OT: soccer thread

[Thaliontil]

Det, Domínguez is a total riddle in terms of production. I´m a supporter of Valencia C.F, but I have many friends who are die hard fans of the Atleti and Álvaro was one of the jewels of their base teams (I don´t know the translation in English, sorry) but also a very irregular player. The team needed 8 millions profit in terms of sells before the end of June, and that´s why they traded him. He has shown details of a great defender, but he lost his position in favor of Godín and Miranda, and they are not Beckenbauer and Puyol. But I would want the guy for Valencia, from my point of view it´s a great signing , and Luuk de Jong would be wonderful!

And in regard to the final this afternoon. I really hope we win. I don´t know why Del Bosque hasn´t put Fernando Llorente in at least one of our games, so I suppose he won´t even get 25+minutes today as a great backup from the bench. We will probably go with Torres, who caused a lot of problems to Italians defense on the first match (Well, he caused problems but then he MISSED 3 one on one with Buffon, let´s see how he works today). Italy is playing at the same level we did 4 years ago in Austria, but I hope we can stop Pirlo (Xabi and Busquets would do that job) and have a good match for the first time in the whole tournament. I want to see that Spain who erased Rusia in the semifinals of 2008 or the one fighting with Germany/Portugal 2 years ago. A lot of people are very pessimistic but I think we will win, this team deserves credit for what they have fulfilled.

[Det the Threat]

Det, Domínguez is a total riddle in terms of production. I´m a supporter of Valencia C.F, but I have many friends who are die hard fans of the Atleti and Álvaro was one of the jewels of their base teams (I don´t know the translation in English, sorry) but also a very irregular player. The team needed 8 millions profit in terms of sells before the end of June, and that´s why they traded him. He has shown details of a great defender, but he lost his position in favor of Godín and Miranda, and they are not Beckenbauer and Puyol. But I would want the guy for Valencia, from my point of view it´s a great signing , and Luuk de Jong would be wonderful!

Yeah, I know they had to sell one of their defenders and they chose to take our offer of 7 million euros for Dominguez.
He seems like a very aggressive defender that knows how to challenge opponents but is also a bit limited in his playmaking skills.
Though, we don't need that much of playmaking(the guy we lost to Bayern, Dante, is one of the best at that in the Bundesliga) from him as we got more creative at the defensive midfield positions with Xhaka and Tolga Cigerci having a shot.

BTW: The final round of CL-Qualification has been drawn today.
Here are the pairings.

Champions
Basel - Cluj
Helsingborg - Celtic
Borisov - Schmona
Limassol - Anderlecht
Zagreb - Maribor

Non-Champions
Braga - Udinese
Spartak Moscow - Fenerbahce
Malaga - Panathinaikos
Mönchengladbach - Kyiv
Lille - Copenhagen

We got Kyiv, which was the toughest possible opponent we could've drawn and we'll also play the first match at home.

[fatlever]

USA 1 - Mexico 0

first win in mexico, ever. well done.

[e4Nf6]

Azteca was unrecognizable....Even with a midweek game and B teams on both sides it's shocking to see it half-empty like that.

I was almost completely uninterested in the game until we scored.... I always imagined our first win in Mexico would be more dramatic than this.

[fatlever]

Azteca was unrecognizable....Even with a midweek game and B teams on both sides it's shocking to see it half-empty like that.

I was almost completely uninterested in the game until we scored.... I always imagined our first win in Mexico would be more dramatic than this.

true. it does feel a little cheap. friendly, half-empty stadium, our B- team vs their B+ team.

would have been so so much more awesome if it was in WCQ next summer in front of 105,000 pissed off fans.

[LamarMatic7]

Chelsea just got robbed by the refs. Did you see that Fats?

[Eoghan]

LFC got robbed today, too. But that's business as usual lately.

[fatlever]

Chelsea just got robbed by the refs. Did you see that Fats?

i did. it completely ruined my day. losing to man united is one thing, but to lose to them due to atrocious officiating is another. we were manhandling them for the previous 30 minutes prior to the two red cards. i can live with the one on ivanovic, but that torres red was just ridiculous, especially considering sturridge was waiting to come on for torres and the ref didnt allow the sub at the previous dead ball. we could have hung on with 10 men, but 9 men, no chance. and the go-ahead goal, of course it was offsides. as usual, fergie acts as if its an outrage if man united don't get those types of calls.

new rumor swirling that chelsea has lodged a complaint against the ref for abusive language towards two chelsea players.

@dave, i missed the liverpool game. what happened? are you loving the show "being liverpool"?

[fatlever]

the more i see replays of the ivanovic red card, the more i think it was soft. young appeared to be diving before ivanovic barely touched his foot.



here is the red card on torres for "diving" evans clearly takes out his feet. torres may sell the foul a little, but its definitely not a dive.



and here is an image of the hernandez offsides goal. he is clearly offsides. its not really even close.



thats three crucial calls in the span of about 10 minutes, all three calls went against chelsea and in favor of united.

[fatlever]

Chelsea Rumours ‏@ChelseaRumours

Guardian reporting that the inappropriate remark by Clattenburg was a racist slur directed towards Mikel. Mikel was booked for dissent. #CFC

[Eoghan]

@dave, i missed the liverpool game. what happened? are you loving the show "being liverpool"?

Suarez scored off a Gerrard free kick in the 88th minute that would have clinched the match 3-2 and the ref mysteriously disallowed it. Wasn't even close to being offsides and no foul to be seen. After the replay the announcers were immediately like "oh dear." I think the Evertonians booing everything the Reds did all match got into the line judge's head or something. A shame b/c it was a fairly well officiated match all in all.

The show's okay but a little boring, although the game footage is sweet. I've only watched the first 3-4 episodes. I can't help but call Jonjo Shelvey "king of the golf course" every time I see him now b/c Rodgers calls him that during a practice, jokingly.

[Probst]

The Ivanonic red was there but Clattenburg's view was obstructed for the Torres incident and he simply guessed. No defending the missed offside decision. Mata is having a super season though, Van Persie too

The Saurez disallowed goal was frustrating but on the balance of play, a draw was fair.

[fatlever]

but Clattenburg's view was obstructed for the Torres incident and he simply guessed.

he definitely guessed. he didnt have a good view. if he didnt have the view he should have just ignored the play all-together. i also think he forgot torres was on a yellow. i think you could see it on his face when he realized the yellow for dive resulted in red for torres. no way you make that guess when its for red.

agreed about mata, he has been stellar the past 5 or 6 games.

[LamarMatic7]

thing about the Torres booking that bothers me is that a referee just shouldn't do that. He knew that Torres had already received a yellow, he had just sent off Ivanovic, he didn't have the best angle and considering all that he still left them two men short. I'm not saying that it should affect a official's judgement - a foul should be a foul all the time, the circumstances shouldn't matter, but we all know that that's just the way refs usually officiate and actually it isn't that bad. In this scenario - he shouldn't have sent off the second Chelsea player in such a short time span for a play he didn't see.

[fatlever]

so the news coming out of london is that mata claims clattenburg called him a "spanish twat" and mikel claims he called him a "monkey".

if the ref said those things, disgraceful. if the chelsea players are lying, disgraceful.

[LamarMatic7]

so the news coming out of london is that mata claims clattenburg called him a "spanish twat" and mikel claims he called him a "monkey".

if the ref said those things, disgraceful. if the chelsea players are lying, disgraceful.

this has the makings of a big scandal. and imagine how tense will the wednesday game be.

[fatlever]

yeah, lots of added drama to a previously uneventful carling cup clash.

my guess is chelsea rotates most of the squad on wednesday, except center back, since terry and ivanovic are unavailable, something like

---------------------------turnbull--------------------------
azi..-----------cahill------------------luiz---------bertrand
--------------------romeu-----------ramires----------------
moses---------------------piazon--------------------marin
-------------------------sturridge------------------------------

i assume man united will probably rotate most everyone as well.

[fatlever]

fox soccer lost the rights to EPL in the US today. NBC will have rights starting next year. i hope this isnt a bad thing. i get pretty much every chelsea game live currently. how does NBC improve on that?

[Det the Threat]

Man, seems like Chelsea got robbed in this one.
Too bad I couldn't watch because of work.

Also, I find myself watching more and more Chelsea games, as their offense of Hazard, Oscar, Mata and Torres is really fun to watch.

@fats:
Do you still have the Bundesliga package?
If so, what were you able to watch so far?

My team's up and down this year but that's to be expected, if you're losing three key players of your squad.
Though, we just managed to beat Marseille and then won at 3:2 Hannover yesterday after being down 2:0.
That broke their 22 game unbeaten streak at home and Juan Arango is just playing fantastic this season.
He's scoring unbelieveable goals, assisting on many more and just did it again yesterday with another fantastic free kick.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g026x0XVMBk[/youtube]

[fatlever]

@det - i am still getting the bundesliga games here on goltv. i havent watched a ton of games though, because they are usually competing with EPL games. i have watched a few here an there and i try to catch the US players if they are on, so i have seen some shalke games and hoffenheim games for fabian johnson and danny williams. ive also tried to catch werder so i can see chelsea loaned player kevin de brunye.