You realize there is a difference between "this year" and "last year", right?
How can you say Ronaldo was the difference when you see the stats above? Messi was clearly better than Ronaldo, but his team let him down as all the numbers show..
Ballon D'or ... who will win it? who deserves it?
- Thread starter Marcosdeto
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
You realize there is a difference between "this year" and "last year", right?
How can you say Ronaldo was the difference when you see the stats above? Messi was clearly better than Ronaldo, but his team let him down as all the numbers show..
What are you on about?
I didn't say anything other than "Barcelona have/had a better team, but Ronaldo is the reason they didn't win the league".
I don't know what Messi has to do with that statement.
what you are doing is comparing players and saying "barcelona has better players" so "barcelona were better than real madrid"
but is not like that my friend, having the, arguably, better players doesnt mean being the better team
tactics, tiredness, injuries etc have major impact in a season and that's what happened to real madrid and barcelona last year
xavi, iniesta, villa and cesc didnt play as well as they can, while xavi alonso, benzema, ozil and di maria did
I'm not doing that at all Marcos. Look at every single Madrid/Barca thread from last year and see who everyone thought was a better team, think about who you'd have preferred United to face in the CL knockouts.
"tactics, tiredness, injuries etc have major impact in a season"... agreed.
Anyway, Ronaldo was the reason Barcelona didn't win the league, I'll stand by that statement all day. If you disagree then tell me this, do Barcelona win the league last season if Ronaldo is still at United?
"tactics, tiredness, injuries etc have major impact in a season"... agreed.
Anyway, Ronaldo was the reason Barcelona didn't win the league, I'll stand by that statement all day. If you disagree then tell me this, do Barcelona win the league last season if Ronaldo is still at United?
Last year, if you took out Messi and Ronaldo, the rest of the Madrid squad would have been celebrating winning La Liga in March.
Bollox. ha ha
And you had the cheek to laugh at me.
Edit: FWIW, that still has feck all to do with my statement. For some bizarre reason you keep mentioning Messi.
Got to agree here, would much rather have faced RM, with Ronnie out they are down to a very good team, when Messi is out for Barca, players like Iniesta Busq Xavi etc bridge the gap a lot better I feel that RM do for missing Ronnie.. Very hard to say who deserved Ballon D'Or obviously, but as far as who contributed more to La Liga IMO would be Ronnie as without him, RM would not have won it, without Messi, I would still put Barca with a very good shout
Within the league yes. Compared to other leagues, no, it's not that easy. You're totally ignoring developments in tactics, for example. Along with that you're ignoring that english teams overpay on wages and transfers all the time compared to all the other leagues. Foreign players cost on average way more money than equally good homegrown players and the premier league has by far the highest percentage of foreign players out of the top leagues. So for a english midtable club to get to the same level like spanish or nowadays german midtable teams they need way more money. It's not easy to compare teams that don't meet in european competitions but in no way you can judge quality because of the wage bills, that doesn't make sense at all.
By the way, if you think a spanish player leaves his home country instantly to play in the english championship just to earn a little bit more money you're delusional. You have to pay way over the top to make it happen, so that's more proving my point of english teams overpaying a few players which doesn't guarantee an overall better team instead of investing in a quality youth setup that produces the same quality for less money and helps building a great team.
Oh and again you're totally misinterpreting the numbers regarding the goals per game / average. But I'm out now, I'm pretty sure I won't convince you because you'll bring out the next cliché ignoring what happened over the last years in european football. Sorry mate, back to agree to disagree.
1 game actually, RM lost the first league clásico 1-3 at home where Messi had an assist and Ronaldo did nothing basically, taking 7 of RM's 17 shots and only hitting the target twice. Messi in that game played as a playmaker (as in every clásico after the Supercopa that season) which is evident from his shooting stats (only 2 shots, hitting target once).
The return clásico was Cristiano's moment of glory with the game-winning goal which also put Barça's remontada on ice, but as with the Real Sociedad game recently he didn't just create something out of nothing, it was created for him and he finished expertly. That's where he can't beat Messi in my opinion; the ability to consistently create and finish.
It's worth noticing, by the way, that in most Clásico's last season Messi had the upper hand except in that one. Funnily, WhoScored.com rates Messi's performance in that game higher than Cristiano even though he scored a goal (which has a major impact on those ratings, a bit too much even IMO), so his performance mustn't have been very efficient.
(Looking at the stats of that game) Apart from 2 dribbles he created nothing himself in the entire game; his passing was poor and he was barely involved in any build-up (17 passes at 65% completion, no key passes, 33 ball touches; no crosses, long passes or through balls even attempted!!). Messi was far better on the creative side and more involved (as you'd expect from the possession) but not incisive enough. So I personally would rate him below Ronaldo in that game, but neither of them was the game's most outstanding player. That was Özil for me.
of course not, you are talking about an exceptional player like ronaldo, who will make any team play 100 percent better
as i said before theres no way to deny that he was the reason why madrid won the title
but messi was the reason why barcelona fought for the title for so long
and here is where we disagree, i think that last season ronaldo had better company than messi
ronaldos team mates were in a better shape and played better than messi's
of course, in a real madrid were ronaldo excelled
You see, I have difficulty reconciling this statement with "Iniesta and Xavi are the best players in the world not named Messi and Ronaldo".
How the hell can you come to the conclusion that the team who won the league with a record points tally were not the better team last season?
Barca were also more reliant on Messi last season than Real were on Ronaldo.
Barca were also more reliant on Messi last season than Real were on Ronaldo.
That's quite a flawed argument. Instead of guessing what impact Ronaldo's absence would have on Real Madrid, we could actually look at the impact his presence has had... y'know in reality. If Cristiano was definitely more influential to his team than Messi on his, how would you explain the following?
Last season, C. Ronaldo took 36.1% of Real Madrid's shots in La Liga and scored 38.0% of their goals.
Messi took 32.4% of Barcelona's shots and scored 43.9% of their goals.
(similar pattern for the CL)
Adding assists, we see that C. Ronaldo is responsible for 47.9% of RM's goals to Messi's 57.9% for Barça.
Now I'm not saying Messi was more influential, I just want to point out that it's quite close, depending on what you value most. In terms of consistency, Cristiano was better; in terms of efficiency/accuracy, it's Messi.
I guess this is reflected in Spain's individual awards for that season; Ronaldo picked up the prestigious "Alfredo Di Stéfano" award for Player of the Year (handed out by Marca); Messi won LFP Best Player & Best Forward awards (handed out by the Spanish league).
I explained this once above, Real had the better season, Barca they better team, we all know this so stop playing silly. As I said, who would you have preferred to play in the CL last year? Real, right, because you'd fancy our chances as Barca are a better team.
Why is Messi always being brought into this? my statment had ZERO to do with Messi.
Bollox. ha ha
And you had the cheek to laugh at me.
Edit: FWIW, that still has feck all to do with my statement. For some bizarre reason you keep mentioning Messi.
The fact that we're talking here about who deserves the Ballon d'Or, Messi or Ronaldo? Did you even read my previous posts??Seriously, did you watch La Liga last season? Or did you just read what everybody was saying here (particularly people who don't even watch La Liga)?
Without Messi's goals last season Barcelona would have lost far more points than Real Madrid without Ronaldo's goals.. I don't even understand how you disagree with this..
Did you look at the goals/assists stats of last seasons??
Real were a better team than Barca last season. They had a better defense and more goalscorers at their disposal. Barca were very vulnerable last season and it showed in the CL. I would've preferred them to Real, though I highly doubt we'd have had a chance in hell against either of them anyway.
It had everything to do with Messi. The reason I'm mentioning Messi is because you seem to be massively attributing Real's success last season to Ronaldo (their best player), where as Barca were much more reliant on Messi (their best player) because nobody else was scoring goals for them. You're basically saying that if you took Ronaldo out of the team then they wouldn't have won the league, but in tandem you'd have to take Messi out of the Barca team and they'd have had way more problems without him than vice versa.
But who would have scored the goals? With Pedro playing shit, Villa injured, Sanchez injured a lot of the time, playing not good the rest of the time. I think Alonso actually played as good a league season as Xavi did and I'm not sure if Iniesta really had a better year in the league than Özil, he was way better in the CL and at the EC, but not in the league imo.
Higuain
Benzema Özil di Maria
sounds like a way better attacking lineup to me than playing Fabregas instead of Messi and hoping he's doing the trick - I really don't know if Barca had a plan B if Messi got injured?
Easy..
1- Iniesta started 21 games last season for Barcelona. Xavi started 26.
2- Even though they are regarded as among the best in the world, their performances for Barcelona last year were not the best (by their standards). As many have noticed here, Xavi's has been on the decline in the last year or so (even though he's still a very good player), and Iniesta had many injuries last season that affected his performances.. The main reason why Iniesta was there beside Ronaldo and Messi is Spain's performance in EURO 2012.
3- Both are midfielders and Messi was pretty much their only striker. A lot of possession won't win you games.
The bolded part is total rubbish. Look at the likes of Henderson, Young, Carroll, Bent, Allen, Sturridge, Adam, Crouch... Compared with the likes of Mata, Cazorla, Ba, Ramires, Hernandez, Suarez, Kagawa. It's as close to a fact as anything can be that British talent costs far more than European talent. This is for obvious reasons that managers are hesitant as to whether a talented Spanish player could handle the Premier League, preferring a "proven" but probably more mediocre British option, as well as having the homegrown squad rules. The reason the Premier League has the highest % of foreigners is because of our monumental TV deal (which is only getting bigger over the next 18 months), which means even relegation threatened teams can pay far higher than their Spanish/Italian/German counterparts and therefore end up having a far stronger team. I'm not saying every single Spanish/Italian/German youngster would move, but money talks more often than not.
The signings of the likes of Kone (£2.5m) to Wigan and Michu to Swansea (£2m) are evidence that money talks and that a relegation threatened Premier league team can pluck the best players from mid Spanish teams quite easily if they actually take the gamble, usually at a pretty low cost. It's testament to a new breed of manager that they are actually looking at these players more seriously, rather than instead paying over the odds for homegrown talent.
Most mid-low table Spanish teams could not afford to turn down offers of up to £5m for their best players (a fee which even teams newly promoted like Reading are happy to pay), as their turnover is often < £30m and their levels of debt are unbelievable, Swiss Ramble source if you're interested:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LoL1aNsTa...MRSwD6Go/s640/32+RMB+La+Liga+Debt+by+Club.jpg
Fundamentally that was the problem. When Messi did go slightly off the boil at the business end of the season against Chelsea and Madrid, Barcelona didn't have anyone else to really step up to the goalscoring mark. That's an error on Guardiola's part: in configuring the entire team around creating for Messi, he'd neglected a secondary threat that he previously profited from with an on-form Villa/Pedro, Eto'o or Henry.
Returning to the argument between who would be better without Messi/Ronaldo last year, obviously Madrid had other proven goalscorers. Whereas Barcelona would've continued to dominate matches would need to reconfigure their attack to translate possession into goals.
Again you're missing my point - maybe my fault, because I didn't make it clear enough. English teams are paying over the top for all players, not only foreign players. It's a specific problem in the premier league with few quality english players available and premier league rules regarding english and homegrown players implemented. You won't find the same effect in other european leagues, at least not to the same absurd level. In spain, germany and italy homegrown players aren't as expensive. It changed significantly in germany the moment the new youth generation was old enough to play important roles in top teams (around 2009-2010), but has been a huge problem over the last decade when very few german players were good enough to play for top sides. More importantly with a higher amount of quality homegrown players spread equally around in the league, teams won't need to pay over the top for average players anymore. While other leagues intensely invested in youth development, english teams bought foreign players to keep the quality at the same level and right now, spain surpassed them and germany is on the way to do the same. Yes, the premier league will fight back with money and probably be on top again in a few years, doesn't change the situation right now, though.
Btw. until now mid-low table spanish sides are deep in debts because they won't sell players, they try to keep the teams together until everything falls apart, they try to compete against the ridiculous advantage of Real and Barca. So with the exception of a few teams that went down - happens in all the european leagues though - the debts didn't influence the quality so far. It might change in the future, I actually hope the whole spanish league explodes, because I think it's a joke on so many levels. Doesn't take anything away from the quality of the teams right now, in my opinion.
Read them all and I just keep thinking....
Once again... the question was asked, "if Barcelona were a better team than Madrid (as Maureen also says), why did Real win the league".
My answer is: Ronaldo
That is how I see it, Barca played better football, as always they had great chemistry, they were a supreme team, the best in Europe, just as they were the year before and just as they are this season. Tiredness, over-confidence, all that came into it but there is no doubt for me that Barca were still a better team and would've beaten Madrid on more occasions than vice versa and I'm pretty sure that happened right? You can keep replying with shit about Messi all you like, and I'll just keep thinking
The FIFA team of the year is a piss-take. Not even a player from the PL or Bundesliga, or even particularly players from Bayern or Dortmund is inexplicable.
Argument about Messi v/s Ronaldo doesn't even warrant a discussion in light of it.
Argument about Messi v/s Ronaldo doesn't even warrant a discussion in light of it.
Amazing considering the year RVP had, and Drogba winning the CL on his own!
One could accept the argument about strikers being picked out of Falcao/RVP/Drogba/Zlatan but its the players in defence and Gk position I have problem with.
My point was that I'd say English teams are getting good value for foreign players (a few duds naturally aside). As I said Mata, Cazorla, Ba, Ramires, Hernandez, Suarez, Kagawa, Oscar as well as lower end business - the likes of Kone, Michu, Benteke this season. It's the clubs that stick to buying "proven" Premier League players that are getting screwed over. Obviously a few teams will be held out to ransom for the absolute top European talents, such as Hazard and Aguero, but even then you'd hardly say it's more than market value (e.g. the difference between £20m for Henderson and £32m for Hazard).
This in my opinion is why the Premier League is so much stronger. You would never hear about a mid table La Liga team being able to sign a top scorer for a mid table Premier league team, such as Ba, Cisse or Berbatov. But because of the finances involved Wigan and Swansea can pluck the equivalent player from La Liga cheaply and with relative ease. This is the reason we have such a culturally diverse, successful league; not one that for the last 7-8 years has been dying a slow, painful death.
This goes back to my original point quite nicely to be honest. Because Barcelona are so set up to feed everything through Messi, which makes his stats look ridiculously incredible, if he is slightly out of form the team is totally devoid of ideas. Just as Liverpool are when Suarez is off form or can't hit a barn door. This is obviously a tactical error which means Messi's stats look incredible, but as a team Barcelona did sweet FA last year. If Messi is out of form or slightly tired for even a month, the team are likely to drop points and lose games left, right and centre. It is Barcelona's naive/poor tactics in part that has allowed Messi to get his incredible record.
Kinda strange. A league that's been dying for 7-8 years dominates the european competition for mid-top table clubs with winning the EL several times, surpasses the premier league in UEFA's 5 year ranking and actually has 4 teams in the CL knockout rounds this year compared to only 2 english teams. Pushing it to the limit and probably going out with a bang in the near future would have been my description for La Liga. And results in european competitions fits that description very well, imo. Dying a slow death over the last 7-8 years would have described Serie A very well, though. But again, you totally twisted a point and ignored what I was talking about, so I give up, now.
Atletico destroyed Chelsea earlier this season, it was painful for them but funny for us.
Talk about stretching the parameters of what constitutes strength. While we are at it lets say the Scottish League is as strong as ever, or that the German League is much stronger than the Premier League, looking at the last 32 teams left in the competition. You know as well as I do that whoever reaches the last 16 in the Champions League one season in isolation doesn't equate to how strong a team is.
As I said the last Spanish team bar Real/Barcelona to make the semi-finals for instance was 7 years ago, the last time they reached a final was back when their league wasn't a joke, around 12 years ago. Compare that to English clubs in the same period, where four different clubs have participated in 8 finals in 8 years. The last Spanish team to make the quarter finals being a fortunately easy run of fixtures for Villarreal 4 years ago, a team that is now in Segunda División due to their levels of overspend.
Serie A is just a stronger version of La Liga if you take away Barcelona and Real Madrid.
As I said the last Spanish team bar Real/Barcelona to make the semi-finals for instance was 7 years ago, the last time they reached a final was back when their league wasn't a joke, around 12 years ago. Compare that to English clubs in the same period, where four different clubs have participated in 8 finals in 8 years. The last Spanish team to make the quarter finals being a fortunately easy run of fixtures for Villarreal 4 years ago, a team that is now in Segunda División due to their levels of overspend.
Serie A is just a stronger version of La Liga if you take away Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Anyone seen Capello's pl and world teams? Some pretty random choices, he's also included mark noble in both, a player I don't think he ever selected and certainly was never a regular in his England squads, very strange.
Not strange as Capello has proved time and time again that he's clueless when it comes to English football
Barcelona should look to replace Villa with Falcao. As dangerous as that thought is.
He probably meant Clark Gable.
So what? I agree that the premier league had several great teams up until 2010. 2006-2009 probably 4 out of the top6 in europe were english with Arsenal and Liverpool being better teams than Real or Bayern for example. Not anymore though. Who cares if Liverpool were a great team back then, they are a joke now and worse than Valencia, Malaga or Atletico. You're completely ignoring the points I made, again. You're ignoring what happened the last 3 years, the decline in defending, problems with continental tactics, for example. Are you actually watching the games? Don't you see a difference in a team parking the bus and getting a result to teams playing dominant football? Of course you can get a result playing like Chelsea last year or Glasgow this season. 2006-2009 english teams outplayed the opponent, they were better teams and dominated on a regular basis, that's why they got lots of great results and not just a few. I'm not saying the german league is much stronger than the premier league btw. My point was that the following is nonsense:
And if you're basing your player comparisons between leagues on that, you're wrong. I tried to explain that the Bundesliga isn't a poor league compared to the premier league anymore and the defending in La Liga isn't worse than in the premier league. You're talking about what happened years ago when you're statement was indeed true.
And I really don't get what you're trying to say about Serie A. Comparing it to La Liga doesn't make sense at all, totally different league with very different problems, a completely different style and different ownership models.
I hope it happens. 100x better than him going to City or Chelsea which would be a fecking disaster.
I haven't ignored any of the points you made, the statement "you're ignoring my points" seems to just be your reflex defence when faced with a coherent argument. I stated that even if the defending is slightly worse now vs 6 years ago, which by your figures is worst case scenario around 15% more goals conceded, Ronaldo still scored 30-40% more goals in La Liga vs his best ever season in the Premier League (in my opinion his best ever season).
The only thing that has happened the last 3 years is that Real Madrid and Barcelona have gotten better, Athletic Madrid have arguably gotten slightly better almost solely because of Falcao, which will soon be irrelevant as I'm sure he'll be playing in the Premier League and Malaga have very temporarily improved, but have now been banned for 4 years from competing in Europe due to unpaid fees, so I'm sure they'll be a mass exodus there also.
Whilst these 4 teams have gotten slightly stronger, everyone else has gotten much weaker, with two of those four soon to suffer the same fate. The likes of Villarreal and Deportivo have plummeted into obscurity. Valencia are a total shadow of 4 years ago, having been forced to sell the likes of Silva, Albiol, Villa, Mata, Alba, Joaquin and more recently Hernandez (another perfect example: Valencia's first XI to Swansea's). Sevilla are similar to Valencia in that they have been forced to sell the majority of their top quality players.
I look at La Liga now and see maybe 3 or 4 players outside the top 2 teams that most would say would really improve a top Premier League sides squad. Four years ago the situation was so much different. Fortunately for the Premier League we have cherry picked the likes of Cazorla, Mata, Silva, Torres, De Gea (and even Michu, Chico, Hernandez, Kone etc at the lower end of the spectrum) and then Barcelona/Madrid have raped their fellow clubs of the likes of Villa, Alves, Albiol, Alba, Caceres, Adriano, Keita, Milito, Canales, Callejon... The list goes on.
Unfortunately there is no way the other clubs can even slightly keep up in such an environment, without facing financial oblivion.
The comparison I'm making with Serie A is that if you take away Real Madrid and Barcelona from La Liga, you'd have a worse version of Serie A. It would be a far more competitive league but one of worse overall quality. The bottom 15 teams in Serie A are more than comparable with the bottom 15 in La Liga, the difference being the top 2 no longer have £100m a season given to them at the expense of everyone else.
Bayern no doubt.
Because a club that couldn't even make the biggest European club tournament certainly isn't the real European champion.
Is Falcao the type that can operate wide?
Because they tried that with Eto'o and Zlatan and Pep moved both wide to accommodate Messi's preferred playing style.