Penalty given.
Gloved fingertips stretch beyond
her limitations.
Category: Football/Soccer
-
We’re playing at a different location today.
After two days of rain the sun is finally showing face. I drive pass the Radha Krishna temple, and the Montessori, hoping I’m not one of the last to arrive (first 22 play). Google maps? That rude bastard. He rides shotgun, but after every sub-division interrupts Andy Brassel’s commentary on Juventus’ historic 2003 semi-final win over Real Madrid.
I arrive on time, but as a group we’re late. Our back-up field is packed with weekend amateurs.
The diligent and disciplined have laid out their cones, set up their goals, and snatched up every free patch of turf.
We sit in the parking lot and argue which field we should play at now. From my car, I see heads nod. Some laughs are exchanged. Our Congress works like Washington’s – slow.
The majority come to an agreement and we drive back to the park we normally play at. The field waits for us, dotted with gulls spearing at worms in the wet soil.
A few of us run through some half-hearted old man stretches. Others chat about their midweek indoor matches. The fights that broke out. The incompetent referees. The games lost.
Alberto and Mo choose teams and we break off.
90 minutes of bliss ahead.
-
Casemiro is still fundamental to Real Madrid’s success. By Sid Lowe:
One day early in Zidane’s first spell as Real Madrid manager, Casemiro knocked on his door. He hadn’t played yet — five games had passed — and he wasn’t happy. Play me, he said, please. Zidane looked at him, told him to calm down and said that once he started playing, he would never stop. Zidane was right, so much so that it became almost a running joke. After one game recently, Casemiro was asked if he was ever going to rest. By way of a response, he offered that cherubic smile he has and said something about how he didn’t need it. Zidane didn’t think so, either. You only ever leave Casemiro out to ensure that you can put him in.
Wilfred Ndidi snatches the ball winning crown from Nogolo Kante. By Ryan O’ Hanlon
the tactical beauty of having an omnipotent ball winner player such as Ndidi in your squad is that he allows you to shove an extra attacker onto the field without losing much (if any) defensive solidity.
Roy Hodgson reflects on his time at Inter, and Javier Zanetti. From The Coaches Voice
Javier wasn’t even signed to be the big player he became – he made himself into that. He had an incredible professionalism and desire to make the very best out of himself. Whatever his coaches or fitness coaches wanted him to do, he was going to show he could do it.
-
‘Every disadvantage has its advantage’, ‘The game always begins afterwards’ , ‘If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better’…
From: Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic genius of Dutch football. Winner, David. pg 4.A proper Dutch football book always opens with a few Johan Cryuff maxims.
-
If you’ve been missing out on the most entertaining league in the world, make a New Year’s resolution you can keep – watch more Liga MX.
Below are a few links to get you more familiar with the league:
Tom Marshall’s end-of-season awards on ESPNFC.
Tom is also the best twitter follow on Liga MX as well.
A reddit retrospective on the past decade of Liga MX.
The 2020 Clausura is only 9 days away…
-
I first read David Winner’s Brilliant Orange fifteen year ago. My first motives for reading the book were naive. I was an aspiring professional footballer. I’d read any book I could find on football, hoping to discover a professional path to imitate. It proved to be an impossible profession. When you’re sixteen, you have no hint to how the world works. You believe, and rightly so, that anything is possible. At nineteen I accepted my lifetime amateur footballer card. I continued my reading however, searching for inspiration or secret training exercises to improve my game. If I was an amateur, I wanted to be the best amateur among my peers. Fifteen years on, my motives to read Brilliant Orange has changed. I returned to the book to see how much the football world, in particular Dutch football, has changed. And in doing so, how much I have changed as well.
-
Lucien Favre has plenty of critics.
They will all be out howling tonight after Dortmund blew a two goal lead to draw with RB Leipzig.
Fine. Howl away, but credit is due.
Why?
Jaden Sancho.
I’m not privy to the Dortmund training sessions, but when it comes to Jaden Sancho’s development as a player I suspect it’s more about what Farve doesn’t do.
He doesn’t beat down Jaden. He hasn’t coached the feints or stepovers out of him. It seems like he’s encouraged it.
In what was possibly Dortmund’s biggest match of the season, Farve let Jaden revel in the sheer joy of trying to beat 3 or 4 Leipzig defenders at a time. He let Jaden slot out on the left and play one two’s with Raphaël Guerreiro, even if the pair didn’t combine to go anywhere. And Jaden’s nutmeg on Konrad Laimer must’ve put a smile on Farve’s face, even though he gave the ball away almost immediately after.
For me, Jaden’s style of play reminds of a young Allen Iverson. The rookie year with Philadelphia Iverson. He plays with audacity for audacity’s sake. He’s Dortmund’s answer to all of the Bundesliga’s questions.
Who’s going to try beat three men off the dribble?
Jaden Sancho.
Who’s going to play no-look slide rule passes into the 18 yard box?
Jaden Sancho.
Who’s going to lift the Meisterschale in spring?
Jaden Sancho.
We hope.
Floodlights and Goalposts 