i've been thinking hummels could make a great libero instead of central defender

i don't know who could replace klopp-- i just know that what he's doing is not working.

and in part i say i don't know who could replace klopp because i don't know what kind of squad dortmund will have left after this season.

HEY, HOW ABOUT BIELSA??? :D

seriously, he's also a practitioner of gegenpressing so it wouldn't be such a leap.

Bielsa would be an obvious choice for the very reasons you give. And it's not as though, after Klopp, the fans wouldn't be used to eccentricity. Although I've heard PSG and Inter are also looking at him.

Have you seen him in dressing room mode? Amazing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjx8RY7_NQ4

that was great

"eat poison"

"do not complain"

"i congratulate you all"

amazing speech

so i've been looking

they're in 4th place right now 1 pt behind monaco, but monaco already played friday

4pts behind lyon (who plays wednesday), they won't catch up this week. psg is only 1 pt ahead of that.

where will they be at the end of the 9 dates he mentioned? first they beat up lens 4-0, then they lost to psg 3-2 (the zonal marking article). and today...?

epic drama in the making--"date #3". i might try to catch a stream of today's match-- will happen late in the day (night where you guys live).

If you're able to catch it, the Manchester derby is about to start. Always interesting, even if neither team are realistically challenging for the title.

thanks! i've got some things lined up this morning-- but arsenal in 2nd place? (i just looked since you mentioned the title). how did this happen??

Arsenal have been the in form team during the second half of the season, and if the league lasted another say 5 games, you might fancy them for the title. But as it is Chelsea have just built up too many points early on, despite being very average in the last few months.

MU just annihilated MC (the 4-2 score massively flatters City). Pellegrini is surely gonna get the sack in the summer but, while we know they want Guardiola, it doesn't look like he'll be moving from Bayern before his contract is up - and if he does go to the Prem, everything suggests he wants the Utd job, anyway. Big dilemma for the City owners. Ancelotti? Rafa?

The rumours at the moment are Benitez which I can very much see. So how shit is Mangala again?

Yeah, you definitely win the Mangala argument.

Benitez makes sense but only if he accepts that, come the following summer, he''ll be treated like a spare part by the owners as they go all out to land Guardiola. After what happened at Chelsea, though, he'll at least know what to expect.

Either way, listening to the final round of the Masters at Augusta right now. I'm hoping Justin Rose will do it but I think it'll go to Jordan Spieth.

holy shit i spaced out the marseille game!

i think the 2nd half just began

----

UPDATE

i could not get a stream to work for me (i really tried) but i just found out bordeaux won 1-0!!

dammit, bielsa.

disappoint!

maybe he should have said "eat the poison. life sucks get used to it. rewards not guaranteed"

maybe they should find an existentialist coach instead of a catholic one. REWARDS NEVER GUARANTEED. ENJOY YOUR STRUGGLE.

there is no santa claus. don't lie to the children.

oh man. i should try to catch a game (probably not the CL ones they lost, which i can watch recorded?). i used to like them a bit, except they were perpetual non-scorers and it got frustrating.

To be honest, Arsenal have only been the best of a pretty average bunch. Their downfall in the CL, like all the other English teams, says it all. Maybe this is just a bad season for the Prem but, relative to the other big European leagues, the quality does seem to have gone down. Maybe it's just too satisfied with its own commercial success. Its trademark unpredictability still makes it massively watchable but the price being paid for that, in terms of quality, definitely shows itself when teams like Chelsea, City, Arsenal, etc, meet their equivalents from other countries.

Even in terms of players, the Prem is packed with very good ones but would any of them make a world XI right now? Although that's bound to change once the TV money comes into play.

Either way, this season hasn't been a very good advert for Brand-Prem.

Official: Klopp's going at end of the season

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...ussia-dortmund

damn! had to be. a pity he's not taken a sabbatical. he seems to have run out of ideas. he needs to go smoke some marijuana in brooklyn like pep the baroque.

you did realize the fundamental premise of Catholicism is the inherent value of the ascetic struggle right? That the reward of life is to endure natural suffering with Christian dignity? That Christians are meant to suffer in the trenches with the sufferers? Yes i know, theology is out of your league but if you can't promise to try, can you at least promise to try to try?

It's not an ideal time to leave, in terms of situations vacant. Man City apparently aren't interested and I can see Arsenal sticking with Wenger. Outside the Prem, I'm not sure. Ancelotti's job at Real is in doubt but they'd have to see Klopp as a downgrade if he came in as replacement. France? Holland? Italy? Surely he won't move to another German club.

A Sabbatical might be the best move, not necessarily to sort himself out but to wait for the right job to come up.

Till recently I'd have said Bayern but Barcelona right now look awesome.

ugh!

you're not catholic and you can't understand spanish and you don't read french, and you don't know who bielsa is, so you have no idea of what he said or what it meant but you win the Golden Rolleyes-- the internet annoyance trophy.

Meh.. you always dissing people's faith, don't like it much when they bark back. Rewards never guaranteed, enjoy your struggle.

Speaking of which, looking forward to USA Mexico tonight, even as a friendly should be heated

Yeah I'd agree. I've not the foggiest as to where he's going to go now. I'm sure he's not short of a few pennies to take a year off.

Honestly I can see Juventus making it to the final at least. They keep plugging away getting the results they need.

the man seriously needs a refresh. his ideas were great when nobody understood him and he had a team of 21 year olds (plus lewandowski).

i feel terrible for the players. some really good talent there. reus just signed his megacontract.

so-- hummels to man u? he's always been a fan. i'd like him in bayern but he got estranged from them at some point it seems.

reus? will someone buy him out?

what of kagawa? sahin? gundogan? aubameyang on the rise? immobile who was great before this?

the vultures have to be circling that juicy carcass...


don't know about right jobs... he went from coaching mainz to coaching a very underperforming dortmund... he might very well like a young unknown team to turn around again, not a mega-club like the handful mentioned.

shit, schalke doesn't seem to be taking flight under di matteo. they're the first to come to mind. hamburg is another sinking ship, maybe he'd like to turn them around. maybe QPR, for all we know--are they looking?

Well Porto have put paid to the idea of it being Bayern! For now anyway...

ha ha ha ha-- damn!

i'm glad i missed it (on purpose-- long story)

defenestrate pep the baroque

DRAFT HEYNCKES!

===


ps- ha ha ha ha!

"psg's new badge"

I think somewhere on this beast of a thread I talked about what an exciting young team Porto has. I would love to see them make it to the finals. It's a shame that Danilo is going to Madrid next year and Casemiro will, if Madrid has any brains, be called back.

It's just amazing the talent that Porto has bought for nothing, built up, and then sold at massive profits-James Rodriguez, Falcao, Hulk, Anderson(haha, ManU), Carvalho, Deco, Pepe ,Guarin, Bruno Alves, Moutinho.

Imagine if they could hold on to this talent

I still think Bayern will turn it around at home against Porto and Barcelona will almost certainly get to the semis. If they're drawn together I see no reason why Juventus couldn't beat which ever Madrid side gets through. If they draw Bayern they still have a chance but not if they get Barcelona.


Not just saying this but everything you say makes him an ideal replacement for Sam at West Ham: a club on the cusp of becoming very rich, but with no real history of success; a very out of favour manager and a fanbase dedicated to attacking football. Plus we know he likes the idea of managing in England. Not saying it'll happen but, of the realistic options out there, it ticks a helluva lot of boxes.

just looking at the names plus some obvious things (i'm great at noticing those!) looks like they have a culture and language pipeline to brazil (and the rest of south america is not far), plus portuguese football is not too shabby-- they do great for a small country, some great talent.


i am honestly not so sure of that. 2 goals is a steep climb, and should porto score more than one (looks like they can) bayern would be thoroughly fucked.

i am really bothered by pep's lack of attention to defensive players. keeping possession might be a great substitute to actual defense, but when that breaks down then what's your backup?

it's a similar scenario to klopp-- "we know how to beat you and you offer no variations." klopp's last years at bayern was super-supremo because the team was infinitely flexible-- they'd play possession, they'd play counterattack, they'd use fine touch, they'd be physical-- they showed a fantastic power to adapt and beat their opponents.

now it's the always the same shit, predictable and therefore open to the knife under the armpit.


no, totally, i would totally have said west ham, kloppo has said he likes english football, but some days ago you said they had hired gollum, ha ha, so i refrained from naming them. the article mentions hamburg shopping for a coach and schalke has been stalling behind leverkusen and monchengladbach, so im thinking those are obvious candidates. and QPR... they always do poorly, don't they?

That was an exciting friendly, USA-Mexico is always a lively grudge match

And I still think it'll be Moyes but if the Klopp situation had been announced a little earlier I'm sure he'd have been a very big blip on the owners' radar.

Problem in England is, even with the new TV deal, it'll be very hard for any emerging team to become regular CL qualifiers. Maybe the odd season but nothing as consistent as I expect most big name managers would want. And with the possibility that our qualification slots might drop from 4 to 3, unless you can secure a Russian or Saudi multi-billionaire, it'll become even more difficult. There'll be an interesting situation in a few years where most Prem clubs will be richer than most European teams in the CL but won't be in a position to actually play them.

Porto fooled everyone with JM's supposed injury. Just brilliant... haha fuck, I really enjoyed that.

dammit, jammed up internets kept me from catching dortmund-paderborn this morning. dortmund won 3-0 but parderborn is really a shit team so it doesn't count... still, i wanted to see how they behaved today after the news of kloppo's departure.

speaking of that, here's a pretty good & true analysis of what went wrong w/ the guy, if you haven't seen it yet.

5 reasons klopp is leaving:
http://www.espnfc.com/club/borussia-...ussia-dortmund

Link doesn't work :(

oh damn. 2nd time espn does this shit.

google turns up this: http://www.espnfc.us/club/borussia-d...ussia-dortmund

which just went there.

or, put up w/ my copypasta, which follows

BY STEPHAN UERSFELD
ShareTweet18 3 days ago
Five reasons Jurgen Klopp is leaving Borussia Dortmund

Jurgen Klopp has announced his decision to leave Borussia Dortmund. What from an outside perspective looked like a relationship for life began to turn into a dead end when Mario Gotze left for Bayern Munich in 2013. Untested on that level, BVB were not able to come up with the right answers to the challenges that they suddenly faced. In uncharted territory, Klopp's demise began. It all ended on Wednesday in a highly emotional news conference on the first real day of spring in Dortmund.

Here are five of the key reasons Klopp is leaving Dortmund:

1. Gotze departure/Mkhitaryan transfer

In April 2013, Borussia Dortmund were in control of their fate. Or so it seemed. Exactly one year prior, Mario Gotze penned a new deal, valid until the summer of 2016. The contract included a release clause, and while BVB might have braced for a potential departure, they likely believed it would happen in 2014. They were wrong.

Having coped with the losses of Nuri Sahin and Shinji Kagawa the two previous seasons, BVB were unable to replace the Bavarian youngster, who came through the ranks of the club's youth academy before leaving for Bayern Munich in 2013. When announcing his departure on Wednesday, Klopp admitted that he made the decision in order to spare Dortmund any kind of pressure to have to make a quick decision on a new manager -- the same type of last-minute decision-making Klopp was forced to do when players made unexpected departures.

Borussia Dortmund were forced into the transfer market unprepared, and signed Armenia international Henrikh Mkhitaryan for a club-record transfer fee of some €27 million. Despite a decent first campaign, it soon became obvious that the Armenian was not a replacement for Gotze, who was able to make quick decisions and see spaces open for his teammates where there had not been any spaces. After two years it's evident that Mkhitaryan is a good footballer but does not have the vision possessed by Gotze.

2. Lewandowski departure/Bad scouting

Gotze's transfer also meant that Borussia Dortmund dragged the Robert Lewandowski saga into a new season. The club vowed to not sell him to Bayern Munich, and counted up the numbers, claiming that he'd be more valuable for Dortmund than a transfer fee in 2013. He was. The Poland international played on like nothing happened, became the league's top scorer, but was more than just that for BVB. He was the go-to-guy in Dortmund's attack, and made room for players like Marco Reus to shine.

Yet, despite having over a year to scout Lewandowski's successor, Dortmund came up with a two-player solution. They bought Ciro Immobile and Adrian Ramos. And both failed to have an impact for Dortmund, with BVB's footballing qualities diminishing with the Italian striker on the pitch. Both could be part of a major squad overhaul in the summer, depending on the new coach.

(cont.)

(cont.)

3. Failure to implement a Plan B

Football is a fast-moving business. What is new today will be dated tomorrow. What is spectacular today will be punished tomorrow. The young Borussia Dortmund early on in the Klopp era needed only a handful of seconds from winning the ball to scoring, or at least creating chances. They had the player, ruthless when winning the ball, but also able to play the clear pass. Sometimes long, sometimes short, always finding small pockets of space.

But the players grew older and teams began to test new tactics against Borussia Dortmund. At first, they attacked Mats Hummels, who was doing all the build-up play from the unusual centre-back position. That worked to parts. They also began handing possession to BVB, and learned that by sitting deep this also meant freeing themselves from Dortmund's Gegenpressing. The last time that Dortmund press worked was in the first match of this season's Champions League when a fantastic BVB side stormed past Arsenal. But even in the Bundesliga, clubs like Bayern only handed the ball to Dortmund. Klopp, citing a difficult preseason, had no answer, even after the winter break.

4. No fresh blood

Borussia Dortmund were the most thrilling side to watch in Germany, and for one season also in Europe. They were a team full of hungry youngsters, without a trophy, without a major success. Their famous Gegenpressing and their hard-working style was loved throughout the continent.

It was also draining. Holding midfielder Sven Bender has struggled with various injuries in recent years, and so has left-back Marcel Schmelzer and Nuri Sahin, one of two players -- Kagawa being the other -- brought back to the club in a bid to re-create the romantic idea of that group of players playing their hearts out for the club.

Klopp relied on them. Klopp did not want to cut ties. He was thankful, and maybe too thankful.

At the same time, BVB brought in players from outside of Bundesliga. Some of them failed to adapt to what makes Borussia Dortmund the "extraordinary club" it is. But with Dortmund being forced into the transfer market year, in year out, their transfer policy remained reactive, and the club and Klopp missed out on implementing new blood into key positions, like holding midfield or at full-back.

5. Becoming bigger than the club, and realizing it

With all of the above unfolding into what ESPN FC writer Raphael Honigstein has called a "black swan season," it became evident that Klopp had grown into something bigger than the club itself.

He used it to shield his players from the criticism, and took hit after hit from the German media, who themselves had difficulties finding the right words, knowing that Klopp was Borussia Dortmund, just like Arsene Wenger is Arsenal or Sir Alex Ferguson was Manchester United. But as much as he loved the club, he did not want that. On Wednesday, he said that "the club is bigger than all of us," and added that he felt that whatever he did next at Dortmund was always going to be viewed in the light of his successes of the past few years. In the end, for Klopp, his presence as manager was blocking the development of the club. "The evil of the good deed," he said, and announced his departure to allow the club to find itself again.

Uersfeld is a Germany correspondent for ESPN FC and runs a blog focusing on Dietfried Dembowski. Follow him on Twitter @uersfeld.

Cool. Thanks!


I suppose that pretty much sums it up, although it could also be said that the situation at Dortmund (in relation to Bayern) was blocking Klopp's development as a manager, too. Never really being able to build a team, only react to its constant dismantling. So we'll need to see what he can do elsewhere, ideally in another league, before we can really judge him.

yeah, but i guess points 3 & 4 hold more truth to me-- not sure if it's because i've been saying those things for a long time-- not sure if you remember some post of mine where i said klopp's style required recruiting players at 19 and selling them at 25 (to the glue factory?). or something like that. so it's not just lack of fresh blood but that his style only works with young players.

and then the "lack of plan b". this is what makes klopp suspect in my eyes.

yes, he's having troubles, and yes they've been dismantling his team, and the scouting was no good, etc. but also he's had no tactical responses to others finding his weak spots, and the article describes exactly how they've done it-- and that lack of reaction is on him and him alone.

i've seen it all year this bundesliga season-- they give dortmund the ball and they are lost with it. even without gotze and lewandowski dortmund has a pretty great squad and lesser teams have beat them--repeatedly & consistently.

so maybe he stumbled upon his winning formula by chance, maybe it was a product of the players he had at one time-- and now that he has lesser players and people found out how to dismantle his scheme, he's got no tactical brain to produce a variant. please note i'm saying "maybe". but i can't explain why he'll insist on the same broken record and not switch things around in the face of abject failure.

PSV won the champoinship in the Netherlands yesterday. Big celebration in my hometown now, and I'm missing all of it becasue I'm once again in Paris for work, even on a Sunday....