re: Why Can't the United States Assemble a Championship Soccer Team?

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Barcelona's absurd technique forces slow players like Michael Carrick or Alvaro Arbeloa to foul incessantly. It's the definition of tactical fouling.

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it's more than that. the last time man u played barca rooney was called for getting good position on a handful of long balls

i'm not even talking about having destroyers in the midfield. i mean allowing stronger guys to gain position downfield where there is a ton of space to move. if the refs won't let bigger players get position to handle longballs, then it's going to be really ough to ever beat barca

real has had these problems the past few years, too. what you end up with is one team playing shitty shell soccer and trying to destroy barca via fouls and not allowing different offenses to work

basically they've called to game to require a team to play compact and on the ground, and if you play barca they're going to beat you at this so you will have ugly soccer on the other side without a chance of doing anything about it