Serie A and La Liga Preview

Serie A Title Race

Inter Milan

Inter are looking for their 5th successive Seria A title this season and few would bet against them. Normally, the loss of a world-class centre forward like Zlatan Ibrahimovic would shatter a club but in return Inter have signed Europe’s top striker last season in Samuel Eto’o.

Possibly the best deal in history, Inter recieved £45 million plus Eto’o for Ibrahimovic. Given that Ibrahimovic is only a year younger and is not neccessarily a better striker, Inter must have snapped Barcelona’s hands off to secure the deal.

With possibly the most talented manager in the world in Jose Mourinho, Inter will feel they have the fire power to win the league and will also be desperate to give a great showing in the Champions League. Inter’s main aim will be to win in Europe and owner Massimo Moratti has repeatedly reminded everyone of this for a few years now.

Inter’s strength will be the depth of their squad, the likes of :

Vieira, Suazo, Cambiasso, Stankovic, Quaresma, Zanetti, Cordoba, Samuel, Materazzi, Chivu, Militio, Mancini, Muntari, Maicon, Cesar, Toldo, Motta and Eto’o, will strike fear into any opponents next season. Not many clubs can boast 18 such well known established players in their squads, if any.

Inter need to deliver this season especially in Europe because although they have won 4 Scudettos in a row, the black and blue have always struggled in the massive European games.

Prediction 1st

A.C. Milan

The underachievers of recent years have lost their talismanic manager Carlo Ancelotti to Chelsea. Having appointed the inexperienced Brazilian club legend Leonardo as the new boss, Milan have taken a risk but maybe one they feel they have to take.

It will take a monumental effort to unsurp Inter and selling Kaka has all but ended any real hopes that they may do so. Kaka was sold for £56 million and whilst the money will be great for the club, the loss of the player could be detrimental to their title chances, Kaka’s apparent replacement Klaas Jan Huntelaar is not a player in the similar mould. Huntelaar will score goals but does not have the same ability to drive teams forward and win matches that Kaka was so adored for.

An aging squad last season has just got a year older, Milan seem in decline and owner Silvio Berlusconi has conceded that the club cannot compete financially will the biggest clubs in Europe anymore.

Prediction 4th

Roma and Juventus should be stronger this year and should fight it out for 2nd and 3rd places.

La Liga Title Race

Real Madrid for thoughts on Real in the new season please visit this link on an article written last week https://sportsportsport.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/madrid-the-real-deal/

Barcelona

The most beautiful football team in the world have signed Zlatan Ibrahimovic this summer. The forward is a welcome addition to the squad and his nonchelant style should suit the free flowing creative football of the Nou Camp.

The loss of Eto’o however may be bigger than expected. To sell a 35 goal a season player is always a risk, no matter who you bring in. Whilst Mourinho has procliamed ‘Ibra’ to be the best player in the world, there are a few who prefer Eto’o and actually feel he is the better forward.

Regardless of this Barcelona still have a squad capable of winning the league. Guardiola has kept his squad together and the likes of Henry, Xavi, Iniesta and of course wonderkid Messi should help Barca secure another title. Real will take time to gel their squad and so will need a season or two before they can become world beaters.

Prediction Barcelona 1st, Real Madrid 2nd

Atletico Madrid have done very well to hold onto Diego Forlan and Sergio Aguero and as such should take 3rd place. The other team to have done well to hold their squad together is Valencia, with Silva and Villa still there they should finish 4th.

Champions League or English Premier League?

Kings of Europe or Kings of England?

It sounds like a straightforward question. Surely to be the champions of Europe is a greater achievement than being the best in England, just because of the sheer number of extra teams in the whole of Europe compared with England.

So basic statistics suggests that it is a far bigger honour to be the Kings of Europe. But as most people in sociology will tell you, statistics are not everything.

Is it really tougher to win the Champions League? Perhaps, one of the best arguments for the Premier League being tougher to win is that in 2005 Liverpool won the Champions League, in the same season they finished a lowly fifth in the Premier League, even below their main rivals Everton.

If the Champions League is so tough to win then how on earth did the fifth best side in England win it? Maybe, another point to add to this one is that in two-legged cup competitions it is far more likely that a ‘weaker’ team can beat a ‘better’ club. The nature of cups is so that a fortunate goal here or there could end up winning you the competition. Something that is unlikely in a League where over the 38 games of a season luck pretty much evens itself out.

It is very rare to hear anybody say that a team who wins a league did not deserve it. Even the most biased of fans have to admit that when a team wins a league it is a great achievement which is unlikely to be ‘lucky’.

Is the Champions League competition tougher in terms of teams than in the Premier League? In some ways ‘yes’ and in some ways ‘no’.

Yes, it is tougher in the way that all of Europe’s elite are competing to win the trophy. The likes of Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Inter Milan are far better than the average Premier League side. But on the flip side of this teams such as Anorthosis, CFR Cluj, Bate Borisov and Aalborg are arguably far weaker than the average Premier League opposition.

Would fans prefer to win the English Premier League or the Champions League? This is a difficult question to answer, one that was perhaps far easier to answer four or five years ago. Back then, English Premier League teams did not dominate Europe’s top club competition in the way that they do now. It seems that if the league is weaker then it is more of an achievement to win in Europe.

However, this has all changed over the past few seasons and was proven by last season when English teams were only knocked out of the Champions League by other English teams. After an all English final and another season where so far all four English clubs have made the quarter-finals it is hard to deny that the EPL is Europe’s toughest to win league. As a result because it is played over 38 games it seems a much fairer way of assessing which English team is the best. If your team wins the EPL there are more reasons to brag than if your team wins the Champions League.

All in all it is very hard to assess which competition is the greater to win in terms of achievement and prestige. People such as Roman Abramovich and Massimo Moratti would far sooner see their teams Chelsea and Inter Milan win the Champions League than their own Leagues. However, the die hard fans of such clubs especially in England probably would rather see their side lift the league trophy, knowing what a great achievement this really is.

Yes, the Champions League is very tough to win but there is a greater luck factor involved, would Porto really have won the EPL the league they won the Champions League? Of course it is nice to beat teams such as Barcelona and Real Madrid rather than hammering Wigan or Fulham but until a season long league is created between Europe’s elite it is difficult to conclude that the Champions League is harder to win than the EPL.

Champions League Group Stages

The conclusions of the Champions League groups will be played out tonight but with half of the groups completed yesterday one trend has again occured. The group stages are a waste of time and devalue the cup competition.

With the top eight seeds qualifying for the round of 16 last night the three month long group stages were not really worth while. No huge upsets have occured and are very unlikely to. So once more the validity and point of the group stages are questionable.

Ok, so the idea is straight-forward a four team group stage format where two teams go through, six games home and away decide the outcome. The trouble is that by round five and six some teams have already qualified. Now if these teams decide to play weaker players then this is an unfair disadvantage to the team or teams that have already played them twice. This was apparent in Shaktar Donetsk’s win over Barcelona at the Nou Camp last night, Barca rested eight first team players for this match in which a full strength Barca team would be expected to win easily.

A simple solution would be to seed the teams and then draw a round of 32. Play over two legs and have 16 teams at the end of it. This would cut out four arguably pointless games and would help to solve fixture conjestion crisis for the bigger clubs in Europe. This may decrease revenue but it would also cut out any ‘dead rubbers’ in which the teams basically threw matches.

The foreign players versus home grown players debate

Anyone who has followed football over the last few years will have heard many different views on how foreign players have effected club and international football. There has been a huge increase in foreigners across most of Europe’s leagues in the past decade. This has caused suggestion that the amount of foreign players playing for a club should be capped. FIFA president Sepp Blatter and UEFA president Michele Platini have both backed proposals thata their must be a minimum of 6 home grown players and a maximum of 5 foreign players per team.

Whilst such a proposal would expect to result in an increase in standard of certain national teams whose youngsters will get the chance to play top flight football, it is of little doubt that the standard of football in these leagues would decrease.

Maybe the argument is purely a club versus country debate. Which is more important and which do the fans prefer.  Well, it is tough to judge whether international football is preffered to club football. Fans tend to like both types of football and without polling Europe to find out, it is very difficult to draw any significant conclusions because of the undeniable popularity of both.

So rather than try to determine which is favoured it is probably easier to analyse whether foreign players have improved the top European leagues and whether less foreign players will help national teams to prosper.

Using the English Premier League as an example, most people will agree that the quality of football has dramatically increased over the past few seasons. With English teams dominating the champions league’s latter stages not many would deny that the English Premier League now has the highest standard of football anywhere in Europe and probably the world. The bigger nations in Europe such as Spain, Italy and Germany also seem to have gained something with the increase in foreign players. This has seen the revenue of these leagues increase by millions and millions in recent years.

Perhaps this increase in revenue and popularity still would have occurred without foreigners and of course there is no definite way to judge it but it is hard to dismiss the impact of foreigners in the bigger European nations.

The countries that have suffered most from the increase in foreign players in the top leagues in Europe are the smaller European countries and the rest of the world. Countries such as Holland, Brazil and Argentina are finding it increasingly difficult to hold onto their home grown players. As soon as players within these countries start attracting interest from the big European footballing nations they have an impossible task to hold onto their players.

So on the upside in England, Spain, Italy and Germany the standard of football has improved over the last few years. On the negative side pretty much every other country’s club football is suffering because of it.

The next question is whether or not the state of the national teams in England, Spain, Italy and Germany are deteriorating because of the influx of foreigners into their leagues.

A lot of Englishmen will point to England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008 as a prime example of how foreigners have ruined the state of their national team. However, even before the decrease in English players in the Premier League England failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, a tournament in which they made the semi-finals four years earlier. Of the other main European footballing nations who have a similar amount of foreigners in their league, Spain won Euro 2008, Germany were the beaten finalist’s and Italy are the current World Cup holders. So on the whole it can be argued that in fact the impact of foreign players has not had a negative effect on the leading European nations national sides and may have even had a good effect. Even England, who can have the most complaints in this respect, are having a great qualifying campaign this time around.

It is unclear if countries should limit the number of foreigners playing in their club teams. It would be a great shame to see the worlds best clubs being limited in talent and the top European leagues would probably lose a lot of global appeal. Maybe this is the reason FIFA and UEFA have failed to sanction such a proposal despite their head henchozs both being in favour of it.