The General Football Thread

Ah, I missed your joke. I still had my serious head on.

Yes, the EFL was our most important comp this season.

 

Owen Hargreaves is making the same point on BT, to be fair. Yes, he's going to be biased towards Bayern but he has a point as well.

 

Well there you go. Pat Nevin said that it was purely random that two Spanish clubs in Spain benefited. I'm not so sure. Did Hargreaves give any impression alluding to my feeling, or did he stay open minded in that respect.?

 

Champions League is bigger and better than the World Cup!! WC is an over-bloated turgid affair played at a time when the players are completely exhausted. If it wasn't for the advertising and money involved it would be a dead duck of a tournament.

 

Ronaldo's third goal was offside as wel!!! Unbelievable.

 

Yes, so I'm hearing too.

 

He was just disappointed that a game between two of the best clubs in the world was reduced to a farce by incompetent officials.

 

Oh, I don't know about that.

 

The best thing to come out of all this is that VAR's will almost certainly come in now, so I suppose as neutrals we should be objectively satisfied. As a football fan I personally am still outraged though.

 

It was a fascinating game until the sending-off and then Baern became very wary. Once Real had secured the second equalizer of the night, the life drained from Bayern. Without a doubt both teams are two of the best in Europe and it was a pity one had to go out.

 

Yeah, that point was made on Radio 5 too. Danny Mills has been saying that footballers have been carrying GPS packs in their shirts for a couple of seasons [that's not unknown] but to just use them for offsides. I think he over estimates their extremely accuracy, unless one uses 'local satellite' transmitter/receivers, anchored on the stadium roof. Then you might get the requisite accuracy, but I still doubt it.

 

You are right SS, these are just my subjective feelings!!

 

There is no 'if' Chilco, It is coming in from next season in certain competitions in football. The thing is it could have easily been in football for a few seasons now using present technology.

 

I agree. The personal GPS's are only accurate down to a yard or so, which isn't going to be good enough for close offside decisions. As I said the other day though, technology can always be improved upon, whereas human error can't ever be completely eliminated.

 

The Spanish clubs in this year's competition seem to have had more than their fair share of 'luck'

 

I think you are alluding to Barca in particular rather than La Liga teams in general. We shall see tomorrow!! If Celta Vigo get through to the final of the EL and beat Manchester United in the process, then your claim may have some validity..

 

You obviously didn't see the Real-Bayern game then. Bayern had a decent penalty shout denied, then a farcical second yellow for Vidal, then 2 offside goals by Captain Portugal.

Atlético, to be fair, got through on merit.

 

So am I. Of course because we have been personally affected. Thing is, everyone is personally affected. The error hit us this time in the EFL Final.

 

This is actually my concern too about VARs. It is still open to human interpretation. One wonders whether the invisible humans advising on the decisions in the van don't have brown envelopes in their pockets. Do I believe that is entirely impossible.? No, I can't say that. I suspect that we'll see one or two decisions from the van be very suspect in major competitions. But I can't believe they will be as blatantly wrong as at present, which could almost have the label 'fix' applied to them.

I still maintain that the Barcelona-PSG result, for example, wasn't an honest one.

 

Actually I did see the game Chilco, but you may have missed my comment. The Vidal sending off was totally unjustified. There is also a element of doubt over Bayern's penalty. The goals scored by CR did look a bit offside. When the second goal went in for Real, Bayern just stopped. So maybe the bias is for Real and Barca because the other La Liga teams are treated just like eveyone else.