“A year ago, before Real Madrid went to the banks to borrow money at what seemed a reckless rate, there was no comparison between it and the other Spanish monolith, Barcelona. Barça was on its way to a historic clean sweep of six trophies, including the Spanish, European and World club titles. More than that, its soccer was so stylish, so uninhibited, that no team on earth could touch it.” (NYT)
“Barcelona twice came from behind to win a point at Almeria in a match blighted by some bizarre refereeing decisions from Carlos Clos Gomez. Clos Gomez delayed the start of the match for almost a quarter of an hour, harshly sent off Pep Guardiola and Zlatan Ibrahimovic and incorrectly awarded a free-kick to Barcelona which led to their first equaliser.” (ESPN)
Almeria vs Barca Match Report
(All About FC Barcelona)
“Nemanja Vidic should have been sent off for his foul on Gabriel Agbonlahor in Sunday’s Carling Cup final. Aston Villa’s manager, Martin O’Neill, said it. Villa’s players thought so too and their fans were convinced. Even Sir Alex Ferguson admitted that Manchester United got a lucky break after the Serb conceded the penalty from which James Milner gave Villa the lead.” (WSC)
“During the course of my research for this piece, I discovered that my planned intro, Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about how supporting a team was tantamount to “rooting for laundry” has already descended – or should that be ascended? – to the level of cliche. That’s what I get for being late to Seinfeld, I suppose. Still, every cliche has a kernel of truth (as the cliche has it), so let us anyway remind ourselves of precisely what he said…” (Norman Einsteins)
“Faced with their toughest opponent for a generation, Europe’s leading football clubs have been forced to adopt a new tactic: frugality. Creditors have caught up with the beautiful game in recent weeks, raising fears that spiraling wages and reckless spending could put the future of some of the world’s most iconic teams at risk.” (WSJ)
Florentino Peréz
“In the summer of 2009, Real Madrid sent shockwaves around the world by spending an estimated €252 million pounds. After FC Barcelona dominated Spain in 2008-2009, winning an unprecedented treble, Florentino Peréz felt it was essential to topple the Catalan giants.” (Just Football)
“Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola felt his side were back to near their best during their 2-1 home win over Malaga, even though they needed a late strike from Lionel Messi to seal the points. Guardiola admitted earlier this week that his sextuple winners were struggling to find top gear but he was far happier following last night’s victory which kept the Catalan giants two points clear of Real Madrid at the Primera Division summit.” (ESPN)
“Everything Barcelona’s Lionel Messi touched at club level in 2009 may have turned to gold but Juan Sebastian Veron wasn’t too far behind his countryman, leading Estudiantes to the Libertadores Cup and retaining his personal crown as South America’s footballer of the year.” (World Soccer)
“It’s no secret that without the top South American players, European soccer’s biggest club competition — the UEFA Champions League — wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. With the amount of South American talent integrated into the competition in recent years, the quality of play has reached a level never imagined before. (SI)
“The full extent of the debts engulfing English football has been laid bare in a report that shows Premier League clubs are carrying more debt than the rest of Europe’s clubs put together. The findings are contained in a study from European football’s governing body into the state of football’s finances and come as the Premier League’s bottom club Portsmouth FC prepares to file for administration—a form of bankruptcy protection—on Friday as a result of debts of roughly £70 million ($105.5 million).” (WSJ)
“FC Barcelona coach Josep Guardiola was pleased to see Zlatan Ibrahimović silence his critics after the striker helped the UEFA Champions League holders to a first knockout round first-leg draw away to VfB Stuttgart.” (UEFA)
“In the off-season, despite the wave of cash and new signings, I had one serious concern: could Manuel Pellgrini balance the all-star egos in the locker room? And could he impose the Villareal short-passing approach on Madrid? He has done neither. And he has succeeded with fantastic aplomb. The Alcocorn hiccup aside, Madrid trails Barcelona by 2 points. The games, the goals, the endless and relentless storm ahead of progress. But exactly has Manuel done? It’s quite simple – he has imposed a style of Madrid that is Madrid. Madrid no longer plays like a lost puppy sniffing for scraps. Madrid now plays like Madrid. Allow me to elaborate.” (futfanatico)
José Mourinho
“There might never have been a coach more intent on turning his teams into a sideshow to his own performance than José Mourinho. Yet he is not the pretty sight he imagines. On Saturday night in the San Siro, his Inter Milan was reduced by foul play and gamesmanship to nine men before halftime for the second match running. No matter, Mourinho applauded them, mocked the referee, and boasted that a team of his would have to be reduced to six players to lose a home game. He is a bitter and twisted man — and a successful one.” (NYT)
“Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola was happy to see Thierry Henry return to the side with a goal in Saturday’s 4-0 win at home to Racing Santander and believes the Frenchman has much more to offer the Catalan side.” (ESPN)
“The whole army of Spanish media outlets has been splashed with this bit of news, regarding the facebook page of suspected ETA members–ETA being, for those unfamiliar with Spain, the Basque separatist-terrorist group responsible for thousands of acts of violence since their establishment during the Franco dictatorship. From sports dailies such as AS to Marca, to dailies such as El Mundo and even regional papers like La Voz de Galicia, most everyone had a shot at this piece.” (Soccer Politics)
“No sooner had Barcelona lost their first-ever competition under Pep Guardiola than they won a seventh title. No sooner had the coach sealed up a virtual contract renewal than he wrapped up a virtual title. Top of the table at the halfway stage of the season, Barca are Spain’s campeon de invierno (winter champions). And while Guardiola said it was “merely anecdotal”, most others insisted it was rather more significant.” (World Soccer)
“Pep Guardiola said it, Joan Laporta said it, and Carles Puyol said it. Cristiano Ronaldo said it, Kaká said it, and Karim Benzema said it. The Madrid press said it. Over and over and over again. Everybody said it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sooner or later FC Barcelona will lose in La Liga. The occasional lone voice dared whisper the words ‘whole’, ‘season’ and ‘unbeaten’ in the same sentence but most didn’t. Most wouldn’t. Everyone knew the day would come; many even knew when it would come. In Madrid they were counting on it. The maths had been done: -5+3+3=1, Real Madrid = champions. Twenty-one matches and almost six months later, the day had come.” (Guardian)
“This week’s Video Of The Week is ‘Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait’, a 2006 film that was featured at that year’s Edinburgh Festival. The film follows a simple concept: follow Zinedine Zidane with a bank of cameras (seventeen, to be precise) during a Liga match between Real Madrid and Villareal. The film drew comparison with the 1970 film “Football As Never Before”, during which a camera followed George Best for the duration of a match between Manchester United and Coventry City. With a soundtrack provided by the Scottish band, Mogwai, this is a hypnotic piece of filmwork.” (twohundredpercent)
“The news of the week was the death of Luis Molowny, not exactly the last of his breed, but certainly a significant figure in its diminishing ranks. Signed by Real Madrid back in 1946, the midfielder went on to play for 11 seasons, was a major spoke in the wheel of the great European side that went on to dominate Europe so imperiously after his retirement (1958), and then managed the team on four separate occasions between 1974 and 1986 winning three leagues, two King’s Cups and two UEFA Cup titles. He finished his time with the club as Director of Football in the late 1980s, finally retiring and returning to live in Las Palmas. He was originally from Tenerife.” (ESPN)
“Note : This post was written after the defeat to Fiorentina in the Champions league. With me still lost for words over the loss at Emirates, I’d like to make a re-visit to continue my support for the man who cares for the club the most. So some of the readers who are new to this blog kindly have a look. (For the old ones, yeah the ‘Psycho’ part was re-edited for obvious reasons.” (All Four One..)
“Long-distance goals should intrinsically have a reduced element of surprise, but tell that to Ronaldinho. Just because you are outside the box doesn’t mean you can’t think outside the box in the way that you shoot for goal. Ronaldinho’s incomparable imagination manifested itself in under-the-wall free-kicks and strikes with scarcely any backlift.” (Guardian)
“James is back with another top-banana podcast featuring John Ashdown, Barry Glendenning and Paul Doyle. Midweek Premier League matches mean plenty of talking points: including Louis Saha increasing John Terry’s woe, Arsenal back to winning ways, and Aston Villa’s limited ambition against Manchester United. Sid Lowe is on the phone from Madrid with the truth about those Cesc Fábregas to Barcelona rumours, while James’s Italian round-up includes news of Ultras storming Lazio’s training ground.” (Guardian – James Richardson)
“The pod squad analyse Chelsea’s demolition of Arsenal, Liverpool’s bruising battle with Everton, and Tottenham Hotspur’s snoozefest with Aston Villa and ask: why are we getting another dose of the same old same old? Also in the show – and lest we be accussed of Big Four-centricity – we discuss Hull City’s recent revival now that Phil Brown ditched the earpiece and the goatee. Plus, we ponder whether Fabio Capello’s done the right thing in stripping John Terry of the England captaincy. And we get dewy-eyed about those Brat Pack movies of the 1980s. Finally, our favourite Teuton Raphael Honigstein brings us news of a rift in the German national team and the latest from the Bundesliga; Sid Lowe brings us up to date with Spain’s La Liga; and Jimbo tells us about Lazio’s mounting woes in Serie A.” (Guardian – James Richardson)
“”Successful football is about good habits,” quoth Brian Clough, more or less in those words. Maybe so. What he meant was that you inculcate good habits into a player on the training ground to the extent that the player then reproduces them automatically on match-days, usually without the manager’s further intervention. Clough, for one, was famous for not turning up for training sessions, preferring to take his dog for a walk, which was his implicit way of acknowledging that the habits had been taken on. Vicente Del Bosque is another one from this school of management, preferring not to change the well-oiled Luis Aragonés machine, and only applying fine-tuning when necessary.” (ESPN)
“Despite the current financial crisis in English football, it’s not down to a lack of television revenue for the Premier League. Indeed, that revenue is the envy of the world, with the £1.782 billion deal signed last year for domestic live game rights alone. The Premier League’s deals are negotiated collectively; the threat of, say, Manchester United going it alone has long bubbled under the surface, but the overall size of the deals the League have managed to negotiate, and the long-term benefits of it for the Premier League as a whole, have kept even the biggest clubs behind the collective agreements.” (Pitch Invasion)
“Football’s transfer system has always been a murky business. Unlike the National Football League or the National Basketball Association in America, where players enter the professional ranks amid the glitz and razzmatazz of the college draft, the movement of players in football is an altogether more furtive operation. Players are effectively the property of their employers, bought and sold by professional clubs without oversight or regulation from the sport’s authorities. Since every player has a price attached, recruitment is a cloak and dagger process.” (WSJ)
“Lionel Messi is probably the top sportsman in the world right now: unless you ask fans in Argentina where the soccer star was born and grew up in a town called Rosario, roughly 180 miles (290 kilometers) north-west of Buenos Aires. After helping his club, Spain’s FC Barcelona, win most of the top awards in 2009, Mr. Messi was named World Player of the Year by FIFA, world football’s governing body. He received the 2009 Ballon d’Or, given to Europe’s top player— winning the honor by the widest margin since it was first awarded in 1956. He even won the Latino Athlete of the Year 2009.” (WSJ)
“Ajax Amsterdam’s general director recently tallied his club’s transfers, and came up with this estimate: only 8.3 per cent of the footballers Ajax had bought in the past decade had succeeded. Ajax’s Dutch rivals, he said, had done even worse. This January European clubs spent barely anything during the “transfer window”. English clubs forked out about £30m ($48m, €34m) on new players, their lowest for any January since 2003. German, Spanish and French clubs spent even less. The credit crunch has bitten soccer in the leg.” (Simon Kuper)
“Barcelona maintained their impressive home record in the Primera Division with a 2-1 victory over Getafe – despite finishing the game with nine men following the dismissals of Gerard Pique and Rafael Marquez. Pique was sent off for a cynical lunge on Rafa Lopez after 24 minutes, although Barca were already a goal to the good by then, thanks to Lionel Messi’s brilliant early strike.” (ESPN)
Barca win despite two red cards, Real keep pace
“Leaders Barcelona survived red cards for Gerard Pique and Rafael Marquez to complete a 2-1 victory over Getafe in La Liga on Saturday while Real Madrid kept pace with a 3-0 win at home to Espanyol. Pique was sent off in the 25th minute for a wild challenge on Rafa Lopez. Marquez walked at the end after bundling over Kepa for a last-minute penalty scored by Roberto Soldado but the game was effectively over by then. Lionel Messi opened the scoring in the seventh minute and Xavi netted in the 67th as Barca continued to create the clearer chances despite their numerical disadvantage.” (Guardian)
Lionel Messi vs Getafe
(All About FC Barcelona), (1), (2)
“On January 9, Racing Santander’s 18-year-old attacking midfielder Sergio Canales scored two goals to defeat Sevilla and become seemingly the most desired young player on the planet. It has been reported that Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United, Arsenal, Barcelona and Real Madrid are all interested in him, while Vicente del Bosque reportedly hasn’t ruled out his inclusion in the Spanish squad for the World Cup.” (WSC)
“If soccer agents had powerful lobbyists working for them in the halls of government, you can be fairly confident they would be asking for a generous stimulus package right around now. Just as fears of an enduring economic slump can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy in the real world, as consumers “feel poor” and hunker down to save, slowing or even negating growth, so too can the perception of imminent doom affect soccer clubs’ spending. And, when teams stop spending, the first to be affected are the agents and middlemen who grease the wheels of the transfer market.”
(WSJ)
“Soccer players are reputed to do it for 90 minutes and some fans of Barcelona, inspired by their favorite team, did it … and did it … and did it. It has been nine months since Barcelona, within the span of only a few days, trounced its arch rival Real Madrid, 6-2, in the country’s capital and ran away with the title in Spain’s La Liga.” (NYT)
“Pedro’s goal proved enough to give Barcelona their 16th league win of the season as Pep Guardiola’s side edged out Sporting Gijon at El Molinon in the Primera Division. The Tenerife-born winger struck after half an hour to give Barca the lead. Both sides had missed decent opportunities before that, but Guardiola’s side were superior virtually throughout.”>(ESPN)
Sporting Gijon vs Barca Highlights, on 30/01/10
(All About FC Barcelona)
“Josep Guardiola is being linked with the job at Manchester United, which may be up for grabs at the end of this year or next. The contractual chicanery between him and Joan Laporta suggests he could well have designs on a position elsewhere, and in the very least, Guardiola has evinced an unwillingness to commit longterm to the Catalan giants. It’s rumoured he favours a move to England and the Premiership – a league he is reportedly a fan of.”> (Soccer Lens)
“For Real Madrid, the best thing about 2009 was that it did, eventually, draw to a close. For Barcelona, that could be their only complaint. Their task now is to dominate in another year too, to ensure that this is not a one-off, to build a lasting legacy. The cliche says getting to the top is one thing, staying there is even harder; that the second season is even more difficult than the first.” (World Soccer – 1), (2 -Barcelona’s Annus mirabilis will be hard to emulate)
“The old adage about defenses winning championships is starting to look outdated. Across Europe’s leading football leagues right now, the major title contenders have ditched the defensive mindset traditionally associated with success in favor of a new adventurous line of attack, in which teams are far more interested in scoring goals than preventing them. The result has been a deluge of goals that has delighted supporters and sent statisticians scurrying to check the record books.” (WSJ)
“Barcelona crushed Real Valladolid 3-0 away to move eight points clear at the top of La Liga on Saturday, reaching the mid-point of the season unbeaten for the first time. Xavi, Daniel Alves and Lionel Messi scored to round off a positive week for the champions, in which coach Pep Guardiola ended speculation over his future by agreeing to a one-year contract extension.” (ESPN)
Real Valladoid vs Barca Match Highlights, 23/01/10(All About FC Barcelona)
“You can blame the weather, I suppose. England’s deep freeze has wreaked havoc on the Premier League calendar, which is great for U.S.-based fans — there have been midweek (and therefore, mid-day) games galore, like Wednesday’s Liverpool-Tottenham showdown of underachievers. In the meantime, both the FA and Carling Cups have been raging on, and selected other European action — mixed in with some awesome African Cup of Nations games — have made mid-January a smorgasbord of excellent soccer. Plus, with everyone finally off winter break, we can start picking apart the leftovers again. Enjoy this week’s rundown — we recommend you nuke on high for two minutes, flip, then zap for another two minutes on medium.” (SI)
Alfredo & co.
“In much of the world, professional sports serve as little more than a form of entertainment – a world of glorified, physically gifted athletes who are paid astronomical wages (although, based on the simple law of demand, rightfully so) to wow us with their trade. For most of us, the largely frivolous sphere of football rarely (if ever) comes into contact with the austere sphere of politics, the only exceptions being the presentation of an award to a national team or a charitable event.” (Soccer Lens)
“One of the most damning accusations spit at towards Real Madrid in recent times is their abuse of money. Over €250 million were splashed out this summer to recruit Neo-Galacticos and questions persist whether it is morally right to spend so much money on football – mere football, as some would suggest – when the world is subsumed in economic crisis. And true, president Florentino Perez’s persistence to spend huge to become huge is an apt indication of just how much money there is to make in football.” (Goal)
Scissors Kick 