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http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2013/oct/01/manchester-united-shakhtar-donetsk-champions-league

 

Manchester United must be wary of Shakhtar Donetsk's boys from Brazil

 

Shakhtar Donetsk should win the championship this season, but it says something for the changes in the Ukrainian league that the verb is "should" rather than "will". The shakiness of Manchester United's start to the campaign may be more obvious – while United lie 12th in the Premier League table, Shakhtar are third in the Premier Liha – but this has been a sobering couple of months for Mircea Lucescu's side.

 

There are still 19 games to go, and Shakhtar have won seven of their 11 matches so far, but the landscape has changed. They are five points clear of their traditional rivals Dynamo Kyiv, whose refusal to accept the inevitable and replace Oleh Blokhin becomes increasingly baffling by the week, but Dynamo are no longer the main threat. Top of the table stand Metalist Kharkiv, with nine wins and two draws from 11 games, including a 1-1 draw at the Donbass Arena, and then come Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk, who were convincing 3-1 winners over Shakhtar at the end of August. The league campaign has become a struggle rather than a procession.

 

This was always going to be a season of transition for Shakhtar, who sold Fernandinho and Henrikh Mkhitaryan in the summer, having already lost Willian in January. No side can expect to lose three of their biggest talents and go on as though nothing has happened; but what has caused disquiet in Donetsk is that the struggles have come not in Europe but domestically. Shakhtar began their Champions League campaign with a slightly fortuitous 2-0 win away to Real Sociedad, but if they could take advantage of United's indifferent form in a packed Donbass Arena on Wednesday, they would be in control of the group.

 

As has been their policy for a decade, Shakhtar looked to South America to replace the talent they moved on. Four Brazilians arrived, taking the total number to have played for Shakhtar since Matuzalém arrived in 2004 to 23 (not including Eduardo, who was born in Brazil but is a naturalised Croatian and Marcelo Moreno, who is Bolivian but has a Brazilian father). The most vaunted of the four is probably the 21-year-old forward Bernard, who has already won seven caps for Brazil and was linked with Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal in the summer, but he has started a single game so far. Fred, a gifted 20-year-old midfielder, is already a fixture; Lucas Fernando has started only one game – at 21, he could be the long-term replacement for Fernandinho; and the 21-year-old forward Wellington Nem, who hasn't started a Shakhtar game yet, was a key figure in Fluminense's title triumph last season.

 

One of Shakhtar's strengths is that they don't rush players to integrate. Douglas Costa was signed in 2009, but it's only this season, at 23, that he has really become a regular. In a sense, this is a modern version of the old Liverpool policy under Bob Paisley of buying promise and then leaving it in the reserves for six months to learn the club's methods. "It is clear that the newcomers are talented players," said Lucescu, who last week became the longest serving coach in Shakhtar's history. "But when two or three of them go out in the starting lineup, our game goes a bit wrong. We're waiting. Naturally, we need patience."

 

Facundo "Chucky" Ferreyra, an unusual, awkward centre-forward who flickered and frustrated at Banfield for years – although he is still only 22 – before exploding with 16 goals in 18 games last season as Vélez Sarsfield won the Torneo Inicial, is another summer recruit who has seen limited action, starting two games so far. "They come," Lucescu said, "because they see the set-up here and because I convince them." He is charismatic, a gifted linguist – he speaks at least seven languages with a degree of fluency – and is beloved.

 

I visited Shakhtar's extraordinary training complex – it features an aviary and fishing lakes to help keep players entertained, as well as all the usual gyms, pitches and training equipment – in 2007. Although Lucescu, now 68, is a hugely entertaining man to interview – he sees conspiracies everywhere and spent a long time pitying me for the lack of flavour in English tomatoes – the most memorable moment came as I walked with Lucescu from the canteen where we'd had lunch to an office where we had coffee. We passed through a room in which three young Brazilians were lounging watching a recording of a Brazilian league match. Immediately they began talking to him, desperate to describe an incident that had happened a few minutes earlier. He smiled and, with avuncular concern, promised to come back and watch it later. Given the cynicism that pervades so much of football, it was a surprising and touching moment; Lucescu as favourite teacher, a man who loves his subject and can inspire that love in others.

 

One Brazilian begets another. When Douglas Costa was contemplating his options, he rang Willian and Luiz Adriano, both of them from his home state of Porto Alegre, to seek their advice. They described a thriving Brazilian community. Ukraine may not be much like western Europe, but Shakhtar, with its first-rate facilities, is an ideal stepping stone. Young Brazilians know they are going to a club who will give them a chance and at which the process of adaptation will be easier than almost anywhere else.

 

Whether that is good for Ukrainian football is another matter; Shakhtar do little to develop local talent, but their policy has seen them topple Dynamo and become a major European force. Beating United and managing this transition would be a major step to confirming their development can continue for the long-term.

 

Shakhtar's shape is relatively easy to predict; the personnel less so. After abandoning the diamond, Lucescu has been a firm devotee of 4-2-3-1, which probably means Fernando operating alongside the dogged Czech Tomas Hubschman at the back of midfield. "It's a dynamic way of playing," Lucescu told the latest issue of Champions magazine. "The layout on the pitch is valid at the start of the game – after that things change. For me, the leader on the pitch is whoever has the ball. He decides how to play."

 

Luiz Adriano will almost certainly be the lone striker and it would be a major surprise if Alex Teixeira, scorer of both goals in San Sebastián, did not operate behind him. On the evidence of United's past two league games, his willingness to run at defenders could be a major threat. The wide positions are less clear with Lucescu to perm two from Taison, Douglas Costa and Bernard. What is certain, though, is that the five most attacking players will, once again, be Brazilian.

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Guest Geordiesned

Guest Geordiesned

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Chelsea striker Fernando Torres will not face retrospective action for scratching Jan Vertonghen's face during Saturday's 1-1 draw with Tottenham.

The Football Association reviewed the incident after the Spaniard was captured on TV scratching the defender.

But a match official had already seen the players collide which means under FA rules no action can be taken.

The 29-year-old will serve a one-match ban after being sent off in the 82nd minute for two bookable offences.

Torres faced the prospect of his one-match ban being extended to four if he was found guilty of violent conduct.

The FA is trialling a new disciplinary system this season, which sees a panel of three former referees reviewing an incident and deciding whether charges should be made.

Under the old system, action was only taken if a referee viewed the footage and judged whether a player should have been sent off during the match.

But, under both systems, the FA cannot take further action if a match official witnesses part of the incident.

The FA said in a statement: (external) "One of the match officials saw the coming together of the two players, albeit not in its entirety.

"In these particular circumstances, in line with The FA's policy on when retrospective action may be taken, reviewed this summer by the game's stakeholders, no action may be taken."

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/24355751

 

So how exactly is the new disciplinary system different to the old one? The system was supposedly changed after the McManaman/Haidara incident but under the new system McManaman would still have faced no retrospective action as one of the officials was looking at the incident! 

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jdckelly

jdckelly

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Chelsea striker Fernando Torres will not face retrospective action for scratching Jan Vertonghen's face during Saturday's 1-1 draw with Tottenham.

The Football Association reviewed the incident after the Spaniard was captured on TV scratching the defender.

But a match official had already seen the players collide which means under FA rules no action can be taken.

The 29-year-old will serve a one-match ban after being sent off in the 82nd minute for two bookable offences.

Torres faced the prospect of his one-match ban being extended to four if he was found guilty of violent conduct.

The FA is trialling a new disciplinary system this season, which sees a panel of three former referees reviewing an incident and deciding whether charges should be made.

Under the old system, action was only taken if a referee viewed the footage and judged whether a player should have been sent off during the match.

But, under both systems, the FA cannot take further action if a match official witnesses part of the incident.

The FA said in a statement: (external) "One of the match officials saw the coming together of the two players, albeit not in its entirety.

"In these particular circumstances, in line with The FA's policy on when retrospective action may be taken, reviewed this summer by the game's stakeholders, no action may be taken."

 

http://m.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/24355751

 

So how exactly is the new disciplinary system different to the old one? The system was supposedly changed after the McManaman/Haidara incident but under the new system McManaman would still have faced no retrospective action as one of the officials was looking at the incident!

"we've reformed the system aren't we great! its now more difficult than ever to punish these guys for what they did!" :troll:

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Tooj

Tooj

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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1795485-the-beautiful-idea-of-andrea-pirlo-juventus-and-italy-regista-supreme

 

The Beautiful Idea of Andrea Pirlo, Juventus and Italy Regista Supreme

 

By

Jonathan Wilson

(Guest Columnist) on October 2, 2013

 

There is something rather beautiful about Andrea Pirlo—or at least the idea of Andrea Pirlo.

 

He is, as Jorge Valdano once said of Juan Roman Riquelme, a player who preserves the spirit of another age. To watch Pirlo at his best is to see a game in sepia; to drift into a gorgeous nostalgia in which football was played without rush by debonair men who stroked the ball about.

 

Like Riquelme, Pirlo seems an anachronism. He is not quick. He doesn’t charge about the pitch, and he is not one for conspicuous effort.

 

His effectiveness, rather, lies in his intelligence, his ability to conceptualise the pitch in its entirety, to know where teammates and opponents are and where they will be, allied to a sumptuous ability to craft a pass.

 

We call him old-fashioned because he doesn’t quite seem of our age, and we presume there must have been a time in which he fitted, but there never was such a time. Read match reports of the 1890s or the pioneering tactical columns in the Sheffield Green'Un, and you’ll find just the same complaints about football’s emphasis on speed as you find today.

 

But it’s nice to believe there was, and it’s a mark of Pirlo’s greatness that he can awake nostalgia for a golden age that never existed.

 

Italian football has long admired the regista—a word also used for a film director. It is used to mean playmaker, wherever on the pitch he plays—and Pirlo, of course, did have a time under Carlo Ancelotti at AC Milan as a more orthodox No. 10, but it tends to be used of those rare players who sit deep, dictating the play from in front of the defensive line.

 

Ancelotti himself played in something approximating to that role as the conductor of Arrigo Sacchi’s orchestra—although nobody really sat that deep in a team that pressed ferociously hard.

 

Falcao and Toninho Cerezo played as twin registas in the Brazil side at the 1982 World Cup and both had distinguished careers in Serie A with Roma and Sampdoria respectively. There are numerous holding midfielders who circulate the ball—the likes of Sergio Busquets and Michael Carrick—but there have been very few who have the range of passing to be a true playmaker from deep.

 

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/001/099/139/Brazil19824-2-2-2_original.jpg?1380727161

 

Xabi Alonso is the best modern example other than Pirlo. Dragan Stojkovic, perhaps, towards the end of his career would fall into a similar category, but there have been very few.

 

Yet, perhaps Pirlo is less a glimpse into a lost past than a possible future.

 

Carlos Alberto Parreira has spoken of how Mario Zagallo, in the early '90s, described his vision of how football would be decades later. He foresaw two lines of players, constantly interchanging around a playmaker. The key is how space can be created for the regista; even the most gifted require a fraction of a second to assess their options.

 

To an extent, the changes in the offside law over the past two decades have created that, particularly the redefinition in 2006 of what it is to be interfering. Teams are warier now of pushing out and playing an offside trap, which has had the effect of stretching the effective playing area from sometimes as little as 40 yards to nearer 70. That in turn creates space and was one of the reasons behind the successes of Barcelona’s team of diminutive technicians.

 

But Pirlo has succeeded at Juventus in part because of the players around him. The three central defenders offer protection, and he can even at times drop so deep as to effectively become part of a back four, with Giorgio Chiellini and Andrea Barzagli adept at shuffling slightly wider.

 

http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/article/media_slots/photos/001/099/142/JuventusspaceforPirlo_original.jpg?1380727267

 

At the same time, Leonardo Bonucci takes some of the pressure off Pirlo with his ability to step forward from the back and spread long passes. The energy and tenacity of whichever two of Arturo Vidal, Paul Pogba and Claudio Marchisio are selected mean his lack of defensive capacity is rarely exposed, while also giving him the room—freed from marking responsibilities—in which to direct the play.

 

He’s 34 now and as his career perhaps at last is slowing to a halt, Pirlo remains an anachronism. Possibly, though, he is less a hangover of a golden past than a herald of things to come.

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Raconteur

Raconteur

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24363625

Non-league chairmen accuse FA of match-fixing inaction

The Football Association has been accused of a "dereliction of duty" after failing to question three non-league clubs about suspicious betting activity on a number of games.

After reading of the link between the three dubious Essex clubs (especially AFC Hornchurch) and the scandal here in Australia, describing the FA's inaction as "deriliction" is generous. It borders on complicit.

 

Are there any anti-gambling crusading type politicians (or grassroots organisations) in the UK who might make a suitable hue and cry about this?

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Fugazi

Fugazi

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The Brazil FA has objected to Diego Costa being allowed to play for Spain, the matter will go to the Players' Statutory Commission.

 

Can't wait for the reactions of the Brazilian crowds when we play over there for Summerslam the World Cup.

 

Spain won.

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Segun Oluwaniyi

Segun Oluwaniyi

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What is Diego Costa's claim to being Spanish. Unless I am misunderstanding something, he is fully raised in Brazil and never even saw Spain until he was an adult. FIFA needs to ban this sort of thing. Unless someone has proven lineage in the new nation or moved there before attaining professional status, they should not be allowed to change football nationalities unless there are extenuating circumstances. "Being a talented footballer" is not a satisfactory reason. It is the same nonsense Holland tried to pull with Saloman Kalou all of those years ago.

African legends such as Nwankwo Kanu, Yaya Toure, Obi Mikel, Drogba, and Adebayor stuck on the rubbish Overground line. Owen at Oxford Circus. Some women at my cousin's stop. This map disappoints me greatly.

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