70s Fantasy Draft QF2 - antohan v kps88

antohan

BTW, since this balance, gelling and synergies argument seems to hold some sway:

1. Most of my players have played with 2-3 others before
2. All my players speak Latin-based languages, Spanish and Italian in particular
3. My front 6 all speak Spanish
4. My whole back four has played in that exact position as part of a Serie A back four and can communicate fluently
5. kps' back four consists of two fullbacks whose peaks were playing in a Dutch-inspired 3-4-3 in La Liga (not precisely as fullbacks!), a Serie A CB and an EPL CB.
6. Campbell will not be able to communicate with any of them.

If his players become "better" by having played with each other, surely my back four is significantly better since they can actually communicate with each other and are playing in a familiar way based on the Italian school of defending.

At some point we have to draw the line between this being a fantasy competition and voting judgement being based on "reality checks".

Snow

Ferrer is a pundit in Sky's La Liga games. He's very fluent in English.

I don't think it matters a lot if a striker has played on the same team as a defender.

antohan

He played for Chelsea after his peak. Unless you are suggesting kps has Ferrer the pundit playing

antohan

Zanetti crossing for Vieri isn't relevant?

Danny1982

Reminds me of this..

Jayvin

Kps has a good team, but for me antohan is slightly better in every position.

Easy decision in the end.

antohan

Brilliant

Ralaks

Afellays face is priceless when Valdes is talking to him at the start, he has no idea The added voices are brilliant

Snow

So? You're from Uruguay no, and live there. How on Earth are you speaking English without living there?

He's speaking fluent English now and he's speaks it well. There's no reason he wouldn't now it before he moved there and I don't think it matters at all tbh. Language has nothing to do with this game. Chemistry is about speaking football, not the same verbal language.

Snow

Not really no. With Vieiri you just cross where he is or just in front of him. Not rocket science. And I'd be surprised is Forlan and Montero ever spend more than 60 seconds in a game closer than 10m to each other.

Rood

As it isnt making a difference to the result, I have voted based on United bias - if it was closer then I would have thought about it a bit more!

kps88

Picking Sergi was a bit meaningless, but there really was no one else I could have picked once Cold Boy took Beckham. Having Cole and Yorke as a pair has restricted my options in hindsight.

antohan

I lived in the UK for 12 years. Get your point though, but you will find in the 90s most people in Spain couldn't speak a word of English.

I disagree, in a back four in particular communication is very relevant.

That said, I did mention in the same post that we must draw the line between fantasy and reality somewhere. It's obvious that when people see Yorke and Cole they will be able to picture them together and they played together at their peak so that will in itself give them a an edge when appreciating them. From that to voting for a team because it has more proven partnerships is completely doing away with fantasy.

Neville-Nowotny-Cannavaro-Kuffour, different languages, not ever played together... so would the more familiar two Nevilles, Brown and Silvestre be a better back four?... In practice, if they met for a game one time, there's no question they would be, but that's not the point here is it?

It's already bad enough that if you read that twice you start almost ignoring Cannavaro is there and start really quite fancying the known/established back four as the better one full stop.

antohan

This chemistry concept is getting quite obscure I tell you. The more we go through it the more it sounds like a term designed to favour EPL partnerships.

Forlán has actually assisted Montero but yeah 10m is too close if you are taking a corner, and you have already established crossing a ball for someone to score has nothing to do with being familiar with the players' movement and practising that in training.

Snow

I say draw the line at the criteria that voters are asked to base their vote on. You can talk up your team all you like and mention medals and awards and such to influence but it doesn't really matter.

Ferrer's English was more of a guess that he might know it based on his accent. His accent is better than Reina's and Alonso's. For me that suggests that he's probably better than average at learning languages.

Of topic a bit but the match is mostly over anyways. What's the 2nd and 3rd language that you learn in schools in Spain or in Uruguay for that matter? Spain is a country that dubs all the foreign stuff so you won't be hearing much English there. You'll get it from Sky News, BBC News and Eurosport and that's pretty much it as far as I know. But it's always different since their education can vary a lot along with their brain power to learn overall.

antohan

Oi, he is staging a comeback! He is 3-2 up since I last logged on! No irresponsible voting, please , there are a good few hours to go!

Snow

It's at 23 votes now. 7 more and it would be the 3rd most voted match so far. Only two matches so far that have gotten 30 or more votes.

Your team has started retaining possession.

antohan

True, it was a crying shame that in a group with Del Piero, Raúl, van Nistelrooy, Crespo and Solskjaer available you could hardly pick any of them.

FWIW, you could have picked Ole to play the supersub card, don't think Sergi is really making any difference.

To be honest, it screws me up a bit as well if I win this, all these partnerships of yours when I can only pick one player.

The only two that can add something are Pires and Gattuso (Scholes would be overkill). But I can't see myself ever benching Forlán to play Pires (it would also mean sending Luis Enrique to the other wing and Simeone-Seedorf + Zidane in the centre). Which brings me back to Gattuso. He won't improve me drastically, but a handy one to have if I have to focus more on destruction further down the line.

antohan

He is Catalan, they speak two languages from a very early age so easier to pick up new ones, much like the Dutch or Scandinavians, for whom speaking a second language is almost natural and a necessity.

I'm not familiar with the vagaries of education in Spain, although I would guess they still don't make a second language compulsory.

In Uruguay it depends whether you go to public or private schools (by public schools we mean grammar schools and by private what is called public schools, i.e. open to the public as long as they can pay!). Private schools are usually associated with an immigrant nationality (French, Italian, German, British, Irish -this one being Catholic-, etc.) and include that language as compulsory to the extent it must be spoken in the corridors, canteen, etc. instead of Spanish.

The national curricula when I was a kid required three years studying French and two studying Italian, both in secondary school. English was more a private school addition + other language if it was the German school, for example. Forlán studied under that system in a private school.

Sometime in the mid to late 90s the government switched it to English, starting from primary school and added two years of Portuguese in secondary school. French was ditched entirely. Two years of Italian are still required (more than GCSE but not as much as A-level) if you want to go to Law School.

antohan

At 15-8 and with 20 minutes to go, Forlán drops deeper to help secure and manage possession.

Rood

Dont worry this match is over already, so now I dont need to feel bad about voting out my fave players!

Cling Bak

He's got them pegged in! They're on their backs! kps is all over them!

Gio

And Zidane and Montero will be off for an early bath by now for violent conduct.

Snow

Antohan better hope he doesn't get Cold_Boy. Zidane will be off. Game over.

Snow

That's a lot of changes in languages. I wonder why they bothered with French to begin with. Portuguese would make more sense because of the neighbors. Does Uruguay have a lot of Italian immigrants like Argentina?

Fun fact. Uruguay are renowned for their beef. Most beef in Uruguay is now cut with Icelandic technology. Icelandic corporation Marel made a huge deal there. They've got the best processing machine in the world. Top notch machinery and AI. Very impressive company. It made me hungry for a Uruguayan steak.

antohan

Actually, with kps I had two worries over him getting Beckham: the service to Yorke and Cole and getting him and Simeone on the pitch for a famous payback.

antohan

You tell me... Spent three years trying to work out French between ages 12 and 15 and only got to test it in real life situations when I was 20. Not.Very.Useful.

Probably even more so. In 1900 about 70% of the Uruguayan population were Italian immigrants who had arrived in the last 30 years. 90% of the total population were then immigrants from the last 30 years (Italian, French, Spanish and British - mainly Scottish- in that order). Over the next 50 years immigrants would mostly be German Jews and Eastern European/former USSR minorities.

antohan

Cling, I chose not to reply to this as I didn't really want to get embroiled in a youtube w*nkfest on how good these two were. Was never going to be helpful.

Red-tinted glasses off I do believe they were. Giggs was, is and always will be better than Pires. Beckham was a better fottballer than Ljungberg and was ideal for those two upfront.

The difference that makes them significantly better though is work rate and attitude. I am ill-equipped to take anyone on a trip down the labyrinth of character so I'll have to let a picture speak a thousand words about the difference between those two reds and the two "invincibles":






















AND THAT'S THEIR "ENFORCER"...

Snow

I think quite clearly that Giggs and Beckham were better than the both of them. They both had more ammo in their arsenal.

One of them is still playing for United. One of them went on to Real Madrid and Milan and is still wanted by big teams. One went to Villarreal and then Aston Villa and the last went to America and didn't become a star player there.

Hell, if you look up Ljungberg his modeling career is mentioned as much as his football career but that part he's behind Beckham as well.