I sure wish I could find relevance in your 50% occupancy charge argument but for the life of me I can't fathom how it is relevant. No one needs to know the full facts about Roma home attendance when Serie A home attendances are generally so much lower. Quite how that factors into the context of Champions League, god knows. I mean, no one talks about our poor atmospheres against Burnley, West Brom earlier this season or Stoke at the weekend in the context of our own European nights because it's irrelevant and tonight, as it was for Roma against Barcelona, the fact that they've lost a few times at home this season won't matter much to them. A wholly different context you see. And again, I've yet to see any evidence of the 'superiority' of PSG over Roma. Don't allow the fact that they paid the most expensive transfer fee in history for an overrated Edd The Duck lookalike who's biggest claim to fame is being the third best Barcelona attacker of the last 5 years behind Suarez and Messi to cloud your perception of them. They've created the grand total of f**k all headlines under Ancelotti, Blanc and Emery with a squad full of players that on paper consist of players who are past their peak or haven't actually achieved very much in their careers. What was it Thomas Muller called PSG a few months ago? 'Gassed up' by the press? And so it has shown numerous times in recent seasons. As I've said before - charlatans. That's all they are.
I said in an earlier post (if you haven't read it) that great sides are ones that capture the imagination of the public and/or influence the game in a way that no other team has. They also have an ability to capture the best footballing elements from the country they're from as well as sweeping all before them in domestic competition as well as continental. Real Madrid may be awesome in the sheer size of the club and the relentless way they have picked up the top trophy in recent years but they have done so by imitating the actions of a conglomerate - sucking in all the best talents from around the world, siphoning them away from their continental rivals and putting them together to play a brand that is effective and geared towards Europe only but in a way that makes them not just uninteresting but very hollow as well. It's kind of sad that a club of their size only exists to compete in one competition alone. That their whole strategy and season is geared towards the Champions League and the Champions League alone is calculated but cynical. When it's Real Madrid and they have the resources (and more) to do something like Barcelona did, Bayern in 2013 or even Man Utd in 1999 and scoop up every other honour available to them, it's hard not to say that there is something very false about claims of greatness. In the time they've dominated the Champions League they've only won the two team La Liga once and a solitary Copa Del Rey since 2011. It's a kind of gutless attitude that insists on spewing its resources onto one competition alone and so it comes as no surprise that the claims in recent years of the Champions League having turned stale and boring have arisen during Madrid's dominance of the competition. They're just using the competition to create a slightly fraudulent image of greatness about themselves when domestically they're anything but. That they do so by hook or crook on the filed only makes that worse.
Sorry I missed this post completely. I'm not really interested in the discussion anymore to be honest
, but for the sake of closure, here we go again haha. If you honestly think Roma are a superior side to PSG, then fair enough, there's not much else I can say. Dislike them all you like though, for me PSG's squad is significantly stronger and I'm sure the vast majority would agree. As for their lack of history, well, history didn't seem to be a very important factor when you put beating Manchester City (of all clubs, one with less history in European competitions than PSG) over eliminating the French, Italian and German champions in succession - among them 5 UCL final appearances in the past 8 years alone. So I'm sorry, it seems to me you can be overly romantic when necessary - with a rhetoric I most definitely admire and I'm often in agreement with - but then conveniently leave that aside when it suits your argument. As for Thomas Muller's opinion, I wonder what he'd have to say about how much he fears playing in that mythical Stadio Olimpico...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng_oSGPs6SAI mentioned Roma's occupancy rate to dispel any myths about their fan base and their home stadium. They're far from a "feared" side. I added to this other facts which I consider relevant - such as that just one season ago they were beaten 3-0 in there by a very mediocre Porto side, one that fared far worse in the Portuguese league than they did this season (they've recently been crowned Portuguese champions). So, in a nutshell, Roma's fans are nothing special, their home record isn't particularly great and their recent history in there isn't exactly glorious. One good run doesn't really change any of it. Deportivo La Coruña once also had an incredible comeback against a far superior side but that never changed their minor status.
As for great teams, I was referring to my question whether you consider the Liverpool of the late 70's to feature among those. For in an earlier post you made it sound as if only clubs with a particularly attacking, or attractive type of football truly deserved a place among the 'greats'. We know that on pitch behavior isn't really a measure for either of us, otherwise you wouldn't (as I do) place Guardiola's Barcelona in that list.
But anyway, whilst I agree that this Real Madrid is far less interesting than that epic Barcelona, I disagree with the very notion that a club that wins 3 in 4 isn't a great one, but then again the bar, for me, need not be that high. Ask yourself this very basic question: what would you be saying about this achievement if that was LFC's? I'm sure your words would paint a very different picture, even if that was accompanied by zero league success. If you really set the bar of 'great' teams as high as to include only treble winning squads as your three examples here, then again I must ask myself whether you think Paisley's LFC ever reached that level. Probably not - maybe Fagan's, if we're willing to consider the League Cup?
I sure don't agree with the idea that Real Madrid's superior performance in Europe is something done by design. It implies that any club with similar resources could do as much, but the reality is that they don't. Others spend more - see PSG's "impostors" or your amazing Manchester City - and still fall short. And make no mistake, for both of those clubs, winning the Champions League would be far more important for their ends than winning their leagues. It took Abramovich's many years of heavy spending to finally reach his ultimate goal. So really, this for me is just a fantastic rhetorical effort to discard what in truth are incredible achievements. And that is leaving aside the fact they actually won the both the UCL and La Liga last season.