here we go... tobes amking up stats... average age means nothing when chile out ran them. iniesta was blown away last night, alosnos was... so in fact was pedro. legs and age is not the same thing necessarily. thats why i said legs. spain could no longer win it back like they did and could'nt hold on to it like the used to.. both chile and holland got in their faces and disrupted the game plan totally... if spain had the legs they'd have patiently pased the legs off both teams and won 1-0.
Did they though? They just didn't look interested, no pressure off the ball - which is their trademark - I'm sure they weren't sent out not to work off the ball, they just were more outplayed than out thought. I agree Casillas should have already called it a day and by the next WC Reina will either be out as well or still number 2. If I was a Chelsea fan I'd have had the excitement about Costa dampened too!
Firstly, I've made up **** all - the average age of their starting XI last night was 27 - fact Secondly, you said it was legs; Alonso aside, it was nothing to do with the 'old guard' he just picked the wrong side and sent them out with a plan that simply didn't work.
oh forgive me wise one. i MEANT TO SAY... you just pull out irrelevant stat that supports your point yet ignore the overwhelming tsunami of conventional thinking about last nights game. Just about every pundit going has said what i did yesterday after the game. they can't keep up. If you didnt see iniesta being simply blown off the park in terms of closing down and hassling and simply not being able to keep up then fine. Thats what i say. I say pedro giving it away in the same way. and like i said yesterday and this morning... del bosque picked the "old gaurd" that means irrespective of form and ability he went for the aforementioned and even threw on torres... Its really simple. if this chile side met spain 2010 I say they would have been passed off the park, ran out of legs and lost the game 1-0. I think the conventional wisdom is that is not the tactics par se its the inability to deliver the required work rate tomake said tactics work. If it is your opinion that given the players del bosque had he could have adapted a brand new set of tactics to make use of the ability they did have including legs fine... i think that equally he could have picked different players and applied the same spanish game much more successfully. After all we are only disagreeing on the way del bosque f'd it up and I don't even care if you just want to disagree with Livtor on the rest.
Well maybe you should have said that then instead of saying I'd 'made them up', which was not only incorrect but ****ing patronising to boot. As for Iniesta being 'blown off the park' I think that's bollocks, as he was still full of running in the last 10 minutes. The problem for him and Spain was that Del Bosque had left his foil i.e. Xavi on the ****ing bench. Spain were off the back of a hammering and once they went 0-1 down their heads dropped and Chile had an extra yard in them. Nothing to do with age, legs or complacency, They were just out fought and out thought.
well I apologize to your good self of course! however given the fact that iniesta created nothing you might find yourself in a minority of one on that one, but to think that putting xavi and iniesta in would have improved it in my opinion is actually only going to make the problem even worse! I'll predict that this result will be put context. but how can out out fought and out thought not be symptoms of the lack of legs and complacency as root causes that led spain to wander into this tournament and get an almighty wake up call.
I agree with Tobes on the Inesta part I thought he was the one player for them that kept at it and was trying to get something going. Spain of the past have hunted the ball in packs when they lose it and close the opposition quickly but there was none of that to be seen in either game and that is imo where it went wrong.
The Spain of old defended from the front. This starts with the focal point setting the example for the rest of the team to follow. Deigo Costa clearly isn't 100% fit and simply didn't do this. The Ams then didn't do it either and so on...
Same. Iniesta was trying until the last minute but had very little help. Takes two to make a pass. Takes two to makes a cross. Takes two to make an assist. etc, etc...
It would appear not..... I think luv and G are spot on about the hunting in packs and defending from the front. Costa was patently not fully fit and the Spanish midfield just weren't compact enough and he used the wrong personnel. Sad end to a great reign for Del Bosque.
I agree with mito in that Iniesta was ineffectual, nothing to do with whether he kept going, that wasn't the point. The point was he had no influence on the game whatsoever. I agree with you about taking two etc. unfortunately the wrong team selection was mostly the undoing.
i think still... iniesta is on the way out... god loves a trier but you put him with x,y,z and he'd still not create anything last night cos chile had him sussed. people are saying he kept trying. i don't see why "trying" and what i'm saying can't amrry up particularly from our LFC experience watching players from morientes to the likes of gerrard "trying" all the time. Morientes is an ideal example actually, the lad had slowed right up but he tried his best every game... but got nowhere and we all could see it. IMO honeslty seeing silva who's so good for city, seeing pedro struggle, seeing costa basically do nothing shows the point. none had the legs to match chile. alosno got taken off rightly but he's just one guy. where was navas, one spanish player of genuine pace... nowhere.. on holiday. where's the forward alternative... villa was left on bench after decent athletico season. not that he would be again much option. my final point woudl again be it says it all when you turn to torres as your option of the bench.
Iniesta on his way out? He's only just turned 30 last month. Harsh that like, as he still looks great to me Agree about Torres, he's a husk of the player he was in his heyday at Liverpool and rarely has any impact off the bench for club or country these days
Agreed. I think the point luv and Gerrez make about Iniesta being the only one trying is valid but I agree with you that it doesn't go against your point of him being 'blown away' either. Question is for Spain, where to now?
That's like saying a player that puts ten crosses into the six yard box per game is **** because he never gets a assist when the rest of the players stay in their own half One player can only do so much and Iniesta got no help from his teammates. Why the hell Xavi was dropped I have no idea. If it was because he has old legs and DB wanted to keep up with the Chileans, why play Alonso? Edit: obviously, with the crosser you could argue that he should look up but that's slightly different to the Iniesta position plus it was just an example
Iniesta was the only Spanish player that game out of that game with any credit imo. He was often left isolated and the movement around him was nowhere near the standard that we've seen from Spain in recent years. Nothing to do with Iniesta that, he was working with nothing last night.
meh.... bet when some bright spark puts the you tube of all his touches together you'll see what i mean by blown away. If you watch the youtbue of him v holland you see him play great up to a point then things get ropey from him and the rest obviously but he gets closed down every time. chile cottoned onto it. close him down, get in his face. cut the time to decide down. sure he needs someone to pass to thats absolutely fine. but this is starting to be iniesta is better than messi and the rest were so bad its all their fault. he was the central force and focus last night. maybe you can say thats the issue, and if someone else stepped up of del bosque put soemone else in like fabrgegas but iniesta was the man on the night and he couldn't get going.
The Holland game was a one off. Put Xavi on the pitch alongside Iniesta against Chile and he hardly loses the ball. Iniesta has never been the main man in his career, he as always been a key player but in the shadow of someone else such as Ronaldinho, Messi, Xavi, David Villa, etc
The point was never Iniesta was rubbish, it was that he was ineffectual and the reason for that is exactly what you stated.
Fair enough, still think it's harsh to point the finger at him when its the rest of the team (not the same effort or fight) or manager (picking wrong team around him or him in the wrong setup) at fault.
