Quote:
Originally Posted by Green Kool Aid
Nice to see you rate remy. His movement is not great but when he breaks through onside he looks a real threat to score. Your list makws me want to watch some non english football. List is great but torres sucks
Suarez deserves his spot. Closest player to messi in style.
Remy should only get better. I do have some reservations IF he'll be great playing with Crouch though if that becomes the Redknapp scenario.
Do you watch Champions League? In terms of pure level of play quality that's the best I think. I really enjoy those games. Even some relative under the radar, not hailed as a great game by anyone, like the last Porto-PSG was real quality and far better than the large majority of games I watch across the leagues every week.
I realize I'm well into blasphemy and it's probably a symptom of having become too far removed from any sort of healthy football-fandom, but just from a pure disturbing wet-dream of fantastic level of play week in and week out the now pretty much buried idea of a European Super League full season does actually appeal to me. The quality could be so great! But of course I'd hate to see the effect (possibly ruin) of the various leagues that I enjoy so much and that has so much history. The downside of it must be too grave.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BRpokah
Damiao at 16 is beyond crazy.
It's very possible it would also seem like that to me had I seen his performances in Brazil recently but though it's an argument that doesn't work great when doing current rankings of players, I do think time (hopefully soon) will prove me right. I think he is a beast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Green Kool Aid
Bjorn--how would you rank league quality?
England, Spain, Germany, Italy are top 4 I know. You seem to prefer Brazil and Portugal over Dutch league...how would you round out top 10 or so leagues?
It's a classic argument. Maybe the best thing is just to look at the coefficients. The leagues still have their different characteristics. Certainly those 4 are still quite different and teams would be a lot different if they were in another country.
In the European battleground I do think the Spanish teams have it most right currently but apart from the big two they have huge financial issues that seriously hurt them. The English teams as a whole can buy more valuable players and it's almost inexcusable if they don't seriously pull away with their advantages. Outside of Real, Barca, Bayern and maybe Juve (if not now then soon) their biggest theoratical competition for most valuable players is from Russia, China and maybe talent staying longer in Brazil. Thankfully the talent pool in this the most global of sports is so bottomless deep.
Germany as everyone knows is in a good state that seems to only be getting better while Italy are sort of stuck at least trying to avoid the same trap of Spain. The Italian tv deal is better though and thankfully Juventus rebounded or things would look really bad. If I try and compare teams across those two leagues it's still pretty close though you have to give Germany an advantage just by having both Bayern and Dortmund where they are right now in terms of quality. Italy have a number of good teams, some with good looking futures, some with bad, but apart from Juve not really comparable with those two.
Outside of the big flag bearers (where you can count a few more big quality squads in England) in those leagues I still like some of the Spanish clubs the most right now, like Atletico and probably Malaga as well but in general it's pretty close between a big number of clubs in those four leagues I think. Too close to argue too strongly over x-German midtable club vs x-Spanish.
Swansea are kind of interesting right now since they're probably the closest thing to a La Liga good midtable team you have ever seen in England. Laudrup coaches exactly like he did at Mallorca and Getafe and if he had resources and control there these are pretty much the players he would have brought in as well.
So where would Swansea place in Spain? In general I think the big mass there around 13-14-15 teams are quite equal. Some with more upside than others of course but in many ways they just trade blows every week.
Last edited by Bjørn; 01-30-2013 at 11:40 AM.