the first half of juve/olympiakos has been great

beautiful goals-- incredible suspense

catch the highlights in halftime

Will watch them after. Real Liverpool's been good. Real deserve ttheir lead but Liverpool definitely aren't being outplayed

change the channel, you're missing out!

i'll avoid spoilers

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UAU! heart attack till the end

Surely the big match was Arsenal? Wenger was supposedly so pissed off coming off at the end. Rightly so too.

Yeah, in retrospect that was the game to watch but, with Arsenal 3-0 up after an hour, not even their most jaded fans could've expected what was to come.

Gonna watch Chelsea tonight. Probably more interesting games but that's the best of the ones I can get.

oh i read about arsenal! should i laugh or feel sad? i kinda want to laugh. wenger needs a limpia.

bayern/roma was good but not anywhere near the insanity of the previous game--of course robben (FIFA's next player of the year) was out sick, and he can't be replicated by any system. but bayern dominated and won fair. neuer had an AMAZING save! that guy is a beast. all good with the match. i found juve's game yesterday much more thrilling though.

any recommendations on replays to watch? you have mine. thanks.

Laugh, but only after you've stopped laughing at Man City.


Love him or loathe him, It'll be Ronaldo, and deservedly so.

who??? (ha ha ha)

beaten by moscow! roma should be in and this pleases me.


i'm not denying his greatness or his role in la décima or what he may be doing right now, but he limped through the world cup, and for this year i think that counts

The WC distorts so much though. Not knocking Robben at all, I just think that at club level Ronaldo's been in a league of his own this past couple of seasons. Plus, the decision is also based on conduct so I think Robben's diving will probably lose him a few points. Not saying Ronaldo doesn't dive but even Robben's biggest fans would have to admit he's one of the worst out there for it.

Besides all that I really think Ronaldo's been the best player on the planet this past two years. I used to hate him, then I started to grudgingly respect him. Now I'm just in total awe of him.

i see him play week in & week out and the last time i saw him presumably dive was vs. mexico at the WC. but he was fouled. does he have a reputation already made? sure. but i don't see the behavior to back that up this year. honest.

fair point about ronaldo being generally speaking the best player right now--i like him A LOT as a player, but i just can't stand his douche face ha ha ha. having said that, i think the world cup distortion is valid though-- i think it deserves the extra weight, which also increases the stock of james rodriguez or mascherano and decreases zlatan or ribéry.

then again there's neuer-- best keeper right now, world champion, he's got everything.

wait, i sound like i'm biased towards bayern. guilty as charged, ha ha ha.

Thank you for.being a voice of reason about Robben.. his dives are notorious but 99% of.the time.including that game against Mexico.he is.exaggerating contact or fouls.but.rarely inventing it.

Also fuck Ranaldo..

When was the last time you could say Ronaldo legitematly dived? He's not been accused of doing that for a while now.

And surely the fact that both he and Messi were pretty much injured during the world cup counts for a lot.

exactly my point-- these guys have supreme talent, i'm just saying for whatever circumstance this wasn't their best year.

I didnt accuse ronaldo of.diving, just.being.an.ass

In the world cup sure. In the league? Come on, man. They had a stormer. Ronaldo especially. 17 goals in the Champions league campaign, 51 in the liga, 14 assist for both of them, and so on, and so on. Right now when Messi isn't supposedly at his best he still stand heads above pretty much everybody. And n top of that you'd struggle to find beeter all round players than the two.

Don't get me wrong, I like the one-footed donkey but was he the best player last season? No. And if they had judged Suarez on his footballing merits alone I suspect they'd place him above Robben too.

51 GOALS IN LA LIGA??? HOLY FUCK.

i had no idea.

true about suarez but his suspension has to disqualify him

OK, everyone (me included) has raved about his performance in the WC, in which he actually only scored 3 goals, with two of those against a Spain side in full-on meltdown mode. Even Van Persie outscored him. And we can hardly talk about Robben contributing much in other areas. He did his usual running-really-fast-then-cutting-in-to-the-left thing supremely well but, in all honesty, that's about all he did do. I'm not suddenly saying he had a bad WC but in retrospect it's hard to say anything really outstanding about it besides breaking a speed record.

He did win a Bundesliga title, though, with a Bayern team that were hardly not gonna win it. And yet even so, he wasn't even voted one of the Bundesliga's top 3 players at the end of the season - voted for by his peers in the league. He didn't even make their top 3 forwards list. Not that I take those kinds of polls very seriously but it does raise the question of what he's done this year to lift his reputation to the level where he's now seen as a serious contender for the Ballon D'Or.

At 30, his current market value is reckoned to be about £30m. Ronaldo's just a year younger and valued at over £100m. The numbers aren't clear cut but that's a helluva difference.

You know who should get it? Naismith.



Love the albino Scot.

Don't you mean Sahko?



Love the spray-tan Senegalese

7 in 7

Is this the single greatest own goal ever?

And it handed Dortmund a win. Well done, dickhead.

Haha.

Almost as funny as watching Arsenal and Man City lately.

Major coup. I've got tickets for Argentina's friendly against Croatia on Wednesday, at West Ham's ground.

Hopefully Messi, DiMaria and Modric will all play.

Go me.

^^ sounds fun

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about your cr 7 rgument, i've been mulling it over and i think you're 70% correct. i have some 30% conterarguments.

but looking back at the short history of this trophy (i looked @ wikipedia) the obvious ones have always won, so okay. robben in 3rd place.

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fun weekend in the bundesliga. dortmund finally won-- with an own-goal by monchengladbach! who of all people did this-- do you remember the german who was walking around concussed during the wc final game, looking goofy? the same one. hilarious. still dortmund couldn't score. wtf.

--

ps oh yeah ha ha you saw that! funniest thing is when kramer gets slapped on the head by his own teammate.

Ohhhh poor baby Saurez complaining about "being treated like a criminal" by the Uruguayan team.at the WC. DUH! dude breaks the rules yet again humiliating his entire.country what did he expect? The reason.I hate on Suarez is no matter how many guys he bites, or how many times.he.handballs in big.games, or how.many suspensions gets for misconduct he NEVER owns up to it. NEVER!

Back from the Argentina Croatia game. Just a friendly but an excellent match. Most importantly though got to see Messi, Aguerro, Tevez and DiMaria. Great atmosphere. Tevez got a standing ovation from the West Ham fans there. Argentina deserved the win but Croatia were good.

So who'd you put 2nd?

me i'd put robben first ha ha ah. but if we're going with market valuation etc then i'd put the obvious messi 2nd. since messi's market value is higher than cronaldo's due to age but one could argue this year cronaldo is best, etc. messi won @ the WC anyway, sadface & all.

reason i picked robben 3rd is because ribéry made it to 3rd last year, not out of any sense of ranking i'd create myself. just trying to guess what people will vote, which are different from my favorites where i'd have neuer for example who's been phenomenal this year so far.

Not that he deserved it and Messi knows that too.

probably. for my taste, james or muller or robben or neuer or mascherano were the stars of the world cup in retrospective.

...

to answer demonyo's previous comments about robben's schtick, yes maybe if you look at him that way he always does the same thing, but what impresses me the most is the effect he gets to have on games, the way defenses melt down before him, and even if they all know what he's going to do they can't stop him.

i see this in bayern week in and week out, and i think it was the same with the netherlands in the world cup--he carried them as far as they could go. and this year he's been unstoppable. of course he won't win, he might get a place though (3rd?), but i think he's gotten better with age and he's underrated right now. (of course he didn't score 51 goals in a season. holy shit, who does that. insane.)

Messi sad face pissed me off.. so disrespectful even if he was let down with himself

Can't argue with any of that. I don't see enough of Robben to really comment but you seem totally right about his impact on games. And yeah, Ronaldo's goal tally is absurd. I read somewhere recently that at one point this season he'd scored 3 hat-tricks in 4 games. 3 goals in 4 games is impressive but hat-tricks?!? As you say about Robben improving with age, you could say the same about Ronaldo. He was superb at Man U but there were always doubts about him. His time at Real though has meant that any arguments now about whether he's as good or even better than Messi at his best probably come down to personal taste. So far this season, in La Liga alone, he's scored 18 goals in 10 matches played. Whichever way you look at it, that's an absurd stat.

James had the best wc from a, 'who the fuck is this guy?' pov (unless you followed the French league, which I don't). But overall I'd have given it either to Robben or Muller. Neuer too but I think a goalkeeper will always be a special case.

Mascherano was probably my favourite player of the tournament but that had more to do with his attitude and sheer heroics. He played last night against Croatia and was brilliant again, without doing anything remotely spectacular. But playing that role will always make you under-appreciated compared with those in more superstar-friendly roles.

Hard to believe he was once a West Ham player, and barely even got a game

I'll agree that Robben has gotten better as he got older. Feels weird to think he was at Chelsea, especially given how much better he's gotten since then.

So FIFA have been cleared of corruption...by having FIFA investigate whether they are or not. Brilliant.

I await Suchfriends' rant about corruption. He would be right to a certain extent.

hahahahah.

The best bit was how they managed to turn the spotlight on the English FA. Not sayin we're squeaky clean but that's like a Nuremberg trial deciding the real problem was Alf Garnett.

Oh FIFA is so inherently corrupted I dont even bother, itd be like complaining about the rain while living in England. Ive more or less come to terms with sports corruption.

All football needs is to replace Blatter with a dream team of Bernie Ecclestone and Don King and it could give up any pretence of credibility altogether.

Another awards thingy, this time Fifa's Puskas Award for the best goal of the year. (Can't be long before football has its own fully fledged Oscars)

Shortlist is

Tim Cahill – 18 June 2014, Australia v. Netherlands, 2014 FIFA World Cup™

Diego Costa – 23 November 2013, Atlético Madrid v. Getafe, Primera División (Spain)

Marco Fabian – 15 February 2014, Cruz Azul v. Puebla, 1a División 2014 Clausura (Mexico)

Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 19 October 2013, Paris St. Germain v. SC Bastia, Ligue 1 (France)

Pajtim Kasami – 21 October 2013, Crystal Palace v. Fulham, Premier League (England)

Stephanie Roche -20 October 2013, Peamount United v. Wexford Youths, BEWNL (Rep.Ireland)

James Rodriguez – 28 June 2014 – Colombia v. Uruguay, 2014 FIFA World Cup™

Camilo Sanvezzo – 6 October 2013 – Vancouver Whitecaps v. Portland Timbers, MLS (USA/Canada)

Hisato Sato – 8 March 2014 – Sanfrecce Hiroshima v. Kawasaki Frontale, J.League (Japan)

Robin van Persie – 13 June 2014 – Spain v. Netherlands, 2014 FIFA World Cup™

I'm going for James' goal in the WC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GESyL3MkgNU

by "the year" the mean last season yes? august --> august?

how long has it been since zlatan's bycicle kick vs. england? that has to wind the decade.

these awards are kind of funny. nice to remember some of those goals though, like van persie's superman flight. but yes, of those listed, james all the way. tim cahill's a 2nd? i haven't seen the vancouver whitecaps (lol) or the mexican 1a división or getafe for that matter.