Playing this guy on career mode....he is fast. Like real fast. Great for fifa...guess we will see how he pans out in real life.
Stiven Mendoza [Forward]
- Thread starter einwindir
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He may be Villa's turf replacement but tonight ( 5/9/2016) VS DC United he did not impressed me. On the 80th minute our team had a great opportunity to increase the score to 3 -0 . Mendoza had the ball while Villa was right in front of the goal area. Mendoza could had passed to Villa and instead he took the shot which went wide off the net. Even to my untrained eye that rarely catches these selfish actions, it was so patently clear to me.
I think these were two separate incidents. The one that
TabascoDiva is talking about looked like a failed cross-shot (I don't know if it was selfish as much as poorly timed). The one that
LionNYC is talking about, I think Mendoza just got muscled off the ball and the defender got a foot in and either knocked it wide for a corner or knocked it onto Mendoza's boot. He also made a few passes that were telegraphed or overly ambitious. I think he was just struggling to get into the pace of the game and do too much. He's busting a gut to make an impression. When he missed the shot / cross he ended up kicking a hoarding on the side. When he failed to score on the 1 on 1 he was so frustrated it sounded like an alien giving birth or having an orgasm.
I'm still excited about Mendoza.
All of this.I think these were two separate incidents. The one that
He also made a few passes that were telegraphed or overly ambitious. I think he was just struggling to get into the pace of the game and do too much. He's busting a gut to make an impression. When he missed the shot / cross he ended up kicking a hoarding on the side. When he failed to score on the 1 on 1 he was so frustrated it sounded like an alien giving birth or having an orgasm.
I'm still excited about Mendoza.
The play where he got caught from behind, we've seen in various forms with many of our players. It always seems to me that one of the easiest things to do (and you see this all the time in Serie A and La Liga) is for the offensive player to just side step a bit to take the contact and draw the foul. For Mendoza that would have been a PK. We don't seem to be great at drawing those kinds of fouls.
I think it's an officiating policy thing.
In some interview, somewhere, I remember PV saying that the team met with officials at the start of the season to talk about some general guidelines they'd put in place to set expectations about how they were going to be interpreting the rules. I've also heard pundits talk about very explicit, differing interpretations between various European leagues and the Champions League (e.g. it's ok to raise studs if you win the ball in the EPL but it's never ok in UCL).
So I think it's an MLS choice to favor physicality over finesse or shielding technique. Whether it's to preserve or give the league character, or to give American players an advantage, I could only speculate, but either way it doesn't favour our relatively diminutive squad.
Do you see other teams getting these calls? I can't really remember honestly.
I say this as someone who did not watch MLS before NYCFC, but I've always assumed some of it is due to the fact that the league knows there was, and still is, limited technical quality (which includes the ability to defend and tackle, not just play on the ball) and that if you whistle everything that is traditionally a foul in higher level leagues, you'd have a tremendous number of stoppages, too many cards, etc. and end up with an unwatchable product.
Now maybe calling the match tighter would allow the game to evolve to a better quality match, but look at how much outrage there was over the red cards earlier this year?
My general hope is that, as the level of quality gets better, you can ref the game more consistently with the top European leagues and start a virtuous circle where that further allows higher quality play thrive.
Thoughts welcome as this is just speculation, and I'd particularly welcome views from those who have watched MLS a lot longer than I have and are better situated to comment.
None that I can recall. So you are probably right. The officiating may very well be set up to discourage trying to take those bumps.
Word. Like pain killers, this seems like a short term fix that could become a long term problem. I'd love to see the league make a bold, if immediately painful, step forward on this. But I'm biased towards the little guys as a little guy
As another point of comparison, when Jamie Vardy got a Yellow for embellishment a few games ago (which was a second Yellow and therefore Red) he got it, at least in part, for creating the contact by sidestepping into a chasing defender. He also literally embellished his fall by pitching himself forward, and the defender also fully grabbed Vardy's upper arm inside the box, and the sidestepping was crucial.
Such fine lines. I thought that was a fair booking because the defender wasn't making an attempt for the ball. On the other hand if Vardy had stepped in between the defender and the ball as the defender was making an attempt I'd think a penalty was in order. I think that's fairly uncontroversial?
And I don't think we ever figured out the proper way to spell his first name
Crazy. I had no idea he was in Ligue One. Apparently been there for a year and has 3 goals in 24 appearances.
So, we’ve got Mendoza in Ligue One and Angelino playing Champions League. I will be waiting for Kwame Watson Siraboe to get the call to Serie A any day now.
