₦airaland Forum

A40: This is one of the biggest myths and urban legends in football. You would be suprised at just how many people think Makelele invented or perfected the DM role I can't help but chuckle each time I see it

Absolutely one of the biggest myths in Footy History.
As I keep saying what did Makalele do that hasn't been done before?

hensben: bro you have a very low football knowledge no offence, chelsea just rise to stardom and you expect them to win ucl just like that...you think say ucl na moi moi . Sir alex ferguson spent 27 years at man united and won just 2 ucl says a lot about the tournament.

Coming from you, I take absolute no offence whatsoever. Your footy knowledge is limited to the English league and even at that i don't even think you know much about the league anyways

Del Bosque won it twice in 3 seasons. So did Pep
Ancelotti has won it three times now. So why use Fergie as the yardstick.

hensben: lie! they call it 'the makelele role' worldwide, go figure.

What a load of poppycocks. Show me articles prior to 2004 where the so called Makalele role was mentioned?

coogar: he would have carried on winning for them. he was the missing link. madrid already had the attacking platform but none of the galacticos was willing to track back & do the dirty work. makelele was the man for the dirty job & they sold him.

what proof do you have that they would have won after all Makaleke did not win another one till he retired? Or why did they not win another one in his 2 other seasons?...... The missing link was Del Bosque not Makalele abeg.

coogar: i remember a troglodyte named dayokanu saying the same about busquets in 2010 until busquets destroyed schweinsteiger & khedira in south africa. winning possession & retaining it is the most vital part in football.
so are we comparing france to madrid now? or what's the comparison for?

Lest we forget Sergio for all his greatness had XavIniesta who were pretty much raping all and sundry. Also Sergio has more to his game than Claude ever had. He actually could and does deliver defence splitting passes

Why Are we comparing France to Portugal and it is generally acknowledged that the French had the much better team? Even still at that they both won nada for their respective countries.

coogar: specialist in tackling. makelele would tackle an aircraft and win the ball cleanly. he's too good! better than all these goats you have around these days......especially those ones in bayern lying to themselves they are DM.

So tackling is his speciality? Okay o

I think we should leave out Bastian(others can be included) from this discourse.

Horayce: Winning trophies is not the only yardstick of success, Chelsea became relatively more competitive in europe than Madrid. Appearing in more semis/advanced stages for example. Madrid couldnt get beyond the round of 16 for 7-8 straight seasons if i recall correctly. It wasn't all down to Makelele to be sure, but his influence was undeniably felt.

Well for a Big club like Madrid winning trophies is the Main yardstick. Madrid fans and hierarchy alike could care less about the amount of CL semis they have played in any given period of time. Anything short of the title is seen as a failure. Madrid's failures had nothing to do with Makalele abeg. Other factors like Perez's crazy transfer policy and firing Del Bosque after he had delivered two CL trophies in 3 years are to be blamed

raumdeuter: What made madrid tick between 1998 and 2002 are many and makelele is the least of them. Often time he was just a passenger on the field which would explain why Del Bosque yanked him off the field in the lone CL finals he has claims to

So you mean the Engine of the team, the man who made them tick, the man without whom they would not have won the title was taken off the pitch at a time when Leverkusen were pressing hard for the equaliser? INCREDIBLE!

coogar: no, i am saying madrid would have won more in the 2000s had makelele stayed. he was already familiar with his madrid team-mates with an excellent chemistry. bringing chelsea into the fray is a redudant argument.

What proof do you have that Madrid would have more had he stayed? Or isn't this the same Maka that won no CL trophy before or after he left madrid?

coogar: no, they wouldn't have!
they had no engine. zidane described makelele as the engine of the team. hierro said claude was their best player if you disregard the statistics. they know him better than you do, i would rather listen to them than listen to you & dayo.
how many world cup finals did he reach with portugal? how many european championships did he win? paolo who? once again - you are comparing a general practitioner to a brain surgeon.

Which Engine? Engine that could do more than operate in a 5m area of the pitch not so? Ofcourse they were his ex teammates and in Zizou's case still a team mate for the National team so was bound to say that. Imagine Hierro saying we should disregard stats? What next?

How many titles did Maka win as a starter for France?

Paolo Sousa was viewed as the better player till the makalele hype went into overdrive.

coogar: that's because the others who would have said so can't speak english - and you wouldn't understand whatever it was they musta said about makelele. the absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence.
there's a difference between a specialist and a general purpose individual. the specialist is 100% focused on a particular role & he does it to death. the general purpose dude has a general idea over everything but he can never be as good in the role the specialist is trained to do.
this is why claude is the greatest!

Ofcourse that was the reason nah. Nothing to do with English journalist hyping up a player .

Specialist in what exactly? Staying in one spot all match long? Abi what exactly did He do that others have not only done but done it much better before?

Maybe the Greatest in Chelsea FC history sha.

Katsumoto: This was the same Madrid that won two CL titles in 1998 and 2000 (with Redondo as Anchor 98, 2000 and Captain in 2000) before Makelele joined. Now Makelele is the reason Madrid didn't win for 10 years.

Nevermind that Chelsea didn't win the CL with Makelele.

Kats you dey read my post ni? . Pretty much what i wrote really.

I wonder who we will blame for Bayern's failure to win the CL from 01 till 2013 or Milan failing to win it from 94 til 03 or liverpool's barren period from 84 till 05?

coogar: because chelsea aren't traditionally a champions league giant. you just don't join a big club spending money & win the champions league. there's a tradition to this & a technical know-how! if he had joined a european powerhouse like ac milan, liverpool, united or bayern, he would have won the CL

So are you now saying the reason why Maka did not win another CL trophy was because he did not join a big enough club who would won it anyways regardless of whether claude joined them or not?

So you admit Real would have won it in 02 regardless of makakele's participation? After all this was the same club that won in 98 and 00 with Nando Redondo orchestrating plays from the DM/CM position.

coogar: paulo sosa was never a specialist - i dunno why his name is being brought up. we are talking about a specialist & you are bringing up a no-mark name to sway an argument.
so you are a security officer whose job is to open the gate, sweep the surrounding for invaders, watch CCTV, etc
and another man just stays by the gate. nothing concerns him with CCTV or looking for invaders in the premises. his speciality is just the gate. he could tell from the knock on a gate whether it's a man or a woman or a kid. they call this man a gateman or used his name(kasali) to describe his role.
you mean the first security officer = kasali?

How can Sousa a member of Portugal's golden gen be a no name? A player that was more famous than Maka before the Maka hype went into overdrive a no name? If not for the injuries that pretty much cut his career short, You would have heard more about him.

I keep hearing about the defensive mid spot being named after Makalele but I am yet to hear anyone apart from Alan Hansen and a couple of english journos call it just that.

coogar: makelele had the role named after him - you are now screaming like a rhesus monkey that matthaus was a defensive midfielder.

Who apart from the English Journos calls it the "Makalele Role"?

coogar: his own teammates said makelele's departure was the reason they failed to reach the high standard they had set before .

If He was the reason why they never reached the high standard they set beforehand then why didn't He win the CL afterwards with chelsea?

Paulo Sousa as Dayo mentioned earlier has got more of a case than Makalele. Not only did He win the CL the very next season with Dortmund but also Juve are yet to taste CL sucess since he left them

Katsumoto: Madrid winning the Champions league 10 years after the last one had nothing to do with Makelele. Did Madrid not win without Makalele? Or did Chelsea win the CL with Makelele?

Was actually going to say let's stop all this rubbish about Makalele's departure being the reason for Madrid's failure to win the big ears.

raumdeuter: This is an article that listed Defensive midfielders. When someone tells you to find anything on the interwebs that call any other player a DM
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/231097-greatest-ever-football-the-top-10-defensive-midfielders-of-all-time

Dayo did not have to dig deep sef before He found an article

raumdeuter: I remember the Juventus defence of the late 90's

Ciro Ferrara, Torricelli, Birindelli, Iuliano, Pessoto, Montero

Those guys were hack masters

Not forgetting Tacchinardi who sent Oliseh out of Juve

Not forgetting Petr "Czar" Vierchwood.

coogar: he didn't reinvent it - he invented it.

until makelele, find one article on the internet that ever described rijkaard, ardilles, redondo, vieira, keane, scholes, petit as a defensive midfielder.

they were all central midfielders - they never had the specialist role of sitting in one role like a tank. that's the difference. redondo was räping united defenders by the touchline & putting a beautiful cross into the box for raul to score - na defensive midfielder be that?

supposing united intercepted that cross & countered, where would redondo be? did you ever see makelele jogging back to after being caught out? the ball was never behind makelele. he was always in front of the ball!

abeg, there's no one like claude!

I'm sure if I dig a little i'll find an article referring to Frank or Desailly as a defensive mid. Prior to Makalele coming to england, you won't find any article that referred to the position as Makalele's(and he had been playing that position for years before moving to England).

Redondo could play either as a defensive midfield or as a Central Midfielder. He was that talented. What would Makalele be doing that far up the pitch? He'll be lost. His skillset was limited as Kats mentioned. Rijkaard was as hard(started off as a no nonsense defender) and intelligent(could read the play perfectly) as they come but He still went forward because He had that ability.

Probably not one could have done the not moving more than 5 yard position better but abeg He did not invent nada.

coogar: that's exactly the point - until makelele, the role others played was simply central midfielder. makelele's sitting role invented the defensive midfielder.

likewise, the maestros who started operating between the lines invented the attacking midfielder role. before then, they were just midfielders or central midfielders. they went backward & forward at will..........they weren't specialists like makelele.

How exactly did Makalele reinvent the defensive midfield position? You mean by moving a haul of no more than 5yards either way from the position He started the match from He somehow reinvented that position?

horlabiyi: UK on the list?? Haha you must be kidding

More like I would have been extremely surprised if the UK wasn't in the top 5 never mind top 10

coogar: others were central midfielders - they went forward & backward as they deemed fit. others were often caught out by the opposition for taking stüpid risks - makelele never crossed the halfway line. his reading of the game was excellent - he could tackle an elephant cos he knew the exact time to apply his foot & knock the ball away from the stride of his opponent.

stop belittling makelele....he was the best ever to play that role - a sitting midfielder.

Just because others went forward because they were very capable of doing so or because some of them gave defense splitting passes because they had the ability to do so and Makalele did not should not take away from the fact that they were excellent defensive midfielders. Me belittle one of the greats of the game? Yh right!

Well if your definition of sitting midfielder is "sitting in one spot not moving more than 2meters" then sure. But as a DM no chance mate

coogar: because that was their first time of seeing anything like that. until then, the default formation was 4-4-2. nobody protected the hole. it's also one of the reasons players like bergkamp, zola, cantona, etc blossomed in the english league - having a withdrawn forward operating in the hole instead of side-by-side with a strike partner was alien to british

Your simply making my point for me tbh. Journalists from other countries don't see it as Makalele's. Only the british ones do. Also not enough reason for people to call him the best DM ever(as i have seen on this thread already

Katsumoto: Such ignorant words are usually coined by folk who don't watch much football and usually by England based followers. Nothing Makelele did that wasnt done by Souness, Rijkaard, Ardiles, Tardelli, Effenberg. Makelele role my ar.se.

Im pretty sure it was Alan Hansen that first used that term on MOTD. Think He was trying to say Claude redefined that position. How he did that however, i'd never know. As you said i don't see exactly what He did that hadn't been done by his predecessors tbh.

coogar: he had that role named after him cos he was brilliant at it & he was slightly different from his predecessors that used to anchor. makelele was a sitting midfielder - he never ceded position. his role is to sit in that space between the opponents midfield & .

Wasn't the term the "Makalele Role" coined by the english press?

Ibime: Take Deschamps and Dunga off your list. They were not footballers.

Dunga in his latter years actually became an extremely good passer of the ball.

YESSSSSSSS ALLYSON FELIX!!!. Followed her career since 2002 or thereabouts. What a great athlete

Sagamite: 2) Now look at the response of most guys on this thread.

Are they not taking the logical approach? Does that not give you a hint of why only a few select guys tend to pull all the women while most blokes are jonesers till the girls become pass their peak

Eyin Boyz Dem talk say most of una be jonesers? Nah 3rd rate chics most of una dey pull . Shey nah true?

fredoooooo: bros !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i miss ya o , how ya end ?

End dey o. How your side dey nah? E no good the way u just dey abandon your boy like this o. Wetin i go say sha na Daris gooodu oo

raumdeuter: Alcantara I think is coming back in September

Read the below from a CHelsea blog about Benatia admittedly written by a biased Morrocan

http://weaintgotnohistory.sbnation.com/2014/8/17/5997829/the-indomitable-rise-of-mehdi-benatia-an-introduction

Also Roma fans are mightily pissed that he left them they are replacing him with Manolas

But getting any defender for 26m nowadays is a bargain thinking of how much other defenders were sold for this window. Even ROJOsibe that no one knew about 2 months ago was sold for over 20m Euros, never mind Mangala or calamity Luiz

Personally I have only seen like 6 games of Bennatia including the ICC tour recently and cant make a judgment

The Author of that article is quite clearly a Benatia stan. As good as He was last season, He certainly wasn't in no discussion for the best centreback in world football.

Plus he clearly stole the "Grace of Thiago, Skill of Hummels,Leadership quality of Terry, Aerial Dominance of Cahill"(Gimme a break, wiil ya?)line from an italian journo who once said Muntari(while @udinese) had the combativeness of Davids and the Grace of Kaka

usbcable: my monicker has always been "usbcable" and not "logical".

Touche!!!

fredoooooo: ;

Fredoooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

usbcable: Mario was a nut case.
A boss (Berlu) and his employee (Balo) cannot live in same house

Quite a number of Great talents down the years have been nut cases.ie Cantona. It's down to the respective coaches to manage this special individual talents with care and make sure those inbuilt aggression are channeled in the direction.

Btw what's with Berlu trying to compete with his employee for the limelight? He should start investing properly in the club and all other matters alone abeg

So Balotelli a Mercurial talent who had his best years ahead of him was let go on the cheap only to be replaced by Nando whose best days are long gone not so?

Right now I am in the "Siddon dey look" mode tbh. Really dont know what else to say with regards to Berlu to be frank. All i'd say right now is let's hope Nando rediscovers a bit of his liverpool form of old(circa 07-09) and we will take things from there.

FORZA MILAN!

Symphony007: exactly...schools like this have a curriculum dropped out of heaven. They teach their students over 5 foreign languages with special tutors and ear sets, and make sure each student must excel in one sports. Indeed schools like this groom great men who help each other. Example. Eton college, windsor, england. Produced over 6 british prime minister, foreign secretaries, diplomats, currently, david cameron, u.k prime minister, george osborne, chancellor of the exchequer, boris johnson, mayor of london are all old ethonians.

Are you trying to compare these aforementioned schools to the likes of Eton and Harrow?

raumdeuter: Try redtube.com

Proper wasteman kmt!

coogar: when he had good passers like fab feeding him quality passes, he won several golden boots for spain.

There u go. Give him the tools and watch him perform. Maybe not as He used to but still a good one nonetheless

Havilah93: Maybe. . .
But for him to take that long!.

Not making excuses for Torres btw. Just saying He probably wasn't best suited to Chelsea's style of footy at that time.