Barcelona had the sort of quality that not a lot of team over the course of history will have. While I don't at all agree with the sentiments that you need a plan B, Barcelona are really an extra ordinary case.
It's easier to defend from counterattacking teams than it is to defend from possession teams. Counterattacking teams often don't know what to do when they are the ones facing a parked bus.
They play fantastic football under Sarri and I'm intrigued to know why he's slipped under the radar for so long without getting a high-profile job until Napoli came in for him. Looking at his Wiki page, he's been a manager since 1990 - albeit part-time for much of the 90's - and I find it astonishing that another decent sized team didn't take a punt on him before Napoli did.
It's one of the laziest cliches thrown around so casually (the "pragmatic" tag gets on my tits too). Good point regarding United. But the cliche is only thrown around against teams comfortable with possession, as if there isn't history of counter-attacking teams being nullified by ceding the intiative and little space to them (cf Mourinho with Chelsea the season he was sacked).
Yeah. I think Milik, Zielinski and Diawara have some talent and are young enough to improve fairly rapidly, but the other spots are real concerns.
Timo Werner in a post match interview said that his team RBL are still struggling when teams give possession to them.
So true I would just like a definition that makes sense. Usually when a team is not winning, there is a list of clichés to look over for as to why they fail. You have the players out of position, weak character, lack desire, winning mentality, and this plan A or B nonsense. It's lazy but it helps comfort the fans in the knowledge that the problem is clear and identifiable.
It sure is a contradiction in some sense . If you got 20 teams in a league and one win you normally say they are the best. Although they could have been lucky and might say win on goal difference due to playing against weaker teams filled with injuries at the time so they could boost goals scored. So you can be the best even without winning and reverse. Although the ultimate goal to be seen as best in football is to win the games. That is the objective we need to judge. So if you never win any individual games well you can't really be best since you tend to fail at the objective. Although winning trophies have much larger variance due to luck particular in cup competitions. Over time though well it will be hard to argue that a team is better if they don't win any league titles at least as over 38 games and multiple seasons the luck even out much more. Of course you only got one timeline. Otherwise you could say the best team is the one with highest probability to win. Although you can't really know for sure all the parameters to objectively decide the odds.
It's not, not really. Which great teams you remember had a plan B? And what even constitutes a plan B in this case?
Felt they were a bit unfortunate to not get anything out of the 2 games vs City, if Callejon had buried that chance I believe they would have held on for the W in Naples. To be honest, if Napoli played like they did over those 2 games against anyone bar City and PSG this season, they are leaving with 3 points. It would be a shame if a team on their level doesn't progress to the CL knockouts this season. I hope they can strengthen the squad in January and make a real push for the Scudetto as well, this squad deserves a trophy, as does Sarri.
90 days for ACL reconstruction rehab? That's very unrealistic. 4-6 months is the minimum recovery period for this kind of an injury.
That is some seriously bad timing for him since evidently both us and City were in the market for a LB. He would have instantly been our first choice LB, with a huge salary upgrade.
Napoli are already offering him a new contract with a big salary upgrade, though of course City or United could offer even more than £100k a week
Considering Pep is unlikely to stay beyond 3 or so years you could do worse than Sarri to succeed him. Their philosophies are pretty similar, or atleast it wouldn't be totally alien for players of both teams to adapt to either style.
Juventus is nothing special this year, I mean they're not as good as previous years. It's now or never for Naoli to win the title.
Not sure how tonight helps you come to that conclusion, they needed Shaktar to drop points and they will have known City rotated heavily. Once Shak went 2-0 up Napoli knew they were out so stopped playing.
How have they not qualified for the last 16? 1 point behind Inter in the league, ahead of Juventus and they showed real quality against City in CL.
You have just said exactly why they haven't qualified....they are fully focusing on winning the title this season so Europe is irrelevant for them this season.
Why can't they challenge on both fronts? I mean they wouldn't have finished ahead of City but they should've finished 2nd quite comfortably. Surely they wouldn't give up on Europe completely.
Because they don't have the squad for it, now that their left back season pretty much ended. Playing in EL is a hindrance too
