Make that Rasenball, Rassenball wouldn't be a good name for a German sports team ;)

Oh boy, good call. Yikes on my part.:o

Won’t make that mistake again

Champion League draws are out. Quite a few tasty matches here.

Mönchengladbach v Manchester City
Lazio v Bayern Munich
Atlético Madrid v Chelsea
RB Leipzig v Liverpool
Porto v Juventus
Barcelona v Paris Saint-Germain
Sevilla v Dortmund
Atalanta v Real Madrid

Not sure if this is old news for everyone but Ben Foster (Watford keeper) has a great youtube channel - The Cycling GK. Good cycling/football content. Cool guy.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3...3M3bI0ipjOP2Eg

Well what a game. Feels like I need a drink just to calm down from it all.

And Jose never disappoints, jawing at Klopp at the end. The former was playing for smash and grab, except the script got turned on him.

I really hope that Jose does an encore performance of his "three nil" tirade.

Two - one; two - one. Yes, we lost two one, but in the grand scheme of things, you know what that means? It means two European Cups for me, and one for him. So in the end, I'm still the best. Respect man, respect.

The scary thing is that Liverpool are now top of the league despite playing poorly.

Should be an interesting few weeks in the EPL. Man-U has a game in hand, and that game is against Burnley (albeit away at Turf Moor).

Also, Serie A getting really interesting. Juve "lost six points" in the span of two days. Of course, three of the six were rescinded as a result of overturning the farcically awarded administrative win over Napoli, which now has to be played at a later date. The other three were dropped to Fiorentina, at home no less.

Milan has a real good chance of getting the scudetto this year. I've never liked Zlatan that much, but if he were to get them the league this year, that'd be quite the magnificent achievement at the age of 39.

Never liked zlatan much, you must be mad. Mad i tell ya.

Milan has transformed since his arrival in Jan 2020. Havent lost a game in serie a since and only 1 in all of competitions since, a game in which he did not play.
this season he is at 10 goals in 7 games in serie a. On top of that his other stats like aerial duells are crazy good. Its the one thing he has improved in his game in the later years. His head was not that good for such a tall man earlier in his career. I guess part of that was because his feet was so good he always tried to pull of some magic stuff regardless of how high in the air.

Pity he has been injured for a while and wont return till january. They have dropped a few points since that i doubt they would have with him on the field. I think if he can stay fit Milan will win the league which i agree would be amazing. Theres a belief in that team that now everything is possible with him in the ranks. It does not take a lot more than a good streak and the confidence that brings for a lot of the other players to step up their game as well. All of a sudden theres quite a few of them looking like good footballers.

Third in scoring: He has 10 goals - Lukaku 11 - CR7 12.
He is still fast (despite his age), and opposing players always speak well of him.
If he is on your team you love him - if not......

And some times, even when he is on your team, you are still liable to get a kung-fu kick, sometimes to the noggin, other times Eric Cantona style ;)

Also, I'm really glad that you guys actually get to play Juve for that match. It was such a farcical decision to award an administrative win
Guilty as charged :)

It's not that I dislike him, just that I like other players a lot more. That said, I love it when he punks clowns on and off the field. I'm sure you've seen the first one numerous times over, but the second one is not too bad either (okay, granted, the clown being punked is in on it, but still).

Happy Holidays to you both, and I'm looking forward to another year of bantering about football (I mean Zlatanspiel). Also, can you believe it, it's almost time for the Euros again.

[QUOTE=echappist;2851444]And some times, even when he is on your team, you are still liable to get a kung-fu kick, sometimes to the noggin, other times Eric Cantona style ;)

Also, I'm really glad that you guys actually get to play Juve for that match. It was such a farcical decision to award an administrative win


Forfeiting the game was a tough pill to swallow, but they were also deducted a point for not showing up. That was a killer.

What ever happened to the Zlatan thread - we need to re-visit/revive it.

Would you like to do the honors at starting a new one?

I think Cadence90 started the original; it eventually transformed into a catch-all football thread. When Cadence90 left the forum, the thread kinda went with him (thread title changed to "..."). I tried searching all the threads he started but wasn't able to locate it.

I began doing the annual threads afterwards, but nothing has replaced the Zlatanspiel.

Ahhh that explains it - I miss Cadence - had emailed him a few times after his departure (I dont want to get started on that debacle) but then lost contact.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic picks up his Dream XI and reveals he could become a coach one day.

“I choose eleven for their strenght or for affection. Those who gave me something,” he told Sportkeek.

“[Gianluigi] Buffon is the goalkeeper, I played with him at Juventus. That was a special team. I have great memories. I was young and everyone treated me like I am treating young players at Milan now. They had so much to teach me.

“Maxwell is the left-back, he is a friend of mine. Then [Alessandro] Nesta and [Fabio] Cannavaro in central defence. Fabio was crazy, he used to take me around Naples with his scooter. I was young, I didn’t have experience. Him and [Lilian] Thuram had too much. I’d like to play with them now.

“Maicon is the right-back, when he arrived at Inter he wasn’t consider as strong as he proved to be.

“Then [Pavel] Nedved, the number one. He is the one who improved me more than enyone else. When I saw him I understood that what I was doing was not enough. He was always training, he was a machine.

“I pick up [Patrick] Vieri and Xavi in the middle of the park. Two champions.”

Ibra played with Vieira at Juventus and with the Spaniad at Barcelona.

“That Barcelona side was such a strong team. The first six months were amazing, but then I didn’t feel well because of the coach,” Ibra said.

“Attack is easy: [Zinedine] Zidane attacking midfielder, Ronaldo the phenomenon and Diego Maradona up front. He is the greatest of all time, better than me. I could be the coach of this team, who knows, maybe I can really become a coach one day.”