Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - We are SO back, the Premier League returns!
Mané Swagincha
6 times
Hes a left winger that drifts towards the center at PSG to be on the ball a lot more, he does the same at the national team, kind of a left attacking midfielder
Nah he missed out when he failed to beat Chile twice in the finals. Can't see the Argentina squad beating this Brazil team who are certainly better than that Chile squad. Hes already lost to them in the semi finals when they won it. Doubt he can overcome such a stacked squad with up and coming players like Vinicius and Rodyrgo plus Neymar will still be around.
DlAMONDZ
That pu$$y got me grinning
Nah. I don't see another early 00's era for them. Barca is way richer and more prestigious now than they were 20 years ago. And unlike Man U and Milan, they're fan owned. If things aren't going right, they'll hold electionsNo way Barca recovers from this anytime soon. Griezmann is so out of sync its crazy he adds nothing to the attack def needs to go Should see a trophy drought for 5 years sucks but Messi may never win another significant trophy again.
Bayern vs PSG
Great article on The Athletic on Atleti. Pretty much sums exactly how I feel. Simeone is the only thing that keeps us from going back to the days of being a terribly mismanaged also ran in La Liga. When I started following Atleti I would have killed for consistent CL football. Now it’s expected, because of the work Cholo has done.
“I’m convinced we gave everything we have,” said Atletico Madrid coach Diego Simeone after his team were eliminated from the Champions League quarter-finals.
The questions continued at the Estadio Jose Alvalade as Spanish reporters tried to get Simeone to explain how his team had performed so flatly. Most fans and pundits had expected Atletico to quite easily beat a German side, RB Leipzig, that had never reached this stage of the competition before.
“We tried to give everything, it just didn’t work,” was one Simeone response. “We did everything possible,” was another. Then, “We looked for more, but did not have it.” And, “It’s hard to take, but we gave everything.”
El Cholo had his message for the night and he was sticking to it. But for many Atletico fans and pundits, the result and the performance were anticlimactic. This had seemed their big chance to go one step further than 2014 and 2016, when their team had come so close in finals against their city rivals Real Madrid. This season, they eliminated the holders Liverpool in the last 16, then after lockdown, the draw seemed to open up in their favour. To some observers, Simeone’s team were not just favourites to beat Leipzig, they had been favourites to win the whole tournament.
So the defeat was painful. On Thursday night, Simeone’s former team-mate Kiko Narvaez — probably the highest-profile ex-Atletico player working in the Spanish media — said on radio show El Larguero that “Leipzig are a good team but they are an inferior outfit to Atletico Madrid”. The cover of Marca newspaper on Friday morning pointed the finger directly at the coach, saying the team had paid for Simeone’s “miserly” and cautious tactical set-up in the game. There was even a suggestion in some quarters — and not all of them were mischief-making Real Madrid-leaning observers — that Atletico needed a new manager to take the next big step and finally win a European Cup.
After nearly 10 years of success, that begged the question: what are Atletico Madrid now? Are they plucky upstarts punching above their weight against the heavyweights in Spain or Europe? Or have they become one of the real elite clubs, who expect to always be competing for the biggest trophies? What is success for Atletico? And how do you measure it?
It is worth remembering where Atletico were before Simeone took charge in December 2011. They sat 10th in the table and had just gone out of the Copa del Rey 3-1 on aggregate to third-tier Albacete. Just 300 fans turned up at the creaking Estadio Vicente Calderon for the presentation, after which Simeone told the few local reporters willing to interrupt their Christmas holidays what he planned to do.
“I would like to see what has always been the history of Atletico Madrid — a strong team, a warrior-like team, aggressive, fast, a counter-attacking team,” said Simeone, who had only finished his time as a player at the club six years previously. “Teams have different histories and this is Atletico’s history.”
Simeone is a very persuasive speaker but many were sceptical. Atletico’s history was also bankruptcy, flakiness, laziness, inexplicable transfers, disastrous defeats, regular crises, dramatic collapses and historical “curses”. The former midfielder was still much-loved, but he was their team’s 10th coach in 10 years, during which time they had never finished higher than fourth in the La Liga table.
However, Simeone was quick to win over Atletico fans and the wider football world, bringing unbelievable success to the same group of players he inherited — a Europa League trophy within six months, the Copa del Rey by beating Real Madrid at their own Bernabeu stadium the following season, then finishing ahead of both Cristiano Ronaldo’s Madrid and Lionel Messi’s Barcelona to win the 2013-14 La Liga title. That achievement was not dissimilar to Leicester’s Premier League victory two seasons later, something which had been equally unthinkable just a few years before.
By having so much success so quickly, Simeone set a bar that Atletico just cannot reach consistently. Their only big trophy win over the last six years is the 2017-18 Europa League, when they dropped down from the Champions League stages in the autumn, and were suddenly the big kids in the playground. FC Copenhagen, Lokomotiv Moscow, Sporting Lisbon and Arsenal were rolled over on the way to the final, where Marseille were dispatched 3-0.
Regularly reaching the latter stages of the Champions League, and the move to their shiny new Wanda Metropolitano stadium, have boosted Atletico’s revenues from €100 million a decade ago to €515 million in 2018-19. However, that is still only about half the income of Real and Barca. All the while, Atletico’s debts have remained huge and their transfer dealings as inexplicable as ever. Despite the facade of being one of Europe’s “superclubs”, they retain many of the characteristics of the basketcase club they have, in some ways, always been.
Every season, Simeone tries to keep expectations in line with what Atletico can realistically achieve, at least when speaking publicly. He maintains that his team’s main rivals are Sevilla, Valencia and Villarreal, not Real or Barca. Twenty-four wins in 50 games across all competitions in 2019-20 was the lowest total of his time as their coach. But finishing third in La Liga — especially after being down in sixth during the COVID-19 enforced break — means that he was left relatively satisfied despite the pain of the defeat to Leipzig. Experiencing the once-in-a-lifetime euphoria of the warrior-like victory against the odds at Anfield helps, too.
“A good season is ending, it was a good one,” Simeone said on Thursday in Portugal, again repeating himself as he knew how his words would be received. Supporters who have so enjoyed the last nine years understandably find it difficult to accept that finishing ahead of Valencia means an acceptable season. Atletico keep banging their heads against a ceiling, but that ceiling is set so much higher than it really should be. The question should not be whether Simeone has taken Atletico as far as he can, but where they would be without him.
The questions continued at the Estadio Jose Alvalade as Spanish reporters tried to get Simeone to explain how his team had performed so flatly. Most fans and pundits had expected Atletico to quite easily beat a German side, RB Leipzig, that had never reached this stage of the competition before.
“We tried to give everything, it just didn’t work,” was one Simeone response. “We did everything possible,” was another. Then, “We looked for more, but did not have it.” And, “It’s hard to take, but we gave everything.”
El Cholo had his message for the night and he was sticking to it. But for many Atletico fans and pundits, the result and the performance were anticlimactic. This had seemed their big chance to go one step further than 2014 and 2016, when their team had come so close in finals against their city rivals Real Madrid. This season, they eliminated the holders Liverpool in the last 16, then after lockdown, the draw seemed to open up in their favour. To some observers, Simeone’s team were not just favourites to beat Leipzig, they had been favourites to win the whole tournament.
So the defeat was painful. On Thursday night, Simeone’s former team-mate Kiko Narvaez — probably the highest-profile ex-Atletico player working in the Spanish media — said on radio show El Larguero that “Leipzig are a good team but they are an inferior outfit to Atletico Madrid”. The cover of Marca newspaper on Friday morning pointed the finger directly at the coach, saying the team had paid for Simeone’s “miserly” and cautious tactical set-up in the game. There was even a suggestion in some quarters — and not all of them were mischief-making Real Madrid-leaning observers — that Atletico needed a new manager to take the next big step and finally win a European Cup.
After nearly 10 years of success, that begged the question: what are Atletico Madrid now? Are they plucky upstarts punching above their weight against the heavyweights in Spain or Europe? Or have they become one of the real elite clubs, who expect to always be competing for the biggest trophies? What is success for Atletico? And how do you measure it?
It is worth remembering where Atletico were before Simeone took charge in December 2011. They sat 10th in the table and had just gone out of the Copa del Rey 3-1 on aggregate to third-tier Albacete. Just 300 fans turned up at the creaking Estadio Vicente Calderon for the presentation, after which Simeone told the few local reporters willing to interrupt their Christmas holidays what he planned to do.
“I would like to see what has always been the history of Atletico Madrid — a strong team, a warrior-like team, aggressive, fast, a counter-attacking team,” said Simeone, who had only finished his time as a player at the club six years previously. “Teams have different histories and this is Atletico’s history.”
Simeone is a very persuasive speaker but many were sceptical. Atletico’s history was also bankruptcy, flakiness, laziness, inexplicable transfers, disastrous defeats, regular crises, dramatic collapses and historical “curses”. The former midfielder was still much-loved, but he was their team’s 10th coach in 10 years, during which time they had never finished higher than fourth in the La Liga table.
However, Simeone was quick to win over Atletico fans and the wider football world, bringing unbelievable success to the same group of players he inherited — a Europa League trophy within six months, the Copa del Rey by beating Real Madrid at their own Bernabeu stadium the following season, then finishing ahead of both Cristiano Ronaldo’s Madrid and Lionel Messi’s Barcelona to win the 2013-14 La Liga title. That achievement was not dissimilar to Leicester’s Premier League victory two seasons later, something which had been equally unthinkable just a few years before.
By having so much success so quickly, Simeone set a bar that Atletico just cannot reach consistently. Their only big trophy win over the last six years is the 2017-18 Europa League, when they dropped down from the Champions League stages in the autumn, and were suddenly the big kids in the playground. FC Copenhagen, Lokomotiv Moscow, Sporting Lisbon and Arsenal were rolled over on the way to the final, where Marseille were dispatched 3-0.
Regularly reaching the latter stages of the Champions League, and the move to their shiny new Wanda Metropolitano stadium, have boosted Atletico’s revenues from €100 million a decade ago to €515 million in 2018-19. However, that is still only about half the income of Real and Barca. All the while, Atletico’s debts have remained huge and their transfer dealings as inexplicable as ever. Despite the facade of being one of Europe’s “superclubs”, they retain many of the characteristics of the basketcase club they have, in some ways, always been.
Every season, Simeone tries to keep expectations in line with what Atletico can realistically achieve, at least when speaking publicly. He maintains that his team’s main rivals are Sevilla, Valencia and Villarreal, not Real or Barca. Twenty-four wins in 50 games across all competitions in 2019-20 was the lowest total of his time as their coach. But finishing third in La Liga — especially after being down in sixth during the COVID-19 enforced break — means that he was left relatively satisfied despite the pain of the defeat to Leipzig. Experiencing the once-in-a-lifetime euphoria of the warrior-like victory against the odds at Anfield helps, too.
“A good season is ending, it was a good one,” Simeone said on Thursday in Portugal, again repeating himself as he knew how his words would be received. Supporters who have so enjoyed the last nine years understandably find it difficult to accept that finishing ahead of Valencia means an acceptable season. Atletico keep banging their heads against a ceiling, but that ceiling is set so much higher than it really should be. The question should not be whether Simeone has taken Atletico as far as he can, but where they would be without him.
African_brehda
Superstar
I understand this...but that negative football only has to be used when there's a lead to be defended. That 6 minute stretch where Felix came on and your players actually decided to attack was fukking beautiful....then nothing afterward
African_brehda
Superstar
Because he has to.
ThrobbingHood
Breh&Breh Associates™
ThrobbingHood
Breh&Breh Associates™
If we’re being real, Barca have underachieved in Europe. Only 3 CL titles in 13 years when you have:
The best player in the world.
The best midfielders in the world (08-15)
World class players.
Real Madrid won 4 in 5 years and 3 in a row. Barca should’ve won at least 5 CLs. Yes, it’s not easy to win and luck does play a part but:
In 2010... they should’ve beaten Inter. Yes, that Inter treble winning team was fantastic but that Barca team should’ve been in the finals.
They went out to a Chelsea team in 2012 that had no business being in the finals that season. That loss was so bad it made Pep take a sabbatical.
In 2019, to be 3-0 up on aggregate and then lose 4-0 to Liverpool with no reply is true capitulation. Not saying Liverpool didn’t deserve that win but all they needed was one goal and they couldn’t even do that?
Let’s not even get started on that Roma game.
Again, they should’ve had at least 5 CL titles since 2008. To have only three is shameful.
Barca got they asses whopped
An up and coming feeder leagueBeautiful goal. Davies is a beast
Going from MLS to champions league
Spades Of Aces
The Infinity Watcher
I still can’t believe what my eyes saw...never in a million years I would think Barcelona would lose like this! It’s even more crazy that they didn’t even claim a single trophy this year
