@Monkey:
Tactics? You don't CARE about tactics. You openly complained about tactics. As if they get in the way of the "real game". Denying "deserving" teams through "cheapness".
I would guess your issue with tactics is quite simply that they tend to be gulp unquantifiable!
If you can't jam it into your calculator then surely it's a perversion of a thing where people kick balls into nets.
No, I see ultra defensive "football" as a perversion of the sport. I've made that quite clear.
@Monkey:
Except you're the one constantly bringing up your special relationship with soccer. As if to invalidate any experience with other team sports anyone might have.
Specifically as if targeting the Americans because of the basic absence of soccer in our national media and general experience.
You're trying to build a wall of phony authority around yourself to avoid making actual points.
No, I'm focusing on the sport at hand. Sports are you know…different from each other lol.
I'm not targeting anyone. That's more your style, I'm afraid.
At no point have I said anything like "because you're American you know nothing about football".
@Monkey:
Such as nothing you've brought up.
Eh, yeah I have lol. However, bringing up the pros and cons of defensive football, and its re-occurrence through the decades was met with "I don't really give a shit".
@Monkey:
Maybe if you'd brought up the Italian thing as anything other than a namedrop of how many books you've read about soccer I would have given a shit of some sort.
But see here's the stupid shit about what you're doing here.
I know twenty five billion things about world history and geography. Everyone knows that.
And yet funnily enough, someone can still enter the fray on say the topic of Iraq falling apart and grasp the basics and come to good conclusions without any of that knowledge. Because fundamentally there are simple concepts involved that a good head can figure.
Haha, oh you can piss right off on that count. You're telling me that YOU of all people would allow someone with limited knowledge of a subject to come in, make an (to you) erroneous statement and you'd leave them alone and not once bring up how you x, y and z about the subject and that you take your own opinion more seriously?
I've seen you do it so many times. So don't preach to me about "good heads".
@Monkey:
The fact that you haven't actually flexed any muscle of soccer knowledge aside from randomly mentioning Italian teams doing a thing? Rather telling about how much of "YOU DONT KNOW" is smokescreen.
I mentioned catenaccio in passing in terms of the origins of defensive football styles.
I was met with "I don't give a shit"…there didn't seem much point in going in any deeper. I could tell you all about the rise and fall of catenaccio and how it became outdated in it's original style after it was countered with the innovation of "total football" by the dutch teams of the 70's.
..but you probably wouldn't give a shit. So why bother?
@Monkey:
By the way there are different phrases in every country to describe these things. For instance "keeper" is not used in American English.
By the way.
Yeah, and you made an erroneous assumption about how I used that particular phrase, by the way.
I was clearing up any confusion about me thinking that Tim Howard was lucky, which he obviously wasn't. He just played very well.
@Monkey:
What happened to the importance of me not knowing the "intricacies of the sport".
You don't give two shits about them is what happened lol. "But generic sports analogy DUR".
@Monkey:
They were more polished players. That's really all I admitted.
What YOU are trying to do here that I and frankly most people don't, is quantify all this. Which is stupid perversion of sports (and the arts!).
Sports is qualitative outside the score. You can try to guess at it's shifting form through past scores and such things, and you can increase accuracy at guess work. But in the end the game is full of unquantifiable variables.
I'd be AMAZED if trainers and coaches and fuck even players would disagree with me on this.
I mean that's half the reason to BE technically skilled (or "well trained/experienced" in human speak). Is to better face against the elements in the field. Not just the opposing team of hopefully less powerful robots.
It's clear you hate things you can't quantify. Which leads me to conclude…that you being into sports is awful strange!
Like you can't think of the unquantifiable as anything other than cruel whims of an uncaring bad luck god.
You make it seem as if I've been throwing out stats concerning possession, passes made, shots blocked etc. and that's what I'm basing being a better team upon.
I haven't quoted any stats in this thread whatsoever. I don't get where this whole "oh you think it's all quantifiable" thing has come from lol.
Just because I put more emphasis on solid technical skills rather than "heart" doesn't mean I totally rule out it's importance.
@Monkey:
Nope.
Yeah, and I'm the one perverting sports here lol.
@Monkey:
Defended well? What? Mathematically speaking or some shit? Because that was awful work they did. Unless you're trying to make some smug reversal here where "Belgium was just SO GOOD that.."
Christ I'm not sure what YOUR TV's were showing, but ours showed Howard constantly yelling at them after every other ball they let through to him lol. The man was pissed the fuck off.
Howard made a lot of saves, yeah.
However, the number of clearances and last ditch blocks by the American defense also pointed to being well drilled to a point.
Just because they made mistakes or were sloppy at times doesn't change that.
Your the one who keeps going on about other factors like tiredness and such, and not to only go by stats.
@Monkey:
So can you explain what this expertise of yours on the topic is? Because I'm officially calling bullshit here. Watching a lot of games is not expertise btw.
Actually scratch that, I AM interested in catenaccio now. You namedropped it to show off, but in reality you… revealed in a roundabout way that you don't consider that part of playing the sport? Strategy?? Whaaaaa??
Heck it sounds like "play football" means entirely one thing to you by this logic. Scoring.
Football is an attacking game lol.
The basis of it is to score more goals than your opponent.
It started with formations containing the equivalent of a goalie, 2 defenders and 9 attacking players.
Over time the game has gradually shifted to be more balanced, with basic formations like 4-4-2 or 4-3-3.
However, there is a gradual remergence every few years (since it's inception in the 60's) of a style that you could loosely term as catenaccio, which is what it was called when it was innovated in the Italian teams of the 60's. primarily Inter Milan.
Teams don't really play traditional catenaccio as such anymore, since it employed the use of a sweeper and man marking, tactics which are largely outdated today.
I was using it as a base point for ultra defensive football that basically consists of bringing every man back in an almost spartan like formation, keeping narrow and packing your box so as to drastically reduce the chances of your opponent scoring.
In my view, this kind of tactic, that actively promotes stopping the other team playing, rather than trying to outplay them, is an abomination.
For me it's a pretty cheap and uninspired "tactic" that a team has to use when it's already conceded that it's the inferior team when it actually comes to playing football.
I'm more into the idea of using an actual tactic to negate your opponents strengths and allow you to play the better football on the day.
A classic example would be Berti Vogts man marking Johan Cruyff throught the entire 1974 world cup final, negating the Dutch's best player and allowing Germany much greater freedom in the game, allowing them to go and win, despite the best player in the world being on the opposing side.
Anyway, I'm going to be honest, I'm done with this argument, we're not going to see eye to eye and tbh I don't really fucking care lol.
–- Update From New Post Merge ---
@Mog:
I just have to pop in and point out the silliness in everything you're saying. I mean even ignoring the snootiness in all your ''I watch a lot of football so I know what I'm talking about unlike some plebeians'' it's kind of begging me too.
What you were arguing to begin with is that there is such a thing as a team that deserves to win and is the better team regardless of the result of the match. Or even if they do nothing but lose every single time they play following your line of logic. They could still have played better. Like your example of Belgium vs USA. You point out that Belgium was far more impressive in the field and scored better chances. Undeniably. But for most of those chances they were horrible at actually shooting to score, and Howard was excellent in blocking their shots. What you're suggesting is that, somehow, both of those things don't factor into ''the better team'' or ''deserving to win''', but… of course they fucking do. Blocking goals is a skill. Hitting the net is a skill.
And yes, s__topping another team from playing football is, erm, a skill. What a ridiculous distinction to make, and one so subject to arbitrary bias it almost automatically invalidates your argument because it boils down to having nothing to do with ''deserving to win'' but with what you think is more fun to watch being played. You're using the terms ''better'' and ''deserving'', and ''superior'' pretty blatantly wrongly. Like, not even arguably so. I'm sure they mean something else to you but I'm pretty sure Zephos was arguing with you on the level of what you were saying and not what you think you were.
Yes of course luck and chance are factors, but I have a little more respect for the game and its players than to give those things the immeasurably huge credit you're giving them. And you are if you read back what you're saying. Football, like it or not, is like any other sport or game in this respect. And that's a valid point to make and adress and not dismiss by mimicking what your opponent is saying and adding herp derp sound effects.
thanks though
loving the world cup
I'm a football purist who believes that the team who actively attacks and outplays their opponent should be given more credence than the team hanging on by the skin of their teeth.
I'm so goddamn crazy for thinking that aren't I?
If you see no difference between an emphasis on outplaying the other side, and stopping the other side playing while trying to sneak a victory then we have zero to talk about when it comes to this subject.
Imagine wanting to be entertained by a game of football and not see one side trying to actively ruin the game. I mean, it's not like at it's absolute core that all it is an activity for the purposes of entertainment, right?
