Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Why Messi's Argentina Never Win...



                    It's almost becoming a cliche now..."Miracle Messi" fails to lead his National team to victory again... World's best Footballer fails to display the same form for his nation, etc etc. And the comments are pretty obvious and simplistic. Just blame Messi for not being proud of his country, or where the Messi-worshipers are concerned, find faults with rest of the team or just blame the head-coach (In case of Maradona, I do agree with them, yeah!). But, I would hardly think the reasoning behind Argentina's failure is that simple. You just can't throw together some of the world's finest talents, and expect them to conquer everything, as Real Madrid keep finding out again and again.

             
                         Argentina have some incredible talents, alongside Messi, be it Tevez, Kun Aguero, Di Maria or Higuain. But, the major issue is Compatibility.Let Messi put any number of inch-perfect through-balls, the fact is Higuain and Tevez are simply not used to just wait on the shoulders of the last defender for such passes.Higuain plays an out and out Target Man for Real Madrid under Mourinho, in a role which lets him fight with the defenders. Carlos Tevez was the joint-top goalscorer in EPL last season, without a world-class play-maker in his team (David Silva returned to form pretty late in the season). Even Messi built his reputation as the world's Best, not only on his sleek passing, but also deadly finishing which saw him score an incredible 53 goals last season. But then, there's not a single play-maker in Argentine team, who can offer Messi the service that Xavi and Iniesta provide him at Camp Nou. Juan Roman Riquelme, the only one who could've done the duty, left the team after differences with the then-coach Maradona. His loss is huge to the Argentines, because it forces Messi to go even deeper to create chances for his team-mates, which deprives Argentina of one of the most brilliant finishers of the game.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The Professor's Conundrum...

Arsene Wenger has come under lots of criticism recently,
 for his side's long trophy-drought
           Arsene Wenger is possibly the most distinguished manager in Arsenal Football Club's history.And in recent times, probably the most ridiculed one, too.Six years without a trophy, and the patience seems to be growing thin among the Gunners' faithful.Another year like this, and Arsenal's new owners may have to take action.But is Arsenal's crisis as simple to solve as most of us think it to be?

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

The curious case of The Seleção ...

              There were times, when every football fan,on seeing his team knocked out (or in some cases, team didn't even qualify), would go on to support Brazil for that tournament.It was considered an almost obvious thing to do.Not that other teams were not competent enough, Brazil were the epitome of Football, the unanimous emperors of the "Beautiful Game".Fast forward to today, and you'd almost feel sorry at the current state of affairs.

The 3 Legendary Rs of Brazil