Soccer debate - Club vs. National Team

[eurythmech]

The top national sides would beat the top clubs, and it's not even close.

Just consider the number of top clubs, using a not too wide definition of top clubs, I'd say we have the following:

Barcelona
Real Madrid
Valencia
Arsenal
Chelsea
Liverpool
Manchester United
Bayern Munich
Lyon
Inter
Juventus
Milan
Roma

That would be 13 clubs that fight for their share of the world's top talents, while there are also world class players in other clubs.

This while the world's top nations would be Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy, Spain and then possibly Germany, England, Holland.

[PokerFink]

There are elite players that play for those club teams that come from countries other than Brazil, Argentina etc.

[eurythmech]

Of course, I just feel that the talent is more heavily concentrated to the national sides.

[BaggyAnt]

Club teams every time. Talent is overestimated, team work isn't.

[ZeTurd]

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Of course, I just feel that the talent is more heavily concentrated to the national sides.

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That's kind of silly. You're forgetting that there are a lot of national sides that have 2-3 top players that are available for club teams to even out things. Consider:

Didier Drogba - Ivory Coast
Andriy Shevchenko - Ukraine
Petr Cech - Czech Republic
Michael Essien - Ghana

All Chelsea players, and all world class in their positions. Two of them may even be considered the best in their respective roles (Cech, Drogba). And if I were feeling generous I could throw Nigerian John Obi Mikel and Peruvian Claudio Pizarro in the mix as well.

To me there's no doubt that the concentration of talent in the major clubs is denser than in even the best national sides. Add in the fact that these guys play and train together all year long, I think the edge is pretty decent, probably around 10-15%.

[freemoney]

its relatively close either way between the top clubs and top national teams. the club teams are the ones that would have much better chemistry though.

[Jacob_Gilliam]

Club teams easily.

Teamwork>>>>>>>>>Talent

And the talent level is fairly equal in my opinion. If you look at another sport, basketball, this is why team USA loses. Most talent by far, but they dont play together that often and get their asses handed to them by crap teams like Greece who have much less talent but play together all the time.

[ThaSaltCracka]

Jacob, I was thinking about this yesterday, which NBA team would beat Team America in a 7 game series?

[capone0]

The US team also doesn't send it's best players. I don't think a lot of American players think of it as an honor. We don't have dream team anymore going, we have a good team with all-stars but not the best.

[Fallen Hero]

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As it is, most of Hollands team play in Holland, and the same is true for Portugal.

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not even close to being true for portugal, carry on [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]