FC Barcelona Thread

ofcourse they are, Gerd he's not the only talent in that predicament who would in most cases start for anyone else but Barcelona, Thiago, Fabregas, Mascherano come to mind, Pedro also.

these lot could get into most sides barring the one they actually play for, they've made the decision that

Squad Role in this Barcelona team > First team role anywhere else.
 
Yes but the players i mentioned are (or were) among the top 20 players in the world.
Eto'o was the best striker in the world before Falcao emerged.
Zlatan: among the 10 best players in the world.
Villa: according to FourFourTwo was in 2011 the fourth best player in the world. That was maybe exagerated, but he is one hell of a player.
 
In light of Barca's never ending supply of talent ya gotta give Brendan Rodgers one thing; he is right to keep some of his focus on recruiting and developing local talent.

P.s. Gerd I heard about the BeNe league trial that was approved by UEFA to in some format combine the women's competitions of the Netherlands and Belgium. Apparently if it goes well, they would consider shifting to a similar format for the Men's teams. Seems like a good deal to me. Both the Netherlands and Belgium seem to be excellent at developing young players but simply don't have the market to retain them or keep foreign talent longer than their growing years (Ronalda, Romario at PSV, Suarez at Ajax, etc...I'm sure Belgian teams have their examples).

The ability to retain local talent is a massive benefit to La Liga and so it should be to the Premier League. Would be nice if smaller countries like Belgium and the Netherlands already known for their excellent youth training would be better able to somehow compete further down the road of these players careers. But alas, that is perhaps a discussion more fitted for a separate thread.
 
I went to the City-Barca youth game a while back and from what I saw Barca can look forward to seeing David Babunski and a really short fullback ((his name escapes me) coming through eventually.

They also snatched Roman Angel off us who is very talented. Bit of a David Villa about him.
 
La Liga is so boring....I wish there were other sides that could challenge Barcelona.

Maybe you could same the same about PL? Although you dont get many upsets in La Liga like you do in PL.
 
The thing with Villa is that he's on the verge of starting losing physical abbilities, he has only one year left of contract and he's coming back from a very important injury.

All this combined, and the fact that the team is playing brilliantly without him, means he spends a lot of time in the bench. But I'm sure he will end up contributing a lot to the team, as he always did. He is a wolrd class player and one of the best finishers around.

Now, I don't know if he will continue next season. Due to Messi central and dominant position in the pitch, Villa ends up playing in the wing. He has adapted to it, but he lacks the speed and dribbling that the team needs there. Iniesta has the dribbling but noth the speed nor the finishing. Alexis lacks dribbling and Pedro is the usual starter because of his amazing teamwork and pressure. But I can see Barça going for Neymar, because it fits like a glove in the left wing. And that could mean selling Villa, because he only has 1 year of contract left and his market value will diminish a lot. And there's the doubt if he has fully recovered from the injury, lots of players never do completely in those cases. So that's why he's having hard time reaching the starting eleven week in week out.

My guess is he will be playing more minutes during the season and who knows what will happen this summer. No matter what, he's a great pro, a great player and someone who is really loved by the fans.
 
Benni said:
La Liga is so boring....I wish there were other sides that could challenge Barcelona.

Maybe you could same the same about PL? Although you dont get many upsets in La Liga like you do in PL.
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I really don't agree with this. No upsets? Then why is Real Madrid 16 points away from Barcelona? What happens is that Barcelona is playing absolutely brilliant football, and there have been lots of matches in which Barcelona had to come back to win. Atletico is up there and there are lots of teams that can make it to Europe, with Malaga, Betis, Levante, Valencia, Sevilla and Rayo fighting hard.

It's bloody hard to snap two or more consecutive wins in La Liga, in fact. Boring? It depends, if you want to have an exciting race for the title, it might be. But if you really watch matches of the league it's as exciting as any other league out there. I watch a lot of Premier and Serie A football, and I have to suffer a lot of boring matches too.

That said, I guess it was very boring too when Arsenal won the Premier league undefeated, or the Serie A as well, because no one can beat Juventus.
 
But barca and Real Madrid monopoly and tv deal money isnt fair on other teams in league.

It isn't a level playing field. And its always barca or real who win league. No other teams get a look in.
 
Barcelona plays with 7-8 homegrown players regularly, so the tv money right now is not the main factor. City, Chelsea and PSG have more money than barcelona, so I guess it is also unfair then? It is in the hands of spanish clubs to change it if they want. Barcelona and Madrid will always have more resources, the same way Milan had a lot of money in the late 80s coming from berlusconi and they could sign whoever they wanted.

I understand you and it would be great to have a more level fight for the first place, but barcelona success is NOT based primarily on money, but on the work of 10 years of forming players. Anyway, the spanish federation is a joke and yes Tv deal suould be distributed differently.
 
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Good point drek but I don't think Sanchez, alves, the kid from arse and villa were exactly bargain bin buys.
You don't see those type of purchases outside the top two and was it Malaga
And we see we're that got them...
 
Alex, i still think Benni has a valifd point.
Ok Barcelona's success is due largely to great youth players. But there are other clubs who have great youth players (Le Havre, Ajax, Genk) and can't hold them because they don't have enough money.
Besides that, if one team has an amazing generation of homegrown players, what is the only thing other teams can do ? Buy good players. All the other teams (except for Real Madrid) simply don't have the money. Barcelona's yout worh is amazing, but they still have an unfair advantage...you can argue about that as much as you want Alex, but that is undeniable...

I don't agree with Benni that La Liga is boring. IMO La Liga is by far the strongest league, just look at the results of the Spanish teams in Europe...says it all.
 
Benni said:
But barca and Real Madrid monopoly and tv deal money isnt fair on other teams in league.

It isn't a level playing field. And its always barca or real who win league. No other teams get a look in.
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The "second best" teams in Spain, behind Barcelona and Real Madrid, are still kicking severely ass in the UEFA competitions. They are also playing the most entertaining football in general and by that I specifically mean the "second best" teams. Barcelona might play with style, but they are also playing "keep the ball" to a point where neutral watchers are becoming annoyed. (Don't even get me started on Spain's national team..) Teams like Valencia, Atlético Madrid, Sevilla and Athletic Bilbao have given a huge amount of great entertainment football in European cups, some recently and some a while back. This is high quality "luxury" football for the neutral watchers where players with sometimes superior technical abilities compared to the English league are giving breathtaking performances against teams we sometimes expect them to lose against.

For pure football entertainment and football aesthetics I never look for Premier League or England for a match. It's always Spain, Portugal or even South American leagues. Premier League is like footballs version of USA, a mixed soup and the end result isn't the best. Premier League and especially the English national team would have benefited from much stricter foreign player rules, even EU players. The English national team has been a joke for a long time, and it has only gotten worse since PL became the melting pot of the football world.
 
Also the uneven tv money has been an advantage to Barcelona. For instance they signed Adriano and Daniel Alves for a combined fee of almost 40m euros. Similarly they signed both Jordy Alba and David Villa for almost 50m euros from Valenica. In all of these cases it was a double blow for the competitiveness of La Liga, not only did it make Barcelona stronger, but more critically, it made other teams (and at the time these were top 6 sides in Spain) weaker.

Valencia and Sevilla couldnt really afford to replace these players as (for amongst other reasons) their TV money is minimal compared to the big two in Spain. So their squads got weaker and weaker, while the other two got stronger and stronger. The payments from Barcelona were also staggered, so Valencia and Sevilla couldnt immediately re-invest in their teams using the money from the Villa/Alba and Adriano/Alves sales since it wasnt in their accounts, and - unlike clubs in other leagues - there were finanical problems at these clubs so they found it harder to get selling clubs to agree for staggered fees. Instead of a team like Sevilla or Valencia being able to compete with Barcelona they were weakend by them, reducing the competitive nature of the league - 10 to 15 years ago both of these sides could try and build squads to challenge Real and Barca, but they simply cannot do this anymore, the squads are dismantled by the big two before they are complete.
 
La Liga being 'boring' was badly written by me I apologise because I do watch it - it's just the end of season outcomes that bore me.

And lets be honest, we know either Real Madrid or Barcelona are going to win the title before a ball is even kicked at beginning of season. That is what bores me I guess.

Someone needs to step in and make it a level playing field, make sure that EVERY TEAM gets equal tv revenue.

This is why Sevilla president has been making lots of noise - saying its unfair. He is right. And we wont see a team apart from Barcelona or Real Madrid win a Spanish title for a very, very long time unless it changes.

So that for me is pointless - because at least in Germany, England and Italy there is 3 or 4 teams who can push for a league win.

Not the case in Spain.

Also am I right in saying that only 9 teams have ever won La Liga? If so, that is shocking really. And Real Madrid have won it 32 times! Barcelona 21 times!

Compare that to England where 23 teams have won the league title!
 
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BPL Is no better w the Manchester teams winning. It's just ppl opinions ! Ligue1 is a league that challenges more n Bundes as well.
 
bebo said:
BPL Is no better w the Manchester teams winning. It's just ppl opinions ! Ligue1 is a league that challenges more n Bundes as well.
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I agree, the difference is that every 3-5 years in England one of the title challengers switches places with another, whilst United stay put.

Seriously, maybe some people got riled up that this might be Chelsea's year and after 5-6 games maybe even believed it. But it all came clear by day 10 that... it's City or United. By day 19 it's gotten to "City has a big hill to climb".

It's a very entertaining league and maybe the one I watch most as a whole, it leaves La Liga wanting in terms of TV rights, but I don't quite buy into the "anything can happen" tagline.

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I read articles the whole Villarreal story from last year - how certain last-minute events in their last 4-5 league games have ALL gone wrong for them... and it's not only a heartbreaking story, but a really GOOD relegation story.

I'm partially invested year-in, year-out in the PL relegation story... because it's much more widely available, discussed, English blogs/sites highlight it, decent journalism...
This Villarreal story would have surpassed a lot if them. But I can't read Spanish well and the 4 affiliated Spanish papers are ridiculous, so had I not read those articles I would have discarded the story as simply "oh and V'rreal relegated - just like Deportivo the previous year. Meh".

The PL is way more memetic [as in "idea/news that spreads"] and has more and better known lore [supporters etc.] than La Liga and thus often it seems more interesting. I believe in a way it IS because when someone tried to build a giant in Spain [Malaga] it failed miserably [Chelsea and City are doing just fine]. But the media seems to overstate it. And FIFA seems to understate it.
 
Benni said:
And lets be honest, we know either Real Madrid or Barcelona are going to win the title before a ball is even kicked at beginning of season. That is what bores me I guess.
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I "knew" Juve was going to win Serie A last year, and I think they will this year as well. Milan was the only team keeping up with them, and they are nothing left of.. a pathetic shadow of last years version to be honest.

In PL we know United and City will battle it out, and Chelsea was an outsider. The only real drama there is the "magic" 3rd and 4th place battle. No different than Spain in other words. History is unimportant, LFC is gone, Arsenal is gone, Chelsea is in limbo, Aston Villa is gone. It's going to be United and City (possibly Chelsea) for a LOOOOOOOOOONG time.

In Portugal you can assume that Benfica and Porto will be a horse head in front of the rest.

In Germany you know Bayern and Dortmund are most likely to win, and I think Leverkusen will fall behind soon (but I may be wrong ofcourse).

So, in all honesty.. the league table is actually the LEAST exciting part about football in general. It is the individual battles, where smaller teams can be giantkillers and heroes for a day that makes it all exciting.

Even in the WC, Euros and Copa you can for the most part guess at least three of the four last remaining teams of the tournament, but it doesn't make it less fun. There's always a surprise team, and there's always a small chance for two surprises.

Besides, the playing field will never be "level" as long as Real Madrid are allowed to have unlimited, interest free loans indefinitely at the Bank of Madrid. They should have been set bankrupt a long time ago, but then there would most likely have been a civil war in Spain around the same time. It baffles me that they're allowed to keep purchasing these ultra expensive players though... Madrid fans would benefited from some mid-table struggling a few years while the club worked off some debt, as they're almost as intolerable and disillusioned as Liverpool fans (generalization with no puns intended).

La Liga could have a third member of the top flight, but somehow Malaga got butchered for having bad economy, but still better economy than Real Madrid. This doesn't smell good at all. Let's hope they can cope with the CL ban, and ride out the storm without losing too many players. A team like Malaga that could lessen the gap along with Atletico would have benefited La Liga tremendously.
 
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Godotelli said:
I went to the City-Barca youth game a while back and from what I saw Barca can look forward to seeing David Babunski and a really short fullback ((his name escapes me) coming through eventually.

They also snatched Roman Angel off us who is very talented. Bit of a David Villa about him.
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Good to hear.:BOP:
 
Barcelona
Atletico
Real
Sevilla
Valencia
Malaga

I think thats enough "top" teams.

I would add to Sabatasso post about Russia:

Zenit, CSKA or now Anzhi, no1 else for years to come. Rubin did win double but that won't happend for some time. Zenit is sponsored by Gazprom and Anzhi is "as rich" as Chelsea, because of billionaire owner. CSKA got very good selection and they buy young prospects under 25 only, its club policy.

So in every league its the same thing, couple of real contesters and couple of fake champions ambition contesters
 
Well it depends on how you term 'top' teams.

In reality it's still only Barça and Real, and even then at the minute it's only really Barça. The other teams are very good but due to the level of the other two they'll never, ever have a chance of winning the league.

I hope Sevilla's owner/chairman (can't remember which) manages to gain a bit more influence. Perhaps when the TV deals are up for renewal then they'll make a difference and protest. The other clubs need to stand up against the big two and the LFP and make sure there's a bit more equality. The powers that be need to realise it can't carry on like this otherwise it'll hurt La Liga in the long term.
 
When was the last time Barca or Real didnt win the league? Wasnt it Valencia in 2001?

OVER TEN YEARS of the same teams winning. In England you have Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City - so its similar I suppose.

I love how techinical La Liga is. But I hate Barcelona and Real Madrid.
 
Benni said:
When was the last time Barca or Real didnt win the league? Wasnt it Valencia in 2001?

OVER TEN YEARS of the same teams winning. In England you have Chelsea, Man Utd, Man City - so its similar I suppose.
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8 years. Valencia won it in 2004.

Well... since then a really good Barca came up who had some brilliant transfers over 2 years [Ronaldinho/Deco, Eto'o, Giuly] who won it in 2005-2006. Mind you, this team was good and made its mark on Europe as well. Next was Madrid's comeback, coached by Capello, who won two more. And then Guardiola happened, which coupled with the peak of Xavi and Puyol/maturization of Iniesta and Messi produced 3 titles and two Champions. Meanwhile, Galacticos 2.0 was on and Mourinho came. Again, teams who may not win the CL but they're definitely favourites.

Being that right about 2010 Valencia, Atletico Madrid, Villarreal and Sevilla [the other strong teams] couldn't even muster a shirt sponsorship and let many of their players go it's easy to see WHY the domination of two for the past 8 years. It's not just local domination.
 
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matherto said:
Well it depends on how you term 'top' teams.

In reality it's still only Barça and Real, and even then at the minute it's only really Barça. The other teams are very good but due to the level of the other two they'll never, ever have a chance of winning the league.

I hope Sevilla's owner/chairman (can't remember which) manages to gain a bit more influence. Perhaps when the TV deals are up for renewal then they'll make a difference and protest. The other clubs need to stand up against the big two and the LFP and make sure there's a bit more equality. The powers that be need to realise it can't carry on like this otherwise it'll hurt La Liga in the long term.
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Considering were Athletico currently are you have to include them also, being 7 points clear of their neighbors is a phenomenal achievement at this stage, I wonder if they can hold onto 2nd.
 
I think they will.

Simeone has done an amazing job and they're playing very well. Unfortunately though it shows the difference in quality whenever they've played the main two head to head this season.

It's coupled with the fact that Real have basically given up on everything but Europe though. Much like Barca in 2006/07, they've realised they're gonna get nowhere near Barça and just decided to settle.

They'll probably try in the second Clásico though. I bet it'll cost Mourinho his job though he may have already found somewhere else.

In reality though, it's a bit of an anomoly. 2006/07 was similar again because Villareal came second but they weren't of the quality of the top two (despite having the likes of Riquelme, Forlan, Pires, etc).
 
2007/08 I assume you mean, a lot of which was down to Pellegrini's expertise, as was their run to the CL semis two seasons prior.
 
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