A Beautiful Thread for the Beautiful Game

I think that, somewhere, lateral defenders are being completely forgotten by youth teams in France. Every year we discover a striker or offensive midfielder who looks like he would be a very decent option in one of Europe's powerhouses (Griezmann, Martial, Coman, and now Mbappé & Augustin, plus you can add Lacazette or Fekir who aren't old either), but it's been a while since anyone looked at a French team and said "beware the left/right back, he is dangerous". I think Sagnol was the last one, and he retired in 2008. Evra is alright, but not groundbreaking, especially now.

Zlatan makes José gay. Pogba's move to MU looks like this summer's biggest story - I personally think that they are paying WAY too much, but considering how inane the transfers have become, maybe it actually makes sense. Quite curious to see him in Premier League, I can absolutely picture him crushing weaker teams, but I can also absolutely imagine him failing against serious opponents. Sissoko is not as good, but he is more consistent (and might move to Juventus apparently?) Anyway, the point is, Cantona's reign as "Manchester's most popular Frenchman" is unlikely to come to an end.

On a completely unrelated topic, is there a Rio Olympics thread yet?

Following that wonderful own goal in a friendly with Bournemouth, Minnesota United and goalkeeper Sammy Ndjock are have a laugh over it, themselves...

Sam Allardyce has been confirmed as the new Mike Bassett, oops, as the new England manager, on a two year contract.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3704117/Sam-Allardyce-laughs-camera-message-England-fans-new-manager-admits-t-stop-smiling.html

Hopefully that's the last time he smiles wearing that England training top - he's got altogether too many teeth for my liking.

He's not gonna be the man to revamp England, but with the more I read about him, the more I'm beginning to admire him as a person.

With his reported history of attitude problems, all that, "he doesn't suffer fools gladly" shit you keep reading about him, he's going to fit in well at the Football Association. Sarcasm Mode very much on there. Plus there's the whole "he didn't bother his ass saying goodbye to the fans" thing, and the bitterness at the way that him dumping his club side for the England job was handled that this article from his local paper's website pointed out:

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sam-allardyce-england-perfect-fit-11653699

"Sunderland cannot afford to waste time moping over their messy divorce with Sam Allardyce, they must move forward with David Moyes"

"Allardyce’s decision to go AWOL at half-time on Wednesday, as his side played its first pre-season friendly at Hartlepool United, was bizarre and disrespectful."

"Given that Allardyce and the supporters celebrated survival together just two months earlier, the least he could have done was to say farewell to the near-4,000 travelling fans."

I don't wish him well.

Same article also suggests that "bad blood" seems mutual between both club and manager.

Allardyce didn't want to give a goodbye to Sunderland; Sunderland didn't want to thank him for keeping their squad in the EPL. As far as I could care, they're even. One cancels out the other; net change in my respect for either party is zero.

Hey, Julep, how does it feel to be Champions d'Europe? :P

More seriously, congratulations. Mbappe and Augustin (not to mention Blas and Tousart) are really promising for your future national team's attack and midfield.

This goal by Augustin is top class.

The first couple frames aren't entirely clear. Did that ball come from a last-ditch pass or a wayward tackle?

I think it was the latter, but I could be wrong.

I have noticed that some of the planned player signings by Real Madrid went instead to Barcelona or some other team (or simply chose to stay in their current clubs). For the second year in a row, they're not updating the squad appropiately, and they'll have an impending full year without authorization to sign new players due to FIFA.

You know that it's not a new feeling in France right? :P Especially against Italy.

The youngsters look good. Last team that won had Lacazette and Griezmann, so if the current team is as successful, we will have no shortage of good strikers for years to come.

Hey, Quag, remember when I was telling you Paul Pogba could cost Man U nearly 130 triskaidekadrillian quatloos between his club transfer fee, his agent's additional 20% fee (unless Juventus agree to cover, at least, part of that from the transfer fee), and his salary (for just this season)?

Apparently, Juventus are trying to hold out for a whole lot more and could drive Pogba's full cost for Man U (or anyone) over €150 million.

Those numbers are downright insane. The transfer market has inflated itself too much in these years.

Only Pogba's price tag has inflated over the past few transfer windows.

It's probably only being bumped up yet again because Juventus (for semi-related reasons, I'm sure) apparently just forked over ~€90 million to Napoli just to sign Gonzalo Higuaín. Throw in his likely wages, and you're already looking at a new ~€100 million investment for the season right there. But Juventus don't want to burn through all the money they were already hoping to get selling Pogba that quickly (before the deal is even completed); they need to make a profit from this sale and retain more of that money, and Pogba's supposed to show a lot more promise and potential at his age than the much older Higuaín... so they just jack up their price for him some more.

edited 26th Jul '16 9:28:03 PM by SeanMurrayI

The Italian league was already boring, so of course Juventus went and made it more so. Can't really blame them, of course; they've got to keep improving, and it's on the rest of the clubs to catch up. Their advantage is currently so huge, though, that I honestly can't see how anyone is going to challenge them for an entire season.

I had hoped that Higuain was coming to Arsenal, but of course they were never going to pay £75 million for anyone other than Messi (and maybe not even him now that he's probably in the last couple of years before he starts to decline. (He might still improve a bit before it - it's not certain that he's reached his peak yet. Still, I doubt he'll be the best forward in the word 4 or 5 years from now.)

I know that Arsenal have also been linked to players like Lacazette and Icardi. Both players' clubs are asking for too much, though (I think about £40-45 million for each of them), and for that money Arsenal would be expecting someone like Higuain. They'll have to compromise eventually, though. Perhaps Arsenal will end up buying Romelu Lukaku (who, according to the usual rumours, wants to leave). Wenger would probably prefer someone that certainly can make it in the league, so it would be best to buy from inside the league; and Lukaku, of course, would compete against Giroud for a starting spot (and probably win). For that, Arsenal might even overpay - so £40 million would be possible.

Lacazette is eyed by the PSG too, now that Zlatan left. I can really see him becoming first option before Cavani, who is very good but not groundbreakingly good.

Paris got Meunier from Bruges, Krychowiak from Sevilla, and Ben Arfa from Nice so far, plus will get Lo Celso from Rosario in December. Aside from Zlatan, they only lost Van der Wiel (but Meunier replaced him - and Aurier is better despite being an idiot).

So it really only leaves a real striker for the team to be complete.

But it is insane to see the discrepancy between Paris and everyone else (bar Lyon and Monaco) when it comes to recruits. My personal favorite team, Nantes, has bought three players and signed two more that had no contract (or whose contract ended). Total: €3.7M.

Meanwhile, Paris already paid €50.6M for Krychowiak (33.6M !!!), Lo Celso and Meunier, and is still looking for the aforementioned striker.

I remember when Juve were crap and A.C. Milan were the top kiddies in Italian football What happened?

At least they weren't part of the Russian soccer team. The Russian soccer team is consistently crap.

Long-running aftermath of the calciopoli scandal a decade ago... and the current state of the Italian economy.

As things have played out, following the most immediate consequence of 30 International players who featured at the 2006 World Cup (which Italy won) making an unprecedented exodus from Serie A due to calciopoli...

• Juve, who were the most harshly punished club in the scandal, took their time to rebuild themselves and have emerged once again as top dog in Italy and competitive in Europe.
• Remaining big clubs who weren't punished (or not punished as severely), like AC Milan, Inter, and Roma, went on desperate spending sprees to remain competitive. That brought some success to those clubs in the short term, but it left these same clubs over-stretched financially, and that situation has only gotten worse after the Italian economy took a nosedive which it has yet to fully recover from.
• Other clubs that used to remain competitive with the strongest in the league simply became shadows of their former selves. Reggina and Parma, especially, were both relegated, bankrupted, and kept plummeting until they hit the Italian 4th Tier last year (Parma, at least, won promotion).

edited 27th Jul '16 7:45:52 AM by SeanMurrayI

NBA All-Star Dirk Nowitzki puts on an annual exhibition soccer match for charity in his native Germany every summer where he gets down to lots of comedic hijinks, such as fielding Manuel Neuer as a forward attacker and diving in the penalty box.

This year's match, he stepped up to the penalty spot with 20 minutes to play and pulled a Zaza (even committed himself to deliberately missing it).

edited 27th Jul '16 1:26:04 PM by SeanMurrayI

MLS All Stars 1 - 1 Arsenal after the first half. Drogba scored at the very end of the first half, after having two shots blocked and bouncing right back to him. Arsenal's goal came from a Campbell penalty, which was also won by Campbell.

Apparently the All-Star game is actually a big thing in the MLS. For Arsenal, obviously, this is just another friendly, as evidenced by team selection. 18-year-old youth team defensive midfielder Krystan Bielik plays at centre-back, paired with the recently acquired Rob Holding. Both looked like very good youth team/reserve players, but not good enough for the first-team yet.

Mertesacker is injured for a long time. Koscielny is rested because of the Euros. Gabriel is ill. I'm not sure if Arsenal would still have gone with these two at centre-back if all of those options were available, but in any case it's nice to see them play with the first-team.

Wilshere also played the entire first half. I take it he's back to full fitness, then, and now only needs some games to get back to form. Walcott played fairly well at centre-forward in terms of creating chances to his teammates, but he missed a couple of fairly easy chances that he would almost certainly have scored from in a competitive fixture.

Campbell and Oxlade-Chamberlain were very good with their build-up play from the wings, but to be honest there were also times when they were just sort of walking around even though Arsenal had the ball. I'm sure they've been instructed to not take any risk at all of getting tired or injured in the preseason.

Elneny and Coquelin were decent, as well, except for the number of fouls they committed. In a real game they'd be running more to get in positions where they wouldn't have to commit fouls to win the ball.

Cech is the goalkeeper. He didn't really have to make more than about 2 saves in the first half. (The MLS All Star 'keeper, BTW, looks Premier League quality of this performance. He'd be a starter for a mid-table Premier League club.)

I don't know what the rule is for substitutions in this game. I'm assuming it's basically no limits. If that's how it is I expect Arsenal to make loads of changes. Xhaka is on the bench, so it'd be fun to see him. Ramsey and Özil are resting, and Alexis is out with a minor injury. I expect to see Monreal and Bellerin in the second half, along with some young players in need of game minutes: Zelalem, Iwobi, and Akpom.

Martinez will probably be the 'keeper for the second half. (I don't think he'll be at Arsenal for much longer, BTW. He's 23, so he needs to be registered to play in the League; and while Arsenal need a 3rd 'keeper, I'm sure they'll have someone from the youth team on standby rather than wasting a spot in the 25-player squad on Martinez.)

Arsenal's youngsters and reserves will probably be very happy that they got to play against Villa and Pirlo and Kaka for a while. Many of the players on the pitch today for Arsenal will be lucky to get more than a couple of cup games in the next season, but hopefully they'll enjoy this friendly enough to push hard in the season proper for competitive games.

Full time: MLS All Stars 1 - 2 Arsenal. Akpom won it with a simple tap-in after a fantastic assist from Monreal.

Cech ended up playing about half of the second half, too. Perhaps Wenger wanted him to have some saves to make, or maybe he was just the experience the centre-backs needed around them (with Chambers playing the second half as by far the most experienced centre-back Arsenal had in their squad.)

Xhaka played the second half. His set pieces were great, and he had some nice long passes, as well. No surprises there; but he did commit a couple of pointless fouls.

Forward Christopher Willock was the only Arsenal player in the squad I did not know anything about previously. Can't say I know anything about him after this game, either; he didn't have much of an impact. Reine-Adelaide, one of Arsenal's legion of promising young attacking midfielders, had a fairly good game, with some nice through balls and good passing, in general.

Zelalem didn't make any sort of impression on me. That's a bit worrying, because he's old enough that he should be challenging for cup games and such in the first-team by now. He's been talked about as one of the greatest prospects of the US national team, so for them I hope he gets some playing time next season - perhaps on loan again.

Gibbs played the first half, and I think he was very good. His passing, even under pressure, was impressive. Monreal is ahead of him at the moment in the first-team rotation, but that might change yet. I'd be sorry to see him leave for want of first-team football. He's an academy product at Arsenal, and held a first-team spot for a fairly long while before Monreal arrived. He's still got a lot to give.

Bellerin was better than Debuchy. That's no surprise, at this point. Debuchy might play as a centre-back early next season, if Arsenal don't get a new centre-back to cover for the injured Mertesacker and Koscielny, who will get a game or two to rest.

Arsenal still need a forward. There's talk of Mandzukic. He'd be a great, albeit perhaps too similar, alternative to Giroud. I still want Arsenal to get Mahrez if at all possible, though, even if Mandzukic arrives.

edited 28th Jul '16 7:33:59 PM by BestOf

Atlético Nacional won the Copa Libertadores. I would have loved underdogs Independiente del Valle to win their first international trophy, but I guess Colombia really needed its club to win it now, especially considering the improved performance of the national team in recent years.

Also, Madrid lost 1-3 to PSG. I have a fad feeling that they'll lose the UEFA Super Cup.

Schweinsteiger retires from international football.

Why would the outcome of a meaningless pre-season friendly in the absence of Navas, Pepe, Ramos, Kroos, Modrić, Bale, James, Benzema, or Ronaldo have any impact on the Super Cup? Is the starting lineup that featured on Wednesday the exact same one Zidane is planning to roll out against Sevilla, or is that array of missing talent somehow drastically inferior to the Europa League winners?

His future at Man U would be in doubt, too, if/when they ever bring in Pogba.

People take friendlies too seriously.

The only friendlies that mean anything are ones just before the season starts - I mean literally the last friendly, and even that only if the manager picks basically the likely starting lineup for the season - and national team friendlies, which are considered important because there are relatively few international games on offer, even to the best players.