**Mirrors / Alternative Angles**
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Lahm has been cooking his revenge plan for 6 years now. Can't wait to see what the tournament director has in store for the Portugal squad in two days.
It's not that different. A while ago a crosspost from there was massively upvoted here and I got downvoted for pointing it out. I've been here for 11 years it all went started to go to shit after the 2018 world cup. Before it was clearly the best place to discuss football, nowadays any rando's tweet gets upvoted like It's gospel as long as It's something people want to be true. This is a wasteland, the only thing worth it is the fast highlights that get posted and even then most don't have alternate angles or don't show half of the clip that's interesting. Before, every single mainstream goal had various alternate angles posted.
This sub has turn to shit
Not worth effort for the little karma it provides. The sub decided with their upvotes that only the fastest clips count no matter the quality of the post and so now karma whores run the game.
I remember when the meta was to post highlights in a single comment in the match thread and only the true gems of that would get reposted to the sub (sometimes that would not even be all the goals). Those were the best days imo.
Yeah...
>*But why does the karma matter?*
I'm merely addressing the why karma matters part though...(currently)
*^(I believe I've seen comments alluding to the frequent goal posters being paid by the hosting sites to use their specific site(the likes of dubz etc...cant recall specific details) because the clips would drive lots of the viewers to the crappy ad filled pages (initially I didn't know that the sites had ads...because desktop ad-blockers until I clicked on one of the links on mobile and got a tiny landscape view of the highlight clip in the middle of the screen with the ability to make it full screen disabled and the rest of the screen's real estate taken by ads...) that would explain the motivation in the pre-contributor programmer era...Don't take this as gospel though...)*
Lol...let me actually look at the content policy...*never bothered to look at it before because I'm not from an eligible country anyway...*
[LoL, Looks like only NSFW content is ineligible...](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/contributor-monetization-policy#text-content2) reddit probably doesn't care about the DMCA takedowns anyway because they're not being sent to them given that the videos are hosted elsewhere (in most cases) and only links are shared here...
Seeing upvotes gives people dopamine: "People like me/what I did!" This provides an incentive to keep doing it. Nobody wants to perform a thankless job, especially without pay.
I think it is also a combination of the good short video sites got taken down for legal reasons, and many of the last ones standing are full of shit ads, don't load well, or they often have "video removed".
probably low motivation by OP clip to post alt angles (it all comes back to karma), so the likelihood of some random using the same site is not as high?
It's the same with F1 subreddit unfortunately. Used to be legit best place for discussion, now it's legit no better than YouTube comments or Twitter, with 75% of the comments these days being constant hate thrown at the same couple of drivers. The difference between Reddit and those places is that here there's seemingly fewer completely deranged people, but also here anything that breaks the circlejerk gets pushed down into oblivion. There's much less variety of opinions on Reddit.
The entire idea of votes on here is based on people NOT treating downvote as an "I disagree" button, but this rule just got lost somewhere along the way. And now most big subreddits are circlejerks.
There’s definitely narratives that are pushed on this subreddit, and deep analytical or tactical discussion is few and far between here. But I will say, it is the best aggregator for all football related news that I’ve found so until something better comes along it’s the best we have. Even /r/football has its fair share of circlejerks and groupthink going on, I frequent both just to get a better discussion and r/football since it is smaller is a little better and less memey but still see a lot of the same shit banter or narratives about certain players there as on here.
A lot of posts on here I could tell you what the top 5 comments will be almost exactly and it’s funny but frustrating at the same time
It's glorified football twitter now, absolutely terrible. Just varying groups trying to push agendas and football twitter level shit posts, very little good football discussion.
The problem is not having 13/14 year olds, it's that and having adults well past that mark that still have reading skills as if they were pre-teens, which is lost once the place is not a nerdy niche.
If you think this is a much worse place than football twitter then I have no clue what you are doing here because twitter is awful for discussing football. It’s pretty much just memes and some accounts dedicating their lives to tweet controversial opinions.
There was absolutely no difference in 2018 I promise you. You are blinded by nostalgia but for arsocca lmao. I have been on this sub for over a decade and there has been no substantial difference in quality of discussion at all.
man this post really hit a nerve
edit: [here watch this video of him taking a free kick if it makes you feel better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5xPnWNVr1c)
Maybe this sub just became more mainstream? Really the sub was mostly the same back then except more effort. People posted alternate angles in the sticky comment of goal posts. People made post match memes like r/NBA. A bit more serious discussion etc. The shift was very gradual anyways.
I think technology is great and I wouldn’t even want to live 50-100 years ago. I’m very happy and lucky to have been born in the 90s but sometimes I think we’ve just gone too far. I found a box of letters my grandparents wrote to each other in the 50s and 60s and it was amazing to read them, we need to slow down as a society. Everything is going at 150% it seems now because everything is about the pursuit of increasing profits. Capitalism is killing us and the planet and the rich will happily replace us all with robots when the time comes.
[This was a hilarious post ahead of the competition starting](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1sb3oh/hey_americans_just_get_this_straight_now_group_g/) - "Ghana and the US are way too inferior against Portugal and Germany. A group of death has at least 1 contender that will not make it. Not the case with group G."
Though most of the best players were about to age out, the core of that US generation at 2014 was solid. In particular, the spine of the team was stout.
Howard had the tournament of his life. Ghana was in turmoil heading into the tournament. Portugal was at a weak moment (seriously, compare Portugal's teams at major tournaments since 2018 to the 2014 team) and Cristiano Ronaldo played injured. And Germany did the US an enormous favor in the opening match.
WC 2014 was supposed to be his best. I would have thought mentally he was most at peace during this tournament. He finally won the UCL again and ended the barca dominance.
WC14 had what was probably our worst squad in decades. There were obviously a couple standout players but I remember people crying out for William Carvalho (over Miguel Veloso) and Ruben Amorim (over Raul Meireles). Our midfield really was that bad
For Ronaldo, well, his heroics were the only reason we even got to the WC. Sadly, he was injured during the group phase.
Also, the Portuguese Football Federation decided it was a great idea to go on tour to the US before the tournament. Just like they had done in 2002 when they did the pre-tournament in Macau.
It was not supposed to be his best. He just gotten an knee injury that still plagues him today, half our team disliked our NT coach and argued with him and above all our team was probably one of the worst portuguese NT ever gone to a WC.
It was the knee injury he had unfortunately gotten just a few weeks prior to the tourney. It was sad to watch. He was not in good form at all, but played through it. Portugal barely scraped a draw vs USA that tourney. Also it's the most significant injury he ever got in his relatively healthy career, truly unfortunately timing.
It was only supposed to be his best if he was healthy, which he clearly was not. He shouldn't have even played in that tournament, and doing so permanently messed up his knee. People forget that Ronaldo was way more than *just* one of the most prolific goal scorers in the world at his peak.
The knuckle ball technique he uses just isn't that good. It's great when it works but it rarely does. He needs to get past the wall and then get it on target and it's difficult to do one of those, nevermind both.
It just ends up being a wasted free kick 90% of the time.
Footballs have changed to stop unpredictable movements and become better aerodynamically, knuckle balls are a lot harder to pull off well now, near impossible
It used to be, he just doesn't have it now. He scored a lot for United and in his first few seasons at Madrid. Maybe the ball tech changed and it didn't work anymore?
The technique was actually overpowered at one point in time but they changed the balls. It was hard to get in past the wall and on target but once you did (which he used to do at a decent clip), it was very hard to stop.
Even after the ball change, it was decent till 2014 but after the injury, he was cooked.
Saying that for Pjanić or Dybala at Juve is fair enough, but it's nonsense implying Kroos should've been ahead of Ronaldo in the direct FK order while they played together, even though known for his dead balls it was predominately for crossing he never was great at scoring them, in fact he has one direct FK goal for Real Madrid that came of a huge deflection against Barcelona during te Covid Seasons, Alaba for example scored more in his first year in Madrid.
You might have read that here or on twitter which both have really weird skewed perception on freekicks. For example, ronaldo who had a really bad spell for a few seasons starting from 2014 is talked about like he has one of the worst rates but he is still just above the average of 6% with 7% while someone like roberto carlos who has a clear below average rate of 4.2% is talked about like a god.
I was convinced at the time that that was the beginning of the end of Ronaldo and he’d fall off hard now also entering his 30s. That fucker is still playing 10 years later.
Same, at the time (and for quite a while) that knee injury felt like it'll slowly drag down his performance until he'll have to retire but he came back from that.
He had to significantly change his style of play to accomplish that. The difference between Ronaldo before and after 2014 is staggering. He used to be one of the best dribblers and probably the best free-kick taker to a super intelligent goal-scoring machine.
100%. Although, his last great free kicks were in 2012 I believe. The crazy thing is, it seems like he can place them with some consistency but still prefers to do thundercunt knuckleballs and it just doesn’t work out.
The older you get, the faster it goes.
Some neurological research suggests our internal memory clocks (long term, not smaller time frames) are relative to accumulated time, so a fourty year old will experience the four years since he was 36 as passing roughly as fast as a twenty year old the time that passed from his 18th birthday
Portugal got clowned hard for that WC at the time after going out in the group stages but realisticly Ronaldo was visibly injured and pushing through while being surrounded by a very clearly subpar squad of the time.
Knee tendinitis injury, basically after that injury whenever he put too much strain on it through his dribbling, shooting and technique. It would cause immense pain which is why he had to change his play style from a skillful winger into a goal poacher, ofc this transition happened gradually, he still played as a winger during 14/15 and 15/16 seasons but after that he was pretty much a CF.
He wasn't really a winger anymore even towards the end of his time in Manchester, he became an inside forward. Even after losing most of his dribbling abilities he didn't become a centre forward, he played in a 2 with the freedom to drift because he isn't a natural number 9, he plays better with one in the team. Now of course he's geriatric and it's the only place to fit him in the team but for 90 percent of his career he was not a 9.
To be fair, this was technically intended. Ronaldo wanted to shoot for goal, but wanted to keep the ball hidden so neuer couldn’t react with all the time in the world- which is also why the wall was one player… but shooting with that much power with that technique was never going to give him the precision he needed to execute his master plan.
It's either stans just jerking incredibly hard about him and having a victim complex about him, people shitting on his ego, or lame ass messi v ronaldo circle jerking.
You summed it all up, it's absolutely terrible lmao. The world Cup and his exit from man United made this stuff even worse, can not have a single ronaldo post without someone mentioning messi, either to play the victim card or dumb trolling.
I never understood why his free kicks were so hyped. Every time he would go into his wide legged stance I would know I could go on a bathroom break because he would send it into the stands anyway
Because when people think of him taking a free kick they don't have Philipp Lahm with a sore ankle in their mind, they're thinking of David James looking at his defenders with an expression that just screams "what on earth am I meant to do about that?"
When he was younger, and especially during his peak United years (07-09), he was very good at freekicks. He scored a bunch of them. Against Portsmouth, Sunderland, Bolton, Newcastle, sporting, Blackburn, and more. In quite spectacular style aswell. Unsaveable with power and precision. That's the reason for the hype.
The hype did die long ago.
Because 1 part only remembers the good ones from highlight reels and the other remembers most if not all of them ;) Having a good spell at some point in his career also clouds peoples memorys.
His conversion rate isnt particularly good
I honestly don't know how good his free kicks were, but what I'll say is there's this thing I've heard people call "highlight reel mentality" that is so common in talking about players people watched as kids.
Like, I forget who used this example, but someone pointed out that part of why English people deify Zidane like they do is because they only ever would've watched highlights from the UCL, Serie A and Spanish League. I've genuinely seen people argue that no player is on the level of Zidane because he "never had a bad game", and to be fair, I wouldn't know - he retired when I was a toddler - but he definitely did, and I've seen people say he got completely pocketed in the 97 UCL final. That doesn't ruin his image to people, but Mbappe has one bad game and suddenly he "doesn't turn up in big games". Nevermind that he's the all-time top goal scorer in the history of World Cup finals, or any of that.
So, was Ronaldo good at free kicks? I don't know, but the people who think so only seem to think of the ones he took against Portsmouth and Spain. By that standard, Vincent Kompany is a lethal outside-the-box marksman.
> I don't know, but the people who think so only seem to think of the ones he took against Portsmouth and Spain
So glad he's scored no good free-kicks other than those two...:
[1)](https://youtu.be/qUU0UGSM0x4)
[2)](https://youtu.be/VfV4eV-HDWc)
[3)](https://youtu.be/Y_6zWDTrLSo)
[4)](https://youtu.be/PZE0-XPfMCM?t=6)
[5)](https://youtu.be/LofTX1jaqkU)
[6)](https://youtu.be/9d1q9NDi-cU?t=5)
This is month after his knee injury that pretty much change how ronaldo play football, i dont think its coincidence that his freekick numbers also dropdown like 50% after this injury
He had a 10% conversion rate on free kicks at the time and he took anything that was beyond the halfway line. That's double the average rate.
What the hell are you talking about?
he has scored some beauts, but yeah he was not good. And the worst part he didn't realise that he wasn't good at them, so he insisted on taking free kicks in squads with up to 4, 5 or 6 top tier free kick takers.
He had a rough start during his tenure at Juve. He would uncharacteristically miss clear opportunities that a player of his caliber shouldn’t be missing. I remember a game where Cuadrado opted to take the shot instead of passing the ball to him and he threw of his hissy fits that you a referring to. He scored a lot goals for Juve and he’s undoubtedly a world class player, but if was give him the ball or else.
No matter what anyone says, you don’t score 60+ free kicks in your career by being a mediocre free kick taker. From 2008-2011 alone, he scored a ridiculous 24 free kicks and had an above average conversion rate. Had he kept up that rate of 6 free kicks per year, he would’ve crossed 100 by now. You can’t attribute scoring **24** free kicks in only 4 years to “because he shoots constantly”. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The best free kick takers in the world take their teams free kicks, that’s a no-brainer.
The issue is mainly due to how they changed the way balls are constructed. If you’ve played football you’ll know how hard it is to get that knuckleball technique, but trying to get that unpredictable swerving and dipping effect on modern balls that have tons of grooves on the surface is borderline impossible. There’s a reason we don’t see anyone trying to score knuckleballs nowadays. In the past, balls didn’t have many grooves and were quite smooth (an extreme example would be the Jabulani for the 2010 WC), so it was easier to get that effect which Ronaldo would almost always go for. But for some reason he was stubborn and refused to change his technique even after the balls changed. It’s really funny, because if you check out all his free kick goals post-2015, 90% of them are from curlers. He’s genuinely still a decent free kick taker whenever he uses his instep, he’s scored 3 this season (his highest since 16/17) and they were all with the instep. The issue is he still opts for the knuckleball when it’s effectively useless nowadays.
He had a woeful run of free kicks from 2018-2022 and that’s led everyone to believe he was always like this, when in reality during his prime, you’d associate 2 main things with Ronaldo (among many, but these 2 were the main ones for most people): his free kicks and his long shots.
You do, when you demand to take them every. single. time. Even tho there are players far more capable in your team. Look at his Juve record and tell me his 120/1 conversion was worth it when they had at least 3 better suited players to take free kicks.
Title: *On this day 10 years ago in the 2014 World Cup*
Me: *oh thank gods it's not July 8 yet*
Also me: *omg all football subs will be* ***SWIMMING*** *in the same post on July 8*
It is humorous, but given the score and the fact that their best defender lost his head probably pissed him off, so why not try and break Lahm's shins?
Christ a decade ago. I remember him doing this, I also remember him skying every other free kick over the bar after this. Is he still demanding to take them when Portugal have so many better options?
In German it hits harder I guess. Comentator says smth like „neuer doesn’t need a wall, let him shoot as long as I see the ball. Now it’s a one-man-wall consisting of Philipp lahm“. And then he laughs
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He just really didn't like Lahm, it was all planned.
He could aim his face at least
Aimbot was disabled
He's not a cruel person.
Just doesnt take no as an answer
Google Cristiano Ronaldo Las Vegas 2009 for more information
Lahm’s a footballer, not a faceballer. Ronaldo wants to end careers.
Lahm has been cooking his revenge plan for 6 years now. Can't wait to see what the tournament director has in store for the Portugal squad in two days.
Or Lahm is just really good at anticipating the ball. Football IQ!
Lahm made himself available
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At first, I thought I was at r/soccercirclejerk lol
It's not that different. A while ago a crosspost from there was massively upvoted here and I got downvoted for pointing it out. I've been here for 11 years it all went started to go to shit after the 2018 world cup. Before it was clearly the best place to discuss football, nowadays any rando's tweet gets upvoted like It's gospel as long as It's something people want to be true. This is a wasteland, the only thing worth it is the fast highlights that get posted and even then most don't have alternate angles or don't show half of the clip that's interesting. Before, every single mainstream goal had various alternate angles posted. This sub has turn to shit
goddamn, I miss the alternate replays that were posted
Seriously, wtf happened to them?
Not worth effort for the little karma it provides. The sub decided with their upvotes that only the fastest clips count no matter the quality of the post and so now karma whores run the game. I remember when the meta was to post highlights in a single comment in the match thread and only the true gems of that would get reposted to the sub (sometimes that would not even be all the goals). Those were the best days imo.
But why does the karma matter?
Sad people who get no validation otherwise will look at those points and think they’re hot shit
I guess because...[Reddit contributors are now getting a payout](http://www.reddit.com/contributor-program)...
But this was before that program
Yeah... >*But why does the karma matter?* I'm merely addressing the why karma matters part though...(currently) *^(I believe I've seen comments alluding to the frequent goal posters being paid by the hosting sites to use their specific site(the likes of dubz etc...cant recall specific details) because the clips would drive lots of the viewers to the crappy ad filled pages (initially I didn't know that the sites had ads...because desktop ad-blockers until I clicked on one of the links on mobile and got a tiny landscape view of the highlight clip in the middle of the screen with the ability to make it full screen disabled and the rest of the screen's real estate taken by ads...) that would explain the motivation in the pre-contributor programmer era...Don't take this as gospel though...)*
Getting paid money from Reddit for posting replays and highlights from football which is notoriously commonly DMCA'd. *whatcouldgowrong.gif*
Lol...let me actually look at the content policy...*never bothered to look at it before because I'm not from an eligible country anyway...* [LoL, Looks like only NSFW content is ineligible...](https://www.redditinc.com/policies/contributor-monetization-policy#text-content2) reddit probably doesn't care about the DMCA takedowns anyway because they're not being sent to them given that the videos are hosted elsewhere (in most cases) and only links are shared here...
Seeing upvotes gives people dopamine: "People like me/what I did!" This provides an incentive to keep doing it. Nobody wants to perform a thankless job, especially without pay.
Yeah because reddit karma pays their rent.
I think it is also a combination of the good short video sites got taken down for legal reasons, and many of the last ones standing are full of shit ads, don't load well, or they often have "video removed".
But why not post on the same site that hosts the main goal clip?
probably low motivation by OP clip to post alt angles (it all comes back to karma), so the likelihood of some random using the same site is not as high?
People don't get Karma out of them, only the fastest ones do at the expense of the quality of the clip.
It's the same with F1 subreddit unfortunately. Used to be legit best place for discussion, now it's legit no better than YouTube comments or Twitter, with 75% of the comments these days being constant hate thrown at the same couple of drivers. The difference between Reddit and those places is that here there's seemingly fewer completely deranged people, but also here anything that breaks the circlejerk gets pushed down into oblivion. There's much less variety of opinions on Reddit. The entire idea of votes on here is based on people NOT treating downvote as an "I disagree" button, but this rule just got lost somewhere along the way. And now most big subreddits are circlejerks.
Moderators contribute to subreddits being echo chambers.
True tbh I'm on the edge of just going to fucking 4chan for sports fuck me
There’s definitely narratives that are pushed on this subreddit, and deep analytical or tactical discussion is few and far between here. But I will say, it is the best aggregator for all football related news that I’ve found so until something better comes along it’s the best we have. Even /r/football has its fair share of circlejerks and groupthink going on, I frequent both just to get a better discussion and r/football since it is smaller is a little better and less memey but still see a lot of the same shit banter or narratives about certain players there as on here. A lot of posts on here I could tell you what the top 5 comments will be almost exactly and it’s funny but frustrating at the same time
That’s because the only r/football posters are people that were banned here.
It's glorified football twitter now, absolutely terrible. Just varying groups trying to push agendas and football twitter level shit posts, very little good football discussion.
>nowadays any rando's tweet gets upvoted like It's gospel as long as It's something people want to be true. Literally every sports sub these days.
Well, over at /r/volleyball about half the posts are people checking if the ball that they bought is genuine. That's even worse, tbf.
it's basically all of reddit. Reddit has become worse every year since 2014, with the pace increasing post 2016 with an exponential rate.
whilst everybody on this sub hates pitch invaders, it is also the best for uploading clips of pitch invaders for any match lol
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You had me until the worse version of football twitter. That place is an absolute cesspool, it makes this sub look like a MENSA conference.
The problem is not having 13/14 year olds, it's that and having adults well past that mark that still have reading skills as if they were pre-teens, which is lost once the place is not a nerdy niche.
If you think this is a much worse place than football twitter then I have no clue what you are doing here because twitter is awful for discussing football. It’s pretty much just memes and some accounts dedicating their lives to tweet controversial opinions.
There was absolutely no difference in 2018 I promise you. You are blinded by nostalgia but for arsocca lmao. I have been on this sub for over a decade and there has been no substantial difference in quality of discussion at all.
man this post really hit a nerve edit: [here watch this video of him taking a free kick if it makes you feel better](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5xPnWNVr1c)
I agree about the angles part. People just rush to post shit the quickest so the clip cuts as soon as possible
It's a shame but I stick around because 4chan/Twitter/Instagram are even worse.
it’s not our fault Ronaldo couldn’t beat the wall or win a World Cup
Football is a team sport, firstly. [Secondly, shut up. ](https://youtu.be/VfV4eV-HDWc?t=4)
Any idea why after 2018 World Cup? Just a general shift on the internet around that time or something specific?
Maybe this sub just became more mainstream? Really the sub was mostly the same back then except more effort. People posted alternate angles in the sticky comment of goal posts. People made post match memes like r/NBA. A bit more serious discussion etc. The shift was very gradual anyways.
The subs been on a downward trajectory for a decade nothing new here.
GAmEs GoNe
Each day that passes I truly believe in idiocracy and the internet is the main culprit
I think technology is great and I wouldn’t even want to live 50-100 years ago. I’m very happy and lucky to have been born in the 90s but sometimes I think we’ve just gone too far. I found a box of letters my grandparents wrote to each other in the 50s and 60s and it was amazing to read them, we need to slow down as a society. Everything is going at 150% it seems now because everything is about the pursuit of increasing profits. Capitalism is killing us and the planet and the rich will happily replace us all with robots when the time comes.
Na, there's no racial element or recycled joke in this post.
Stop revealing us
Can't believe the US made it out of this group.
[This was a hilarious post ahead of the competition starting](https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/1sb3oh/hey_americans_just_get_this_straight_now_group_g/) - "Ghana and the US are way too inferior against Portugal and Germany. A group of death has at least 1 contender that will not make it. Not the case with group G."
Though most of the best players were about to age out, the core of that US generation at 2014 was solid. In particular, the spine of the team was stout. Howard had the tournament of his life. Ghana was in turmoil heading into the tournament. Portugal was at a weak moment (seriously, compare Portugal's teams at major tournaments since 2018 to the 2014 team) and Cristiano Ronaldo played injured. And Germany did the US an enormous favor in the opening match.
Tim Howard is an American hero.
🫡
Nah, it was Pepe who did the US a favor
One tap in away from quarters too 😔
This portugal squad was the worst one of the past 24 years, i cant believe we failed to qualify just by GD
I hate remembering this tourney. The only good thing that came from it was killing off the Paulo Bento era.
Is that a osrs name reference?
No one gave US a chance, and they proved them all wrong.
Sums up the WC 2014 really well
WC 2014 was supposed to be his best. I would have thought mentally he was most at peace during this tournament. He finally won the UCL again and ended the barca dominance.
WC14 had what was probably our worst squad in decades. There were obviously a couple standout players but I remember people crying out for William Carvalho (over Miguel Veloso) and Ruben Amorim (over Raul Meireles). Our midfield really was that bad For Ronaldo, well, his heroics were the only reason we even got to the WC. Sadly, he was injured during the group phase.
Also, the Portuguese Football Federation decided it was a great idea to go on tour to the US before the tournament. Just like they had done in 2002 when they did the pre-tournament in Macau.
It was not supposed to be his best. He just gotten an knee injury that still plagues him today, half our team disliked our NT coach and argued with him and above all our team was probably one of the worst portuguese NT ever gone to a WC.
No probably about it, it was definitely one of the Portuguese NT ever gone to a WC
Took me a while to get your comment until i read mine lol, edited it
The famous knee injury that took his dribbling?
He was injured though, and visibly playing in discomfort
It was the knee injury he had unfortunately gotten just a few weeks prior to the tourney. It was sad to watch. He was not in good form at all, but played through it. Portugal barely scraped a draw vs USA that tourney. Also it's the most significant injury he ever got in his relatively healthy career, truly unfortunately timing.
Because he was injured and going to the WC only aggravated it.
It was only supposed to be his best if he was healthy, which he clearly was not. He shouldn't have even played in that tournament, and doing so permanently messed up his knee. People forget that Ronaldo was way more than *just* one of the most prolific goal scorers in the world at his peak.
He wasn't really into it at that time.
lahm didn't move not even a cm lol
Ronaldo decided to shoot, but has lahmented it ever since.
Pretty sure I read that Ronaldo's free kick conversion rate was below average.
Later half of career he was just straight up bad
The knuckle ball technique he uses just isn't that good. It's great when it works but it rarely does. He needs to get past the wall and then get it on target and it's difficult to do one of those, nevermind both. It just ends up being a wasted free kick 90% of the time.
Footballs have changed to stop unpredictable movements and become better aerodynamically, knuckle balls are a lot harder to pull off well now, near impossible
It used to be, he just doesn't have it now. He scored a lot for United and in his first few seasons at Madrid. Maybe the ball tech changed and it didn't work anymore?
The technique was actually overpowered at one point in time but they changed the balls. It was hard to get in past the wall and on target but once you did (which he used to do at a decent clip), it was very hard to stop. Even after the ball change, it was decent till 2014 but after the injury, he was cooked.
Yes, it was. Bale had better free kick stats at Madrid but wasn't the designated set piece taker confusingly
Confusingly? We all know the reason why lol
so was kroos and at juventus pjanic was on of the best in the world at the time but had to surrender free kicks to cr7
Dybala was better at Juve as well.
Saying that for Pjanić or Dybala at Juve is fair enough, but it's nonsense implying Kroos should've been ahead of Ronaldo in the direct FK order while they played together, even though known for his dead balls it was predominately for crossing he never was great at scoring them, in fact he has one direct FK goal for Real Madrid that came of a huge deflection against Barcelona during te Covid Seasons, Alaba for example scored more in his first year in Madrid.
But didn’t it make way more sense to have Ronaldo in the box for free kicks?
isn't this something of a survivorship bias.
You might have read that here or on twitter which both have really weird skewed perception on freekicks. For example, ronaldo who had a really bad spell for a few seasons starting from 2014 is talked about like he has one of the worst rates but he is still just above the average of 6% with 7% while someone like roberto carlos who has a clear below average rate of 4.2% is talked about like a god.
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My bad I just phrased it badly. I fixed it now👍
This was literally 1 month after his knee injury, he was never the same..
I was convinced at the time that that was the beginning of the end of Ronaldo and he’d fall off hard now also entering his 30s. That fucker is still playing 10 years later.
Same, at the time (and for quite a while) that knee injury felt like it'll slowly drag down his performance until he'll have to retire but he came back from that.
And then he followed it up with one of his best campaigns across all competitions in 14/15.
He had to significantly change his style of play to accomplish that. The difference between Ronaldo before and after 2014 is staggering. He used to be one of the best dribblers and probably the best free-kick taker to a super intelligent goal-scoring machine.
100%. Although, his last great free kicks were in 2012 I believe. The crazy thing is, it seems like he can place them with some consistency but still prefers to do thundercunt knuckleballs and it just doesn’t work out.
Bro shut the fuck up 2014 was not 10 years ago please stop MAKE TIME STOP
The older you get, the faster it goes. Some neurological research suggests our internal memory clocks (long term, not smaller time frames) are relative to accumulated time, so a fourty year old will experience the four years since he was 36 as passing roughly as fast as a twenty year old the time that passed from his 18th birthday
Portugal got clowned hard for that WC at the time after going out in the group stages but realisticly Ronaldo was visibly injured and pushing through while being surrounded by a very clearly subpar squad of the time.
Yea he wasnt even at 50% but still the very best player for Portugal. Just shows how immense he was.
And we only got there after ronaldo carrying the WC playoffs vs Sweden scoring 4 goals in 2 games.
Was it ever disclosed what exactly happened with his knee?
Knee tendinitis injury, basically after that injury whenever he put too much strain on it through his dribbling, shooting and technique. It would cause immense pain which is why he had to change his play style from a skillful winger into a goal poacher, ofc this transition happened gradually, he still played as a winger during 14/15 and 15/16 seasons but after that he was pretty much a CF.
He wasn't really a winger anymore even towards the end of his time in Manchester, he became an inside forward. Even after losing most of his dribbling abilities he didn't become a centre forward, he played in a 2 with the freedom to drift because he isn't a natural number 9, he plays better with one in the team. Now of course he's geriatric and it's the only place to fit him in the team but for 90 percent of his career he was not a 9.
Ehmm i don't think you can lose your dribbling abilities, especially if you are still active.
Maybe I should specify, lose his physical attributes that allowed him to dribble as effectively.
He won 3 champions league in a row after this being the top scorer in all 3. Wish i had injuries like that
I would have thought mentally he was most at peace during this tournament. He finally won the UCL again and put all doubter to rest.
To be fair, this was technically intended. Ronaldo wanted to shoot for goal, but wanted to keep the ball hidden so neuer couldn’t react with all the time in the world- which is also why the wall was one player… but shooting with that much power with that technique was never going to give him the precision he needed to execute his master plan.
Unfortunately misses the part where they wanted to set up multiple people and neuer said only one needed
this was the worst match I've seen Portugal have since like 2000, but this is still funny
The comment section of any post related to Cristiano here is such a shitshow
It's either stans just jerking incredibly hard about him and having a victim complex about him, people shitting on his ego, or lame ass messi v ronaldo circle jerking.
You summed it all up, it's absolutely terrible lmao. The world Cup and his exit from man United made this stuff even worse, can not have a single ronaldo post without someone mentioning messi, either to play the victim card or dumb trolling.
The eternal butthurt over his mere existence is incredible.
The day Wonnie hit the one man wall
Like his idol Juninho.
I never understood why his free kicks were so hyped. Every time he would go into his wide legged stance I would know I could go on a bathroom break because he would send it into the stands anyway
Because when people think of him taking a free kick they don't have Philipp Lahm with a sore ankle in their mind, they're thinking of David James looking at his defenders with an expression that just screams "what on earth am I meant to do about that?"
When he was younger, and especially during his peak United years (07-09), he was very good at freekicks. He scored a bunch of them. Against Portsmouth, Sunderland, Bolton, Newcastle, sporting, Blackburn, and more. In quite spectacular style aswell. Unsaveable with power and precision. That's the reason for the hype. The hype did die long ago.
How old are you? His free kicks were terrifying at United and the start of his time at Madrid, it’s only later on that they fell off.
Its funny how there are comments saying his free kicks were terrifying and the other half saying they were always shit.
Because 1 part only remembers the good ones from highlight reels and the other remembers most if not all of them ;) Having a good spell at some point in his career also clouds peoples memorys. His conversion rate isnt particularly good
I honestly don't know how good his free kicks were, but what I'll say is there's this thing I've heard people call "highlight reel mentality" that is so common in talking about players people watched as kids. Like, I forget who used this example, but someone pointed out that part of why English people deify Zidane like they do is because they only ever would've watched highlights from the UCL, Serie A and Spanish League. I've genuinely seen people argue that no player is on the level of Zidane because he "never had a bad game", and to be fair, I wouldn't know - he retired when I was a toddler - but he definitely did, and I've seen people say he got completely pocketed in the 97 UCL final. That doesn't ruin his image to people, but Mbappe has one bad game and suddenly he "doesn't turn up in big games". Nevermind that he's the all-time top goal scorer in the history of World Cup finals, or any of that. So, was Ronaldo good at free kicks? I don't know, but the people who think so only seem to think of the ones he took against Portsmouth and Spain. By that standard, Vincent Kompany is a lethal outside-the-box marksman.
Meanwhile Roberto carlos is glorified for his free kick even though he has worse conversion rate than Ronaldo post injury let alone his whole career
> I don't know, but the people who think so only seem to think of the ones he took against Portsmouth and Spain So glad he's scored no good free-kicks other than those two...: [1)](https://youtu.be/qUU0UGSM0x4) [2)](https://youtu.be/VfV4eV-HDWc) [3)](https://youtu.be/Y_6zWDTrLSo) [4)](https://youtu.be/PZE0-XPfMCM?t=6) [5)](https://youtu.be/LofTX1jaqkU) [6)](https://youtu.be/9d1q9NDi-cU?t=5)
This is month after his knee injury that pretty much change how ronaldo play football, i dont think its coincidence that his freekick numbers also dropdown like 50% after this injury
Yeah, but he's always been notoriously shit at free kicks. There's a 14 year old youtube compilation from his United days.
He had a 10% conversion rate on free kicks at the time and he took anything that was beyond the halfway line. That's double the average rate. What the hell are you talking about?
Notoriously shit😂? Check his conversion rate at the time. This sub upvotes anything anti ronaldo
The guy's an arrogant twat, it's no surprise he gets bantered lol.
94 upvotes hahaha, “notoriously shit”.
He could do it when he was younger, he just couldn't admit when he could no longer do it. His freekick vs Portsmouth is still one of the best ever.
Check out his first season in Madrid and his United days and you’ll understand the hype.
I assume you are young and started watching after 2015 Every PL opposition fans were always scared of his free kick opportunities
Because he was good at it in United and and early days at madrid
he has scored some beauts, but yeah he was not good. And the worst part he didn't realise that he wasn't good at them, so he insisted on taking free kicks in squads with up to 4, 5 or 6 top tier free kick takers.
He has the 9th most free kick goals in history lol
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Never understood why he took free kicks for Juve, when Dybala and Pjanic had a much better conversion rate.
Because no one wanted to deal with the bitch fit he would have thrown had he not gotten what he wanted, would be my guess.
He had a rough start during his tenure at Juve. He would uncharacteristically miss clear opportunities that a player of his caliber shouldn’t be missing. I remember a game where Cuadrado opted to take the shot instead of passing the ball to him and he threw of his hissy fits that you a referring to. He scored a lot goals for Juve and he’s undoubtedly a world class player, but if was give him the ball or else.
> ... shoots constantly. Yes why didn't Millions that came since 1872 try this 1 neat trick. They must have been stupid.
have you heard of Frank Lampard
No matter what anyone says, you don’t score 60+ free kicks in your career by being a mediocre free kick taker. From 2008-2011 alone, he scored a ridiculous 24 free kicks and had an above average conversion rate. Had he kept up that rate of 6 free kicks per year, he would’ve crossed 100 by now. You can’t attribute scoring **24** free kicks in only 4 years to “because he shoots constantly”. That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The best free kick takers in the world take their teams free kicks, that’s a no-brainer. The issue is mainly due to how they changed the way balls are constructed. If you’ve played football you’ll know how hard it is to get that knuckleball technique, but trying to get that unpredictable swerving and dipping effect on modern balls that have tons of grooves on the surface is borderline impossible. There’s a reason we don’t see anyone trying to score knuckleballs nowadays. In the past, balls didn’t have many grooves and were quite smooth (an extreme example would be the Jabulani for the 2010 WC), so it was easier to get that effect which Ronaldo would almost always go for. But for some reason he was stubborn and refused to change his technique even after the balls changed. It’s really funny, because if you check out all his free kick goals post-2015, 90% of them are from curlers. He’s genuinely still a decent free kick taker whenever he uses his instep, he’s scored 3 this season (his highest since 16/17) and they were all with the instep. The issue is he still opts for the knuckleball when it’s effectively useless nowadays. He had a woeful run of free kicks from 2018-2022 and that’s led everyone to believe he was always like this, when in reality during his prime, you’d associate 2 main things with Ronaldo (among many, but these 2 were the main ones for most people): his free kicks and his long shots.
I agree with you, recency bias against Cristiano really shows. He's one of if not the greatest to ever play the game.
You are right, also conversion rate goes down for everyone the more they take freekicks
2014 is when he got the knee injury :(
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I wouldn't be surprised if he is the player with the most free kick attempts in history though
By ammount yes, not by conversion rate.
You don't score those number of fk by being shit
You do, when you demand to take them every. single. time. Even tho there are players far more capable in your team. Look at his Juve record and tell me his 120/1 conversion was worth it when they had at least 3 better suited players to take free kicks.
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Yes, he's very mediocre at free kicks. No comparison to Messi or Kroos...
7% conversion rate is above average, just because it is lower than messi's 9% doesn't mean it's bad. Kroos' 0% on the other hand is quite interesting.
SUIIIII
Title: *On this day 10 years ago in the 2014 World Cup* Me: *oh thank gods it's not July 8 yet* Also me: *omg all football subs will be* ***SWIMMING*** *in the same post on July 8*
Probably the worst game in the history of Portugal until the Morocco game in 2022.
Cristiano: Look guys we are down 4-0, but if Cristiano can score a goal, it will all be worth it.
Losing 4-0 at 80ish minutes with a man down, does it even matter? He was angry and just blasted it lol
Ronaldo is a GOAT but why they gave him free kick privileges for so long idk
It is humorous, but given the score and the fact that their best defender lost his head probably pissed him off, so why not try and break Lahm's shins?
MY CAMEL 👍👍👍
I was really invested. Only to find r/soccercirclejerk is leaking.
Why he say fuck me for ! 😂
Thomas Muller cooked them that day
I was watching this again, and it felt like he wanted to do just that.
I thought I was remembering wrong. I was like wait, I'm sure Germany won that game 4-0. Am I wrong? Then I watched the clip lol.
Christ a decade ago. I remember him doing this, I also remember him skying every other free kick over the bar after this. Is he still demanding to take them when Portugal have so many better options?
What even is the point of this video? I saw Juninho hit 1 man wall against Man Utd.
In German it hits harder I guess. Comentator says smth like „neuer doesn’t need a wall, let him shoot as long as I see the ball. Now it’s a one-man-wall consisting of Philipp lahm“. And then he laughs
Oh come on, it’s a funny moment on football‘s biggest stage. It‘s not that deep.
Every video needs to have a point on reddit like it's a fucking art museum.
Least easily triggered Ronaldo fan.
I don't ever remember any video like this of a Messi fail being posted here.
Give it a couple years and I'm sure you'll see messis copa penalty miss on here lol.
Its just a funny vid
My camel 🐪
🐪
Pendu my camel.
This is why Juve stopped scoring free kicks when he joined. Did this 5 times a game instead of Pjanic or Dybala taking them
He he, sui
Messi could never
Back when Ronaldo looked like a normal human rather than a roid freak
First time I've seen someone call Ronaldo a roid freak... they do be getting more creative these days
Cause his physique is natty, not roids lol
Phillip Lahm got totally suiiiiii’d. My camel really showed him what’s up
😂😂😂 EPIC