Kairi Zaide
Unforgiven
I'm not going to disagree that soccer is not the only sport where scoring goal involves luck.
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Siamese Dream
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Great Britain men's/u20s/u18s hockej
Noo Yok Rongos
Wales rugby union
British & Irish Lions rugby union every 5 years
Gloucester rugby union
Leeds Rhinos rugby league
Aliya Mustafina
In that order
Noo Yok Rongos
Wales rugby union
British & Irish Lions rugby union every 5 years
Gloucester rugby union
Leeds Rhinos rugby league
Aliya Mustafina
In that order
Kairi Zaide
Unforgiven
i wonder how much peener would talk negatively about the scorers if Aliya were to not win gold at the olympics by like 2-3 points only
Siamese Dream
Registered User
I don't really fully understand it so I can't really complain
Unlike all the experts on HF at the last Olympics who claimed MC Kayla Maroney should have been given a perfect 10 for her vault
I mostly only complain about officiating in hockey, since I am actually a qualified official myself. I'll only complain about it in rugby when it's really really obvious, but most of the time it seems like the refs themselves just guess.
Siamese Dream
Registered User
Kairi Zaide
Unforgiven
Regarding reffing, I'm certain guessing is a thing in hockey too, no? Especially when you don't have a clear view of an event (hidden by a player, did not really looked that way though you had it in your eyesight, etc.), and you have to decide whether or not to call something, and not calling it might result in you calling something that shouldn't have been called, and inversely.
Siamese Dream
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Kairi Zaide
Unforgiven
SoupyFIN
#OneTerritory
- Nov 7, 2011
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I said that if you're good at it, you can ignore those half-assed and arrogant attempts because it wouldn't happen to that said player that can handle the pressure.
Note: don't confuse good PK taker = great/good player. Like in hockey, there's a lot of really good players that are horrible in that event.
Siamese Dream
Registered User
General rule is if you're not sure, you don't call it
Only time I ever guess is when I'm giving assists
if I don't know and can't be bothered to chase after the players and ask, I normally just give it to whoever was in the immediate vicinity and/or the goal scorer went to fist bump and celebrate with first obviously I only do this at junior level where the stats aren't really taken very seriously.
Mantis
I am a doctah
Siamese Dream
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Hey, I was going to post a lot of words and here's someone effectively making my argument for me. Everything you said is completely wrong and in fact forms the basis of a mass English delusion that's existed since they invented football in 1992.
Why is the Premier League the most popular topic of discussion on this board? A board made up mainly of North Americans with a few mainland Europeans thrown in? It's marketed. It's shown in North America and given comprehensive advertising budgets to do so. When the Premier League started in 1992 it was broadly the same, Sky started showing it, they charged people to see it, they made a fortune. Since then, the money has only gone up.
With it has gone the advertising and the need to continue to sell it to people (note: football generally does quite well of its own accord, with the people who live in the towns and cities football teams come from. They know it exists) as the world has shrunk and the internet and streaming has come in. North American markets have emerged. Asian markets have emerged. All of these contain people who want to spend money to watch the Premier League.
This money in turn does two things. It makes Premier League teams want to maintain their Premier League status because of the money it brings them in. Some have been and are bought by extremely rich businessmen with a view to making money in the aforementioned market. Ask anyone with any experience and they'll tell you you can't make money from a football club. With the amount of money Premier League clubs are able to generate and the subsequent devaluing of their own transfer funds in the global market the amount of money you actually need to put into one yourself is diminishing. Roman Abramovich is a billionaire. He was a billionaire when he bought Chelsea. He's probably put close to a billion pounds into Chelsea in the 13 years he's been in charge in transfer fees alone - you'll see in the news they're signing some 20 year old Belgian boy for 40 million. They're making these signings because it will generate money. It'll generate money in merchandising, it'll generate money in prize money, in stature they can take to sponsors and draw more money from that way.
The other effect money has on the Premier League is to those who are not in the Premier League. It becomes the sole focus for non Premier League clubs. Second tier clubs are bought for increasingly baffling sums, increasing money is spent on wages and transfer fees there. I vaguely recall seeing that in fees and wages it's somewhere in the top ten in Europe. The focus of these clubs' owners and managers is to get promoted. To get the Premier League money. That is all. All of these clubs exist as a means of generating and perpetuating wealth for the people who own them. This exists to varying degrees of success, for every Bournemouth there's a Blackburn.
What effect does all this have on the England national team? Well, it's an effect that is the ultimate responsibility of all clubs at every stage of the league set-up. Their focus isn't to produce good English players. Their focus is to buy the best players. It's the best players who are marketed as the stars, who are talked of in terms of being the draw to all those advertisers and all those watching eyes the world over. While there is undeniable quality in the Premier League, ask someone who the best players in it are and they'll tell you foreign players who are not English, who were not trained and developed in England, who are the focus of the wealth which is what runs the game.
Even for what young English players there are filled with potential, how can they honestly be expected to succeed in an environment like I've described? They can grow up at a football club with the best modern facilities and treatment and coaching available, that's great. They can learn every day from some of the best players in the world who themselves bring together experiences of football from all over the globe. That's surely unquestionable, and I've no doubt it is a boon to these players. The problem is that this cannot in any way create a mentality among young English players that anything is worth doing. Being Scottish you read stories of players who were at Celtic or Rangers until they were 19 or 20. How they went in and trained with these great players in these great surroundings every day. How they got one sub appearance in the league cup before being released on a free and signing for Stranraer or some other godforsaken hellhole and realising that things are very, very different in the real world. If that's in the relatively meagre surroundings of Scotland, how is an 18 year old English boy coming through at Chelsea or Man City supposed to concentrate on improving themselves as a footballer when they're being paid a minimum of a four-figure sum every week?
With every English failure at a tournament there seems to be the inevitable talk of national inquiries and schemes and programs and the like to rectify it and trying to implement another of these now would be a waste trampling over anything that's come before it before it's had a chance to work. I think there are issues within English league football that are largely unsolvable with regard to the English players it produces. If there's a crash in the money of the Premier League somehow then there's a chance but until then, I don't see any way for what I've described to change.
Now, if you want to discuss why England failed on this occasion, well that's very simple. Its simplicity is matched only by the sheer volume of reasons. They were led by someone patently out of his depth. The day after the game Hodgson had to come out and give another press conference and seemed affronted at the concept. "I thought my statement covered everything," he said, apparently unaware that it had the air of being prepared well in advance of knowing who their opponents would be in that game even.
Being led by Hodgson in this way has a trickledown effect which crops up in other areas. I've no doubt that the England players underestimated Iceland. Their entire ****ing country did. Discussing Hart's mistake at halftime, the punditry chat is "will he be dropped for the quarter-final?" The expectation, the arrogance, call it what you will, I don't doubt there was a sense of having to turn up being all that was required. You only had to look in the opposite dugout to see the value of proper preparation starting from the top down.
How does that manifest itself on the pitch? Players couldn't pass five yards in a straight line. Players were played out of position. Players looked unable to have any ideas of how to break Iceland down. Their goal was a penalty from a relatively long ball at the start of the game. The only other hope of incision they seemed to have was in the last five minutes when Rashford came on who had the idea of taking the ball and running into the Iceland box with it. He played with a youthful instinctiveness that said a direct approach was needed - not one other player in that team wanted to do that at any point in the match.
You could view their cavalcade of failure over the years individually and examine the reasons for their failure and you'd come up with a different one every time but consider last night - where was the leadership on that pitch? Where was the initiative, the player or players to say: This has to change. I need to something to change this. Alli, Kane, Dier, they're playing at their first major tournament. You can excuse them, even if their international performances aren't on par with their club performances (and even if those three and Walker/Rose can't hide behind the foreigners on their club team argument). What about Rooney, shoehorned into the team in midfield because he can't run? Hopeless. The captain, unable to inspire any sort of performance in either himself or his teammates. I think it was the first game of the World Cup in 2014, Rooney started on the left and Sterling was in the middle. They played badly because Rooney kept trying to cut in and play more centrally. They come out after half time and Rooney's in the middle and Sterling on the left - the commentary hails the tactical genius of Hodsgon with the air of Mr. Burns boasting because he told Strawberry to hit a home run. Wayne Rooney's paid 300 g rand a week and Sterling's built a reputation on the back of picking up the scraps of someone much better than he is doing what he wants - is there not one part of these peoples' heads that says "I will try something different?" No. Because for their clubs, they don't have to. Because the money makes everything better. Where is someone to go up to Harry Kane and tell him to stop taking free kicks? Nowhere.
I will say also, I think HadjukSplit touched on this, there's no hope for the coaching either. I'll give you a taste of ITV's coverage from Monday night:
Second goal goes in. Glenn Hoddle (sacked as England coach because he said disabled people are punished for sins in a past life) bemoans the fact that the goal came from a long throw. "It's from the 80s," he says, "you don't get those in the Premier League any more, the players don't know how to defend them." He said this with the petulance you might expect from someone in his position, or perhaps his brain was just rebelling because it had momentarily forgotten that Rory Delap exists. Either way, you get to half time and Lee Dixon's going over the goal. "Gary Neville is a good coach," he says, "they'll have worked and worked on this in training, these players should know who they're picking up - why is Rooney covering the runner?" he asks as Rooney stands still while the first ball is won by some huge Icelandic boy before Walker falls down when Sigthorsson scores.
Ally this with the fact that Ian Wright was in the same studio being remarkably sensible and reserved by his standards and also there was Peter Crouch apparently representing the ignorance of every other English person, you're sat wondering how there can be any hope when you've got all this analysis of what's going on and different people are saying different things.
Then the game finishes and Hodgson chucks it. Gary "Great Coach" Neville goes with him, presumably eliminating him from potentially taking over the job. And hey he's a great coach, he has this pretension of intelligence because he can go on Sky and use a computer, he presided over this shambles. Oh and ask Valencia (since renamed from Gary Neville's Valencia) fans what they think of him as a manager. A list of favourites goes up for the manager's job, Gareth Southgate's name tops the list. Great Coach. Of course he is. Utterly smacked about in his most notable encounter with non-English opposition, but still a Great Coach. Steve McClaren is a Great Coach, he still manages to get employed as a manager. You wonder how long it will take them to figure it out.
It seems though that a role in the England set-up is the only chance a young English coach has a chance of staying for a few years and being able to hone any skills with any sense of stability. Look at the names mentioned for the job. Look at the English names. It's grim reading. Eddie Howe and Garry Monk are the only two under forty who don't have the stink of failure from somewhere on them. Glenn Hoddle's been tipped by everyone's favourite Sky exponent Arry Redknapp (he now of international experience with two games in charge of Jordan, tax free (allegedly (probably))), Glenn Hoddle doesn't think teams should defend trifling things like throw-ins. That's who the English football people seem to think is a viable candidate - much like the player watching 40 million come in from Spain or Brazil wonder why he should bother trying to play for his club, why should a coach or a young manager think they can ever achieve anything when so many are brought in by all those rich clubs and owners I've mentioned? If one does get through, why bother with the hassle of trying to sort out the England team when you can stick with the funny money of the Premier League?
With that said, it's Big Sam's to lose. I want him to get it so badly.
I'll give you one last British TV anecdote to tie all this together. With the BBC highlights after the game broadly resembling a wake with Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Rio Ferdinand and Jermaine Jenas in attendance, Shearer let rip at everything with their of someone forgetting Newcastle United exist. It was unparalleled. His seethe was so off the charts he took a potshot at the FA, saying he offered to take up some sort of coaching role (I refuse to believe I heard him emptying the pram at being turned down for England manager given his record). Flailing, clueless, nonsense. It's okay though, the show finished with a collective giggle at Antonio Conte trying to mount his dugout. What a character he'll be in the Premier League, eh lads? He'll spend a lot of Roman Abramovich's money too.
irunthepeg
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Kairi Zaide
Unforgiven
I'm just going to copy paste what I told DM and Ceres on Hammy. Simple physics will cause variance even for the most poised, best penalty shot taker in the world, if you were to ask him to always kick the ball the same exact way. Of course I'm refering to Özil's miss, but it could be any player, really.
Siamese Dream
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irunthepeg
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Ceremony
How I choose to feel is how I am
- Jun 8, 2012
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****ing read his *****. It's luck because no two kicks will ever be the same.
irunthepeg
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Kyle93
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- Mar 30, 2012
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my social anxiety is getting very bad, my brother who visits once or twice a year is here today and I have been staying in my room all day. I used to be able to talk to him about anything but now all I can really get out are single word answers. 2 more months of being a recluse and I will probably be unable to talk to anyone lmao.
irunthepeg
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Siamese Dream
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Siamese Dream
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