The Soccer Thread (Version 13) — Winter World Cup Edition

All for the second-best player of his generation.

 

Ronaldo gutted the U.S. at the death that one time, and he is a great historic player.

But like Pogba and a few other MUFC stars, he was a zero-sum player for the club. He subtracted as much as he added.

 

Meanwhile, in The Great White North, eh.

 

I get the concern about the Red Bull style, but I do think he tried to adapt at Leeds - he clearly improved their defensive posture from Bielsa, and I think part of that was the issue about the "penis ball" as he set up more centrally and clearly improved on their propensity to ship goals. He had to choose from two bad options - open up like Bielsa had them set up and pray to outscore your opponent, or clog up the middle and concede fewer goals and hope to convert your chances. The first wasn’t going to happen with Leeds’s talent.

 

Bielsa's defense only really went to pot in his final season. Leeds was not great in the first promotion season, but not horrific, I think they were 13th or 14th in goals allowed. In the promotion season itself, Leeds had the best defense in the Championship.

Leeds still shipped goals under Marsch, it just did it in different ways. Teams attacked us on the flanks because fullbacks have to provide attacking width in his system. So teams would just send a diagonal or long ball into the open space and counter the fuck out of us.

(That's where you get the bizarre split in points Leeds has, where the majority of our points are against the good clubs, with a near-miss against Arsenal too. Teams that have played Leeds straight up, aka, the ESL 6 clubs, actually played into Leeds' hands by not taking the obvious carrot because they feel they can out-talent a team to death. Leeds can hang with that. It's the shithousing clubs that give us trouble because they're more pragmatic.)

For the same reason, our far post was always vulnerable because the marauding fullback was caught of position. Our right back had to slide over to essentially play center back on a central attacker. One good cross over the top to the far side and we were fucked. Thank fuck for Meslier, who saved us from countless one-on-one's.

Our set piece defending was terrible under both coaches. Marsch briefly fixed the marking on corners last season, but it was poor again this season. Unlike Bielsa, we were also vulnerable on our own corners because dumb ass had way too many players forward.

Nope. I've seen enough of Marsch. He was all vibes, no tactics, and his motivational speaker tripe didn't help matters.

 

Out and loving it (hopefully) …

Czech international Jankto announces he is gay

 

Seems unlikely anything meaningful will come of this, but it'll still be entertaining to watch.

 

For some reason Watford-Burnley is on ESPN2 this afternoon. Clarets have two Championship losses all season, one to Watford at Vicarage Road back in August. The race for the four playoff positions will be pretty wild. As of now, only seven points separate fourth from 11th.

 

USA, Canada, Mexico to qualify automatically for 2026 World Cup

 

Well, he's going to Southampton now anyway!

 

A 32-team Club World Cup in the summer, with 12 teams from Europe. Because why not heap even more minutes on the legs of the world's top players a year before a World Cup when there's lots of FIFA "development funds" to be hoovered up and redistributed?
Saudi Arabia unanimously chosen to host December's FIFA Club World Cup, new 32-team format to start in 2025

 

Man City with a great second half against the Gunners.