Feel like I was on the pitch myself. Pure elation for the first half and intense arse clenching in the second. I might be shitting blood for a week now.


Unreal player. Ibra esque

Haaland is actually not human. Unreal. I'm so glad Manchester United didn't sign him. He's clearly the next best player in the world

Clrnc wrote:


Unreal player. Ibra esque

Can you find another link Clrnc? Don't see anything.

Schalke continue being garbage. 4-0 loss in the derby against Dortmund.

Big Willie wrote:
Clrnc wrote:


Unreal player. Ibra esque

Can you find another link Clrnc? Don't see anything.


Here mate

Mustafi will have gone from prem football to the 2nd league in Germany in the space of 6 months - holy mackerel.

spaceman spiff wrote:

Mustafi will have gone from prem football to the 2nd league in Germany in the space of 6 months - holy mackerel.

I think he might struggle at that level too looking at how bad he is at Schalke.

By the way... 😆

What’s funny? I’m missing it

Can't figure it out myself.

Ref wanted to pick the ball up and played it off when Neuer took it

I don't think so, he clearly goes to pick up the coin.

Saw some stats that showed for players under 21, Mbappé and now Haaland were complete outliers in terms of their goals per game at around 0,8. All other recent great players (Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar) etc had been in the 0,6-0,7 range to that point in their careers.
Possibly football power is getting more concentrated and that is helping these 2 players, but there is no denying their talent. We can spend the next decade bitterly arguing over who is better

Claudius wrote:

Saw some stats that showed for players under 21, Mbappé and now Haaland were complete outliers in terms of their goals per game at around 0,8. All other recent great players (Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar) etc had been in the 0,6-0,7 range to that point in their careers.
Possibly football power is getting more concentrated and that is helping these 2 players, but there is no denying their talent. We can spend the next decade bitterly arguing over who is better

Could be due to playing in Germany and France rather than England and Spain too. They are absolutely elite talent though. Kroenke needs to give us £300m so we can sign both in the summer.

The stats included players like Benzema, Henry and Lewandowski who partially grew up in lesser leagues. And these guys are nearly double each of those chaps in terms of output rates.

You're comparing apples to oranges though Claude. The likes of Thierry would be scoring 50-60 goals a season if they were from this era. Football was very different back then.

That’s why I pointed out earlier that there might be a consolidation effect that is helping Mbappé and Haaland, but their numbers are impressive. Because within this era, there is no youth anywhere close.

Yeah, just trying to explain that players from different eras can't be compared so readily. Especially when back in the day teams weren't conditioned the way they are now, the level of professionalism and attention to detail between now and then in world's aparts. Players these days are like machines, finely drilled on almost every move they make on the pitch, sometimes to the detriment of the flair that used to be in the game. This all comes from the huge amounts of money that keep flowing into the game resulting in the big teams getting bigger whilst the smaller ones get further and further away (England is an outlier).

Remember back then you'd have the traditional big teams like Arsenal/United, Real/Barca, Inter/AC/Juve but many smaller teams like Leeds/Newcastle/Blackburn, Valencia/Deportivo, Roma/Lazio/Fiorentina/Parma all able to hold their own with countless top quality players in their squads? You'd almost never get the same 3 players for the Balloon D'Or because there were so many too players from different teams. Like you mentioned, nowadays almost all the top players are playing for a small group of clubs.

That said, I agree with Qwiss that the Mbappe/Haaland numbers are inflated because of the league they are playing. They'd still be scoring bucket loads in the big leagues as well but wouldn't be at the same level as it is now playing for one of the best teams in weaker leagues.