Village Idiot

Last year on his contract too.

Real Madrid had a disappointing tendency of sitting back in all their big games. He lost his first two CL semis because of that.

Coaching an u21 team to a modicum of tactical effectiveness is hard actually; we're talking a side that pretty much changes the entirety of its playing staff every couple years, and thus develops even less chemistry than your regular national side.

Apparently we got €2,5m in fees, while the organization donated €35,000 to the Haiti earthquake victims

Kobe Bryant gloryhunting cunt.

I read something the other day about why Norway's youth team is doing so well -- which was a surprise to me, as I don't follow it closely. Or at all. The claim was that it's due to the economic crisis, which for some reason struck Norwegian football hard (which is true), despite the fact that the overall economy is doing spectacularly well compared to the rest of Europe. The result is that instead of clubs bringing in foreign mercenaries looking for a stepping stone toward the bigger leagues, they have to rely on their own youth development. I don't think the same applies to England. Good English players are still more expensive than foreign players, especially at premier league level. Just look at NUFC. Although youth development was one of Ashley's stated goals, the players are mostly French. A similar thing applies to Holland. Foreign players in the Eredivisie have to earn a certain minimum salary (not spectacularly high for a professional footballer, but still. Believe it is around 200k/year), so often it is more attractive to pad the squad with talented youngsters rather than foreign players. The other day I was thinking the same about Spain. In La Liga's heyday in the 90s, even lesser clubs had a bunch of well-known foreigners, now that's just unthinkable, and our NT has improved in parallel.

Courtois announces that he's staying one more year at Atlético. That'll be 3 years, it's almost as they signed him for real

Our FA has a knack for setting up useless friendlies, some South/Central America FAs pay silly amounts for us to play their teams.

Luís Enrique new Celta manager. Really looking forward to that.

Spain - Haití in front of an empty stadium, glad I'm not the only one that doesn't give a fuck about this shit friendly.

They wish. I played for their youth setup when I was a kid. They are my only true "second team", and always my first serious save in FM

It's a pretty weird clause to be honest. Dunno what would stop, say, Betis from trolling them with a €8m "offer" to force them to pony up.

It's not that. Sevilla have to pay the player a bonus of half the biggest formal offer he gets for him, in excess of €8m, if they refuse it. The actual clause is €20m. Anyway, I don't think it's a player that you need right now.

I'll never be able to like Villarreal, when I was a kid and they were still in Segunda B they had some very cunting behavior in the games against CF Badalona (my neighborhood's team) and that bitter feeling I associate with them somehow is always there.

Very little wrong in the choices of both these two, tbf.

Laudrup is ridiculous, third club in a row he'd leave after a single season iirc.

I like Cuenca a lot, insane technique but maybe a bit weak. Best crosser of the ball we have, imho. His problem is that he's been crocked for a year. Roberto is one that I think could adapt well to England, but you seem stoked in the cm department, and he isn't our usual tippy-tappy midfielder - he's more box to box in the English mold. Cuenca wants to go to Ajax, but they won't pay wages in full so we're looking around.

As Sewelly says, that assist alone was worth the transfer fee.

There's a bunch of players we're looking to sell/loan: bartra, afellay, dos santos, bojan, cuenca. Rafa alcàntara, sergi roberto... Make your pick. There's also Villa/Deulofeu but those aren't too realistic.

I keep hearing that this or that player aren't Arsenal level so much that I wonder if that bar shouldn't be revised downwards.

Because if you want to take something from Barça, is our transfer policy.

Work to knock down San Mamés started today, a piece of Spanish football history gone.

Honestly, I fail to see how a side that scores lots of goals is automatically "creative". Milan were all about exploiting Sheva's and Kaka's athleticism through Pirlo's long range passing. It's counterattacking 101. It's not bad, I'm not shunning it, but it wasn't a particularly intrincate side. There's a swathe of difference between good old catenaccio and dynamic counterattacking too. Again, his style suits Real Madrid perfectly so I think it's a good move for them.

Morata should have handballed or something, Spain isn't allowed to score from set pieces. Predictably stale performance from our U21s, after all the hype and the quality throughout the squad I'm getting the same feeling as before the London Olympics (which featured a few of these same players). Anyway, they seem to be getting 4-6-0 quite well at least