Men's Soccer (Football) Thread [ARCHIVED] Soccer • Page 1379

I guess I can understand it with the change of when the World Cup is falling this year. I would rather them just institute a concussion sub more than anything.

They should have mandated a certain amount of these subs have to be homegrown players as well.

 

5 subs so can Pep complain about fixture congestion and make 5 subs during a 3-match week

 

His refusal to use subs is one of the few things that frustrate me.

 

I agree it should be mandated that some are homegrown players, but that would possibly discriminate against smaller clubs that don't have the academy infrastructure to put meaningful players on the bench.

I honestly don't mind it too much. Burnout is a real thing. 5 possibly feels like too many, with an additional concussion sub. Could end up subbing over half your starting XI. 4 with the concussion sub might have been better.

 

I don't mind the change. I get the argument for it being unfair to the smaller clubs, but the bigger clubs are most likely going to be playing a lot more games and usually have a much tighter schedule. I think it could help cut down some of the muscular injuries we see every year.

 

It's not that it favours bigger clubs over smaller clubs, per se. It's that it favours teams who prioritise physicality and running.

The reason I hate it comes from a very simple love of football as a game. One of the reasons football's so great is that it never quite allows you to have full control. Rinus Michels talks about it in Teambuilding. It's played with your feet rather than your hands, so accuracy is more complicated. The pitch isn't too big to be unmanageable but it's not small enough that you can adequately control all the spaces at any given time. Covering the whole pitch is too difficult for 11v11. And there's a great balance between the technical, physical, tactical and mental aspects.

Three subs gives you limited potential to change things during a game. It puts more stock in a manager getting their original selection correct. It makes the art of the substitution more interesting, with the risk of making subs too early if an injury or sending off occurs, or too late to have a tactical impact on the game. Broadly it puts more emphasis on both players and coaches to manage a game, instead of giving them an easy out. If you put too much in early on then more space appears and the game opens up second half.

Five subs destroys 11v11 as a concept. Most importantly, it makes football too focused on the physical. The gegenpressers love this idea because it allow them to run and run with much more limited risk. That makes space tighter, allows teams to spoil play too easily, and overemphasises the physical aspect.

See the first leg of Inter v Liverpool last month; a game that was in the balance, even edging in Inter's favour at the start of the second half, was completely turned once we made a triple sub an hour in. It wasn't for tactical reasons particularly, nor technical ones. It was the fresh legs and the fact that the players we brought on were of similar quality to the ones they replaced. Inter didn't have that quality in depth and the triple sub took the game away from them. I didn't enjoy that game anywhere near as much as I should have done, because it almost felt like we won on cheat mode. It was a little hollow.

Five subs doesn't automatically help the richest teams, but it certainly puts more emphasis on resources. Teams going through injury crisis are screwed over. And of course it's a wet dream for FIFA and UEFA. Cram those schedules even more because five subs makes players even more dispensable.

 

If we’re expecting players to play 10-11 months out of the year between league, cup(s), continental club comps, international comps/qualifiers/friendlies, pre-season tours… 5 sub starts to feel like the minimum to protect their health and well-being, imo.

And FIFA/etc aren’t going to back down from the money.

 

This is an incredibly informative take, and one that I appreciate particularly as a relatively new fan of club football. I've only been watching regularly since ~2017, and before that only every watched the World Cup every 4 years, so my knowledge is a fraction of what it could be.

I had never thought about most of what you just described, so it's great to get more of a breakdown other than just "money reasons" , "cramming fixtures", etc. It's fascinating how much this can impact every match from a tactics standpoint. Thanks!

 

From a practical view, there's some validity to that. Not entirely - muscle injuries are still broadly down to training methods - but I have some sympathy with that.

I find the submission to it though really depressing. And the fact that it's coming out of pure selfishness from clubs too really exasperates me. I don't even trust Klopp on it; he's behind it because of all the ways it benefits him as Liverpool manager.

 

Wales in the same group as Portugal would be fun.

 

I mean I watch the sport to see the best players performing at a high level.

The 5 subs helps us as the viewer get there.

 

Sort of conflicted because I dislike it for all the reasons said here, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to see players getting injured due to the HUGE amount of games.

I definitely think two of them should be u21/academy graduates, so at least you have a clear path to the first team and reasons to keep these kids around. The issue is what that does to teams lower down the leagues who don't have youth teams or academies. Even Brentford famously binned off their academy 6/7 years ago. I guess you would have to compensate by buying some young players for the bench?

 

Tomorrow's the draw.

What's everyone's dream draw for their nation(s)?

I'd go England, USA, Japan, Ghana for a fun little group.

Canada getting Qatar, Switzerland and Morocco would be good and they could maybe get out of that group or give it a good go.

EDIT: Shame I don't think we can get Qatar, USA, Iran, Saudi Arabia as a group because that would be a laugh.

 

My girlfriend is Iranian so I hope we get grouped together.

Iran had a really good WCQ campaign. I think they only lost 1 game during qualifying and it was to S Korea.

 

I would love to see Brazil-Germany in the group stages.

 

Non league Sutton United are in a final at the weekend and their celebrity fan Tim Vine, a comedian, has composed a song for them and damn it’s catchy

 

There’s a greater than 15% chance (if I understand this tweet correctly) that US/Mexico could face Messi-Lewandowski-Bale*

*pending winning, of course.

That would suck.

 

Argentina. Poland. USA. Wales.

That is a really fun group though.

 

Only one of those guys deserves the ballon d’or.

only one of those guys win the ballon d’or.

they are not the same people, and the other one is bale.

 

So, I mentioned my city was getting a new USL2 team awhile back. Just had our kit reveal:

 

Literally nothing in football will ever match this.

 

What is everyone's "nightmare draw"?

 

Since the Pot 1 team greatly decides where the US can fall, I guess it would be this for me:

Bra/Arg-USA-Poland-Ghana/Wales* (UEFA Path A most likely)
UEFA Pot 1-USA-Senegal-Ecuador/Peru* (more likely than the AFC winner)

(obvious) Dream Draw:

Qatar - USA - Tunisia - Wales*

 

You know I think this is deserved but I can’t help but find it very weird that we are renewing contracts before a manager comes in. Bruno, De Gea what if the new manager comes in and doesn’t fancy them?