International Friendlies - August 9 [P][R]

[Adi]

i hate cross-sports comparisons, but he is like lebron james in that he moves like, and has the skill-set of, someone much smaller. he has always had that, but he might be able to work out as an attacking player at the highest level.

You don't even have to make cross-sports comparisons.  We can just compare him to someone like Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

[Adi]

There is no flair in the midfield and no creativity.

Yeah I hear a lot about Ganso and apparently he should be getting the same hype as Neymar but the media is just overlooking him.  I haven't seen him play enough to draw a conclusion but he'll probably pan out.

I'll tell you what the problem for Brazil is.  They are asking outrageous transfer fees for their players.  European teams like Ajax and PSV who were known for turning 250K Brazilians into world-class players are now passing on paying 10-15 million for Brazilians who may not pan out.  The risk to rewards ratio doesn't make sense anymore. 

Brazilian clubs needs to relax and bring down their asking prices if they want to see their youth develop like it used to.

[neymars hair]

very true, but i don't formally recognize that zlatan exists as a person. an enemy of oguchi onyewu is an enemy of mine  

[neymars hair]

ganso is good, really good. he is one of those players that needs a touch and .5s to split a defense in half.

didn't have the greatest copa america. not that he played poorly, he just had a hard time really working himself into the game and was invisible at times. his positioning was off, and you could probably blame his lay-off due to injury for that.

when he found the ball, he was magic

Ganso skills - Copa America 2011!

[Adi]

Impressive from those clips... some good stuff there.  The problem is his club team won't let him leave for anything less than 20 million.  The guy should already have 2 years of European football under his belt.  He probably won't leave for another year if they want this type of money for him.

[neymars hair]

i think the biggest thing with santos is that they want to retain neymar and ganso for the club world cup.

the brazilian serie a isn't really the worst league in the world. if anything, it'll keep them 2-3 extra years from their early, discoteca-fueled decline.