Euro 2012 General Discussion

[paul_oshea]

thats not how it was meant to sound. well not a conspiracy anyway. i hate people wasting their time on such things. :)

[Stuttgart88]

Probably because they don't have an extradition treaty with the US!

[BonnieShels]

Probably because they don't have an extradition treaty with the US!

Still wouldn't explain why he would be in the RFEF. I mean, there's whole lot of Spain to be inconspicuous in. :P

[geysir]

The thread has taken a turn for the worst, I suspect Paul must have been the precursor :)
That was some game. Sympathy for Italy who got whipped in that manner on the finals' stage for all the football world to witness. I was hoping for a tighter game but sometimes you just have to put your hands up and accept the perfect display of football for what it was.

[Stuttgart88]

Goals change games - Di Natale missed 2 great chances in the first 10 mins of second half. Things might have been different.

Italy had a go from the start but I wonder if they'd played the same shape as they did in the group game would they have been more competitive. The narrow midfield allowed Spain's full backs to roam the flanks.

Great stuff from Spain though, no doubt.

[geysir]

Just too much quality in that Spain team tonight. They were up for the game right from the start. Italy might/could have got a goal but I doubt if it would have changed the winning game that Spain were in form to play.

[mark12345]

So - lessons learned from euro 2012?

[mark12345]

Lessons learned for me. Ireland are still babies at the game, and so are England. How many years until Trap gets his charges to play the type of football Spain
played tonight?

Where does the answer lie, in improving the LOI, in sending our kids to foreign leagues to play instead of England, in importing Spanish coaches to coach our kids?

The feeling of depression is all consuming right now.

[ArdeeBhoy]

No depression, Spain, Italy and the other two semi-finalists are currently light years ahead of us. And probably always will be.

More seriously, this article (& comments) is worth a read, if only for highlighting Pl*tini for being an even more deluded fool than Bl*tter...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/euro-2012/9367631/Euro-2012-Michel-Platini-will-sour-a-winning-formula-with-ill-conceived-Euro-2020-plans.html

[tricky_colour]

So - lessons learned from euro 2012?



We are no better than Italy or Germany. or Spain.

[Crosby87]

ZZZZZZ What an awful Tourney and with Stutts saying it was for the ages to boot, I have no idea.

Who could watch that today? It was like a bad Super Bowl.

I think enlarged; it was hopeless, without drama, and lacked any entertainment.
I get the more cynical of us responding with kicks but come on. Lads.

[Stuttgart88]

Do you have any faculty for appreciating football whatsoever? Super tournament, from start to finsih.

[passinginterest]

I think there were only about two games that weren't great to watch and I saw most of them. No moaning about the match balls, hardly any diving, very few controversial refereeing decisions, brilliant goals, incredible tactical battles, beautiful football, hard to argue it was one of the best tournaments ever.

I genuinely think there are a lot of people out there who don’t actually like football.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Crosby,
Even I enjoyed the Final (though do admit to drifting off) and was a better tournament than usual...

[Stuttgart88]

Lessons from Euro 2012?

I'm not sure I learnt that much from this. I think the way the game has been evolving in recent years has been obvious to most. But some of my thoughts:

- While there's always room for a bit of rough and tumble, the elite football nations derive most of their success from cohesive and fluent football that requires good technique.
- The best countries have had an imaginative playmaker of some sorts.
- The best countries have used their full backs well and as an attacking platform...but has this been at the expense of the traditional winger?
- We're miles behind the top 8-12 (think what Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico might have done here), but where we are vis-a-vis 16-50 in the world remains to be seen. The best will only get better from here. Staying still is not an option for us.
- There is no one best way.

What I liked:
- Good refereeing, by and large
- Good behaviour by the players for the most part
- Good tackling, very few studs-up lunges (take note BBC)
- Hardly any reference in the media (TV or newspapers) to "holding midfielders", the most useless descriptive term in recent football history
- Interesting tactical variations
- Unlike 2010, the attacking teams won over the defensive teams.

Any other views?

[tetsujin1979]

Intelligent movement while in possesion is almost as important as possession itself. I lost count of the amount of times balls were played into space, but the intended target hadn't anticipated the pass and stayed static.
Spain, Germany and Italy all moved to reduce the areas the ball can be played into when the opposition were in possession. It wasn't zonal marking, it wasn't man marking, but it was fantastic to watch

[Charlie Darwin]

Italy's transformation since 2010 shows how an imaginative manager and good players can reap real rewards. I know we don't have players on the level of Pirlo or Cassano, but they have decent, technically-adept players like Marchisio and Montolivo who work hard and really punch about their weight. They outclassed a German team who, man for man, are more talented in almost every sense. The scoreline was very harsh on them against the Spanish too - they paid for some poor defending rather than being outplayed as most sides are against Spain.

[paul_oshea]

Spain, Germany and Italy all moved to reduce the areas the ball can be played into when the opposition were in possession. It wasn't zonal marking, it wasn't man marking, but it was fantastic to watch

Ya this reminded of the revolution around the turn of the century with the Northern teams and the effect it had on Gaelic football. I think Spain, and Germany to a lesser extent have adopted this(not that they copied) to football now, and it is extremely effective, the ground covered over 90 minutes is phenomenal.

Id love to know, the combined running total for spain in a game, say compared to Italy yesterday or just in general, it must be a lot higher than most other teams.

[EAFC_rdfl]

Something I thought on when RTE were doing their closing segment last night, a sort of 2-3min recap of the tournament - was there a bad goal scored at all?! Every goal I can think of had something decent about it, there was hardly any scrappy goals, or tap ins from a couple of yards out. Most were either well built goals (spain for example), powerful finishes from the edge of the box or further out - the germans had a few, or even the headed goals were top notch - carroll, shevchenko spring to mind.
im sure there were one or two scrappy goals, but they are far out weighed by the classy ones!

[sullanefc]

No depression, Spain, Italy and the other two semi-finalists are currently light years ahead of us. And probably always will be.


A very defeatist attitude. Sure we might as well give up.

[ArdeeBhoy]

Maybe. But we're miles ahead of them at GAA & rugby and probably always will be...
Anyway, I did say 'currently'.
;)

Though does anyone realistically expect vast change in the next decade? I doubt it. Winning play-offs will probably be the height of our ambition?

[paul_oshea]

Seeing as I was accused of starting this off, i might as well continue on that thread, even though it wasn't my initial intention.

Xavi covers a lot more ground now than he does in his 20s....

Is there any real evidence that Barcelona players are doping? Well, some of the following may be evidence even though admittedly it is no more than circumstantial:

-Pep Guardiola was already caught doping while playing in Brescia himself for using nandrolone. There was a legal dispute in which he was absolved of the charges by Brescia, but there has been a general controversy about the way he was absolved, with some anti-doping Italian officials claiming that the investigation should have continued.

-Guardiola's same doctor from Brescia while he was caught doping is now working in Barcelona as one of the head doctors.

-Barcelona doctors are notorious for extensively using "vitamine shakes" for the players. It has been part of the Barcelona culture for quite some time, and there are rumors that such shakes contain illegal substances that are hard to detect.

-Formerly injury-prone players such as Xavi, Messi, and Iniesta rarely get injured anymore despite playing nearly 90 minutes of every single Barcelona match. Pep is known for barely rotating his squad , and the amouunt of injuries the team gets is notoriously small considering how much they play and former physical fragility of various players.

-Barcelona players appear to be almost as fresh at the end of every match as they are in the beginning. It is always said that this is because how much posession they always have, but it is nevertheless suspicious that players that aren't known for being particularly that athletic manage to run as much as they do and with as much intensity in every game, especially since they barely rotate and are involved in all competitions.

-Barcelona always travel the same day to every away game, which is said to be triggered to reduce the chances that there is a surprise *** test by UEFA officials.

-In Spain, *** tests are done much less frequently than in other leagues. Teams always get to know in advance when they will be tested, and blood tests are rarely done. The number of players tested every season is also significantly low.

-The infamous Doctor Fuentes has been heavily linked with being involved with Barcelona in the past. A few months ago there was also an allegation by a fellow prisoner (Fuentes was in prison at the time obviously) that Fuentes had confided in him that "if people actually knew the truth, the World Cup would be taken from Spain immediately"

-In the last 18 months, Barcelona has "conveniently" suspended two training sessions before a UEFA *** test, one which led to a fine to the club by UEFA officials.

[Stuttgart88]

I'm always up for a good conspiracy theory. Where did you get that info from?

[paul_oshea]

An email from a mate after I started sending the same to them after geysirs post. It put the thought in my mind.

I'm open to good conspiracies, i.e. ones that I agree with :D

Here is something interesting, its what ive been saying for a long time also, but I think dodge on here was in denial for a very long time. Someone good out there could do the retrieval, the best one i know is Dodge, but he isn't going to hang himself.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2012/07/lance-armstrong-charged-drug-taking

[EAFC_rdfl]

on a very basic level, even looking at alonso last night, you would know he had put in a shift, he was knackered and the jersey was drenched. compare that with xavi, iniesta and fabregas to a lesser extent. the conspiracy grows!

[Charlie Darwin]

Paranoia is a terrible thing, Paul.

Barcelona's players are supremely fit. This is not new information - they actively work on it and do gruelling endurance workouts in pre-season to prepare them for it. The New Zealand rugby team undergo a similar regimen.

[Stuttgart88]

I've always suspected the All Blacks of doping too!

[ArdeeBhoy]

But all top sports teams bend the rules and always have done...

[paul_oshea]

Paranoia is a terrible thing, Paul.

Barcelona's players are supremely fit. This is not new information - they actively work on it and do gruelling endurance workouts in pre-season to prepare them for it. The New Zealand rugby team undergo a similar regimen.

Denial is a horrrible thing - Ace Ventura.

They can do all they like, we are all only human after all CD. You should know this of all people :) Unless of course natural selection is at a far more advanced stage in Spain than the rest of the world....

[BonnieShels]

I've always suspected the All Blacks of doping too!

It helps that they are the IRB's cashcow too.
Despise them as a team. And don't get me started on that McCaw b*****.

Paul, some nice work there. I stopped watching the game after the 4th goal as I was just disgusted they had won. But remarkably when I hot home and told my sister the result I then in jest that they were doping cos there was no other explanation...
Then I started to think about the game v Portugal and how much energy they had in ET v the first 90... and that fuelled my fire for conspiracy and then you did such a good summation that I'm on board.

I love it.

[paul_oshea]

My manager here at work has a PHD in Advanced Genetics, I was on about spanish players not getting many injuries(muscle injuries i mean), bone can't really be enhanced, in terms of strengthening anyway - no matter how much milk you drink :D, but he mentioned "i have read recently a book about genetic doping... scary stuff
maybe that's what they are doing
so even if they have muscular injuries, their muscles regenerate far more quickly than otherwise possible"

Sports injuries such as calf(oshea) and hamstring injuries, are very common over seasons, especially as you get older, where you are playing 2-3 games in 7-8 days. They never seem to get them.

[BonnieShels]

Wasn't Iniesta and/or Xavi out for a while the season before last with a hamstring problem?

[bennocelt]

Overall I enjoyed the tournament. Spain were a little annoying for a while but hit back in the final. Iniesta was the player of the tournament, Pirlo second, for me. But the best thing for me was that the refereeing was excellent, really makes a difference to a tournament if the guys in black do their jobs correctly.

[paul_oshea]

Wasn't Iniesta and/or Xavi out for a while the season before last with a hamstring problem?

Yep then they discovered Genetic Doping :D

[mark12345]

We are no better than Italy, Germany or Spain - agreed. So how do we close the gap?

Can we start coming up with suggestions for a solution?

[geysir]

I'm always up for a good conspiracy theory. Where did you get that info from?
Sounds like a Madrid thing.
Guardiola was cleared of all charges.
The rest is complete unsubstantiated waffle and worse.
Somebody in prison overhead Fuentes to say .... :D
Was there not this type of stuff aimed at Arsenal when their game improved under Wenger, suspicious vitamin shakes etc ?

Sorry Paul, I just love a good conspiracy but this is kid's stuff.

[DannyInvincible]

Overall I enjoyed the tournament. Spain were a little annoying for a while but hit back in the final.

I dunno if it's fair to blame Spain for being "annoying". If teams set themselves up very defensively against you and you want to retain possession, as you're naturally expected to do in football, what can you do other than pass it around amongst your technically-superior side until an opening appears? Rather than Spain being boring, a few of their games prior to the final mightn't have been end-to-end stuff, but you can't blame Spain for their opponents' reticence.

[DannyInvincible]

Sounds like a Madrid thing.
Guardiola was cleared of all charges.
The rest is complete unsubstantiated waffle and worse.
Somebody in prison overhead Fuentes to say .... :D
Was there not this type of stuff aimed at Arsenal when their game improved under Wenger, suspicious vitamin shakes etc ?

Sorry Paul, I just love a good conspiracy but this is kid's stuff.

Surely some Barcelona players have been tested over the past few seasons? Also, if the substances are indeed untraceable (so the conspiracy theory goes), why would the club want to arouse suspicion by intentionally avoiding drug tests?

[geysir]

And what drug prevents a player from getting a muscle injury?

Apparently it is a Madrid inspired conspiracy :)
http://www.europeanboard.net/t23100-the-barcelona-doping-scandal

[paul_oshea]

Sounds like a Madrid thing.
Guardiola was cleared of all charges.
The rest is complete unsubstantiated waffle and worse.
Somebody in prison overhead Fuentes to say .... :D
Was there not this type of stuff aimed at Arsenal when their game improved under Wenger, suspicious vitamin shakes etc ?

Sorry Paul, I just love a good conspiracy but this is kid's stuff.

Conspiracy theories are just that, little hard evidence, but plenty of assumptions! :)

Until you actually see someone injecting themselves, or using genetic implants, then its no longer a conspiracy and fact.

The thing around armstrong was never really a conspiracy, more circumstantial evidence and doubt, and since charges are being brought against him.

[tetsujin1979]

the obvious flaw in the theory is that Barcelona still would be tested by UEFA at home games

[shakermaker1982]

drugs don't improve your first touch.

If they did I'd get Whelan and Andrews on em straight away!

[shakermaker1982]

The Barca/Spanish lads will also look after their bodies. No drinking, eat well and go to bed early 99 times out of a 100. They eat, sleep and drink football.

[Mr A]

Given the amount of money involved in top level football I'd be amazed if there wasn't a fair bit of doping going on. If you've got the resources, chances are you can stay ahead of the testers- and the big clubs certainly have the resources. And while drugs may not directly increase skill levels, they can allow longer and harder training and faster recovery.

One thing I'd like to see would be the introduction of the blood passport like they have in cycling. Also, samples should be stored indefinitely so that as new tests become available that old samples can be retested to name and shame users (maybe this happens already).

[paul_oshea]

The Barca/Spanish lads will also look after their bodies. No drinking, eat well and go to bed early 99 times out of a 100. They eat, sleep and drink football.

All sounds a bit boring to me. IF you cant enjoy what you are doing, and enjoy those special times, then whats the point?

[shakermaker1982]

All sounds a bit boring to me. IF you cant enjoy what you are doing, and enjoy those special times, then whats the point?

Have you read the new Barca book by Graham Hunter? Well worth a read. Great insight into what makes these players tick.

The days of Best, Gazza and co tearing it up are long gone! The dedication and commitment shown by Iniesta, Xavi, Messi and Puyol etc as young kids is scary. Pep did let them go out for a couple of beers now and again to let off a bit of steam but they never went mad.

[tetsujin1979]

Fascinating (well to me) analysis of a team's passing statistics using the PageRank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank) algorithim: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/428399/pagerank-algorithm-reveals-soccer-teams/

[Stuttgart88]

I found that interesting too. I saw a similar diagram showing that Brendan Rodgers sets his team out in a way that maximises the number of possible triangular interchanges, or that ensures there are at least 2 options available to the man on the ball, and then the next man etc.

As a bit of a tangent, I read a book recently called Economyths (by Oddell or Orrell?) that recommends that network theory be used to design a safer banking system, just as it is already used to construct the electricity grid.

[geysir]

Conspiracy theories are just that, little hard evidence, but plenty of assumptions! :)

Until you actually see someone injecting themselves, or using genetic implants, then its no longer a conspiracy and fact.

The thing around armstrong was never really a conspiracy, more circumstantial evidence and doubt, and since charges are being brought against him.

The first thing you should have is a premise. There is no premise here, just a bundle of waffle and really really poor uneducated waffle at that. It's so ridiculous that it gives conspiracy in general a bad odour, that a person can't be interested in a decent conspiracy without being associated with crackpot conspiracy theories like this :)

This stuff all came from a Mourinho inspired Madrid camp which resulted in a drug test on 10 Barca players.
There is not one grain of substance, all we have left is fantasy stuff, that perhaps there is some unknown drug (unknown because it doesn't exist), is responsible for preventing Barca players getting muscle related injuries. That would be too zany even for a Dallas soap opera script.

[paul_oshea]

I like the use of the word substance.

"unknown because it doesn't exist" - barca/madrid/spain players aside, do you really think that undetectable - infered by the word unknown- drugs don't exist? Thats laughable geysir, seriously.