From the Editor (John Bull)
The season is being kicked off as you read this editorial, and the whole Arda is slowly coming to terms with the fact that it is once more time for Arda Cup. It is truly a time to cease all other, less important, tasks and ventures. Arda Cup is a genuine celebration of sportsmanship, valour and virtue, plus a dazzling show-off of talent, skills and cunning. All that is displayed for the whole Arda by both the greatest heroes and vilest villains of all time - in front of live audiences!
It is time for
Celebration! (Be sure to check the feet-work in the beginning!)
~*~
The first round of friendlies looks pretty interesting. Which of the dazzling attacks are on fire from the very beginning, which rock-solid looking defences actually hold from the first game on, which goalkeepers claim their superiority over the forwards from the get-go? Which teams have the balance right, which need to go back to the drawing board, which players rise to the occasion against expectations, which players leave room to enhance their play in comparison to their salaries?
The world of the friendlies is a world of its own as many teams will do different kind of testing: some teams will play in over-friendly terms against some teams but with full seriousness against some others, some teams want to take it easy against a team they meet in the group-phase (or they think they will meet after it) not to reveal all their cards while others in a same situation might go for the mental supremacy and display their strength, and some might just wish to give their goalie a tough rehersal and defend lazily when others might go on trying a universal defence making also the forwards play defence first etc.
Which brings us to the odd comment made by the TTN just yesterday. It is a prime example of how mediocre journalists try to pick on their professional colleagues trying to make themselves look good - but who actually only harm their own credibility.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by TTN Network
Some of our competitors find predicting friendlies to be all together silly and pointless, and TTN acknowledges friendly results must be looked at with a grain of salt. However, when we promise to bring coverage from every angle, we mean every angle. Friendlies can go a long way in determining how teams plan to play and win during the tournament, and of course, how they perform against other Arda-quality teams.
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As you can see from above, we agree with the TTN that even if the friendlies are a world of their own, there can be some things an observant analyst may pay heed to and from which some predictions can be made concerning the real games to follow suite. But that has nothing to do with a network's or media-house's willingness or interest in making predictions for the first round of the friendlies. Or to the helpfulness of such more or less random predictions.
More helpful to the Arda Cup follower, especially to the phantasy-gamer, would be fex. pointing towards the fact that many, if not most, top-paid forwards are not even near the worth of their salaries if you compare the relative worth with their team-mates with over ten times smaller pocket-books. And thus one should pay heed to how they perform during the friendlies: do they score or assist, do they play it with half-speed or with full effort - and against what kind of defences etc. It is also clear that goalies and defenders with 1 million paycheck must be - again in relative terms - more worthwhile than their 20 million counterparts (even if some of them will be getting points scoring from free-kicks and corners etc.) or especially to their 5-8 million colleagues. So watch for solid defences, not only at the salaries etc.
Compared to fex. above-mentioned points, the "off the hat" predictions of 15% chance a particular first friendly ending 1-0 to one team are more or less irrelevant.
When something
can be said. The AKM will be there to say it.