Village Idiot

Today's Barça's General Assembly. I may have misheard him, but our treasurer I think has just said that 25% of Barça's ticket revenue comes from football tourists. Interesting tidbit: we pay footballers every 6 months, not monthly. Will try to read the assembly notes later.

Still not sure I'm happy or disappointed about yesterday's game. A draw at Atlético's place is never a bad a result but I have the feeling we could've won. André Gomes is useless though.

Police raiding the French HQ of BeinSports, owned by PSG's owner.

Was mint in Championship Manager Italia

Love stuff like this. Football.

My very uninformed opinion is that there's too many of the USMNT players playing in the MLS. That whole "repatriaton" trend of the past few years to bring them back to the league has hurt the competitiveness of the team's backbone, imho.

Just saw the US result - I checked Argentina early in the morning but I took US' qualification for granted and didn't bother to check the TNT game. What the hell happened?

What's more likely to happen, Barça-Newcastle in the CL or in the PL?

The thing is that if the Catalan FA pulls out of the Spanish FA following the UDI, Barça would automatically become uneligible (Barça's a member of the Spanish FA through its Catalan FA membership).

There's a rumor going round that if we go for an UDI today, the Catalan Government will force Barça to pull out from the Spanish league. Oh ffs.

That's one of the 5 or 6 goals he's going to score all season, I hope he spent it juiciously.

Las Palmas keeper has been outstanding today. We could easily be 2 or 3 up.

Paulinho and Vidal subbed at half time. Odd.

It's 50/50 - which is the huge problem.

Me too, man. It's a shame some have already been injured, still I hope some peacefulness, integrity & decency for the fellow man can be restored amongst the unrest. It's not worth it, it really isn't... No matter how justified one feels to be angry; the moment it manifests as violence to our fellow man, everyone loses... Totally agree. Really sad and broken over what's happening today in my city. This is not who we should be.

Why? There's been some violent scenes in the city as it's the day of the Catalan independence referendum. Hundreds injured and some really ugly policing from what videos I have seen. People are incensed, and I can't see the game being played in front of 80.000 people without any bother. I pray there isn't any violence outside the pitch.

Looks like we will play closed doors. Some fan groups have threatened a pitch invasion if the game is played.

You voting? I don't believe in this referendum. But this police violence is absurd, they are fucking nuts.

Barcelona - Las Palmas off due to all the bother in Barcelona. It's going to be a very long day.

I work in the media, and I can tell you this: broadcasters absolutely don't want a single superleague. If there's a superleague, it will be controlled by a single or small group of broadcasters, leaving others without lunch. As new media platforms are emerging, there's a demand for *more* sports content that's attractive to viewers, not less. Killing the domestic leagues, which offer hundreds of attractive games they can market every year, in exchange of a much smaller premium superleague, just doesn't make sense to broadcasters as a whole.

Barça and Madrid managed to play off the rest of the La Liga clubs against each other for years until they finally agreed and forced through our current collective TV deal. How did they actually manage it though? It was Littlefinger business of the highest caliber. While most clubs bar the big 2 agreed on the principle of a collective deal, they disagreed on the details (i.e. clubs like Sevilla, Valencia or Atlético wanted the new system to be more merit-based than the smaller clubs, who wanted it to be more egalitarian), and Barçadrid feasted on that division.

Barça and Madrid managed to play off the rest of the La Liga clubs against each other for years until they finally agreed and forced through our current collective TV deal.

Villarreal sack Escrivá after losing to Getafe. That's the second good manager in a row they jump the gun on after firing Marcelino at the start of last season. They kinda deserve whatever they get this year.

He is, but he's not a club employee anymore so we can hardly do anything about it. He's free to take whatever bribe he wants.

Barça have chosen not to renew the contract with Qatar Airlines as the official club airline. With that, the club will finally become 100% Qatar-free.