Village Idiot

http://img02.mundodeportivo.com/2014/01/02/Barca-Entrenamiento-de-tarde_54398745062_54115221154_600_396.jpg

Spanish commentator called Eto'o's goal today "one of the biggest he's scored". Has he bothered checking Eto'o's resume? :rofl:

Love Pizzi myself, that game against Atlético in the cup was easily the best game an Argie not named Lionel has ever had for our club Hope he does well there, I'd hate for Valencia to fall to the wayside because of all the off the pitch trouble.

Basically, the idea was that the city council would buy the Calderón so it could expand the road that runs under it (which is a pretty important one) and the club would use the proceeds to buy the remodelled Olympic Stadium. Without the push of the Olympics to justify the operation, and given the poor finances of the city council, it will be hard to push this to completion, even though work has indeed started. So we might be looking at another Nou Mestalla kind of limbo here too.

That move was contingent on Madrid getting the Olympics as they'd become the Olympic Stadium's tennants. It's all up in the air now. The stadium exists but it needs a lot of remodeling which may not happen now.

Season tickets. A lot of people buy them without attending every game. Barça averages 75-80k for the Camp Nou but sells 90k STs.

Merry Christmas everybody

Looks like Valencia's been sold to some Singaporese billionaire. Also:

Alonso still has a couple years at the top in him, if you ask me. Surprised Madrid aren't making a bigger effort to retain his services, they must be very confident in Illarramendi.

But, from a legal point of view (and yeah, I'm no law expert) it's hard to explain having a subset of workers not being able to cancel their contracts like others do. I have always thought it's a matter of time an EU court stamps on this, like it happened with the Bosman ruling and free agency/unrestricted registration for EU nationals. To be honest it's sort of there, that's how you got Jonas.

What's so whattable about it? As I said, that's exactly how the law operates in Spain, clubs just found a way around it with the release clauses.

To be honest, it makes very little sense that footballers don't have the same rights as any regular worker, high wages or not. And it's not like all footballers earn premier league wages.

That's *exactly* what happened in Spain and the reason there are transfer clauses written in contracts (which are actually penalties for early termination), since otherwise players could cancel their employment contract like any other member of the workforce. I don't think there's even need to pay up the remainder of it.

Dum-dum! http://elpais.com/elpais/2013/12/16/inenglish/1387214441_486283.html

To be honest is more than 2 months away, team forms can change radically until then. Personally I think we are starting to gel and we'll be a much better team in February, plus we'll have Messi back by then (hopefully for real now).

I personally don't rate AVB, but yeah, it's way too early to sack him.

Really looking forward playing City, should be a cracking fixture

Sergio Ramos is now the joint all-time red card holder in La Liga with 18 sending offs. At only 27 years of age, the sky is the limit

Ok, I thought we played quite well despite the tightness of the score; it just underscores how badly we need a natural CF, imho. Good to see Neymar growing into the team, he can be great.

Neymar playing centrally again? Bound to get anohter hattrick in that position. Hope so, but Neymar played centrally against Celtic because Fábregas was banned.

2-2, not too bad. We have a tough one against Villarreal later today, looking forward to it though, should be a fun match.

2-0 now. What the hell... Down to 10men now. Have them on my betslip =( Ramos has to be up to 3 red cards this season or something. Unbelievable. Also where's Ronaldo the best player in the world when you need him? I will personally blame you if he turns this around, you reckless face-tempter.

Glad to see Pellegrini starting to grow into it these last weeks; pity I sort of dislike ManCity.

Apologies, thought you were Flip for a second. I like that it's ok to be a dick to Flip, and the apology isn't even about being a dick, it's about being a dick to the wrong person. Second time it happens, will need to change my avatar FFS

Pretty much, actually. The board was pretty candid in saying we just needed the money given our debt levels.