Quote from: Asiska02 on Today at 09:16:15 PM

Quote from: ILuckyGuyI on Today at 06:03:49 PM

About Haaland in the Champions League, I can say that he has been quite impressive in this tournament also. He scored so many goals here last season. Maybe he couldn't make much impact on the semi finals and the finale but I can't overlook his overall effort just because of that.

Manchester City are playing great as a team. They don't rely on only one player such as Haaland. The semi finals and the finale were great examples for that. It is the truth that Haaland is an important piece of the puzzle. But Guardiola has a system working like a clockwork now. Even when Haaland isn't in-form the rest of the players can make up for that.

This is a very good strategy that many teams are unable to decode from Pep Guardiola till now. He always have a way to play around with the team he’s facing by using a single player to lure the attention of their opponents to while others will do the work of this player. He has been doing that for quite sometime now and always get it right. This is perfection and he can’t be counter with easily through this method. Haaland has not lose form yet and I see him doing great things this season too, looking from his first match this season against Burnley, he could be the highest goal scorer again by the end of this season.

But this isn't really a strategic element that Pep Guardiola is deliberately including into his game. It is rather the genius of Haaland that forces the opponent to keep him covered for the full distance and in every position because he knows how to strikes from everywhere within a blink of an eye. This is what Guardiola and Manchester City bought when they paid the transfer fee for him. There is no magic or genius on behalf of Guardiola that Haaland forces several players at the same time to prevent him from scoring. But I think this is what extraordinarily good players are all about.

You can also take Mbappe here and guess what, the opponent is forced to play defensively more careful than if a team attacks without Mbappe being part of their offense. But I agree that this is so impressive how Haaland is effective even when he doesn't score a goal because all other players get chances they would otherwise not have gotten.