Goals win games ?

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everyman
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N.Ireland 2, Czech 0,
23% 77%,
This shows that scoring is the point of football,that`s why we must keep Holman,the best goalscorer we have had for years if he can regain confidence ?
RegencyCheltenhamSpa
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Yup, completely agree. Great to see another defeat for possession obsession and Pep-fetishists last night.
leohoenig
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Similarly, last season's Europa League Final
Ajax (64% possession) 0, Manchester United (36%) 2

I am not certain where I saw the stats, but two Ajax centre halves may more completed passes than the entire Manchester United team
Its just that almost all these passes were between the two centre halves, about halfway between the goal line and the halfway line, leaving Manchester United to say, "so what, you are losing and you have to actually cross the halfway line to score".
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Shade
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I'm not sure that Czech Rep are possession obsessed Pep-fetishists, as NI are just a team that set up to be solid at the back and play on the break all the time (attack and score or lose the ball) and therefore Czech Rep had more of the ball by default. If anything, it just tells me that NI are a lesser skilled team but have a manager that gets the best out of every player and knows how to use them most effectively.
Red Duke
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In the past the advantage of high possession was to exhaust the opposition. As time has gone on, the less skillful teams have learnt to adapt to it by having better levels of fitness, not chasing defenders down in the opposition half, not having a high defensive line to catch players offside and have players back in numbers to compress the space available for the more creative players.

This is especially the case in international football and it why smaller football nations are being more successful.
RegencyCheltenhamSpa
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Shade wrote:I'm not sure that Czech Rep are possession obsessed Pep-fetishists, as NI are just a team that set up to be solid at the back and play on the break all the time (attack and score or lose the ball) and therefore Czech Rep had more of the ball by default. If anything, it just tells me that NI are a lesser skilled team but have a manager that gets the best out of every player and knows how to use them most effectively.
Surely being able to score two goals from 20% possession suggests that when you do have the ball you have better skill and tactics than a team who can't score from 80%.

I wasn't using my terminology to describe the Czech Rep, more so to describe the pundits and fans who still talk about having a lot of possession as a sign of being the better team or 'dominating' the match.
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Shade
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It tells me that they have a better defence and sat deep. That's all.
RegencyCheltenhamSpa
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Shade wrote:It tells me that they have a better defence and sat deep. That's all.
And that they are incisive and efficient enough in attack to score two goals?
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Shade
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Not necessarily. If I hadn't have seen the game then it could be that NI just sat deep, invited Czech Rep on, stifled the game, made it boring, and then got lucky on the break a couple of times.

Stats of shots and bookings don't always tell the whole story so I don't know why possession stats should be any different. Would you say the same thing about Greece at Euro 2004? They were boring as hell but still won the whole tournament, including beating an exciting Portugal team in the final, by killing the game and getting a chance on the break. Their possession stats would have probably been somewhere around the same.
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