^^Yea he does. Hamsik is a very good player. Napoli has some good players.
JUst watched Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid. Heartbreaking defeat for Atletico. Real Madrid scored a last minute penalty to win the game 2-1. Simao had equalized for Atletico with a fine free kick with about 3 minutes of normal time left. Then in the 5th of injury time Heitinga makes the most stupid tackle to bring down Drenthe. Higuain slotted home the penalty. Hietinga is a poor defender though. I have seen him alot for Holland and Atletico and he doesnt impress me. He played for PSV before moving to Spain didnt he?
He came from Ajax, man. Product of their youth.
You know what the funny thing is?
I completely agree with you. I rate Heitinga highly, however. Here comes the explanation train:
Usually he plays as a defender. He's alright. Does his job. HOWEVER, he's prone to very unsophisticated play. Giving things away at crucial moments.
Now, back when we were qualifying for EURO2k8, the Dutch side played against I-don't-know-who-anymore and out of necessity Heitinga was put as a DM playing just before the defensive line.
I tell you, best two matches I ever saw Heitinga play. And here's why. He's good defensively. He spots interception possibilities, his positional play is good, he's alert, he's good physically. Now that makes him technically a good defender, but since he's still prone to fucking stupid mistakes, he sometimes lays a player down that wasn't dangerous, or wanders completely out of position. Those errors are crucial and unforgiving as a defender.
As a defensive midfielder, however, it's not *that* bad since he's got more players surrounding him. And then also, Heitinga is, certainly for a defensive player, quite decent technically. He's got a good shot, can be quite dangerous in the opponent's box (with headers and scrappy play. Not flashy actions of course) a good pass and actually pretty good vision and game intelligence. But he can almost never use those attributes as a defender!
Sometimes he played on right back and you could see some of these qualities shining through, but as a central defender he's curtailed by his position. When playing in Ajax' first, he was always a centre back out of pure necessity. This may have caused people to view him as a pure centre back. I'm still waiting for a coach to realize Johhny's real potential, actually. I hope Atletico's staff can see his qualities in training and experiment with him. I don't know how they're staffed regarding defenders, so he may not even get a chance.
Either that, or I'm severely missing something.
bacho2 said:
Lavezzi just scored second goal beating Juve.
Juve does seem to struggle a bit. Napoli is a class squad, though. Hamsik and Lavezzi are really some great names in the making imo.
I had a friendly bet on Juve though, so I'm pissed they lost. In another way it's also somewhat painful to see the Old Lady straddle like this.