I don't think it's fake. It probably took over 50 attempts, but it's not fake.

any pro FK taker can place a ball anywhere, hell if you gave me 50 tries at it, i'd get a few off the post and in. The difficulty is doing it on a bigger stage then just a practise ground...

Nah, it's not as easy as people think. They have a crossbar challenge on Soccer AM every week where a professional team attempts to hit the bar, you probably get 1 every 3 weeks or so. Obviously it's from far out, but the point remains, you can't do it at will. If you could, practically every free kick would be in and certainly every penalty.

But the Soccer AM thing is from the half way line i think. Pirlo was taking it from a much closer distance. As you can see, he dosent always hit the crossbar, but he does come fairly close even when he misses

If Pirlo, or any free kick taker, is as accurate as some of you are suggesting, they would be scoring in the region of 15 goals a season from free kicks alone. Nobody is that accurate, it's not even humanly possible.

Free kick takers need to take into account the wall and positioning of the goalkeeper. If they dont have those obstacles to worry about (like Pirlo in the video) then they can hit a target reasonably accurately

+1

You're not taking the factors that come into play during a mtach into account kurt. If things were so black and white then how can a player miss a penalty? since in theory it is such a straight forward thing to execute

I don't know how players miss penalties. I'm nowhere near professional level, but I would expect to score 95 or so out of 100 for sure. Professionals should never miss really, hitting the post I'd probably let them off with.

Kurt, there's lots of circumstances which make an influence like fatique, pressure, things like that... However, I agree on/with you that real professionals particularly superstars which make enormous quantity of money should score 9 out of 10 or even 10 out of 10.

P.S. How I have to say in English: agree on or agree with ???

You can agree ON something, but you agree WITH someone.

Thanks, Tennie

The front page of today's Gazzetta. Cos it's a cool picture.

Love it.

Yup..I did read that interview snippet. He's the king of cool. If he weren't human, he'd be an ice-berg. The only one untouched by global warming a 1000 years from now.

He's awesome!

And what's that bit about Moratti and Bergamo, fishdoll?

Talking of global warming, when is it going to get its act together? Most snow in England in 40 years, coldest winter in England for about the same period. It's April and we still haven't had any sun?

Come on GW, we're waiting.

dst, he said he'd already mentioned in 2006 that he'd spoken with Bergamo (the referee dude).

It's looking to sucker punch us. Slimy little b@stard.

No sucker punches over here. I wore short sleeves on christmas it was so hot!!
And I can count the number of times there was a decent rainy day on one hand

You wanted to show off your gym-toned biceps to the chicas.

You know I only show them to you Jackie

I am afraid of what han shows to Jack, yepyep. Some things are just not meant to be seen.

So, anyway, Andrea Pirlo was at a big football gala in Brescia tonight (he's from Brescia, that's where the family factories are). He is quoted as having said the following (my translation):

'The scudetto is lost, it's between Inter and Roma and will be decided on the last day with a 1 point difference. We throw away points in the last games or we would have been there too, but now it's over. Now we're thinking of playing these last four games well.'

About Leonardo, he is quoted as saying:

'There's a lot of talk but we're thinking about finishing the championship and then we'll do the sums.'

As for himself:

'I've got a contract with milan and think I'll finish here. Whatever it is, the season's still long and then there's a world cup to play.'


link

Oh..when I want him to stay..he goes, when I want him to go..he stays. Love hurts!

Here's some nice (tiny) headshots from Studio Buzzi. Apparently he's a lumberjack in his spare time.

Yeah he's a lumberjack.

And Bill Gates is a computer programmer and Buffet is a stock broker!

Damn guy was loaded before he even came to football!!

And his hair is rapidly progressing from cool to gay.

Didafan is angry with Jack. She said "hullabaloo" and "bushwah" in one day and the sloshed pirate didn't respond. *sob*

To quote the great Monsieur Wenger, "I didn't see it!!"

(from acmilan.com)



HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Please go to Chelsea.

Happy Birthday Andrea!

Hope the World Cup once again proves to be a turning point in your career!

He'll get eaten alive in the EPL

I hope he play well at WC his preformance would afect on his price so we could get at least 20-25 Mil €

Rewind forum reel 12 months back..to have hanman say the same thing about Carlo Ancelotti.

Happy Birthday to Pirlo (^). Best wishes for him.



Say this one more time and next thing you'll cry is your ship

But I want to love him in peace. Away from these crazy people, who're always dissing on him.

I never said that about Carlo, I always said that his teams only do well when they're great, just like what he did at Milan and Chelsea have a great team. Not to mention the fact that he went to the EPL when Man U had just taken a severe hit in quality when they sold Ronaldo.

And let's face it, Carlo still hasn't delivered anything with Chelsea, what Abramovic wanted was the CL and Carlo has not delivered.

Mourinho was doing the same thing, but atleast he managed to get them to the semis

So you don't particularly rate Ancelotti.

I don't really know...

I used to be one of his followers a couple of years back, but he started showing his true colours once Sheva left and the players started getting older. I mean a rookie coach managed to do better then him with a much weaker squad shredded through by injuries. That to mee says a lot.

I think Carlo is brilliant if he's in his comfort zone (top class squad with a top class defence that can allow him to play his attacking game) but once the squad is not as good he becomes cowardly, a coach who is happy to rest a 0-0 if it came down to it or try to get his team to salvage a 1-0. He was like that at Juve and like that with us in his last 3 years.

At Chelsea he went in, inherited a top team and lead them to the title, but at the end of the day, still didn't give them what they really wanted which was the CL

They both reached 3rd place, so Leo didn't do that much better than him. Plus last season we were at equal points with Juventus, so generally we were 2nd. And if you say Carlo had Kakà last year, don't forget he didn't have Nesta, Thiago Silva and Borriello. He does have his negative sides, but for a manager who's won that many titles I really see no point in trying to assess his qualities. Carlo is a winner!

CL can not be won by all teams in the same year.
Also Pellegri didnt give Perez what he wanted and they have way more "top team" than Chelsea. They didnt even won the La Liga.
Also Guardiola didnt give Laporta what he wanted and they also have better team than Chelsea.
Ancelotti this year was very good and the looses against Intere were just a moment of weakness OF HIS TEAM , not his tactics.

Carlo had Maldini and Kaka though, that makes a BIG difference. Paolo is a leader, and sometimes this season you could see how the team was lost at certain moments.

And Kaka was just the focal point of the entire team. Not to mention the fact that he had Pato injury free for the entire season and Pippo hitting blinders in the final months.

And I'm not just talking about last season, the one before that we couldn't even qualify for the CL and got humiliated by the Arsenal kiddies at home.

Also Nesta got injured at the most crucial point this season, so in reality Leo didn't really have him when he needed him the most, not to mention the fact that at one point we only had 2 CBs with one of them being Favalli and a midfield of 4 because the injuries got so bad.

So in my eyes Carlo had it better then Leo, not to mention all the experiance in world, but still Leo managed to do better...

Barca have won the CL, so have Real.

Carlo was solely brought in to bring Chelsea what they have never in their history managed to achieve. In Abramovic's eyes Carlo failed. At one point after the CL elimination everyone was thinking that Carlo was going to get the sack, even though Chelsea were doing so well in the domestic league.

And if Carlo failes again next season he will get the sack.

And Chelsea have one of the best teams out there. A squad that has been together for a while now, unlike Real's and they're a squad that wants that CL more then anything, unlike Barca who just won the thing last year.

THen we disagree. I think Carlo did better.

How does finishing 5th and 3rd mean that he did better? Especially considering the fact that hehad a much better team then Leo.

Um. If memory serves we didn't finish fifth in 2009. And we had more points than we did this year.

Well I wasn't talking about just least year, but the last 3 under Carlo which were all horribly bad, from the way we played to the results. (Aside from the miracle CL thanks to Kaka that is) Out of those 3 years we only had one really good performance and that was against Man U.

Also, if you're going to talk about just last season, Carlo still had the much better squad, the fact that he felt more then comfortable with leaving Sheva, Dinho and Pato all on the bench says it all.

Right, sorry. The Italian coach sucks despite his higher point total and CL win (which he had nothing ot do with, it was done singlehandedly by the Brazilian AM), and the Brazilian coach is blameless for any bad thing that happened while he was in charge. I'm sensing a doublestandard in your opinion han. And given that my person's having a crap enough day as it is, I'm not going to make her grumpier by continuing this argument. We both know where we stand and neither of us is going to change our mind.

Oh come Fishdoll, what's done Ancelotti after all? He's only won two Champions Leagues, one Scudetto, one Coppa Italia, one Supercoppa Italiana, one UEFA Super Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup with Milan. Pfff, everyone can do that.

Oh come on!!!!

Why do this everytime?? Turn it into Brazil vs Italy? It's getting old, no one here cares what nationality either coach is, especially me, seeing as I'm an Azzurri fan. And I can easily name you a couple of ITALIAN coaches who I think are better then Carlo.


Most of them being when he had arguably the best squad in Europe...

Han, I'm not the one doing it, you are. You may be an azzurri fan but you're hypercritical of most Italians connected with Milan (Maldini being the lone exception that comes to mind) while you hold up the Brazilians as being above criticism. I'm merely pointing it out.