You mean when the likes of Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus, Ac Milan, Inter, Manchester United, Arsenal, PSV, Ajax would all compete for the top prizes and all bar really Real were on an equal playing field without ridiculous financial doping. No it wasn't hard at all... When United won the treble in 99, four of their group stage games were against Bayern Munich and Barcelona. That would never happen in today's competition. You get at max two big clubs in each group.
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Who says it wouldn't happen today? If the draws see it, then it can happen. It's also a bit different format today as UEFA keeps adapting and changing. The 99 treble was a rare occurrence at what's possible in this tournament but if you look at it on the norm, it's much harder today in the layout and games played than it was yesterday.
You know the net spend for United since the start of the premier league has been around 10 million a season. When United spend big, they do spend big 'Rooney, Veron, Ferdinand, Berbatov, Ruud' etc, but it is few and far between. Nobody remembers that Sir Alex picked up Vidic, Evra, Park, Ronaldo 'relatively', Hernandez and Van Der Sar for less than the cost of Andy Carroll combined.
Net spending just shows Man U are good with negotiations and transfers, never said they weren't. You can look at any big club in any league and see where clubs have done good and done bad on deals. If you sell off a big player, you can spend on youth and still come out at the end of the season with a very positive balance in the books (or negative) and that is also thanks to the success of that season's campaign. I follow the Portuguese Liga quite a bit and I can tell you year after year Porto are always in the green where as Benfica and Sporting, the 2 Lisbon giants, are constantly in the red. This past season saw Sporting Lisbon do a major shakeup where as Benfica, still in the red, generally goes to their fan club funds to get out of the red (unfair in my book).
I know SAF picked up Ronaldo for dirt cheap (amongst others, but CRON was a KILLER deal!!!), that's mostly because Sporting Lisbon is absolutely horrible at negotiations (they just sold off Joao Perriera for under 4mil to Valencia just this week, which is a tragedy!!) CRON looked to be a good player but not the star he became so Man U board was certainly happy to get what Real Madrid paid for him. Today's day is very much different as well as clubs have been spending ridiculous money on players. And I do mean ridiculous money! It's why in recent years, especially this past season across all euro leagues they are calling it the plastic trophy era...
I made the comment based on the usual response I get that Mourinho has this huge amount of cash to play with, which he normally doesn't.
Great achievement yes, but Porto like Chelsea this year had so much luck going for them it was ridiculous. If Scholes goal is correctly awarded on route to your CL final, you wouldn't have won it.
Porto won everything 2 years in a row under Mou. League title, league cup, UEFA cup his 1st year. Then he does it better by winning league title, league cup and CL the very next year. Mou then moved over to Chelsea and brought them success the way he did, winning everything but the CL and had he stayed there longer without Roman sticking his nose where he shouldn't have, Chelsea would have won the CL.
I'm not going to cry over poor calls because all it takes is 1 wrongly called offsides call or a disallowed goal to completely change how something went down.
You'll actually find towards the end of his tenure he didn't have a great relationship with the players. Particularly a disgruntled John Terry was one of the main reasons he was sacked.
Who has a good relationship with John Terry in the first place??? lol
The main reason why Mou stopped being Chelsea's coach is the dispute between him and the club owner Roman A. It's not about a player(s) having a pissing contest with him. You can be rest assured that when Roman brought in Schevchenko and wanted him to play on the norm, someone who Mou didn't want at all, that was the biggest reason for conflict with the 2 parties and the ultimate reason for the split.
Only in his second year was Inter even pushed for a Serie A title. It should have been a walk in the park with absolutely no competition coming from any team except Roma and AC, of which Inter had a far better team than both. Kaka was also mostly rubbish post 07 for AC and Pato still hasn't lived up to his hype 4 years later.
He also didn't need to spend alot of money because the team was already there. The inclusion of Sneijder and Eto'o were the icing on an already very god team. Also Eto'o only left at the start of 11/12 season and the main reason for Inters failings post mourinho where down to having that basket case Benitez installed as the manager.
I disagree. His 1st year there was quite the competition regardless it ending in both Juve and ACM both 10 pts behind at the end of the season, and the Cup too was some competition. Mou had a big problem dealing with a flopping Quaresma amongst others while dealing with some big trouble (like Balotelli and Adriano). He also is the reason why Davide Santon was found lost in the youth ranks (and played phenomenally under Mou).
Remember that he had this amazing undefeated home record for over 9 years!! I thought that would end in Italy as the Milan Derby was probably one of his toughest achievements for his record to keep going.
It wasn't just Benitez being the coach. Inter went through some other managers too but the players were a shadow of their former selves, still are to this day!! Aside from being a Mourinho fanboy, it's amazing what he pulls out of players when under him. Absolutely amazing.
Mate this is just absolutely silliness. How the hell do you improve on their forward line of Ronaldo, Benezema, Higuain and Di Maria? It's easy for you to say he wasn't there for that but like with Inter, why the hell do you need to spend more money on that?!!!
All you've really said is that he's walked into arguably some of the best teams in the world and won trophies with them. Nobody is disputing he's a very good coach, but he's not miles ahead of anybody. Certainly not even close to Sir Alex and to an extent Wenger, both who've had to work with financial constraints over the last 7 years.
On paper things looked great but Higuain got hurt and Benzema was not doing what he needed to that 1st year. Again, Mou complained heavily due to lack of striker options and there was a big pissing contested between him and one of the heads (who is no longer there). Ronaldo I think became a better team player under Mou. Di Maria as well (I saw all of Di Maria at Benfica, phenomenal player which simply got better under Mou). As a Madrid fan, they were fairly solid under Pellegrini but under Mou, it's such a better club and I'm glad he signed an extension and wants to create this era which has already started. I'm putting my money on a treble next season, I totally can see it happen.
He has walked in to some big teams but that's not always a guarantee as you can see with any big spending club that doesn't show up. But note again, I'm a bit biased since I think Mou is the best of the best. With time he just keeps proving it and eventually your opinion will change
Also I think you're out of order on your comments about Guardiola. It's one thing to be like Mourinho and being a coach your whole life, but Pep had effectively gone from being an international footballer, to head coach of Barcelona in the space of three years. With a young family that can't be easy, especially with the stress of coaching such a sublime group of players. He'll be back but he deserves a couple of years off.
Mourinho played footy as well. He knew he wasn't good enough and decided to go towards coaching, which he massively excelled at. Smart choice too and very wise of him to realize he's not good enough to be a top player. And Mourinho has a family as well so it's not just poor lil Pep here...
To bring it back on topic for EPL and to confirm a bit what I was getting at... If Pep didn't run away and was supposedly taking a break, then why is he open to work in the EPL, as in NOW?!
