giles:
Apparently he has recently expressed a preference to represent Finland rather than England on international level. However, I won’t be surprised if he changes his mind, as the lad is likely to soon register on Roy Hodgson’s radar if he continues with his strong performances for Arsenal.
i think that rebajlo said recently that jenkinson wanted to play for england, that's why he counts him as an englishman now in the breakdowns
Evian Thonon Gaillard FC in the French League has many Danish players on its roster...I think that this club has been punching above its weight. A number of years ago there were quite a few prominent Icelandic footballers (Helguson, Gudjohnsen, Gudni Bergsson, Steinssson) in the Premier League and Iceland have recently been very successful at the U-21 and U-19 level (regularly qualifying for Euro championships), but surprisingly their young footballers haven’t attracted a lot of attention.
iceland is even starting to be pretty dangerous in europe
in the qualifyings to the 2014 world cup, they won against albania and norway!
that's really impressive, and it wasn't even a surprise
we (the french national team) played a friendly match against iceland recently:
http://youtu.be/1UquQt2s1DA
iceland could have won (they won actually, because in a friendly match only the first 60-70 minutes make sense, after that there are too many substitutions in friendly matches so it's no longer significant - giroud came in in the last 10 minutes and saved france with 2 assists)
the commentators were saying the same as you, that their youth teams are very good, and that they were going to try to be dangerous in the qualifyings to the 2014 world cup
As for Kagawa (who was mentioned in the Arab influence in Real Madrid thread), time will show whether he has been a shrewd signing for United, but I have to say that Dortmund’s performances in the Bundesliga have deteriorated quite a bit now that the Japanese is no longer with them (Gundogan hasn’t been an effective replacement, though there are of course additional reasons why Dortmunders have fallen into a slump – key figures like Goetze and Lars Bender haven’t seen regular playing time and are still regaining their fitness).
i think that for dortmund, we don't have to look any further than their results in champions league to understand why they struggle in their domestic league
they might be the top european team with the less players in its roster
when you have this few players, you can't do well in both national and european competition, it's impossible, you have to choose between the 2
last year at the same point of the competition, they already had lost to marseille (who were dreadfull in the french league) and olympiakos
this year, they won against ajax and real madrid, and they almost beat manchester city (they deserved to win and did 1-1)
that's why they struggle a little bit more in their league
Gabonese players like Aubameyang are also somewhat underrated.
he is more skilled than people think (usually everybody mention his speed more) but he doesn't seem very intelligent in his passes
he might be one of the best players of the french league right now - if we forget about PSG
:nod:.
