stop now.

Just got a chance to watch the Argentina game and my expectations have come crashing down to earth. I thought that this team could win it all this year, but I was disappointed by what I saw today.

- The defense is absolutely porous.

- Demichelis seems like he would have a hard time in the MLS, and is clearly beyond his depth here. Can someone who watches him play more than I do tell me if he is just running bad, or is he really that lost?

- they give the opponents way too many opportunities to get into open space. Mexico couldn't take advantage of it, but elite level teams certainly will.

If I am watching my team with a 3-0 lead in the 70th minute, and I am still uneasy about the final result, there is something seriously wrong.

I hope they will find a way to beat Germany, but I don't think they can.

Can someone who knows more about soccer than me (most of the posters in here tbh) please give me something to believe that the Albiceleste have a chance to win it all this year?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...eague_managers

gonna edit in all the guys whose first managerial job was in the premier league. Gimme a few mins.

Sir yes sir. I think I got my point across.

As an aside, I did tell my brother before the match today that I wouldn't be surprised if England went out and won by 2 today after their performace vs Slovenia. And yes, I did feel kinda bad after the goal was disallowed. UL. GG. Maybe next time.

Tony Adams

Chris Coleman

Kenny Dalglish

Roy Evans

Trevor Francis

Ruud Gullit

Roy Keane

Brian Kidd (kind of)

Steve McClaren

David O'Leary

Tony Parkes

Stuart Pearce

Peter Reid

Bryan Robson

Ricky Sbragia

Peter Shreeves

Alan Smith

Gareth Southgate

Gordon Strachan

Gianluca Vialli

Ray Wilkins

Gianfranco Zola

you see it throughout professional sports in general. not so much american football (at least not the head coach and coordinating positions), but baseball, basketball, hockey, etc, ex-players get all sorts of coaching and mgmt opportunities.

I agree that the racism is stupid, but they're all German. Except for Cacau they all grew up in Germany and learned how to play football here. Cacau btw applied for his German citizenship at a time when nobody even considered it to be possible that he would become a part of the German national team.

there is someone who didnt watch the match.

i want to get a detailed timeline of those 30 minutes...

btw this is the 8. time in a row we made it to the quarter finals of the world cup. also never happend that we didnt survive the group stage. just winners!

lol England

Spain plays a more or less flat 4-4-2, they seem to be doing ok. It's a poor excuse to say the system doesnt work, especially given the fact that the team is individually so much stronger than anyone they've faced.

And what was it that led them to qualify before anyone else in Europe? And what about the failures in the last 14 years, because of a wrong system?

GTFO with that. Now go on defending your terrible keeper and what not. Capello is one of the best coaches in the world, pretty sure he can teach a system...

Attitude, baby! Attitude!

yeah but the genes are not germans.

1. How could you compare industry to football on that matter? There are plenty of people who started from scratch in a company and made it all the way to the top. And there arent really superstars in a industrial company, are there?

2. Last sentence is especially wrong. I have no EPL examples, but it shouldnt matter. Uli Hoeneß, arguably the best football manager (not SAF style, merely focusing on financials, sponsoring, transfers and those issues) in the world, started to manage Bayern Munich when he was 27 (I think) and made them big.
Not that hard to learn on the job.
Basically every good coach out there (exception Mourinho) was a professional player before and a lot of them started out at good, some top (like Guardiola), teams and performed rather well.

It's a new generation.

for example özil is the third generation of his family in germany. even his grandparents lived in germany for the most time of their life.


only american indians should play for usa?

nice 5th level post

SPURIOUSSSSSSSSSSSSS

The lot of 'em

I'd do it.

highest loss for a english team at a worldcup, courtesy of germany - ur welcome :-)
on a serious note though argentina will be super tough, be happy u dont have to play them , england would have been shredded like another poster already mentioned...
and lol @ the people calling out / being surprised about the german squad for having a multiethnic team, u havent been in germany in a while / at all i guess ?

who cares? not sure if you are leveling tho, but i will bite this time...

the whole german society has become more and more multicultural so this team actually is a quite fitting representative for our nation and has a great potential to contribute a lot to a better integration of all the different ethnicities being part of our country.
you can also look at all the other national teams. one great example is france. almost all of their players are descend from immigrants. and would you expect the usa to play only with native americans or the aussies only with aborigines? i don't think so.

been thinking about what england's problems are beyond the whole jingoistic lol capello, wait that was clearly a goal momentum shift etc things. some thoughts:

- players are involved in too many games in england. i don't think that the epl is oversized, 20 seems fine, but we don't need two domestic cup competitions (in before nobody plays their first team in the carling cup anyway, that's reason alone to remove it and/or just restrict it to championship and below and merge with the auto windscreens or whoever sponsors that nowadays). a team that makes moderate progress in the fa cup and champions league can easily end up playing close to 60 games in a season right now, which is too many, before you start considering international qualifiers, meaningless friendlies etc.

- tell the EPL "**** your deal with nike, you're using whatever new gimmick ball adidas wants for the world cup/euros when available". at the very least the FA can introduce it for the cup as it's their competition.

- look at the top six or so teams in the EPL. here's sample lineups:

United - VDS, Rafael, Vidic, Evans, Evra, Fletcher, Giggs, Park, Nani, Valencia, Berbatov
Chelsea - Cech, Ivanovic, Carvalho, Alex, Zhirkov, Kalou, Essien, Miken, Malouda, Drogba, Anelka
Arsenal - Almunia, Sagna, Gallas, Vermaelen, Clichy, Diaby, Ramsey, Nasri, Fabregas, Arshavin, RVP
Citeh - Given, Boateng, Toure, De Jong, Zabaleta, Kompany, Vieira, Ireland, Bellamy, Tevez, Adebayor
Liverpool - Reina, Insua, Agger, Skrtel, Kyrgiakos, Mascherano, Lucas, Aquilani, Kuyt, Babel, Torres
Spurs - Gomes, BAE, Bassong, Kaboul, Corluka, Bale, Kranjcar, Palacios, Modric, Pav, Keane

now i don't think any of these are ridiculously below full strength, but which english players would get into those lineups?

United - Rooney and Ferdinand and, er, well Scholes is retired from international football anyway and like 36
Chelsea - Lampard, Cashley, Terry, er, er, that's it
Arsenal - Walcott maybe
City - Lescott? One of Johnson/SWP? Bridge who won't play for England anyway? Micah Richards?
Liverpool - Gerrard, Johnson, about it.
Spurs - Dawson, King maybe, Crouch or Defoe, possibly Lennon, Huddlestone?

point i'm trying to make is that there's very limited opportunity for english players to make it at the top level of the domestic game, because of more and more foreign imports. it's symptomatic of not only the big clubs having to get the very best players from anywhere just to try to break even, but the quality simply not coming through. name one english player that would get into a top six lineup that isn't already there. maybe hart at arsenal? milner might push somewhere but i don't think he'd be guaranteed to start or be a huge improvement. compare that with bayern munich, who got to the champions league final with a lineup including klose, lahm, butt, gomez, muller, schweinsteiger. the sooner that the 6+5 rule comes into play the better.

and who'd want the england job anyway? we've tried and failed with the "hire best coach regardless of nationality" route twice already and seen next to no progress. looking domestically, who would the FA reasonably dare to appoint? can't see redknapp wanting it after taking spurs to the CL. would love hodgson to get it, but after that? big sam? ian holloway? jesus.

rant over. can't wait for germany/argentina.

Good to see Frank Lampard hasn't lost his sense of humour.

I feel like all these post-mortems need to be leavened with a full helping of "lol donkaments"

When did valenzuela turn into a troll? You are better than that man.

Also even if the market has Argentina at 60%, it doesn't mean that they are really 60% to advance. They were already overrated before the Mexico game and it's not surprising that they are overrated again after a result that didn't really represent how the game played out. It's a lot closer than that imo.