FC Barcelona Thread

What happened Alex ? Is it about his taxes ?
As you know i have a friend who lives in Spain (near Pamplona, he has a bed and breakfast) and he is absolutely disgusted with Spanish politics and the judicial apparatus.
 
Well, I think he was actually guilty of the taxes thing (Rafael Nadal did exactly the same but being a big Spanish referent he wasn't acused by the media at all).

But no, it's a persistant campaign of the mass media from Madrid against Messi's image in the last years that has turned absolutely insane.

They acuse him of everything they can. Yesterday El Mundo and Marca put Messi at the center of a drug-dealer mafia who apparently has got something to do with summer friendly matches. The police themselves have said that Messi and other Barcelona players were asked about it as part of the routine procedures, but the news gets transformed into "Messi guilty of cleaning drug money" in the news. Then the day after they put a smaller news saying "They are apparently only being asked by policemen". But the harm is done. No apologies, maximum difamation.

Today El Mundo published that in one of those matches Messi refused to be photographed with "300 poor children who ended up crying and abandoned". If you investigate a bit you discover it was a failure of the managers and when Messi became aware, he personally went to the children and spent some time with them.

And it goes far beyond this. They may take one or two instances in which he was angry at the pitch and create a big new like "The real image of Messi" as if he was all the time like this. They did the same the day he asked Villa to be passed the ball on a single play. The news filled their space with "Messi the dictator" kind of news, which were absolutely ridiculous.

Messi is too good for some people. They just can't accept it and they will use whatever it's necessary to spit on his image. Specially when Real Madrid needs some diversion due to bad results or they need to impose the golden ball to Ronaldo (personally I think Ribery deserves it).

But that's how this country works right now. The press has no moral stance and is driven by very powerful economic groups with specific agendas. We are talking about a government that made up false news the day before autonomical elections at Catalonia just to put dirt on a nationalist leader. We're talking about making up false documents and show them to the press - level of things.

As I've said many times before, if I was younger I would flee from this lands.
 
I don't follow the logic of that, but anyone's entitled to its oppinion. Snejder won many titles that year but wasnt as important as Ribery. Let's be honest, Inter didnt play that well as Ribery and Bayern have. Inter got lucky and win just like Chelsea, while Bayern dominated clearly and Ribery was key in practically all the important matches. I dont think titles should be the main factor (Cannavaro eon one because of this and I find it ashaming), and personally I dont think Snejder was that good, I think Ribery has been, by far, the best player for his team this season.
 
doesn't matter for me even if ronaldo wins. ideally ribery should win it with no shadow of doubt. fifa is so f'n corrupt. journalists was getting it right most of the time ('cept 2000 and 2006 imo) before the stupid merger.

messi the nice kid of fifa and uefa gonna win it again, again and again, and again...

YouTube - Keane - Again And Again
 
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Looking forward to Saturday night with a few beers watching Atletico Madrid v Barcelona.

Should be a good one.

I favour Real Madrid myself, but I love watching Barca.

Believe Neymar might be injured though, not sure if that's correct, just someone said.

Should be a good game, although I will probably be hoping Atletico Madrid win, which will make things interesting.

But if I was a betting man, whilst I don't think Barca is as good as they have been in recent years, I think they'll beat Atletico Madrid on Saturday night.


FD
 
Not that slim, Simeone has done a brutal work and Atletico is and will be the main competitor for the title for Barcelona unless some of their key players get injured. I admire Simeone and Atletico for what they are doing.
 
Kanouté said:
messi the nice kid of fifa and uefa gonna win it again, again and again, and again...
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Taking into account that he won more titles, scored about the same number of goals and served a lot more assists than Ronaldo even though he spent 4 months injured... well, I don't get why Messi shouldn't deserve it more than Ronaldo.

I guess that "again and again..." mantra is due to some personal grudge against him, because if the trophy is suposed to be for the best player overall, few people have doubts.

Personally, I don't think Snejder deserved it years ago even though he won the treble, nor Xavi or Iniesta for winning the world cup back then. We can hate a personal trophy in a team sport, but I watch Messi every week and what this guy does is just undoable by the rest and has been doing so for the last 5 years. You only have to take his highlights. And the highlights don't even tell half of it. A pitty he got injured in the key months last season.

As I said, I think Ribery deserved it more than the rest last season, because he was the key player on a team that totally owned the rest and because he was as instrumental in the offensive as in the defensive department.
 
Messi is the best player in the world, so he deserves to win it.
If you only look at the last season, then a Bayern player should win it, and IMO that might be Ribery but not necessarily. Players like Schweinsteiger, Muller, Lahm and Neuer are as important as Ribery.
If you want a skillfull player to win, well then not Ribery but Messi.

As i've already said Ronaldo is a fantastic player but not a big match player (and don't tell me that the matches against Sweden were big matches).
 
Team Ronaldo n Team Messi such a strange euphoria. I can't wait until they both retire and see players like humans not Idol man worshipping. Damn tweeter n their tweets!
 
Ronaldo's performances in big games have been great over the past few seasons.

Unless you expect him to dominate a major tournament, something that Messi has yet to do either.

They both had great tournaments prior to their peak, with Messi in the 2007 Copa America and Ronaldo in Euro 2004 but have yet to make an everlasting impact on international football like Pele, Maradona and co.
 
gerd said:
As i've already said Ronaldo is a fantastic player but not a big match player (and don't tell me that the matches against Sweden were big matches).
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This is simply not true. He's scored in every major final he's been in, the WC playoffs, is leading the CL scoring chart this year, and I believe has more Copa Del Ray goals than anyone else since he joined La Liga.

I also believe he's tied for the most goals in classicos since he joined.

I'm not sure why the myth persists, but it does.

They're both fantastic players - the very best two individual players in decades. It's a pity they're playing at the same time in some ways!
 
Man Utd friends, of course i exagerate.
I was letting myself carried away by another poster. I'm sorry.
 
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I watch football for 41 years and there is only one player who comes close to Messi: Pele.

The fact that he is nice or not nice has nothing to see with his footballing capacities.

One might also say that Ronaldo is the glamour boy of football and thus the new Beckham. So him winning the Ballon D'or is good for football because obviously he is a better poster boy for publicity than Messi... a very valid argument.

The truth is that all these discussions about individual trophies are totally irrelevant in a team sport.
Ronaldo is phenomenally good and deserves to win because Messi can't win year after year but Messi is the better player.

Should the best player win it ? I'm not sure.
Why is Messi the player he is ? Because he is terribly gifted, but also because his team mates serve him...would Messi be the same player with team mates who are very average ? Put Messi, Zlatan, Ribery or Ronaldo in a team like Stoke City (on a thursday evening of course, but not against Stoke, with Stoke) or Getafe of Sassuolo...

The best team of the last season was Bayern Munchen, imo one could argue that the Ballon D'or should be a Bayern player. Ribery ? Not necessarily, why not Lahm, Schweinsteiger or Neuer ? Why never a GK or a defender ?

Conclusion: who cares about individual trophies in a team sports ?

Probably the best football player is playing in Outer Mongolia for an unknown team, just like the best guitar player and the best whatever...Outer Mongolia is the place to be.
 
cfdh_edmundo said:
Gerd see if you can get some videos of a player called Diego Maradona, he was pretty good.
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"Maradona was Maradona now and then. Messi is Maradona at its peak every day."

I heard that from a Spanish coach time ago, and I think it's the best way to define Messi and the comparison with Maradona.

gerd said:
Would Messi be the same player with team mates who are very average ? Put Messi, Zlatan, Ribery or Ronaldo in a team like Stoke City (on a thursday evening of course, but not against Stoke, with Stoke) or Getafe of Sassuolo...
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Well, there's obviously a part of truth in this and personally I don't care much about individual trophies. I posted the goal quoting that post because some people try to underestimate the real dimension of Messi.

But in my oppinion the "good teamamtes" argument it's not a 100% valid argument in his case. He's done it in all sorts of pitches, against all sorts of opponents and all sorts of tournaments, and no matter the teammates he has around. And if he played in a team like Stoke, he would have less defenders and more space to dribble in counterattacks. Quite frankly, personally I think that he could score even more goals (though surely he wouldn't do half the assists he does).

What makes Messi absolutely different and a genius that you probably see once in a lifetime is that most of his great moments, he does it alone, he just does something no one could ever do and you couldn't expect before him. Take this goal he scored against Getafe yesterday, for example. Up to 5 players try to stop him, even tackle him, but he alone does everything and scores. He's done it against Madrid, Milan, Getafe, Manchester United, Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, Bilbao, etc... And I can't find anyone in football history who is capable of doing that SO OFTEN.

Ronaldo is a great player, one of the best finishers ever, but a lot more dependant on his teammates that create the play for him to finish. But Messi? He can start the play, finish it, associate with teammates or simply dribble everyone and score.

You should watch highlights of a single season of Messi and ask yourself how many players could match that even comparing their whole career highlights. That's his real dimension as a skilled player.
 
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Maradona has won the World Cup and was instrumental in his team's win. On football's biggest stage, the World Cup, he was the best player by some distance, 4 years later his Argentina team went to the final. In terms of clubs again he won Serie A twice with Napoli, a team who had never won Serie A before and never since. So forgive me if I prefer to judge players on what they achieve and the context in which they achieve it rather than the soundbite opinion of an unspecified Spanish coach.
 
IMO the World Cup is not the biggest stage.
A good club team is easily much better than the greatest noational team.

And then there is the myth that Maradonna won the world cup all by himself. In that team there were some very good other players like Burruchaga and Valdano.

If you know that Argentina beat Belgium in the semi-final, then you also know that stange things happened in that World Cup (just like 4 years later).

I've seen all the WC's since 1970 and both 1986 and 1990 were definitely the worst WC's. Lots of great teams weren't good at all in those tournaments.

One example: that Belgium team was very mediocre, even by Belgian standards. The 1990 team was much better...

But my main argument "against" Maradonna is that WC's are shockingly over-estimated. The team that has the best form in the space of 7 matches wins it...usually one can even say that the team that is best in the last 4 matches is the winner...

Some of the most impressive national teams never won a WC: Puskas' Hungary, Cruijff's Holland, Zico's Brazil, Belanov and Dassaev's USSR's, Michael Laudrup's and Preben Elkjaer's Danmark and there are lots of other examples.

I do rate Maradonna's scudetto's with Napoli very, very high, because at the time Serie A was by very far the best league in the world.
Unfortunately he never did it in the ECI (current CL).

But there is no doubt that he is the third best player ever...not sure who is the best Pele or Messi...i'd go for Messi because Pele's 1970 Brazil was full of absolutely fantastic players: Carlos Alberto, Jairzinho, Rivelino, Gerson, Tostao...
 
I don't think there is that much difference between the players you mention, and to a degree it's all subjective. For instance I have met Brazilians who say that Garrincha was a better player than Pele, personally I would probably say Pele was better but I can see the logic of some saying that Garrincha was the best Brazilian player. I would also say that you could make a case for Di Stefano being the greatest player ever and certainly in the top 3. I dont think a single one of the "greatest players" is a class apart from the other "greatest players".

About the 1986 World Cup, personally I think that the Argentina squad was generally a good squad, but probably not a world class squad in the sense that they were not really expected to win the World Cup. There were some very good players in the squad aside from Maradona, but was the squad say as strong as Italy with the likes of Sicrea, Tardelli, Altobelli, Rossi or France with Battiston, Giresse, Tigana, Platini or Brazil with Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Alemao or Germany with Rummennegge, Matthaus, Augnethaler, Voller, Brehme. Possibly it was not as strong as Spain's squad with Goikotexcha, Butrageuno, Victor, Carrasco and a young Michel.

Maradona was crucial in all of Argentina's games, from getting the equaliser in the group match with the Italians, through to his goals against England and Belgium in the quarters and semis and through to his performance in the the final where he was man-marked by two German players for the whole game yet was still able to set up the winning goal. It's very hard to imagine Argentina winning that world cup if Maradona hadn't been playing.

As to if the World Cup or Club football is the biggest stage, it's hard to say, but its very much worth remembering that football was different 30 years ago, back in the 1980s International football was seen as the pinnacle of the game. Also on Napoli not winning the European Cup, you have to bear in mind the structure of European football at the time. Typically only the league winner would enter the European Cup (or CL as its now known), if you finished 2nd in your league you would end up in the UEFA Cup (or CWC if you won your domestic cup), the only way to get back into the CL without winning your league was to win the CL the previous year (as Nottingham Forest for example once did). In effect it was much harder to qualify for the CL than it is now. Let's look at the last 5 winners of the CL, Bayern 2013, Chelsea 2012, Barca 2011, Inter 2010, Barca 2009, Man Utd 2008, Milan 2007, Barca 2006. Only Barca in 2011 and Inter in 2010 would have actually qualified for those tournaments. All the other finalists were not domestic champions the previous year (it was Dortmund, Man Utd, Real (07-08)). The likes of Bayern, Chelsea and Barca (09) would have been playing in the UEFA Cup instead, which itself was much more competitive than the current Europea League - and Napoli infact won that in 1989 - to give you an idea how competitive it was some of the other UEFA Cup teams in 1988-9 included Atletico, Bayern, Roma, Ajax, Inter, Juventus and Bilbao.
 
United were Champions in 2007 so we would have qualifies for the 2008 Champions League.

on topic : I think Messi does either need a European Cup with another team other than Barcelona or a World Cup win with Argentina to solidify himself as the best ever.
 
YoungGun_UK said:
United were Champions in 2007 so we would have qualifies for the 2008 Champions League.
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Barcelona 2005 won the league as well to qualify for CL 2006.

YoungGun_UK said:
on topic : I think Messi does either need a European Cup with another team other than Barcelona or a World Cup win with Argentina to solidify himself as the best ever.
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Noooo, I see where you're going there. We won't sell it to you!

So he will win the next world cup, then! (doubt it, in my oppinion Argentina has a big midfield problem and no coach has been able to fix it).
 
Would be a great triumph for Argentina to win in Brazil. When we go out I'll be cheering them on.

I definitely agree with YoungGun about him moving leagues ...if it meant him playing in blue and white for club as well as for country ;)
 
Edmundo, it is possible that Di Stefano is as good or even better than Messi and Maradonna, but i never comment on players i haven't seen. That is also why i don't comment on Garrincha. But here is an indication about Garrincha/Pele. It is very well possible that Garrincha was better than Pele ever was in 1962. But Pele lasted from 1958 until 1974 or even later...all that time he was the best player in the world...Where was Garrincha in 1970 ? Or in 1958 ?
But that is only an indication.

I can judge and compare Pele, Maradonna and Messi because all three of them i have seen fairly regularly on television.
There is something mythic around these historic players and that is the problem with Maradonna. It is true that Maradonna had moments when he was unique and in those moments it is very well possible that he was better than Messi and Pele (mind you, i'm far from sure). The fact is that Maradonna had long periods when he was rather average (remember for instance his Barcelona period). Now an average Maradonna is still much better than most professional football players, but not better than Pele or Messi.

That is the reason why to me it is very obvious that both Messi and Pele are better than Maradonna.
Most of you know Maradonna from reputation and from clips with his most brilliant moments, but that is not the whole story.

Oh and before you mention that, i'm well aware about Goicochea and the injury he inflicted on Maradonna when he played for Barcelona, but that is not the reason why he he wasn't the biggest success in Barcelona...

When playing for Napoli, he had also periods where he was rather average (comapared to Messi, Pele and the brilliant Maradonna we all know from the clips...).
 
gerd said:
Edmundo, it is possible that Di Stefano is as good or even better than Messi and Maradonna, but i never comment on players i haven't seen. That is also why i don't comment on Garrincha. But here is an indication about Garrincha/Pele. It is very well possible that Garrincha was better than Pele ever was in 1962. But Pele lasted from 1958 until 1974 or even later...all that time he was the best player in the world...Where was Garrincha in 1970 ? Or in 1958 ?
But that is only an indication.

I can judge and compare Pele, Maradonna and Messi because all three of them i have seen fairly regularly on television.
There is something mythic around these historic players and that is the problem with Maradonna. It is true that Maradonna had moments when he was unique and in those moments it is very well possible that he was better than Messi and Pele (mind you, i'm far from sure). The fact is that Maradonna had long periods when he was rather average (remember for instance his Barcelona period). Now an average Maradonna is still much better than most professional football players, but not better than Pele or Messi.

That is the reason why to me it is very obvious that both Messi and Pele are better than Maradonna.
Most of you know Maradonna from reputation and from clips with his most brilliant moments, but that is not the whole story.

Oh and before you mention that, i'm well aware about Goicochea and the injury he inflicted on Maradonna when he played for Barcelona, but that is not the reason why he he wasn't the biggest success in Barcelona...

When playing for Napoli, he had also periods where he was rather average (comapared to Messi, Pele and the brilliant Maradonna we all know from the clips...).
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Yes Gerd, that's why I put that sentence saying Messi is Maradona every day, which is an extraordinary way of paying homage to Maradona but at the same time put Mess in the right perspective.

I watched Maradona play live at Barcleona (though injuries and illnesses made it short but I watched every single match he played). He had moments of brilliance amongst lots of average performances. He hadn't found yet his place in football, that he found at Napoli. But how many brilliant seasons he had? 2, 3 at most? Definitely some people overrates old legends. As a whole, Beckenbauer was a much better player than Maradona. But Maradona had 2 or 3 seasons in which he was absolutely superb and outshined everyone and did things no one could do. Think of Ronaldinho.

Besides, Maradona defeated England with a marvelous goal, but he also scored with his hand. Can you imagine what would happen if Messi scored that way against England on a world cup?

By the way, in the '86 world cup I don't get how anyone can think Spain had a better squad than Argentina. That's just nonsense. Spanish football had won nothing and had an average squad. Most of the so-called "big" teams also weren't specially brilliant and things were quite level, that's the reason why a team like Belgium could reach the semifinals (no offense to them, but as Gerd says it wasn't a brilliant team).

And finally, if he had been born at Samoa, Messi (or Maradona) couldn't be the best ever then? I think the world cup can be an element to decide the greatness of someone, but can't be used to deny the greatness of a genius, we're comparing what: 24 matches at best vs 1.500?

A world cup depends a lot on luck, form and relies less on individual performance. Club career is a much better indicator of a player level and skills.

At the same time, the demand for Messi to be tested on another league to be considered better is bullshit. Baresi, Beckenbauer, Van Basten, Maradona, Pele, Di Stefano, Maldini, Best... I could go on and on. All of them (and almost all of the best players ever) are remembered for what they did in a single team. So why Messi has to be treated differently? What's really wrong on him developing his career on a single club? I think it's fairly positive in the marketing world we live in that a big star remains loyal to his club.

Maradona was a flop in another league (Spain). Is this an indicator he wasn't great, then?

Godotelli said:
I definitely agree with YoungGun about him moving leagues ...if it meant him playing in blue and white for club as well as for country ;)
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I don't think he would like a move to Everton.
 
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