastic measures. The team holed up in a training camp in the Black Forest but the fabled "spirit of Baiersbronn" that was said to have been instrumental in their promotion campaign last season failed to materialise. TSG once again started brightly enough on Saturday yet couldn't make their dominance tell. The lion's share of possession and higher number of shots on goal counted for little in the face of Stanislav Sestak's cool hat-trick.
Two silly red cards for keeper Daniel Haas (professional foul) and midfielder Carlos Eduardo (violent conduct) put the icing on this Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte of a defeat. Rangnick euphemistically called Hoffenheim's rotten run a "Ergebniskrise", or crisis of results. Move along now, nothing wrong here except a few numbers on top of the match reports. Chairmen of insolvent banks would appreciate the term, no doubt.
"We won't pack it in now but keep working hard in training until every single player improves," added the 50-year-old, "it's all a matter of the head." Captain Teber, however, thinks that one or two egos might have gotten too big. "I feel that everybody is playing their own game, trying to look good," said the 28-year-old. "We've stopped helping each other out and running for each other. A few people think they are superstars. The team spirit is broken."
Rangnick, too, has complained that his team have been infected by this kind of Cristiano Ronaldoism over the winter break. "For months, they would read how brilliant they are," he said in February. "They were treated like pop stars and photographed like models. Suddenly, the media were interested in the girlfriends' handbags. One or two players found it difficult to concentrate on the relevant things."
Stuttgart striker Mario Gomez, who had played with some of the Hoffenheim's players in his youth, angrily noted that "a few of them have turned 180 degrees" after the 3-3 draw a few weeks ago. "I don't know why but some of them really broke my balls," the German international added. "I've had a lot of sympathy for them in the first half of the season but they have lost all of it now."
A sizable section of the public will feel the same. "Hoffenheim lost their innocence," was Der Spiegel's take. "Against Hamburg, they were even resorting to route one balls at the end", the magazine was appalled to note. The beautiful, free-flowing one-touch combinations of 2008 have given way to frustrations and bouts of petty violence. This, too, started in the winter-break, when Carlos Eduardo was banned following stupid fisticuffs with Hamburg's Ivica Olic in a friendly.
Maybe success really has come a bit too soon for footballers who have never experienced the limelight before. In their defence, you could say that their superiors were just as guilty of believing the hype. Rangnick's feigned surprise that "Bayern were able to match our pace" in the wake of the eponymous 2-1 defeat at the Allianz Arena in December was a superfluous provocation; general manager Jan Schindelmeiser's quip about dedicating the autumn championship to their rivals ("it's not that important for us") too daft to be funny.
But regardless of the psychological pressure at the very top, Hoffenheim have also been a little unlucky. Losing leading goal-scorer Vedad Ibisevic with a serious knee injury was always bound to cause complications. Rangnick's problems were compounded when the wonderful Chinedu Obasi and Demba Ba were unavailable along with the banned Carlos Eduardo, then defenders Martin Jaissle and Andreas Ibertsberger, too, were hurt for good measure. The team has been unable to deal with the necessary changes in tactics and personnel. As an overtly technical, attacking outfit built in the image of Arsenal, they need confidence and routine to truly hit their stride. Grinding out wins is not their forte.
Since their slump has coincided with improved performances by the likes of Stuttgart, Dortmund and Schalke, qualification for Europe is now in serious danger. Before the season, a top 10 finish would obviously have been seen as a tremendous success but the sense of anti-climax is all too palpable. If the "crisis of results" doesn't abide, the Hoffenheim fairy-tale will soon have to survive the reality of mid-table triteness. Curbing his players' hubris will be the least of Rangnick's worries.
Results: Gladbach 1-2 Wolfsburg (Wolves stay top with the sort of incongrous, fortuitous victory every title contender needs to succeed), Hannover 2-0 Hertha (Berlin's third defeat in a row proves that their wait-and-see tactic only works if they don't concede first) , Schalke 2-0 Karlsruhe, Hoffenheim 0-3 Bochum, Cottbus 2-1 Bielefeld, Dortmund 3-1 Köln, Bayern 4-0 Frankfurt (Jürgen Klinsmann keeps his job and goalkeeper Michael Rensing on the bench as Frankfurt arrive determined to roll over from the get-go), Bayer Leverkusen 1-1 Bremen, Stuttgart 1-0 Hamburg (both teams enthusiastically hit the bar like German labour officials on a junket before Gomez scores a last-minute winner to dent Martin Jol's treble hopes).Comment
-
Eredivisie - Goal of the week, Moussa Dembélé for AZ Alkmaar - 5.55
Comment
-
Franck Ribéry wants to join Barcelona, reveals Bayern team-mate Mark van Bommel
• His style would fit with Barça, says Bayern captain
• Frenchman said to be a target for both Manchester clubs
[Guardian]
The France midfielder Franck Ribéry wants to move to Barcelona, his Bayern Munich team-mate and captain Mark van Bommel has revealed.
"Franck has told me he wants to play for Barcelona," Van Bommel told the Spanish radio station RAC1. "He is the best player in Germany and his style of play would fit well with Barça's because he is strong with great technical ability."
The Dutch midfielder's comments are poorly timed to say the least coming as they do on the eve of Bayern's Champions League quarter-final second-leg tie against the Catalans. The German champions are 4-0 down from the first leg at the Camp Nou last week.
The news will also come as a blow to Manchester United and Manchester City who are believed to be tracking the player.Comment
-
Italian football is in a downward spiral
Serie A's status suffered another blow with the failure of any Italian clubs to make the last eight of this season's Champions League.
By Paddy Agnew in Rome [World Soccer]
Is Italian football on the slippery slope of irreversible decline and fall? The question inevitably asks itself in the wake of Serie A interest in the Champions League being ended by teams from the English Premier League for a second successive season.
With Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United making short shrift of Roma, Juventus and Internazionale in the first knockout round, Italy finds itself without a single team among Europe's top eight.
This was an even worse performance than last season, when Roma made it to the quarter-finals only to be dispatched 3-0 on aggregate by Manchester United. All in all, in the space of six years, English clubs have achieved a total and seemingly inevitable turnaround.
Cast your mind back to the 2002-2003 season, when Milan, Inter and Juventus all reached the Champions League semi-finals, in the company of Real Madrid. Milan won the eventual Final, beating Juventus in a penalty shoot-out – at Old Trafford, no less.
If, in 2003, English fans had to stand idly by as two Serie A sides fought out the Final on English soil, there is every possibility that Italian fans will be doing something similar this year should two Premier League clubs meet in the Final at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
The Money League
So what has gone wrong? Adriano Galliani, right-hand man of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi at Milan, has a ready-made answer.
“Today's league tables coincide with club turnover,” claims Galliani. “We're playing in a new championship now; it's called the Money League. How come Portuguese teams, Dutch teams or even a side like Red Star Belgrade win nothing these days?”
Galliani is the first to admit that Italian football has been slow to move and react to changing times. And he has been saying it for at least five years now.
“The main reason for our crisis is basic economics,” he explains. “Our biggest problem is that clubs like us share a stadium and don't have one of their own.”
As an example of what he is talking about – by way of lost revenue through Milan sharing the San Siro with Inter – Galliani points out that as soon as major sponsors discover that the stadium “changes colour” (switches club) every week, they pull out of major sponsorship deals. It would simply cost too much to have to mount and then dismantle semi-permanent advertising hoardings linked to the two different clubs
on a weekly basis.
Galliani says that it is inevitable that the best players in the world will follow the money... all the way to the Premier League. He points out how, back in 1990, Real Madrid were very keen to buy Milan's great Dutch striker, Marco Van Basten, but, in those days, Milan's revenue far outweighed that of Real so the club could afford to reject a Spanish bid.
If an offer like that were to come along today – and the club's apparent willingness to sell Kaka to Manchester City in January would seem to prove the point – Galliani admits: “We would simply lose the player.”
There are those, though, who feel that, while money may explain a lot, it does not tell everything.
Former Germany and current Bayern Munich coach Jurgen Klinsmann, someone who knows Italian football well having spent three seasons with Inter in the early 1990s, offers another less comfortable explanation for Italian failure in the Champions League.
“It simply means that Italian teams have fallen behind. It's all very well being the great tactical maestri but that's no longer enough because football today lives by movement off the ball,” believes Klinsmann. “In England and in Spain, the pace of the game is much faster, more aggressive and direct. In Serie A, the game is still slow and closed down.
“I have to be honest, I watch a lot of Serie A and you can see these problems. And then you see Italian teams pay for it when they play in European competition. Milan were a disaster [against Werder Bremen in the UEFA Cup], while Juventus and Inter are out quite simply because they are a reflection of the overall level of Serie A.
“I think, too, that the entire Italian football movement is suffering from complacency after winning the World Cup. Teams aren't hungry any more.”
A painful lesson
In analysing this season's European campaign, many commentators tend to agree with Klinsmann, arguing that the economic divide between Serie A and the Premier League cannot explain every shortcoming.
“Is it all black?” asked Gazzetta dello Sport two days after the Italian whitewash. “No, provided we do not hide behind excuses like the lottery of the penalty shoot-out or the number of shots we had that hit the woodwork. Luck played a minimal part in our painful Champions League lesson. Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal fully deserved to win.
“European competition has told us that we badly need to reform our football parameters.
“Economics and not owning our own stadia do not explain everything. Cristiano Ronaldo earns £5million less per year than Zlatan Ibrahimovic, while the total current Inter wage bill is twice that of Manchester United. We did not lose because we are poorer, rather because they were better.”
In an interview with World Soccer, Giuseppe Bergomi – the former Inter defender and winner of a World Cup winner's medal as an 18-year-old in Enzo Bearzot's 1982 side – feels that there are many things which need to change in Italy.
“When I watch a Premier League game, say it is Fulham v Manchester City, I enjoy myself,” he says. “The game has pace and rhythm, the fans get behind their teams, they don't spend their afternoon trying to get at some player.
“We Italians, however, have an addiction to controversy, our fans don't accept a defeat.”
Bergomi argues that pressure created by impatient Italian supporters tends to cripple Italian teams, stunting the development of young players and making teams very cautious when they play away from home in Europe.
“I think the Premier League teams take to the field with a lot less pressure and it influences the way they play, faster, more athletic and with less pressure,” he continues. “The foreign players in the Premier League adapt to this instantly.
“We're still the best, tactically speaking, but sometimes the excessive obsession with tactics gets in the way, it blocks the player. In contrast, Premier League players in England are freer in their minds, they just go out there and play.
“Look at the three Italian sides in the Champions League, their mental approach was all wrong. Inter, for example, only began to play well after they went down 1-0 in the return leg. At that point, with nothing left to play for, they finally came out and played but it was too late.”
These days, Bergomi is a summariser for Sky Italia and covers Serie A matches every week. He points out, as an example of what is wrong with Italian football culture, that he now requires police protection at certain grounds, such as the Olympic stadiums of Rome and Turin, because fans, annoyed with the way in which he has called a key incident in a game, tend to be on hand, ready to abuse and even assault him. “There isn't the right mentality,” he says.
“I mean, if I say during a commentary that that is definitely a penalty for team Y against team X, then for lots of fans I'm not giving my expert, objective opinion. No, no, for lots of fans that means I am simply against team X, their team.”
Bergomi argues that there is not that much between Italian and Premier League sides in technical terms. He says, however, that the whole ambiente (environment) has to change. Club ownership of the stadia, removal of pitch-side barriers and the creation of a more “family” atmosphere are imperative.
“If I didn't have to go to matches for my work, I'd never go to the stadium at all these days, it so uncomfortable in Italy,” he says.
“You've got to make it a real pleasure for people to go to a match.”
Fundamental problems
Unfortunately, the odds on a change in attitude are not encouraging and, to some extent, Italy's World Cup win in Germany helped mask many of the fundamental problems.
For the best part of this decade, Italian football has been systematically rocked by a succession of scandals, from match fixing and drug abuse, to financial irregularities in club affairs and recurrent episodes of fan violence.
The writing has long been up there on the wall. Written in bold. With capital letters. And underlined.
However, to some extent, the governing class of Italian football mirrors that of the entire country and they have been slow to enact effective change, perhaps distracted by that win in Germany three years ago.
Upgraded infrastructure, leading to increased revenue, would be a big help, as indeed would more emphasis on the development of youth team players – and not for the youth team but for the first team – together with a less defensive style of football.
Such developments and more are all required to help create a different mentality. Twenty years ago, Arrigo Sacchi might have thought he had changed the Italian football mindset with his Milan team of Gullit, Rijkaard, Van Basten, Baresi and Maldini.
In reality, the success of one glorious side was not enough to start a footballing revolution. Perhaps, it is time for a new Sacchi.Comment
-
Heres AC Jimbo again with his damn cake and coffee:
Comment
-
Lyon lost at Bordeaux tonight, while Marseille won their game.
So Lyon drop to 3rd now. Bordeaux top, Marseille 2nd.
AZ Alkmaar are champions in Holland, after Ajax lost 6-2 at PSV. AZ lead the table by 11 points, with just 3 games left.Comment
-
Well, at least our defenders weren't the biggest idiots tonight:
and the penalty shot even Berbatov would be proud of deserves mentioning too
Comment
-
A German football club will refund the tickets of 600 fans in an unusual apology for a "pitiful performance" that ended in a 4-0 loss at Schalke.
Energie Cottbus supporters travelled some 610km (380 miles) to Gelsenkirchen on Friday only to see their team suffer the sixth loss in seven games.
The club made the offer in a web statement headed "Sorry, Energie Fans!"
Cottbus are second from bottom of the Bundesliga table and in danger of being relegated at the end of the season.
"By refunding the cost of admission for their supporters, the red and whites would like to apologise for the pitiful performance which they displayed at the Veltins Arena," the statement read.
"We lost at Schalke, but we were very timid against our opponents," Cottbus manager Steffen Heidrich was quoted as saying.
Schalke's win put the team back into contention for a place in the Uefa Cup.
BBCComment
-
Originally posted by Daffy Duck View PostWell, at least our defenders weren't the biggest idiots tonight:
and the penalty shot even Berbatov would be proud of deserves mentioning too The dive, the kicking out by Pepe, the penalty - what complete clownishness.
.
Suppose you have a physicist and a sociologist standing at the side of a field, observing a set of events unfolding on the field. The physicist does [describes] it using the terminology of mass and velocity and frequency of radiation and the rest. And the sociologist does it by describing it as a rugby match.
May the Lord bless this post.Comment
-
Blackburn should take note.Originally posted by Joe King View Post.
Suppose you have a physicist and a sociologist standing at the side of a field, observing a set of events unfolding on the field. The physicist does [describes] it using the terminology of mass and velocity and frequency of radiation and the rest. And the sociologist does it by describing it as a rugby match.
May the Lord bless this post.Comment
-
Valencia 2-2 Barcelona
Barca lead through Leo Messi after 24 mins but it was Valencia who took the lead before the half with a two minute salvo - goals from Maduro and Hernandez. Henry got the equaliser four minutes from time. Real can cut the gap to four points with five games to go when they visit Sevilla tomorrow.
Bayern 0-1 Schalke
Stunning win for the visitors in an ill tempered match. Altintop with the goal after 24 mins. Bayern are three points off top in third. Hertha beat Hoffenheim yesterday which leaves them one point off Wolfsburg who play Cottbus tomorrow.Comment
Comment