Not surprising

A colleague of mine is a big fan on the pace and speed of EPL. In many ways I am too, but I also am disappointed with the lack of outright creativity. Everything is so anticipated and usual. There is of course the special piece of skill once in a while from the top teams, but not enough in my opinion. On the other hand, La liga teams have sublime skill, its not all physical and that is so different from how most of EPL teams play. Each their own I guess...

But something that doesn't appeal to me from either facet of the game is the Serie A. The quality of football is going down the drain in Italy and it showed in the world cup. The games are played to half filled stadiums and that tells a story in itself. The teams I follow in Serie A are inter, ac milan and juventus and each of them are far below the standards by the other two big leagues i.e. EPL and La liga. There then should be no surprise that the teams that make it to europe and more specifically uefa champions league rarely make it past the knockout stage. And in this edition, ac milan has been taken to the cleaners at home by newbies tottenham while last years champions inter lost at home to bayern. The story is same in europa league where all the italian teams are out of contention with hardly any fight being put up.

These very obvious signs have not gone unnoticed and uefa has decided to reduce the number of teams from serie A getting automatic qualification to the champions league from 4 to 3. All this doesnt auger well for italian football and it wont be long before big players, even italians choose clubs outside of Italy to make their mark. The league making the most of the situation is Bundesliga which gets promoted to Serie A's place. And quite contrary to Italy, Germany was a revelation in the world cup. And after a long time you see german players playing outside of home with Mourinho reading the obvious. He has taken Ozil and Khedira, the stars of the world cup, and they are not doing too bad for themselves.Here is hoping to see more of these kind of german youngsters and their skills in the coming years in europe.

Overall this is the right move for football and will make the UEFA CL and Europa leagues more competitive in the coming year(s).

Epitomizing Bad!

Rafa Benitez is my favourite bunny when it comes to manager bashing. If someone has been overrated in the position of a manager in the time that I have seen football, it is this guy! You know how huge world corporations, especially US based ones rejig the management, departments and personnel and think they can get out of a sticky situation, well... benitez is that to football. 

During his time at Liverpool I cannot remember a steady playing 11. For a team sport, he sure did a lot of chopping around. I dont remember his CL win, but that was probably the only reason he was persisted with for all those years! Comparing with english club managers who have had a long run, Unlike Fergie he hasnt made champions at liverpool, unlike wenger he has not got kids coming through the system and playing good football and unlike david moyes he has not made the most of what he had! Other than Martin Kelly, no one from the youth academy has made it to the senior team at liverpool! You can effectively say that benitez not only screwed Liverpools present, he also screwed their future! For a club struggling to make it to the europa rounds, they have had to do a lot of spending to build a team again, post the benitez era. Yes, he was that bad!

When his innings with Liverpool came to an end, he inherited a champion team in Inter Milan, thanks to Mourinho. And what did he do there? He chopped and chipped the team into a team of losers! Sure, he got lucky with the FIFA Club World Cup, but then, he hadnt had enough time to screw things up yet. And when Inter saw that he was again on his path of breaking up a good team, they had to get him out! They brought in Leonardo from AC Milan and the results are here to see, 8 matches, 7 wins and 1 loss! and they had just 6 wins from 15 matches under benitez.

Now that he is out of a job post the Inter sacking, it is no surprise that he has no takers. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets a job with some of the relegation doomed teams in EPL or La Liga or Serie A in the near future, i.e. if he actually manages to get his head out of his ass! With my limited knowledge of football, I am willing to bet on this prediction. Anyone wanna take me on? :-)

Too friendly

Cassano, the purported genius with a few screws missing made the big move to AC Milan and immediately had an effect in their match against Cagliari. The pass was deft and the finish from Strasser was decent. But what caught the attention of most was how friendly Cassano had gotten with his new teammates.



If this is what Strasser gets for scoring one goal, wonder what will happen if he scores a hat-trick. ;-)