Kaizero

Bottom left corner looking like what the national stadium of Mordor probably would've looked like

Almost feel bad for the Celtic fans after a run of results like this, they know none of it matters for anything, to anyone or in any way shape or form to anyone.

Come join me in the Olympics thread:

It's NWOAT. Belongs in either SNWOAT or the Daft Football Questions thread, or one of similar ilk.

Oscar Bobb is starting to look like the real deal tbh, two assists and a goal (currently 3-4 against Celtic). Know it's a pre-season friendly and not the best bar to measure against, but still... if only Norway had an actual football manager as our national team manager, this generation of players, on paper, look like they could actually compete at an international tournament. Sadly it doesn't seem like the Norwegian FA possess enough self-awareness to realize how absolutely idiotic it is to constantly tell the press "Solbakken's job is safe" when they've fucked over our national side multiple times over the last decade by sacking managers for "not achieving the FA's level of expectation" when all those fucking managers have a better record than Solbakken. Lars Lagerback even pointed it out during the last round of international fixtures when asked by the studio hosts; "Me and Solbakken have now managed Norway an equal amount of games, his record is worse than mine - I was sacked for delivering below expectations, yet I delivered better results with a team that didn't have players like Ødegaard and Haaland available at the level they are today." Just a middle of the night rant about the absolute shambles that is the Norwegian national team there

They do, agents are paid anywhere from 5% to 20% of their salary.

Iconic managers

Odds make no sense tbh... We're given worse odds than Tottenham to win the Premier League, but given better odds than Tottenham to finish in the top four

Seeing pictures of iconic managers when they were players feels illegal for some reason

"Norwegian top-flight match abandoned after fans protest VAR by throwing fishcakes onto pitch" https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5650159/2024/07/22/norway-var-rosenborg-lillestrom-fishcakes/

This

Genuine question for any ref experts on here: Would doing what that player did actually be against the laws of the game? I've tried googling but have come up short and one of my absolute biggest pet hates is not getting to know the answer to a question I really want to know the answer to

Was it @SEMTEX who got the REQUIRED shirt, or?

nwoat

Playing with the shirt tucked in gives you an advantage tactically as well, as all of a sudden it's a lot more visible when an opponent is pulling your shirt.

Personally I've always felt that when it comes to international football, it intuitively doesn't make sense to hire a manager with the same nationality as the team they'll manage. Can't be arsed trying to explain in detail why I believe that, but in essence I guess it boils down to wanting the guy in charge of tactics and team selection to have a healthy emotional distance to the national pride that's at stake in every match to make the risk of them making a heat-of-the-moment decision driven by emotions instead of tactics.

Truly inspiring when you can witness something becoming reality through sheer perseverance, building everything from the ground up with nothing but a pair of empty hands and a matchbox 🙏🏼

In 99.9% of all scenarios where the fairly obvious answer has been to "move forward" and ignore the complaints of those refusing to let go of the past to allow for forward progress, I would have been on the side of those in favor of leaving the past behind. But I fucking hate the typical design of a new football stadium, as well as us having one of the most unique stadiums in the world both with regards to design and location. This is the 0.1% scenario where I struggle to not be on the side of the people stuck in the past, choosing to hold on to "history" instead of welcoming future progress. If the Saudis succeed with their ambitions to grow us into a successful club with a global fanbase, we will need a bigger stadium. Even without success we've been filling one of the biggest stadiums in England - week in, week out. But St. James' Park is so fucking special, man Given our owners, there is no doubt that we'll end up with a state-of the art stadium, but it'll "just" be another modern football stadium with no history or soul. But you got to make sacrifices to get where you want to go, and sadly saying goodbye to St. James' will most likely be one of those 😢

You guys are no fun, of course the result/performance in a friendly match doesn't matter to anyone involved. That doesn't mean you can't point and laugh when something bonkers happen because of blatant lack of tactical awareness from a manager who just signed a new deal after showcasing his lack of tactical awareness for an entire season before that

Also, this was a mix of the Rosenborg reserves and youth squad - even more filled with back-up players than the Man Utd line-up were.

Even their youth squad should have disposed of this version of Rosenborg with absolute ease. They get hammered by part-time Norwegian clubs week in-week out these days. The point was more about how they were tactically outclassed on the pitch by a manager and team that's tactically inept, which does not bode well - even when the presumed first team gets back, their problem isn't their squad - it's the person (or people) in charge of it, so they'll be a laugh-a-ton this season.

Their first pre-season match was today against Rosenborg. From what I saw of it, as well as how it's reported in the media, Man Utd were apparently completely outclassed and outperformed - this by the worst edition of Rosenborg I've seen for as long as I can remember. How the tactically inept Rosenborg manager managed to tactically outclass Ten Hag is beyond me, at least the latter was honorable enough to own up to it in his post-match remarks to the media: "We have no excuses. We definitely should not lose a game like this." Next season is going to be a laugh-a-ton