Euro 2012 General Discussion

[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 , 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

[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 ....
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 ....
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-...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 ....
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...-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.