FC Barcelona Thread

[Enzo]

No Messi was fantastic because Messi is injured and needs rest.
Seeing Messi in Munchen was a sore to the eyes. He should never have played there.
Yesterday Barcelona realised that in the long term it would be better to play this match without him.

He took Xavi and then Iniesta off, later he said: well it was obvious we couldn't score 6 so let them rest for important game on sunday... hmm.. We will make comeback words can be thrown into garbage bin. I don't like Tito at all. Maybe I'm harsh, but he looks like a Zombie

 

[Sabatasso]

More like build a team that doesn't pass the ball to death the whole game and have more than just one boring plan.

I've been saying that since long before Pep left tbh...

 

[bebo]

Not at all a hater myself. Was always a Barca fan until this team emerged. I truly couldn't like them one bit. The whole world can bang on forever about their style but I just cannot get myself to like it. Find it a total turn off. I do not like this pass the ball to death, cutback and walk it in the net style.

It funny that most of these members, were labeled. Haters! But now you see them trying to find an answer for them. As beach said this shows how good Messi really is to plug so many holes. So, I'm not aving a go, just pointing out how great our members are in this community

 

[jonneymendoza]

Where is all the barca fans?

 

[beachryan]

Barca are hardly 'done' - they'll win the league this weekend ffs. They still have one of the best squads in the world (and the highest wage bill - didn't know that).

But this somewhat arrogant belief that their way of playing is the only way and would overcome all and sundry needs to go away. They have not stumbled upon the secret of football, they need to change and adapt just like every other team out there.

Having only really seen them in 'big' matches in the CL - it seems to me their passing is actually defensive, rather than offensive. They're not quite as dull as the Spanish national side who seem to literally be happy to pass between the back 4 and midfield for 90% of a match, but it bores me to tears seeing the ball go into Alves in an attacking position, him stop, look around, then back to the full back, back to Xavi, back to Pique, back to Xavi, back to the full back, back to Alves, look around repeat.

That coupled with their frankly appalling attitude toward being touched in any shape or form made them easier to dislike, despite posessing very likeable 'stars' in Xavi, Messi and Iniesta.

A big, powerful centre back and a clinical striker and they'll be fine. They should do a double-swoop for Vidic and Hernandez.

 

[gerd]

But this somewhat arrogant belief that their way of playing is the only way and would overcome all and sundry needs to go away. They have not stumbled upon the secret of football, they need to change and adapt just like every other team out there.

Did they ever claimed themselves that their way of playing is the only way ?
I don't think so.

Just like Ajax they have a house style which is played by all their youth teams. By doing that, they have had (just like Ajax) enormous advantages.

And you know what beach. The team that "humiliated" barca yesterday, Bayern Munchen. Who is considered as the architect of this team ? Louis Van Gaal...

Where did Van Gaal originated from ? Ajax. He also coached Barcelona (rather unsuccesfully);

Barcelona = basically Ajax.

Weren't you one of the people who lauded Ajax when they beat Man City ?

What will it be: buying all your players is not good (Chelsea, Manchester City), but if you develop a youth academy and let all these youth players grow up in system that becomes the house style, then you are arrogant.

You know that i'm one of the only neutrals that Always came up for the Sugar daddies clubs, but if push come to shove i prefer clubs like Ajax and Barcelona who try to develop players.

There are much more similarities between Bayern and Barcelona than there are differences. Why do you think Pep goes to Bayern ?

 

[beachryan]

Think we may have our wires crossed. I obviously laud youth systems and really dislike sugar daddies/distorting influences that can instantly destroy a club.

I've no problem with La Masia or the philosophy they teach. But for 4 years everyone seemed to believe that the future of football was small, technical players that could pass all day but hated the physical side of the game. It started coming out in interviews with the Barca players, and in their style too. Drove me insane that their main 'tactic' when they lose the ball is to close incredibly quickly, and more often then not clip heels to disrupt the attack. But if you get near the heel of an Busquets or an Alves, you have a player whose life is over, you have Valdes running the length of the pitch demanding cards and so forth.

It's obviously been wonderful to watch a team that clicked so well and performed at an unheard of level for a good few years. But I think it was arrogant to assume that they didn't need a plan B, or another approach. Maybe arrogant is the wrong word, but certainly stubborn.

The best teams adapt, and I'm sure at some point this Barca will.

 

[gerd]

Then i agree with you more or less Beach...
About the diving: most Spanish and Portugese clubs do it...

 

[Sabatasso]

Then i agree with you more or less Beach...
About the diving: most Spanish and Portugese clubs do it...

And English, French and Italian... basically everyone dives to some degree. Some players dive, some don't and there are divers and non divers in clubs all over the world.

 

[drekkard]

But this somewhat arrogant belief that their way of playing is the only way and would overcome all and sundry needs to go away. They have not stumbled upon the secret of football, they need to change and adapt just like every other team out there.

I never heard anyone from barcelona saying that, and if you knew A BIT about barcelona fans, you would know that we are demanding a PLAN B for years. The problem is that with our PLAN A we won 15 trophies, including 4 leagues, 2 Champions leagues and reaching CL semifinals for 6 consecutive years, something no one did before.

The PLAN B was Ibra and turned to be worse than PLAN A, for whatever reasons. I'm pretty sure that if we had had someone like Larsson in the squad we would have some additional CL trophy in the cabinet. But hey, having won 3 in the last 10 years it' enough.

All cycles are based in a way of playing. Sacchi's Milan always played the same way, Ajax always played their style... Were they arrogants as well? Were they stubborn?

As in other areas of life, like science, sometimes a paradigm makes it way and triumphs for some time. The paradigm will become useless sooner or later, but reaching this status is reserved to only the best temas in time.

Most people will judge this team by it's last efforts, where possession has been above 70% but chances slim, and yes, Barcelona has played boring football in the Champions League lately. But this can't hide the way in which this team played with Pep at their peak, when they had the highest amount of chances per match in Europe, the lowest shots against and most of the possession was aimed to hurt the opposition. And it was very very similar to what Bayern are doing now.

All this "arrogant" stuff I think was created by journalists all over the world praising so much the team and the style. But it was only natural to have all that praise. Don't forget that Barcelona played finals of Champions League with up to 8 players from the youth team in the field.

I risk being arrogant now, but I really think that this (a majority of people from the youth team) is the way football should be. It's my belief, and I'm prettu sure there's people who disagree and would prefer otherwise. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with people who prefer the athletic type of player and consider that passing the ball around is more boring than just running around. I don't call them arrogants. It's just different styles of play.

Barcelona wasn't really a top big club until Cruyff changed its history in the late 80s and stablished te way in which football should be played. It doens't mean that football should be played like this by ALL teams. It means that Barcleona HAS to play like that because it's his style. And since that change, the club has achieved more than any other club in the world.

So blame the journalists or people over the world for changing that praise into mantras. We Barcelona fans are perfectly aware that there are many ways to play football and there's no ONE way to play it. It's just that we are aware of how our team has to play, and yes that's THE way we have to play in order to make thinks work. Each group/company/club has an idiosincrasy and culture, and the same way Atletico has always succeeded with counterattack football, we mastered (for right and for wrong) possession football, it's our way. And it pays a lot more than not having a clear way at all.

Besides, it's just wrong that the club only wants tecnihcal small guys. Toure was a key player and he left simply because of the money. Busquets is no small at all. For years one of our key players in midfield was Keita and we recently signed Song. There's an idea of balance in the midfield that just got wrong lately, when we didn't sign the right players and kept putting Xavi and Iniesta when they were clearly too tired and almost injured. They have no gas left in the tank after playing so many matches. Blame Tito for that.

I think most of the "haters" of this team at the beginning didn't like that a team was able to nullify the opponents. Barcelona truly made, for several years, the opponents like like amateurs without the ball. That's very hard to achieve and imply a kind of enjoyment of the sport that is not related to goals/chances. In the CL finals against Manchester, we faced an incredibly strong team that was dominating locally and in Europe. And they had no chance against us at all. They felt totally useless and that's because of how Barcelona nullified them by having the ball. You may not like this style, but it's an incredible feat.

And really, I never felt the team was boring until the last year and a half. You only have to watch matches from that period and Barcelona was having 20 chances per match!

For years Barcelona has been the highest scorer and the team conceding less goals. How can the team that socres the most be as boring as you say? The boring side of it was that it was so superior to opponents! But really, is Barcelona to blame for that?

It says a lot on how people change their mentality towards a team when it begins to win a lot. Take into account last year semifinals. There was people talking about how bad Barcelona had been against Chelsea.

But let's recap the numbers of the round:
- Barcelona had 4 posts
- Barcelona wasted 2 empty net shots
- Barcelona shot 35 times (18 on target) in the overall (practically 1 shot each 4 minutes of REAL playing time).
- Chelsea shot 4 times, 1 off target and scored 3.

At the 2nd leg, after missing a penalty, Barcelona got nervous and didn't deliver. But overall it was a team that had done everything to win, had shot a lot of times and had simply wasted too many chances.

And guess what. People were criticizing the team for not playing well, for not having a plan B... practically for everytihng.

Hey, they were simply wasteful and had bad luck. You can believe in luck or not, but commonly speaking, it was bad luck. 9 out of 10 times Barcelona had to win both matches and they did DESERVE to win, in my oppinion. If those were numbers of the team you love in a semifinal, what would you think of it?

So, at the end, when a team wins, expectations rise. And they rise to really absurd levels. Barcelona this season will win the league (I hope) and have reached CL semifinals. How can this be really a bad season? It's better than 99% of other clubs seasons! But this is where expectations drive you.

And a similar thing happened with the amount of praise in the world. Some people will feel angry with that amount of praise and will end up

Having only really seen them in 'big' matches in the CL - it seems to me their passing is actually defensive, rather than offensive.

This is something that says a lot. Out of 70 matches of the season, you maybe watch 5 or 6. It's less than 10% of matches. How can you judge the entire team/season out of that?

In the CL the team suffered a lot, so they were toothless at times. But not because they wanted to, it's just they coudln't perform better and the opponents were hard to beat and played very well to us.

But if you had watched the entire season, you would be surprised. The first 5 months of competition it was a delight watching the team play, scoring plenty of goals and having a more direct approach to the game than with Pep. All this changed after Tito had to go away due to its Cancer and the team running out of gas in the final stretch. But look at the results in the first leg of the Spanish league and you will see the big amount of very interesting matches played.

Some of the people also judge some players for punctual performances. It's the case with Busquets. As I said in this thread before, Busquets acted like an idiot the first 2 years at the team. And he earned himself (deservedly) to be infamous. But, in the last 18 months, he hasn't acted, he hasn't cheated, he hasn't dived and he has behaved perfectly in the pitch. But people, out of inertia, will keep tagging him as a "cheater", before he was indeed 2 years ago.

I would say people LIKES to put those TAGS to people. It makes things easier and it's easier to criticize people/clubs. I know because I do it to certain extent as well. We always do. It has happened with all the "arrogant/style" debate, as your posts clearly show. People have TAGGED barcelona as arrogant fans that thought they style was the only way football was meant to be played. Does it holds any truth? Probably some Barcelona fans will think this. I'm sure some fans also believe in UFOs. That doesn't imply that Barcelona fans think like this. At all. But it was easier for some people to simply put that TAG to the team and the fans.

PS: Congratulations to Bayern. They were an incredible team. Watching them live at the Nou Camp was a joy, a performance I won't forget in years. It was like watching our team at its peak again. Dominating every aspect of the game. Totally focused, competitive and most of all.... HUNGRY!

I will definitely enjoy the CL final a lot, because I love the way both teams play and they deserve to be there.

 

[gerd]

Excellent post Alexis.

 

[beachryan]

I'll only comment briefly because obviously I expect a passionate fan to have a good response, and that is clearly excellent.

I stand by my point about the 'sterile possession' in the matches I've seen being relevant - because the few matches I see each year are the Classicos and the CL matches. And if we're honest, those are the only times (barring 1 or 2 other teams) Barcelona play any real quality each season.

Not necessarily a debate for this 'team' forum, but is unarguable that the other Spanish sides are being slowly sucked dry by the inequality in the league, and are becoming worse and worse because of it.

Also, Busquets has been doing his happy feigning injury this year in the CL too, so not sure he's really 'fixed'. Maybe he's now not falling rolling around and holding his face then peeking through his hands, but you still can't touch the lad (who your'e right, is a big strong midfielder, except if you try to tackle him)

 

[gerd]

Must say i agree about Busquets. If he has sorted himself out, i wonder how he was a couple of years ago.

As for the quality of the Spanish teams.
Malaga, Valencia: very good.
And do you really think that a team like Everton is stronger than Real Sociedad. Last year Athletic de Bilbao even beat Man Utd (and they really dominated them).
Liverpool better than Sevilla ?
Fulham better than Betis ?
Atletico Madrid less good than Spurs ?

I'm far from sure.

The inequality between Man United and WBA is also huge.

 

[beachryan]

Just look at the scores between teams. United are better than WBA, but tend to win matches by 1 and occasionally 2 goals.

Barca at the beginning of the season were winning everything by 4 or 5 goals.

It's not like it's just me saying this, it's been a major conversation point for years in La Liga.

Look at Bilbao this year. If you do have some success, all your best players leave because all hte teams are broke.

Valencia are absolutely f*cked, Malaga are sugar-daddied up and still didn't manage to pay some wages (and are denied from UEFA next year).

There's no way to test it, but I seriously doubt that the Barcelona's goal difference and points total would look like they do if they played prem teams instead. I mean last year Madrid had 100 points!!!

 

[Sabatasso]

Look at the second best teams in England, beachryan... Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea are really unstable teams who can potentially lose to anyone not only in England, but Swiss and Belgian teams as well. Spurs made a complete ass of themselves in Europa League and are making a fine job doing the same in PL at the moment, playing as fat donkeys on pot for large periods of time. Manchester City also has an extremely poor lowpoint, which is weird considering the lineup they can muster. But most of all, English teams generally play a lot less entertaining than most Spanish, German, French, Italian and even Belgian and Swiss teams and hardly getting better results for it. Manchester United wins not because they have a great team, but because they are playing more or less at the same good level all year around. It's enough to get fairly far in CL, win PL etc. but they're pretty far from the max potential of pretty much any other team in the last few final rounds in CL.

So, be my guest and pretend PL is the toughest league around, but I see signs that they're bumped down to 4th place or so despite having the best economy and arguably the biggest stars.

 

[beachryan]

So, be my guest and pretend PL is the toughest league around, but I see signs that they're bumped down to 4th place or so despite having the best economy and arguably the biggest stars.

Germany, Spain...Italy then England?

Erm, okay.

The 4th place team in England is in the Europa League final and won the CL last season. Two English teams went out of the CL in the quarter finals in very close situations. A red card here, another minute of extra-time there and who knows.

On their day Spurs can beat almost anyone, as they've shown this season domestically and in Europe.

Germany obviously has a strong top 2 at the moment, but even pro pundits like Rafa Honigstein question the talent below that. Schalke hardly look up to much. France is obviously a 1 team league for the forseeable future. Italy...perhaps. Juve looked decent in the CL, but were pretty easily tossed aside by Bayern.

I'm not saying the English league is the best, but I certainly don't think it's behind the others across the full 20/18 teams. I'd argue that the top 5 in England are the closest in terms of genuine talent. City and Chelsea have better squads, United and Arsenal have better managers and Spurs have Bale

 

[jonneymendoza]

Germany, Spain...Italy then England?

Erm, okay.

The 4th place team in England is in the Europa League final and won the CL last season. Two English teams went out of the CL in the quarter finals in very close situations. A red card here, another minute of extra-time there and who knows.

On their day Spurs can beat almost anyone, as they've shown this season domestically and in Europe.

Germany obviously has a strong top 2 at the moment, but even pro pundits like Rafa Honigstein question the talent below that. Schalke hardly look up to much. France is obviously a 1 team league for the forseeable future. Italy...perhaps. Juve looked decent in the CL, but were pretty easily tossed aside by Bayern.

I'm not saying the English league is the best, but I certainly don't think it's behind the others across the full 20/18 teams. I'd argue that the top 5 in England are the closest in terms of genuine talent. City and Chelsea have better squads, United and Arsenal have better managers and Spurs have Bale

Well said. Barca got humiliated by bayern and arsenal only lost by away goals on team that's supposed to be joke of a team for example

 

[bebo]

RB are a good team they always were the team I like the most in La Liga . No Messi and they were losing , Messi comes in and Barça wins

 

[drekkard]

I think a lot of people likes to think La Liga is worse than it is. It's hard to compare different leagues, but all the elements that could serve to compare the Spanish teams with the rest of European teams seem to point that the Spanish teams are amongst the most powerful anyway.

Malaga, Valencia had a good run in the CL, and Malaga was the only team in the competition that, even if momentarily, had one of the two german finalists eliminated.

Atletico comes from winning 2 consecutive UEFA Leagues and smashing Chelsea in the European supercup. And Bilbao defeated Manchester last year at Old Trafford.

So overall La Liga has at least 6 teams that could beat ANYONE: Barcelona, Madrid, Atletico, Malaga, Valencia, Bilbao/Sevilla.

You could say the same about the Premier: Mancheste United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool/Everton. The rest of teams are quite mediocre (I love to watch the premiere league but I would say that it's the league with the worse tactical deffending, in my oppinion).

Let's see Serie A: Juve, Napoli, Milan, Lazio, Fiorentina, Udinese. I don't think Inter is currently in this group. I think there's a lot of talent in Serie A but sometimes it gets ofuscated because they have the best tactical deffending in my oppinion, hence why sometimes you may think they are worse than it seems. They're not, they just defend better on average.

In my oppinion, those 3 leagues are similarly balanced in terms of title contenders and teams that could beat anyone in CL. Of course it's my personal list right now and we could speak ages about it, but as I see it it's a Myth that La Liga average is lower than the Premier or Serie A teams.

La Liga teams defend a lot better than Premier teams and there is a lot more quality in the midfield. What the premier has is much better strikers and frentic pace of play and generally they play in open spaces a lot.

To be short: Premier teams put a lot of stress in forwards, Spanish teams put a lot of stress in the midfield and Italian teams put a lot of stress in deffense.

Of course that the TV rights have made the fight for the title more boring than it was years ago in Spain. But at the time I write this Manchester has already won the Premier, Juve won the Scudetto, Bayern won the Bundesliga and La Liga is still undecided although Barcleona may win it this weekend.

Clearly Bundesliga is more uneven than La Liga currently, all that talk about Scottish league should apply now to Bundesliga, isn't it?

 

[bebo]

Fair point I would like to think , next season every league winner might be tighter race ATM it wasn't as close as it should be for La Liga, Bundesliga , SerieA n EPL. Ligue 1 is pretty even imo

 

[matherto]

Bayern will be even more dominant next year I'd imagine, given that they've bought Götze and Dortmund are also losing Lewandowski to whoever. They've got the money to spend massive sums and Pep will want to stamp his signature on the team too despite them being probably the best in the world right now.

The Prem is guarenteed to be a lot closer I'd imagine. I hope United strengthen in the right areas though I think I'd just about forgive SAF for not buying a decent midfielder if we buy Ronaldo...

City will buy a great striker like Falcao or Cavani and so will Chelsea so they'll be scoring a lot more next year.

 

[gerd]

It will be very difficult for clubs like City and Chelsea to do big transfers due to financial fair play. Currently there is something of a soap around Kevin De Bruyne.
De Bruyne is a Chelsea player loaned out to Werder Bremen.
Both Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund are interested in De Bruyne (buy or loan). De Bruyne himself is not averse going to Leverkusen but prefers Dortmund (who wouldn't ?) where he would replace Götze (and in my entirely biased opinion he's better than Götze, De Bruyne is Belgium's biggest talent by far, yes better than Hazard...).

Chelsea are putting pressure on De Bruyne to opt for Leverkusen because they want to set up an exchange between De Bruyne and Schurrle. With De Bruyne going to Leverkusen, Chelsea need much less to pay for Schurrle. Same scenario for Courtois-Falcao...

This is proof that the Sugar daddy clubs need to look out about transfer sums...

 

[Enzo]

Great post Drekkard!

Also I would like to point out, that Tello is really making giant leaps towards getting more and more playtime!

 

[cfdh_edmundo]

Clearly Bundesliga is more uneven than La Liga currently, all that talk about Scottish league should apply now to Bundesliga, isn't it?

This is just silly, you're taking one season out of context. Do you know how many teams have won the Bundesliga in the last 10 years (2002/3) ? - 5 (Bremen, Wolsburg, Stuttgart, Bayern and Dortmund). Now let's look at Spain, only 3 winners (Real, Barca and all those years ago Valenica), it's the lowest of any of the 4CL place leagues, England's had 4 (both Manchesters, Arsenal and Chelsea).

Even across all the other big European leagues, La Liga is very uncompetitive in terms of winners, with only Portugal (2: Benfica & Porto) and the Ukraine (2: Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar) having less winners in the last 10 years. Italy has had 3 (Juve, and the 2 Milan clubs) but then Serie A was messed up for several of those years due to Calciopoli.

France has had 5 different winners in the last 10 years (Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, Lille, Montpelier) with PSG looking certain to make it 6. Russia's had 4 (Zenit, Rubin, CSKA, Lokomotiv) as has Holland (AZ, Ajax, Twente, PSV) and Turkey (Gala, Fener, Besijktas, Bursaspor). Even going down to the Belgian league there have been 4 winners in the last 10 years (Anderlecht, Genk, Liege, Club Bruges). If you're going to compare a top European league with the Scottish duoploy then Spain, Ukraine and Portugal look like the best comparisions. All the other leagues are more competitive with not only more variety in outright winners but also more variety in the top 2-3 teams. In Germany as well as the 5 winners you have teams like Leverkusen and Schalke really pushing for the championship and only just missing out. In Italy Napoli have got very close a few times and 3-4 years ago Roma only just missed out for a few seasons running to Inter. Liverpool pushed Man Utd all the way and ended up 2nd in 2009, in Russia Spartak came very close a few years ago and this year Anzhi are pushing CSKA/Zenit very close. As you look across a lot of the European leagues you can see a variety of winners and also some other second place teams going close (you can include KAA Gent of Belgium and Trabzonspor in Turkey, Braga of Portugal) but in Spain it's always Real/Barca 1st or 2nd and then a fairly big gap (not just in points but also in credibility) to the next team, it's very sclerotic.

In the long run if things don't change with the TV deal, Spanish football will decline, especially with the economic situation and levels of debt there. To an extent we might already be seeing it. Everyone knows that the top two in La Liga were given a real lesson by the top two in Germany, but more tellingly Spanish teams were very poor in the Europa League this season - a competition that was for so long used as a barometer of the league's strenght by its proponents. Bilbao went out in the group stage and only won 1 of the 6 games (away to Israeli rookies Shomona), Atletico won their group stage home games but lost away in Plzen (Czech Rep) and Coimbra (Portugal) and then went out in the first knockouts to Rubin Kazan. Levante made it through their group, beat Olympiacos in the R32 but then lost to also to Rubin in the R16. Maybe it's a one off and next season Spanish clubs will do well again, but with so many financial issues you wouldnt want to say a return to sucess was certain

 

[gerd]

That is a very good post edmundo, nevertheless i tend to agree with drekkard. I think drekkard is looking forward instead of backwards.
With what happens now in Germany it could well be that the Bundesliga will be even worse of than the Scottish competition. If it's only Götze that goes to Bayern Dortmund might still be able to compete, but if they also loose Lewandowski (and maybe even to Bayern) they might not pose a big problem to Bayern. And as much as i like teams like Leverkusen, Schalke and Werder who are decent team in Europe, they are no match for a Bayern led by Guardiola who will be able to spend money on the transfer market. In fact the biggest problem for Bayern might be ...Bayern....if there are big names who think that they don't play enough.

 

[drekkard]

I do agree with practically all that you say Edmundo, but in the case of Bundesliga as Gerd says I was looking forward. Bayern had no opposition this season, and it looks it won't have the next 1 or 2 seasons. I doubt we'll be surprised here...

About the german-spanish clash in the champions league, Barcelona was in its lowest situation (in form, injuries, bans and coaching) in 5 years, I don't think it had anything to do with La Liga having a suposedly lower level than Bundesliga. Madrid showed a similar level to Borussia, but anyway I think it's more a merit of the german clubs than the Spanish ones being weaker.

Anyway, in the Premier League you have 4 different winners, but 2 of them are suggar daddy clubs, something that doesn't happen in Spain, where smaller suggar daddies have invested in small clubs like Malaga. If someone came here and put 400 M€ on Atletico, Sevilla or Valencia, like it happened in the Premier... bam! Instantly we would be as competitive as the Premiere in terms of title contenders. So the comparison with the premier is difficult to stablish, at least for me it's hard to really compare the situation of clubs.

I always said that TV Rights distribution is not that right (pardon the pun) in Spain, but suggar daddies aren't as well, it's financial doping one way or another.

Plus, take into account that the big problems of clubs like Sevilla or Valencia, as I wrote in the La Liga thread, are primarily management problems by (and) the mobsters running them.

But yeah, they should address this unbalance in TV Rights to recover a bit more equality in the league, I've always been quite vocal about it and would love to have more domestic challenge. It's simply that I don't think at all that this imply that La Liga is less competitive compared to other big European leagues. I don't think that the results of Europa League on a single season can be waved as the proof of it. Let's wait and see how it goes in the next years, specially with the finantial UEFA rules.

 

[matherto]

Aren't the TV rights being renogotiated at the minute? Or perhaps in the near future in favour of a collective pool rather than Madrid and Barça taking everything and leaving slim pickings for the rest.

That'll be a good start in terms of helping out the lower teams but it'll be a long, long while until they're competitive with the big two again. The current economic climate certainly doesn't help matters, the other historically big clubs are up to their eyeballs in debt but don't have FCB/RM's international pull to cover it.

Anyways, any Barça fans care to suggest what'll happen to the squad this summer? Will David Villa be off? Midfielder to take the strain off Xavi maybe? (Or just give Thiago more of a chance). Big defensive signings? New keeper too if Valdes is going.

I think every big team is in for a world of change this summer, most interesting one for a good while.

 

[drekkard]

I hope we knew what our club is ul to! Lots of rumours at the minute with Neymar, Ter stegen, Thiago silva, Hummels or even Rooney and Gundogan. Who knows! They may end up signing a new coach and 6 players or keep like they are and sign only 2 or 3 big signings.

The real news up to now is that it seems we aren't pursuing any Arsenal player this season!

 

[Issidingo]

The legendary barelona team was created by Laporta, first with Frank Rijkaard (won leagues and CL) and then with the Dalai Lama Pep guardiola (won every friking thing twice o three times).

It did benefit from having an outstanding generation of catalan/cantera players (xaxi, puyol, messi, iniesta, busquets etc) but it also did benefit from the likes of dhino, deco, etoo etc etc.

The legacy of Laporta/Guardiola has now come to an end and the people currently running the club aren't exactly famous for being very smart or clever or having any particular merit (rosell, zubizarreta, tito vilanova etc), their glory is mostly due to the legacy left by those before them. At the same time the golden generation has aged and you really notice that (xavi puyol villa and iniesta can't play at the same pace).

So what is left is messi and a bunch of good players who seemed better than what they are because they were playing together with the finest ever.

time and bad managament have finally put an end to a great era. what a run it has been though!

 

[gerd]

The legendary barelona team was created by Laporta, first with Frank Rijkaard (won leagues and CL) and then with the Dalai Lama Pep guardiola (won every friking thing twice o three times).

It did benefit from having an outstanding generation of catalan/cantera players (xaxi, puyol, messi, iniesta, busquets etc) but it also did benefit from the likes of dhino, deco, etoo etc etc.

The legacy of Laporta/Guardiola has now come to an end and the people currently running the club aren't exactly famous for being very smart or clever or having any particular merit (rosell, zubizarreta, tito vilanova etc), their glory is mostly due to the legacy left by those before them. At the same time the golden generation has aged and you really notice that (xavi puyol villa and iniesta can't play at the same pace).

So what is left is messi and a bunch of good players who seemed better than what they are because they were playing together with the finest ever.

time and bad managament have finally put an end to a great era. what a run it has been though!

That post is a litle bit premature.
It might be true that this is an end of an era, but most people seem to forget that this is a team that has been without coach for the most part of the season because that coach was in New York for a cancer treatment.
Imagine David Moyes being away for months due to a cancer treatment (and of course this is for the sake of argument) next season. Would it be fair to say that Man Utd are has beens ? I don't think so.

So what you say in your post remains to be seen. It could well be that next year you will be able to post "i told you so", but in that case you have luck, because at the moment there is not a single argument to say that this Barcelona is finished as a team or as a generation.