LUKAKUUUUUU!!! m

^^ for your sake and that of all everton fans i hope he's regularly a more exciting player than he was this past summer.

i didn't see him w/ chelsea last year, so i only knew him from the great hype around him, and he certainly didn't live up to it.

Nah he was on loan at everton all last season. When he's on it, he's brilliant, and to make it better he's only 21 so he's gonna keep getting better. Especially under Martinez.

oh, i see! congrats then.

do you know martinez is a commentator here on… what channel… ESPN? he comes across as a very smart guy. between him and van nilsterooy they dissected matches brilliantly during the world cup.

Yeah I heard he was doing the commentary in America for the world cup. When he's on Match Of The Day over here he's always an interesting guy. He knows his beans I'll say that.

Gideon Zelalem is getting THAT much closer to becoming a US citizen and joining the USMNT team ;)

Me too.

QPR's manager Harry Redknapp is infamous for overspending on players so I wouldn't be surprised if Valbuena goes there solely for that reason. But I'm still surprised a bigger club, say at the upper-midtable level, haven't gone in for him. Although I'm equally surprised Marseilles want to drop him - although I'm basing that on how he did in the WC.

ow, man, i'd like to join that prem fantasy league, but it seems high maintenance and i won't be able to watch the prem anyway-- how will i guess?


valbuena had to be good in order to be picked for his national team, right?

must be a ton of money they're offering both him & marseille to let him go-- but i thought ligue 1 was flush with arab prince petrodollars as well?


haven't seen him at arsenal. i actually haven't seen him anywhere. is he really good?

Bertrand is best placed to know the details but what's most weird to me is that both Arsenal and Liverpool were looking at him pre the WC then apparently cooled off afterwards, which is a bit like saying you've gone off Tim Howard after watching him against Belgium.

He's only 17 but there's some serious hype around him. A lot of the claims are absurd. One I heard recently was that he's a good a passer as Xavi and as good a dribbler as Iniesta!! But he's obviously got something. (Unless they meant the summer 2014 versions of Xavi and Iniesta) Either way, Wenger's meant to love him.

If even a fraction of the hype surrounding this kid turns up then he is indeed something..

Mmmm... there's cash galore at PSG and Monaco only.
It's taking time for rich blokes from abroad to approach the French market - too many taxes make it not so interesting, and there are always those people trying to point out that your club shouldn't spend more that it earns (contrary to Spain - Real Madrid: a € 541 million debt, or England - the marvellous Glazers lendig money to the club they own - Man U - so that Man U pay them back with tons of interests - £ 356.6 million debt).
Club owners in France have waited for their foreign foes to fall down due to this weird handling of money. After such a collapse, they would have reigned over Europe. Eventually, considering it will never happen, some have thrown the towel completely, handing the key to their teams to Qatari owners and the likes.

Marseille has appointed a new coach, Marcelo Bielsa, held as responsible for Chile's way of playing - they were quite successful during the world cup.
Why wouldn't he want Valbuena I don't know.
Valbuena is 3 feet tall, his first club near Bordeaux did its best to avoid giving him a contract when he was a kid. He struggled to get a place in the squad at Marseille too. Yet...
Oh! I get it! I don't watch that many games from the French ligue 1, but it was reported that he had had a poor season (that didn't show for France).
And it appears that the club has to sell because they need money. Their deficit is a € 16 million one. Which is unacceptable.
He is about to reconsider his snubbing of Dynamo Moscow.

Interesting article about the popularity of Prem and La Liga teams' in the US

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...erpool-arsenal

Whenever I would read all those lame "think-pieces" about the rise of futbol in the United States the circulate every World Cup I would think to myself, "Why are they only measuring MLS or USMNT, why aren't they including the obvious? How the biggest growth for futbol in the US is cable-satellite subscription to the Euro leagues."

THIS is a better measure of American support for futbol. The key to American sports, is Americans only want to follow the BEST. Canada has American-style football league, Japan has thriving baseball leagues, there are surprisingly talented basketball leagues in Spain/France/Argentina BUT Americans watch the NFL, the MLB, and the NBA because those are the top in the WORLD at those sports. So it follows logically that Americans watch European league futbol rather than MLS because THAT is the best in the world.

By that measure, American support of European futbol, I think its fair to say futbol's popularity in the US is growing.

Makes perfect sense.

Exactly the same thing happened here in the 80s with the NFL, when we started getting live games and highlight shows. It developed a massive cult following, and a national league did emerge, but the fact was you'd see plenty of kids walking around in Bears, or Dolphins or Raiders shirts but none of any English teams. It even generated a national weekly magazine, First Down, which I used to buy religiously. It had maybe two token pages on domestic stuff but I think they even dropped those towards the end, so they could focus solely on the NFL (which I know was all I was interested in reading about).

this was all great info and i didn't thank you earlier for posting it

Right lemon pies, I've created a league if you want to join.

844072-326007 is the code for the premier league site

I expect it to die after 2 months, but whatever. Oscar Schindler has been quoted as saying "this list is an absolute good" regarding my team selection. Truth.

actually sat down and watched an entire LA Galaxy match last night and it was actually PRETTY GOOD even though it finished a 2-2 draw. Galaxy should have won though, they had 23 shots and 10 corners to San Jose's 3 shots, but the Earthquakes scored two really good goals on takeaways. To be sure, I thought Galaxy's goalkeeper sucked yo