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Football Thread 2013/14 |OT7| The Ramsey Effect

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L

Linius

Member
Shanks D Zoro said:
Depends where in europe you are from. For the uk the times are not that late but normal world cup times.
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Europe is only three time zones. For UK bros it's one hour earlier than for me. For them it's four hours difference. For me five. And for Panty for example it's six hours.
 
G

Gareth Bale

Member
BVMuMGWIYAA0YMJ.jpg
 
S

Shanks D Zoro

Banned
Linius said:
They don't have the same schedule as in 2010? Back then they had games around 3, 6 and 9 pm local time.
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Nope confed schedule. I think the final is 4pm local time. I am on my phone now but check wikipedia it has all the times.

Fifa are not idiots, they do not want ro throw away all those european advertising euros and pounds.
 
L

Linius

Member
Shanks D Zoro said:
Nope confed schedule. I think the final is 4pm local time. I am on my phone now but check wikipedia it has all the times.

Fifa are not idiots, they do not want ro throw away all those european advertising euros and pounds.
Click to expand...

I see. The latest group stage games end around 9 pm local time. That's 2 am for me. That's doable.
 
K

KidA Seven

Member
SirAF on Redcafe translated an Eric Steele interview

Mitten has conducted an exclusive interview with Eric Steele for the Scandinavian Supporters Club and I have, quickly, translated it here.

As a former English student I am a bit ashamed as I feel that my work here is a wee bit sloppy and rushed, but I didn't have too much time on my hands. I hope that you'll find the interview readable!

tl;dr de Gea eats too many tacos and sleeps three times a day.

Part One

On De Gea

So, you found him while you were at City?

ES: Yes, David was playing for the Spanish U17 team in the European Championship final against England in 2007. Spain won 1-0 and he made a couple of things which prompted me to note his name and track his progress.

How did your transfer to United come about?

ES: A good friend of mine, Tony Coton, was the current GK coach for United. He rang me in december 2007 and said he was retiring due to a knee injury. He still lives in Bolton, by the way, and does scouting work for QPR. TC explained that the manager had asked him to recommend someone to succeed him and he asked if i was interested. Of course I was.

No disrespect to City, there are some proper football people there, but United is at a completely different level in terms of tradition and history, on and off the pitch. They are like a huge machine, that is why I wanted to go there.
I struggled a little bit with my loyalty since I had signed a three year contract with Sven (Erikssson) at City, so it ended with me staying there for the rest of the season. Thus I missed the Champions League final in Moscow. However, I felt that I needed to show my loyalty to Sven, and I can't regret that now.

In the end, I lost my job before I could announce that I was leaving. Shinawatra was getting rid of some of the highest paid staff at the club and I found out that I was going to be let go when we were in Bangkok to play a post-season friendly. Sven had a meeting with Shinawatra and came back and told us: "I've lost my job, and so have you, Eric."

I was then in contact with United. I had spoken with Sir Alex, but he had another problem in the summer of 2008: Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo wanted to leave the club and the manager had cut his holiday short in order to persuade him to stay. To put it this way, I wasn't his top priority at that moment. TC acted almost like my agent, phoning David Gill and the manager daily, but he never got a response.
At the end of June I had still not heard from the club. Then Paul Ince was appointed as manager of Blackburn and he brought Archie Knox with him. They wanted to bring my self to Blackburn as well, and I was interested. It would mean that I could stay in the Premier League and continue to live in Manchester, that's why I accepted their offer.

I signed the contract with Blackburn at 2 PM 5th of July and guess who phoned me two hours later? The gaffer.

"I've just signed for Blackburn", I said.

"You fool" he replied.

"What do you mean with that? I never heard anything from you. TC never heard anything."

"Okay then, my bad. I'll take care of it" was the response.

After that I went to a training camp in Portugal with Blackburn. They had a brilliant backroom staff, even though I was not convinced by Paul Ince. Paul also told me that I was not allowed to cancel my contract.

"You and I both know what's going to happen now", I said. A little bit later United and Blackburn came to an agreement, I think they were compensated something like 70 or 80,000 GBP for my three weeks there.

United later rang me up, and said that my first match was a friendly against Juventus.

Part two

How was it to arrive at Carrington? You didn't know many people there?

The manager actually hadn't told anyone that I was coming, but he shortly realized it and told Mike Phelan and his secretary Lynn Laffin. Then he explained that he wanted me to work with Edwin.

How was working with Edwin van der Sar?

He was a gentleman, he studied the game of football. He was very knowledgeable. I'll never answer the question of weather Edwin or Peter was the best goalkeeper but Edwin's save from Anelka in Moscow put him, at least, at the same level as Peter in my opinion.

I studied Edwin, and even though Peter was more verbal and more imposing, Edwin had a very strong presence, even though he was calm.
What was so special with Edwin was his ability to launch attacks, United had developed a lot since Peter's days, football was different. I looked at Edwin's past to find out as much as possible about him and I quickly realized that the manager regretted not getting him before he signed for Fulham.
How on earth did he end up at Fulham? No disrespect to Fulham, but I had to ask my self that question.
I didn't need to concern myself with Edwin off the pitch, he was a grown man of 37. I was more of putting things in place for him, the most important thing I could do was to ask him: "Ewdin, what do you need?"
He didn't need to follow the physical part of the training fully, so we made him a tailor made program. There was no point for him to do much work with weights, at 37 he was not going to change his body shape.
My role was to help Edwin prolong his career as much as possible. He had one year left of his contract, but we got two out of him, which gave me time to figure out who was going to replace him.
I listened to Edwin, if he was sore then the training would take place in the swimming pool. It all revolved around how to get him as ready as possible for the next match. If it was raining we sent him inside to train, we protected him. If we were training for match specific situations for the next match against, say Everton then he didn't have to take part in that since he's already played against Everton a dozen times already. It was better for him to sit on a bike and watch different Everton set pieces at an iPad.

One time he asked to go back ho Holland due to his wife's illness, he asked the manager for a leave, and it was never a problem. The manager knew how professional he was.

United won the European Cup the year before you came and made it to Rome just after you arrived, how was that?

Simply heartbreaking.

We all know that we didn't give a good account of ourselves in that match, and Edwin was disappointed over his performances in both of those finals against Barcelona, it's a shame as I know how much effort he put into his preparation for those matches.

To reach the two finals was a tremendous achievement in itself. I'll never forget Ronaldo's goal against Porto, it was one of the most stunning goals during my time at the club. We spent a lot of time preparing for that match, and for the following tie against Internazionale.

Against Porto the manager decided to use Ronaldo as a lone striker. That was the great thing about Cristiano, you could stick him on the left wing in the midweek and then put him up front three days later. Or you could place him on the right wing if the other back had a poor match, he gave us so many options.
But yeah, that final in Rome was really frustrating. Barcelona was so much better than us, player for player and as a team. Our players didn't follow the game plan.

How So?

We know how to play against Barcelona, and we did that for ten minutes. However, we had to keep that up for the full 90 minutes. You got to apply pressure high up the pitch against them. If you allow them to play you might as well throw on an extra ball to have any chance of getting a touch.

Then it happened again? Two years later at Wembley..

Again we didn't follow our own plan. The whole team has to be on board, but some individuals forgot about the team and as the match went on you could see that other players were getting disillusioned (Perhaps the argument which Rene was talking about? - SirAF). You, simply, have to deny Barcelona the ball. If you have the ball yourself then you can inflict damage to them as well. If Barcelona has the ball then you have to chase it around and and after a while it wears you down mentally. Did we have one single player who could lift us that day? No. They were all exhausted.

I don't really recall much of the last 20 minutes. There was no way back. We couldn't get the ball, and when you can't do that you're in for a struggle.
We gave away a hopeless goal, then we equalized with a brilliant strike. Before that we were dying out there. Who scored that goal? I want to remind the fans of that - before they shout that he should leave the club ( This interview was conducted before the season started - SirAF) and who stepped up when Robin didn't score for nine games last year? I'm a huge Wayne Rooney fan.

Were none of the keepers United had on their books good enough to replace Edwin van der Sar?

No. Ben Amos and Sam Johnstone were talented, but not ready for the first team. We also let Ron-Robert Zieler go and I'm so happy that he has kept developing at Hanover. However, he wasn't ready either.
I travelled a lot to find Edwin's replacement. Martin Ferguson and Jim Lawlor also looked at keepers. It was about how they would prepare for a match, how they would warm up and how they would communicate with the defence. We looked at Stekelenburg, Lloris and Neuer at Schalke. However, it is very few german players who leave the country because they know that the national team management prefer players who are based in Germany. We also looked at Casillas, Joe Hart and Petr Cech - even though they would be difficult to obtain. I looked at all of them.

Then the choice was David, who didn't had a very good start at United..

The first six months were horrible. He was only 19 years old and there was a certain risk with that. However, the manager had scouted him together with me before we signed him, so he knew how good he was. It helped that Atletico had other players we were scouting as well.
The manager decided to sign de Gea. The fact that he weighed only 71 kg was a problem though.
We worked hard with him both on and off the pitch. We wanted to change his way of life. When he was done with training he wanted to go home, but we told him that he had to report back in the afternoon.

"Why?" He asked then.


It is about a certain lifestyle, he would sleep two or three times a day, he ate his dinner late at night. He ate too much taco. We would give him protein shakes, we almost had to force it down his throat (someone do a gif here! - SirAF). We dragged him down to the gym and he hated it, they are not used to training that much in the gym in Spain. However, we needed to build up his core strength, which we did.

Part three

But the debut against WBA was horrible?

He conceded a soft goal, yes. He was pressurized hard at the back post, but with ten minutes to go he would still come for crosses. But he got much criticism from fans and the media. The manager decided to protect him, he knew that he had a goalkeeper for the future.

Were you aware of the managers plan to retire?

No. He called me, Mick and Rene into his office that wednesday morning. Then he said: "I'm retiring, the next manager is David Moyes."
You could see that it was a difficult message for him to give.
The day before we had been at a golf tournament between the players and staff and all the phones were turned off underway. When we put them on they would all go off, it was not about the manager retiring, it was about Moyes being on his way in.

How did you react?

I wasn't completely surprised, I had noticed that he looked tired. It is almost insane that he managed to keep going for such a long time and it is marvelous that he's got his health so that he can spend more time with his family.
He also has a huge list of things he want to do now. He wants to see the Boca - River derby, and the Melbourne Cup. He also got plenty of money. It was fantastic the times he would bring with him his grandchildren to work, his office looked like a kindergarten! They also used to correct him and ask him why he played certain players.
"Why are you playing Nani, granddad? He's rubbish!" was one of the things they would say. He was always laughing his head off when they questioned his decisions.

Were you worried about your own future when he announced his retirement?

It gets you thinking, yeah. I didn't want to leave, why would I? I knew that David Moyes would come in and I was wondering who he would bring with him. Then you have the United perspective: The manager said "Take care of what we have. Take care of the continuity, work with what you have and it will get you results. This is a massive machine, you are leaving Marks and Spencer for Harrods."
Then you have David's focus - which I understand - I knew him professionally, I know how he works and how involved he likes to be. I've been around in football for such a long time that I know how the game works.

At the same time it is a bit ironic, that you've been a part of the team that won the league after such a great season. De Gea had his best season so far, does it then not make sense to be allowed to continue that work? Unfortunately, it was not my call.

Did you speak to Moyes?

Yeah, he spoke to both me, Mick and Rene. I told him that he was making a brave call. He listened to the managers advice, but he wanted to make his own decisions.
There has been some huge changes. The manager has left, the CEO has left, Scholes has retired and the coaching team has left. However, there are enough of players in the dressing room who can make sure that United will keep winning.

My time at United is up and I am very proud of what I achieved, I have some great memories.
Click to expand...

Original source http://www.united.no/andy-mitten/dea-gea-var-glad-taco/
 
F

Freewheelin'

Member
Just watched Room 237 on Netflix.

Interesting theories, but most of them are just too ridiculous and hilarious. There's no way that Kubrick was thinking about all of this stuff while shooting The Shining.
 
L

L1NETT

Member
IT Crowd <3 Good final episode, got a bit breaking the 4th wall-e but good overall.

---

Batigol you live in Brum or did I am thinking of someone else on here?
 
W

Wilbur

Banned
The_Hitcher89 said:
Goddamn, Bubbles was a great character

Brilliant actor as well
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Best actor in the show I think, just remarkably believable. It's an absolute shame that you don't see many of the Wire's cast in films, it's only really Elba and West who made it, although MKW isn't doing too bad for himself on Boardwalk.
 
S

Salvadora

Member
Wilbur said:
Cheers for that, brilliant interview. The stuff about VDS made me miss him, as much as I love De Gea. Don't think he's massively sold on Moyes either haha.
Click to expand...
I was watching a thing on Wenger recently in which he was talking about his time at Arsenal. One of the points he stressed was surrounding himself with already existing Arsenal staff (at the time) when he came in, like Pat Rice.
"Take care of what we have"
Click to expand...
Feels a bit disrespectful to against that imo, at least in the short term.
 
W

Wilbur

Banned
Salvadora said:
I was watching a thing on Wenger recently in which he was talking about his time at Arsenal. One of the points he stressed was surrounding himself with already existing Arsenal staff (at the time) when he came in, like Pat Rice.

Feels a bit disrespectful to against that imo, at least in the short term.
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree with you. I think with Rene it was understandable because Moyes is a real training ground coach unlike Fergie who delegated a lot in his later years, so I can understand why he moved on (and if what Hixx posted about Sunderland being interested in him is true, I'd be delighted for him if he's given the time, a fantastic coach), and there was talk of Phelan being interested in a managerial role as well.

But I don't really know why Steele wasn't kept on, especially considering how well DDG's come on under him.
 
L

Lightning

Banned
WJD said:
I think it's around the time to start panicking about Adnan's contract. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
Click to expand...
Walcott's went on longer and he signed. After the January window still no signature then time for concern but now should still be time.

I am wanting news on Sagna's contract but nothing even about negioations. Disappointing.
 
K

K1LLER7

Member
We're getting our youngsters taken from us.

Its over United-Bros.


Fuck, we should just give him/his agents how much they want and get him on a long term contract.

In a couple of years, he'll be worth so much more, just like Pogba is now :'(
 
K

KidA Seven

Member
K1LLER7 said:
We're getting our youngsters taken from us.

Its over United-Bros.


Fuck, we should just give him/his agents how much they want and get him on a long term contract.

In a couple of years, he'll be worth so much more, just like Pogba is now :'(
Click to expand...

i5prByw6vX3vS.gif


We should have just paid the cunt his what? 20k a week? Meanwhile Young and Anderfat are on several times that.
 
M

Messi

Member
Might have been posted, can't be harmful to post if again. From TotalBarca:

timthumb.php


Miguel Roqué Farrero, known as Miki, was born July 8, 1988. He passed away June 24, 2012. At 17 years old the defender signed for Liverpool FC, nothing materialized there so Miki returned to Spain at 21 to play for Real Betis. Less than two years into his Betis career, Miki complained of back pain and in a routine physical doctors discovered far more than they anticipated. Miki Roqué had pelvic cancer.

Born in the Catalonian city of Tremp, Miki never did nor would play for FC Barcelona but that didn’t matter a hoot to Carles Puyol. See, Miki Roqué’s mother comes from the same tiny town Puyol does, La Pobla de Segur, and from this minor connection a friendship was born. Real Betis made support bracelets for Miki, similar to the Livestrong kind, in order to help fund his cancer treatment but sales were not nearly enough. Carles Puyol then decided he would pay for all of Miki’s medical expenses for no other reason except it being the right thing to do.

Miki died two weeks short of his 24th birthday in a Barcelona hospital and it affected Puyol tremendously. That day he tweeted: “Miki now rests in peace, he was an example of fortitude and courage. The very touching farewell, one will never leave while being remembered.”

This mark on his new shoes is just the latest way Puyol is trying to honor Miki and keep his memory alive. Perhaps even this story of tragedy has been the motivation Puyol has drawn upon. Puyol has been fighting to get his knee healthy again and career back on track, which pale in comparison to Miki Roqué’s fight for his life.

Athletes don’t always have the best reputation. Many times deservedly. But amidst all their mega millions, mansions and sports cars, at the end of the day they are just people. And at times people are capable of great things. What Carles Puyol did for Miki Roqué falls into such category. Puyol is far more than a captain for cules worldwide to be proud of, he’s a person to be proud of.

==

Fuck Cancer :( . I have no idea how much it cost Puyol to pay for the treatment but its a was a very nice gesture none the less.
 
G

GorillaJu

Member
Slizz said:
So the other day I was watching MTV in the morning when they play just music videos.... Turns out it turned me onto a new artist I had not heard before. Really weird to say that I learned from MTV about this artist in this day in age. Even worse its a 17 yr old girl from New Zealand..... Anyways its Lorde, some of you peeps in here would prolly like her, if not already heard of her. Since I found out via MTV it must mean I'm behind the curve.
Click to expand...

She has completely blown up in the past week. You're not that far behind the curve though.
 
W

Wilbur

Banned
The_Hitcher89 said:
BBS5E13&14

Best back to back TV episodes ever?
Click to expand...

Probably. 14 was just insanely incredible. I thought judging BB on 1-4 it was a great show but under the Wire/Deadwood for me, but the majority of 5 has been absolutely remarkable television.

Although Here Was A Man/The Trial Of Jack McCall from Deadwood Season One was a fucking top two parter
 
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