Hey, I get plenty of joy out of the sneks' team going out, too.
UCL 17/18 Knockout Rounds (Draw and Matches)
- Thread starter Midas Mulligan
- Start date
Well what can I say? Part of why this makes this the beautiful game. No excuses on this end. After the results, I still would have felt confident with Barca and MC going through just as I think Real and Bayern will. Let's see though.....
Juve
Watched the last 10 minutes. What a ridiculous finish.
I couldn't understand why Juventus was slowing down play. They had a distinct advantage that only lasted until the end of regulation. If they had scored their 4th in regulation, then Real would have needed two goals. Once extra time started, a Juventus goal could be matched by one Real goal. Better to speed up play and try to put in the winner before the whistle blows.
In UEFA, the Away Goal Rule applies to extra time, so I don't think this is correct. Juve's advantage would have lasted through the extra 30 minutes. This is not how it works in CCL or MLS Cup, where the AGR only applies to regulation time.
To me it was a penalty. Didn’t get the ball and took down the man.
I thought he might have gotten the ball and I still think it was a penalty. He had to go through him and put hands on his back to get it. Still, a tough call.
I just want to know what Buffon said to see a straight red for dissent(?).
Not gonna take sides on the peno call. Heartbroken for Juve, what an effort today.
Not gonna take sides on the peno call. Heartbroken for Juve, what an effort today
.
Yeah, I hate the “got the ball” crowd.
Shit was a penalty. I didn’t want it to be. But it just was. And I actually think Oliver felt the same way, unlike how he is in PL.
The person filming that deserves the coach treatment. Dick move.
I must be crazy because I don't feel like that was a penalty at all. People keep saying hands on the back, but every angle I've seen, he's flapping his arms backwards so he can try and get his leg forward and take the ball clean. Second thing you might think from this still image is that maybe the push started a few strides earlier, but Vazquez was basically planted and Benatia was closing the gap. I can also understand why Vazquez might make the most of that instead of just scoring. He's got no forward motion so he's waiting for the ball, which makes it hard to generate movement towards the ball. It's coming in at chest height but he can't quite get his head down to get it in so he has to take a touch. I think under those circumstances, if you can score, you score. If you can't score, you dive.
Barney Ronay is generally really good. He doesn't do any theorizing, but let's some air out of the debate:
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-three-straight-defeats-champions-league-exit
Reading this article reminded me somehow of the stats talk at NYCFC's chalk talk series last year. They talked about how they would drill their teams around getting the ball to the parts of the pitch most highly correlated with xG. They also mentioned that a major shortcoming of xG is that it doesn't take into account the position of defenders.
One thing about analytically formulated action is that the success of the action assumes that you can extrapolate trends derived by interpolating upon past data. But if something that is external to the sample data changes, for example, the defense distributes itself differently, then success may no longer map well to the previously established trend.
I've been playing over the Liverpool matches in my head because I'm a big fan of Pep's and I suppose I'm subconsciously trying to figure out how his ideas failed. One thing that sticks out is just how well Liverpool managed to crowd the six yard box. This is a highly targeted area of the box because of how much City rely on underlapping to get into the area. By the time Silva or Sterling get the ball, they tend to be very close to the touchline, which means the angular range is fairly acute.
So it seems to me as if City need to find new ways to penetrate the box. A naive thing they might do is just taking advantage of the distortion of the defensive distribution of players and find ways to move it to areas of the box that are more sparsely protected. This wouldn't make them less vulnerable to counters, but it would make them more efficient in terms of converting their possession in the attacking third into goals.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...-three-straight-defeats-champions-league-exit
Reading this article reminded me somehow of the stats talk at NYCFC's chalk talk series last year. They talked about how they would drill their teams around getting the ball to the parts of the pitch most highly correlated with xG. They also mentioned that a major shortcoming of xG is that it doesn't take into account the position of defenders.
One thing about analytically formulated action is that the success of the action assumes that you can extrapolate trends derived by interpolating upon past data. But if something that is external to the sample data changes, for example, the defense distributes itself differently, then success may no longer map well to the previously established trend.
I've been playing over the Liverpool matches in my head because I'm a big fan of Pep's and I suppose I'm subconsciously trying to figure out how his ideas failed. One thing that sticks out is just how well Liverpool managed to crowd the six yard box. This is a highly targeted area of the box because of how much City rely on underlapping to get into the area. By the time Silva or Sterling get the ball, they tend to be very close to the touchline, which means the angular range is fairly acute.
So it seems to me as if City need to find new ways to penetrate the box. A naive thing they might do is just taking advantage of the distortion of the defensive distribution of players and find ways to move it to areas of the box that are more sparsely protected. This wouldn't make them less vulnerable to counters, but it would make them more efficient in terms of converting their possession in the attacking third into goals.
I must be crazy because I don't feel like that was a penalty at all. People keep saying hands on the back, but every angle I've seen, he's flapping his arms backwards so he can try and get his leg forward and take the ball clean. Second thing you might think from this still image is that maybe the push started a few strides earlier, but Vazquez was basically planted and Benatia was closing the gap. I can also understand why Vazquez might make the most of that instead of just scoring. He's got no forward motion so he's waiting for the ball, which makes it hard to generate movement towards the ball. It's coming in at chest height but he can't quite get his head down to get it in so he has to take a touch. I think under those circumstances, if you can score, you score. If you can't score, you dive.
That image is way too late.
Hands on the back.
If you kick an opponent in the armpit from behind, I don't think getting the ball makes it clean.
Eh. I don't get particular enjoyment from f'ing with drunk people.
That said, I was completely in on the drama of whether or not the pizza was sidewalk bound.
You know, several articles have come out recently about how Klopp is very tactically under-rated. They are responding to the plethora of material painting Liverpool and Klopp as a one-trick pony, and that's just not true. In actuality, he's quite astute and his adapting his tactics has become both better and more common.
I think you are accurate in your analysis of how LFC cut down the effectiveness in front of goals. To explain what I saw, Klopp and team made a brilliant decision to let Sane receive the ball out wide in tons of space. Instead of chasing the winger wide as they had in the 4-3 (the 5-0 became worthless analytically after the red), the fullback would stay tucked in to stop those little runs from Silva. Additionally, almost always a CM would get align himself in between the RB and CB, but at the edge or just above the box. They would only aggressively close down the ball when they had a numerical advantage and could make the closing runs without opening an angle.
Additionally, it was a big and smart to call to move Salah to CF and allow Mane and Bobby to offer more support to the fullbacks, with Salah obviously being less than 100% and just generally not as capable a defender as those two. At least, that was pretty much my immediate takeaway. But Sam Maguire at Footballwhispers makes some deeper observations.
https://www.footballwhispers.com/blog/klopp-has-proven-hes-guardiola-tactical-nemesis
Tiny preview, but I'd be curious to read your reaction to the whole piece. I think his analysis about going at Fern is right, but I would argue he downplays the most critical element (probably because he already had content on it - Gini - and needed to write about a different angle).
Looking at it what transpired tactically in the second half, I think even a first half two goal advantage wouldn't have changed the ultimate result for City. And I think Pep knew he was in deep shit after taking his big swing early, and that, as much as anything, is why he lost his composure (not that the ref wasn't shit, he was. He wasn't biased, just absolutely bonkers.).