FC Barcelona Thread

This match was a nail bitter it seem if you defend the 1st half and in the 2nd start a bit slow then release the crack-in . Perotti came in like Theo and speed demon down the flanks he was great to see. That free kick was sweet , but I still don`t get why he ran out to whistle before the kick was in the net. Replay showed both slightly nudging. Pep looks worry ? Is it back pain or stress ?


Negredo surprise me didn`t think he was that fast. Caceres n Navarro were running everywhere like mad men :LOL: Bojan had a very good game that cross he put beat everyone including messi by inches. Dani reminds me of Eboue falling about from draft wind.:SMUG:
 
Barca fans, hope you don´t mind posting this article but it is very good imo..it´s from LFC forum..This article was written as reaction to this post after the derby Real - Barca..It is a reaction to people who say that Barca just playes their youth and that playing youth is the key to future success..And that Liverpool should follow this model..but it depends on many things...

Having watched Barca give Real a football lesson last night it is clear to world football, that you do not actually need to be owned by a billionaire.

9 players from the youth system says it all

A squad which cost a third or Real's

It really is time for us to go back to grass roots, and kids playing locally are the key.

I know we have teams of all ages but this has to continue and total focus on our english players must be demanded from our new owners.

Our scouting network must be braving the winds on a Sunday rather than looking for the next spanish/french kid to tempt away.

It was amazing to see last night and there are kids in this country that play great one and two touch football, free football has to be the way and natural talent not coached out of them.
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HERE is the reaction, i think very true and interesting..

Barcelona have done some great things and they are the best team I have ever seen.
One thing constantly pisses me off though, whether it comes after Rafa has signed somebody who worked for Barcelona or after yet another crushing Barcelona victory you are guaranteed to find a post similar to the following:

I'd like to raise a few points that can hopefully, once and for all, terminally kill the view that we can grab 11 kids off the streets of Huyton and conquer the world, because that's what Barcelona do.

Point 1 - Geography

The argument put forth is usually that Barcelona consists of nothing but kids who have grown up within spitting distance of Sagrada Familia, and that all of their players are "local" to the town.

Imagine if you will that Puyol, Xavi, Iniesta and co are British.
The following is the equivalent distance they were born from LIVERPOOL:

Pique - Liverpool
Valdes - Birkenhead (5 miles)
Busquets - Formby (10 miles)
Xavi - Warrington (15 miles)
Bojan - Leeds (70 miles)
Puyol - Solihull, Birmingham (85 miles)
Iniesta - Aberdeen, Scotland (245 miles)
Pedro - Kiev, Ukraine (1,400 miles)
Jeffren - Kiev, Ukraine (1,400 miles *actually born in Venezuela but moved aged 1)

Then you have Messi who was born and raised in Argentina.

So I hope you salute our young upcoming locals such as Nathan Ecclestone of Manchester, Jonjo Shelvey of Romford, Danny Wilson of Livingston and of course Dani Pacheco of Barcelona.

Think about this next time you wish to emulate Barcelona and their "local" team, they are as guilty as any other team of scouring far and wide for the best players.

2. Competition

In England you are only allowed to sign players within 1 hour's drive of your club, your "catchment area". This can be exploited by moving the player's family, but this relies on the child not already being snapped up by another big club and thus removing a large incentive for moving.

In regards to Barcelona their local competition is sparse:

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That means with local rivals Espanyol aside the nearest teams for Barcelona to compete with are:

Mallorca - an island 130 miles away
Villareal - 155 miles away and in a town almost half the size of Wigan
Zaragoza - 160 miles away, a team bottom of La Liga

Whereas in the North-West of England:

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And that is not including Birmingham and Aston Villa who are only 80 miles away.

If we had the same competition as Barcelona you could easily argue we could well have Gerrard, Carragher, Rodwell, Richards, Rooney, Giggs, Scholes, and *shudder* the Neville's, and as the point above shows they'd all easily count as "local".

3. Work Permits

Picture the scene.
In the year 2000 a Scouse scout gets on the wrong plane, his dyslexia has kicked in and he hasn't got on the flight to Almeria but to Argentina.
He lands to find a country in economic turmoil, and suddenly spots a tiny lad playing football.
He beams, he has found the new Maradona - his bosses will be delighted he has found the player that will one day bring league titles back to Liverpool.

He arrives back at Melwood with tales of this young boy. The club contact the boy's family, unfortunately he has no grandparents with a European Passport so they put the phone down and forget about the boy.

A Spanish club arrives one month later and signs the boy, growing up to become Leo Messi.

Without a European passport, or one in the family a player must either go the Sebastien Leto route of forgery or must have played 75% of his country's matches - providing his country has an average FIFA ranking of at least 70 over the past 2 years.

A hard task for an 11 year old.

4. Reserve Team Football

Currently our reserves play in the Northern section of the Premier League Reserve League, playing 9 other teams.
A league in which Birmingham, Spurs, Fulham and Stoke have turned down the chance to field a team in.

Barcelona have their youth team in the 2nd Tier of League Football (currently 5th) playing against teams that only a few years ago we played in the Champions League (Betis).

5. Money

Barcelona spend tens of millions on kids.

Keirrison was signed for €14 million and has not played for Barcelona since. Having loan spells at Benfica, Fiorentina, and now Santos.
Martin Caceres was signed for €16.5 million and has since been sent to Juventus and Seville on loan
Henrique was signed for €8 million and is another yet to play a game for Barcelona and is another on his second loan spell

These players are by no means write-offs but can you imagine we spent 30 million on 3 kids and then sent all 3 on loan to 2 clubs, even 3 in some instances.

Due to the fact they have so much money these players go under the radar and are considered investments, we simply cannot do that.



I'm sick of people thinking it's so easy to go out with a packet of sweets and come back with a world class football team.
It's not that easy and it undermines the work Barca did and is ignorant of the challenges we face.

It also pisses over the likes of me who, this season alone, has taken the kids team I manage up to both Kirkby and Finch Farm to play against their U8 teams. Every Sunday I see 2 people connected with Liverpool and 1 with Everton at the pitch where we play. 2 of my team have been up to train/play with Liverpool while Everton are after another.

I'm sick of "grass-roots are fucked up" talk from people sitting on their ass on a Sunday morning stuffing their faces with bacon butties while laughing to the repeat of Soccer A.M, then phoning up talk-sport to moan.

Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher, Wayne Rooney, Michael Owen, Robbie Fowler, Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan, Tony Hibbert, Ryan Taylor, Leon Osman, Jack Rodwell, Scott Dann, Jose Baxter. Grass roots in Liverpool is fine, bringing them through the Academy at Liverpool is not.
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That's a very interesting article, Pipa, and some of the things they say are absolutely spot on.

I would add other things, though, and an important conclusion:

- Football philosophy: One of the keys of our recent success is having all the youth teams playing the same system with the same conception of football. So, Barcelona produces specialists. Barcelona youth players would be absolutely unable to play a completely different style. That has its advantages, but laso its draw backs. If you really want to start produciing good players for your first team, you need a clear direction and spend some 10 years doing it.

That's the main reason why Pedro, who was an average player, suddenly becoms a valid player for the team. The same with Busquets.

Xavi and Iniesta wouldn't even be signed by Liverpool youth team, considering they don't run, they won't fight and are midgets. So, the philosophy behind your football shapes your youth players. I don't think Liverpool has a very clear conception of how to play football right now that could be applied to all the youth teams to produce unique players for the first team.

- Barcelona has a lot of players in the first team, but a lot of them don't even manage to reach it. We simply invest a lot on the youth teams. And this investment can't be done by most of the clubs. In Spain, only Madrid and Villarreal invest a lot of money in the youth teams, though Madrid don't even use the homegrown kids right now. But the heavy investment is there.

Having Iniesta, Messi, Pedro, etc.. in our youth teams is not that cheap. We invested a lot of money in those kids!


- We also spend a lot of money on signigns! Alves, Villa, Ibra... We simply spend a lot of money to have the perfect companions for our homegrown players. Without Alves, Abidal , Villa and

- This is the important one: you need a little luck too. We had the luck to find Messi, Xavi and Iniesta. Not all the generations of player will be that good. So, in a few years, when we don't play football as well as we do now, remember that the homegrown players are in our first team only when they are great. If not, we would sign other players, as we did with Rijkaard, for example (Ronaldinho, Deco, Belletti, Etoo, Larsson, Van Bronckhorst, Van Bommel, Giuly...).

Concluding:
We invest a lot of money in youth players expecting them to be great, teaching thenm to play in a very specific way. When they do, we base our team in them. When they don't we spend a lot of money in buying players that fit our philosophy, but that is riskier.
 
gerd said:
Kanouté, i don't agree with your assessment of drekkard, he is one of the most fair fans on this forum. I also ask myself if you understand drekkard posts...
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By the way, thanks for the support Gerd, it's great to have people like you and lo zio around to have healthy debates. :WORSHIP:
 
His best season ever for Barça and then this bomb comes down on him...

Heard about this yesterday and it made me really sad. Aside from the usual magicians in Barcelona, Éric was the only "outside" of the box players that really made me confident and secure that no1 will break his form. Little did i know that only a thing of this magnitude could break his astonishing season.

Hope he recovers well and that this is just a benign tumor instead of a carcinoma, because that would mean quimo, radio and all of those things that ruin your body. We need Éric atm but more then we his family and friends need him well, so hope he recovers well.
 
Very sad news indeed. I was shocked when I heard it. He was one of my favorite players and was in his best moment. After an initial hard time in the team some years ago, he had finally "clicked" and was doing an incredible season. But most important, he was truly a happy man and had become an important person in the team (in and out the pitch). I wish him the best.
 
The operation was carried out by Doctor Josep Fuster Obregón and his team to remove a tumour in the player’s liver.

During the operation, which lasted for approximately three hours, the medical team removed the tumour through laparoscopic surgery without any complications.

The player could be fit to leave the hospital within a week, depending on his progress.

In accordance with the specific wishes of the player himself, the Club would like to demand the maximum respect for his privacy at this moment.
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http://www.fcbarcelona.com/web/english/noticies/futbol/temporada10-11/03/17/n110317116354.html

Thanks God! quick recovery Eric!
 
Interesting fixtures. Playing the 2nd match away can make it very very tough for us. The same applies to Inter and Madrid.

I'm glad that the apparently "lesser" teams didn't face each other. Mainly because that way, if they get through no one can say the got lucky in the draw. All the teams are very strong (maybe Schalke is in a lower level compared to the rest) so we will have a great round of football.

PS: What if Chygrinsky puts us out with a header in the last minute?
 
Yes, we have only 6 days between both matches in the CL with a league match in-between. Time for Mourinho to moan about the calendar again?
 
Yah Barca need to take care of them in 1st leg!

Otherwise it could get very tricky!!

Shakhtar 2nd leg in Ukraine..... not gonna be pleasant.

And with the players they have, they just need 1 or 2 good counter-attacks. Then guys like Luiz Adriano and Douglas Costa, Willian can always hurt you in ONE moment of lack of concetration. Let's hope Gabi Milito isn't called upon... :P

But if Barca can get a good result like 2-0 or more at home without conceding... then it's game over.

So I think Barca should and will try to finish the game in 1st leg. Because otherwise it can all go very wrong.....

Shakhtar has not only very good players but very professional/sneaky and experienced ones like captain Srna who certainly knows how to get the crowd going and also use the referees....
 
Great read PLF, that's exactly what I think. They will feel comfortable being dominated and wait for the moment. They won't care if we score one or 2 as long as they score in the first leg. We should play the first matcha as a final, because we've suffered a lot everytime we have played against them.

Srna is on of the most underrated players in Europe. He can defend, he can run the wing, he's one of the best crossers around. Add the speed they have upfront and yes, it can be very tricky without Abidal watching our back. I really hope Puyol is able to play, because putting Milito in the pitch is committing suicide day in day out.
 
Yeah I completely agree.

If Gabi Milito who is unfortunately a SHADOW of the great defender he used to be plays against those Shakhtar attackers, it'll probably end up with red card, penalties and goals conceded!

Barca is really gonna miss Abidal and could really use Chygrinksi right about now. :P Unfortunately he'll be on the other team and doing his best to hurt Barca and prove them wrong.

Barca had problems against Rubin but Shakhtar has much more dangerous players even and the Romanian mastermind, Lucescu is a brilliant coach!

I'm looking forward to this game! Neither team can afford a single mistake I think. Otherwise it'll be very costly.

p.s. Yeah Srna just r0cks! The guy's as well rounded as they come! Very impressive!
 
I never understood what happened with Chygrinski.
Barcelona bought him last season, he scarcely (if ever) played for them and now he left. It seems to me that Barcelona are not patient enough with their lower profile new players...
They have a fantastic first eleven, but IMO the bench is not good enough. Players like Puyol, Xavi and Iniesta are not getting any younger and i fear for them that one day they will come to the conclusion that they haven't thought about worthy replacements for those older players.

Right at the moment it even seems that the absence of Abidal could cause a problem. They have the best first eleven in the world, but compared with other big teams their fringe players seriously lack quality (well obvioulsy not Masscherano, but he is the exception perhaps together with Seydou Keita).
 
Totally right, Gerd, I've been saying this for some time. A single injury can destroy the team as a tower made of cards. Keita may be an average player, but adds nothing to the team. There's no one in the bench that can offer any valuable attribute to the first eleven, and that's our main weakness.

For all good Guardiola has done (and it's a lot, really), configuring a large squad and playing the bench is definitely not one of his qualities.

Even Afellay is having only 5-minutes play on a good day. That's absurd, we don't give enough minutes to talented players (in my oppinion Thiago should be alreay playing in the first team, giving a rest to Xavi/Iniesta).

Though, I disagree with Chigrinsky. It was a mistake by Pep. He's a good player, but he's not cut for our style of play. He lacked cold blood and speed. His appearances were always causing a bad result and he never proved to have the very specific qualities our style need. He can prove he's a great player,as he is, but he didn't fit here. Though, maybe it was more a kind of mental blocking that prevented him to really show his skills.
 
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