This is the time of year where I smile politely while y'all talk EPL meanwhile getting ready to troll this thread with American football posts when our season starts next week ;)

it's not just the EPL though, it's the whole european scene--serie a, ligue 1, la liga, eredivisie, bundesliga, super lig, etc-- and of course the champions + europa leagues. it's *massive*. and of course you know there are many americans playing there all over.

i know you'll be ultrabusy & po' but maybe "fuck sucker" lets you catch games on your own schedule: http://www.foxsoccer2go.com (CL games being the main attraction here).

Surprisingly I have Dish where I am staying currently and so I have NBCSports and some other channels with games BUT even after watching a few I just can't get into it.. I don't know why, I mean I get it, EPL is truly elite futbol but I just don't know the narratives, the stories, the shit that is important to Demonrail so I just can't get into it. With national teams I am more familiar with tournament history and the history of those rosters together, but all that talent is almost meaningless to me without knowing the context. Perhaps its because I'm a nerdy history teacher and so I love the history almost as much as the game itself!

My brain is filled with needless trivia history and stats from the NFL and NBA so there isn't really room in there for Eurofutbol.. I mean, I can tell you about what the fucking Milwaukee Bucks were doing in 1971 or when the last time the Detroit Lions won a playoff game and I can also tell you the last time Mexico lost an international game in Mexico City or explain the rivalry between Panama and Costa Rica on top of basically the entirety of World Civilization from pre-human hominid evolution in the Great Rift Valley up until a geopolitical analysis of what is happening in Syria currently and how it relates to WWI so really, I just don't have the brain power to learn a new sport because I just can't get half assed into anything, its all or nothing :(

oh yeah i hear you. i have a much more limited sports bandwidth than you. so for me it's either fútbol or nothing, and then it has to be good or i space out on account of my adhd--hence it's hard for me to watch MLS on tv.

Hence why all I can do is troll.. Here is everybody's favorite substitute science teacher, Hotlanta Falcon's Quarterback Matt Ryan ;)




By the way, in case y'all are interested in the comparison, here is a brief analysis ranking the
FIBA world cup B-Ball teams and interestingly the top 5 are all elite futbol nations as I've mentioned before..

http://espn.go.com/blog/marc-stein/p...ld-cup-edition


(1) USA
(2) Spain
(3) Brazil
(4) France
(5) Greece (but I'm not buying Greece at #5 at ANYTHING yo ;) )

ha ha ha

FUCKER!

You must spread some Deal With It Meme Shades around before giving it to !@#$%! again.

Well Man Utd getting a crucial point against Burnley there. *snigger*

How can that shit bag Young still be playing for Utd?

i can't find a negative either now that i found they also got benatia from roma as a new centerback. at last, a defender!!!

all is well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUXev_FrclM

sweet sweet football gods

i found a stream and it is blurry but watchable. and in english! though the guy talks pure crap.

bayern 1 schalke 0 at halftime

beautiful goal by lewandowski with an assist by sebastian rode (i had not seen this guy before)

xabi alonso is having a GREAT game and i am so glad i was wrong

this is working because pep is now fielding a 3-4-3

lahm as a wingback on the right (yesss), alonso in the middle where lahm used to be

neuer
boateng-badstuber-alaba
lahm-rode-alonso-shaquiri
muller-lewandowski-gotze

anyway here we go again

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eta: bayern's tikitaka lasted only half a game. 2nd half was slow, at 60+ bernat came for gotze, dante came for boateng, and schalke scored (great elbow by howedes lol). then some dude came in for alonso. i couldn't read his name in the blurry video ha ha ha.

ps- british commercials have better music than american ones.

It does seem as though, if nothing else, Alonso represents a kind of return to a 'conventional' Bayern set up. We'll see if it continues once Martinez is back.

Meanwhile Chelsea's 6-3 win over Everton was funny for Mourinho's face on the touchline, watching his usually hyper controlled tactics descend into pure pinball.

And still no win for Man U. Happy days.

We don't talk about that.

re: bayern, i posted "not fielding" but it should have actually been "NOW fielding" a 3-4-3 (i edited)

and 3 defenders, while more popular this year, isn't quite standard yet. we had a lot of 3-5-2s in the WC (holland, mexico, italy, argentina at some point) but not a 3-4-3 that i can remember.

as the WC proved, lahm is better on his right side than in the middle (he's good everywhere, but the team works better with him on the right channel), so i am glad for his return there, but there's still a superabundance of tikitaka (they got exhausted on the first half) and a lack of directness up front that are keeping bayern too weird.

xabi made some great passes! he was pirlified. but the final third players were meh. imagine having müller, lewandowski and gotze upfront and scoring only 1 goal. how can that be? i blame pep. i will always blame him, ha ha ha ha.

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sorry h8kurdt for that which you don't talk about, but martinez did speak of a "soft defense" and i'm looking for a replay. i've only caught highlights but i want the complete thing.

I really should get round to watching more Bundesliga this season.

Yeah Everton's defence has been shocking this season. 10 goals conceded in three games says it all. It's all well and good getting Eto'o, Lukaku and Atsu in up front, but it don't mean shit when your two centre backs (Jagielka and Distin) are shockingly bad.

Distin is 36 now and when you've got a player who's 6ft 4 losing headers and making stupid mistakes, you've got a problem. Jagielka has been terrible since the world cup and I've no idea what needs to be done to sort him out. So fingers crossed Martinez tries to get someone in before tomorrow's transfer deadline.

Put simply, your team is only as strong as it's weakest link and that goes for every team out there. I'm DREADING the derby game in 2 weeks.

i saw the bayern game in… BT something (stream) which i assume is a british tv channel? they showed the roma-fiorentina game afterwards. in 2 weeks they said they'll show stuttgart vs… i forget.

i think the bundesliga top teams are nice-- dortmund, bayer (that's bayer leverkusen not bayerN), schalke, etc… they have some great players. and even the rest of the league plays a fun fast-paced game that you might like.

the problem is to find them narrated in english (i caught a bit of mainz vs. hannover today but it was difficult to follow in german).

liverpool played well today, so i hope you get some new defenders-- best wishes!

I.agree with the 5-3-2 comments but.it also seemed like.a lot.of WC teams used hybrid formations where the sometimes moved in.between 5-3-2 and 4-2-4 and 4-4-2 formations interchangeably depending on the onpitch matchups.. this is comparible.to the.nba shift towards "positionless" rotations where players on the court shift in and out of their "traditional" positions based on whatever matchups develop in fluid during the game

pep's formations are very fluid, in the tradition of total football, much more so than just having the wingbacks go up and down the flanks on a 3-5-2<-->5-3-2. for example yesterday i saw alaba, a central defender in this scheme, so high up the pitch as to be where gotze should have been, and i thought, who the fuck is covering his pocket? i mean i'd get shaqiri moving all the way to the corner but alaba? (that was his role as fullback before but he'd leave 2 CBs behind, where now he's supposed to be the last line). so alonso would cover behind and if i'm not mistaken boateng would cross sides and cover while lahm folded back where boateng was. so it's like they would rotate the whole thing 45 to 90 degrees clockwise if you can visualize it. then shaqiri kept appearing all over the place, etc. but all that running about just exhausted them quickly.

this article i just found is pretty good. i blame pep! ha ha ha.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/spor...t-Schalke.html

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ps- just found out the traitor kagawa is returning to dortmund from his benchwarming spell at man u!! wooohoooo!!! fucking traitor! good acquisition though.

it was such a delightful watch yesterday to see Real Madrid lose 2-4 to Real Sociedad. after winning 2-0 some 11 minutes into the game, Real completely fucked up the match for themselves.
such a delightful Sunday evening.

hey slavo, since you follow la liga-- how come madrid sold di maria? wasn't he cronaldo's perfect partner?

and james played yet?

!@#$! I agree playing a "positionless" line up combos can be very tiring, indeed in basketball teams experiment but those commit to it full season tend to wear down quicker than those more traditional rotations. The Miami Heat won 2championships playing with completely unconventional rotations but they couldnt continue it this past season. ALL their stats, particularly defensively, dropped off. With all the added running and fewer breaks im not surprised this effect is amplified in futbol.

Really? Of ALL the players Man Utd could've bought they choose Falcao...on a year loan...for 20 pissing quid? REALLY? Bloody mongs.

please translate, amigo!

Man Utd have got Falcao from Monaco on a year loan. A loan that's gonna cost them upwards of £20mil. And if that wasn't absurd enough they don't need any strikers (well ignoring they've got rid of Welbeck and Hernadez now) it's their defence that's fucking things up for them.

ahhhhh… i see. their misery is your joy though, right?

and did you guys (everton) get any decent defenders in the end?

And that, my friends, is pretty much a sum up of the bad things about football today.

Non. Gutted really. Everton signed a defender a month or so back, but the kid is 18 so he won't be coming up for a while. Meh well hopefully things will get sorted out.

I got a chicken and egg question for y'all..
http://www.fiba.com/basketballworldcup/2014/groups

So the FIBA B-Ball World Cup (formerly World Championship) is underway, and as I've mentioned before, all the better teams are the same teams who field elite national futbol teams and who have elite futbol leagues..

So do y'all think that these countries have both world class futbol AND basketball because they are more developed sports' nations in general (culture, talent, logistics) or because they are just naturally good at these sports?

My point? If Brazil and Spain are elite at basketball and futbol not necessarily because of some kind of natural talent pool but rather because of concerted effort and development then the US should easily become a truly elite futbol nation soon because if there is one thing about US sports its significant effort and development at every level.

If the rumours that RVP's about to have surgery are true, then the Falcao deal looks a bit more logical. But, yeah, they needed to break the bank and get Hummels. But no CL football? Would he have even wanted to go there? The Glazers are disguising their drop in status by paying over the odds for Di Mario and getting marquee names in on loan for 350k a week(!).

rent-a-striker.com

350k?? Making that loul deng money yo ;)

There's obviously nothing innate physically about elite football countries. The issue is infrastructure and, as such, I don't see a reason why the US couldn't join that elite. It's really just a matter of will.

Yeah, hard to know what's going on there. No team able to put 3 past Chelsea should ever be on the losing side. Jagielka's been terrible but could this mark a return to all the doubts about Martinez's defences that started when he was at Wigan? I hope I'm wrong, mainly cos I've got a bit of a soft spot for Everton, but I felt Martinez was a bit too good to be true, especially during his first season at Goodison.

West Ham getting Alex Song on a season long loan is a decent bit of business, although I'm even happier we managed to keep hold of Winston Reid. Either way we'll (hopefully) huff and puff our way to the lower mid-table mark by the season's end.

Right, now I've got you in a corner I've gotta ask- what's your opinion on Sam getting booed seemingly every frigging game West Ham lose?

And what's this Van Persie surgery talk about?

I randomly saw that 6-3 chelsea beatdown of of everton on replay.. wow. It was like a clinic of bad goal keeping from both sides but it looked mostly like.tim howard used up all his.mojo in that epic usa-belgium match

some nice friendlies coming up today!

i'll be watching argentina-germany

!!!!!

I'd never boo personally but I do sympathise with those who do, even if some of what they're demanding, in terms of a more attacking style, is a bit naive. Problem is Sam is so far in the opposite direction that it's now become too much even for a lot of their more pragmatic fans to stomach.

There was some chat about VP going in for knee surgery but he dismissed it in the press yesterday. Still, it's the only logical reason for them bringing Falcao in. Unless Van Gaal wants him up front next to VP with Rooney behind them, which would mean leaving out Mata. Why do that when clearly the problems aren't in their attack - especially with the arrival of Di Maria. Despite VP's dismissal of it all, I still think there's something in it.

i get it that most of you are probably on england-norway right now but you might want to learn that argentina is getting its revenge 2-0 vs. germany so far… oh yeah…. di maria the star (poor fucking real madrid)
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3-0 @ 48! ha ha ha ha
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4-0 @ 50!!!!! :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
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ok 4-1 at 51 but damn

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ended 4-2. great game by di maria! again poor fucking real madrid. what were they thinking? /me shakes head

watched the first half of the US-Czech friendly on my prep period, thankfully that was the "good half" because I checked the recap on my lunch and saw that the second half was a bore..

Mix Diskerud played very well, I was wondering why he didn't see more minutes in the World Cup, especially in the Belgium game where we needed some more punch offensively. I like the language and culture coming out of USA as we prepare for the 2018 WC cycle.. I just wish Klinsmann would admit that not bringing Donovan was, yes, a mistake too!

i saw pedoya score in the highlights (not many highlights). feeling a little bad for chech.

The Czech played fantastic in the beginning of the second half (I saw a bit of it on replay) indeed Nick Ramando showed why he is a top-shelf keeper, he had like four or five fantastic saves! They can hang their head high, they kept USA on their toes most of the match.