• Dear Guest, Please note that adult content is not permitted on this forum. We have had our Google ads disabled at times due to some posts that were found from some time ago. Please do not post adult content and if you see any already on the forum, please report the post so that we can deal with it. Adult content is allowed in the glory hole - you will have to request permission to access it. Thanks, scara

Champions League 2014/15

The difference between Messi and Ronaldo is being put on display tonight. Messi has so much more to his game than just goals, not sure the same can be said for Ronaldo.

He's been pretty special tonight.

Hmm, Ronaldo is phenomal in the air, is very good at set pieces etc. But I do agree, Messi's vision, range of passing and overall play is unmatched.
 
Just seen them mention that in the last 4 years only 3 english clubs have made the quarter finals. Thats just 3 appearences out of 32 teams over 4 years. Shockingly shockingly bad. The premier league has declined so much recently.
 
Just seen them mention that in the last 4 years only 3 english clubs have made the quarter finals. Thats just 3 appearences out of 32 teams over 4 years. Shockingly shockingly bad. The premier league has declined so much recently.

According to Jamie Redknapp, Geoff Stelling and the rest of the Soccer Saturday panel, it's because the Premier League is so demanding is the reason why we are struggling in the CL. I'm sure it was demanding a few years ago also when we were doing well in the Champions League and regularly had teams in the Semis and beyond.

I swear a couple of years ago they also said it would be bad for Bayern Munich that they are so far ahead of the rest of the Bundesliga that it would leave them undercooked in the CL. All part of the Sky narrative that they must sell the Premier League as the best in the world.
 
one thing that sure would help our clubs do better in the ucl would be if the league adopted similar models to spain in terms of distributing tv revenue etc. not saying we should necessarily do so, but perhaps its one reason (of many) why spanish clubs are doing better.
 
i had a mate who had a big bet on over 2 goals in the barca city game, he actually broke his TV at the end of the game, incredible to just have one goal in that, not just hart, how many times was the woodwork hit and barca trying to score the perfect goal
 
one thing that sure would help our clubs do better in the ucl would be if the league adopted similar models to spain in terms of distributing tv revenue etc. not saying we should necessarily do so, but perhaps its one reason (of many) why spanish clubs are doing better.

:confused:

but in Spain Barca and Real take almost all the tv revenue leaving the rest to feed off scraps
 
one thing that sure would help our clubs do better in the ucl would be if the league adopted similar models to spain in terms of distributing tv revenue etc. not saying we should necessarily do so, but perhaps its one reason (of many) why spanish clubs are doing better.

As Indianspur says, this would make the Premier League even more lopsided than it is already.

The biggest issue the youth systems at English clubs is not as good as in Germany and Spain. How many world class players have England produced over the last 5 years or so?
 
:confused:

but in Spain Barca and Real take almost all the tv revenue leaving the rest to feed off scraps
As Indianspur says, this would make the Premier League even more lopsided than it is already.

The biggest issue the youth systems at English clubs is not as good as in Germany and Spain. How many world class players have England produced over the last 5 years or so?

i wasnt saying that we should actually polarise how our tv revenue is distributed, but just pointing out that if we were to do the same, our top sides would have more money, and therefore be able to sign better players: and do better in the ucl. its a relative advantage that the top spanish sides have over our top clubs.

comparing youth teams between spain and england is unfair. in spain, they can bring in kids from any part of the country. in england, its restricted. ie. if we were to find a really good 10 yr old in manchester, we would not be allowed to bring him in to our youth setup (iirc, this is technically the ruling, but i think in some cases, some clubs find a way around this. but the majority of our youth players are london boys).

most european nations dont have this ruling, hence why the top clubs (in the respective nations) are able to hoarde the best young players. for example, this is how ronaldo ended up at sporting lisbon, and how iniesta ended up at barcelona. clubs who have had a ridiculous number of worldclass players graduating from their academies in the past, were/are all able to recruit kids from all over the country, and were also traditionally the biggest clubs in their countries. ie. ajax, sporting, barcelona etc

its not so much that english clubs are bad at producing academy graudates, their pool of talent was just much smaller. so its only to be expected that they dont produce as many top players. its a minor miracle that in recent years we have seen the likes of kane and mason graduate into the first team. the same can be said of arsenal too with the liks of Wheelchair and gibbs. when you consider how many top top clubs in london there are, us, arsenal, chels, whu, charlton, fulham, reading, millwall, cpr, its not a surprise that no one team is able to have the kind of success rates that a team like ajax have had.

this all means that you will have some top players who dont get to join the best academies in england. so their careers probably suffer. and england as a whole dont produce as many top players as we possibly could. having said this though, i dont think england are doing a bad job. there are still many top top players being developed. so germany and spain may be doing better at the moment. but we are still doing as well, if not better than a whole host of other european nations with a big tradition for football; italy, holland, portugal, france.
 
Just seen them mention that in the last 4 years only 3 english clubs have made the quarter finals. Thats just 3 appearences out of 32 teams over 4 years. Shockingly shockingly bad. The premier league has declined so much recently.

Sky have hyped it up for years, best Lge in the world my arse.
 
As Indianspur says, this would make the Premier League even more lopsided than it is already.

The biggest issue the youth systems at English clubs is not as good as in Germany and Spain. How many world class players have England produced over the last 5 years or so?
Not so sure - you have to look at the overseas rights.

Apart from a couple of blokes in the Middle East with about £5B riding on it and a bunch of penniless mancs, who wants to see City play? Utd would do very well out of it, as would Victimpool and to some extent the goons. We'd do comparatively well due to having reasonably strong overseas support and a reputation for exciting matches. There's also a generation still around in which we were most people's second team.

It would heavily punish long ball merchants like West Ham and Stoke, and rightly so.
 
Back