Zidane sack watch - 19/20

Cal?

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Before Bosman you were only allowed 3 foreigners per team. The modern Real Madrid sides typically had only 3 SPANIARDS in their team
That doesn’t change the fact that the 2-4 placed sides in the big leagues were still better than the smaller league champions

The difference could have been smaller, but they were still clearly better
 

NasirTimothy

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That doesn’t change the fact that the 2-4 placed sides in the big leagues were still better than the smaller league champions

The difference could have been smaller, but they were still clearly better
The difference was a LOT smaller. The top teams in the big leagues spend billions on their sides now
 

Cal?

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Pre-Bosman is not just the 80s, you’re talking 30-40 years of history. But this is still false (your contention that ‘the best players always went to the best sides), even if you look just at the 80s. Which European clubs did Zico, Socrates, Falcão and Éder go to? Passarella, Kempes and Ardiles? All amongst the best players in the world in the 80s. Even Maradona after Barcelona went to Napoli. That simply wouldn’t happen today.

Look, I’m not questioning your knowledge of the modern game, I’m sure it’s extensive. But I respectfully submit that you have a lot to learn about historical/contextual differences. Football has changed a lot, and just blithely saying that it was much easier in the past to accomplish certain things doesn’t hold water.
We seem to have gone off track, my point was and still is that the CL is harder to win because better teams competes in it.

It’s really quite simple, better teams in a competition that has a fair format, makes it harder to win. Which part of the above sentence do you disagree with?

The 2-4th placed sides in the big leagues are better than the champions in smaller counties back then as they are today. Before you mention the Dutch, Portuguese etc leagues, those champions qualify for the EC as well as the CL.
 

NasirTimothy

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We seem to have gone off track, my point was and still is that the CL is harder to win because better teams competes in it.

It’s really quite simple, better teams in a competition that has a fair format, makes it harder to win. Which part of the above sentence do you disagree with?

The 2-4th placed sides in the big leagues are better than the champions in smaller counties back then as they are today. Before you mention the Dutch, Portuguese etc leagues, those champions qualify for the EC as well as the CL.
What’s harder to win, the World Cup or the modern Champions League?
 

BalanceUnAutreJoint

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Addressed this in my other post re the history of the CL/EC, you should read it. But trying to claim the PL and the first division are somehow different is just asinine.




Barcelona won a sextuple and a quintuple in 3 years. They also won the league in the year in between. I’m taking that over 3 straight CLs, because if you don’t win the league in your own country when you win the CL, then it’s tough to call yourself the best team in Europe that year (based on a knockout competition where luck plays a greater part) when you’re not even the best team in your own country. Win the league and the Champions league, and there’s no argument. Madrid did that once.



See above



If you want to be more correct with your analysis then Barca won three straight trebles. Since nearly winning a trophy apparently means you did win it according to you.
You keep coming in with these disingenuous arguments. Absolutely no one, not even Liverpool fans would have ever dared to say they had won the Premier League before 2020. The Premier League is a continuity of the English 1st division but it is an entirely trophy on its own, the same applies to the EC and the UCL, except that in this case the difference is even bigger because of the format change.

Sextuple,quintuple, all empty words so that you don't have to name the mickey mouse trophies at play here? Spanish supercup? European Supercup? Club WC? All of that is irrelevant. Zidane won all these things too for that matter.

Lucks play a greater part in the CL? Ah yes, I forgot that beating up some bottom table teams on a consistent basis is harder to pull off than beating top European clubs every year.

Madrid in 2015/16 won more points than Barca under Zidane and beat them in the only clasico they played under him.
Madrid in 2016/17 won La Liga+UCL.
Two straight seasons of being the best team in Europe.
In 17/18 they faltered in the league but still won the CL,

Don't forget that Pep couldn't beat what is arguably one of the worst team to ever win the CL in Chelsea 2012, in a year where Messi scored 91 goals. Talk about some European dominance uh.
 

NasirTimothy

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You keep coming in with these disingenuous arguments. Absolutely no one, not even Liverpool fans would have ever dared to say they had won the Premier League before 2020. The Premier League is a continuity of the English 1st division but it is an entirely trophy on its own, the same applies to the EC and the UCL, except that in this case the difference is even bigger because of the format change.
it’s the same competition in both cases under a different name and I’ve explained all this in other posts (specifically in regard to the CL), please read them and stop bothering me with nonsense.

Sextuple,quintuple, all empty words so that you don't have to name the mickey mouse trophies at play here? Spanish supercup? European Supercup? Club WC? All of that is irrelevant. Zidane won all these things too for that matter.
Fine if you want to disregard them, you’re probably another Madrid fan so you can’t see reason. I’d take 3 straight league titles, one treble and 2 CLs over a CL 3peat and 1 league title. Is that simple enough for you?


Lucks play a greater part in the CL? Ah yes, I forgot that beating up some bottom table teams on a consistent basis is harder to pull off than beating top European clubs every year.
Anyone who knows anything about football knows that luck plays a bigger part in a knockout scenario than in a league scenario, because one bad game or one bad refereeing decision has so much more of an impact on who wins and who doesn’t win the trophy. Obviously you don’t know that much about football.


Madrid in 2015/16 won more points than Barca under Zidane and beat them in the only clasico they played under him.
Madrid in 2016/17 won La Liga+UCL.
Two straight seasons of being the best team in Europe.
In 17/18 they faltered in the league but still won the CL,
And this guy talks about ‘disingenuous arguments’. Hilarious. Have a word with yourself mate. Zidane ‘getting more points’ means absolutely nothing, he didn’t win the title. Is the job to ‘get more points than Luis Enrique in 2016’ or to get enough points to be champions? Please stop with the ridiculous moral victories.

Also, good job of glossing over Madrid’s 76 points in the league in 2018 (their lowest total for over 10 years) by saying that they ‘faltered in the league’. So funny.


Don't forget that Pep couldn't beat what is arguably one of the worst team to ever win the CL in Chelsea 2012, in a year where Messi scored 91 goals. Talk about some European dominance uh.
That team was a great team that had fallen just short many times prior before getting over the hump. You’re talking nonsense again buddy. And all of a sudden you’re claiming that a team that wasn’t very good (though that’s false) somehow won a cup competition. Sounds pretty lucky to me. Make your mind up.
 
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NasirTimothy

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The WC, you get 4 chances in the CL compared to 1 in the WC.
I meant in terms of the strength of the teams?

Which competition has better quality teams, the World Cup or the modern Champions League?
 
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GatoLoco

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Zidane will leave Madrid when the season ends.
 

DoneDaDa

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TeleMadrid aren't that reliable when it comes to Madrid news wouldn't make much out of it.
 

iKnowNothing

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Zidane will leave Madrid when the season ends.
I don’t know how reliable this source is but I happened to visit the gunners sub Reddit and they’re saying they’d rather have Artera than Zidane. Some of them are hoping he’d not go to Spurs and one poster thinks Arsenal are competing with Real Madrid in landing their next manager.

When did some of these Arsenal fans become this deluded?
 

NewGlory

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The World Cup by far.

It is played once every four years.
That and also comparing apples with oranges is meaningless.

Not only World Cup is played every four years but also: a coach doesn't get to work with national teams day-in-day-out like a club coach does. And they don't get to buy players. They have to use what they have got. You may as well compare Champions League with a baseball competition, it is so different from World Cup dynamics.

I meant in terms of the strength of the teams?

Which competition has better quality teams, the World Cup or the modern Champions League?
Champions League. Most years, a champions league winner club can destroy the national team that won the World Cup, since clubs train together all the time and are better built than national teams, in which players only see each other occasionally.
 

Sayros

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I meant in terms of the strength of the teams?

Which competition has better quality teams, the World Cup or the modern Champions League?
Not to butt in the debate, but I think as far as difficult competitions to win, I put the Euro over the World Cup. You can always land on some weaker team in the round of 16 and even 1/4 finals in the world cup, it's much less likely at the Euro IMHO.

Now when it comes to strength of teams, I'd say club teams will always have a huge boost in that they train together far more, you can actually buy any player from any country, and make the best 11 you can. But it doesn't answer the question of which is tougher to win, and I think it's undeniable that it's harder to win a competition that's once every four years with a team that gets limited time together than winning a CL which you can get a shot at every 4 years.
 

NewGlory

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Not to butt in the debate, but I think as far as difficult competitions to win, I put the Euro over the World Cup. You can always land on some weaker team in the round of 16 and even 1/4 finals in the world cup, it's much less likely at the Euro IMHO.
Hard disagree. You may run into weaker teams on the group stage, maybe, but on the flip side, you don't have the deadly Latin American teams to contend with, at Euros. How many title runs of top teams like Netherlands, Germany, England, Italy etc. were ended, at the World Cup by teams like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico etc.? There were also several World Cups in which African teams were force to reckon with.
 

Sayros

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Hard disagree. You may run into weaker teams on the group stage, maybe, but on the flip side, you don't have the deadly Latin American teams to contend with, at Euros. How many title runs of top teams like Netherlands, Germany, England, Italy etc. were ended, at the World Cup by teams like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico etc.? There were also several World Cups in which African teams were force to reckon with.
Decades ago, maybe. I'm only talking about right now. South America is very weak compared to what it was 15-30 years ago.
 

Lay

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Decades ago, maybe. I'm only talking about right now. South America is very weak compared to what it was 15-30 years ago.
Although Europe is ahead of South American football. France got to the final of Euro 16 by playing Rep. Ireland, Iceland, Germany. Portugal did it by finishing 3rd in their group, then got past Croatia, Poland and Wales. Two years later Portugal got knocked out by Uruguay and couldn't beat Iran.
 

Sayros

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Although Europe is ahead of South American football. France got to the final of Euro 16 by playing Rep. Ireland, Iceland, Germany. Portugal did it by finishing 3rd in their group, then got past Croatia, Poland and Wales. Two years later Portugal got knocked out by Uruguay and couldn't beat Iran.
I think you can always find examples like that in any competition, including the world cup. That Portugal team was one of the poorest team to win the Euro since Greece in 2004, but those situations don't happen too often. It's just an opinion, and I'm not married to it, but are Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, or Chile stronger than any of Italy, Germany, England, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Spain, or Belgium in recent times? Same with the African teams. Barring the odd tournament here and there, because that can always happen, but in general I think the level of competition you start to find in the knock-out stages of the Euro is going to be tougher than what you'd find in the world cup nowadays. Just looking at the history of the top 3 finishes in each world cup, it's mainly European teams whether it's recent or distant history, and there's no South American or African teams that you can play to dodge these match ups to get a favorable run to a final where anything can happen in general, but you always have examples like the one you've mentioned, and teams going through a drought of talent or a bad patch, same as with any team around the globe, things can change quickly again where South American teams can become dominant, but that hasn't been the case in a while now and I'm not seeing that wave come yet which makes me feel the Euro is the tougher competition to get through now and for the foreseeable future.

I'm realizing though this is the Zidane thread and it has nothing to do with him. :nervous:
 

NasirTimothy

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That and also comparing apples with oranges is meaningless.

Not only World Cup is played every four years but also: a coach doesn't get to work with national teams day-in-day-out like a club coach does. And they don't get to buy players. They have to use what they have got. You may as well compare Champions League with a baseball competition, it is so different from World Cup dynamics.


Champions League. Most years, a champions league winner club can destroy the national team that won the World Cup, since clubs train together all the time and are better built than national teams, in which players only see each other occasionally.
Not the point of what I was talking about
 

Wolf1992

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Not to butt in the debate, but I think as far as difficult competitions to win, I put the Euro over the World Cup. You can always land on some weaker team in the round of 16 and even 1/4 finals in the world cup, it's much less likely at the Euro IMHO.

Now when it comes to strength of teams, I'd say club teams will always have a huge boost in that they train together far more, you can actually buy any player from any country, and make the best 11 you can. But it doesn't answer the question of which is tougher to win, and I think it's undeniable that it's harder to win a competition that's once every four years with a team that gets limited time together than winning a CL which you can get a shot at every 4 years.
The new Euro with 24 teams is at the same level of a World Cup

But the old format with 8 and 16 teams was definitely way harder and more competitive than the World Cup... without a doubt.
Especially considering that before the 2000s 99% of teams outside UEFA , except Argentina-Brazil-Uruguay, were rubbish.
The World Cup before the 90s was literally UEFA Euro + Argentina and Brazil.
 

Wolf1992

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Hard disagree. You may run into weaker teams on the group stage, maybe, but on the flip side, you don't have the deadly Latin American teams to contend with, at Euros. How many title runs of top teams like Netherlands, Germany, England, Italy etc. were ended, at the World Cup by teams like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico etc.? There were also several World Cups in which African teams were force to reckon with.
Netherlands,Germany,England, France, and Italy were only knocked out at World Cups (in the knockout stage) by either Argentina,Brazil, and other european teams(including medium european teams like Croatia,Bulgaria,Portugal,etc)

On the other hand, we saw Belgium eliminating Brazil in 2018, that would be like Colombia eliminating France or Germany but that hasn't happened yet.
 

GatoLoco

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Allegri and Raul are the main favorites according to well-connected journalists.

@giorno your thoughts about Allegri?
 

amolbhatia50k

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I don’t know how reliable this source is but I happened to visit the gunners sub Reddit and they’re saying they’d rather have Artera than Zidane. Some of them are hoping he’d not go to Spurs and one poster thinks Arsenal are competing with Real Madrid in landing their next manager.

When did some of these Arsenal fans become this deluded?
:lol: Arsenal fans and their irrational love for Arteta
 

giorno

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Allegri and Raul are the main favorites according to well-connected journalists.

@giorno your thoughts about Allegri?
If Zidane leaves he'd be my first choice. Very similar to Zidane i think, should give a measure of continuity to his work

That said, if Zidane leaves we're fecked anyways :(
 

dinostar77

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Pogba's Madrid dream will be over if zidane does leave madrid. Suppose it will be clever of him to get out. Massive rebuild job at madrid and limited budget.
 

carvajal

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Although it refers to the first time he left, it could be applied in this case. Leaving because of the need for a change.
Raúl is very important in the club. They didn't give the chance to Guti but Raúl has another category, besides now there is some hope with players coming up from Castilla.
In any case, I wouldn't mind Allegri
 

The holy trinity 68

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Pogba's Madrid dream will be over if zidane does leave madrid. Suppose it will be clever of him to get out. Massive rebuild job at madrid and limited budget.
They just got to the semi final of the CL and could still win the league which would be twice in a row. I wouldn't say it is a massive rebuild job.
 

Iker Quesadillas

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The rebuild is exaggerated a bit.

The majority of the squad is performing well, very few starters are really old (just Modric and Benzema), and some of the rebuild has already happened.

The issue is more with unexpected absences: if Varane leaves and Carvajal remains injury-prone, if Hazard can never be healthy.