YES. shaqiri played instead. i had completely forgotten him. see, he's left-footed, and nominally a winger, though i've seen him play more often near the center instead of kroos or schweinsteiger for example. but yes yes yes. he can sub for ribéry and he's good. gomez's goal was from a perfect pass by shaqiri.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i5EHSnPHmA

now that was a fun match, i thought leverkusen pressed very well and at times overwhelmed bayern in the midfield and bottled them up in their own area, forcing them to play counterattack for much of the game-- which isn't something that bayern is used to doing-- or when they do it works better with ribéry because unlike robben he doesn't lose his head.

it wasn't a clear victory for me, could have gone either way but i'm glad munich won.

--

also i watched liverpool / southampton and damn, being a liverpool fan must be a masochistic endeavor. their defense was full of holes! i read it was cuz of carragher not playing? but damn...

and call me bananas but i thought the real edge on the liverpool attack has been the addition of coutinho, not sturridge... and coutinho didn't play very well this weekend (okay, he scored, which was nice, but he wasn't the destabilizing force i've seen him be in other matches..)

anyway nice weekend and all. how did your teams do?

ps- check out this nerdy fun! (it's an imperfect translation i think, but still...)

http://spielverlagerung.de/2013/03/1...rn-munchen-12/

Great analysis on that site you linked. Good to know there are alternatives to Zonalmarking during their down times.

I don't think there was a key reason for Liverpool losing apart from Southampton playing better than expected and a few too many Liverpool players having a bad day. I certainly wouldn't make too much of Carragher's absence. A Kop legend he might be but he's a shadow of the player he was 5 years ago, maybe even longer.

Re Sturridge, I think he's the more important signing right now because he's helping free up Suarez but Coutinho is surely the more promising long term.

As for the weekend for me, West Ham lost against Chelsea which was disappointing but hardly a surprise. West Ham fans got slaughtered by the media for throwing coins at Lampard when he scored his 200th goal.

i see coutinho as the alt-suarez

--

anyway here is something looking at the upcoming bayern/juve

there is an annoying video on the sidebar so be sure to have your audio on mute

http://www.givemefootball.com/335582...ical-breakdown

after reading that, i started mulling it over and realized the article isn't counting javi martinez as part of the defense. and then it occurred to me that setting him to hound pirlo might just do the trick for bayern. old-school tactic, but effective when it counts.

Not taking anything away from Pirlo but it seems easier to stop him than it is, say, Xavi. England did it against Italy in the Euros. It's not that Pirlo makes it easier, just that opposition players can man mark him in a way that never works with Barca because it only frees up someone just as dangerous. The real problem for Bayern, as mentioned in the article, will be how they cope with Juve's defence.

Pirlo's hardly a spring chicken these days! He's a still a great player mind.

right, whereas javi martinez is only 24-- and has retard strength!

Pirlo plays quite economically. He doesn't do too many runs and isn't required to close down much, so as long as he avoids some major injury he should be fine for at least another couple of seasons.

he's a very intelligent player.

speaking of longevity, what happened to paul scholes? i saw him playing earlier this season but not anymore this year. not that i really follow man u's every game, but i just haven't seen him in those i've watched.

Scholes is still knocking about and at 38 still annoyingly reliable. Unlike pissing Phil Neville at Everton. God I wish that guy would retire.

you could pull a tonya harding and "retire" him :(

Paul Scholes is a bench player now. He rarely starts. Shame. Best English player of his generation, and all that.

Not by much. Just read his stats for this season 9 starts and 10 games as a sub, not bad going. He'll be missed when he does finally leave. Hell he had to come back this season cos they needed him.

They could do with having Gary Neville back, too.

so i googled the man, and sure enough, he had been injured

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...-alex-ferguson

Scholes is one of the most fascinating players in my lifetime and one of my favourite players ever. Even if we admit that he pretty much warrants a yellow card as soon as he enters the pitch because, frankly, he doesn't know how to tackle legally and that he abandoned the English national team because (and I'm not making this up) he had trouble dealing with hot climates, none other than Xavi has gone on record as saying that Scholes is the best midfielder he's seen in the last 20 years. Regardless of what we make of that, there's a reason Ferguson still uses him, and why every England manager since Scholes' 'retirement' from international duties has made it their top priority to try and bring him back to the national team.

Xavi on Scholes: ‘In the last 15 to 20 years the best central midfielder that I have seen — the most complete — is Scholes. He is a spectacular player who has everything. He can play the final pass, he can score, he is strong, he never gets knocked off the ball and he doesn’t give possession away. If he had been Spanish then maybe he would have been valued more.’



While we're talking about players like Pirlo, I do think it's a shame that Paul Scholes will likely never be mentioned in the same breath even though he was easily as good. People who write him off (such as the increasingly Anything-but-an-Englishman centric British media) just don't know what they're talking about. The problem with his kind of player (besides being English) is that he doesn't look that great on Youtube compilations. Same with Pirlo, who it's taken ages for people (outside Italy) to realise just how good he really is. It even extends to Xavi, quite honestly one of the most awe inspiring footballers I've ever seen. They simply don't work on youtube showreels in the way that Zlatan or Neymar do. Nor are they otherworldly in the way that Messi or CRonaldo appear to be.

This would be an interesting question to ask of the Bundesliga, given its current ascendency: has it produced a central midfielder in recent years that comes close to matching Xavi, Pirlo or Scholes? Schwienseiger? Not even close. Of course, that's not to say that Bayern/the Bundesliga won't prevail regardless - just as an NFL team can still win a Superbowl without having an especially noteworthy quarterback.

Sorry. I'm ranting because I'm drunk but I stand by every word.

dammit, general grant, you keep talking like that and your next bottle is on me!

okkay, i mulled this over during sleep and came up with a couple of names that may be cheating but not really. here you go.

1. franz beckenbauer. what, you say he wasn't a midfielder? nominally no, but he played box to box, went on the attack, scored, etc. the sucka invented a new style/position. beat that, anyone! if he played today he'd be a midifielder like....? nobody, because he'd be better.

2. lothar matthaus. eeeehhhh? not a model citizen by all means, but watchu say maradona? the best rival you ever had? oh yeah, you said that! another midfielder/sweeper guy who played until he was ancient.

3. this took me a little research cuz he was great during my "fuck television, i'm going mental!" era, but there was matthias sammer, who again was midfielder & sweeper extraordinaire until he was sidelined by injury. he's now sports director for bayern munich. he was as ugly as scholes too and here's teh little video to prove it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbd2yehoD1g

and here is a discussion about the evolving role of the sweeper that includes sammer's time of glory (during which i was probably lost in some swamp or desert-- 1996! wow!):

http://www.zonalmarking.net/2010/04/...to-prominence/

none of them however is a winemaker. so they lose points on that.

---

ps- am i cheating with the sweepers? maybe. but here's more from the zonal marking article:


So what qualities would this modern sweeper, or modern centre-half, need? They would have to be a good reader of the game, an excellent passer (especially over long distances), a decent tackler and competent in the air, so they were not targeted when up against a tall striker. In other words, exactly the same as the old-style sweeper, and it is no coincidence that many of the more prominent examples of sweepers – Sammer, Lothar Matthuas, Ruud Gullit – were central midfielders earlier in their career.

voilà, monsieur d.!

pps- watch javi martinez in coming years??

In reference to the article about the return of the sweeper, Isn't that the very role Beckenbauer kind of defined - and to which Sammer was definitely an heir - along with Nesta and Baresi in Italy and France's Laurent Blanc? They're an elite that tactical changes do seem to have made obsolete so the idea of a possible return is definitely interesting. While it may have been defined and perfected by Beckenbauer, I tend (perhaps wrongly) to associate it with the Italian Catenaccio thing. Either way great sweepers invariably get ranked as among the very best defenders out there, simply because of how hard it is to do well - so the problem, even if it comes into vogue, may be finding defenders capable of actually do it.

My only problem with that article is that Jonathan Wilson seems to envisage a new kind of sweeper which seems no different to me to a classic defensive midfielder. He even gives Busquets as an example, who's nothing but a defensive midfielder in my eyes. I don't think I've ever seen him play in a role that I'd describe as that of a sweeper. Besides maybe set pieces, he doesn't ever stand behind the central defence, just in front of the goalkeeper, which to me is the classic sweeper position. Even if he occasionally joins the line of defence in open play, that's still just a defensive midfield role for me. In fairness though, some people do think a sweeper plays between the midfield and the defence, hence the idea some have that the SW and DM role is synonymous. My understanding of it, though, is represented here:



Even so, I think a better example of the kind of player Wilson envisages isn't Busquets but Makelele, who builds things from the back but is still for me not a sweeper.

I don't remember seeing Matthaus play as a sweeper - but that doesn't mean he didn't. He was always a midfielder when I saw him though.


Yeah, a perfect example of someone who could potentially become a sweeper, either in the traditional sense or the new version we're talking about.

Lol. Bless you. And no I haven't and still haven't.

With regards to sweepers etc. I honestly think it's gonna get to the stage with players that it'll be rare to see a strict defeneder, a strict midfielder etc (don't be a douche and goalkeepers). As time goes on I think players will find themselves having to adapt to doing different jobs. It's rare even now to see a defender who focuses solely on defending.

A perfect example for me is Jordi Alba. Someone who quite happily plays left back, but every now and then is thrust into playing left-mid. Another example is Ronaldo. The motherfucker playes wherever he wants!

Yeah, you can't anticipate change. Just prior to Barcelona, everyone thought Mourinho held the key to the future in terms of tactics and formations. Then Guardiola came and spoiled it all for him. That's why Bayern intrigue me; they're looking like they could be on the cusp of dominating things but are they bringing anything new to the table, tactically, I mean?

i just had a big lunch and im about to go into a food coma but here a quick few things

the difference between catenaccio and beckenbauer was that before him the libero was purely defensive while beckenbauer went on the attack. same as sammer.

the offside rule changes ended that so the new libero/sweeper plays now in front of the defense (yes, defensive midfielder). check bwt this awesome article about pirlo:

http://arsenalcolumn.co.uk/2012/06/3...ea-pirlo-code/

This is how the conversation unfolded, in the words of Mazzone: “I was managing Brescia when Pirlo still considered himself a “mezzapunta” (attacking midfielder). I told him to play in front of the defenders, because he had vision. ‘But I like goals,’ he told me, unconvinced. ‘You score four or five a year,’ I replied. ‘Play in this position and you’ll score even more. Let’s try it for two weeks. You’ll be a base playmaker.’ “I told him to play two games without asking questions. Afterwards he told me: ‘I feel very comfortable here. I get the ball all the time.’ He found out how it worked. If I’d told him I was going to play him as a libero ahead of the defenders, he’d have run away terrified! Calling him a base playmaker convinced him.”

pirlo = libero! (= sweeper) (!?!?!?)

h8kurdt -- true-- and that's why demonyo can't find any "great defenders" anymore. well they still have them i think but less. everyone plays everywhere, sorta...

--

and speaking of new tactics, last year i thought dortmund were the possessors of the new secret sauce but this year they have collapsed a little. reus came in for kagawa and reus is awesome but kagawa i thought was more creative. in the back they have hummels who is a defender but also a "deep lying playmayer". they may be on to something with their fast pace game but they might be lacking the players to execute properly what they did last year.

shit, this stuff fascinates me. though i am going to have to go unconscious right now...

On that score, he may be the very model for this new type of sweeper, but is he mobile enough? Pirlo is a 'deep lying playmaker' but doesn't defend enough to qualify. Most defensive midfielders destroy rather than create so they wouldn't do, either. Although Xabi Alonso might fit. How is Schweinsteiger at defending? He looks capable and definitely has all the other attributes. Maybe my initial reservations about him are misguided. Maybe he (and by extension Bayern) really do have something new to offer.

Changing the subject a bit, this might be of interest to anyone interested in the (mis)fortunes of Suarez and Liverpool

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...ns-league-club

in the 98 WC matthaus in his old age covered for sammer as sweeper. e.g.:

http://www.soccertimes.com/worldcup/...mes/jul04a.htm

he did so also at bayern, in old age



^^ 1999 champions final

granted, not his glory days of the late 80s/ early 90s as #10. but proof that the same talents can serve both positions.

Haha. what a nostalgia fest. David Beckham, 4-4-2. It's like the football equivalent of a good sunday roast, before those pesky continentals ruined it all with their clever formations and false number 9s.

*snigger* Liverpool would be lost without him. If anyone says Sturridge is a good replacement might as well do a silly dance whilst saying it.

Liverpool will be fucked without him but I bet Rodgers won't see it that way - privately, at least. He's a Dalglish signing and Rodgers won't like building a team around another man's main player. He'll get his big transfer budget to spend and can start to build a team in his own image. But I don't see an equivalent quality forward out there who isn't already being attached to bigger, richer clubs. I can see Rodgers taking a massive risk on a couple of more low profile players rather than just one big name. This is all assuming Suarez goes, of course, and it isn't just another media story. I'll be sad to see him go if he does. Regardless of his cheating he's been entertaining as fuck. It's like Big Brother. Everyone votes out the cunts so the last few weeks are just really nice but boring people who nobody wants to watch. The Prem needs its Nasty Nicks.

maybe liverpool could hire neymar, haaa haa haaa.

It is a problem for Rodgers no matter how he looks at it. The team is slowly but surely finding it's legs (aside from the brilliant loss to Southampton) and losing such a crucial player like Suarez is a bad thing.

If has to go and find a couple of young strikers who still need the experience then that's the whole of next season trying to get them settled in etc. As for big strikers, I can't think of anyone at the top of my head who'll want to go there.

huntelaar, stuck in underperforming schalke. falcao (if he'll move). mandzukic/gomez/lewandowski (something's gotta give in all that clutter, i'll explain later). lambert, since he fucked them. some italian if he can afford him (cavani?)

then he could look at south america (i wasn't joking really when i said neymar).

but it seems to me rodgers has to beef up his defense right now. at least from what i saw in that match. of course without suarez he'd have no outstanding anything to defend.

keep suarez + find a good sub for him (feed coutinho, he's got promise), beef up the defense, and he'll be equipped to put up a good fight.

Neymar would be shit in an English league and I think even he realises that. Even though it seems pretty likely that Falcao will be moving in the summer, Liverpool couldn't afford him.

Gomez could be a possible as Mandukic aint gonna leave anytime soon.

Looks like Klinsmann is under pressure in the US. Divided dressing room, players calling him out on his tactics. Hmm.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...lifer/2005237/

Good call.

Neymar's out of the question. Real, Barca, Chelsea and Bayern are already interested.

And I was thinking about Lambert as a possibility, too.

Saying all that I'm just listening to a podcast and they're saying the quote from Suarez is meaningless, that he couldn't say anything else. Still nice to speculate.

ok i'll explain the gomez/mandzukic/lewandowski conundrum

gomez + mandzukic have been fighting it out for who is the starter at BM. mandzukic was originally to cover for an injured gomez, but even after gomez returned heynckes has consistently favored mandzukic (and mueller) over gomez (and robben). maybe it's an issue of full fitness, maybe it's an issue of being better integrated to the team (robben was also sidelined on injuries), maybe it's something else (e.g., lost mojo).

thing is, heynckes is leaving at the end of the season. and barcelona under guardiola had in the past expressed interest in gomez (not sure today, but whatevs). so this would tend to indicate that guardiola wouldn't get rid of gomez. you can have 2 centerforwards, that's fine. deep bench ftw.

however, here's the shit-- there are rumors (or "rumoUrs" as you ingleses call them) that bayern might wanna lift lewandowski from dortmund (that would be horrible for dortmund). this rumor, if it were true and came to pass, would mean there'd be a glut of centerforwards/finishers in bayern. someone would most likely have to leave, not just because the team needs cover in other areas but also because those are all hungry players who want to be starters in a CL team.

hence, at least one of them would become available. right now i'm thinking the cheapest would be mandzukic, but this is like casino bets or the stock market-- one day up, one day down, who knows. on the other hand gomez could come in undervalued and regain his stature at liverpool-- but that would push out sturridge, not cover for a missing suarez, actually.

just feed coutinho more oats!

If Gomez comes to England, he'd better be prepared for a relentless stream of Marty McFly chants

now seriously talking, someone who plays similar to suarez and could fit the same role (not just as a finisher but as a creative attacker, though he's not as good as suarez yet) might be gotze.



he's merely 20 though, and has a long term contract w/ dortmund till 2016.

I don't know much about Gotze but I'm wondering if Rodgers would want to replace Suarez with a player so similar. We know he aspires to a quite fluid Barca-like style and Suarez has never been a perfect fit for that. I don't even think you necessarily need a world class striker for that kind of style (look at David Villa). If Suarez does go, maybe a better idea would be to get another striker who's solid but relatively cheap, to work with or as an alternative to Sturridge (say Rickie Lambert - apparently a Liverpool fan, too) and then splash out a bit more on getting the right midfielder. Michu would be perfect. He's young, wouldn't cost ridiculous amounts, has proven Premier league experience and would suit Rodgers style to a T. Plus he'd surely view moving from Swansea to Liverpool as an upgrade. Coutinho and Michu in the same midfield would really look like the start of something, not least a future beyond Gerrard - a far bigger elephant in the room than what to do about Suarez.


I think Robben will go. That doesn't mean others will be safe but unless Guardiola adopts a very different style, I just can't see Robben fitting in at all. It'll be fascinating watching the ins and outs at Bayern this summer. I still have my doubts about Guardiola, at least in terms of whether he can adapt and build a side without the whole Barca infrastructure to rely on. Putting aside players he's inherited from the youth system, his record bringing players into Barca from outside isn't great.

More importantly, and sadly, West Ham will be confirming that they're leaving Upton Park to move to an Olympic Stadium they'll never fill and which'll have zero atmosphere. Nice one.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...lympic-stadium

christ, how hard can it be to qualify in that shitty group. top 3! with rivals mexico, and then what? nada! nada! nada! shameful...

the rest:

gotze is a fucking child prodigy. must have smart genes, cuz his dad is a professor of engineering.

heres a little tacky kiddie video by some fangirl-- the point of it is.. it's recent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI1F_YvDE2k

coutinho + michu = i'd love to see that side!

gerrard should have at least another year in him from what i've seen

robben going - possible, sure. but here's my question-- who's to say that guardiola is going to make a barca II and not something completely different?

as for insfrastructure, bayern has a huge one-- 2nd team, youth team, women's team, academy, other sports, you name it. he's gonna have tons to choose from. member-owned club ran by former players. and profitable. fucking brilliant!

and west ham-- hey, don't be so pessimistic. maybe they can rent it out for concerts and make a little cash on the side so you can buy better players and win more games. eh???? or maybe they can sell more cheaper tickets. no??

It's not so much about his fitness, I just think that for as long as Gerrard remains at Anfield, Rodgers will likely struggle to really stamp his identity there - similar to the situation at Chelsea while Terry's still around.


I was trying to make the same point. The problem is that compared with most other managers of his stature, there are whole areas of management that we've yet to see Guardiola deal with. I'm not writing him off but I do think he's a bigger risk than his success at Barca might suggest.


And with that comes a certain institutionalised way of doing things. Fine if Guardiola's happy just to keep things going but I assume he'll want to do things his way and that could involve stepping on toes not used to being stepped on, with enough weight behind the scenes to make things difficult for him, especially if they have any kind of dip in form.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if I was in charge at Bayern, I'd have broken the bank to get Mourinho. Love him or hate him, he's successful everywhere he goes, knows how to handle pressure (a definite weak point with Guardiola) and, well, he's Mourinho. If I imagine Bayern under Guardiola I'm faced with a mixture of excitement and a whole load of question marks. Bayern under Mourinho, though, and I see Death Star levels of pure awesomeness. Oh well.

oh i see where you were going all along now.

dont know enough mourinho to know but just found out guardiola had detectives following piqué and thought "holy fucking shit maybe demonyo is right". with respect to, hm, "pressure". meaning, the ability to go nuts.

eh! we'll see what happens!