To my amazement the Orange team has made it to the 2nd position on the FIFA list. Are the other national teams that bad?

Way to go MNb!! Looks like you & me share some things in  common both in chess & football! What you wrote are my sentiments exactly

Boy! i just gotta let out a huge sigh of relief here. Newcastle at last won their 1st game!! Owen scoring a goal. If they had lost i would surely be among the 1st calling for the head of Souness!! Great player he may have been....but great manager he isnt!! No doubt he turned round the fortunes of my long time favourite Rangers around up in Scotland.....but hey!! Its basically only Rangers & Celtic up there challenging for the scottich premiership!!

@Willempie, 

The only time I ever felt like rooting for Bayern Muenchen was when Man United beat them in the last two minutes of a game they'd dominated.  As for the other German teams, Hamburg was ok once (and that coincided with Kevin Keegan being on their side!), and I used to love Borrussia Moenchengladback (I'm sure I misspelled it), just for the sound of the name and how well they played in the 1980s.

Italian teams still stink of dirty liras.  I know that's not fair, but it's hard to watch AC Milan and not remember how they managed to get so many great players under one roof not so long ago.  (Kinda like Real Madrid today and Man United a few years ago!)

Well at least your're not rooting for Real (hahaha this week) or Chel$ki. Those two teams make you even want to root for German or Italian teams in Europe.

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Well, I see you're still living in the past. It's a new season with new heroes now...

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Ahh, a cheap shot from a guy in a glass house! - Does the US even have a soccer team except for the national one?

Smyslov_Fan, do you still believe in Real Madrid after yesterdays disaster against Lyon?

Maybe you were right, with that idea of the best league being the one with the most swedish national players! As Rennes and thus the french league seemed a clear winner, and Lyon's thrashing Madrid back to Reality also seems a good indicator, don't it?

I suspect that keeping track of the different clashes in the Champion's Cup etc should also give a good indication of which national league is the best. I'd suppose the French league might be a strong outsider considering the paragraph above, but personally I'd expect the Italian League, and especially Juventus, to win. - Provided we have some soccer fan with enough extra time to keep track of all the different results between clubs from: England-Italy-Spain-France-and perhaps Germany 

In my defense....

Yes, asking midfielders to make plays may be a tall demand, but that's what they're there for.  They should be able to pass the ball around and find/create the open space for the attack.  I don't necessarily expect them to score lots of goals (at the high school level, btw), but I do expect them to control the ball.  If my midfielders can control the middle third of the pitch, we win.  It works, too!

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That's a very tall demand isnt it? I think you would be lucky if you can even get 1! Also depending on how talented your players are as well.

Playmakers are a very special breed of footballers afterall (even in a moderate team). Best passers in the team, best technique, great creativity (to create goals), great tactical awareness & game reading ability & also be able to score a fair no. goals themselves. Oh Yes! A lot of fitness also since they are probably the busiest in the whole team - to pick up the ball from almost anywhere & to distribute it out for posession play or to start a counter attack etc.