I don’t even like Man City but it must be so infuriating to lose your main striker because he got injured on a fucking friendly against Faroe Islands.

Camavinga got injured in a training session, to play a qualification game for a competition France have already qualified, against Gibraltar.

Seriously, fuck off with those international breaks, teams don’t pay millions for their players only to see them getting injured against literal part-time footballers.

The defending on south american leagues is laughable. In Saudi League at least they have some sense of positioning and tactics.

I’m a huge Ronaldo fan myself, but no, he is not one of the best right now. Same goes for Messi, Suarez, Cavani and other players who are doing well in minor leagues, there’s a reason those players don’t play in Europe anymore.

That being said, his performance is still one of the best we’ve ever seen from a 38 (soon 39) year old player, objectively. Also to all the people saying about Saudi League being “terrible”, yeah it’s not the top 5 leagues, but it’s definately much better in terms of quality, tactics and defending right now than all the other leagues players typically go to “retire” (MLS, South America, China etc). The league is not as bad as people try to pretend it is, there are at least 30 players that used to play in the top leagues some months ago. Let’s not pretend that Mahrez, Benzema or Bono became terrible players overnight. Plus Ronaldo is also proving himself consistently in the Asian CL and the Euro Qualifiers.

Long story short, is he one of the best? Nope. Is his performance still very decent for his age, for both club and country? Absolutely. There’s a reason he’s gonna be a starter in the Euros and he 100% deserves that spot.

Totally surprising, also just Googled Immobile and he has only scored 17 goals for Italy. I mean they haven’t been at their best lately (except for 2021), but hasn’t Immobile been their starting striker for almost a decade now? The guy has had many club seasons with 20+ league goals.

Football is the by far the most popular sport in the world, so it makes sense that more money is involved. Huge transfers are part of the excitement of the game nowadays, but without proper management, they mean nothing. Chelsea and Manchester United spent millions (billions?) to rebuild their teams and they’re still average. PSG have spent more than a billion on transfers and wages in order to win a UCL, but they fail miserably every year.

But in Europe, low level teams will generally NEVER compete with top teams.

That is so not correct. Just look at the current La Liga table, Girona are first right now. Speaking of La Liga, Athletic Club is always one of the top 6-8 teams in Spain, but they aren’t allowed to play non Basque players as a principle, so they almost never buy players in general.

Inter were in the UCL final last year and most of their key players were either extremely cheap or free transfers: Onana, Darmian, Dimarco, Acerbi, Calhanoglu, Brozovic, Mkhitaryan, Dzeko etc. All these players costed less than 10M each (some were free) for Inter. Some of them were on really low wages too. Speaking of UCL, almost every year we get a surprise or pretty unexpected team reaching the semis, a team that usually spends far less money than their competitors. 2023 Milan, 2022 Villareal, 2020 Lyon etc.

Other obvious examples are Leicester winning the 2016 EPL or Lille winning 2021 Ligue 1. Huge salaries and transfer fees aren’t as important as most people think.

Nah it makes no sense.

It’s just a random qualify game, relax.

Me and everyone who watches football.

2016/17 was an amazing UCL season for various reasons:

1. Real Madrid become the first team to ever win back to back UCL titles.
2. La Remontada (Barcelona 6-1 PSG, after losing 4-0 in the first game).
3. Kylian Mbappe introducing himself to the world of football. And he did it in style.
4. Monaco reaching the semis, with Mbappe, Falcao, Bernardo Silva, Fabinho, Ben. Mendy, Bakayoko, Lemar. Iconic underdog team.
5. Juventus’ team was iconic as well, that run was the last dance in the competition of so many great players: Buffon, Dani Alves, Higuain, Marchisio etc. Dybala was one of the best players in the world back then.
6. Leicester City in the UCL quarter-finals. Do I need to say more?
7. Bayern 10-2 Arsenal in two games.
8. The top scorer battle. When the round of 16 games ended, Messi had scored 11 goals and Ronaldo had scored only 2. After the final, it was Messi 11, Ronaldo 12. Truly iconic.

Lucas Vazquez is the definition of that. He is just decent/okay at many things on the pitch, but he isn’t really good at anything, except passion and workrate. When Real Madrid signed him in 2015 for 1M, he was supposed to be a 3rd-4th choice winger, I’m pretty sure he never expected to play over 300 games for them, winning 4 UCL titles and also getting some caps for Spain.

I don’t understand why people bring up Ronaldo’s personality as a negative trait of a potential coaching career.

One of the most succesful managers of the past decades was… Jose Mourinho, the guy who called himself the special one.

As a Real Madrid fan, this guy better be the next R9 without injuries, or else we’re completely fucked. So many among our fanbase believe he’s gonna immediately occupy the starting striker position once he arrives and I have a bad feeling that the board thinks the same way. That’s way too much pressure for a 17 year old, I think we should wait at least 3-4 years before (and if) he is ready for pretty much the most important role any footballer in the world could have, being the starting number 9 of Real Madrid.

I wish we could have bought an actual world class and proven striker like Kane instead of chasing every 17 year old available, but it is what it is I guess.

Half of this sub only talks about Messi and Ronaldo, these people don’t watch football at all and you want them to know Grimaldo?

Fantastic football, loved him since his Benfica days. Hope he gets his well deserved Spain appearences.

Yeah obviously, it was just my answer to

but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them

But the guy clarified that he got confused and thought Ronaldo was playing then, while I thought he meant Raul was scoring all the goals, which wasn’t the case.

Gonzalo Higuain only scored 11 in his first 2 seasons at Real, but of course there’s a significant mitigating factor wearing the number 7 shirt scoring all the goals for them.

Tbf Higuain was more of a winger or shadow striker than an actual one at the time. He was also 20.

Also iirc Van Nisterloy was scoring more than Raul at the time.

I don’t think any number 9 in history has an individual impact on their teams like Suarez did

C’mon bro, that’s just cringe. Even if we don’t count CR7 as a striker, Benzema scored 10 goals in UCL knockouts against the best teams in the world just a year ago. If we go further back, you have R9, Gerd Muller, Sheveckenko, Henry, Drogba etc.

I suppose you mean EPL, not EFL, which is England’s second division.

I’d say it’s also cool to look outside of England. Not only your typical Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Bayern etc but there are also so many cool teams around Europe. You might find yourself attached to some Balkan team with crazy fans, or maybe a Dutch team with tons of young talented players. I get that EPL is the most popular and most easy to follow for many reasons, but I’d say try something less boring.

I’m European, but I simply don’t understand the appeal of basketball.

First of all, if you aren’t lucky to have 6’6+ genes in your family, you’re completely screwed, no matter how talented you are. In football you can be world class, no matter if you’re 5’4 or 6’7, if you’re skinny or strong.

Second, football is the most popular sport in the whole world. Basketball is only popular in the US and some European countries, most of the times the ones with average football teams (Slovenia, Lithuania, Serbia etc). So, apart from Lebron and Giannis, I wouldn’t recognize any basketball player if I saw them on the street.

Finally, most of the game is useless. If every game it’s gonna end 132-128 (or slightly lower in Europe), what’s the point of celebrating any point scored? In football every goal counts and people celebrate like crazy, because usually only 0-5 goals are scored by both teams in each game. In basketball, if there’s a tight game, just watch the final two minutes and you’re good to go. Can you imagine a football game where every team would score 10 goals each and people would only care if it would end 11-10 or 10-11 in the end? Lmao

I think it’s a win/win situation for are parties involved. Brahim Diaz is recent example. He was very hyped as a youngster, but now he is 24 and I doubt he’s ever becoming a Spanish NT regular. Switching to Morocco will allow him to play in the NT and also strengthen Morocco’s team.

Other examples are Gouiri and Aouar. These players aren’t good enough to get called up between France’s superstars, but they’ll be very useful for Algeria. I think many other French players with dual nationality will follow soon.

Isco getting MOTM awards for fun now.