victims of their own success and hanging on to past glories

maybe he’ll give you a friends & family discount :D

It'll take Messi's departure for Barca to finally be able to move forward. Personally I'd rather see him retire than go to another club, but either way I do think he's gonna have to go before any Barca manager can even begin to make the fundamental changes necessary to turn things around.


I think it's more just a case of the club giving one player too much power. Understandable given who that particular player is but Barca once stood out as the very anti-thesis of that: a great team, a perfectly honed collective unit that's now descended into a Messi+10 circus.

apparently Messi decided he wanted to leave after his first conversation with Koeman in which he was told that "the privileges in this squad are over, you have to do everything for the team,"


the horror

i hear that, they are still taking about wanting to “build a team around messi” as if he were 21...

but what about the rest of the squad? piqué (33) busquets (32) alba (31) vidal (33), suárez (33), rakitic (32)? griezmann is a “new” hire at 29 and their “young” players are around age 26... except for démbélé (23) who didn’t play (was he injured or something?). they’re looking to the past not the future.

meanwhile, bayern fielded 19 year old rising star alphonso davis... and when old man boateng had to leave limping in came süle no problem... i was worried when this happened but defense actually improved. btw, leroy sané is coming to bayern next season (well, he’s already there).

That's true but here too Messi is central, as we know that since Pep left, the various club presidents have given Messi a huge say on things like player transfers, managerial appointments and tactics, even the power to veto any decision that he sees as potentially betraying the Cruyff-Rijkaard-Pep tradition that he seems incapable of looking beyond and believes should define Barca forever. There's an inner circle of players that includes Busquets and Pique who apparently share this view and were, until the arrival of Koeman-the-Heretic, considered untouchable within the club.

the... but... oh... hm...

i wasn’t aware of the internal politics in such detail, but just the other i did hear piqué offering to fall on his sword to bring about change to the club. that was still with quique though.
and i haven’t kept up with koeman’s recent arrival (things happen so fast these days) but ah...

so will pep and leo reunite in manchester? hahahaha. that would be something... wow

Think it's most telling that Pique said he'd be the first one to leave if needed and now we've not heard head nor tail from him.

Fuck em. Club deserves everything they get.

I stayed with them until Enrique left, prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. After that they just descended into pure farce. I'll never question their brilliance during the Pep years and still consider Messi a genius on the pitch but the behind the scenes nonsense means I've just lost interest in them now, as a club.

holy guacafuckingmole! i had no idea. well i had a bit of an inkling from argentina’s national team dramas, but not this.


so it was more threat than actual offer?

i begin to see...

Nah, he probably said it as an offer but had no intention of going without something following that is on equal money.

manny for shakira’s children? :D

ohohohohoooo lucky England!

David Silva has been away from Man City for all of a month. Already there's a trend from people saying he wasn't that great of a player and is massively overrated. It just confirms that most people don't know what they're talking about

Bielsa's 1st PL outing was a cracker. Unlucky against a slightly under-performing Liverpool, saved largely by Salah. If Leeds can play like that for the rest of the season they'll be fine.

An enjoyable game for sure. Reckon Liverpool will win the league again?

The fucking dumbass commentators did my head in though. Sniggering like school boys at the name Koch. Once would have been fine but I felt like everytime he did something they'd laugh about his name. Morons.

I'm backing Man City. but I can see the top 4-5 being far more competitive this year, with Chelsea and MU doing some great business in the summer, and Arsenal massively improving sine Arteta took over.

Can also see Everton having an excellent season and I'll be surprised if they finish below 8th.

All the bts stuff at West Ham makes me fear the worst for them already. Yet another season of only hoping there are three worst teams by the end of it.

EDIT: Just watched Everton beat Spurs. Looked very good. James is class, and Allan. Although I'd forgotten just how selfish and wasteful Richarlison is.

Also meant I'd be surprised if Everton finish below 7th, not 8th.

The future's bright, the future's blue.

wait, you got ham-mez now?

nbc is trying to splinter their fucked coverage of the prem into a bunch of different paid services

fuckem. bad luck for me. HALLO BUNDESLIGA, if i can still watch it on one channel.

==

oh shit it moved from fox to ESPN+

another fucking subscription!

lmao bye bye football i guess. i'll follow the financial news as a form of blood sport.

Not just do illegal streams? Be less hassle it seems.

Also, Everton gonna win the league, la.

i'm not into piracy and i believe in the market. lol, can you believe it? yes, i prefer to take my business elsewhere rather than steal.

currently watching la cage aux folles--the original movie not the american "birdcage" remake.

Im going to watch Arsenal - Spurs, women's FA Cup Final.
Go Miedemaaaa!! ;) she's been in top form lately and Roord too

sounds good.

i've got a documentary on the crimean war i'm working through. talk about sport, lol. (but seriously, people would watch battles with opera glasses, as entertainment, wtf)

Haha! Fair enough. However, if you wanting to watch some football why not get one of the subscriptions? We have the same situation of three different TV companies showing separate games. Sky sports, bt, and Amazon which adds up to a chunk of money if you were to get all three.

Gotta admit that I do love the birdcage.

the original french one is better, and as it was made a quarter century earlier, much further ahead of its time. but birdcage has a great cast and nathan lane is hilarious in it. it's a good copy, no doubt, but very late.

anyway, i will figure out a subscription eventually, but i don't want death by a thousand papercuts. who the fuck carries the leeds game? it's a very bizarre menu. eg, i could watch burnley for free, but i give zero fuks (or b--something, about which i give zero fucks, either way)

too many disconnected options and hard to piece together. this guy i used to worked with would often say: *a confused mind says no*

i forget who carries the champions league now. oh yes, cbs. one fucking thing after another...

34,600,000 euros

Neymar's tax debt in Spain

That's insane! I want one percent

The amount of goals that's been scored this season so far is just mental. Man Utd currently losing 6-1 to Spurs. Yes, that's right Mourinho's spurs.

They've now scored 13 goals since the first of October.

there’s a new (?) documentary about mourinho at spurs. i might watch it as a substitute for live stuff.

watching the royal tennenbaums this morning instead hahahaha

with pauses, because i’ve seen it a bunch of times

It's worth watching just to see how utterly dim Dele Alli is. Mourinho is always a character worth's seeing too.

Liverpool losing 4-1 at halftime. Love it.

hahaha! cheers, will do.

and 7-2... to aston villa? wtf!

was it the 2nd goalkeeper?

Nah, it was just down to every player sucking. Kudos to Aston Villa though. Played Liverpool off the park.

Everton sitting pretty at the top is a rare, but pretty sight. Like an albino stag.

haaahaaahaaaa

A lot of it's obviously constructed for the cameras but I much prefer the way Jose talks to players in that series to the way Pep did it in the MC one, where he was all nervous energy and weird cryptic statements that I ended up finding more irritating than anything else. Jose couldn't be more different; just telling them straight. Like when he says they're too nice, that for 90 minutes they need to be cunts. Intelligent cunts, but still cunts. That's actually a really perceptive thing to say not just about this current team but the club itself, which for as long as I can remember has had some exceptional players but no real killer edge. Hence Fergie's classic "lads, it's Spurs" line.

This has definitely been my favourite of all the 'reality' style tv shows looking at different clubs.

Everton/Liverpool derby tomorrow. As usual I fel bloody sick about it. Wish we could have played them the week after the 7-2 drubbing but hey-ho.

Suspect it'll be a draw, but we'll see.

Phew, lucky Everton! That was no offside! Congrats anyway :)

The replay I saw showed it was offside, if only by the tiniest of margins. 2-2 seemed like a fair result. Everton are looking more and more like they're the real deal. James is next level and DCL is probably the surprise hit of the season so far. They need to find a replacement for Pickford, though.

I actually turned btue TV off in a fit of disgust when third one went in. The Mrs, ever the optimist, said to put it back on because you never know what will happen. Kissed right after the goal was chalked off.


RS fans are moaning but hey, theyve had enough decisions go their way over the years so it evens out.

Gutted that Man Utd didn't let Romero go. Think he'd have replaced Pickford straight away. If they get a champions league place this season I consider it a success.

Tell you what, I had written as a guarantee that Moyes would be the first manager gone but looking like he could turn it around. You optimistic?

Never optimistic but they're not looking as bad as I 1st feared. Problem (as ever) is they play well in games they're expected to lose then don't show up for the ones they have a realistic chance in.

15 minutes.gone and it's 3-0 to spurs against West Ham? Eesh, could be an interesting afternoon.

Edit:where the FUCK did that comeback come from?