Essential The Official Football (Soccer) Thread - The Slotification of Liverpool is nearly complete
Kunty McPhuck
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I cannot remember Coutinho playing at any time as a CM. There has to be a reason to why Klopp, choose Lallana over Coutinho to do that role last season. Coutinho may do al right in that role vs the Alves, Gijon and teams of that ilk, but I think he'll get exposed when he comes up vs Real and the good CL teams tbh.
African_brehda
Superstar
African_brehda
Superstar
but the market is fukked. Normal midfielders going for above 60 million 
Kunty McPhuck
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Yes, but Barca's main formation has been 433, 1 DM 2 CM's in midfield for like forever, with the odd 343 being played. Last time without checking they didnt play 433 was under Bobby Robson 20 years ago, when it was a 442/4411/4231 variant.
That's what happens when you have no academy growthbut the market is fukked. Normal midfielders going for above 60 million
Kunty McPhuck
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To be honest that shyt is a cycle. Barca probably going have to wait another 15-20 years to get anything as good they had w/ Iniesta, Messi, Pique & Fabregas. Just like United have never really recreated from the Class of 92 or Ajax have done in the early to mid 90's. They did have a good crop when VdV, Sneijdar, Ibra were together, but outside of Ibra the rest of them have had disappointing careers in all fairness.
Sneijder had an excellent career.
Maxwell a great career.
Christian chivu had a good career.
Vdv played at RM couldve had a great career but is lazy.
ibra is a legend.
Kunty McPhuck
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Like I said they had a good crop
Sneijder aint done shyt since 2010. Had that amazing 09/10 season then gave up. He was so bad and such a money whore that no-one in the top 5 leagues would touch him, when he was looking to leave Inter.
Maxwell, I'll give you
Chivu had a good career, but was too injury prone.
VdV makes Humpty Dumpty look like Ironman
@Kunty McPhuck is right. That shyt was a once in a generation thing. La Masia had literally all time greats come out of the school within 5 years of each other. We won't see that again, IMO ever. But the homegrown talent is lax all around in Europe, there's no incentive to get young kids and train them up when you can just use your TV deal money to get the best players that can fit in damn near any system.
Tiki-Taka worked because it built upon Total Football, a system which Barcelona, and by proxy Spain, had been perfecting for the better part of 25 years before Pep took Barca to the promised land. That 25 years of youth and team development, 25 years than literally is being unmade in front of us because of the sheer money involved in the game. Name me any team that's going to be ok with 20+ years of development even if it means a decade of dominance.
Im not disputing what @Kunty McPhuck is saying just pointing out that Ajax generation had a better career then just only Ibra.
Sneijder won a treble (arguebly shouldve won a BDR that year) and is a WC finalist. Hardly can call that a bad career.
Sneijder won a treble (arguebly shouldve won a BDR that year) and is a WC finalist. Hardly can call that a bad career.
Kunty McPhuck
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Just to add on. If you look at Germany, who restructured their whole football from top to bottom in 2000 they won the world cup 14years later. And began to see the fruits 4 years earlier of the youth development. Even in the last 12months they have gotten to the Olympic final and won the Euro u21 with a half and half squad and also won the confederations cup with half of the players eligible from the u21 squad. Now 17 years later they can now produce 3-4 different squads to win the various tournaments at senior level.
And even in the rebuild they still managed to make a 1 world cup final, 1 Euro final and a world cup semi final.
Kunty McPhuck
Scust Szn has Returned
That was 7 years ago. What has Sneijder done since the World Cup 2010. He went from one of the world's top 10 players to not being mentioned at all.
yeah but i haven't played it for awhile had to take a break lol.
