The European/World Football Thread III

Please, ever since UEFA changed the rules on Qualifying Celtic only play easy teams to make the group stages, they don't deserve to be in the CL whilst better teams like AC Milan or Lyon could go out. They wouldn't even qualify for the group stages if they had to play 8 out of 10 teams in the league route.

It was a spanking, a team like Celtic really should be beating a third rate Kazakhstani side.

I wonder how long Celtic fans will keep boosting the fact that they got into the last 16 last season. It was a one off mate get over it.

And you guys were the 4th best team in your league last season. Therefore I do not agree that you deserve to be in the "champions" league.
Out of curiosity do you believe you got "spanked" by Villa?

And you guys were the 4th best team in your league last season. Therefore I do not agree that you deserve to be in the "champions" league.
Out of curiosity do you believe you got "spanked" by Villa?

Celtic are getting spanked 2-0 by Shakhter Karagandy. This is what happens when you remove the competition from the domestic league, the team doesn't improve. I really hope they don't qualify

Just because Celtic won the Scottish Pub League doesn't mean they've earned the right to play in Europe's elite club competition. As we often saw Celtic barely qualified before the rules changed. IIRC Celtic were spanked 5-1 on aggregate by Arsenal in 2009/10, when CL qualification was fair and the best teams went into the group stage.

No, I don't think Arsenal got spanked by Villa.

Bit harsh saying they don't deserve to be in the Champions League?
Every champion from every European country has the right to play in the Champions League, Celtic are in fact a shoo-in compared to the likes of the San Marian, Andorran and Luxembourger champions. They too like Celtic have to go through rounds of qualifying, and I think it's fair that these teams are given a chance to try and get themselves into the group stages of the competition because it's the only way their country's league can be injected with money, the same goes for the SPL, where if Celtic do well in the competition, Scotland's European coefficient can be improved, meaning more qualifying spots for Europe for the Scottish clubs at later stages of the competition. Once the clubs have more money from playing in later stages of the competitions in Europe, they will have increased income to help their league flourish. Only so many of the weaker leagues' champions will make it through to group stages anyway, so it's the best of the best from lots of qualifiers.

Do you see why leagues such as Scotland deserve a chance in Europe's elite now?


Also, HAHAHA you got beat by the Villa.

I didn't say they don't deserve to play in the CL, I said they have to earn the right to through fair qualification. After all we want to best teams from around Europe in Europe's premier competition. Just look at the teams in the Champions Route qualification.

Dinamo Zagreb, Ludogorets Razgrad, Viktoria Plzeň, Shakhter Karagandy, Steaua București, Austria Wien, Basel, Maribor, Celtic and Legia Warsaw. Are these the sort of teams you want to entertain you OR are they just 3 easy points in the group stages.

Lyon, Fenerbahçe, PSV, AC Milan and Arsenal are all very good competitive teams who bring something to the CL and they could go out in qualification which is disgraceful imo

The reality is that a number of champions of smaller leagues will always have less money than the bigger leagues - from TV money, wages that fans have to spend at clubs and sponsors who are attracted.

As more time goes by, the clubs from the smaller leagues will become more and more reliant on CL money and in turn it creates a gulf in their own domestic league due to their domestic dominance.

So do we keep the smaller league champions in the CL to help them grow to spread the quality of the teams in the CL or do we try and get the best teams into the competition and reduce the dominance/reliance of smaller league champions?

No I still think it helps the smaller leagues with the standout teams, because if they improve through European competition then they can fly the flag for their country in Europe, and the further they get, the more coefficient points (and money) they gain for their country in the process, which will improve the country's coefficient. When this is improved, more European places are opened up to the teams lower down the table at later stages in the competition. In turn, more money for these smaller clubs lower down the table if they can succeed. Thus growth!

Every club is trying to improve their co-efficient but in reality one club can only improve at another club's expense. So while it's easy to say that more spots will open and better other teams in that league - it will come at the expense of another club in a different league.

For example, in recent years the German League gained an extra spot now but Italy lost a spot.

Look at a club like Celtic - CL money makes up a huge proportion of their income when they get through. They then use that money to buy better players, in many cases from competitors (as their scouts will be more familiar and adapted to the league and willing to play there) and in turn they will continue to improve or stay ahead of the pack, to the detriment of the Scottish league as a whole.

Lol, if the results had gone the other way round, I'd have said the same thing!

To be honest I was not too surprised with how we played against Maritimo. Before the match, I was already not feeling too confident about this match, especially since how bad we've been in the pre-season.

I missed the first 20 minutes of the match, but as soon as I turned it on, I could tell we were playing badly and we were going to have a tough time.

There is just no creativity at all, and the players all look like they don't care. Everyone is waiting for someone to do something. We're also really missing Cardozo because we have no aerial threat whatsoever and because of that, we rarely even cross the ball anymore... Lima isn't good enough to be playing on his own all the time, unless he has someone else making some runs (like how Rodrigo did in our goal).

We've signed Funes Mori, I hope he is better than what I've heard about him... I don't think he's the answer to our problems.

Salvio is also another big miss... he usually created things out of nowhere and he always helped out in defence.

Cortez isn't good enough, and Maxi has been quite poor as well... I'd rather like to see Silvio instead of Maxi, but that's not gonna happen because Maxi can't be dropped.

I don't think we quite deserved to lose, and I'm not gonna complain about any referee decisions (like how JJ did) because we really didn't do enough to deserve a win either. Maritimo played well, and their passing and movement was a million times better than ours. Very disappointed so far, and it looks like my presentiment about a bad season looks like will be right, unless something drastically changes. And we haven't even made a big sale yet... if we were to lose someone important now..... :/




Anyway.

Porto. I saw that Quintero goal.. it seems like James has already been replaced. Quintero looks like an awesome player. Setubal made things easier for Porto, but I think Porto are already set up really well for a great season, so they'd have probably ended up winning the match anyway.

I haven't watched the highlights for Sporting's match yet, but yeh... Montero looks like the answer to Sporting's prayers. A hat-trick on his official debut. Jardim is a competent manager and a 5-1 win (even if it is against Arouca) shows Sporting will be back in the title race this season. Unfortunately I can't see Benfica putting up a good challenge... I'm actually not looking forward to our match against Sporting on the 30th (or 31?) at all now.

Yeh, Pacos will have a hard time in the CL. I wonder how they'll cope with midweek matches right at the start of the season. If they put out a strong team, they'll be tired for the more important league matches, and if they don't they will be embarrassed by Zenit... even their strongest team would have a very hard time.

As for Belenenses.. I think staying up should be their priority this season. Hopefully Miguel Rosa can help them out with that..

Let’s see how the results go this weekend, I’m not feeling as confident as last week seeing as we’ll be playing Maritimo. I think you’ll be okay against Gil Vicente though. You should be anyway. I know they got a 2-0 win over Académica last week but if Académica played how they’re currently playing now against Sporting then I understand why Gil were able to win.

Sporting are looking good. They currently deserve to be 2-0 up in their game right now at half time. Sporting have had a solid first half. Carrillo has looked great this half too. Last season was painful to watch Sporting, two games into this season and I’m actually enjoying seeing them like this. I’m sure their fans will be enjoying it too. It does make the tie next weekend for the Lisbon derby all the more exciting!

Tough week for Paços and Costinha. Very unfortunate to be 4-1 down in their CL game. They put absolutely everything into it and had a bit of hope for the minute or two that it was level, but poor defending allowed Zenit to grab their second goal. As for today it seemed like it was “one of those games” against Olhanense and they were quite unfortunate not to get an equaliser but credit to Olhanense for holding on the whole of the second half with 10 men.

And as I write all this Sporting are now 4-0 up and Académica are down to 10 men. Sporting scoring for fun, albeit thanks to two penalties. But such a contrast to last season where goals were few and far between!



EDIT: I cannot believe what i just watched in those last four minutes of the Benfica game. Concede one goal maybe, but TWO! So lucky to have picked up all three points!! Now time for Porto.

...

Franck Ribery is the European footballer of the year 2013! I'm happy to see that a football player from Bundesliga got this award. The last football player who won this award was Matthias Sammer in 1996, so 17 years ago!

Neither Messi or Ronaldo have won this award for the last 2 years now (I think Iniesta won it last year). Interesting.

I still think Messi will win the Ballon d'Or though.

Two relatively easy groups for Benfica and Porto. PSG will be tough and are the favourites to win our group, but we should be able to beat Olympiacos and Anderlecht to get the second spot, even though they could both be tricky ties. If it all goes badly, I think that we should be able to get 3rd place at the very least.

Porto has two other strong teams in their group, Atletico Madrid and Zenit. They're all quite similar to each other and it'll be three teams fighting for two positions.
I think Porto can win against Zenit so they should also be able to go through, especially if they play like how they did against Pacos Ferreira... Pacos managed to dominate possession but didn't know what to do with it, Porto should be able to do better.
Austria Wien won't get much from this group.. I think 3rd place for Porto is pretty much guaranteed if they don't manage to pass the group stages.

-

-

Ajax are losing Alderweireld and Eriksen it seems. Does this change your thinking significantly on who'll win the league now?