Dion

It's bigger than that. You see, take away the goals Neymar scored, or take away everything Neymar did in the CC and Brazil would still look good. Yet, Brazil hasn't looked good in this World Cup even if you count everything Neymar did in. I'd say it's probably even bigger than tactics alone, despite it being one of the major factors. It was probably the sum of everything - missing our best players, pressure and nerves, lack of tactical plan + proper training, slump of other core players and strong opponents capable of exposing our flaws to the limit.

He has to play better this season. I think nobody can argue with that. If not by creating, then by making runs and scoring - I reckon this will become easier than ever before with Fabregas. But he has to do better offensively.

To be fair the excuse of not enough rest could go on because he didn't have the same rest as most other players since the Olympics. I'm not some sort of specialist but I think it's widely known that a player we'll usually lose a lot of muscle, fat reserves and form by the end of the season due to the amount of matches and training he goes through during the year. And he'll use the period of rest and beginning of a season to rebuild his reserves and muscles. The curve usually goes like: beginning of the season gaining form and muscle again; around mid-season they're at their peak of physical form and slowly decline until the end of the season. Oscar has been working tirelessly with little break to rest for years now. I am more disappointed with him than anyone here, seeing that I've followed him since his youth team days and I'm not seeing much improvement in offensive skills, if anything sometimes it seems he got worse. In part probably because of tougher opposition but he looks less confident too. He looks way too shy and scared on the ball. Despite any tactics or instructions he may be given I wanna see him do better offensively and this is the last season I'm willing to wait. If he doesn't perform regularly all season at least on par with the good performances he's had in the beginning of the season and under the management of RDM I'm giving up, just ship him somewhere else and try to cash on it because maybe he's just no supposed to be, at least not at Chelsea or EPL, maybe he's gonna have more luck elsewhere and he won't be hurting us or himself anymore. His defensive work is fine and really welcome but it means jack shit when his passing, vision or creativity isn't any better than a regular defensive midfielder.

And we only looked good, as I said in the match thread, because they were not pressing our pivot / centre-backs, they were trying to defend too deep and passively. Also the ref giving every little foul and disrupting the game helped us quite a bit. Look at our toughest games. Mexico, Chile and Germany. All of them pressed us heavily in the transition from defense to midfield. Just watch them again. The only difference between those games is that Germany had a better side and knew what to do better and more dangerously after gaining possession. It was clear as day we had a problem building anything as a team.

I believe it's the opposite. When you lose by little, by details, that may be traced back to a player, to a mistake. When you can't even take the ball out of your defense if not for aimlessly shooting long balls forward and you have no presence in the midfield that's not on the players. Sides with way less quality could manage to give more trouble to this german side with proper management. More often than not, large scores like that are result of wrong management or HUGE skill gap. While it's true the german side had better talent, in no way it would translate in 7-1 if our team had proper management. Do you believe Argelia had a better squad? Nope, but they had a proper game plan and knew how to execute it. That way they gave the germans a run for their money. One could argue that the germans played this SF better than ever before in this tournament, and I would agree with that, but our team also has more quality than most teams Germany has beaten in their way to the semis so it should sort of even out. All that considering we had a team of course, not a bunch of players thrown on a pitch.

Dang, I almost made the cut.

I reckon Fabregas should be used in a 4-3-3 interchanging positions dynamically with Oscar depending on the situation or the team we're facing. Let's say we're playing against a side that has a Mata type of player as their cam and a creative player at the pivot, a deep-lying playmaker if you will - in the mold of Pirlo or Xabi Alonso. In this kind of situation it would be wiser to have Fabregas deeper than Oscar, that way he will avoid their pivot which more likely than not are better at defending than their CAM, which is Mata-esque, providing him more time on the ball to make plays and impact the game and at the same time we can use Oscar to shut down their deep-lying playmaker. If we're playing a team that park the bus or doesn't have a particular strong creative player in their pivot than Fabregas would play further up the pitch and so on. The reason why deep-lying playmakers were ever used was to avoid defensive midfielders in the first place, so it makes sense. Besides, Fabregas has some of the best long balls and through balls I have ever seen, he would definitely work fine there. I also believe Oscar and Fabregas are tactically smart enough to make these transitions or cover for each other seamlessly throughout the match. In the game vs. Colombia, Oscar played almost as a pivot player, covering for players from the back going forward all the time, which means he could cover for Fabregas whenever Fabregas saw an opportunity to bomb forward. This 4-3-3 would consist of Matic, Fabregas and Oscar in the middle, Hazard, Costa/Ba/Lukaku and Schürrle/Willian upfront. A scary line-up in my eyes.

Maybe we'll see more of Aké this season, from what I've seen he looks to be a really talented lad. I'd love to see him get more play time. He can play as a centre-back, can't he?

Dude, you think he's thrash, has no potential for improvement, no skill, overrated, overpriced, whatever. We get it. You don't need to spill your hate for the boy everyday in every single opportunity, it gets old really fast. Come back when you have something different to say.

No attacking player has ever been "super" effective playing for Barcelona since Messi's rise to the core of the team. Henry, Ibrahimovic, Villa, Sanchez, Neymar, you name it. Everyone of them played below their standards after moving to Barca. Oddly enough, Sanchez was only brought to life after Neymar's arrival. They assisted each other quite a lot. But even then, they both are still playing below their top performances there. I reckon Sanchez would play a lot better would he move to any other team.

It does remind me of certain users whenever they post on this thread.

Hazard can do a decent defensive work but please don't use the word tackle when comparing both. Oscar has superb tackling stats even for pivot / centre-back standards. We would definitely be losing a lot in defense and gaining a lot in offense with that exchange, which is a fair trade, but please don't act like they both have the same defensive efficiency.

The only part I disagree with is the last. I think Hazard is on par with most of those names. I'd say it is mostly form the deciding factor between them currently, other than that I agree. Most of all, I loved the organization with all those (1) (2) (a), if I did write all that it would be messy as heck.

I don't think the lack of pressing is Oscar's fault. If anything this is one of the few things he still does efficiently. At times it seems he's the only one doing it. Felipão should reinforce the importance of pressuring high on the pitch. Also the striker who has the most energy and who can press better should play, none of them can score anyways, so we might as well put someone who can force passing mistakes from defenders, be it Jo, Fred, Hulk or any other, I don't care who it is. But I'm afraid we shouldn't discuss Brazil NT problems on Oscar's thread.

I have absolutely no clue why it has stopped. Same players, same manager. Why the fuck are they not pressing as much as before?

The way I see it, when Oscar has the free role he impacts more the team as a whole. Not only does he play better he makes several players play better. Neymar on the free role not so much, because he always try too much and usually by himself, he doesn't bring others into play as much. Not that he's bad, I just think Oscar would be a better choice, also Neymar plays worse in certain aspects when free. For example, since Neymar became the focus he's been dropping too deep, now he has to dribble past like 4 or 5 players to be able to shoot and he always tries to by himself. I don't think he should help creating chances from behind, he should be making runs behind defenders or receiving the ball in forward positions where he's only got to beat one or two markers before finishing/passing/crossing. He's also not as effective from the middle as from the left. This free role may even be detrimental to him. It puts him on the spotlight but it doesn't necessarily improve his final product. It could, if he was willing to pass and assist more.

Speaking for Brazil NT only, I think we played better when Oscar was on the free role instead of Neymar. Neymar is just too selfish and attacking oriented whereas Oscar does it all.

I think he needs a free role to excel. In his best games I remember seeing him everywhere, sometimes he would be upfront finishing, sometimes he would drop deep to distribute, sometimes he would be marking and doing defensive work, sometimes he would be making a run between defenders, sometimes he would be wide trying a cross. It seemed like he always knew where the team needed him, I would praise his tactical awareness more than anything else he had. Right now he seems to be too focused on defending and going down the wings. It's so weird.

Maybe you're on to something but Oscar has played better with Scolari too. I think it is more than that. I think he's still on a slump, he looks terrible compared to how he used to play.

Oscar is playing worse for Brazil than he used to. It is easily noticeable that he's not the same player he used to be and I don't know what happened. One year ago, Oscar would be my MOTM for our NT in 8/9 games out of 10. He would pretty much always outperform Neymar too. Now Neymar plays better than him in every game while performing in a level about the same he's always have with the yellow jersey and, bar the first game against Croatia, Oscar hasn't come close to being MOTM. Oscar used to produce a lot more attacking chances, I thought he would bring his Brazilian NT form to Chelsea one day but it seems the opposite is happening.

German flair?!

As a matter of fact it isn't legal in football either. It is legal to slide tackle a ball in both football and real life, not another human being. In reality, some physical contact is tolerated as a consequence of a sliding tackle to reach the ball. Extremely risky sliding tackles are punished whether you hit the player or not because the goal is to touch the ball, not the player. Sliding tackles which threaten other players more than target the ball are always punished and are discouraged.

I reckon Evander Holyfield would choose some broken bone

I think he meant you can't say the player wanted to break the other player's leg, per say. He wanted to hit him, that's for sure, but how much damage did he expect/intend to do? That's hard to know. Still should be punished, don't get me wrong. If you are taking the risk of breaking someone's leg by yourself you should see heavy punishment, even if what you had in mind was some bruises and scratches.