Jimmy Bignutz wrote:


I never knew that Ralph Hasenhuttl (mid-1990s lumbering target man for Austria's national side) wound down his career in the stiffs at Bayern.

Well, at least English sides maintain their almost perfect record in this competition against Brazilian ones.

Liverpool got tonked 3-0 by the 1981 Flamengo side that had Zico in it.

Aston Villa lost 1-0 to Gremio a year later.

Man United did beat Palmeiras 1-0 in a version of the Toyota Cup in the autumn of 1999, but no-one at all took that seriously as the World championship anymore because a few months later the first all-singing and dancing FIFA World Club Cup was known to be happening, and at that, United got stuffed 3-1 by Romario's Vasco da Gama.

In 2005, Liverpool lost to Sao Paulo; and now in 2012, Chelsea have lost to Corinthians.

I make that played 5, lost 5 (in matches that mattered) and at best played 6, won 1.

Greatest league in the world, the English Premier League.

Rogin the Kitten Minder wrote:


No one takes any of them seriously, you goon.

Apart from all the CONMEBOL countries (especially Brazil) and the CAF, CONCACAF and AFC ones. Oh, and Man U fans, when they won it by beating Liga from Ecuador in 2008 and sang about it for a year. You er, pillock.

I bet you'd have taken the 1999 final seriously if it had ended Man Utd 0, Palmeiras 6.

Er,I'm the one taking all of them seriously. You're the one who said "No-one takes any of them seriously". Eejit.

Rogin the Kitten Minder wrote:


You mean the ones that don't compete in a competition as prestigious or lucrative as the CL so treat a game against the European champions as one of the highlights of the season? Whereas the CL winners normally see it as an annoyance and a distracting formality from their domestic league that ends up taking a week-long chunk out of their season and fatigues their players?
Thought so.
We'll see how many Chelsea fans are weeping into their pints over this defeat and then judge about taking it seriously.

@Keyzer, (do we do that thing here yet? The @ thing? Seems ghastly to me but okay)

Er, precisely. The rest of the world takes this far more seriously, indeed some very much so. AB2's "no-one" was extremely dismissive of them, and points towards a typically Premier-centric view of the world (which, by extrapolation, means that the Champions League doesn't mean a toss either, it's all about the EPL).

Yeah, but if the CL winners don't take it seriously then it's pointless to hold it up as an example of 'Hahahaha the EPL's shit lol!'
I mean, the EPL is fucking shit, but that's by the by. You can't judge it on the basis of a couple of games a season against highly-motivated opponents for whom this is one of the biggest games of the season and the CL winners who are probably already wondering what the in-flight meal is on the flight home.

Rogin the Kitten Minder wrote:


Eh???

That's almost certainly true ... but I do wonder. I don't think either Chelsea today or Liverpool in 2005* turned up not really giving a toss about this, and they've both lost to Brazilian opponents whose players certainly would be "shop window" ones for European sides.

*There's another common denominator between those two teams, but that's another thread.

Rogin,

If one side is not arsed, the whole thing is effectively rendered meaningless.

.

"Man fans' idiocy". Hmmm.

Extrapolate, if you would, how a statement such as 'the EPL sides don't take the World club cup seriously' leads to the conclusion that the CL doesn't matter 'a toss' in comparison to the Premier league. Because every single English team in the CL takes it very fucking seriously indeed as it's a massive breadwinner.

"A statement such as "the EPL sides don't take the World Club Cup seriously"" ? Where? Which "statement"?

You dismissed AB2's claim that no-one (meaning no European team) takes the World club cup seriously on the grounds that it 'points towards a typically Premier-centric view of the world (which, by extrapolation, means that the Champions League doesn't mean a toss either, it's all about the EPL).'
Those are your words.
Now, I'm asking you how you managed to get from point A (the contention that European teams don't take this tournament seriously) to point B (this attitude therefore, after extrapolation, indicates that the English teams don't consider the Champions League to be as important as the Premier League). Because that simply doesn't make sense.

The English teams care about one thing: money. They earn vast sums of it for winning their domestic title and even vaster sums for winning the CL.
If FIFA tomorrow said, 'Take whatever money you earned for winning the CL: We'll double it if you win the World Club cup' then the English and European sides would be all over the tournament like flies on shit. For a start, it wouldn't be being scheduled for 11:00 AM on a Sunday in Europe - a time when most Europeans are either still asleep or nursing a hangover. It'd be on a Saturday night, Sky would be mounting an unbelieveably massive advertsing campaign and it would be billed as a match second in importance only to the FIFA World Cup final.
But that's not the case. Sky doesn't give much of a toss about this tournament, neither do many of the other broadcasters from what I can see.

I didn't "dismiss AB2's claim that no-one (meaning no European team) takes the World club cup seriously" ... because as I've said above at no point did anyone least of all AB2 "claim" that "no-one" meant "No European team". He said "no-one," generally. Which I don't actually take to be true. Even if he'd said "No-one in Europe" (which he didn't) I'd have disputed that, too.

So carry on.

The end of ET's on now btw so as usual I'm in bits so this chat has to end for now

I'm with you Rog its a proper lump in the throat moment. A triumphal but heartbreaking end to a magical movie.