England and Argentina haven't played against each other for 20 years. Thats way too long, their FA's have to make it happen .
Facts about football that shouldn't be true - but are
- Thread starter altodevil
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Isaac Price had more international goals for Northern Ireland at the age of 21 than George Best and Norman Whiteside scored throughout their entire career. There are way more international games now than there used to be.
One going the opposite way - Italy's all-time top scorer is still Luigi Riva with 35. A low number for one of the world's most successful teams, and they're one of the few countries whose top-scorer isn't quite recent.
85 countries have at least one player who have scored more than him in international football, and lots have multiple players with more than that.
Edit: The current highest scorer in ther squad is Giacomo Raspadori with 11, a player I've never heard of until googling that just now (embarrassed). Barella and Kean on 10 each.
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It's very bizarre because Italy has had countless world class strikers historically like Del Pierro, Totti, Baggio etc. I haven't even heard of that player Luigi Riva. But then again, the top goal scorer for Netherlands is Memphis Depay. No offence to Depay who is solid player, but the Dutch have produced so many great strikers like Van Basten, Cruyff, Van Persie, Van Nistelroy, Kluivert etc. And to see Depay to be at the top is definitely strange.
Luigi Riva seemed a good goalscorer. Won the league with Cagliari with 21 goals in 28 games that season.
But yeah I'm surprised others haven't scored more. Totti for example, only managed 9 goals
Way more games against poorer opposition than their used to be too. If you go back to those days you basically had USSR and Yugoslavia as the Eastern block countries. Those 2 have been replaced with about 20 teams and at least half of those are fairly rubbish or have been until quite recently.
Then you add in Gibraltar, San Marino, Faroes, Andorra etc..
Part of it is that they haven't had that many forwards with tons of caps in more modern times when it's been easier to rack up big numbers. Perhaps sometimes through lots of competion for places, lots of underperforming too though compared to what you might expect.
Then there's the cliche of defensive Italian football.
Del Piero 91 caps, 27 goals. Not bad for a second striker
Vialli 59/16
Totti 58/9
Inzaghi 57/25
Gilardino 57/19
Immobile 57/17
Baggio 56/27
Vieri 49/23
Toni 47/16
Casiraghi 44/13
Belotti 44/12
Di Natale 42/11
Raspadori 42/11
Iaquinta 40/6
Balotelli 36/14
Mancini 36/4
Zola 35/10
Giuseppe Rossi 30/7
Totti, Del Piero (deeper lying forwards), Inzaghi, Toni, P. Rossi, Baggio and Vieri couldn't reach 30 while Belgian Heskey is on the verge of triple that.
Perhaps Italy's defence-centric philosophy for most of history and fiece competition for forward spots in the 2000s ( which included Cassano, Iaquinta and Gilardino) hampered pursuit of a high individual goal tally, while Rom was the primary option for the lone striker role in a team with golden generation midfielders and wingers feeding him.
Perhaps Italy's defence-centric philosophy for most of history and fiece competition for forward spots in the 2000s ( which included Cassano, Iaquinta and Gilardino) hampered pursuit of a high individual goal tally, while Rom was the primary option for the lone striker role in a team with golden generation midfielders and wingers feeding him.
Faroe Islands beat Montenegro 4-0 yesterday
It's weird that Totti and Inzaghi had so few apperances for Italy despite playing until they were 40. Still, Totti only scored 9 goals in 58 apperances for Italy which is shocking. You would expect them to score a lot more goals, especially Totti.
Even Ciro Immobile only scored 17 goals despite being brilliant in Serie A for years. I wonder how many goals has Balottelli scored for Italy because he was always good when he played for them.
The list says 14...
Baggio was a "legend" around my area when I grew up, I see his ratio is decent, but only 54 caps... Was his career cut short?
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That's because you're 2 years old and know nothing about this sport
Part that, part injuries, part dudes just not performing. Inzaghi was a bit screwed by managers continously refusing to play him and Vieri together despite the fact they were BFFs and played were absolutely fecking amazing together, but "gotta play a creative striker so Totti/Del Piero is in, so Inzaghi can't play"
Bettega had his prime cut short by injury, Mancini was disliked by every manager, Vialli underperformed, Baggio injuries, Vieri got a 4 years run, Toni bloomed very late and lasted only a couple years, Del Piero underperformed(consistently and rather infamously), Totti underperformed(plus retired early, all the post 2006 years where he was scoring for fun for Roma he was no longer available to Italy) and we haven't really produced great goalscorers since
There's also the fact Italy historically never cared to run up the score against crap teams plus friendlies were often seen as beneath us unless it was like Brazil
How dare I not know about a player who played for the mighty Cagilari!
Not sure why he had only 54 apperances for Italy, but then also Totti only had 58 and Inzaghi had similar amount of apperances for Italy as those two.
Literally the greatest Italian player of the last 50 years
Won the fecking league with Cagliari
Gigi Riva is a football legend. Such exist even outside England and some played before Barclay invented football, believe it or not
The record attendance for a game at old trafford was an FA cup semi final between wolves and Grimsby
Totally agreed. That’s way too long.
Holy shit.
That’s genuinely upsetting. The record attendance at our stadium isn’t even in a match involving us. I have known about this fact for a while though, I think this game was in in 1937 or something.
North Korea are great at women’s football
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Their games against South Bible tend to be extremely intense, too.
Former Arsenal and Milan player Mathieu Flamini co founded a Biochemical company worth over 10 billion dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GF_Biochemicals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GF_Biochemicals
Fowler only starting 11 England games feels strange. Also feels strange that he made his debut in 1996, when his name was already the most common name on the back of a shirt in my school in 1995. Insane competition I guess, but
Sorry to disappoint but whilst his company has potential it is likely worth something more like 100m. And honestly I'm not sure Forbes even wrote anything about it's value in the first place. I've read the article this all seemed to link back to and it says nothing about the company's value. Just tabloids going mental.
"Well, it's important to rectify things," Flamini told L'Equipe. "Contrary to what I read, I do not have €30billion in my bank account. And this sum does not correspond to the valuation of my company, GF Biochemicals." Flamini explained how estimates had wrongly given him a personal fortune that would make him one of the richest people in the world. "In fact, it is the total value of the market we want to 'attack' with the new technologies we have developed in recent years," Flamini said. "There was a misunderstanding. It's as if we had given a single restaurant the value of the entire catering market in France." Asked directly if he is a billionaire, Flamini said: "Oh no, not at all."
https://www.besoccer.com/new/flamini-i-don-t-have-euro-30billion-in-my-bank-account-403133
Salah has one successful dribble in the league this season.
We've played Liverpool 30 times since Fergie retired. W10 D10 L10.
How very neutral of you
Haaland underperformed his CL goal-to-game ratio vs Villareal by scoring 1 goal.
Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scored 33 times from outside the box in the Premier League. So, despite being a striker(occasionally second striker) and only playing 132 games for Chelsea (288 in total), he averages a goal outside the box every 8.7 matches.
What a clown
Adebayor was caught offside 328 times in 242 Premier League games.
10 Games into a Premier League Season, currently Man Citys top scorer is Earling Haaland with 13 goals. Thier 2nd top scorer is Burnleys Maxime Estève with 2.
Like you , I also heard it when the commentator was telling us this!
Arsenal have lost just 6 more home league games at the Emirates Stadium, opened in 2006, than Tottenham have lost at the new White Hart Lane which opened in 2019.
My favourite part of Esteve's Wikipedia page:
Estève is colloquially known as "Steve" by Burnley fans.
I believe he also holds the world record of "winning" the "runner-up treble" twice, 2002 with Bayer Leverkusen, 2012 with FC Bayern. :-D
John Stones, the young ball-playing CB, is only one year younger than the old-school throwback defender, Harry Maguire.
Maybe not that shocking for those that watch the PL but:
For a run of 9 seasons (2011-12 to 2019-20), 8 different managers won the PL. Not only that: 5 different clubs lifted the trophy in this run.
EDIT:
And 6 of these 8 managers won their first ever PL trophy in this run too!
For a run of 9 seasons (2011-12 to 2019-20), 8 different managers won the PL. Not only that: 5 different clubs lifted the trophy in this run.
EDIT:
And 6 of these 8 managers won their first ever PL trophy in this run too!
Only two of our titles - our first two, in 1908 and 1911 - were won under the reign of a King. Our 1908 title was won during the reign of Edward VII, and our 1911 title was won during the reign of George V. Our other 18 titles were all won during the 70 year reign of Elizabeth II. Our 1952 title was born shortly after Elizabeth took to the throne after the death of her father, King George VI, which was on 6 February that year - exactly six years before the Munich air disaster.