Village Idiot

Looks like we've agreed a contract extension with Neymar until 2020, to be signed after Copa América. Great news.

Refused to accept the MVP award from the Argentina - Perú game, which then fell on Nelson Valdez.

Bellerín's sporting a nice gut too.

It's essentially Lim buying players from himself. Don't think the football people at Valencia had much of a say.

All the headlines are painful to read "Don't take de Mick" FFS.

All season?

Van der Vaart signs for Betis. Was hoping he'd go to Cádiz, but I guess that was too much of a stepdown.

Gianelli Imbula on his way there too, no? No, they pulled out and signed Caio instead.

Why did they buy Negredo after him being pretty poor on loan? They were contractually obligated to buy Negredo if they qualified for the CL. All the other players are owned by Lim's and Mendes' investment fund. With FIFA's ban on third party ownership incoming, they had to offload them and Valencia will have to shoulder the price.

Add €30m for Negredo and Valencia are getting totally mugged.

Read something over the weekend saying it's a move to suit his investment group (co-owned by Peter Lim) as much as anything and the Valencia coach had never seen him. Valencia have also bought Rodrigo for €30m, Cancelo for €15m, and Gomes for €15m, who were owned by the same investment group. Shady? Nah.

This month, Valencia have bought Rodrigo, Negredo, Cancelo, André Gomes and Caio. €102,5m on players not even worth half that imho.

He was s*** for Sevilla tbf I think it's a pretty good bet. If they sort him out the upside is incredible.

Don't really want to infuriate you guys, but our press say that Juanmi's move to Southampton is almost finalised.

Deulofeu has had an awful season at Sevilla, and Emery has openly hinted that he really has to change his mentality and dedication. The guy has quite some talent, but he's running out of time.

According to one of our local rags, we have sold Deulofeu to Everton, €6m. We keep a buyback.

Wat.

Yeah we're done with midfielders at the moment. Luiz Gustavo is much better than he gets recognition for but that's all. Fernandinho is declining lately (still like him though). Glad that the U-20 seemed to have two players that I thought looked very good in midfield, Danilo and Jaja. Here's to hoping Casemiro or Lucas Silva develop at Real Madrid to great midfielders, because we're seriously in need of them. As for strikers, Spain stole our only one. Finders keepers! I really don't rate Casemiro - I guess he can go on to become a good holding mid with a great engine but that's it. Haven't seen enough from Lucas Silva since he was pretty much pulled out after a couple of bad games - which was understandable since he'd just arrived at the club.

Elias starting for Brazil He was beyond useless for Atlético. Really, what is happening with all the flair midfielders and strikers in Brazil?

Wrong thread. Had great highlights but still dwells a bit too much on the ball when he should be taking on players. Matured heck of a lot this season though, seems to only get better and better. Dani was absolutely fantastic as well, thought he was done 6 months ago, but he has really turned it around. Willian is such a great boring mourinho type of player as well. The guy should be a defensive midfielder, he can spray passes left and right and is so great in possession, but just doesn't ever try to create. He'll open up spaces and all, but won't ever make that deadly last pass or so despite being able to. Think he would've been a great signing for a Guardiola team trying to hold onto a win I remember watching Willian in Europe when he was at Donetsk, and thinking that he was such an entertaining player. Mourinho is a big time Pardew sometimes

Seen the highlights of Brazil-Perú yesterday. Ney

Early July, IIRC. It's usually a month before the ball is kicked off.

How much of Spain's success in the past 7 years would you attribute to his management? I think he gave us that extra mile. The job of a manager is to get the best out of his players, and I would say that he did so. He implemented a system that played to our strengths and suited to the nature of international football. He's also a great man manager, and a respected leader. Given the usually fractious nature of the Spain national team, he's got everybody rowing in the same direction.

Tomorrow, Del Bosque will become the first Spanish national coach to reach 100 games with the national team. Class, and deserved.

The Welsh team is the best they had in a while; yeah, they have Bale but they also had Giggs, Bellamy or Rush in the past, and didn't make much of a difference. The fact is that their spine is made out of premier league footballers and even most of the supporting cast plays at the very least in the Championship. In past times you had embarrassing drops in quality within the starting XI, but they have developed a decent depth, given how small they are.