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user rating: 4 star

Looks like Sulley's off

Premier League Portsmouth
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news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foo...

Is this a disaster (ever present in the side last term, and and one of our top players)

or

Is it good business (£5M profit and setting up funds to strengthen the team throughout)

Latest 10 comments

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posted Jul 28, 2008

Yeah, third successive Serie A title. One of these is about 10% as impressive as winning the premier league. Oh, and Liverpool don't have a £27m striker either. Torres cost £20m. Ibrahimovic cost £17.3m and he's 2 years older than Torres.

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A bit harsh to say its 10% as impressive as a Premier League title. Just because all you focus on is the English game you should not be so disrespectful towards other leagues, in the 90s the Italian league was amazing, went downhill but i see it coming back, Roma are good, Inter are good, Juve are good and Milan are getting good...who is there in England? Chelsea and Man Utd, those are the only teams you will see winning it in the next 5 years :P

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posted Jul 28, 2008

Junglemanchild (U5222862)

You obviously haven't noticed what's been happening in the Italian League recently. 4 of Italy's main teams, including two teams better than Inter, were crippled at a time when Italy was already the weakest of the three major leagues. The fact that Inter managed to win three consecutive scudettos having not won it for umpteen years testifies very nicely to the weakness of the league.

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posted Jul 28, 2008

magnificentraekwon (U10515771)

Im not sure how you can suggest Muntari to be a bad over-rated player.

He had balls to score the penalty at OT vs Man U and was part of an amazing Pompey team which won the FA Cup and so many great away games especially Aston Villa & Newcastle which was my fav. He has grown to be a great athlete and prefessional footballer.

He has played in Serie A before and to transform from Serie A to Premiership takes a lot of work and Muntari did really well in his only season at the Premiership.

He is similar to that of Michael Essien. The only difference is Essien is right footer and Muntari is a left footer.

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comment by Henry (U9575498)

posted Jul 29, 2008

You obviously haven't noticed what's been happening in the Italian League recently. 4 of Italy's main teams, including two teams better than Inter, were crippled at a time when Italy was already the weakest of the three major leagues. The fact that Inter managed to win three consecutive scudettos having not won it for umpteen years testifies very nicely to the weakness of the league.
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Italy was one of the weakest of the three major leagues at the time? How many times did England win the champions league from, lets say, 90 to 06 (Calciopoli)? twice?

And how many times did Italy do the same?

90 - Milan
94 - Milan
96 - Juve
03 - Milan


Not bad for such a weak league, eh?

Even look at the last decade... Utd 99, Liverpool 05, Utd 08.... Oh, look, for such a weak league, in the same amount of time, we've won twice!


The fact that Inter won the scudetto three years in a row after fifteen-ish years without is a testimony to the amount of money Juventus were paying the referees, rather than anything else.

I love it how people bash Inter for being awarded the scudetto in light of the Calciopoli scandal - as if we were the ones bribing the referee? You forget we compete in a league where.. 90s - Juventus doping scandal.. 80s - Milan bribery scandal...

Yes, we were beaten by Liverpool over two legs.. No, we didn't deserve to win the tie... At the same time... I'd love to see Liverpool perform with Agger, Skrtel out injuried with cruciate ligaments, Gerrard just coming back off 6 months of injuries, Torres playing with a tear in one of his cruciate ligaments...

If you watched the Italian leagues you'd know that it is very competitive - one of the best matches I've seen recently was Empoli vs Milan... and my introduction to a certain mr Giovinco.


Italy has the most winners and runners up ever in the champions league - and for Liverpool fans who love batting on to Chelsea about the lack of history, then if that doesn't count for anything, it's nothing but sheer hypocrispy.

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comment by ekpodo (U12279644)

posted Jul 29, 2008

I've been away for a while and i came back today to read some incredibly ridiculous stuff.
how can wining the serie A be like 10% of the premiership?
very funny and insulting.some of u guys live in fools' paradise. the most televised league is not necessarily the best league.and the fact that england had a good champions league yr doesnt mean anything. don't forget that both spain and italy provided 2 finalists b4 england attempted it.
so grow up and face reality.
i wish sulley all the best.stop envying the serie A envy

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posted Jul 29, 2008

i really don't understand why you would let a quality player go. if he wanted to leave i can understand but as far as im aware he hadn't asked to leave! why do we always let the quality players go and keep the terrible ones such as niko kranjcar!!! aparently we got offered 15million for him!!! i take that rather then sell sulley. niko is sellfish, wastefull, and should not get the praise he gets!!! how dare any of you with half a brain say that sulley gave the ball away too much did you watch a single game last season. he was such a great player and YOUNG!! he still has to develop he could have been worth much more next season if you were to keep him and ment we could keep hold of a great player. sulley i wish you all the best out there!!!

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posted Jul 29, 2008

browha (U9575498)

Taking 16 years of champions league performance hardly indicates CURRENT strength strength does it? Especially when reducing that to 9 years removes three of the four champions league victories! It's just my opinion that at that time Italy were the weakest league, don't have any solid evidence to back it up to be honest.

ekpodo (U12279644)

If you genuinely are small-minded enough to believe that Italy's league is currently a great league, then I am glad that you feel insulted. Serie A is at a low ebb and probably the likes of Inter, Milan and Juve will be great teams again within the next 5 years, but at the moment they aren't. Inter haven't been great for some time but are starting to look like a top team on the back of their recent success, Juve are recovering from losing so many key players, and Milan really need to employ several top players under the age of 30. Ronaldinho was a good start.

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comment by Henry (U9575498)

posted Jul 30, 2008

comment by Unbiased_Pundit (U5474616)

First things first.

Italy have won the Champions League twice in the last 5 years... Milan 03, Milan 07... You might remember 03, it was an all italian final!

Secondly.. Yes, it is clear you don't have any solid evidence to back it up.

I watch a fair bit of the italian leagues, and I can tell you for a fact, teams like Fiorentina, Udinese, Napoli etc are all extremely good teams - better than their equivalents in the premiership, who I'd consider to be teams like Portsmouth, Everton, Tottenham, City.

Whilst I would agree that the top 4 in Italy isn't as... "epic" as the top 4 in england, there has been a lot of rotation in it in the last two decades, eg Lazio, Roma, Sampdoria even, etc have all been in and out of it... Which more than anything keeps the league exciting.

I really hate it when people who have... frankly no idea about italian football try to comment upon it - and play up to stereotypes of "defensive 4-5-1' etc.

Most of the teams, for example, now play attacking 4-3-3's, look at players like Quagliarella, Di Natale, Giovinco, Maicon, Aquiliani, etc as exponents of it - the English "attacking full back" was taken straight off Inter from the 60s, with great players like the late Giancinto Fachetti.

In my opinion the premier league is like a spoiled kid - lots of money, but very naive. With some teams that are capable of putting out 2nd XIs as strong as their first XI, and capable of paying players twice the wage they'd earn anywhere else in the world, what do you expect but the solid demand of success?

I think italian football is in a very strong position now - and it's in an interesting position. The top 4 AREN'T Inter Juventus Milan Lazio, for the first time ever last year the bottom placed team (at christmas) managed to avoid the drop, the title this season went down to the last day, as did the battle for 4th place... etc.. I could probably do this all day long.

In short - as you fully admit, you have no solid evidence to back it up, so stop talking and sit down until you've seen a few Serie A matches?

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posted Jul 30, 2008

I totally agree with the Pro-Italian camp here. The people who bash Serie A are the narrow minded, premiership only half wits that only see Match of The Day, and therefore believe it to be the best league in the world. Lots of 7-4 games doesn't necessarily mean it's the best league in the world does it. It means that teams are technically and tactically inept. Italian and Spanish mid-table teams are of greater quality than their English counterparts. Look at Fiorentina, semi finalists in UEFA cup, and dislodged the mighty Milan from 4th spot in the league. Soemthing Spurs could not do, in both instances. Before you knock the Italian league, it's best you watch it first (hint hin Un Biased Pundit, et al)

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comment by Henry (U9575498)

posted Jul 30, 2008

Thank you for your comment -

It's a shame, because some of my best friends are in the same boat, and it's particularly annoying cuz the one chance I had to really prove them wrong we had two players sent off in two legs :P
c'est la vie though, if people want to ignore the italian league then they are welcome, but they just make themselves look stupid when they try to comment/discuss with someone who does actually watch it.

I'd just like to list some of the youngsters in Italy that, alone, make it worth watching.

Giovinco (I hate saying this, as an inter fan, but he's brilliant), Montolivo, Dessena (not liverpool's dossena), Cigarini, Stendardo, Balotelli, Pazzini, from the Italian contignent.. I'm sure I've left a bunch out, but those are some of the decent youngsters off hand...

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