CCM Boys conquering the world

[Big Al]

Holding mid? Wow

 

[Insertnamehere]

Holding mid? Wow

Kind of the opposite to mile. One should move backwards cause he's slow, can't pass and can only really tackle and head. The other should move forward because he's young, can pass and can read the game like a mills and boon.

 

[JoyfulPenguin]

 

[Josho Howe]

Tommy Rogic banging in another goal for Celtic in the Old Firm. While it's good to hear him do well in Scotland, is it time for him to challenge himself in Italy or Germany? England would be too physical for him. Germany and Italy are more technical leagues. I reckon he'd suit Italy the most.

 

[Insertnamehere]

Tommy Rogic banging in another goal for Celtic in the Old Firm. While it's good to hear him do well in Scotland, is it time for him to challenge himself in Italy or Germany? England would be too physical for him. Germany and Italy are more technical leagues. I reckon he'd suit Italy the most.

Or Netherlands. Not as strong as Italy but defs stronger than Scotland and defs more technical and tactical.

 

[Big Al]

Tommy Rogic banging in another goal for Celtic in the Old Firm. While it's good to hear him do well in Scotland, is it time for him to challenge himself in Italy or Germany? England would be too physical for him. Germany and Italy are more technical leagues. I reckon he'd suit Italy the most.

He needed this season to put a few games together without injury.

A good World Cup could see him move but probably needs another year at Celtic and be more prominent in their CL qualifying and group games if they make it

 

[greenpoint]

Tommy Rogic banging in another goal for Celtic in the Old Firm. While it's good to hear him do well in Scotland, is it time for him to challenge himself in Italy or Germany? England would be too physical for him. Germany and Italy are more technical leagues. I reckon he'd suit Italy the most.

I'm a Celtic fan so I'm biased on this one. I can't see him being picked up by a club that plays Champions League football, so he might as well stay with the Hoops!

 

[Wombat]

I'm a Celtic fan so I'm biased on this one. I can't see him being picked up by a club that plays Champions League football, so he might as well stay with the Hoops!

So are you saying he isnt good enough for EPL but good enough for the Championship?

Playing another year in Scotland will toughen him up alot.

 

[midfielder]

Trent Sainsbury has already made a massive impact at Grasshopper Zurich, captaining the side against arch-rivals FC Basel in only his fourth match.

https://www.fourfourtwo.com.au/news/sainsbury-captains-grasshopper-in-fourth-game-489268

 

[JoyfulPenguin]

 

[pjennings]

BHA 1 - Man U 0
Maty and Brighton safe on 40 points!!!i

 

[pjennings]

It is interesting to compare Maty and Schwarzer's first full season. Mark played 35 times conceding 50 and keeping 13 clean sheets. Maty has played 34 times conceding 47 with 8 clean sheets and two games to play.

Let's hope that Maty can have as long and as successful season as Mark did!!

 

[pjennings]

Scott McCarthy: It’s hard to think of many keepers who have been as impressive as Ryan this season

There was one moment during Saturday’s 0-0 draw with Burnley that summed up why Brighton and Hove Albion are going to stay in the Premier League this season.

Midway through the first half and an almighty goalmouth scramble was going on in the Albion box, the sort of scene that the Benny Hill theme music was made for. Legs were flailing everywhere, nobody could clear the ball or get it goalwards and then in the melee, Jack Cork managed to dangle out a leg and prod it towards the line.

It’s going in, no doubt about it. Maty Ryan and Gaetan Bong have ended up in a heap on the ground and there is nothing between ball and goal. That is until out of the pile of bodies, an orange-clad arm comes up, extends itself as if it were a limb belonging to Stretch Armstrong and not an Australian goalkeeper and somehow manages to reach and scoop the ball off the line with millimetres to spare.

That single moment was this Albion team in a nutshell. Never giving up and putting everything into the cause. One fibre-busting arm extension from Ryan was the difference between a hard-earned point at Turf Moor and coming away with nothing.

It also summed up Ryan in a nutshell. In a squad that quite clearly cares passionately about the club they represent, it says much that he is arguably the most passionate of the lot. There’s the celebrations whenever we score at the Amex when he runs the length of the pitch and the way he is always last off the pitch and always makes time to go and speak – actually speak – to supporters in the North Stand after the game.

For me, he’s been Brighton’s player of the season. As good as Pascal Gross, who was voted the supporters' player of the season, and Lewis Dunk, who took players' player, have been. Ryan has won us more points than anyone else and you can count his bad games on one hand – arguably, there have only been two – at home to Manchester City and in the debacle at Crystal Palace a fortnight ago.

The reason he probably didn’t win the award is because goalkeepers very rarely do pick up individual awards. I can’t think of an Albion goalkeeper ever winning it, despite the popularity that former custodians such as Michel Kuipers and Ben Roberts had. On a larger scale, only one goalkeeper has ever won the Ballon d’Or. Answers on a postcard if you know who that was.

You’d have got long odds on this Ryan-love in at the start of the season. He was too short, not confident enough or not up to the physicality of English football depending on whose opinion you read. Which just goes to show one swallow does not make a summer, nor does getting nutmegged by Sergio Aguero make you a bad goalkeeper.

Remember when David De Gea first rocked up at Manchester United and was nearly laughed out of Old Trafford in his first season? Nobody is laughing now at the Spaniard who is arguably the best goalkeeper in the world.

It would be a stretch to say that Ryan isn’t far behind him, but in the Premier League it is hard to think of many who have been so impressive this season. That probably says more about the standard of goalkeeping this year, with the likes of Petr Cech, Hugo Lloris, Thiabut Courtois and most noticeably Joe Hart having disappointing seasons by their normal high standard.

That means that you could make an argument for Ryan being in the top seven or eight in the division. And if he is in the top seven or eight in the division, it means that a bigger club might soon come sniffing. Forget worrying about losing Lewis Dunk, Ryan’s departure to one of the big boys would come as far more of a blow but less of a surprise after the season he has had. He’s still only 26 as well, don’t forget, so at least four years away from the sort of age where goalkeepers peak. Scary.

So cross your fingers people and pray that his performances have gone under the radar. Without him, things could look very different in terms of which division we’d be playing our football in in 2018-19. That’s why Maty Ryan should be player of the season. * (The only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d’Or was Lev Yashin of the Soviet Union in 1963. If Australia win the World Cup, we’ll stick a fiver on Ryan being the second).

Read more at: https://www.brightonandhoveindepend...n-as-impressive-as-ryan-this-season-1-8482368

 

[Forum Phoenix]

BHA 1 - Man U 0
Maty and Brighton safe on 40 points!!!i

Had that on record

 

[pjennings]

Had that on record

Sorry

 

[Forum Phoenix]

Sorry

Don't worry PJ. I copped it from Yellowcake in another thread as well.
I thought as long as I avoided the overseas games thread... Def should have known better.

 

[pjennings]

FOOTBALL

THE OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE
Danny Vukovic - Contributor

May 14, 2018

Probably the biggest question mark in my mind before I came to play overseas was whether my family was going to be OK and be looked after properly.

My two-and-a-half-year-old son Harley has a serious liver condition and has had a transplant. In Australia, we’re very lucky to have some of the best medical professionals in the world. The last thing we wanted to do was take my son out of that situation where he’s being looked after – and possibly not get the best care available.

After going through everything we went through with my son, I thought that my dream of playing overseas was dead and buried, that we’d never go.

My fears were quickly alleviated by the first email from Genk, the Belgian club where I’ve just played my first full season in Europe.

When the club first contacted me by email, they mentioned my son and said they’d found a specialist for him here in Belgium.

That was the first time I’d heard from them, and for them to already know about my situation and to understand the things I was worried about left me with a really good feeling, and pretty much showed me how keen they were on me.

The deal originally came about when I was in Socceroos camp last year when I was still at Sydney FC. Maty Ryan, who had done a season on loan at Genk, asked me if his agent Mikkel Beck could give me a ring. Of course I said, ‘Yes I had no problem with that’.

Mikkel knew that Maty was going to be leaving Genk, and he thought I would fit in perfectly here, so he wanted to put me forward, and I was obviously very keen for him to do that. From there on in, it sort of went really quickly.

I was in Russia for the Confederations Cup when it looked like Genk and Sydney FC had reached an agreement. Somewhere down the line after the grand final is where things sort of ramped up, and I have to say Sydney were brilliant in all of this to let me go.

They didn’t want to lose me, but they knew my ambitions and how much this would further my career. They were never going to stand in my way.

THE MOMENT IT ALL SANK IN

I think I was a little bit naive coming over here thinking it was going to be just like football in Australia, 11 versus 11, and you’ve just got to get the ball in the back of a net.

I just didn’t realise how much things would be different, especially for a goalkeeper. We’re over here playing in the middle of winter, and as a goalkeeper you can’t run around like the players do to stay warm, so I can honestly say there have been times this season when I was freezing. I literally couldn’t warm myself up, I’ve never been so cold in my life, which sort of throws a spanner in the works.

You’re also playing on heavy pitches with a wet ball whereas in Australia generally it’s nice conditions to play football, so that took me a little bit of time to adapt to as well.

And I probably didn’t start off as well as I would have wanted to. I made a couple of errors early on, but I think once I settled in and started to adapt to life and football over here, I started getting back to my best form. Then in the second half of the season, I really hit my best form. I got ‘player of the month’ two months out of three, and was feeling like myself again.

It’s been a great experience over here. Every game is a full stadium, a lot of colour and passionate supporters, flares, flags and so on. It’s a typical European league, it’s what I grew up watching and what I always wanted to go to Europe to do, so it’s been really really pleasing.

There was a great moment of realisation in my first game for the club (which was the second game of the season after I missed the first through injury).

It was an away game to Standard Liege – and I’ve now realised they have the most crazy, passionate supporters. My first half of football in Belgium was in front of their home fans, and the stadium is built very close to the pitch and it just goes straight up like a massive wall at the end of the goal.

It was so loud, but I remember I wasn’t nervous at all. I was just so happy I was there. We lost 2-1 but it was still an amazing experience.

In terms of results, Genk has had a funny old season. In a way it’s been a typical European season. We weren’t doing so great in the first part of the season, which meant the coach who signed me ended up getting the sack just after Christmas, just before our winter break.

Then in the second half of the season we really picked up and we were the form team of the second half of the season. We’ve qualified now for the playoffs and we’re still in a position to qualify for Europa League now, so we’ve sort of turned a bad season into a good one.

The last couple of games will now determine just how good of a season it has been.

LIFE IN A BELGIAN VILLAGE

My wife Kristy and my son Harley came over a couple of months after I arrived here at Genk. We found a house, which is great because Harley has a little backyard to run around in.

He’s doing really well now, Harley. He obviously had a really rough time for the first 18 months or so of his life, but now he’s just a normal little boy. He’s started school over here because they start school really early, he’s talking, having little conversations with me, and he’s a happy kid.

We still have ongoing issues. As a transplant recipient, he has to have medication every day for the rest of his life, but he’s doing really well and it’s amazing to see how far he’s come.

Our house is in a little town about 15 minutes from where we train and play. It’s a great little town. Everyone knows us here already. We go down to get groceries and people are always stopping to talk about football. It’s just a different world over here. Football is much like rugby league is in Sydney and Brisbane, or AFL is in the other states: it’s in all the pages of the newspapers and people are just mad about it.

So we’re enjoying the life here. It’s nice and quiet, it’s good.

But of course, it’s been mostly football. We play a lot of games so when we do get downtime, I tend not to do too much. Over here, you travel two hours in different directions and you’re in four or five different countries, so we have travelled a little bit. But I tend to try to take some rest.

At the start of this year, I think we had eight games in 24 days. I guess that’s the other side of football over here. You have to adapt to playing a lot of games in a short amount of time. So I just keep my head down and keep going.

Being over here is what I’ve dreamed about my whole life, so I guess I’m going to give it everything I’ve got and not have any regrets at the end of it, and not feel like I had more to give.

While I’m over here, I’m just going to do everything I can to be the best that I can be and if I can progress my career, then great.

THE ULTIMATE GOAL

Obviously, I’m hoping to go to Russia with the Socceroos and I’m a little bit anxious to see if I make the final squad. I think I’ve done everything that I can to get in there, I can’t think of anything more I could have done.

A big reason for coming over here was to help my chances of getting into the Socceroos squad and get to the World Cup, so I’ll be over the moon if I do get selected. There are at least four goalkeepers there who deserve to go but only three who can go, so someone’s going to be disappointed and obviously I’m hoping it’s not me.

I think we’re probably in one of the better groups. France is obviously going to be a tough game first-up, but the I think we can get something out of other two games for sure. Peru, especially, is one game I think we can do really well in.

We’ve done well against South American competition recently if you exclude the last game against Brazil. We drew 1-1 with Chile at the Confederations Cup and we probably should have beaten them. Then most recently, we drew with Colombia nil-all.

I got ‘player of the month’ two months out of three, and was feeling like myself again.

So there’s no reason we can’t do well. We’ve put good performances together and it’s really just about finding that form at the right time, and that’s why we’re going into camp a month before the World Cup to try to get into the best possible shape that we can.

We’ve spoken about it a lot during the qualification campaign. We don’t want to be the team that’s happy to qualify for the World Cup. We want to be a team that actually does something there now, so this is our chance to try to do that.

On a personal note, I was disappointed coming off the pitch after my first game for the Socceroos having given away the penalty against Colombia, because we didn’t deserve to lose that game.

I’m sure Colombian supporters would say they should have won, but up until that point they didn’t really have that clear-cut opportunity. So for me to give the penalty away was disappointing, and it was nice to have the chance to rectify the situation and go on to draw the game.

Was it a lucky guess when I dived to the left to save the penalty? What I can tell you is that we study the penalty kick takers before every national team game.

The rest is up to us.

Read more at https://www.playersvoice.com.au/danny-vukovic-offer-couldnt-refuse/#MeH31KqJLzD96cEo.99

 

[midfielder]

^^^^^^^^^^

Great read and a really nice guy

 

[Big Al]

Rogic has signed a new 5 yr deal at Celtic

Duke scored in Japan

 

[Forum Phoenix]

Rogic has signed a new 5 yr deal at Celtic

Duke scored in Japan

Mixed how I feel about this. They are a great club. Plays Champoins league. And gets to win a trophy every year but I really wanted to see him tested in the EPL and see how far his star could rise.

Now at 25, his best years are committed to Celtic unless someone comes knocking and is willing to pay a big sum when he’s say 28,