Adrien Rabiot

[BBZ8800]

Lmao shut the fuck up. No one welcomes your posts cause its made up tabloid crap , sometimes crap you made up yourself too. Fans are allowed to talk shit about Rabiot's mom and Vidal's alcohol problems because those are actually things we can verify with first hand sources, whereas your claims like "Dembele likes mcdonalds everyday hurr durr" is unverified shit from tabloids. You're pathetic. Are you really a Barcelona supporter? It's like you don't even enjoy football, you live and breathe to spread negativity about our players.

"I will hate on a player and will use anything, ANYTHING to shit on him."

Absolutely fucking pathetic.

Are you 13 or what?

I am disliking only Dembele, Arthur and Semedo from our current players.
Because:
1. I think that Dembele is not good enough
2. Semedo is abolutely irreparable horrible in attack
3. Arthur is a backpasser for now

I wrote about Busi's lack of pace and some deficiencies lately.

I don't write anything bad about Umtiti, Coutinho, Pique, Roberto, Rakitic, even Alba (except low IQ), Messi (except sulking in a CL), even Suarez, Rafinha, Malcom, Munir, Lenglet, Vermaelen, Mats, Cillessen.

The only "problem" is that majority of fans have the highest hopes from Dembele, Arthur and Semedo, so it may sound as if I am hating everyone.
I am "hating" only those 3.

So, I am not hating on EVERYONE.
I probably hate on 3 players whom you (and majority) hype currently, so that bothers you.

And again, it is not about tabloid rumors, but because of pure football skills and everyone has the right for their liking/disliking.

But that is a deeper psychological thing.
When a player is perceived by a majority as meh or bad (Rafinha, Munir, Paco, Gomes, Denis), then mentioning their flaws is not a big deal and is consider as: not a big deal, objectivity and common sense.
But when you "stab" at current fan's favorites (and Dembele is probably the highest hope for the future for majority of fans), that is: a big deal, spreading negativity, don't understanding football (lol) and similar.

Are you really a Barcelona supporter? It's like you don't even enjoy football, you live and breathe to spread negativity about our players.

You are like those Reddit users, seriously.
I am Barca's fan and my personal view is that Dembele sucks.
That way, my idea is to sell him as soon as possible, return the money, not to lose time and matches on him and try with someone new.

In your head it probably sounds as: you hate Barca, you want him to fail.
In my head that sounds: He 99% won't make it, let's move on and turn the page.

You have to realize that different people have different views on player's skills, coaches, tactics, transfers, everything.

 

[Aryagorn]

Imo, the only way to see which league is better and by how much is to merge both leagues into one big league with 40 teams and then see the table in the end.

Or play 1st vs 1st, 2nd vs 2nd until the 20th vs 20th.

Barca beating Chelsea and Sevilla beating Man Utd really doesn't say too much about quality of Getafe, Levante and Las Palmas vs West Ham, Stoke and similar.

Cr7 winning and scoring against City or Liverpool doesn't make Alaves or Getafe any stronger.
Equally, if Real will suck now in Europe without CR7, Getafe won't suddenlybe weaker than in the last season.

La liga had Top2 teams in the last decade and top2 goalscorers ever.
Due to a success of Real and Barca, fans have started to overrate overal quality of La liga.

The same, Italian teams were dominating European cups in 90s.
That still didn't mean that Piacenza, Empoli and Salernitana were better than random Spanish or German teams back then.
It meant only that their top teams were the best in Europe in that era.

These tests and comparisons are extremely complicated and almost impossible to answer.

How about other Spanish teams' success in Europe?

Atletico made to 2 CL finals and lost both the times to a fellow Spanish team! They've won a Europa league

Sevilla won 4 freaking Europa league in the recent past!

Let's not encourage the propaganda that says only the top 2 are good in Spain please - Thats not true at all

 

[DonAK]

Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao, Sevilla, Valencia are other teams that have had success in European competitions the last decade.

The Mid-Tier teams in Spain are definitely much better than the ones elsewhere. Lower-table sides are pretty much bad everywhere.

 

[BBZ8800]

How about other Spanish teams' success in Europe?

Atletico made to 2 CL finals and lost both the times to a fellow Spanish team! They've won a Europa league

Sevilla won 4 freaking Europa league in the recent past!

Let's not encourage the propaganda that says only the top 2 are good in Spain please - Thats not true at all

That means that La liga is not a one horse race.
And that we have 3 big teams and 1 team who can make havoc in European league (Sevilla).

It still doesn't say anything regarding Nice vs Bilbao, Rennes vs Getafe and similar.

In theory, imagine if Real will now struggle in Europe after CR7's leaving.
And imagine if Barca will struggle after Messi.

What if Barca and Real won't reach finals from 2020-2025 in a CL?
And let's say that Psg will reach 2 finals.
And that Bayern will win 2 trophies and Dortmund will play one final.

Will that mean, due to a number of CL finals:
= that suddenly Ligue 1 is better than La liga because Psg reached finals and Real/Barca hasn't?
= also, will that mean that Bundesliga is now better than La Liga due to Bayern's and Dortmund's final?

Also, does ANY of these events above has any influences on the actual strength of Getafe, Levante, Rennes, Nice, Koln and Hamburg?

Getafe won't be stronger in 2015 than in 2025 just because Barca played a final in 2015.
Nice won't be stronger just because Psg will one day play in a CL final.

I am not saying THOUGH that all leagues are of an equal strength.
But basing a strength of Spanish/German/French league on a number of a CL finals from their clubs, which heavily relies on some players like Messi, CR7 and similar is wrong.

For example, Psg is now stronger with Neymar and Mbappe.
If they will reach a CL final in the next season, will that mean that their 1st div is suddenly strong?
= no

Other teams, except Psg, are equally as good or bad as they were, regardless of Psg and their CL's success.

Equally, we shouldn't overrate the strength of Deportivo, Las Palmas and Getafe because Messi took the ball, dribbled past 5 opponents and won us a CL.
Or because Ramos scored a winning header after a corner in the 94th minute of a CL final.

Those things don't have anything with an actual strength of midtable or bottomtable clubs.

For the end, I do think that currently La Liga is still stronger than Ligue 1.
But NOT AS MUCH as some posters think, when they comment how we shouldn't compare assists from Ligue 1 with assists against Getafe, for example.

Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao, Sevilla, Valencia are other teams that have had success in European competitions the last decade.

The Mid-Tier teams in Spain are definitely much better than the ones elsewhere. Lower-table sides are pretty much bad everywhere.

That is true.
And since both Barca, Real, Bayer, Psg and all big teams are statpadding and winning 5:0, 6:1, and 11:1 against bottom table teams, goals, assists and similar stats are more or less similar in all top leagues.

It is not as if Messi and CR7 were banging goals only in El Classicos.
And as if Xavi/Iniesta/Modric were getting assists only against Barca, Real and Atletico.

80-90% of their stats came from matches against crappy midtable-bottom table teams like Getafe, Rennes and similar.

 

[Jair Ventura]

Villarreal, Athletic Bilbao, Sevilla, Valencia are other teams that have had success in European competitions the last decade.

The Mid-Tier teams in Spain are definitely much better than the ones elsewhere. Lower-table sides are pretty much bad everywhere.

And you believe there's something separating those clubs from Monaco, Lyon, and Marseille? Not buying it. La Liga is defind by its top clubs: Barcelona and the Madrids.

 

[DonAK]

And you believe there's something separating those clubs from Monaco, Lyon, and Marseille? Not buying it. La Liga is defind by its top clubs: Barcelona and the Madrids.

Europa League titles and deep runs in the Europa League or CL.

Then you have three Spanish teams that have reached the CL final the last five years. While the best performance from a French team is Monaco in the SF

So yes, there's a separation between Lyon and Marseille from Villarreal, Sevilla, Valencia and the likes.

 

[Jair Ventura]

Europa League titles and deep runs in the Europa League or CL.

Then you have three Spanish teams that have reached the CL final the last five years. While the best performance from a French team is Monaco in the SF

So yes, there's a separation between Lyon and Marseille from Villarreal, Sevilla, Valencia and the likes.

You exaggerate that rest to artificially prop up La Liga to higher level than it is. Real, Barca, Atletico. The separation begins and ends there.

Wasn't Spain just knocked out the WC relatively easily after struggling in the '16 Euros?

 

[DonAK]

You exaggerate that rest to artificially prop up La Liga to higher level than it is. Real, Barca, Atletico. The separation begins and ends there.

Wasn't Spain just knocked out the WC relatively easily after struggling in the '16 Euros?

The equivalent of Sevilla in France would be Marseille, Nice and Lyon. Not Monaco that even won a Ligue 1 title recently.

Sevilla have won multiple ELs or made a deep run in the competition. Even eliminated Man Utd from the CL last season. What have Lyon, Marseille and Nice done?

I don't see how International Football is relevant when we're discussing club football, but I guess you emptied out your arguments so you're trying to steer this discussion that way.

Maybe I should try your tactic too

I wonder how it feels to be a PSG fan and realizing even Monaco have been more relevant in the CL since your sugar daddies bought up your club.

 

[Bulgroz]

Europa League titles and deep runs in the Europa League or CL.

Then you have three Spanish teams that have reached the CL final the last five years. While the best performance from a French team is Monaco in the SF

So yes, there's a separation between Lyon and Marseille from Villarreal, Sevilla, Valencia and the likes.

I agree. But BBZ's post about all the other teams in the league still stands. Unless you can prove that teams ranked from 6th to 20th place in LA Liga are far superior to the teams at the same rank in France, I don't really understand why stats shouldn't be compared because La Ligue 1 is a "farmer league".

 

[BBZ8800]

Jair, Nt teams have nothing with strength of Getafe and Rennes.

Getafe is as equally as weak regardless if:
Barca/Real will win a Cl
And if Spain will win a World cup or not, since mostly players from Real and Barca play there

No need to connect a strength of bottom table teams in Spain and France with a success or failures of Barca, Real, Psg and NT teams.

About Nt teams, Croatia was a Wc finalist.
Their 1st division is as equally as horrible as before World cup.

 

[Jair Ventura]

The equivalent of Sevilla in France would be Marseille, Nice and Lyon. Not Monaco that even won a Ligue 1 title recently.

Sevilla have won multiple ELs or made a deep run in the competition. Even eliminated Man Utd from the CL last season. What have Lyon, Marseille and Nice done?

- I agree about Sevilla, but just because Sevilla performed well a few years ago doesn't mean they're at the same level now.

- Lyon reached the Semi's of the Europa two seasons back, Marseille reached the final last season

 

[DonAndres]

The midtable teams in la liga is inarguably FAR ahead of Ligue 1 for the reasons [MENTION=15376]DonAK[/MENTION] has listed and a few more (like how lower table teams seem to routinely knock RM out of CDR, even if RM aren't trying as hard that still shows strength in those lower teams). And I'm completely discounting PSG/Barca/Madrid/Atletico/Monaco here, just talking about teams like Sevilla/Valencia/Athletic/Villarreal who have had success in Europe far beyond the 'equivalent' French teams.

On the other hand, sure, you can't really separate the bottom 10 in any of the top leagues from each other. One relatively crude method I can think of is comparing bottom 10 to top 10 across leagues. It is an inarguable given that La Liga and EPL are superior to Ligue 1. So let's start with that assumption and look at the point distribution of the league tables from 17/18.

The accumulated points by the bottom 10 in La Liga ranged from 20-50, which is more or less the same as Ligue 1's 26-51 range. EPL's is a much tighter distribution than both, ranging from 31-44. What this shows is that the difference in quality between the top 10 and bottom 10 in La Liga and Ligue 1 is relatively equal, while EPL's bottom 10 is closer to the top 10 than both leagues.

Given the (pretty much factual) assumption that La Liga is better than Ligue 1 and the difference between the top 10 and bottom 10 is roughly the same, that shows that La Liga's bottom 10 is correspondingly better than Ligue 1's bottom 10 based on how many points they were able to accumulate against the top 10's of the respective leagues. Whereas EPL's bottom 10 is better than both relative to their top 10, and EPL is clearly better than Ligue 1. So that also shows EPL's bottom 10 is also superior to Ligue 1. La Liga is slightly better than EPL but since EPL's bottom 10 is significantly closer to the top, there is a good argument to be made that EPL's bottom 10 is better than La Liga's.

That's a very rough, quick way of doing it. You could make way more detailed calculations, but it's one way of gauging the bad teams in each league.

Even Jair Ventura's criteria can be applied to show this. The bottom teams in France's Ligue 1 are extremely tiny clubs with no resources at all and tiny stadiums/shitty academies. Who finishes at the bottom in La Liga? Teams like Malaga, Rayo Vallecano, Granada, etc. who at various points in the past decade have been midtable sides. Athletic was a bottom tier side last year despite having multiple seasons in the top 5-4 in seasons past. Valencia, Sociedad, etc. have all had seasons in the lower end of the table sometimes excessively so.

Whereas in Ligue 1 the top 10 always tends to have the teams with at least acceptable resources (Lyon, Nice, Marseille, Bordeux, Rennes, etc.). The bottom 10 is always the minnow clubs like Caen, Metz, Amiens, Guingamp, etc. There is very little change in the makeup of the league table every year for the past 5+ years, unlike La Liga. Because the lower table clubs are extremely tiny with very little room to overtake those clubs with more resources. They are inherently extremely weak every single year without fail unlike La Liga's bottom 10 which routinely includes clubs that have rich history and consistently above average resources. Small clubs by nature vs small clubs by circumstance/performance.

 

[BBZ8800]

I agree. But BBZ's post about all the other teams in the league still stands. Unless you can prove that teams ranked from 6th to 20th place in LA Liga are far superior to the teams at the same rank in France, I don't really understand why stats shouldn't be compared because La Ligue 1 is a "farmer league".

[MENTION=23081]Bulgroz[/MENTION], you have wrote a lengthy post about Dembele and gave your views about him as a French guy:

I'm not saying for sure he will make it here, mind you. He still needs to improve a lot. But even though many people here call is a lesser league, Ligue 1 has seen quite a few impressive talents rising up in the past years. The likes of Mbappe, Kante, Hazard or Umtiti started here, and I've seen them all start with Monaco, Caen, Lille and Lyon. Of course I'm not always right about these things, first of all because it's not my job, second of all because so many things can go right or wrong in a footballer's career that even the most talented sometimes end up playing in a very shitty league at 28.

Still, it's pretty safe to say that Dembele impressed me as much as Hazard, for example. He started for the first time with Rennes against my team, Bordeaux, and it was obvious he was well above everyone else. Honestly, over the past 10 years or so in Ligue 1, here are the young offensive players who made such an impression on me: Benzema, Hazard, Dembele, Mbappe, Aouar. Not all on the same level, but they all had something else than even the "good" young players. I really like Malcom and I think he can become a very impressive player. I had a very good feeling about him. But not as good as what I felt when I saw those players for the first time. Talking about another player often mentioned here: Martial seemed very good, but not as much as Dembele imho. And many people in France were in love with Ben Arfa when he started for Lyon, but I never really believed he could be huge.

As for what can make him a beast, I think everybody knows that. He's fast, he's an impressive dribbler, and people often mention his ability to shoot, pass and dribble with both feet without realizing how much of an impact it can have on a player's style. Especially when you love 1 on 1 like Dembele. How are you supposed to defend when you have absolutely no idea where your opponent is going to go ? It's already hard enough to defend against someone like Robben even when it's obvious he's gona move to the center and shoot, because he does it so well. But when it's against a player who can also do that very well, but might decide to just move to the wing and deliver a good cross, basically all you can do is pray.

One of the main thing that could go wrong is the fact that he's very immature. But he just turned 21 ! Even if he doesn't grow out of it, he'll still be a very good player (someone who can score 15 goals and deliver 15 assists every season, but who's definitely not worth 150 millions). If he does though, oh my... Go check Cristiano's stats when he was 18 to 21, and tell me that doesn't give you hope for Dembele. He became very impressive only in 2006-2007. Also, remember Neymar arrived in Barcelona at 21 too, and his first season wasn't that huge, stat-wise.

I think a lot of people's view here are biased by what Messi accomplished. Players carrying the best teams in the world at 21 are very rare, especially when it's their first season in that team (Leroy Sané was huge last year, but his first season in City wasn't as impressive, which is totally normal). Give him time. Few players in the world have as much potential as him.

When you'll have time, I would be interested to hear your thoughts about Rabiot, since you watched him even more than Dembele, since Rabiot plays for 5 seasons at Psg.

So, a few of my questions, when you'll have time:
1. if your current midfield is 433: Busquets-Rakitic-Coutinho.
Where do you see him, as a next Busi, or the next Rakitic, or what?
2. how would you compare him with a current Busquets, Rakitic, Coutinho?
3. how would you compare a current, young Rabiot, with let's say young Arthur or some La Masia midfielders, if you know them?
Do you think that Rabiot is weaker than than, equal, better?
4. can you say more about his style of play, strengths, weaknesses?
People here often say that he isn't that good in anything, as if he is not that good defender, not too physical and surely not too technical (I disagree)?
So, can you write more about his skills?
5. I would like to hear whether he is a figher on a field? I am not pleased with Barca's pushover midfielders who are too nice.
So, is he a pushover, or is he willing to fight (which is not THAT bad thing, imo), and does he sulks/disappears against big teams? Is he a small-game player etc?
6. and how huge deal is his personality, and his mom?

People believed in your words about Dembele, maybe you can help here also.

Thanks

 

[Jair Ventura]

Jair, Nt teams have nothing with strength of Getafe and Rennes.

Getafe is as equally as weak regardless if:
Barca/Real will win a Cl
And if Spain will win a World cup or not, since mostly players from Real and Barca play there

No need to connect a strength of bottom table teams in Spain and France with a success or failures of Barca, Real, Psg and NT teams.

About Nt teams, Croatia was a Wc finalist.
Their 1st division is as equally as horrible as before World cup.

European national teams inform the quality of a league outside of its top clubs. Getafe and clubs of that level(mid-bottom table) don't have the luxury of buying whatever talented players they want, from wherever they want as Barca and Real do. Their level of performance is therefore heavily dependent upon their academy and La Liga's talent pool.

That being the case, Rennes is developing players like Dembélé, Ismaila Sarr, and Joris Gnagnon. What about Getafe?

Even Jair Ventura's criteria can be applied to show this. The bottom teams in France's Ligue 1 are extremely tiny clubs with no resources at all and tiny stadiums/shitty academies. Who finishes at the bottom in La Liga? Teams like Malaga, Rayo Vallecano, Granada, etc. who at various points in the past decade have been midtable sides. Athletic was a bottom tier side last year despite having multiple seasons in the top 5-4 in seasons past. Valencia, Sociedad, etc. have all had seasons in the lower end of the table sometimes excessively so.

The bottom clubs in France produce players like N'Golo Kante(Caen), Thomas Lemar(Caen), N'Dombele(Amiens), and Issa Diop(Toulouse). I.e., top players/talents. When is the last time Malaga, Rayo Vallecano, or Granada developed one of the worlds best players?

 

[Vilarrubi]

I agree. But BBZ's post about all the other teams in the league still stands. Unless you can prove that teams ranked from 6th to 20th place in LA Liga are far superior to the teams at the same rank in France, I don't really understand why stats shouldn't be compared because La Ligue 1 is a "farmer league".

[MENTION=12906]DonAndres[/MENTION] post is very good. He's saying the bottom half of Ligue 1 ends with similar amount of points to La Liga.

With these coefficient's below we can see La Liga's clubs who play in Europe are ranked comfortably higher than Ligue 1's clubs in Europe.

So La Liga's bottom sides are gathering the same amount of points in a season as Ligue 1 does but their top 10 (9 for Ligue 1) teams have better rankings than Ligue 1s.

To go into more detail you would have to see how many of those points were gained against the top teams... but this does paint some of the picture.

(Images showing up small, not sure why)