Champions League/Europa League Thread 2012-13 - Page 83

On March 15 2013 20:00 Pandemona wrote:


Yes thanks! Was a good win, we got a bit angry at Torres at the beginning of the 2nd half and my mate who was with us went absolutely mad haha. Shouted something on the lines of "Fucking hell Torres, get some fkn bollocks, and get stuck your standing around doing fuck all. Give us some of our money back for fuck sake" and some other words which i can't remember, but it defiantly worked, after that he was a different player and went on to win the game for us! Haha

Overall, the atmosphere wasn't great due to only like 25k Chelsea fans their and we had to try and get them singing but we managed to get the songs out once we scored the 2nd and a bit after the first. Wasn't a great game, but was a good one. I bet it was better for the neutral rather than a Chelsea fan.

You don't like in Amsterdam by any chance do you? If by some miracle we get to the final i would love to get there

On March 15 2013 20:20 WillyWanker wrote:
So this year we'll have another draw for the semi...
Dortmund, Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus/Bayern, would be a fantastic last 4!
Too bad we'll have PSG/Barcelona and Juventus/Bayern the same days The other 2 games seems unbalanced

Predictions:

- Dortmund advances, both games balanced
- Real advances, qualified in the first leg
- Barca advances, win at Camp Nou, draw at Parc des Princes
- Juventus advances, draw with goals at Allianz, draw without goals in Turin

Too many people underestimate Juventus, and we have no people to represent the italian football on this forum, that's a shame. I expect Bayern to have a very hard time (it's like Italia/Germany of the last Euro basically) and eventually lose the CL there.

Funny thing is we're gonna have very CL dedicated team since Juventus, Bayern and Barcelona already won their league, Dortmund and Madrid are out of the race. Malaga won't participate in the CL next year so they don't care about the league anymore. PSG is in a tougher position in the league, but still has a good lead, same goes for Gala (but I don't really know the turkish league).

On March 16 2013 00:08 Ysellian wrote:


Nope, I'm from Rotterdam but it's not far to Amsterdam. About 30 minutes with the high-speed train (if it's running, which it usually is in the spring). Not that I go there often though, especially not the Arena, I hate that stadium

Sorry for the late reaction btw. Completely missed your post.

On March 16 2013 01:01 Twisted wrote:

Boooo. Arena is awesome (ok ok, de Kuip is pretty awesome as well :p).

On March 16 2013 00:21 Pandemona wrote:

Aww, well i can still use you i guess! Haha :D

On March 15 2013 21:32 Copymizer wrote:
Am i the only 1 expecting a helluva hot kettle when madrid will play in turkey? The fan culture down there is really crazy

On March 16 2013 00:49 Malaz wrote:


Your predictions seem quite accurate. Dortmund is the slight favourite, but Malaga isn't a team anyone should underestimate. Eliminating Porto isn't an easy feat. Real should go through with relative ease, Galatasary hasn't impressed me at all in their games versus Schalke, Schalke was just too stupid to advance. If Barca plays anything like they did versus Milan in the second leg they should also go through.
As far as Bayern and Juve are concerned, they really seem on par. In my opinion the games could go either way.

The lack of people representing Italian football on TL is really a pity and I also agree that too many people understimate Juve, but I think thats more of the case for casual fans. I have quite some Bayern fans in my circle of friends and besides Barca (for obvious reasons) and Dortmund (national duells always suck) most of them wanted to avoid Juve. Italian teams are always unpleasant to play against and Juve is the best Italian team and they represent everything that makes Italian football strong.
Also if you read the statements of the Bayern players and officials after the draw, it's clear that they have a lot of respect for Juve and would have rather avoided facing them.

Oh and just a fun fact (not really fun but yeah )... Back when Aturo Vidal used to play for Leverkusen his coach was no one other than Jupp Heynckes and he was rumored to be his favourite player. He was eleceted "best player in the Bundesliga" that year and afterwards made the switch to Juve. Bayern was also quite interested in him, but Van Gaal who was their coach at the time, didn't want new players. I think it haunts Bayern until this day because Vidal is pure class and he was quite the bargain

On March 16 2013 11:36 Talos[GER] wrote:
Funny! Nearly every team in the Bundesliga plays full defense against dortmund and most of the time fails. Malaga is just not in the same league as Dortmund.
Semis vs Real would be great. We beat them basically 2 times in the Groupstage, so should be possible.

On March 16 2013 14:36 ZapRoffo wrote:


Yeah they totally have no problem in the league, that's why they are dominating so hard...

and add to that Malaga is better than any Bundesliga team other than them and Bayern.

On March 16 2013 22:29 Talos[GER] wrote:


The Spanish league is complete garbage after the Top2! 5-20 of the spanish league would be playing in the 2nd Division in Germany, so terrible are they.

On March 16 2013 22:52 WillyWanker wrote:

It's not because Barca and Real are so good than the other teams are garbage, watch some games and you'll see.
These two teams would probably rape every league every year (not considering the economical rules of German football).

Comparing national leagues is stupid anyway, at least the top 4 leagues. For the others (France, Netherlands, Turkey, Russia, etc...), the drop in the average level of teams is clear. But for the top 4, I wouldn't compare because they all play a different football. You can only assess the level of the top 5-6 of each leagues thanks to the european cups, and last year we had 5 spanish teams in the last 8 of the 2 european competitions combined. That means something.

Malaga might be less good than Dortmund, but the gap is not that huge, and we'll probably see two close games. By the way, it seems like everybody is talking about Isco, but nothing about Pellegrini. He's the one who took Villareal to the semi finals of the 2006 CL, and I'm sure that if they gave him more time at Real Madrid he would have built a real playstyle, not like Mourinho. Maybe not the same results (who knows?), but he seems to have more ideas than Mou.
And this year, despite what happened to Malaga (some months the players didn't receive salary, then they were banned from the CL for the years to come), he still manages to keep them around the 4th spot and gave a real hard time to the 2 spanish monsters, while finishing 1st of their group in CL.

Knowing Dortmund playstyle, very offensive and maybe a little innocent due to the age of their players, I wouldn't be surprised if they were thrown out by Malaga and Pellegrini's tactical experience.

On March 17 2013 00:42 Mensol wrote:
http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/tacticsandanalysis/id/1049?cc=5739

It's such a good writeup about Pelligrini and Terim