FC Barcelona Thread

Yep, that's it Gerd. The slogan "More than a club" is not just a political statement, it's nearer to "a way of doing things", like trying always to play totally offensive football, almost a suicidal option when you don't have the best of the teams (2000-2004...).

To me this agreement makes our club just like any other one. And we don't need that money to continue being who we are. That's the saddest part. And the debt is mainly a stupid game of numbers by the monkey Rosell. What can you expect from an intimate friend of Florentino??

The rest of the world can think what they want, but clearly Barcelona fans watched the unicef deal with a smile in the face. I bought the shirt with the unicef logo because I find it's a great way of expressing the right values. Of course there's marketing involved in it, but good marketing.

Putting that qatar foundation does not express the same values, the fans know it and they're upset.
 
good response gerd ...I understood everything just by pointing out Arsenal becoming defense minded :LOL: . Barca`s success on the pitch tells me we are not that far ,but the way a club is ran will always change when there is voting involved (administration-wise). Plus, Catalans see themselves like a country .While N.Londoners don`t IMO...Reminds me of the puertoricians (boricuas) in the states . Their flag is their soul and their accents is their gift.Me personally think it`s a complejo ,but I won`t dare say that to any of them . I love them ppls
 
Another splendid show today. Messi again scoring 2 more goals that would make it to the best highlights of any other player in history. He simply does it every week.

My god, I can't even understand what he's doing. Best player in history if no one breaks his leg. He controls the ball, drbible, shoot, pass, assist... everything. Really you should watch the 2 goals he scored today against a Real Sociedad that played FAIRLY WELL compared to our last visitors...

;)

26-0 in our last 6 matches.
 
Jumbo_ said:
To be honest I'm glad in a way as I'm tired of hearing how wonderful Barcelona are/were for negating the option of having a shirt sponsor and having the slogan of a charity instead. This is a club who along with Real Madrid screw every other Spanish team with the TV money and who Nike paid 150m euro for a 5 year kit deal. Then there's the deals with Audi, Turkish Airlines and more who have all paid to have their name associated with Barcelona. They are not sponsor free by any stretch.

Of course all clubs do this but only Barca get painted as some sort of Mother Teresa of the football world which is galling to say the least when you consider the above. The cynic in me says the Unicef thing is just a marketing scheme to help push the 'more than a club' mantra and attract more fans/sponsors etc to this way of thinking. It's not as if Barca are the only club who gives to charity anyway.

Regardless, Unicef will still receive their 1m euro's and the logo will still feature on the shirt so all is not lost.
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:) Yeah, you're right - you can add to the sponsoring list bwin too [till last year it was even on the site].
I don't think anyone except naives believe unicef was 100% selfless. Marketing scheme sounds a lil too rough too :)) It was a "hey, i've got a great idea to really boost our image AND do some good". For unicef the gain isn't in that 1.5 million, but in the publicity which "Barca de la 6 copas", probably the best Barca of all-times, brought. It's really a win-win-win-win situation, at the expense of driving neutrals mad with the aura you mentioned.

Of course, i think going the opposite direction and insinuating the move as mischievous and/or willingly deceitful is unnecessary. I'm not saying you did it, but amongst a lot of fans there's really too much hate.

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I don't know if you followed the sponsorship thing. When Rossell was VP [2003-2005-ish?] he really tried to get us to take on a sponsor. In 2005-2006 it looked like we cracked and were about to sign a very big deal [the biggest at the time] to promote the Beijing Olympics of 2008. I remember everything looked set [even evo-web kits with the sponsor logo had appeared :)) ] and then we backed out wanting to hold on to that "clean" shirt [it was us and Bilbao - last 2 bastions, btw].

One year later, i believe, Laporta [or someone in his staff] makes it big: Barca WILL have a shirt logo _start unicef story_. So it all came as a backlash of Rossell's previous endeavours too.

Drekkard, Gerd... my memories are fuzzy-ish. Anyone feel free to correct me on this.
 
You're quite right Teddy, you got it all right and I agree with all. Though I'm still sad we will put "advertising" in our shirt in a more "typical" way. I liked having a different sponsor than 99% of the clubs.

Did I say Rosell is a monkey?
 
The thing is I can't see where the decline of this Barcelona side will come from. I really believe this team has the potential to be arguably the greatest.
 
As always, it will depend on:

1- Mentality
2- Injuries

If those 2 points are kept into reasonable margins, I can see us playing incredibly well (as in "best football I've ever seen myself") for 2 or 3 more years minimum.
 
Barcelona are without a doubt the best football team in the world and maybe one of the best ever.
Still, they have a strange vulnerability. Against very defensive and well organized teams they will always struggle a litle bit. I still think they lack something. Villa is a fantastic player, one of the best forwards in the world, but Barcelona lack a type of player like Eto'o or before him Larsson. Larsson and Eto'o are different sorts of players but they both were the piece that made the jigsaw complete...at the moment the jigsaw is not complete. Do you guys see a player that can make the jigsaw complete? I'm not sure, but maybe Ajax' Luis Suarez could...it is that type if player Barcelona need...maybe Suarez can't make the step up from the Dutch competition to Barcelona...

I still don't understand why Eto'o had to go...can you imagine the current team with Eto'o?
 
I think all great teams have 1 weakness: motivation. I don't mean the team's actual motivation, but the motivation of their opponents. Did you see how fired up Man Utd were when they ended Arsenal's 49-match run? Or Inter when they beat Barca 3-1 last season? Barca still had quality, but Inter's players wanted to win at all costs. If Real Madrid was at home against Barca a few weeks ago, I'm certain Mourinho would've fired his team up and would have beaten Barca.

btw, drekkard, do you play online with your PS3?
 
Yes, I play a lot, mainly NBA 2k11. I used to play Fifa, but Fifa 11 ires me so quickly when pression and tackling come to effect.

Feel free to add me!
 
This is a litle bit off-topic, but i guess this must be possible in the Barcelona thread.
I have a funny story about my 7 year old son.
Thomas is a huge fan of Barcelona. His favourite player used to be Eto'o, but now he's taken to David Villa and this is his big idol (with Messi of course).
My son is qaurreling with my wife about his hair. He likes long hair and my wife thinks that long hair doesn't suit him and want to go to the hair dresser with him. He has been refusing for a couple of weeks but his mother is augmenting the pressure and he felt that he had to take an initiave to get out of this stalemate that he will inevitably loose. Sunday he went to his mother with a picture of David Villa and said it was ok for him to get a haircut if his hair would be done in the style of David Villa's hair. My wife agreed and this afternoon he will have is David Villa haircut...(my son has blondish hair...).
 
Well, it's barcelona-related so it's not off-topic at all!

And you will like this story:

When I was about 8, I didn't want my hair to be cut at all, but was finally "forced" to go to the haridresser. I wanted to have my hair like Bernd Schuster, who had recently signed and was my idol.

The problem was that my hair is exactly like Guardiola's (I have similar age and we've had the hair always the same kind during life). It was impossible to have my hair like Bernd Schuster. Not the color, not the kind of hair at all. It was a big fustration to me and I remember sobbing because the hairdresser told me he couldn't make it in any way.

Then some years later Guardiola started to play in the first team and I had his same hair and constitution and became my idol. Another reason to love Pep (I met him in the youth teams of Barcelona, though he was much much better than me and played in the "hot prospects" team unlike me who was in the "not so good" team at that age).

;)
 
A bit of my story with the youth team for those interested (if any).

I played 2 years in the youth teams of Barcelona after succesfully passing some tests. I trained next to the Camp Nou and we had the showers inside the stadium, near the showers of the first team.

To reach the showers you should cross some corridors with photos of historical players of the club. You always dream of becoming one of them, but only one out of every 1.000 boys that go through the many youth teams get to play in the first team. Really, it's that hard.

Under 13 years and at that time (early 80s), Barcelona had 5 different teams for every age from 9 to up to 12 years. Depending on your quality and progression you could "roam" from level 1 to level 5 team. I started pretty well but quickly went down and ended as a sub of the lowest teams. Competition is brutal.

I was 11 years old when I first saw Guardiola playing in one of the teams. He's just 2 years older than me and he had just joined La Masia, which is a special house where players from far cities and towns get to sleep. Only the best players join La Masia, so they were like idols for the small minions there that dreamt on becoming professional players.

I remember Guardiola because we were similar physically, but I also remember other boys that were absolutely brilliant but didn't make it to the first team, not even the B Team in fact.

As I say, there are hundreds of players but suddenly, at 12-13 years, they make it into 1 team only. It's the first "hurdle" to become a big player. If you don't make this first cut, you quit the academy. That's why you watched the trainings of the 12-13 year old boys. They had made the cut! It made the difference between good players and the REAL good ones.

I wasn't good enough so I didn't even make it to be refused in the cut. I was refused eralier lol ;)

I played as a full back, left footed. I had a great vision, but lacked the enormous skill and conditions required to go on.

In the late 80s they changed all this system and made it simpler and right now they have only one team for every age. But then in the 80s there weren't young boys from all around the world like there are now.
 
I meant that in the 80s, the youth teams were basically formaed by catalan boys. In the 90s, they changed the structure (with Cruyff) and made it more "professional" and limited the number of youth teams to only some. And they started to pick players from all around the world to concentrate the best young players.

That got it's peek in the 2000s, and right now in the youth teams 50% of the boys are from other countries.

Actually, the success of the team tells it was a very good and smart move.
 
5 goals again, btw the 2nd goal looked offsides :BLEH: . Messi is very protected I remember Cesc getting drilled from the back didn`t even get a card and cesc was injured for 2 weeks.
 
beboq said:
5 goals again, btw the 2nd goal looked offsides :BLEH: . Messi is very protected I remember Cesc getting drilled from the back didn`t even get a card and cesc was injured for 2 weeks.
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2nd goal is definitely NOT offside in any way. Don't know why barcelona-haters have to always try to shadow our exhibitions. In the 4th goal, MAYBE there's an offside of Messi at the start of the play, not in the final pass. But at the same time they whistled 2 offsides that weren't when we were alone against the keeper...

Still, we could have scored 10 again. We're reaching a level that's never witnessed. 26 goals in the last 5 matches. 51 goals in the league and still 2 matches left to reach the middle of the tournament... It's absolutely amazing.

Great display again by Pedro, Xavi and Messi.
 
drekkard said:
2nd goal is definitely NOT offside in any way. Don't know why barcelona-haters have to always try to shadow our exhibitions. In the 4th goal, MAYBE there's an offside of Messi at the start of the play, not in the final pass. But at the same time they whistled 2 offsides that weren't when we were alone against the keeper...

Still, we could have scored 10 again. We're reaching a level that's never witnessed. 26 goals in the last 5 matches. 51 goals in the league and still 2 matches left to reach the middle of the tournament... It's absolutely amazing.

Great display again by Pedro, Xavi and Messi.
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how am I tainted w/ that same brush as haters :LOL: btw some of yous are very touche. I respect barca on the pitch game , but don`t agree w/ their off the pitch antics
 
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beboq said:
5 goals again, btw the 2nd goal looked offsides :BLEH: . Messi is very protected I remember Cesc getting drilled from the back didn`t even get a card and cesc was injured for 2 weeks.
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beboq said:
how am I tainted w/ that same brush as haters :LOL: btw some of yous are very touche. I respect barca on the pitch game , but don`t agree w/ their off the pitch antics
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Because you sound EXACTLY like Marca or AS, full of bitternes. We score 5 goals, play another great match, possibly being of the best teams in history in terms of quality and numbers and all you can say is : "the secondth was an offside", when it's obvious it WASN'T offside, and only the absolut fanatics of Marca will say stupid things like this. Did you read it there? Becuase, frankly, it's quite a joke reading spanish newspapers, but believing them it's just worse.

It's just as if you are just waiting for something negative to jump on Barcelona.
 
drekkard said:
Because you sound EXACTLY like Marca or AS, full of bitternes. We score 5 goals, play another great match, possibly being of the best teams in history in terms of quality and numbers and all you can say is : "the secondth was an offside", when it's obvious it WASN'T offside, and only the absolut fanatics of Marca will say stupid things like this. Did you read it there? Becuase, frankly, it's quite a joke reading spanish newspapers, but believing them it's just worse.

It's just as if you are just waiting for something negative to jump on Barcelona.
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if you re-read my post I said looked offsides (smilie was the jk) you are paranoid :LOL: get a grip no one is bashing your lil precious club . Are there any other barca fans in here who can take a lil banter w/o getting their tits in a twitch . Im not part of the controversial w/ Ronaldo winning by a deflection goal off pepe. I think Messi is better by a distance even though Ronaldo prove himself in both leagues.
 
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