Ultimate Football (Soccer) Thread (2011-2012)

[Gravonia]

How about this?

But how about Chelsea's offside goal against Wigan at the weekend? It happens to everyone. Take the blinkers off.

Welback scored during the game but was called offside when he was obviously onside, plus It was 2-0, not 1-0. What does Chelsea vs Wigan have to do with this?

You say he was onside because you're biased. The Guardian said he was a foot offside (see 47 minutes) Plus, It was 2-0 but the ref wrongly sent off a QPR player so who knows what would have happened if he hadn't?
Did you see my original link mentioned a penalty Fulham were denied in your game with them the previous week. That would have been 1-1 so that's another 2 points you shouldn't have.
I mentioned the Chelsea v Wigan game to point out that bad decisions happen to everyone. And what you saw today was not especially 'disgusting refereeing'. I was at the Spurs v Liverpool game earlier in the season when the ref sent off two Liverpool players. Now that was bollocks refereeing and I'm a Spurs fan.

[Hossaim]

Welback scored during the game but was called offside when he was obviously onside, plus It was 2-0, not 1-0. What does Chelsea vs Wigan have to do with this?

You say he was onside because you're biased. The Guardian said he was a foot offside (see 47 minutes) Plus, It was 2-0 but the ref wrongly sent off a QPR player so who knows what would have happened if he hadn't?
Did you see my original link mentioned a penalty Fulham were denied in your game with them the previous week. That would have been 1-1 so that's another 2 points you shouldn't have.
I mentioned the Chelsea v Wigan game to point out that bad decisions happen to everyone. And what you saw today was not especially 'disgusting refereeing'. I was at the Spurs v Liverpool game earlier in the season when the ref sent off two Liverpool players. Now that was bollocks refereeing and I'm a Spurs fan.

He was nowhere near 1 foot offside. He was clearly onside.

[Gravonia]

I found it

I'd say it's marginal but just off. No way is he clearly onside. Why are we arguing about this goal anyway? You were already 2-0 up at this point.

[Serrland]

Most disgusting refereeing I have ever laid eyes on. We had at least 2 penalties meanwhile we kept getting all the little decisions against us. Phill dowe to blame if City win this.

Fuck's sake, man. Can't you just accept that United were a bit below par against a Wigan side who seem to have the bit between their teeth? United are five points clear with five games left and still have to play City in a few weeks, so it's hardly the fault of tonight's ref if they fuck things up.

If you want to see some terrible refereeing, find footage of the Austria-Italy World Cup '34 semifinal, or the South Korea-Italy quarterfinal(?) in 2002. Or Graham Poll in his infamous "three yellows" sketch of 2006 (it was a generally shocking performance all round - not giving two fairly clear penalties and allowing a clearly offside goal to stand as well as showing one player three yellow cards).

Don't forget the wrongfully disallowed goal for the USA against Slovenia in WC 2010. That still gets me going.

[Hossaim]

I found it

I'd say it's marginal but just off. No way is he clearly onside. Why are we arguing about this goal anyway? You were already 2-0 up at this point.

We are only 1-0 up, and that goal that wasn't a goal made up for the missed call before, so no, the refereeing was fine in united vs qpr.

[Cromarty]

Whilst it's not to be taken as 100% accurate, one should turn to a website such as Debatable Decisions, which looks at controversial incidents and declares whether their panel of experts agrees or disagrees with the decision in question.

Their 'Real Premier League Table', although not updated with the last two sets of games, currently:

They also publish a decisions table where we see that, despite some incidents where he's criticised referees, Tony Pulis' Stoke has benefited from 15 total decisions in their favour, Bolton from 12 and QPR from 5, whilst Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton and West Brom have most reason to be annoyed by refereeing errors.

Debatable Decisions also publish a full list of all decisions so far this season.

[Osarius]

Don't forget the wrongfully disallowed goal for the USA against Slovenia in WC 2010. That still gets me going.

I can't see the video right now as I'm at work, but wasn't that the one where it was extremely harsh, and not necessarily wrong ..? With a foul called in all the jostling at a set piece? Or am I getting my wires crossed?

South Korea vs Italy was one of the worst showings I've ever seen from a ref. In fact, the refereeing in a few of Italy's matches in the 2002 World Cup was pretty shocking, if I remember rightly.

[I V Stalin]

Fuck's sake, man. Can't you just accept that United were a bit below par against a Wigan side who seem to have the bit between their teeth? United are five points clear with five games left and still have to play City in a few weeks, so it's hardly the fault of tonight's ref if they fuck things up.

If you want to see some terrible refereeing, find footage of the Austria-Italy World Cup '34 semifinal, or the South Korea-Italy quarterfinal(?) in 2002. Or Graham Poll in his infamous "three yellows" sketch of 2006 (it was a generally shocking performance all round - not giving two fairly clear penalties and allowing a clearly offside goal to stand as well as showing one player three yellow cards).

Don't forget the wrongfully disallowed goal for the USA against Slovenia in WC 2010. That still gets me going.

Haha! They've got Graham Poll telling us what a bad decision it was! He should know!

[I V Stalin]

Anyone else see this?

Man City fined €30000 for being a minute late onto the pitch compared with Porto's €20000 fine for 90 minutes worth of racist abuse. Nice one UEFA. The article also points to comparisons with the €40000 fine the Bulgarian FA received for their fans' racist abuse of black English players in the Euro 2012 qualifier in Sofia and the €40000 fine Arsene Wenger received for complaining about the refereeing in the second leg of Arsenal's Champions League round-of-16 match with Milan...accompanied by a three match touchline ban.

[Forsher]

Whilst it's not to be taken as 100% accurate, one should turn to a website such as Debatable Decisions, which looks at controversial incidents and declares whether their panel of experts agrees or disagrees with the decision in question.

Their 'Real Premier League Table', although not updated with the last two sets of games, currently:

(Image)

(Image)

They also publish a decisions table where we see that, despite some incidents where he's criticised referees, Tony Pulis' Stoke has benefited from 15 total decisions in their favour, Bolton from 12 and QPR from 5, whilst Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton and West Brom have most reason to be annoyed by refereeing errors.

(Image)

Debatable Decisions also publish a full list of all decisions so far this season.

In a perfect world...

Are they closer or further apart than would normally be expected?

[Utopia FTW]

Anyone else see this?

Man City fined €30000 for being a minute late onto the pitch compared with Porto's €20000 fine for 90 minutes worth of racist abuse. Nice one UEFA. The article also points to comparisons with the €40000 fine the Bulgarian FA received for their fans' racist abuse of black English players in the Euro 2012 qualifier in Sofia and the €40000 fine Arsene Wenger received for complaining about the refereeing in the second leg of Arsenal's Champions League round-of-16 match with Milan...accompanied by a three match touchline ban.

Well, as lamentable as the racial abuse may be. Porto itself had a little less fault in it. It was some Porto fans that acted out, the club was indirectly responsible. Man City otoh, were directly responsible.

[Osarius]

Anyone else see this?

Man City fined €30000 for being a minute late onto the pitch compared with Porto's €20000 fine for 90 minutes worth of racist abuse. Nice one UEFA. The article also points to comparisons with the €40000 fine the Bulgarian FA received for their fans' racist abuse of black English players in the Euro 2012 qualifier in Sofia and the €40000 fine Arsene Wenger received for complaining about the refereeing in the second leg of Arsenal's Champions League round-of-16 match with Milan...accompanied by a three match touchline ban.

Well, as lamentable as the racial abuse may be. Porto itself had a little less fault in it. It was some Porto fans that acted out, the club was indirectly responsible. Man City otoh, were directly responsible.

Irrelevant. If UEFA/FIFA want to be taken seriously, they can't be seen to have any inconsistencies in these areas. Not to mention I'd guess 99% of fans would say the racism is far worse... yet its punished lightly. Why? It doesn't come across as UEFA/FIFA being serious about stamping out racism. Its kinda like the FA's talking about "we need more grass roots coaches" while they increase the prices of their coaching courses. It smacks of PR bullshit, and its not only insulting, but its irresponsible (like Sepp Blatter's "shake hands" comment).

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter that the club is indirectly responsible. They still have a responsibility to make it clear to their fans that its not going to be tolerated. Also, punishing the club for the actions of the fans isn't a new thing, and is probably the most effective method of dealing with poor fan behaviour. They'll either stop because they don't want their club to suffer or other fans will "police" them so the club doesn't suffer... but this only works if the punishments are substantial. But if crowd trouble can lead to games behind closed doors (and lost revenue as a result), then why not for overt racial abuse? 30k is a drop of piss in a swimming pool for these clubs. I'd suggest allowing opposing teams to refuse to play in the face of overt racial abuse, and awarding forfeits. That would soon change things... but I'm pretty sure that would never be accepted, or break some laws or something.

[Utopia FTW]

Well, as lamentable as the racial abuse may be. Porto itself had a little less fault in it. It was some Porto fans that acted out, the club was indirectly responsible. Man City otoh, were directly responsible.

Irrelevant. If UEFA/FIFA want to be taken seriously, they can't be seen to have any inconsistencies in these areas. Not to mention I'd guess 99% of fans would say the racism is far worse... yet its punished lightly. Why? It doesn't come across as UEFA/FIFA being serious about stamping out racism. Its kinda like the FA's talking about "we need more grass roots coaches" while they increase the prices of their coaching courses. It smacks of PR bullshit, and its not only insulting, but its irresponsible (like Sepp Blatter's "shake hands" comment).

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter that the club is indirectly responsible. They still have a responsibility to make it clear to their fans that its not going to be tolerated. Also, punishing the club for the actions of the fans isn't a new thing, and is probably the most effective method of dealing with poor fan behaviour. They'll either stop because they don't want their club to suffer or other fans will "police" them so the club doesn't suffer... but this only works if the punishments are substantial. But if crowd trouble can lead to games behind closed doors (and lost revenue as a result), then why not for overt racial abuse? 30k is a drop of piss in a swimming pool for these clubs. I'd suggest allowing opposing teams to refuse to play in the face of overt racial abuse, and awarding forfeits. That would soon change things... but I'm pretty sure that would never be accepted, or break some laws or something.

They can be penalised just as harsh or harder as any other irregularities. it's just up to the discretion of the judges and the governing bodies ain't it? Based on individual cases.

[Gravonia]

Anyone else see this?

Man City fined €30000 for being a minute late onto the pitch compared with Porto's €20000 fine for 90 minutes worth of racist abuse. Nice one UEFA. The article also points to comparisons with the €40000 fine the Bulgarian FA received for their fans' racist abuse of black English players in the Euro 2012 qualifier in Sofia and the €40000 fine Arsene Wenger received for complaining about the refereeing in the second leg of Arsenal's Champions League round-of-16 match with Milan...accompanied by a three match touchline ban.

Yeah, I started a separate thread on it yesterday as I was interested in the views of people who weren't interested in football. It didn't get very far.
Although they talk the talk, it seems UEFA consider racist abuse to be acceptable banter. Certainly, Porto's counter claim that Man City fans chant of 'You're not incredible' to Hulk was just as bad shows that they don't get it.

[Serrland]

Don't forget the wrongfully disallowed goal for the USA against Slovenia in WC 2010. That still gets me going.

I can't see the video right now as I'm at work, but wasn't that the one where it was extremely harsh, and not necessarily wrong ..? With a foul called in all the jostling at a set piece? Or am I getting my wires crossed?

South Korea vs Italy was one of the worst showings I've ever seen from a ref. In fact, the refereeing in a few of Italy's matches in the 2002 World Cup was pretty shocking, if I remember rightly.

That was the one where there were about 5 American players being quite literally bear-hugged in the box on a set piece, and somehow the call went against us, with literally no indication of who it was on or for what reason. It still hasn't been explained who committed the foul, or even what the foul was. If Coulibaly wanted to call something for the grappling and little pushes and shoves he should most definitely have awarded us a penalty kick - the Slovene fellow marking Michael Bradley had both arms literally linked around his stomach and was trying to haul him out of the line of fire. Instead it goes an unknown American for an unknown reason.

Coulibaly was pulled from being the referee after that, by the way, and was relegated to 4th official status, if my memory serves me.

It's not THAT big a deal, though, we still ended up winning the group and went on to lose to Ghana in extra time of the Round of 16 (that's one we should/could have won!), I'm mostly just bitter because that would have ranked right up with the win over England in the 1950 World Cup and the 2009 Confederations Cup win over Spain - we were down 0-2 at halftime after being outplayed, outmatched, and frankly whipped, only to come back and win 3-2. Alas, the mysterious call...

[Nadkor]

Just read a very good article by Sid Lowe in the Guardian about Real's (or Ronaldo's, really) victory over Athletico the other night. It ends like this:

Down in the car park leading out of the north end, Madrid's players filed through serious, silent and in formation. At the other end of the passageway, Ronaldo was standing before the cameras grinning. "I'd like to thank my team-mates; without them I wouldn't have got the goals," he said before dashing through, stopping briefly to have his picture taken with an Atléti fan in a wheelchair, and on to the bus.

This time, he was wrong. Ronaldo might have got the goals without them. This time, he carried Madrid. He re-established the four-point lead at the top of the table and may still carry them to the league title. If not in play - Ronaldo is not the kind of footballer who controls the game – then certainly in that sense of constant, imminent danger. The brutal beauty of the way he plays. The sheer decisiveness. This is far too good a team to ever talk about a one-man show, but his impact is astonishing. Ronaldo is the Zumosol Cousin: the powerful, perfect specimen, all white teeth and physique, who steps up to rescue his little cousin. When he is flying, he can appear unstoppable, ubiquitous. As one columnist grandly put it: "He is not Cristiano, he is the whole of Christianity."

Against Atlético, the goals came from nowhere. "Cristiano condemned us with his goals," said Simeone. "Those goals did not fit the way the game was going but they were decisive. Goals are more important than ideas."

He has condemned so many others. Atlético were one of only three teams against whom Ronaldo had not scored from goals other than penalties (the others were Barcelona and Tenerife). Now he has remedied that. And with a goal, with two goals, that were barely plausible. Overall, his figures are even more absurdly brilliant. You could argue that they belong to a different age but for one thing: they are better than the figures racked up in pretty much any age, ever. His three on Wednesday night were his 38th, 39th, and 40th of the season. It was his seventh hat-trick. It was also the first time a Madrid player had scored three at Atlético since Alfredo di Stéfano in 1952-53 and he became the first player to score 20 away goals in a season. Before last year, no one had ever exceeded 38 goals. Ronaldo has done it twice in a row. He has 138 goals in 136 games for Madrid, for goodness sake.

So he is cocky? So what? Why shouldn't he be? It is all too easily forgotten that when he made his "rich, handsome and good at football" comment his tongue was wedged at least part of the way into his cheek, that he was right, and that it is that attitude, that self-worth, that has made him the player he is. Or that it is his teams that benefit. The sheer bloody-mindedness, the obsession, the ambition, is almost suffocating and supremely impressive: the drive and determination. The relentlessness of his dedication has proven successful. Ronaldo has more than earned the right to puff out his chest; puffing out his chest has earned him the right to puff it out some more. He hasn't always played brilliantly, of course, but nor has he ever hidden. Back in the days when people wore black boots, the very few who wore coloured ones stood out a mile. White or blue, yellow or red, the verdict was always the same: you'd better be really bloody good.

Last night Ronaldo wore fuchsia.

Pretty much sums up my feelings on Ronaldo perfectly.

[Rubiconic Crossings V2 rev 1f]

Thought I'd mention how brilliantly Warnock is working out for us.

[Cromarty]

Thought I'd mention how brilliantly Warnock is working out for us.

Warnock is one of those managers who's highly rated... yet for no identifiable reason.

[Rubiconic Crossings V2 rev 1f]

Thought I'd mention how brilliantly Warnock is working out for us.

Warnock is one of those managers who's highly rated... yet for no identifiable reason.

No...fair dues to the man. He has done well with keeping teams in or promoting to the higher leagues some seven times...but hasn't actually won anything. A steady hand to steady the ship by anyone's reckoning. I think he'd have done well at QPR if it wasn't for the fact that the owners stiffed him.

So of course this man turns up at Elland Road and proceeds to well...not really win and one game with our worst score ever at home (7 against us by Forest. Forest for fucks sake!) and have dropped to 14th being 6 points off 7th place. 6th (play off position) we're 8 points adrift all told. I'm not looking below us. That is a dark dark place I never want to be in ever again.

[Fartsniffage]

Just read a very good article by Sid Lowe in the Guardian about Real's (or Ronaldo's, really) victory over Athletico the other night. It ends like this:

Last night Ronaldo wore fuchsia.

Pretty much sums up my feelings on Ronaldo perfectly.

Fuchsia. Brilliant.

£80million was nowhere near enough.

[Utopia FTW]

Eden Hazard is a player being strongly linked to Man Utd. I am quite cautious considering our recent transfer history, but he would Bring a great attacking option from midfield. A new CR7?
Make it happen Fergie

[Cromarty]

Do we need Eden Hazard?

No, not really.

[Cyborg Holland]

Such a shame...

[Nadkor]

Do we need Eden Hazard?

No, not really.

Absolutely not. Fantastic player, but he's a wide player primarily. We need someone in the midfield who will work with Carrick. Hazard is not that player.

I mean, if we get him in the grand because he's clearly a very good player and any team is happy to bring in good players, but he's not what we need.

[Serrland]

Do we need Eden Hazard?

No, not really.

Absolutely not. Fantastic player, but he's a wide player primarily. We need someone in the midfield who will work with Carrick. Hazard is not that player.

I mean, if we get him in the grand because he's clearly a very good player and any team is happy to bring in good players, but he's not what we need.

Clint Dempsey maybe? I'd hate to see him leave Fulham but I figure he'd fit in just fine at Man U. Carrick could link up with him just fine I think.