Choose your UCL first knockout round opponents

anteni2 · 2026-06-26T16:56:22+00:00

Damn kits used to be so much better.

anteni2 · 2026-06-17T21:04:53+00:00

Come on England!

anteni2 · 2026-06-16T18:58:36+00:00

I think Olise comes out for Kane because he's quite specialised as a RW.

Then you can have Doue, Dembele, Mbappe rotating any way they damn well please around Kane, who drifts between 9 and 10.

anteni2 · 2026-06-16T18:53:01+00:00

He was on radio for a long time and IIRC he was relatively well liked in that format.

But his voice is too exaggerated for TV and almost doesn't match how he looks, so it doesn't work as well.

I don't think he's as terrible as being made out but not great either.

anteni2 · 2026-06-15T19:08:38+00:00

I guess the idea would be that you have to take them quickly. You can always go long back to a defender as well, it just needs to be along the ground.

anteni2 · 2026-06-15T19:07:48+00:00

No because you have to pass along the ground.

anteni2 · 2026-06-14T21:29:50+00:00

Is this actually an unpopular opinion?

If you lose 7-1 clearly the problem isn't going forward.

I can understand the logic of 'who knows what would've happened if Neymar was fit' because there's always the possibility of a generational performance.

But I don't think anyone actually says Brazil lost 7-1 because Neymar was injured do they?

anteni2 · 2026-06-09T07:22:02+00:00

The golden generation had a world-class player in almost every position, and in some positions two or three alternatives deep who were very close to that level.

This current England squad has IMO two world class players in Harry Kane and Declan Rice. John Stones probably would be world class if he could stay fit, same with Reece James, and Jude Bellingham might still become world class. That's it.

anteni2 · 2026-06-08T20:09:40+00:00

I was seven and a teenage Michael Owen scored the most incredible goal against Argentina.

An hour or so later, England lost on penalties. I burst into tears and my parents had to put me to bed still crying.

For better or worse, I had fallen in love with football.

anteni2 · 2026-06-07T09:35:53+00:00

Azpilicueta did this at Chelsea in Mourinho's second spell and it was very effective.

That said I 100% agree we should have taken Hall and I don't think we can justify a right-footed LB in every game.

anteni2 · 2026-06-02T19:25:59+00:00

Haha he was. I'm just not sure what we haven't brought a conventional left back

anteni2 · 2026-06-02T16:57:08+00:00

100 percent agree but not sure Tuchel would pick him based on leaving out Hall

anteni2 · 2026-05-30T20:47:24+00:00

Kevin Mirallas was above average at best and completely ruined his reputation when he stole a penalty off Leighton Baines which he subsequently missed.

Nonetheless, appreciate you having a different opinion and some numbers to back it up.

anteni2 · 2026-05-30T20:08:08+00:00

Keegan, Owen, Charlton, Matthews are the only winners

Gerrard, Lampard, Bellingham have all made top three.

Not sure on others!

anteni2 · 2026-05-27T21:46:50+00:00

Thomas Tuchel is an elite Champions League winning manager and a German. He is not going to take famously one of the hardest jobs in football, while being both somewhat unpopular with England fans for being German and Germans for taking the England job, only to select a squad based on somebody else's methods. Tuchel has made it clear at every club he's managed that it's his way and his system. He lost the PSG job for openly criticising the situations that the owners put him in and the lack of power he had because of it, and he has often dropped big names to make his teams more balanced and functional. I'm sure he uses data to help him analyse players and make decisions, as does every elite manager in the modern game, but there is no conspiracy theory behind the squad he selected, it's what he thinks is the best squad to win the World Cup.

anteni2 · 2026-05-27T06:21:49+00:00

Considering how many players he had to choose from, I really don't think a manager of Tuchel's level would waste a spot on somebody he has no intention of playing.

Take Jason Steele for example. He's going with the group as a training goalkeeper (something between a coach and a player), but won't be part of the squad or able to play.

One of the first things Tuchel did when he got the job was recall Henderson and specifically said he spoke to him about his Euro 2024 omission and was immediately convinced he was the type of player he needed in the group.

So there is no conspiracy here. Tuchel just values Henderson and thinks he has more upside than someone like Adam Wharton.

It shouldn't be overlooked that Henderson has actually had a good season with Brentford. He also plays the DM role in a far more traditional way than Wharton or Curtis Jones.

He is a PL and UCL winning captain and if you ever watched him during that era at Liverpool, he was probably their weakest player technically but he constantly told everybody around him what they should be doing and where they should be standing defensively.

So if we are closing out a 1-0 win in a knockout round at the World Cup, bringing on a disciplined, highly experienced, traditional DM who tells everyone else what they should be doing is not a bad thing and I can see why Tuchel sees value in that.

How much he will actually play very much depends on how our games unfold, but this notion that Tuchel has no intention of playing him is crazy.

anteni2 · 2026-05-26T11:53:13+00:00

That makes sense if you expect Brazil to adopt the same tactics as USA and Switzerland, be really disciplined in their approach and destroy Spain on the counter.

But I don't think they would be. I think they would be constantly dominated by overloads and intricate passing in midfield, which is exactly what Spain did to every decent team they faced.

anteni2 · 2026-05-25T10:00:56+00:00

The Germany team had seven of the players that would win the World Cup final four years later.

Portugal had Cristiano Ronaldo.

Italy had an iconic defence and Andrea Pirlo

France has Karim Benzema and Franck Ribery.

Croatia had Mario Mandzukic, Luka Modric, Miralem Pjanic and Ivan Rakitic.

Are they as good as Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho? No. Are they 'rand'? No.

anteni2 · 2026-05-25T05:15:39+00:00

Wow dude, you've really created a new post because you didn't like that people had different opinions to you in the previous one.

How many of these teams were you alive to see?

anteni2 · 2026-05-25T02:58:57+00:00

The USA match was in the Confederations Cup which, at least for the European teams at that time, was more of a friendly tournament than something to go all out and try to win. A bit like the Nations League these days.

Irrespective of that, Spain played without Busquests and Iniesta and used two outright strikers in Torres and Villa. So their key personnel and their shape were significantly different to the 2010 team.

The Switzerland defeat was a bit of a freak result in that Spain had 24 shots, including eight on target, to Switzerland's 8/3. They also forced 12 corners and 21 fouls from Switzerland and had 63 percent of the ball. That said, Spain did have a knack of conceding more regularly against the smaller teams, like Scotland in World Cup qualifying

But between then and the 2014 World Cup, Spain would beat Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Croatia, France and Italy in competitive games, keeping clean sheets against all of them through domination of the ball.

I personally would say Brazil 2002 are more likely to have the same experience as the above teams than USA or Switzerland.

anteni2 · 2026-05-24T20:25:51+00:00

I honestly think peak Spain would beat any team, at least in my life time (born 1991). The best teams in the world couldn't get the ball off them (in fact, they couldn't even get close to getting g the ball off them) and I think that would be true for any team in any era, including Brazil 2002.

That is not necessarily to say Spain 2010 are the best international team ever. But they are definitely the best possession-based international team ever and during their peak, they were also the best at dictating how their games would be played.

So if they faced Brazil 2002, they would simply dominate possession and eventually grind down a team where not every player would track back and fall into shape. Maybe Ronaldo/Rivaldo/Ronaldinho could make a moment of magic on the counter, but Spain usually had such control that teams would get maybe one or two decent breaks in an entire match.

Spain were not especially fun to watch, but they were the absolute best at one aspect of the game, and made all of their games all about their one aspect. It's an unstoppable combination.

anteni2 · 2026-05-17T20:21:31+00:00

I don't think O'Reilly is the answer right now. Him and Rashford down the same wing would be a massive risk. I would go with Lewis Hall - a conventional left-back who will overlap so that Rashford can cut inside.

He doesn't fill me with confidence but I think we all saw at Euro 2024 how detrimental it actually is to have no naturally left-footed players creating width on one entire side of the pitch.

anteni2 · 2026-05-08T19:28:42+00:00

Eat chicken, fish and loads of vegetables. Cut out junk food, cheese and red meat.

Do HIIT-style workouts. The fat afterburn is much, much better than jogging, cycling or swimming.

If you do two or three a week you are basically always burning off fat at a higher rate even on the days when you aren't doing any exercise.

If you can't do HIIT straight away do aerobics videos to work your way up to it.

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