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Dembele's Personal Highlights Against Juventus Were A Masterclass

mawspurs

Staff
Jun 29, 2003
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Spurs showed impressive bottle, fight and skill as they fought back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 against Juventus and the man who encapsulated it best was Mousa Dembele.

Read the full article at Sports Bible
 

fatpiranha

dismember
Jun 9, 2003
8,337
21,678
Dembele's performance last night (and in the match against Arsenal) was a thing of beauty. If anyone had scored a hat-trick I doubt they would have been able to get the match ball off of him.
 

TheChosenOne

A dislike or neg rep = fat fingers
Dec 13, 2005
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Dembele's performance last night (and in the match against Arsenal) was a thing of beauty. If anyone had scored a hat-trick I doubt they would have been able to get the match ball off of him.

I was genuinely astounded at the work he put in, he was doing stuff last night that I didn't even think he was capable of.

That's not doing the Moose down, he was above and beyond anything I'd seen him do before, rampaging and shrugging off attempted tackles but also getting to balls that I thought were lost causes
 

Sweetsman

Well-Known Member
Jan 30, 2011
6,673
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Give that his name is the Arabic equivalent of Moses, it wasn't surprising that he could make the Juventus midfield part like The Red Sea.
 
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davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
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The highlights of Dembélé's performance are awe-inspiring.The consistency, the control and the sheer strength and craft are incredible. And he passes forward, forward, forward. When he passes sideways, it's because there's teammate in a better position to advance the attack.

Most of it was Dembélé in familiar (fully fit) Dembélé mode, but the moment that raised my eyebrows was in the second half, when he hared back, showing real pace, to help out the defence, after he spotted a danger that most had missed. I had no idea he could move that fast. He generally doesn't have to, because his anticipation and strength permit him to look languid.

I love watching Dembélé or the same reason I loved watching Carrick and Molby and Huddlestone and Pirlo and Xabi Alonso. I have a thing for central midfielders who use vision and craft to slow the game down for themselves.
 

gloryglory

Well-Known Member
Oct 19, 2004
1,537
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I love watching Dembélé or the same reason I loved watching Carrick and Molby and Huddlestone and Pirlo and Xabi Alonso. I have a thing for central midfielders who use vision and craft to slow the game down for themselves.

Me too. That Modric fellow wasn't bad either.

I wonder what kind of career Winks will go on to have. He has something of what you say but I don't know if he has quite got the technique and the imagination and confidence to reach the level of any of the above (Huddlestone aside - he was an astonishing long passer and he certainly slowed the game down but he didn't have the intelligence or mobility to be named in that breath)
 

davidmatzdorf

Front Page Gadfly
Jun 7, 2004
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(Huddlestone aside - he was an astonishing long passer and he certainly slowed the game down but he didn't have the intelligence or mobility to be named in that breath)

Good call on Modric.

I always felt that way too much attention was paid to Huddlestone's flashy long passes. They weren't what won him his place. His unique skill was his short-passing, specifically, his one-touch instant recycling of the ball around midfield.

Being totally two-footed and having to ability not to telegraph which foot he was going to play an incoming ball until the last split-second would routinely wrong-foot opposing players, which opened space for the teammates on the receiving end of his precise, easy-to-control passes.

That's why he belongs in that list, that's why managers and teammates rate him more highly than fans and it's related to what Winks has to offer as well: his passes roll precisely along the ground, they do not bounce and bobble. It makes it so much easier for the player on the end of the pass to control the ball and choose an option.

It's not the same as what Dembélé does, but it's similarly subtle and often missed in favour of the assists and goals. The television highlights of the Juventus match were particularly egregious in this regard the other day: there were absolutely no shots of the dominant player of the match - Dembélé - and scarcely any of the second-most-influential - Eriksen. All we got were shots, goals and misses. That game was played out in midfield.
 

gloryglory

Well-Known Member
Oct 19, 2004
1,537
302
Good call on Modric.

I always felt that way too much attention was paid to Huddlestone's flashy long passes. They weren't what won him his place. His unique skill was his short-passing, specifically, his one-touch instant recycling of the ball around midfield.

Being totally two-footed and having to ability not to telegraph which foot he was going to play an incoming ball until the last split-second would routinely wrong-foot opposing players, which opened space for the teammates on the receiving end of his precise, easy-to-control passes.

That's why he belongs in that list, that's why managers and teammates rate him more highly than fans and it's related to what Winks has to offer as well: his passes roll precisely along the ground, they do not bounce and bobble. It makes it so much easier for the player on the end of the pass to control the ball and choose an option.

It's not the same as what Dembélé does, but it's similarly subtle and often missed in favour of the assists and goals. The television highlights of the Juventus match were particularly egregious in this regard the other day: there were absolutely no shots of the dominant player of the match - Dembélé - and scarcely any of the second-most-influential - Eriksen. All we got were shots, goals and misses. That game was played out in midfield.

Agree with your final paragraph about the TV highlights, but I'm not sure I buy the Huddlestone assessment: if anything, I think the fans generally rated him higher than managers. If top managers rated him in the bracket of the other players you listed, I'm afraid he wouldn't have spent 8 years at WHL, any more than Carrick or Modric did. And injuries notwithstanding, he wouldn't be a Championship player now having just turned 31.
 
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