Yes - I agree entirely, football is all about athletes these days. Athletes and constant hand passing. High fielding and long kicking are dying skills. The likes of last night only served to exemplify the idiocy of people of Ireland, otherwise sane rational people having their mood dictacted by what happens between 2 PLCs in England playing one of the garrison games.
And that’s not to pick on the EPL, the IPL and SPL both produce their fair share of crap too. I wonder what the ratio of good games to septic ones is? for my money the majority of soccer matches are shit, all that maintains interest is decent marketing by Sky et al.
If Gerrard picked the ball up and took men on he’d be a tremendous footballer.
I know you bhoys have probably gone off on a tangent on this thread but here is my say on both semi finals.
God how on earth can a medicore team like liverpool get to the final 2 in the last 3 years. I just can’t understand it. They are no where near the best team in Europe and still come up trumps in this competition. Although I would still take them over Chelsea any day of the week. It shows that you can’t buy the trophy.
As for the Man Utd match this afternoon, they just looked out of their depth from kickoff today. Milan just looked a step above them, faster to the ball, played at a quicker pace and dominated the entire match. Once Milan coped on to Ronaldo’s step overs and little tricks Man Utd ran out of ideas (and this only took 5mins).
Well at least now class will shine and Milan will undo the slip up they made in Istanbul.
excellent post in the main Flano though I’m not sure I agree with all the ideology. To have style of Irish football dedictated almost entirely by what clubs in Lancarshire do is a sad state of affairs. Lets hope some lessons were learned by EPL fans last night about how the game can be played. Portugal should be our model not Portsmouth.
Does anyone notice that he always repeats what Giles has said in his analysis right at the beginning of the game and then again just after half time?
The other night he jumped on Mascherano giving the ball away twice in the first 5 minutes and was already stating that leaving out Alonso was a mistake. This was straight after Giles said he couldn’t fathom how they could leave Alonso out.
Then after half time he immediately had a go at Zenden and Pennant for not being involved enough - just like Giles at half time.
his favourtism to epl sides really annoys me too. before the semi finals he was speaking about how ‘we all want to see an all english final’. em no i don’t ray. it is pretty obvious that other panelists don’t respect him either.