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By Dermot Corrigan

Minutes after Real Madrid had exited the Champions League on penalties to Bayern Munich last Wednesday, club coach José Mourinho had his excuse ready. The Portuguese carefully chose his answer to the first question put during the post-game press conference deep inside Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabéu:

“It is more difficult to play this match when you are still in the fight to win the league title than when you are not,” said Mourinho. “I remember the semi-finals I lost with Chelsea against Liverpool. They faced Fulham in the previous clash with their reserve players, while we used our main men in our weekend clash and ended up suffering from that. It is our fault because we would have used different players in our previous game if we were not fighting to win the league title.”

The point was that Madrid’s excellence in La Liga had left them at a disadvantage compared to Bayern, who have lost out to Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga so could rest eight players for their unimportant game against Werder Bremen in between the two semi-final legs. Madrid had to go full tilt for their La Liga deciding clásico at Barcelona’s Camp Nou. It was “our own fault” we lost, because we have been so much better than Bayern in our own domestic competition.

Mourinho was correct in what he said, but he has created at least some of that problem himself by choosing to play his strongest available XI in pretty much every La Liga game this season, even those when a just slightly under-strength Madrid side should have been able to win. Cristiano Ronaldo has appeared in all their 34 matches to date, Xabi Alonso has just missed two (both through suspension) and Sergio Ramos has missed just three. Of the 4,680 minutes Madrid have played in all competitions so far (52 games), Ronaldo has played 4,539, Ramos 4,227 and Alonso 4,209. The likes of Kaká and Gonzalo Higuaín have played very little lately, and potential occasional replacements for Ramos and Alonso have barely featured all season (Raúl Albiol 815 minutes in total and Nuri Sahin just 596).

(Outgoing) Barcelona coach Guardiola, in his more elegant way, has also talked of how it is difficult to expect his players to win every game, given the huge demands. This season has been particularly packed for the Catalan club. Its commercially driven pre-season schedule involved six games in 15 days in Croatia, Germany and the USA last August before rushing back to Spain for the Superocopa double-header against Madrid. There was then December’s successful tip to the World Club Cup in Japan, and the need to peak again soon after the winter break with two Copa del Rey clásicos.

Barca’s main players have therefore also been always on the go – talisman Lionel Messi has played 33 of Barca’s first 34 La Liga games, being suspended for the one he missed. In the last 15 weeks Messi has played all 90 minutes in each of the 26 games for which he has been available. Barca’s other key men such as Carles Puyol, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández have been used slightly more sparingly, but rarely rested when fit. Indeed Xavi played for weeks despite having an injured calf muscle, and only when they had dropped out of their two priority competitions was he given the time off he needed to properly recover.

The reason both coaches have flogged their key players so hard is that the level needed to win La Liga has risen so high in recent years. The last time Madrid won the league, four seasons ago, they finished with 85 points, eight ahead of Villarreal in second, and 18 ahead of Barca in third. In Guardiola’s first season (2008-09) Barcelona got 87, then 99 and then 96 last year. Madrid finished second each time with 78, 96 and 92 points. Under Juande Ramos in 2008-09 and Manuel Pellegrini’s in 2009-10 Madrid set various club records for consecutive wins, but still fell just behind Barca. This season Madrid have already broken the record for goals scored in one season (set at 107 back in 1989 by John Toshack’s legendary ‘Quinta del Buitre’ side) and four more wins will give them a record 100 points for the season.

In his pre-Bayern second leg press conference Mourinho alluded to this required level of performance, saying that the 2011/12 season was a marathon which his side had run at middle-distance speed, and they now needed to up the pace again.

“I do not suppose anything until we win the title,” said Mourinho, about the previous weekend’s Camp Nou victory. “That was three more points in a marathon which we are running at 1500 metre pace. We are in the last metres now and need to sprint to the end.”

He also said that he felt his players were in “perfect” condition, but to extend the marathon metaphor the Bayern loss suggested they had hit the wall. Key playmaker Alonso’s stats tailed off dramatically just as the season was coming to a climax, and Madrid began to stumble with draws against Málaga and Villarreal. They were able to lift it to win in Barcelona, and all but ensure they won the league with four games left to play, but the effort of doing so clearly contributed to their Champions League displays in both semi-final legs. The penalty misses from Ronaldo, Kaká and Sergio Ramos, and the debatably offside goal in the first leg in Munich, were all key moments, but overall Madrid lost out because of an inability to control midfield in either game.

Barcelona also looked jaded against Chelsea, none more so than Messi. The Argentine was reportedly ill with a stomach complaint after the Madrid loss and missed a day’s training. The penalty miss last Tuesday looked to drain the last reserves of energy from his body, and he finished the game with the worst pass completion rate of any Barca player. Guardiola had noted the lack of zip in his team’s play and tried to change things by introducing young wingers Cristian Tello and Isaac Cuenca, but main men like Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fábregas and Dani Alves were unable to summon up the verve and spark to make a difference.

Besides the physical exertions, a La Liga campaign ran at full pelt takes a mental toll. Once a team drop points – Madrid at Levante in September, Barcelona at Getafe in November, through Barca at Osasuna in February and Madrid’s draws with Málaga and Villarreal in March, there is an instant brouhaha among the media and supporters. It immediately looks like one bad game has potentially ruined a whole season. This is the type of pressure Guardiola spoke about on Friday when he said he was leaving the club at the end of the season.

Guardiola knew the impact the constant need to win each and every game was having on himself and his players. Mourinho was making the same point, in a different way, when he spoke after the Bayern game. But they are both at least partly to blame. The Catalan coach raised the bar in La Liga when he entered, and the Portuguese has had to lift it even further to triumph. Both have this season poured so much of their resources into outdoing the other on home ground, that not enough was left to compete overseas.

Real have more than likely won their marathon but for many Madristas a tenth European Cup, the legendary décima, was what really mattered. Barca tried and failed to keep pace in La Liga, and in doing so lost their chance to cement their immortal status with back-to-back Champions Leagues.

Dermot Corrigan is a freelance Irish sportswriter who lives in Madrid and writes about soccer for publications including The Score, FOXSoccer.com, Sport 360° and When Saturday Comes. Contact him on Twitter @dermotmcorrigan.

By Jason Davis

Sporting Kansas City doesn’t want you to get comfortable. They don’t want you to relax, to calmly knock the ball around, to have the luxury of time. They don’t want you to settle into the game. They want you to feel rushed, harried, and distracted, on both ends of the field, at every moment, for the full match. Sporting doesn’t so much want to beat you as they want to pester you to death. Over the course of a long 90 minutes, they want to ground you down into a gooey paste with their relentless effort in attack and defense, then use the paste to shine their fancy modern cleats. Preferably as part of one of their fun-loving goal celebrations.

It’s very possible Sporting Kansas City could be the new MLS, representing the next natural step along a linear line of tactical development. SKC’s up-and-down offense plus “90 minutes of hell” defensive intensity is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Right now, SKC is leading the pack, throwing up dust on which the rest of the league is currently choking. End the year with a trophy (or two) in heand, and they’ll just jump to the front of the queue as the new standard.

Even if Real Salt Lake head coach Jason Kreis laments it at every turn. He’s not a fan.

“I think that it’s an overly physical style,” Kreis said to ESPN700 Sports Radio in Salt Lake City. “I think that it relies on being a very disruptive game. There’s not much rhythm to any game that you watch that they play in. I don’t feel like they create a ton of their own chances. I feel like they are picking up a lot of chances off of winning the ball in the opponent’s half of the field.”

For a long time Major League Soccer has been, tactically-speaking, a closed-shop. For the first decade and and a half or so, the league’s prevailing philosophy might best be termed “English style with American accents.” The average American soccer player’s leading attributes being the ability to run a lot and a willingness to ungracefully run into people, the league’s default tactical setting quickly became a staid, flat, traditional 4-4-2, with long balls and speed the most prominent attacking characteristics, and the clumsy bundling-over/crunching tackle the most prominent defensive ploy. It wasn’t so much a matter of MLS coaches consciously choosing to play that way as it was the talent on field consistently, and unwaveringly, reverting to that default setting no matter the stylistic intent.

The old saying about the leopard and his spots comes to mind, because while MLS coaches like to give lip-service to admirable ambitions like “attractive soccer” and “attack-minded soccer”, pulling them off is much, much, easier said than done. It takes significant commitment, and though MLS coaches have longer leashes than their managerial brethren in most of the world, teams just don’t put in the work or have the patience needed to make a coherent tactical scheme, as a matter of club identity, stick.

RSL appears to have managed it through careful personnel selections and a dogged adherence to the type of soccer General Manager Garth Lagerwey and Kreis envisioned, but not without complications, and with just an underdog MLS victory in 2009 (which, it could be argued, came before they morphed into the MLS standard for aesthetic soccer) to show for their efforts. The jury is still out on whether the Real way is an efficient way to build a winner, and no other team has followed RSL more than a few steps down the path.

The team Peter Vermes put together is a pragmatic as any that has ever won thanks to determination and athleticism. What’s different about Sporting Kansas City is the consideration put into exactly how the team plays; Vermes doesn’t just want the typical MLS approach, he wants the old MLS approach turned up to eleven and spiced with a decidedly impatient vibe. SKC took the old model, tweaked it (the move to a 4-3-3, dependent on destroyers in midfield who can push the ball ahead quickly to forwards who will move it just as quickly towards goal), ramped up the horsepower (consistently choosing speedy players to fit the scheme), and unleashed it on a unsuspecting league. It’s not often pretty and it doesn’t follow RSL’s lead towards an aesthetically pleasing passing game, but it’s certainly effective.

In other words, Sporting Kansas City represents a “New Pragmatism” in Major League Soccer. It’s too early to say that they have perfected it (they lost to lowly Portland 1-0 on the weekend), but for the most part the results thus far speak for themselves.

This development is interesting for a few reasons, most notably because it’s not taking place in a tactical vacuum. RSL stands as the obvious counter to the Sporting way. Kreis’s comments, specifically in regards to the chances Kansas City creates, circle back on themselves. They’re contradictory (Kreis says they don’t create “a ton of their own chances” then immediately outlines exactly how they create chances) because Kreis’s sensibilities are normalized to the ball-on-the-ground, possession game Real Salt Lake has come to embody (the word “own” is the key to understand his perspective–chances Sporting creates by forcing turnovers in their opponent’s half don’t count, apparently). Anything else, like SKC’s high-pressure, disruptive, physically-aggressive style on a level not customary even in MLS, is anathema to “good” soccer. The same debate going on in the wider football world, namely the value of pragmatic, opportunistic soccer when everyone should want to strive to be Barcelona, has made its way to MLS.

Sporting is winning, sure, but they’re not necessarily playing a game everyone wants to watch. Of course, playing a game everyone wants to watch was never at the top of organizational priorities for MLS clubs–until this Kreis-led RSL team came along. All that mattered was collecting enough points to make the playoffs, then hopefully catching a wave to ride through the random-ish post-season to a championship.

Parity creates a more balanced competition, giving every fan base a reasonable hope of success, but one of its more disappointing side effects is tactical homogeneity. The Vermes approach can either be viewed as a sort of “MLS+” style, implying a lack of true dedication towards an admirable end and not much of a step forward at all, or as a clever improvement that could predict the tactical future of a copycat league.

The latter would surely dismay not only Jason Kreis, but also the growing number of MLS-aware soccer fans who count themselves about the stylistic idealists. But as a matter of maximizing the available talent in a bid to win, Major League Soccer’s overriding concern for most of its history, it’s hard to argue with Sporting’s way.

By Richard Farley

MLS: Will Rafa Marquez antics show value of league’s Disciplinary Committee?

Rafa Marquez was supposed to begin 2012 anew, but Saturday saw the New York Red Bulls’ midfielder return to his former self, leaving a trail of causalities in the wake of Saturday’s 2-2 draw with San Jose. Earthquakes’ winger Shea Salinas was left with a broken collarbone, San Jose is now down a starter, and after Major League Soccer’s disciplinary committee had its say this week, New York is without one of its two big ticket items.

Because while Thierry Henry has been MLS’ player of the season, New York’s other designated player is banned. His American football-style tackle saw the former Barcelona-man drive Salinas into the ground, his foot suspiciously coming down on his opponents head as the two rolled around the penalty area. It’s not exactly what New York expected from the third-best compensated player in MLS (behind only Henry and David Beckham).

“I really don’t understand it,” Red Bulls’ announcer Shep Messing decried incredulously as the broadcast replayed Marquez’s takedown, which was either missed or misjudged by referee Ricardo Salazar. “[E]very single corner kick, in my view, [Marquez] could be called for a penalty. No doubt about it. He’s got his arms wrapped [Salinas] every single corner kick.”
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By Dermot Corrigan

Even as they hoover up title after title, it is hard to dislike Barcelona. Mention Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández or Andrés Iniesta and the eyes of any football fan will light up. Talk about Carlés Puyol or Javier Mascherano and there will be mostly praise for their commitment and attitude. As soon as Josep Guardiola enters the conversation, many will swoon. Bring up Sergio Busquets though, and frowns and even some snarls quickly appear.

This dislike is not just limited to neutral or opposition fans. Arsene Wenger recently shared his at best ambivalent view of Barca’s one bad guy.

“He is very smart and knows how to help the team,” Wenger told Eurosport. “He is clever, he forces the ref to give yellow cards to opponents. He pretends to be hurt whereas he is the one who kicked. He has all the moral weaknesses that help in football. His intelligence really helps the team.”

Wenger’s opinion of Busquets is widely shared by non-Barca fans, and there’s plenty of evidence to call upon. Internazionale supporters in particular will remember the “peek-a-boo” incident when Thiago Motta was sent off in the 2010 Champions League semi-final. As well over-reacting to opponent’s tackles, Busquets can make some nasty challenges himself, while the most unsavoury charges against him were the never really proven or disproven allegations of racism in last season’s Champions League semi-final against Real Madrid.
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By Jack Lang

His first goal was as soft as they come, the goalkeeper charitably stepping aside to ensure his penalty was successful. The scorer celebrated as expected, but would have to wait a while longer for the moment that would define his testimonial game. Minutes later, it arrived, an exquisitely executed half-volley that slid into the bottom corner of the net.

This was the moment that Edmundo had long anticipated: a split-second piece of skill that brought to mind the countless highlights of a career well lived. Fans of Vasco da Gama—the club with whom the striker enjoyed a fruitful, if intermittent, association—were sent into raptures, chanting Edmundo’s name ceaselessly for the remainder of the match.

In truth, their partisanship on the night was already guaranteed. Edmundo is one of Vasco’s biggest idols, having racked up 241 games and 137 goals for the Rio de Janeiro outfit. The statistics, however, tell only half of the tale: this is a man whose passion and unpredictability came to define the Gigante da Colina, and won him supporters worldwide.
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By Ross Dunbar

For those who are regular subscribers to the Bundesliga, it is becoming evident that many writers are beginning to jump on a media bandwagon about the current standard of German football. In recent months, it has been in overdrive and we can expect that to go in to top gear ahead of the European Championships where some already have the German ribbons on the trophy.

For example, it has been only in recent months where the English press have clicked on to the well-structured model of German football, as well as, talents such as Marco Reus and Mario Götze who have been plying their trade at the top of the division for over 18 months now.

The upcoming European Championships will be the platform for the incredible development work in German football to showcase this new, refreshing brand of football in a country which is renowned for a more pragmatic, effective style of play. The arrogant winning mentality of legendary stars such as Lotthar Matthaus and Oliver Kahn saw Germany as a less favourable nation to support if you are a neutral but the host of younger stars, like Kroos, Reus and Götze, is certainly making the nationalmannschafft, the team of the people.

German national team coach Joachim Löw is the envy of many previous international coaches with the committed 10-year plan by the German government, DFB (Deutscher Fussball-Bund) and DFL (Deutsche Fussball-Liga) which has seen huge investment in youth infrastructure and the general financial sustainability of the national game.
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By Jack Lang

“Santos turn down opportunity to increase stake in Ganso by 10%.”
“Ronaldinho owed $2 million in unpaid wages by marketing firm.”

Sometimes, stories in the foreign press are abstruse for reasons that go beyond language. Even in a global sport like football not all concepts, particularly in finance, are universally understood.

The notion of third-party investment in players is a prime (and timely) example. Headlines like those listed above still alienate a majority of football fans, schooled as they have been in the relatively straightforward financial dealings of football in the major European leagues. In Brazil, however, such stories appear on almost a weekly basis.

For the uninitiated: in South America, players are not always owned exclusively by their clubs. Non-footballing organisations buy portions of the economic rights attached to athletes, entitling them to a cut of future transfer fees. The motivation behind such agreements is easy to pinpoint. Clubs are offered a lucrative short-term revenue stream, whilst investors stand to profit should a player ever secure a big-money move later in his career.
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