posted Sep 15, 2008

the ignorance of so many on the state of european football is unreal.

True the french league is not as appealing as the other top 3, however more world class talents have come from it than other leagues.

firstly cosnider how many international-title winnign players have originated from france and you will see my point. add to taht the emrgence of players like Rai, Vlado, Ronaldinho, no to mention klinsman, Vollit and so many others and you will see how silly your commenst are.

On top of this french teams dont have to bad of a record against the English.

Take Liverpool for instance, in the last 10-15 years you ahve knocked out how many frnehc teams? in return i believe you were knocked out by both Strasbourg and PSG.

Your knowledge is as commendable as Andy Gray when he commented couple of years ago that no team in Man U group was good enough to play in EPL. Man U finished fourth behind Villareal, benfica and lille.

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posted Sep 15, 2008

Carragher will be the chink in Pool's defence.He got turned inside out by Berbatov and Rooney.He lacks pace, not much ball skills.How he got to be skipper beats me.All he has is fitness.Good for marathoners not defenders.

Cheers!

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posted Sep 15, 2008

2Maybe he just looks small because he is so poor on crosses."

He hasnt been that poor, just at times questionable. Maybe he looks short because of the height of players from both sides surrounding him.

"Carragher will be the chink in Pool's defence.He got turned inside out by Berbatov and Rooney.He lacks pace, not much ball skills.How he got to be skipper beats me.All he has is fitness.Good for marathoners not defenders."

I have said Carragher looks jaded since the beginning of the season, but reason he is captain is because of his overall determination, defending and leadership. Some seem to think captaincy is of someone who is scoring every game. He was late with Berbatov for their goal but the threats after then were reduced drastically. Further, he was on call, as he has been so many times, to quell Adebayor in the CL quarter at Anfield, to pick one example.

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posted Sep 15, 2008

i think the marseille coach is right that english teams are strong and probably getting stronger - but at the same time, i think the french league has never been that strong - in the past italian and spanish clubs dominated, with perhaps bayern munich interfering with this duopoly - but nobody seemed to complain about their dominance then(except the english ofcourse) - even when those matches were just dull defensive affairs with the odd goal in 90 minutes and extra time

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posted Sep 15, 2008

@ davenorm

totally agree, in fact the EPL is certainly more exciting than when serie A was best in europe. However people in England are quick to dismiss foreign clubs. Just a s liverpool were with Liege.

There has been more English teams knocked out by french teams than vice versa in last 10-15 years. liverpool v strasbourg and PSG, man u v monaco, lyon v blackburn troyes v newcastle etc

and as you say we have never been that strong. That issue is just a money thing. In France clubs arent allowed to get into debt as they are like a business and have to follow rules. In Engalnd, your team loses game you go and spend £40-£50 million on two new players and ignore the debt.

A balance has to be found soemwhere in between.

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posted Sep 15, 2008

The French league is NOT on par with the Belgian league, shame on some of you arrogant EPL fans

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posted Sep 15, 2008

The French league is NOT on par with the Belgian league, shame on some of you arrogant EPL fans

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Shame on you, Lyon apart its the equivalent of the Blue Square premier, minus the committment from the French posers

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posted Sep 15, 2008

BBR-vavavoom, I don't dispute that many great talents have come out of the French league...The point of my original post was that English clubs can't really dominate that much as we still lost half our recent finals. But we lost them to non-French teams, so Lyon/Marseilles/PSG et al aren't suffering as the result of English form any more than they are from Spanish or Italian form.

Also, Ligue 1 needs to retain its talent, not just create it. I don't know your country's business laws, so you'd know more about how they need to do that than I would.

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posted Sep 15, 2008

I think a bigger problem for the French clubs is that their league is simply not prestigious enough to attract the brightest talent from across Europe or South America the way the PL, Serie A and La Liga do.
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The difference between the english league and the french league is just MONEY... You didn't win 2 CL, you bought them ! We don't have millionars in our clubs. But we still keep our spirit.

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posted Sep 16, 2008

agree with best spam1979

@lease27, look at how many times our blue square teams have not knocked out your money focused teams, and look at vice versa and then come back to me

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