I wish Schweini wouldn't do this to us and himself. It's unnecessary.
German Football 20/21
- Thread starter do.ob
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
Someone tell Haaland that Upamecano has a family 
Is it too late to switch to Terzic?! Can the 25m bank transfer be recalled yet?
Getting some Jan Fiete Arp vibes from the Nagelsmann hiring 
Also they'll release some of their most-experienced, best-paid players like Gebre Selassie. Even if they somehow survive this season the next one will be even worse.
Nagelsmann's great, but Terzic definitely seems to have his number so far. Don't think anybody has been able to get a perfect record over three games against Nagelsmann before. Definitely hope that Terzic stays on as an assistant for next season.Getting some Jan Fiete Arp vibes from the Nagelsmann hiring
Then again, we've said it time and time again, that Leipzig squad is disgustingly bad when it comes to attacking positions. Hwang, Sörloth, barely Bundesliga midtable level. No Forsberg and no Nkunku along with freezing out Angelino is some major auto-trolling by Nagelsmann though.
It is pretty crazy to think about that unless they screw up the last 2 1/2 games a season with so many dissapointing performances will result in a title, CL qualification and a very decent CL campaign. Shows how much momentum can do in football.
Chance after chance for Leipzig, they just have noone who can score
Dahoud living dangerously already beeing on a yellow...I have a feeling that one of Dahoud or Can will not last the full 90 minutes.
Man, Sancho has been a bit shit in the second half, hasn't he? Seems like he mentally checked out at half time.
Not that it ended up mattering.
Edit: Next level technique by Haaland
Not that it ended up mattering.
Edit: Next level technique by Haaland
Haaland shooting himself
Such a one horse cup. Embarrassing
Reus is such a star, man of the match today. Involved in all 4 goals and just brilliant overall.
Has been shit all season and saves them in the end.
Łukasz Piszczek is an absolute legend.
Yea it looked like he lost it this season but his return to form has resulted in the rise of Dortmund as well
Let's hope BVB at least feck up top 4 now.
Were you cheering for Leipzig?
It's all a bit hollow: instead of getting hammered with your friends on the streets and watching the team tour the City tomorrow you're sitting at home listening to some bland ARD moderator chaining together platitudes. Hopefully next season will bring back football as it's meant to be.
Schweinsteiger might just be the cringiest pundit I've ever seen. Worse than Hitzfeld even, he can go entire years without actually saying something more than empty phrases.
Instead I'm getting hammered with my friends online
To me this was a surprisingly emotional celebration afterwards with the appreciation of Piszczek, Terzic's emotional reaction and Morey's jersey being displayed. While I wholeheartedly agree and would prefer to party in the streets of Dortmund I am still having a really good time right now Actually found him a lot more tolerable than a lot of former Bayern players that we have to endure. Would take him over Matthäus, Hamann and Kahn any day of the week. Low bar, I know.
Is that guy unbearable in Germany too? Unsurprising to hear, I must admit.Instead I'm getting hammered with my friends online
Actually found him a lot more tolerable than a lot of former Bayern players that we have to endure. Would take him over Matthäus, Hamann and Kahn any day of the week. Low bar, I know.
Not the worst in my opinion, that title is reserved for Matthäus for the rest of his career. Possibly the worst aspect is that Sky has him curate the "Didi-Man" every week which is one of the most cringeworthy things I have witnessed in my lifetime.
Yeah, it's cringeworthy even by Sky's standards and that's telling something. Still got nothing on Matthäus. Not only that he's extremely narcistic and talkimg nonsense no stop, Sky even treats him as a star and as is he's making incredibly insideful remarks. Totally absurd as a viewer.
Ugh! Sounds nauseating. Hamann is genuinely terrible though. Completely full of himself. Really weird guy.
Trust me, you should be glad that Matthäus' English is even worse. That guy is so full of himself that he makes Hamann appear as humble as the Dalai Lama.
Nope. But against BVB.
As for the rest, only blind and rabid haters would fail to recognize that Lothar is the best pundit in German football by far. Don't let his indomitable accent fool you, his sentences are sharpened like swords.
He's more of a prosaic, no-nonsense commenter, of course, not a dadaist poet like Sammer.
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That gave me flashbacks to our 5-2 cup final drubbing 
Nagelsmann's interview was quite reminiscent of Lahm's post match interview as well.That gave me flashbacks to our 5-2 cup final drubbing
I ventured into the RB bubble and they seem to really loath Nagelsmann now, they even claim he was outcoached and lost them the final, calling him a charlatan. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see it?! Leipzig controlled the match, they were probably leading in every single stat, except for goals scored. That's all you can expect from a coach, isn't it? The rest was just Dortmund having Reus, Sancho and Haaland who brought their absolute best to the occasion (well, aside from that one botched finish from Sancho), while Rasenball had Sörloth, Hwang and Olmo. Bigger picture he's put them on the map in Europe and held his squad to the standard of a serious competitor in the league.
The only question for me is whether it was really necessary to axe Angelino before the cup final, one of the few players who can make a difference in their squad.
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Some Leipzig fans I know are also blaming Nagelsmann and are claiming he made the same mistake again as last game (didn't see that one). I would do the same of course, he's the obvious target to direct one's anger since he's leaving.Nagelsmann's interview was quite reminiscent of Lahm's post match interview as well.
I ventured into the RB bubble and they seem to really loath Nagelsmann now, they even claim he was outcoached and lost them the final, calling him a charlatan. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see it?! Leipzig controlled the match, they were probably leading in every single stat, except for goals scored. That's all you can expect from a coach, isn't it? The rest was just Dortmund having Reus, Sancho and Haaland who brought their absolute best to the occasion (well, aside from that one botched finish from Sancho), while Rasenball had Sörloth, Hwang and Olmo. Bigger picture he's put them on the map in Europe and held his squad to the standard of a serious competitor in the league.
The only question for me is whether it was really necessary to axe Angelino before the cup final, one of the few players who can make a difference in their squad.
Tactically, it's surely not true, as you say. Leipzig were the superior team, rather clearly. The difference in individual quality of the attackers is just so stark, Haaland, Sancho, Reus back in form vs Sörloth and Hwang. And the blame for squad planning isn't mainly on Nagelsmann.
Olmo, I'm not going to talk too badly about him as his second half was great, as poor as his first half was; and he has a lot of quality.
However, team selection is on Nagelsmann, too, and leaving out Nkunku and Angelino was a feck up. Halstenberg, I have no idea what this player offers. Sörloth, what a sad joke to sell Werner for 50+ million and then proceed to spend half of that on this giant(-headed) misunderstanding. No wonder the DoF had to leave..
They controlled possession and midfield, that's true. But their attackers (especially in the first half) had no idea how to really get good (!) chances, and that left them wide open for counter attacks from Dortmund. The fact that Leipzig had much better changes after the break proves a bit that Nagelsmann made the wrong selection. He fixed this, but it was already too late.
Olmo is a good player and had a good game, but Dortmund's three were still on a different level to him. He does a lot of things right, but he doesn't find or execute the simple but effective shot/pass often enough.
Nkunku missed the previous match with an injury, so maybe he just wasn't fit to start. I'm all for coaches showing principled squad management, but since it was the least real game for Nagelsmann at Leipzig anyway one still has to ask whether he cut Angelino, because it's best for the team/club or whether he did so for his own reputation.
Looking at the other two games the two teams played against each other in '21: the first game was much like the cup final: all Leipzig in midfield, but barely any cutting edge in the final third, Dortmund eventually punishing them with moments of individual qualtiy. The game in Dortmund was different: Dortmund was actually able to deal quite well with Leipzig's pressing and for 60 minutes or so was fairly comfortably in charge of the game. Though it has to be asked whether Leipzig were fully motivated, given the match meant everything to Dortmund and fairly little to Leipzig.
I guess people think he should have gone full Mourinho in an attempt to deny any counter attacks?!
They weren't wide open at the back. The first two goals were stupid turnovers during build up, after which Leipzig still had numerical superiority at the back, they just got outplayed. The third goal probably was Dortmund's first "proper" counter attack and that was right before half time at 2:0 up, where tactics already went out the window to a degree. Arguably also an individual blunder from Halstenberg to play Reus onside. And as far as having no ideas goes: it's not like you can turn midtable strikers like Hwang and Sörloth into havoc causing menaces via tactics. In the second half Nagelsmann decided to sacrifice pace upfront, because they weren't going to get any counter attacks anyway, and they took more risks, leading to them actually being open at the back: don't forget that Dortmund missed two open goals after the break.
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Yes and no. Dortmund also have players that are very dangerous in tight spaces, not only during counter attacks, so denying them counter attacks while allowing them more possession would not have changed much in regard of the defensive performance.
But it always looked like a lot of Leipzigs players have no idea how to play in tight spaces themselves. It works for them when the opponent makes mistakes, but when that does not happen (and Dortmund made few easy mistakes in defense), they have no idea what to do. Playing on the counter would give them more space and I believe that approach could have helped yesterday.
The problem is that they put a ton of debt on our club by taking us over which drains money just as the dividends they take out of the club. I think Swiss Ramble showed that we paid about 1.1bn GBP in the last 15 years to interest payments and dividends all caused by the Glazers. I agree we are not a poor club it's simple that's 1.1bn GBP that we generated and has not gone back into the club. This money could have easily paid for the modernization of Old Trafford which is badly needed or gone into other infrastructure developments for the club or well even into buying a Neymar or a player of that caliber. You are right we are not a poor club but the fact remains that funds have been drained that wouldn't have been drained if not for the leveraged take over by the Glazers.
That this would have created an almost insane wealth gap between us and other clubs in Europe is an entirely different problem that is plaguing football right now but out of the perspective of a Manchester United fan I simply can't say this takeover hasn't hurt us, it has hurt us big time.
I think it's an insane argument to say the Glazers haven't harmed United financially: what else than financial harm is it to burden something with hundreds of millions of debt and interest payments for literally zero benefit to the sporting operation and to further extract tens of millions via dividends every year? United still being in a very strong financial position depite what the Glazers did and keep doing to the club doesn't mean there was no harm. As @NoLogo pointed out for all we know the club might have signed Neymar and Mbappe and won a couple of CLs with them.
I know that this is a no go for a Manchester United fan but I actually like Didi Hamann as a pundit a lot, despite him wearing a Bayern and a Liverpool jersey as a player. Always seemed to make a lot of sense when I saw him as a pundit.Actually found him a lot more tolerable than a lot of former Bayern players that we have to endure. Would take him over Matthäus, Hamann and Kahn any day of the week. Low bar, I know.
What I meant was that the club has still gone through very impressive growth under the Glazers. From 2005/6 to 2018/19 you have almost tripled your revenue. It grew faster than for example that of Real Madrid although the club has been more successful than United in that time frame.
So from the commercial perspective, the club has done well under the Glazers. I find it hard to argue that one can do much better in that regard since there's hardly anyone with as good of a development, especially since the club didn't do particularly well on the pitch after SAF left in comparison to other European giants. It also shows that their priorities clearly lie on the commercial side. Of course the Glazers took money out of the club still grew financially at a rate similar to or even better than most competitors or am I wrong?
How successful could United have been with a billion pound more to spend (which would have been possible if the Glazers did not take so much money out of the club)? Only if you think that this would have made no difference it would be fair to say that they did not harm the club.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deloitte_Football_Money_League
United were top of the FML every season before the Glazers took control of the club.
The money the Glazers have cost the club's sporting operation is a fact, how the revenue would or would not have developed without them is speculation. But seeing as basically the whole industry, English clubs in particular, has experienced tremendous growth and United started their journey on top of it, it's a fairly ambitious statement to say the Glazer's management has created more than the extra billion or so they have cost the club.
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