World Football Thread XIX: Capello to the Rescue!

[duke o' york]

So what does anyone make of England's new kit? I think it's awful, but conversely, the goalie kit is awesome. Apparently, well - according to ITV, Capello helped to design it!

[Cort Haus]

I think the white kit is crap.

[Imran Siddiqui]

It's racist to Indians and Pakistanis who are British citizens

[MOBIUS]

I can't believed no one has LOLed to the max about Shearer becoming manager of Newcastle...

What an April Fool!

Going down...

[Maquiladora]

I've been too busy LOL-ing at Maradona.

[MOBIUS]

Of course! I wondered why they were so inept - I forgot they had Maradona as their manager!

[Cort Haus]

[Maquiladora]

AZ Alkmaar won the Dutch Eredivisie for only the 2nd time in their history

[Locutus]

Yup, only the second time since 1964 that it wasn't one of the 'big three' to win it -- the last time (80/81) it was AZ also. To be fair, they won mostly by having a very easy schedule (they failed qualify for Europe last year, got kicked out of the national cup early-ish this year), but still, congrats to them Next year will be ours though

FC Twente is still clinging onto the second place for now, but it's been a very, very long season for us (held on in the UEFA Cup for a long time, still active in the national cup; I think we played like 10-15 games more than AZ) -- it's gonna be tough to keep Ajax at bay in the last 3 weeks: we're still playing Heerenveen (4th), Ajax (3rd) and AZ (1st) in the remaining matches, with in between the semi-final and hopefully final of the national cup. I fear that at the end of this season we may become victims of our own success...

[duke o' york]

We're gannin doon, but on the up side, the Scum lost to Everton, so it's not a bad day all considered.

[Maquiladora]

Next year will be ours though

So how much of FC Twente's success this season do you (and other fans) attribute to McClaren?

[Locutus]

He probably gets slightly more public adoration from the fans than he deserves, but I think that's in part because we know the English press is following us with hawk eyes looking for scandals to report on and we want to make the guy look good.

Realistically McClaren has made a major contribution to our success though. Sure, FC Twente was already a pretty successful team when he got here (coming off of our best season ever in 07/08), but we lost a good number of key players over the summer, including our entire midfield. If you compare the starting line-up today with that of a year ago, it changed in no fewer than 8 places. So McClaren basically completely transformed the team and did so without taking a hit on effectiveness. In fact, although we're not playing quite as attractive and dominant anymore as last year, the big difference is that now when we do play poorly, we still manage to win the game most of the time -- that's something that Twente has struggled with for years and the credit for fixing this belongs squarely to Steve McClaren.

He's done a great job developing some of our youth players as well: Arnautovic, Elia and Brama were complete nobodies a year ago, now they have the likes of Barcelona, Arsenal and HSV chasing after them (and there are a few others like Rendla, Rukavytsya and Mihaylov on the up and up who may well get their breakthrough next season).

[Locutus]

We made it to the cup final for the 3rd time in 8 years!

[Krill]

Cort can feel happy about screwing up the scousers best chance of winning their first premiership

And I have to hand it to Stoke for being doing so well this season. I doubt anyone expected them to be where they are now considering just how litle technical skill they have (which is none)

[Cort Haus]

And I have to hand it to Stoke for being doing so well this season. I doubt anyone expected them to be where they are now considering just how litle technical skill they have (which is none)

:rorydelap: