Euro 2012

[SomGooner]

Casillas has always been a gentleman and one of the few Spanish players I've always admired.

 

[AFC-Phil]

RVP has only 1 prolific season in his entire career so take him out of the equation.

Such an immense strike rate over 18 months shouldn't be disregarded as a one off.

There was a time when only Thierry Henry scored more goals in the premier league than Yakubu.

So RvP should be disregarded, but Yakubu deserves a mention!

I understand that we’re in an era where Spain is dominating the world of football and it’s only fair that their strikers will be mentioned but the truth is both Villa and Torres are not even fit to lick Eto’o’s boots and for Rooney and RVN...Please!

Villa and RvN were both at a similar level to Eto'o. Villa's only the top goalscorer in Spain's history over the likes of Butragueno and Raul... RvN is one of the greatest strikers in PL history, and pretty much carried Madrid to La Liga champions in 06/07 on his own. I don't recall Eto'o dragging Barca over the line in the same way RvN did.

Had Eto’o being born European he would’ve won Ballon D’or few years ago when he came third (Lampard finished 2nd to Ronaldinho) as he had a better season than Ronaldinho that year and deserved to win both Ballon D’or and World Player of the year but I guess being African will always work against you especially in the eyes of the bias Europeans.

This is utter tosh, sorry.

Like I said European strikers have quantity over Africans thanks to Europe having the best leagues but never quality especially the current generation where even a player like Kalou would fancy his chance against them and I’m not even going to mention Mounir El Hamdaoui, Ryad Boudebouz, Belhanda, Adebayor, Cisse, Ba, Seydou Doumbia, Moussa Sow, Alain Traore, Didier Ya Konan, Andre Ayew and many others.

With good reason, you're "not going to mention" them. Several of those players are poor/average.

 

[Armor for Sleep]

SomGooner - are you African by any chance? Somalian?

 

[USArsenal]

Had Eto’o being born European he would’ve won Ballon D’or few years ago when he came third (Lampard finished 2nd to Ronaldinho) as he had a better season than Ronaldinho that year and deserved to win both Ballon D’or and World Player of the year but I guess being African will always work against you especially in the eyes of the bias Europeans.

so I guess Ronaldinho turned European during the course of that season?

other than scoring more goals (he is a striker after all), how did Eto'o have a better season than Ronaldinho?

im not Ron's biggest fan, but he had a great few seasons in that 04-07 range.

 

[outlaw_member]

I absolutely agree. Spain indeed were in cruise control throughout the tournament, and barely had to step out of first gear. I think we all know that they could have upped the tempo, when and if they wanted to, but the gulf was so big between them and the rest, that they didn't really need to.

That's just extremely hard to believe, for the simple reason being that it's not true.

Why would a team choose to jeopardize their place in the tournament on multiple occasions, including the semi-final where they had to go to penalties to see off Portugal? If Spain had more to give, we'd have seen it a lot earlier.

It's not unusual for teams and players to coast through games. We're as good an example as any. Obviously, Spain did not deliberately lower their performance, but they clearly played at a higher tempo in the final, than at any point previous, so we can safely assume that they did have an extra gear in their locker.

 

[say yes]

Villa and RvN were both at a similar level to Eto'o. Villa's only the top goalscorer in Spain's history over the likes of Butragueno and Raul... RvN is one of the greatest strikers in PL history, and pretty much carried Madrid to La Liga champions in 06/07 on his own. I don't recall Eto'o dragging Barca over the line in the same way RvN did.

I don't agree with the african > other strikers point at all but for me at least: Eto'o > Villa/RvN.

Only Ronaldo and Henry > Eto'o of that generation of strikers for me. And Eto'o is still going strong now, quality player and arguably the best african footballer of all time.

 

[future heroes]

Its the best team that wins the Cup nothing more nothing less.

Let me break this down for you.

1970: Brazil(Mexico): Brazil arguably the best national side ever
/.../
2010: Spain(South Africa) Best side by far won

You are worthy winners if you win the cup without cheating or referee bias, nothing more nothing less.

What you wrote above is simplified revisionism at it's worst. You state that the best team always won the World Cup in the 1970-2010 period. That is simply not true. The history is full of cases where the favourite lost on penalties and where a lesser team has overachieved. With the it is the "best team that wins the Cup nothing more nothing less", one got to ask how Denmark won the Euro 1992 and Greece the Euro 2004 as they were nowhere near being the best team. How would the Euros be any different than the World Cup?

The best team does not always win. With revisionism you can change the assessment of the respective teams and player performances to suit your argument. As you have noticed, there are several people that disagree with you about which team that was the best of some of the respective World Cups on your history lesson about 1970 and forward.

A similar form of revisionism hits this forum when Arsenal is drawing while entering injury time. If we score a lucky goal in extra time you can bet that the average verdict on each player will increase with 20%, meaning that the forum posters give the players 7-8/10 instead of 5-6/10. If we on the other hand concede a freak goal in injury time by an individual mistake which makes us lose the game, it will affect the verdict of all our players in a negative way compared to a result where we would have drawn. Injury time should obviously be included in the assessment, but the collective player marks should be independent of individual heroics or mistakes in injury time. That should only affect the relevant player. Anything else is just a knee-jerk reaction.

Another case of revisionism is seen on page 174 in this thread where outlaw_member writes that "Spain were in cruise control throughout the tournament, and barely had to step out of first gear. I think we all know that they could have upped the tempo, when and if they wanted to, but the gulf was so big between them and the rest, that they didn't really need to". As many people here already pointed out, Spain needed penalties to get through Portugal and they would certainly had preferred to get the job done before the PK shoot out if they were in "cruise control".

Spain were only great in the final. The rest of the tournament they were not that impressive. After the fantastic performance against Italy, some people seem to forget that.

It is exactly the same phenomenon when a player has a strong end of season and some fans tend to think that the player had a good season overall even if he was terrible in the first six months and vice verse.

1998 - everyone remember how suddenly Ronaldo got a mysterious illness on the night of the final, making his team choke at the last hurdle.
before the opening whistle starting, everyone was betting on Ronaldo on winning the WC 98. so NO France was not the best team as you stated. Ro-Ro combo and their midfielders were a reminiscent of the 70's squad. FIFA rank them number 1. while France needed a silver goal against Paraguay in the quarter.

If it was not for Ronaldos mysterious illness/collapse it is very likely that Bossa would have talked about Brazil being the dominant force instead.
In the 1998 World Cup Netherlands, Brazil, France and Croatia reached the semfinals. Croatia was the weak team compared to the other semifinalists, but Netherlands, Brazil and France could all have won the tournament. Brazil knocked out Netherlands on penalties, it was that tight between them.

It doesnt matter where you play the best team will win the Cup unless if you're playing against a team with home advantage. I mean why would Brazil have an advantage over Spain or France or another European side when they are playing in Mexico or USA. Time zone doesnt really matter. The climate doesn't really matter either.

Time zone is debatable but the role of this factor has decreased as more of the best South American players generally play in European clubs nowadays. I suppose that your opinion is that the European teams travel early in order to adjust to the new time zone and the new environment. However, Brazil may have an extra advantage on top of being the host nation if some of their starters play in South American clubs and don't have to travel back from Europe.

The climate on the other hand matters a much, as Rain Dance already explained. The World Cup 1994 played in USA with matches on midday was unfavourable to the European teams. The heat was obviously not an excuse to not show up but several European teams struggled to cope with the extreme heat and humidity.

are golden generations deemed as such as the result of tournament wins, or do tournament wins come from golden generations?

Take France for example, would anyone consider 1998 to be their golden generation had they lost the final? It seems that moniker is always applied after they win.

The talk about golden generation is often initiated before a tournament but it will explode afterwards if the team goes on to win (if they are a tradtional title contender like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Italy) or have huge success compared to the expectations (Sweden 1994, Croatia 1998, South Korea 2002). If the so called golden generation team is a favourite and then becomes knocked out early the talk about them being the golden generation is often down played heavily in the collective memory.

 

[future heroes]

deleted.

where's the delete post button?

When you edit your post, you will find the delete button just above "Subject". I suppose that it is only possible to delete a post if it is the last post of the thread.

 

[SomGooner]

@AFC-Phil, Yakubu never played for the third most successful club in England and never played with the greatest assist machine in the world and never had a team designed to get the best out of him and yet he's been scoring goals for every team he's played for...Stop baiting me with my captain fantastic in Robin.

Villa is nowhere near Butragueño and Raul but he's lucky to be playing in an era where Spanish national team happen to be the best team in the world and create chances for fun and even Bent will end up having stats that will better or rival the best in business.

Ruud Van Nistelrooy won La Liga for Real but Eto'o never helped Barca win anything? Nice one.


@USArsenal nice to know that your only contribution to the debate is mockery, classy of you.

 

[AFC-Phil]

@AFC-Phil, Yakubu never played for the third most successful club in England

Which didn't happen for a reason.

Face it, discounting players like RvP in such a debate yet adding Yakubu as evidence for your viewpoint is really, really stretching it. It's a bit difficult to take seriously, hence why I'm asking for an explanation for why RvP doesn't deserve to be counted, yet Yakubu does.

Villa is nowhere near Butragueño and Raul but he's lucky to be playing in an era where Spanish national team happen to be the best team in the world and create chances for fun and even Bent will end up having stats that will better or rival the best in business.

And has held an incredible goalscoring record outside of the Spanish NT (FWIW, he scored a hell of a lot of those goals prior to the Spanish resurgence of 2008. Between the 01-02 season and the 10-11 season, Villa has always scored 20+ goals for his club side. That includes 2 seasons at Zaragoza, 2 at Sporting, 5 at Valencia and one at Barca.

Ruud Van Nistelrooy won La Liga for Real but Eto'o never helped Barca win anything? Nice one.

Instead of hideously twisting what I say (And taking our debate off tangent) I'd rather you replied to what I actually said. It's not that difficult...

 

[future heroes]

I do not agree with SomGooner's general assessment of African strikers compared to European strikers, but I really think he is right about Eto'o.

Eto'o was superior to the likes of Rooney, van Nistelrooy, Ibrahimovic, Torres.

Especially van Nistelrooy was extremely limited compared to Eto'o.

 

[Wouterus]

Ibrahimovic > Eto'o for me, although I can understand why people think otherwise. The rest I agree with.

 

[GDeep™]

Eto'o pips Ibra for me, 3 Champions League Medals - first goal scorer in two of those victories.

 

[Wouterus]

Eto'o pips Ibra for me, 3 Champions League Medals - first goal scorer in two of those victories.

True, but Ibrahimovic has won eight consecutive league titles (2004-2011). Eto'o can't beat that.

 

[SomGooner]

I don't recall Eto'o dragging Barca over the line in the same way RvN did.

That's what you wrote or have you forgotten about it?

For all we know RVP's prolific season can turn out to be a one season wonder (I hope to god that's not the case) hence why I'm eager to leave him out however, we can't say that about Yakubu (I'm not comparing him to RVP, I'll never commit such blasphemy) as he's consistently scored goals for every team he's played for, not anywhere near the amount of goals that RVP did but then Robin plays for Arsenal while Yakubu had mostly average players around him.

Yakubu played against Utd in the champions league while at Maccabi Haifa and scored a hat-trick against them and that's not a mean feat but you think he wasn't good enough to do a decent job for bigger clubs, the same clubs that he seemed to enjoy playing against and consistently score against.

I can't explain why bigger clubs never came for him but in football sometimes you need a luck, the same luck that brought Chamakh, Bendtner, Jeffers, Christopher Wreh and many others to Arsenal or many other clubs that their talents did not merit.

David Villa started playing for the national team in 2005 and at that time they already had most of the team that went on to win the Euros 3 years later with more or less the same style that we see today but in Butragueño and Raul time Spain were more like Holland team always bickering and fighting amongst themselves and let's not forget the divisions (Castillo, Catalan and Basque) that existed especially amongst the Barca and Real players but Villa never had to deal with that and like I said the current Spanish team can make any player prolific the same way the current dutch generation helped Huntelaar score 31 goals just 9 short of Kluivert's all time Oranje goals of 40.

And finally Eto'o was never the designated free kick or penalty taker for his teams and never had a team designed just to get the best out of him as at Mallorca they couldn't afford such luxury and at Barca he lived under the huge shadows of the great Ronaldinho and at Inter Mourinho used him as a winger and sometimes even as a right back while Mr Villa is at a club where he's not the top dog for the first time in his career and he's not pleased and it shows in his numbers.

 

[SomGooner]

Eto'o pips Ibra for me, 3 Champions League Medals - first goal scorer in two of those victories.

True, but Ibrahimovic has won eight consecutive league titles (2004-2011). Eto'o can't beat that.

True but I believe there's more to it than that otherwise he wouldn't disappear in big games whilst Eto'o always shows up in big games.

It won't be fair to Ibra if I say Eto'o succeeded where he (Ibra) failed at Inter and at Barca where Eto'o played a massive role in helping both teams win the treble and playing against Ibrahimovic twice and winning both.

Not only Eto'o but even the great Maradona can't surpass such feat, that's unique beyond belief in itself however, Ibra should've achieved more personal glory with his talent instead of allowing average players to get the better of him, especially when the stage is set and the pressure is on.

 

[AnthonyG]

Yakubu played against Utd in the champions league while at Maccabi Haifa and scored a hat-trick against them and that's not a mean feat but you think he wasn't good enough to do a decent job for bigger clubs, the same clubs that he seemed to enjoy playing against and consistently score against.

It doesn't really matter, but he scored the hat-trick against Olympiakos.

 

[SomGooner]

but he scored the hat-trick against Olympiakos.

My mistake and thanks for the correction mate, appreciate it.

 

[Rain Dance]

deleted.

where's the delete post button?

When you edit your post, you will find the delete button just above "Subject". I suppose that it is only possible to delete a post if it is the last post of the thread.

thanks mate, your last line explain everything

 

[mavelous]

Ibrahimovic > Eto'o for me, although I can understand why people think otherwise. The rest I agree with.

they have distinctly different styles tbh. to each his own, but ibra can carry a team, eto'o makes a decent team much better by goals at the very least.