More Tweets... | | | |  | A Brief History of How We Got This Ridiculous
Mess Called The Europa League | |
| There was a time when only the teams that finished in first place of their domestic leagues played in the European Champions Cup, which is now called the Champions League. That means that you never had both Real Madrid and Barcelona playing in the most important tournament in Europe, you had only the one that finished first in La Liga the year prior. There was great incentive to finishing in first place at home, the domestic leagues really did matter. Finishing first was not merely for bragging rights, but counted dearly for the fate of teams in Europe. Real Madrid were European champions in 2014, but does anybody even know how they did in 2013 to get there? Actually they finished second that season, behind Barcelona of course, but who cares? Nobody. Nobody in Spain remembers either because it doesn't matter. They both played the Champions League the next year and they're pretty much guaranteed to do so every single year, unless they finish worse than fourth place at home.
Of course it's not just Spain. Who cares who won the Premiership in 2011? It was Manchester United, by a mile, but the team that finished second that year, Chelsea, won the Champions League in 2012. It used to be that English clubs were so dominant that whoever won the Premiership was pretty much guaranteed to win the Champions Cup. English teams won every year for six years in a row, starting with Liverpool in 1977 and 1978, Nottingham Forest in 1979 and 1980, Liverpool again in 1981, and Aston Villa in 1982. In that time you can pretty much bet that had we had the format we have today, all four semi-finalists every year would have been English.
Now this doesn't mean that the teams that finished second, third, or even fourth in their leagues were kept out of prestigious European competitions altogether. There was the UEFA Cup for them, and it mattered. Now it's called the Europa League and it's worthless. It's so worthless that the teams that finish worst of their groups in the group stage of the Champions League are just dumped into wherever the Europa League stands at that point and participate in that as a consolation prize. Why even bother? That's what happened to Chelsea in 2013, they fouled up in the Champions League, got dumped into the Europa League, and won that. Big deal, I doubt their supporters even care.
There was also a third competition, also worthwhile, called the Cup Winner's Cup. As the name implies it was for each nations' cup winners, unless that team had also won their league that year and then it was the runner-up who played. The last one was in 1999 because at that point it was just becoming embarrassing.
The quarter-finals for both the Champions League and the Europa Leagues for the 2015 seasons are set now. In the CL we have the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus and PSG whereas in the Europa League the best we can come up with are Napoli, Wolfsburg, and Sevilla. Who cares? Not me. -- Phil Ploquin, March 20th, 2015 [ Comments ] |
| | |  | The Greatest Quarterback of All Time | |
| Typically we evaluate a quarterback's effectiveness by only considering his passing game, using the standard Passer Rating formula:
As you can see, this formula considers pass completions, yards gained, touchdown passes, and interceptions versus pass attempts. It ignores rushing, which is then best expressed as rushing yards per game.
Here is a clip of the full ranking, which we can also tweak to give only a certain range of years and minimum number of pass attempts: (updated for the 2014-2015 NFL Season:)
Full ranking... Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson are so high up because they make so few mistakes, they throw very few interceptions. Intuitively, we'd expect Eli Manning, Brett Favre, and Dan Marino to be in the top 10 of this list while we wouldn't expect Steve Young or Philip Rivers to be so high up. Eli Manning has been Super Bowl MVP twice, yet his numbers leave him at #43 in the ranking. Brett Favre and Dan Marino (#22 and #24, respectively) were very reliable quarterbacks and extremely popular but they made a lot of mistakes. Explore the full rankings with game by game analysis on your Android device with the ScoreShelf Quarterback Passer Ratings app from the Google Play Store (totally free, and no ads)  -- Phil Ploquin, February 8th, 2015 [ Comments ] |
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| | | | Euro 2016 Qualifying Status | |
| A detailed look into Germany's qualifying group's reality reveals that the world champs are not in danger of missing Euro 2016.
The expanded format of the competition which now includes 24 teams in the finals makes it so you need only finish in the top two of your group of six teams to qualify directly, or finish third and win a playoff against an unseeded team (there's no chance they'd have to play The Netherlands, for instance, who are in a similar state of panic after their own unimpressive start.)
The Germans lost on the road against their strongest group rivals Poland, and then conceded a draw to the Irish at home. Before that they had a very unimpressive win at home against Scotland, but 3 points is 3 points. And next up in November, before a 5 months hiatus during which the players' form can change, they get to beat up on lowly Gibraltar while the other contenders compete for points against each other.
So, in order to miss out altogether, the Germans would have to lose in both Scotland and Ireland, fail to win at home against Poland, drop points against Georgia, or somehow fail to destroy Gibraltar. Meanwhile, all three of their rivals would have to have perfect records against spoiler Georgia and mostly play to a draw with one another. I wouldn't worry about it.
Of course, these results have not been entirely accidental. Retirements and injuries have this team looking more like the B squad of the team that won the 2014 World Cup, and also every team they take on is highly motivated to take down the champs. It's normal for championship teams to have a bit of a let down. Spain were just ridiculous in bucking that trend.
Let's look at where we stand, after the last games played on October 15th:
| | Group A | Pts | GD | The Netherlands slipped up losing in Iceland but they should still finish at least second in this group. Iceland will eventually drop points where they shouldn't drop points and end up third. If the Czechs win out at home and get at least a draw in a couple of road games they should win the group. | | Iceland | 9 | +8 | | Czech Republic | 9 | +4 | | The Netherlands | 3 | -1 | | Latvia | 2 | -3 | | Kazahkstan | 1 | -4 | | Turkey | 1 | -4 |
| | | Group B | Pts | GD | Belgium and Bosnia-Herzegovina were in Brazil this past summer so surely they must be expected to advance out of this group. Wales and Israel have other ideas though, and at least one of them should finish in the top two while the other competes with the Bosnians for the playoff spot. | | Wales | 7 | +2 | | Israel | 6 | +4 | | Belgium | 4 | +6 | | Cyprus | 3 | -1 | | Bosnia-Herzegovina | 2 | -1 | | Andorra | 0 | -10 |
| | | Group C | Pts | GD | As their run at the World Cup proved, Spain is no longer invincible and a loss to Slovakia confirms it. A reassuring trouncing of Macedonia later and we can safely assume Spain will be in France next summer. Slovakia and Ukraine get to duke it out for the second place, with Macedonia and Belarus ready to steal a point here and there. | | Slovakia | 9 | +4 | | Spain | 6 | +7 | | Ukraine | 6 | +2 | | FYR Macedonia | 3 | -4 | | Belarus | 1 | -4 | | Luxembourg | 1 | -5 |
| | | Group D | Pts | GD | Poland may have beaten the world champs at home, but they then conceded a draw against Scotland at home. The Irish meanwhile took a point from the Germans in Germany and they also beat Georgia in Georgia, which is not an easy feat. Scotland beat Georgia at home, lost in Germany, then tied in Poland. Anything can happen here but so far, advantage the Republic of Ireland. | | Poland | 7 | +9 | | Republic of Ireland | 7 | +8 | | Germany | 4 | -1 | | Scotland | 4 | = | | Georgia | 3 | +1 | | Gibraltar | 0 | -17 |
| | | Group E | Pts | GD | After their dismal showing in Brazil, England are doing a good job in this weak group. Slovenia unexpectedly beat Switzerland but the Swiss should recover and qualify directly anyway. Lithuania and Estonia are spoilers, though they could supplant Slovenia for the playoff spot. | | England | 9 | +8 | | Slovenia | 6 | +2 | | Lithuania | 6 | +1 | | Switzerland | 3 | +1 | | Estonia | 3 | -1 | | San Marino | 0 | -11 |
| | | Group F | Pts | GD | This is the weakest and most open group. Greece is not living up to its status as the seeded team and Northern Ireland is looking to capitalize. Anything can happen here, except for the Faeroe Islands qualifying. | | Northern Ireland | 9 | +5 | | Romania | 7 | +3 | | Finland | 4 | = | | Hungary | 4 | = | | Greece | 1 | -3 | | Faroe Isles | 0 | -5 |
| | | Group G | Pts | GD | This one is messy. Sweden and Russia should qualify with Austria taking the playoff place, but Montenegro could make trouble. | | Austria | 7 | +2 | | Russia | 5 | +4 | | Sweden | 5 | +2 | | Montenegro | 4 | +1 | | Moldova | 1 | -3 | | Liechtenstein | 1 | -6 |
| | | Group H | Pts | GD | Italy and Croatia are going to run away with this group while Norway tries to keep their lead over Bulgaria for the playoff spot. | | Croatia | 9 | +9 | | Italy | 9 | +4 | | Norway | 6 | +2 | | Bulgaria | 3 | -1 | | Malta | 0 | -6 | | Azerbaijan | 0 | -8 |
| | | Group I | Pts | GD | The shameful display in Serbia not withstanding, the competition in this group is fierce. Portugal handicapped themselves by losing at home to Albania but made up for it by winning in Denmark. Depending on what UEFA does with Serbia it's a fair bet that Portugal and Denmark emerge from this group with Serbia and Albania duking it out for the playoff spot. | | Denmark | 4 | = | | Albania | 4 | +1 | | Portugal | 3 | = | | Serbia | 1 | = | | Armenia | 1 | -1 | -- Phil Ploquin, October 17th, 2014 [ Comments ] |
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