2017 - 2018 Football Thread - Page 34

On August 22 2017 23:46 Rebs wrote:


That is fascinating considering Luis Enrique never actually played for Cruyff. I am not downplaying Cruyffs influence,

The point was that this idea that Barcelona has always had this culture of bringing people form the within the club is flawed. Then it got extended to well actually -- its the Ajax - Barca Cruyff connection and it was planned all along because thats the clique.

Its not because they tried other things in between that failed miserably. So the managers never ended up staying, So to suggest that it was an active decision to do so because of the clubs culture is wrong.

On August 23 2017 00:08 Acrofales wrote:


Well, you're suggesting there is NO club culture influencing decisions. Trying something else, failing, and falling back to people proposed from within the clique shows there quite clearly IS a club culture, and quite a successful one. That's not to say other coaches can't have success with Barça, or that the club culture is completely homogenous (hell, Cruyff and v. Gaal also had completely different philosophies, despite both being huge proponents of total football).

On August 22 2017 22:24 Rebs wrote:


Ehh I dont know about always.

.

On August 22 2017 22:54 Rebs wrote:


Martino and Valverde are not Barcelona products. Not as managers anyway, they just had some familiarity and involvement with the club in the past. Completely nominal in the current scheme of things.

But yes the vast majority of it has been Pep and Ironman so its reasonable that it is indeed the preferred type of coach.

Again they just got Valverde because hes a good coach, not because he is from the system necessarily.

In the context of the larger History Madrid has more of a culture of bringing players and managers out of the system than Barcelona does, the script has only flipped maybe in the last decade. During the 2000's both teams were trying to do to the galacticos thing Madrid were just better at it. And prior to Florez if you look at the history of Marque signings and Barcelona has probably made more (with lesser success overall).

So its a bit fresh to romanticize the whole value, culture and traditions as some age old thing in my opinion anyway. Its something that was planted in the early 90's and didnt actually become a thing till like 10 years ago. And it may just die again because you dont produce players like Xavi and Iniesta all the time. Its unrealistic.

On August 23 2017 00:19 Rebs wrote:


Where did I do that ? The very first comment was below



Not always is not never last I checked my grammar. If the sort of traditions and culture we are talking about were the main driving force then they wouldnt stray in the first place. I am not sure how the dutch view culture, but where I am a from we dont leave our culture and go back to it when the alternative didnt work. Atleast we dont call it a culture, if anything then the culture is one of indecision and lack of identity.




And you all went and just repeated the same things I said trying to counter my point that the culture thing isnt as deep or historical or as important as some people imagine it to be. With respect to getting players or managers.

Which suggests you have goldfish memories or didnt read it. The clubs been around a long time, Cruyff was barely 30 years ago.

Think about it this way, would you play an Emmanuel Petit, a Ludovic Giuly or a heck even a De Boer in the current Barca? yeah...

Xavi is on record saying how irrelevant he felt in Rijkaards teams, and he pretty much was. But these are tangential stylistic points because I like to ramble.

There is no real culture or tradition that suggests that the Club has always sought to bring managers in from within their system. End of story.

On August 23 2017 01:05 Acrofales wrote:



Pointing far back and saying that the culture didn't exist a long time ago is about as relevant as saying Chelsea is not all about Russian money because Abramovich only bought the club 14 years ago and before then there was no culture of just buying the best players money could buy.

Cultures change. I don't think anybody would deny that Barcelona's culture has changed, and may change again. Most notably Barça's culture shifted quite radically during the late 70s and 80s when they started to place a far greater emphasis on their training program... under the influence of Cruyff. If the training program drops in success you can probably expect the culture to change to be less focused on it (as might be the case of the next generation, which so far hasn't impressed).

Two Major League Soccer expansion clubs first took the field in March 2017, both bearing the moniker United. One in Minneapolis, the other in Atlanta – a city in that lower-third of the American map which, conventional wisdom holds, stands in stark opposition to the globalist concerns of either American coast, and could therefore never deign to care about a sport as preposterously effete as soccer, where flopping is rewarded.

Five months later, Atlanta United boast the highest average home attendance in Major League Soccer history (46,318 fans per game, more than any other MLS, NBA, NHL or MLB franchise in the country) and are in contention for the playoffs, while Minnesota United play to smaller than league-average crowds.

So what gives?

Until recently, the United States – particularly the southernmost ones away from the soccer hipsters of Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon – have not been known as a haven of fútbol culture. The same held true for Atlanta, where even a “North American” sport such as hockey was unable to garner a sufficient audience to survive (the NHL’s Thrashers left the city in 2011). And yet, Atlanta United played their first home game to 55,297 fans in March – the best-attended match of MLS opening weekend by a factor of two and the fourth-largest soccer crowd in the world that week.

One explanation for the shift toward soccer in southern cities such as Atlanta may lie in the nature of the sport itself. In The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong, authors Chris Anderson and David Sally differentiate between two kinds of social ecosystems – “weak link” and “strong link”. Strong-link sports have traditionally been popular in the individualist culture of the US, while weak-link sports dominate countries throughout the world. In a strong-link sport, the greatest impact is typically made by Atlas-like individuals, who take the world onto their shoulders to win games (LeBron James and Tom Brady come to mind). Weak-link sports are more cooperative. A soccer team may require 10 perfect passes to score, meaning that a single weak link in the chain can derail the entire enterprise. Likewise, a single strong player is usually precluded from inflicting any outsized dominance on the competition.

Could it be that this disparity in value systems helps explain why soccer is primarily catching on in America’s more progressive cities, such as Atlanta? Additionally, Anderson links soccer’s recent surge in popularity to the United States’ late 20th-century immigration boom (which helped create the multicultural atmosphere of cities such as Atlanta), noting that “the stock of soccer-knowledgeable people in American communities has increased, especially in urban areas”.

Atlanta United president Darren Eales, who is British, agrees. “I look back 23 years ago when I was playing in America, we were lucky to get a thousand people a game and the biggest cheer was when the goalkeeper punted the ball high into the air. That was the level of soccer sophistication. Now, we’ve got a country that knows the game.”

In addition to an increasing domestic appreciation of soccer’s nuances, Anderson cites the tendency of upwardly mobile progressives to self-identify with the sport’s “exotic” global culture as a factor in fan growth. “[America] urban centers have become re-energized in important ways,” he observes. “You have young professionals and hipsters making downtown their home. Many of them seem to enjoy identifying themselves in opposition to the ‘typical’ American sports fan, and soccer offers that opportunity.”

For their part, the millennial fans flocking to the game in Atlanta are as quick as Princeton sociologists to cite soccer’s global qualities as an attraction. Charlton Cunningham, a 29 year-old resident of Atlanta’s west-midtown district who had “little interest” in MLS before 2017, says he appreciates the fact that “one person can’t call his own number and make a play happen [in soccer]. It truly takes a team effort to score.”

Cunningham also notes the unique composition of the crowd. “[Atlanta United] bring out the diversity this city is known for, but rarely sees at other sporting events,” he says. “You hear different languages being spoken, so you feel that international sense of the game. It’s amazing.” Chris Green, an Atlanta native and lifelong soccer player, agrees. “My seat neighbors are Latino, African and European in addition to the traditional, homegrown American. Many of my fellow fans come from cultures where soccer is their first sport, so I think the strength of the fanbase will persist.”

But while these changing perceptions toward soccer are important to Atlanta United, they don’t entirely explain the team’s success (Houston, for example, is a similarly diverse place but the city’s MLS team struggles to pull in large crowds).

Arthur Blank, Atlanta United’s owner, recognized the potential of bringing soccer to America’s largest market without a team. He began publicly pursuing the prospect of MLS expansion in 2007, renewing his commitment to getting the deal done in the aftermath of the Thrashers’ departure. It was the impending (and controversial) construction of Mercedes-Benz Stadium with tax-exempt bonds that cemented the team’s arrival, smoothing over lingering MLS worries regarding Atlanta’s commitment to hosting a team.

The next step was to find the fans (the stadium will seat 42,500 fans for United games when they move to their new home in September). Eales joked that his first year in Atlanta was essentially one long “pub crawl”, meeting with fans at bars across the city. The community investment paid off: nearly 22,000 season seats were pre-sold – a staggering number that made Atlanta the sixth-best attended MLS team before a game had been played, and that would eventually climb to a league-leading 35,000-plus season ticket holders.

In addition to their PR drive, United made sure they had a team worth watching. Perhaps the biggest prize came at the top: they recruited Gerardo “Tata” Martino, the most distinguished coach ever to arrive in MLS. Martino boasts an extensive playing resume in his native Argentina and across Europe, as well as coaching the likes of Barcelona and Argentina.

Blank’s administrative group has attracted other top talent, most notably Eales, who has shown a willingness to leverage his impressive global Rolodex and sink serious money into young players in an attempt to field a competitive team from day one. As a result, Martino has three MLS all-stars (Greg Garza, Miguel Almiron and Michael Parkhurst) at his disposal to implement his aggressive style of play, leveraging speed to counter a lack of defensive polish.

England's all-time leading goalscorer Wayne Rooney has retired from international football after turning down the chance to be part of the squad for next month's World Cup qualifiers.

On August 24 2017 00:34 zev318 wrote:
barca has handled this transfer window so poorly its hilarious

On August 24 2017 04:07 Pandemona wrote:
Ermmm? Hello? Bundesliga do your teams know how to defend wtf? Mane is OPEN on left hand side at minute 20, who then 1-2 simply and emre can is in the 6 yard box open after a walk into the back post area as no one follows him WTF XD