Lots of goals on the final group stage match day. Next round will be drawn on Monday. Seeded Manchester United Paris Saint-Germain Roma Barcelona Liverpool Manchester City Beşiktaş Tottenham Hotspur Unseeded Basel Bayern Munich Chelsea Juventus Sevilla Shakhtar Donetsk Porto Real Madrid
Too early. Best English vs Best German team should be a quarter finals matchup at least. But I'd love to see us play Tottenham or Liverpool. Would also like to see Real - ManUtd, Juventus - PSG and Chelsea - Barcelona. For reasons.
All German Europa League teams eliminated, BVB and RB relegated to EL and only Bayern left in CL. Brutal trend, German teams are even losing vs obscure teams with painfully low market values.
Inevitable. Confirmes what I wrote after last Bundesliga season. The league's quality has decreased painfully. Hertha and Köln are low level teams that can do nothing but parking the bus and have no business playing international - it's a shame for the Bundesliga that these two teams became 5th and 6th. Hoffenheim and Leipzig can play but are still essentially gigantic piles of **** with no fanbase. Dortmund was the only one that really screwed up.
Funny observation from interviews: Heynckes and James saying he's improved that drastically since Ancelotti left because his new coach (Heynckes) is speaking Spanish and made things much easier for James at the club. Other players have also shared those sentiments. I didn't watch Andelotti's interviews at Real, is his Spanish that terrible? Seems he really isn't that engaged when joining other countries and always had communication issues. Also funny because garbage media made up stories of James wanting to leave after his "mentor Ancelotti" was fired, but now he's indirectly said that communication and coaching is much better with Jupp.
I am not too worried about the media concocting those theories...... Bayern brass said his co-coaches were spoiled and difficult to handle not Anchelotti himself. True or not, dun worry. But yup, it's easier to succeed in Italy for an Italian speaking coach, he can speak Spanish and English (Chelsea). His CL triumph with Madrid proves otherwise, you just dun win one with fatal weaknesses, even if you have CR7. You gain some, you lose some. Mike D'Antoni still failed in NY and in LA land. And people are raving about him in Houston and Phoenix, meh in Denver. Happenz. As you said even Phil Jax can't win everything, ones they get old, they just get old. Heynckes and Capello, Schuster and Queiroz not so much were the other foreign coaches at Real not named Zidane.
This isn't even media conspiracy, both have explicitly stated this in interviews. Heynckes roughly said "The players have told me that James did a complete 180 since I joined and is now much more integrated. Things are much easier for him now because he has a coach that can properly communicate with him in Spanish". James also did an interview and said Heynckes is responsible for his improvements, stating "Us being able to speak the same language has made everything way easier for me. No matter if tactical aspects or parts of everyday life that I didn't understand before. Together, we've made a big step forward." Just seems so baffling to me, but 100% indicates Ancelotti isn't able to properly communicate football-related things in Spanish.
Sorry that last sentence just got to me, we have to agree to disagree. No way he wins a CL title even with CR7 just by speaking bad Spanish. Or he was able to have great communicators and interpreters/translators. Better staff at Real. Or his heart was more into it. I think the media's pressure at Real's is even greater than at Säbener Road. Coaches are humans, they decline. They can't have successes everywhere.
Probably this. Know it is difficult to believe, but Heynckes and James have been very open about the communication aspect and wouldn't have said this otherwise.
I think he is almost as good as Pep in the language department, and he is an older dude than Pep. They were not successful at Bayern for whatever reasons, that I think is more tactical and environmental for sure. English should be the universal language like at universities and worldwide.
I dun doubt that Heynckes has a better way in Germany, but James is just not a favorite of Carlo, not in Madrid at least. Wondered why he wanted him in the first place. Of course James isn't thrilled when he was riding the pine in Madrid the entire time.
I'd trust the involved personnel though, pretty much everyone at Bayern has said that it was difficult to communicate with Carlo, especially when it came to technical aspects. And again, makes absolutely no sense for Jupp and James to say this if Ancelotti's Spanish was adequate. Read their quotes and interviews, everyone is saying James had a language barrier and is now integrated way better than before because of Jupp speaking Spanish.
I doubted the James signing from the start, but it was an Anchelotti signing backed by the management. Good thing, Heynckes can come in and communicate to the players who were brought in from another guy. That is all. Not interested in the drama. Just like with Pep, Anchelotti will remain a top coach unless his next destination is a fail as well. But he remains a coaching legend, just not with Bayern.
Not true, Ancelotti explicitly wanted to sign James and James stated he wanted to play under Ancelotti again. Both only praised each other before this Bayern tenure and wanted to work together again. James also started pretty much every game in his first season there: https://www.transfermarkt.de/james-.../plus/0/saison/2014/wettbewerb/ES1/verein/418 This isn't about bad feelings, the language aspect seems to be a fact and is reiterated by every person involved in this recent situation.
Spoiler Let's just stop. Won't do anything for us. He is a top coach who performed for other clubs. I won't stop believing that. I admit he had his problems with Bayern. I dun try to sugarcoat that. That's the whole point. I just dun get people who think their 'fave club' is above everything else, and only at Bayern he can be a legend. That is jus wrong. Good thing, it's not a club only thread I guess.
There are some pretty detailed career analyses of Ancelotti's career performance actually, will try to find them later today. Bottom line is he had some of the best rosters in history and vastly underperformed given the talent, especially in league titles. Pretty interesting stuff and tells a different tale, some coaching careers are greatly inflated because of their rosters plus a few major titles and don't indicate the actual coaching level.
