All Champions League talk in here...

First season of my entire life neither Rangers or Milan have European competition. Utterly weird.

PS: I heard word that Milan and Utd might be trying to arrange friendlies with each other to compensate for lack of the above. Should get others involved, like Rangers.

Weird indeed.

With Milan out, who's gonna be your favorite/team you support?

I'll be backing PSG to an extent, in hope that Ibra & Thiago can bag a CL.

That's a good question. Possibly Atleti. In reality, not really anyone. You?

Roma or Napoli for me.

Real Madrid for Carlo. Newcastle in England. And #TeamZlatan.

For me it's maybe PSG and Napoli, but surely not the same way I'd support Milan.

PSG and Roma are the obvious choices, can't stand to see any of the others win it.

Well, I wouldn't mind Ajax, Dortmund or some other underdog team lift the cup, but this won't happen.

Serie A + PSG + Madrid.

Oh yeah, Dortmund for me too.

Yeah I like Klopp. When I was in Munich, there was this very pretty girl at work, who was a Dortmund fan. I've liked the club ever since then.

Pity about Napoli. They were a mess in the first half, but they made a U-turn in the second and missed plenty of good chances. In Spain it's gonna be tough.

Italy might just end up with 2 teams once again. At this rate we're going to slip behind France and Portugal within the next season or 2

We already fell behind!

Both these countries are a fair distance in front of us in terms of club ranking.

http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/d.../trank2015.html

It's only going to get worse for Serie A.

So it's happening. Most probably 2 Italian teams in the CL this year.

Napoli with some appalling defending.

Napoli lacks a lot on the European front, but they have a coach who has done it twice before. Hope they go through, heck we need them through

Naah. I such defending...really can't get you anywhere. The need a normal CB and a good keeper desperately.

Yet, people on here still say they have a better defence then ours.

2 teams for Italy... It's just one big downward spiral, we'll be lucky if we have 2 CL places in a couple of years' time at this rate

One defence conceded 39 and qualified for the CL. One defence conceded 49 and didn't.

But I also think attack is the best form of defense and where Napoli are ahead of us is their attack!

That's where we're going wrong then, we should play with 10 strikers.

The league is volatile right now, people. 20 managerial changes in Serie A last season. Goals, defenses, attacks, forms and qualifications only count after stability. Financial and administrative.

I can kick your lanky @ss you know.

Napoli's defending, no words. I always said their defenders were never better than ours.

You also said Roma's sucked, but here's Benatia with a 15M+ move to Bayern.

PS Bilbao could beat any team in Serie A at home with ease. Furthermore Napoli drew the first match in Naples.

What I will say is whether it's defending, midfield or attack - Serie A as a whole is just f*ckin' rotten now. It's been surpassed by the likes of France and Portugal completely, and Juve & Roma will get trashed in the CL this season.

I never said it sucked, just that it wasn't much better than ours. And I did say that Benatia is/was their only good defender.

I remembering to dare say I wanted us to sign him.





I wonder why Bayern weren't interested in the chuckle brothers instead?

So now Bayern is the measure of things? A team with the Boateng-Dante duo and a Milan-age van Buyten? Really?

Napoli are a better unit, not defence, the names they have in that area are laughable.

On the other hand we've been a mess for a while, we only started to do something in terms of team organization to help out the defence under Seedorf last season when we were far more compact and produced far better numbers.

Napoli's defence yesterday just made fools of themselves, that third goal was just idiotic

RE: Benatia, I still think he's good to ok, but he's certainly not a great or top class defender, don't kid yourselves, Roma's system made him look far better than he truly is and to show what a major and total pr!ck he is, he forced his way out to Bayern after Roma put him on the map. The key to having a great defence is having an even better midfield and Roma absolutely have that, same goes with Juve, look at the trio kurt used to hail so loudly of Chiellini, Bonucci, Barzagli for Italy, they look like bumbling idiots most of the time

Certainly says more than a CB not wanted by Villarreal and a CB not wanted by Valencia.


Do they? At the World Cup defence was the last of Italy's problems, they couldn't score. At the Euros, it mostly fell apart when they played a back 4 and Chiellini went off.

Chiellini is the only decent one out of the lot of them imo. Just look through the Juve forum, they absolutely despise Bonucci and aren't too happy about Barzagli either, and these guys probably watch them more than we do

And I beg to defer about the World Cup. The defending was an absolute joke, Chiellini kept making mistakes, Barzagli was so slow it was painful to watch and Bonucci is just Bonucci. I get that it was mostly down to Prandelli's constant messing about with the midfield/formation/tactics in every one of the games played, but all 3 contributed to the downfall as well, scoring goals was an issue, but so was keeping a clean sheet

And I disagree about the Euros, Italy looked their best in that competition when Prandelli utilised the diamond midfield vs England and Germany

How nice of you to quote something I said nearly a year ago, when only a few weeks ago I considered Benatia as Roma's best defender and the only one who's good compared to the rest.

Juve fans rate Barzagli for the most part, I agree they aren't sold on Bonucci though.


Yeah, because that's the point I wanted to sign him and was told by a few people that he's not exactly that good. If you changed your mind on him recently, good.

Boateng isn't too bad imo, just inconsistent.

Dante is an absolute liability.

Juve always with an easy group, let's see how they f@ck it up this time

If Badstuber can get healthy and get a good run of games I think their best pairing might be Badstuber and Benatia.

Juve lucky, Roma pretty unlucky. As usual. One Italian club in the last 16. As bad as it gets.

How come Pippo is there but no other Serie A coaches aside from Benitez?

I was asking myself the same.

Not many from EPL either. Good.

Is AVB lost?

Where's the special one?

There's a UEFA logo in the bakcground, I imagine he's avoiding it like the plague.

Too much Platini, not enough Mourinho.

As long as theres Carlo , Pippo , Klopp and Collina !! I'm good ,could not care for the rest tho !


Fergie and that tikki takka guy

I miss Collina.