World Football Postulant

Chelsea - the version that raced to a dominant Premiership start - failed to show up for their home affair with Tottenham on Sunday.  In their stead for their London derby they sent their understudy which, unfortunately, was a complacent side unwilling to push a outgunned Spurs team.  The result was quiet day for the keepers and a 1-1 draw featuring two inglorious goals.

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Cesc Fabregas may not have directly contributed to any of Arsenal’s goals, but it is no coincidence that the Gunners played their best match of the season on the day the Spanish midfielder returned to the lineup.  With Fabregas out for the first two matches of the season, Arsenal scored one goal in two games, had a 186 minute scoreless streak, and split matches against clubs expected to finish near the bottom of the table.  On Saturday, Arsenal handed a quality Newcastle United team their first lost of the season, posting a 3-0 scoreline that did not do the Gunners’ form justice.

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The European Match of the Week is in Serie A, where Juventus starts their march towards recapturing the Scudetto against an Adrian Mutu-less Fiorentina side.  We’ve seen examples in the Bundesliga (Diego, Werder Bremen) and the Premiership (Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal) of what one player can mean to a team, but Mutu’s meaning to Fiorentina might prove to be just as large.  Continue Reading »

With so much movement over the offseason, it’s a bit difficult to pick the first week’s worth of matches.  Both Ajax and PSV get matches they’ll be expected to win, while AZ and NAC Breda may be the most evenly-matched pairing of the weekend.

Here are my first week picks: Continue Reading »

The final set of predictions for the 2008-09 European club season takes me to Italy, where your view on who will win the league will undoubtedly be dependent on what you think of Jose Mourinho.  He has been the big name transaction of the Calcio summer,  A has dominated the Italian media and made himself the face of not just Internazionale but the league.  There may not have been one better move the league could have made to reassert itself on the continent after the bad news of recent seasons.

I am a Mourinho fan and have great respect for everything he’s accomplished.  Show me a real football follower who does not respect what Mourinho has done.  And he and Internazionale are a perfect fit.  It is a club with history and resources, is ready to win now, and will appreciate Mourinho more than he ever seemed to be over the last two years at Stamford Bridge.  Everything is in place for him to succeed, and he better.  This is a club that has won the last three Scudetto.  Their management not only expects a repeat in the league but also challenge for the Champions League.  Anything less than the final four in Europe will bring questions as to whether Mourinho had a successful season.  To his credit, he seems to realize this.

Domestically, there are four teams which critics see as challengers.  There’s Adrian Mutu’s Fiorentina, but the loss of Tomas Ujfalusi and goalie Sebastien Frey coming back to Earth a bit make it unlikely they will improve on a successful 2007-08.  Milan, who finish behind Fiorentina, will have to make up 21 points on Inter despite an aging and injury-prone team.  Roma came within three points last season, but this is another case where questions can be raised as to whether they can replicate an 82 point season, especially if Francesco Totti can never find true health.

That leaves Juventus, who I was biased towards at the start of this exercise.  They have the best set of strikers in the league and could get 50-60 goals from just those four.  They can expect a little better luck with health, and they have the best goalie in the league in Gianluigi Buffon.  People outside Italy seem to forget that last season was their return to Serie A.  This year they will have no issues of adjustment.  More than any of this, though:  this team really wants to win the title.  There is a certain pride thse players have in playing for the Old Lady that’s admirable.

However, when I sat down and looked at the rosters, man-by-who should be playing man, it was just difficult to see Juve making up 13 points on Inter.  In fact, I expect Inter to improve slightly with Mourinho.  Juve will have to make up more than 13 points to take the Scudetto.

Ultimatley, I like Internazionale to win.  Again.  And thanks to a just quick fall-off in quality through the table, I think Inter (and the other top teams) to put up a lot of points.  Last season inter only lost three matches.  I don’t expect that number to increase this season.  They tied ten times.  I do see some of those matches turning into wins.

Amongst the surprise teams of the league, I like Torino to jump into UEFA Cup contention.  Lazio, I like to make the top seven, which would hopefully find them in Europe.  I also like Catania to avoid many of the struggles they had last season and easily avoid relegation battles.

At the other end of the spectrum, I like both Chievo and Lecce to stay up after being promoted from Serie B.  Bologna, I don’t see as fortunate.  Amongst the teams that I see fighting for survival:  Reggina, Palermo, and Genoa.

Other teams I expect to falter a little:  I think Udinese will finish closer to relegation than another UEFA Cup spot.  I also think Fiorentina not only will not challenge for the league, I like them to get passed by Sampdoria, both of them finishing will behind Roma for the last Champions League spot.

Aside from the top six teams in the league, I was not very familiar with the Eredivisie before going the research for these predictions.  As was the case when I forecasted the Bungesliga and the Portuguese Liga, I am somewhat ignorant of Dutch football.  That, however, will not stop me from trying to become a real follower, with this being my first stab.  To the right, you will see my prognostications for the upcoming season, which starts this weekend.

For these predictions, I used the same method I used for all my other previews.  I looked at every position on every team and asked how that player will effect the team’s goals for and goal against.  Once I had that, I was able to project a goals for, goal against ratio, with which I was able to simulate a double-round robin season.  I wrote a script to do this simulation and have used it for every prediction save Ligue 1’s.  For the Eredivisie, I ran the script 10,000 times to minimize the effect of any statistical noise.

And if that doesn’t make football sound boring, nothing will.

When you watch Eredivisie football, the thing which stands out is the wide-out play.  There are more teams playing three forwards in the Dutch league than anywhere else.  In addition, teams play very wide, attacking football.  This leads to a ton of goals.  The league had one team, Ajax, almost break 100 goals last season.  It is an athlete’s league, a scorer’s league, and almost the mirror image of football in Portugal.  You can see why so many players in this league make an easy transition to the Bundesliga.

Ajax added Marco van Basten and retained almost all of their key players.  They are in a great position to unseat four-time champion PSV Eindhoven, who lost Jefferson Farfan in addition to their starting goaltender, Huerelho Gomes.  PSV only finished three points ahead of Ajax last season and had a worse goal differential.  Having retained leading scorer and new captain Klass-Jan Huntelaar, added van Basten and Miralem Sulejmani (who scored 15 goals for Heerenveen last season).  This is the season where PSV - the Porto, Bayern, Lyon of the Eredivisie - slip to an Ajax side partly motivated by missing out on the Champions League thanks to the now discarded post-season playoffs.  As you can see to the right, I don’t think it will be particularly close.

That playoff format, used also in the Dutch second division (Eerste Divisie), is why a team that finished sixth amongst those vying for promotion finds itself in the Eredivisie.  ADO Den Haag won the promotion playoffs and like, FC Twente (who won the Eredivisie playoff to qualify for Champions League qualifying) looked out of their element against Arsenal, ADO Den Haag will look out of their element in the Eredivisie.

In between top and bottom, the team that has done the most to improve itself is AZ, a team that struggled (relatively) to score goals last season but brought in a series of scorers to help move them back into a UEFA Cup qualifying spot.  They should, at least, be competitive.

The one big surprise I have, after I ran the numbers, is Heerenveen.  In my simulations, there were basically as good as PSV.  I thought, in losing one of their three best goal scorers, they would take a step back from their fifth place finish, but as I looked closer a.) their fifth place finish seemed to understate their performance, and b.) other teams were regressing more than them.

But the story of this Eredivisie season will be at the top, where the league’s two storied clubs will against fight it out for the title.  I have Ajax finally breaking through, but as I mentioned at the onset of this post, what do I know?

Many may not look at Real Madrid visiting Deportivo de la Coruña as a marque match-up, but when you predict the two-time defending champions to drop to third place, any opening match is big one.  That’s why I will be looking intently at their match-up, though there are a couple of other more evenly matched fixtures which should draw attention.

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While Real Madrid has been making transfer headlines all summer, few have noticed that they have done little to improve their team.  In fact, it seems they have taken some steps backwards.  Now I agree Rafael van der Vaart is a great signing, but they’ve lost Wesley Sneijder to injury, have yet to get Fabio Cannavaro back, have an aging core, and are on the verge of losing Robinho.  Beyond that, you can ask if Casillas can play better than he did last year, or is it even reasonable to predict such performance?

Madrid is coming back to the pack.  The question is how much other teams have done to catch-up.  Barcelona has also been in the news all summer, but they made as many meaningful changes than Madrid.  Van der Vaart is going to play immediately and regularly for Real.  Is Alexander Hleb really going to unseat anybody in Barcelona’s lineup?  Doubtful.  Daniel Alves does, however, give them another dimension on the right, and he has a track record in La Liga.  Barça’s main issue is getting the talent they have playing to its potential.  As you can see to the right, I do believe that Pep Guardiola can so it.  At a minimum, he will instill a pride in performance - in the shirt the players are wearing - that will help resolve some of the inconsistencies we saw last season.

With apologies to Villareal, the other major title contender is Atletico Madrid.  They have made major improvements in goal prevention, bringing in Paulo Assuncao and Tomas Ujfalusi.  I love these signings and think Atletico can have on of the better defenses in La Liga.  Their strength and depth in midfield can help control matches against the slightly more talented teams, and the addition of Andre Sinnema Pongol should mitigate the effects of any regression by Diego Forlan.  If only one of them can help carry the load with Kun Aguero, this can be a historical season for the Atleti.

After the top five, I see a huge drop, and although my method ended up with Getafe in sixth and back in Europe, any team between sixth and fifteenth could end up qualifying for the UEFA Cup.  I don’t see much difference between Getafe and, say, Racing, who I’m picking at eleventh.  The things which will distinguish these clubs come May are those which I can not predict.

At the other end of the table, La Liga might have the most uninspiring set of promoted teams of all the league’s I’ve previewed.  This is the first of the six league’s I’ve looked at where I wonder how any of the three will stay up.  But, as I looked at some of the lower-table teams from last year, I did find one candidate that could make a promoted side’s season a success.  Osasuna, who finished seventeenth last season, took some positive steps forward and, as is often the case in these stories, were not as bad as they showed last season.  Recreativo, however, I wonder about.  I don’t see much to recommend them, and the regressions I see put them in a place where they should be worried.  They finished higher than they should have last season, the kind of fortunate you can not bet on from year-to-year.

One team everybody will be looking at after this summer’s European Chmapionships is Valencia.  The Davids (Villa and Silva) will continue to make the team dangerous, but as was the case last season, they will still have problems keeping the ball out of their own net.  Until they prove they can do that from game-to-game, they will continue to be a dangerous but inconsistent team, capable of winning shootouts while getting into too many.

In the end, I see this as the season Barcelona regains the crown.  I think they have done enough to mitigate their inconsistencies at the back to become the team that is most ready to take advantage of Real Madrid’s turn to mortality.  Guardiola will be hailed as a savior, and Joan Laporta may be vindicated.  Meanwhile, if these results come true, we may be left wondering who will replace Bernd Schuster and Ramon Calderon at the Santiago Bernabeu.

Former Fenerbahce midfielder Stephen Appiah left this club earlier this summer in search of a new contract while recovering from injury.  In search of a new job, Appiah has been called up for Ghana’s impending World Cup qualifier against Libya.  Ghana’s captain has been trying to link up with a big club and has said he would love to rejoin Juventus, for whom he played for two season before moving to Turkey, but more likely, he could link-up with a mid-table aspirant should he show well for Ghana.

Appiah can be a force in midfield when healthy, but with three years away from one of the bigger leagues and ten months completely off the pitch, he will have to move himself healthy before a big club will even consider him.  In that sense, the Libya match will be big for him.  If he shows well, there are a number of clubs in the Serie A who could use him in midfield.

Owen Hargreaves had been expected to return to Manchester United’s lineup today against Zenit St. Petersburg in the UEFA Super Cup.  Although Alex Ferguson was going to use the exhibition as an opportunity to get the England international some playing time, the midfielder has been ruled out of today’s match after his knee was deemed not ready for the match.  Having already ruled himself out of England’s internationals next week, Hargreaves will have two more weeks to get fit for Manchester United’s trip to Anfield on August 13.

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