21 - Frenkie de Jong

DonAK

President of FC Barcelona
Tbf Serie A is pretty pathetic. I'd agree with that. Napoli mustered a challenge one season and that's it. Their teams usually poor in European competitions too apart from Juventus and when Barca shat their pants vs Roma.
 

serghei

Senior Member
Lol, Serie A, even today when they are at their lowest level probably, is still at least a level above Ligue 1.

Tbf Serie A is pretty pathetic. I'd agree with that. Napoli mustered a challenge one season and that's it. Their teams usually poor in European competitions too apart from Juventus and when Barca shat their pants vs Roma.

What are you talking about? They were close to have 4/4 teams in the last 16 in the Champions League and lost the duel with the English teams by a hair. Last year they were close to have 2 teams in the semis of the CL.

Ligue 1 is distant 5th, with Bundesliga and Serie A battling it out for No3.
 
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Jair Ventura

New member
While we're throwing out stereotypes, i guess since you're in Rio you're a favela dwelling loser :lol:

I don’t see how questioning someone’s footballing acumen is comparable to stereotyping someone’s socio-economic status. You probably aren’t the brightest though, so I should adjust my expectations.

Carry on.
 

Arizona Scott

New member
My issue with people here talking about "farmer league Ligue 1" (besides the fact that they never even watch Ligue 1) is that they always tend to say that Ligue 1 is "miles" behind Bundesliga or Italy in terms of overall level.

Worse, they don't criticize based on what they're seeing, but only based on the UEFA coefficient of the country.

The farmer thing is clearly just a thoughtless insult, not totally surprising given this is a forum about a club in Spain/Catalan, but I don't think it is cool, I have decided not to use it.

I was using using both 5 year Uefa ranking and total player market value form transfermarket--the latter a good indicator of collective talent. These don't always come together, but close. La Liga has regularly cleaned up in Europa, and they are not Real or Barca, and these teams do it with Europa 2nd fiddle to league and maybe co lower club goal with Spanish cup.

Ligue 1 is solidly the 5th league in the world, I would agree. But they really only have one team with ambitions to win the champions league within the realm of possibility due to financial might, and that might comes from Qatar--not from league revenue or anything shared collectively to the clubs.

IMO

La Liga (not necc this order, EPL better in some areas like most of the bottom 1/3rd of teams)
EPL

(solid gap)

Serie A
Bundesliga

(solid gap)
Ligue 1

(solid gap)
other Europe and S. America leagues

Along with the Uefa ranking and squad/league player values--all relatively objective, you can see a lot of cases that support this. How many players get older or just can't quite cut it in Spain or England but whose productivity shoots up and cements a place in the team in Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 (Payet and Depay are great examples, also see Rami, Remy, Dubuchy). And there are many cases of players burning it up in those leagues who when moved to England or Spain become more exposed in terms of the limitations. Now I can't think of great players who moved from EPL or Spain or Italy but then struggle in France--certainly not Neymar, Cavani, ADM.
 

Jair Ventura

New member
The farmer thing is clearly just a thoughtless insult, not totally surprising given this is a forum about a club in Spain/Catalan, but I don't think it is cool, I have decided not to use it.

I was using using both 5 year Uefa ranking and total player market value form transfermarket--the latter a good indicator of collective talent. These don't always come together, but close. La Liga has regularly cleaned up in Europa, and they are not Real or Barca, and these teams do it with Europa 2nd fiddle to league and maybe co lower club goal with Spanish cup.

Ligue 1 is solidly the 5th league in the world, I would agree. But they really only have one team with ambitions to win the champions league within the realm of possibility due to financial might, and that might comes from Qatar--not from league revenue or anything shared collectively to the clubs.

IMO

La Liga (not necc this order, EPL better in some areas like most of the bottom 1/3rd of teams)
EPL

(solid gap)

Serie A
Bundesliga

(solid gap)
Ligue 1

(solid gap)
other Europe and S. America leagues

Along with the Uefa ranking and squad/league player values--all relatively objective, you can see a lot of cases that support this. How many players get older or just can't quite cut it in Spain or England but whose productivity shoots up and cements a place in the team in Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 (Payet and Depay are great examples, also see Rami, Remy, Dubuchy). And there are many cases of players burning it up in those leagues who when moved to England or Spain become more exposed in terms of the limitations. Now I can't think of great players who moved from EPL or Spain or Italy but then struggle in France--certainly not Neymar, Cavani, ADM.


The best EPL players this generation are from Ligue 1: Hazard and Kante

Which is why it’s difficult to take your arguments seriously, given how obvious your ignorance is.
 

serghei

Senior Member
Lyon > Napoli
Monaco over the last 5 seasons > Every other club in Serie A

You aren’t fooling anyone.

Go to sleep. The ruination of Monaco shows why Ligue 1 is a joke. You go from Champions to relegation fodder in 2 years. I see you're trying to big up Lyon now. Very lucky to have made it out vs Shakhtar.

Ligue 1 is a league of PSG and a bunch of inconsistent B sides who basically survive and sometimes turn on big profits by selling their best players most of the times to their direct competitor, PSG.
 
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Jair Ventura

New member
Go to sleep. The ruination of Monaco shows why Ligue 1 is a joke. You go from Champions to relegation fodder in 2 years.

Monaco’s success domestically and in Europe past 5 years > every club in Italy not named Juventus

We’re dealing with facts here. Your ignorant opinions hold no weight.
 

Cule4life

The Culest
I don’t see how questioning someone’s footballing acumen is comparable to stereotyping someone’s socio-economic status. You probably aren’t the brightest though, so I should adjust my expectations.

Carry on.

You said he doesn't know about football cos he's from Arizona. Playing innocent when the fuzz shows up aren't we.
 

Jair Ventura

New member
Why did u feel the need to mention he's from Arizona while debating him. To safeguard your fragile ego?

Because I don’t trust that someone from Arizona has a solid grasp on how good Strasbourg or Amiens are.

Why did you feel the need to stereotype the socio-economic status(I.e. completely unrelated to football) of Rio and Brazilians in response? To safeguard your fragile ego? To expose your bigotry and ignorance?
 

Bulgroz

Senior Member
The farmer thing is clearly just a thoughtless insult, not totally surprising given this is a forum about a club in Spain/Catalan, but I don't think it is cool, I have decided not to use it.

I was using using both 5 year Uefa ranking and total player market value form transfermarket--the latter a good indicator of collective talent. These don't always come together, but close. La Liga has regularly cleaned up in Europa, and they are not Real or Barca, and these teams do it with Europa 2nd fiddle to league and maybe co lower club goal with Spanish cup.

Ligue 1 is solidly the 5th league in the world, I would agree. But they really only have one team with ambitions to win the champions league within the realm of possibility due to financial might, and that might comes from Qatar--not from league revenue or anything shared collectively to the clubs.

IMO

La Liga (not necc this order, EPL better in some areas like most of the bottom 1/3rd of teams)
EPL

(solid gap)

Serie A
Bundesliga

(solid gap)
Ligue 1

(solid gap)
other Europe and S. America leagues

Along with the Uefa ranking and squad/league player values--all relatively objective, you can see a lot of cases that support this. How many players get older or just can't quite cut it in Spain or England but whose productivity shoots up and cements a place in the team in Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 (Payet and Depay are great examples, also see Rami, Remy, Dubuchy). And there are many cases of players burning it up in those leagues who when moved to England or Spain become more exposed in terms of the limitations. Now I can't think of great players who moved from EPL or Spain or Italy but then struggle in France--certainly not Neymar, Cavani, ADM.

I think you're wrong with that "solid gap" between Serie A/Bundesliga and France. First of all because Bundesliga is a better league than Serie A (watch some games in both league to make up your mind about it, or just wait next season or the one after to see Germany take 3rd place in UEFA rankings). Second of all because the gap is not that big.
You're mentionning "great players" who moved from other countries to France and then didn't struggle. That's necessarily biased for one good reason: French teams have less money than other teams in general. How is Bordeaux going to buy a "great player" ? Therefore, most "great players" are bought by PSG, who are already a notch above everyone else. Helps not to struggle.

Second of all: you can't reason by listing examples. If you want to talk about players going from other leagues to France, what about Strootman, who's pure shit with Marseille ? What about Grzegorz "La Liga team of the year" Krychowiak who ended up as one of PSG's biggest flop ? He's actually a perfect counter example: he was ok in France (nothing super fancy though), went to La Liga and instantly turned into one of your best MD. Then he went back to France, and he was shit again. Can also mention Cabaye, who at the time was linked to United and other big teams but joined PSG... and failed terribly.
Those are just two counter examples, but even your examples are not all good (besides the PSG ones, though any PSG fan can tell you how fed up he is with ADM who's never been that amazing there). Payet had turned into shit (his best season was in West Ham, not in Marseille), so has Rami who's just a joke now. Debuchy is good since he's back in Saint-Etienne, but he wasn't bad in Arsenal, just injured all the time. Depay was great last year, but his first half season was meh, and he's only scored 5 goals this season, so not like he's crushing it big time, but I'll grant you this one.

On the other hand, I can name dozens of players who were good in France but shone even more brightly in another country. Lenglet for example played for NANCY (of all teams !) in France. He looked rather promising, but nobody could have guessed he'd end up in Barcelona 3 years later after two great seasons in La Liga. Already mentioned Krychowiak, but he's a perfect example. Kante was good in Ligue 1 and everybody was a bit surprised when he joined Leicester because people would have seen him in Marseille or Lyon for example, but again: nobody expected him to be such a monster so soon. Alassane Plea is having a blast in Bundesliga, so did Anthony Modeste before him. Lille couldn't wait to get rid of Pavard. I could go on for hours.
 

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