The International Football Thread

[OneMoSalah 8,615]

29 minutes ago, Vesper said:

Ferran Torres is looking every bit the monster I assumed he would become

hat trick and almost had a 4th

Top talent with huge potential. Once Pep gives him a run regularly he will take off. 

[Vesper 27,341]

Just now, OneMoSalah said:

Top talent with huge potential. Once Pep gives him a run regularly he will take off. 

yes, he and Foden will be terrors for years

[Magic Lamps 11,452]

32 minutes ago, Vesper said:

yes, he and Foden will be terrors for years

Really hope Pep leaves and gets replaced by a completely inadequate manger who ruins their development lol. Dont see it happening. The sheiks sadly know what they are doing. their club is run superbly.

[Vesper 27,341]

Is this all part of Germany's elaborate rope-a-dope masterplan?

A proper shoeing, earlier. Photograph: Fran Santiago/Getty Images

Scott Murray

LET’S TALK ABOUT SECHS, JÖGI It’s about time The Fiver started seriously planning for the future. Time to grow up, identify prudent investment opportunities, build a portfolio, make our money work for us. So this morning we put our entire life’s savings on Germany winning either the Euros next year or the World Cup the one after. It’s a shoo-in, quite frankly, if Tuesday night’s fiasco in Seville is anything to go by. Joachim Löw’s rabble had the back seat of their trousers handed to them by Spain, a team who hadn’t won in three and didn’t fancy their chances of getting the victory that would send them to the semi-finals of the Confected Importance League. Germany’s 6-0 defeat is being framed in some quarters as a humiliation, but The Fiver knows it’s as good as a written guarantee of silverware. Pints of Germany’s answer to Purple Tin, das Föamingshaafft, all round!

Ferran Torres's treble helps Spain humble Germany in Nations League Read more

Thing is, many of Germany’s biggest successes have come hot on the heels of their most egregious and embarrassing failures. The 1954 World Cup, for example, won a couple of weeks after losing 8-3 to Hungary. The 1974 World Cup, hoisted in the wake of a politically embarrassing defeat by the East Germans, a result that sent coach Helmut Schön so deep into the slough of despond that he locked himself into his room and only ate when staff mashed up his food for him. Germany reached the 2002 final despite the humiliation of shipping five goals at home to Géd Houllier’s Liverpool. And then there was 2013, when they heaped shame on the nation by only managing a 1-0 win against a team managed by Mr Roy. You know exactly what happened the year after. It’s a long-established pattern. It’s how they roll. Mind you, Germany are really going for it big this time. Tuesday’s farce was merely the cherry on the cake of a distinctly underwhelming sequence in which they’ve won only three of the last eight, scoring 14 but letting in 17. If this is all part of an elaborate rope-a-dope masterplan, they’re really pushing their luck this time, because habits die hard after a while. Happily, everyone in the German camp seems calm and in control, even though Löw’s stricken demeanour in the post-match presser may have convinced the team chef to cut up his steak into little cubes that go choo-choo in the tunnel. “We still trust Joachim Löw, no doubt about that,” insisted DFB director Oliver Bierhoff afterwards. So the manager’s job is safe … as is The Fiver’s £3.72 investment with the turf accountant, we’ll be bound. LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE Join Scott Murray from 7.45pm GMT for hot MBM coverage of England 2-1 Iceland, while Nick Ames will be on hand for international clockwatch coverage too. QUOTE OF THE DAY “I’m quite down to earth so when I met them for the first time I wasn’t too starstruck. But when I did find out it was people with such significant global reach, it did seem quite surreal. It’s been a wild few months” – Wrexham director Spencer Harris tells Ed Aarons about the red-hot chats that tempted Deadpool and Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia to enter the world of National League club ownership.

The Gang Ready Themselves for Aldershot at Home. Composite: Lewis Storey/Getty Images; Woohae Cho/Getty Images for Netflix; Philip Cheung/The Guardian

RECOMMENDED LISTENING The game and mental health: a Football Weekly special.

[Vesper 27,341]

Koke is not the new Xavi – but he’s back to his best and dominating midfield

https://theathletic.com/2200490/2020/11/18/koke-spain-atletico-madrid-midfield/

“Koke was super happy, as is logical, as he really wanted to get back and play for Spain,” a source close to the Spain midfielder told The Athletic after their 6-0 Nations League win over Germany on Tuesday evening in Seville.

“Even though he was not called up for two years, he never lost that excitement of playing for La Seleccion or the ambition to return. He is a super balanced guy — not someone who gets carried away when things go really well or get down when things get difficult. He knows clearly what he has to do and he does it, as he did last night.”

It really was a triumphant return to prominence with La Roja for Koke, who was even wearing the captain’s armband as the last three goals went in after usual skipper Sergio Ramos limped off with a hamstring injury.

Koke had been the leader of the Spanish performance over the entire game as he completely outshone Real Madrid’s Toni Kroos in the German engine room and pushed his team into waves of attacks, completely overwhelming Joachim Low’s team. Spain had 70 per cent possession, 23 shots to Germany’s two, and Koke pulled the strings with 95 per cent pass accuracy, including seven accurate long balls and four key passes.

It was also no wonder that Koke was delighted after the game given that just a few months ago, things were looking very different for the Atletico Madrid midfielder, with his career seeming to have stalled for both club and country.

He won his 44th international cap for Spain soon after playing his part in their disastrous 2018 World Cup in Russia, but was then discarded completely by both national coaches Luis Enrique and Robert Moreno through qualifying for Euro 2020 and the first two rounds of Nations League games this year.

Koke’s disappearance was noted but not really a source of much debate outside of Atletico-leaning pundits.

He had burst onto the scene as a key part of Diego Simeone’s 2013-14 La Liga title-winning side, having won the previous year’s Under-21 European Championship alongside near-contemporaries David de Gea, Thiago Alcantara, Isco, Dani Carvajal, Alvaro Morata and Iker Muniain. This generation of emerging Spanish players were supposed to continue on the success of La Roja’s amazing successes from 2008 to 2012 when Xavi, Iker Casillas, David Villa et al were unstoppable. But instead, Koke’s first years with the international team saw national disappointment and embarrassment at the 2014 World Cup, Euro 2016 and the 2018 World Cup.

“We all had those memories of the players who won everything with Spain, who made everyone so happy,” says the source. “But Koke never compared himself to Xavi. That would be crazy. It was like looking for a new Iker (Casillas), which is what is still happening now with the ongoing debate over the goalkeeper. Or looking for a new Villa. There will be no more Xavis, or Casillas’ or Villas — and those comparisons among fans and in the media were unfair and did not help.”

Atletico have also been through their own seasons of transition over that time, with key players and team leaders like Gabi, Diego Godin and Antoine Griezmann moving on, and Koke being earmarked as the new leader at club level, too. At age 28, he has played 467 games for his only club in all competitions, placing him fourth on their all-time appearances list already. But when the team has struggled, as it has at various times in recent years, the homegrown kid has been the focus of criticism from frustrated Rojiblancos supporters.

After he was whistled at the Wanda Metropolitano in October 2019, Simeone explained that Koke was spending too much time trying to fix all his team’s problems, taking on former team-mate Gabi’s role screening the defence as well as shouldering his playmaking responsibility. It was too much — and also explained why Spain coaches looked at players such as Sergio Canales and other, younger options including Dani Ceballos, Mikel Merino and Fabian Ruiz.

“Koke’s generosity on the pitch, sometimes, takes away from the brilliance of his play,” the source who knows him says. “Koke is a guy who understands football like few do. He sees perfectly what is happening on the pitch. That brings him to try and fix all the imbalances he detects, and that often sees him looking backwards, running 13 kilometres a game, and spending a lot of time in tactical adjustments. When he is surrounded by the right team-mates, with the right balance, then he is freed to play his best position and produce his best attacking football. And when Koke can go forward, things happen like (Tuesday) night.”

The opening months of the 2020-21 season have seen Koke playing a central playmaking role for Atletico, noticeably breaking into the penalty area more often and linking productively with the team’s new attacking stars Joao Felix and Luis Suarez. He has been at the heart of their play as Atletico have won five and drawn two of their first seven La Liga games, while scoring 17 times and conceding twice, and they go into their game against Barcelona (on Saturday) in good form. He is touching the ball 88 times per game, while giving 65 successful passes. Last season, that was 71 touches per 90 minutes, and 47 passes completed. It is a small sample size yet it looks like he is flourishing within a better-balanced and more attack-minded Atletico team.

“Having arrived so young, and won things so early, people might think he is coming towards the end,” Koke’s source says. “But he is coming into the peak of his career now. Physically, at the moment, he is like a bull, a missile. He has had good fortune with injuries and he knows that, as the years pass, he has to mind himself a bit more off the pitch. He also has experience at his age that few players have. There is a lot of hard work, a lot of talent, and also that touch of good fortune and timing.”

The timing was also ideal on international level, with no other playmaker nailing down a place in the Spain XI while he was away. Enrique recognised Koke’s return to form and brought him back into the fold for these November international games. A 45th senior cap came in the friendly against Holland last week when he captained an experimental XI from the start. He came off the bench in Saturday’s Nations League game in Switzerland, helping his team come back and equalise late on in a 1-1 draw. Then came the fantastically dominant individual and collective performance against Germany.

There were other redemption stories for Spain on Tuesday, too. Morata continued his superb start to the season, following his escape from Simeone’s Atletico to Juventus. Manchester City’s Ferran Torres is also revelling following his liberation from Peter Lim’s Valencia last summer and hit a clinical hat-trick as the German defence was cut apart again and again. Athletic Bilbao’s Unai Simon keeping his place in goal ahead of Manchester United’s De Gea looked significant, as did another City player, Rodrigo, starting as the “holder” ahead of the injured Sergio Busquets.

Directing the traffic though, with the balance back again, was Koke. He’s not the new Xavi and Spain still have plenty of issues, which a better opponent than this Germany might exploit at next summer’s Euros. But he is playing his best football in a long time and that augurs very well for both club and country over the coming months.

 

[NikkiCFC 7,589]

Saul did not play for Spain for one year now.

[Vesper 27,341]

Zlatan Ibrahimovic in talks with Swedish football chiefs about international comeback

https://www.thelocal.se/20201126/zlatan-ibrahimovic-in-talks-with-swedish-football-chiefs-about-international-comeback

[NikkiCFC 7,589]

I remember him from 2002 World Cup and goal against France.

[Jase 43,479]

Germany are walking into a disaster...

 

[Vesper 27,341]

By saving Low now, the German FA has put itself firmly in the firing line

https://theathletic.com/2231668/2020/12/01/joachim-low-germany-football/

The timing came as a surprise, the substance less so. On Monday afternoon, four days earlier than initially announced, the German FA (DFB) presidential board declared its “unanimous” support for national team manager Joachim Low.

The decision to stick with the 60-year-old was moved forward to avoid a long build-up of media speculation this week but it had been widely expected. Oliver Bierhoff, the national team and academy director, was never likely to break with Low after more than 14 years jointly in charge.

His confidential talks with influential team members and high-ranking Bundesliga officials had uncovered plenty of concern about Low’s vague coaching and uninspiring leadership but no real lust for blood.

Inside the divided, strife-riven five-men presidential committee responsible for appointing — and sacking — the national team manager, the Low-sceptics were outnumbered and essentially powerless to go up against Fritz Keller and Bierhoff.

Low succeeded in convincing the committee that the 6-0 defeat Spain was an accident and not representative of his work since the 2018 World Cup.

“The performance of the national team and the coach cannot and must not be judged off the back of one single match,” the DFB’s press release read. His argument followed the same line that Bierhoff had put forward not long after the horror show in Sevilla: setbacks are to expected, this is a process, things are broadly on track.

The topic of a possible recall for Mats Hummels, Thomas Muller and Jerome Boateng was also brought up, but again, the FA bought into his view that all three would only come into consideration in an emergency. The press release implicitly referred to the trio twice. It mentioned the board’s “unequivocal” backing of Low’s “efforts to rebuild the national team, which have been ongoing since March 2019” — specifically, the month that the three World Cup winners were told they had no future with the national team as part of Low’s plans for a younger Germany side.

It also emphasised that “the head coach has been given approval for his assessment that future tournaments — namely, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and Euro 2024 on home soil — should already play a role in current considerations in terms of sporting approach and personnel”. Translation: Low is right to trust young players now.

But mixed in with this support is also some not-so-subtle and very self-serving backtracking on behalf of the German FA.

First, it listed some positives (Germany “qualifying for the Euros, remaining in League A of the Nations League, and being placed in the first pot for World Cup qualification”) that aren’t actual achievements but the bare necessities for any Germany manager.

The demands of him for next year’s competition appear also incredibly modest. Instead of insisting on Germany reaching at least the semi-finals as Keller had done a few months ago, expectation has now been downgraded to “positive results” and “an inspiring performance at Euro 2021”. The line about Low’s plans taking future tournaments into account almost sounds like a preemptive excuse for another poor tournament. It’s a transparent attempt by the FA officials to shield themselves from the fallout of another debacle with Low at the helm. But it won’t wash.

Even observers who broadly agreed with the German FA’s “Remain” vote have made the salient point that Keller’s and Bierhoff’s necks will be on the line if their trust will appear misguided in six months. Neither public nor media will take the magnanimous view that the Euros should best be seen as preparation for the next World Cup. Another manager might have been afforded such a free hit. But Low will lose the last remnants of the nation’s confidence if he oversees a second catastrophe.

Whether he should move on regardless of the outcome was a subject not explicitly mentioned. Many believe that would be the right call but in time-old tradition, officials decided on a wait-and-see strategy. The final reckoning will only come after the Euros. By that time, the best man available for the job, Ralf Rangnick, is unlikely to be still available. But there’s a suspicion that Bierhoff is playing for time, in any case. The DFB is worried that Rangnick’s approach will prove too radical in its attention to detail at all relevant levels for their tastes. They would prefer Hansi Flick or Jurgen Klopp to take over in time for the immensely important Euro 2024 on home soil.

Klopp, according to the slightly wishful thinking in Frankfurt, might have won so much with Liverpool by then that they will release him before his existing deal (until 2024) expires. It’s an unlikely scenario, though. The German has always fulfilled his contracts and also informed those close to him that he’s intent on taking a sabbatical once his mission at Anfield is over.

Getting Flick isn’t straightforward either as long as he’s successful in Munich.

But even the best coaches don’t tend to last longer than two or three years in Bavaria, which may make bring him into play for 2024. In the mean-time, under-21s coach Stefan Kuntz could hold the fort as an interim manager, but all of those considerations will become more or less irrelevant if Germany go home early next summer. The ensuing earthquake would consume not just Low but also his enablers in the federation.

By saving Low now, FA bosses have put themselves firmly in the firing line.

[NikkiCFC 7,589]

 

[Magic Lamps 11,452]

49 minutes ago, NikkiCFC said:

 

At least 25 points even with Löw. Thank you very much for nothing. Will boycott both the qualifiers and the Qatar Wc

[Vesper 27,341]

1 hour ago, Magic Lamps said:

At least 25 points even with Löw. Thank you very much for nothing. Will boycott both the qualifiers and the Qatar Wc

why are Die Mannschaft fans always so upset?

you are giving us Brits a run for the money, lolol

both you are Italy can tie the Brasilians for 5 WC wins

and to be honest

it should be both you and Italy with five NOW, and Brasil with only 3

Italy should have won in 1994 (Baggio miss)

and Germany would have won in 2002 if Ballack had not taken that FOOLISH yellow in the 71st minute versus SoKo and thus missed the final on cards (an outrageous rule that is now gone) I TRULY believe he was that big a miss. I was 9 years old and cried like a baby when Brasil won (I remember France 1998, but at 5 was not really that much aware of it all, other than my father going bonkers (he lived in France as a young man whilst going to uni, and then his first banker job)

fuck Brasil, I fucking hate them (almost at a Spuds, manure, bindipper level)

I almost peed my panties in joy in 2014 at that 7-1 CRUSHING by Germany of the twats

I also want the Netherlands to finally win a WC (2010 gutted me, I hate Spain, and they should have beaten Germany in 1974 (Hungary should have beaten Germany in 1954 as well, if we are being honest), 1978 Argentina was too strong, a superb team and at home)

 

[Jase 43,479]

...................................

[NikkiCFC 7,589]

Ridiculous! 

[Nero 1,794]

[Vesper 27,341]

Paolo Rossi, Italian football great and World Cup winner, dies aged 64

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/dec/10/paolo-rossi-italian-football-great-and-world-cup-winner-dies

Paolo Rossi, the star of Italy’s 1982 World Cup-winning team, has died at the age of 64.

The news was announced in the early hours of Thursday morning by Italian TV channel RAI Sport, for whom Rossi had been working as a pundit.

“A very sad news: Paolo Rossi left us,” RAI Sport presenter Enrico Varriale tweeted. “Unforgettable Pablito, who made us all fall in love in that summer of ‘82 and who has been a precious and competent workmate at RAI in recent years. RIP dear Paolo.”

Rossi’s wife, Federica Cappelletti, posted a photo of herself and her husband to her Instagram account along with the words “per sempre” – “forever”.

She did not disclose the cause of his death.

The former Juventus and AC Milan player is widely regarded as one of the best forwards of all time and is most famous for his heroics at the 1982 World Cup in Spain.

In the final he scored the opening goal as Italy defeated West Germany 3-1. Earlier in the tournament, in what is still considered one of the best World Cup performances, he scored a hat-trick to beat Brazil 3-2 and send one of the favourites out early. Rossi won the tournament’s Golden Boot and Golden Ball and, in the same year, the Ballon d’Or.

That he was involved in the 1982 World Cup at all was only down to a reduction of a match-fixing ban. Rossi was the world’s highest-paid player when, in 1980, he was banned for three years after it emerged that a 2-2 draw between Perugia – where he was on loan from Vicenza – and Avellino was fixed by a betting syndicate.

Rossi denied involvement and his ban was commuted to two years. The then 25-year-old, who had in the interim been purchased by Juventus, returned to the game two months before the tournament.

Rossi spent his entire club career in Italy, winning two Serie A titles and helping Juve to the 1984 European Cup.

Tributes began to flow on social media, with Jürgen Klinsmann among world football figures to share his condolences. “Dear Pablito, we always remember you!” he tweeted.

Rossi is the second World Cup winner to die in the space of two weeks following last month’s death of Argentine great Diego Maradona from a heart attack.

[NikkiCFC 7,589]

Lol our federation want Raymond Domenech for new NT coach. WTF he did not had a job for 10 years and picks team after reading horoscope