 | Forum
Reply | Gareth Ainsworth Wellbeing!
at 22:33 3 Nov 2023
My wife's friend (who is Swedish) lives in Eskilstuna and we visited this summer. Spent national day in the park and saw the stadium, thought it looked pretty cool.
Nice place. We'll definitely visit again, next time I'll wear my hoops! |
| Forum
Reply | Kit Porn
at 19:15 12 May 2023
We'll (Atalanta) be changing our kit at the end of the season and you'll be able to pick it up cheap on classic football shirts.com
It is a nice kit and obviously always better than Inter's despite both being black and blue stripes. |
| Forum
Reply | Mooooooooooooooooove!
at 14:17 13 Jun 2020
For all his gravitas and status there is so much to dislike about Smith. Would play for Chelsea if a soccer player! |
| Forum
Reply | Mooooooooooooooooove!
at 10:32 13 Jun 2020
Absolutely terrible call. I totally admire the restraint of the players. Every week there's at least one shocker of a decision. Not entirely sure how they saw enough to over rule ref on Storm's last try either.
Best is a phenomenal talent. For someone named after such a famous sportsman, he has a physique as far removed from cricket as imaginable! |
| Forum
Reply | Mooooooooooooooooove!
at 09:27 7 Jun 2020
As a Manly fan, that was heartbreaking. Does anyone know why DCE didn't/couldn't' do captain's challenge?
Knights looked fantastic this morning and now should be top.
Agree, Des was very calm in his conference. Very unusual. |
| Forum
Reply | Mooooooooooooooooove!
at 16:14 2 Jun 2020
And arguably should have won with Best and Lee conspiring to muck up on the wing in golden point extra time. Great weekend of action, hopefully League picking up some new fans which will transfer to Super League and Championship clubs. They're gonna need it. In NRL, Sky have a great product, hopefully they might start to realise that more now...
The 'fan noise' was really well done,which I was sceptical about beforehand. |
| Forum
Reply | Mooooooooooooooooove!
at 10:26 31 May 2020
My lad's a Knights fan so we were emorionally invested, but that was a tremendous game of footy. Knights amazing defence. |
| Forum
Reply | New Tool album
at 22:37 2 Sep 2019
My dad passed away in April and when we were planning the funeral, the funeral director dug our music choices. He asked if we'd heard of Tool and said they had the best drummer ever. My bruv is well into his vinyl and has over 1000 lp's, gets Record Collector etc. He'd never heard of Tool, nor had I.
Every week since, I have seen them mentioned on my interest forums. Mad how that happens. The drumming IS cool, too. |
| Forum
Reply | Signings that nearly happened..
at 18:21 29 May 2019
Atalanta are my Italian team and Duvan has been excellent this season. However, he has never come close to this number of goals with his other clubs. A lot of credit goes to our manager, Gasperini, system. Marauding wing backs, two skillful attackers behind the main striker. Rangers would never have played that way and Duvan would have scored three times and been a flop.
Of all our team, he's weirdly the one that I wouldn't worry about selling. |
| Forum
Reply | The future...
at 10:24 17 Sep 2018
My 14 year old daughter ostensibly supports us, but has no interest in football. She got a strip when she was 6 days old! At primary school she would say she supported QPR, now I'm not sure.
My 12 year old son supports his local team, Newcastle but keeps an eye on us because of me. He goes to a few Newcastle games if he's not playing rugby and is quite clued up. I'm not bothered he doesn't support the hoops, he went with my wife (his step mum) when we drew 2 2 the other season while I was in the away end and we had good banter about it. To make it up to me, he supports my Italian team, Atalanta and national team, Switzerland and watches all those matches with me so I still get the fatherly football thing.
Other two are girls, 3 and 1 and I don't think I'll brainwash them unless they want to support daddy's team. |
| Forum
Reply | Why isn't the England game on terrestrial TV?
at 19:36 10 Sep 2018
I enjoyed it too, but my boys beat Iceland 6-0 so I would.
Ultimately gives smaller nations more meaningful games rather than be picked for spanking practise by big nations and gives a chance to qualify for a tournament.
There's a further argument about the dilution of the once great 8 team Euros to a competition that Wales can do well in, but Champions League opened that Pandora's box! |
| Forum
Reply | Why isn't the England game on terrestrial TV?
at 15:07 10 Sep 2018
Here goes Clive...
There is still normal Euro Champs qualifying next year. 10 groups, top 2 automatically qualify. No host nation as it is moving around. That leaves 4 slots and this where LoN comes in.
The winners of each of the LoN groups, 4 in A, 4 in B etc have a play off and the winner automatically qualifies for Euro Champs. If the winner of the group has already qualified for the Euros via Euro qualifying, the team in 2nd gets the slot, or 3rd if they also qualify.
So group D gets a Euro qualifier and that is why it is 'good for minnows'.
Every LoN division has 4 groups of 3 teams and one from each division will go to Euro 2020 basically.
Make any sense? [Post edited 10 Sep 2018 15:10]
|
| Forum
Reply | VAR
at 11:08 18 Jun 2018
Top post! I'm not always Behrami's biggest fan, especially as he's now seeing my Swiss poster girl (Lara Gut downhill skiier), but he had a great game last night.
Brazil only have themselves to blame. They were playing a high press and pressuring us into mistakes with trying to pass in triangles in our own half and then scored. At that point they retreated into their own half when we had the ball and allowed us to grow into the game, work some space and ultimately get a corner which resulted in Zuber's goal.
If they'd gone for the jugular they'd have won 2/3 nil and the VAR controversy wouldn't have mattered. The ITV pundits could then have w@nked on about samba football etc and not had to worry about filling time about VAR because they know f*ck all about Switzerland. |
| Forum
Reply | VAR
at 09:47 18 Jun 2018
It's absolutely horrible. I watch a lot of Serie A on BT and to be fair, it's worked quite well in Italy season gone. Not hugely intrusive, big errors only, but so far at the WC it's been poor.
How France got the pen, I'll never know. The first contact that toed the ball was outside the box, so I think it was given for the trailing leg making contact with the heel of the striker. It should be like cricket (where it sort of works) to overturn an absolute howler but retain some benefit of the doubt to the ref. For example, in the FRA v AUS game, ref doesn't give it, not enough evidence to overturn, so no pen. I could handle captains have two reviews to use in the game more than the current system.
As a Swiss fan, it was heart in mouth time last night for our goal when I should of just been able to celebrate like crazy! Pundits giving it large about foul as well, p'd me right off, if that had been England, it would have been 'got to have some contact in the box, letting the defender know he's there, etc' which is exactly what it was.
None of us likes reffing howlers and the Rs have been on the end of a fair few, but players make mistakes, refs make mistakes, just get on with it. The TV over analysis has brought this in and causing even more analysis after the match. All made for your neutral, armchair fan who doesn't give a flying about either team.
Clive - is the other sport Rugby League? I'm starting to get well into that as my 12 year old is playing for Newcastle Thunder's under 12 development team. We decided to support Widnes in the Super League as they have a Newcastle kit (I know, I know...) which seems to have put the kiss of death on them! |
| Forum
Reply | Ollie's idea of playing two "number 10s"
at 11:32 5 Jan 2018
I think it relates to the continental influence on the game. 10 in Italy is the 'fantasista', the ball playing creative player behind the main striker, who is 9.
The Geordies do covet the 9 in the way we do the no. 10 shirt. That is why at my wedding to a Geordie, the tables were assigned famous 9's and 10's. I had Bowles, Wegerle, Stainrod, Marsh and she had MacDonald, Shearer etc. Les was the top table and an anomaly as he wore 10 for them (Shearer took 9 away from him) and 9 for us.
In my speech I had to point out to a room of Northerners (including all my family), just how good Weggers was! |
| Forum
Reply | This is a great read.
at 14:39 15 Nov 2017
I would jizz my fcking pants more than I did when Zamora scored at Wembley if the Nati made it that far Antti and would then gladly join Steve! |
| Forum
Reply | This is a great read.
at 12:01 15 Nov 2017
Not playing meaningless games is the essence of the system rather than rewarding for not actually playing football. It rewards the teams that play competitive matches against higher quality opposition from the top regions. You still get points for friendlies, just not as many as you do for actual competitive football. England don't play the system, that's their choice if they would rather play lots of friendlies to get bums on seats in Wembley.
I get the argument for no points at all for friendlies, but there needs to be a system that recognises that smaller nations can play the big boys and get points if they win. For example, in the run up to the last World Cup, Switzerland played Germany and Brazil (and won both), allied to a strong qualification campaign, they were then seeded in their group. Natural order prevailed, France topped the group and Switzerland finished second and had to play Argentina. Ultimately though, they had stretched and challenged themselves by playing strong opposition in friendlies and gained points for beating them, albeit not as many points as they would have gained by beating them in competitive football.
What's the answer? No points for friendlies? See above. No distinction between competitive and friendly games? You then end up with artificiality (?) by allowing teams to play sh1te opposition, thrash them and gain loads of points. Scrap the lot and pull teams out of hats randomly? There was loads of criticism about the last Euros having teams like Albania, RoI playing negative football to try and scrape through. Imagine having a group of Gibraltar, Andorra, Albania et al together while another has Spain, England, France, Italy in it? That said, they're going down that route with the next Euros!
Points for tournaments won, runners up, 3rd place, 4th place etc? We'd have Italy at the next World Cup and anybody who saw their ageing team fail to break down and score against Sweden would argue they deserve to be there.
I get FIFA are corrupt etc, I'm no fan either, but I can't think of a better system. Switzerland play the system to gain a seeding but the pay off is that the fans and clubs don't have as many friendlies, where Shaqiri only plays 20 mins under instructions from Hughesless.
I obviously have a vested interest in Switzerland but hey, it'll come back and bite me on the Haris (Seferovic) when we're seeded in a group that contains England as second seeds and invariably lose. Maybe some of the bigger nations are playing the system in reverse by having loads of friendlies to get an easier group where they are not actually the seeds? Maybe the FA are ahead of the trend for once? |
| Forum
Reply | This is a great read.
at 10:25 15 Nov 2017
Tin pot? You've still got to win the matches or you don't get any points. Switzerland are ranked as high by virtue of beating reigning Euro champs Portugal 2-0 in Basel and then winning all bar one of their qualification games. They only played one friendly in that time.
In relation to Clive's, 'isn't football sh1t comment, I actually think this one they have got right, or are on the right lines. Why should a team like France be able to batter São Tomé and Principe 10 - 0 and get more seeding points than Poland narrowly beating Slovenia 1-0 in a qualification game? It theoretically stops the idea of meaningless friendlies with 11 subs at half time. It does go against the big nations that are in demand for friendlies, like England, Brazil, Germany etc, but they don't have to play the friendlies do they?
What's the alternative? Have seedlings based on tournaments won and traditional standing in the game? Wasn't it quite funny that Italy didn't qualify the other night? One of the reasons being they were in a group with Spain! By virtue of not being seeded.
We always get this thrown up before tournaments where fans who love their club football and know loads about the Championship look st the seeding list and go, 'Switzerland and Poland are seeded! How the fcuk?' But for those of us who don't just watch the England game or go shopping during international breaks, the system makes sense! |
| Forum
Reply | Norn Iron
at 23:49 10 Nov 2017
Don't bite, don't bite, don't bite. Aah WTF...this is just embarrassing. So basically you think there is an international fix where Switzerland have to qualify because FIFA is based there? That explains our excellent record in tournaments due to all the refereeing help we've been getting. But, Portugal must be higher up in the strata cos the ref allowed them to beat us 2 - 0 in our last game forcing us into the play offs?
Or it could just be a poor decision, they happen. And it could also be that Norn Iron, much as I like them and the connections to the Hoops, are moaning on about a decision to mask the fact that they were utter gash on the night. |
| | DanVanDyke
|
Site Scores| Forum Votes: | 10 | | Comment Votes: | 1 | | Prediction League: | 0 | | TOTAL: | 11 |
|
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.