Village Idiot

Back to Barça, I think it's pretty telling of our problems this season that we had to wait 19 games to get our first comfortable away win.

Madrid equalises... they are pretty adept at the "go down first and end up winning" match storyline.

To be frank, I'd have him over RvN any day. He doesn't have the legs to play at this level anymore. Málaga had a couple counters where you could see that he just ran out of breath halfway towards our goal.

What a fucking goal that. MESSI.

Damn, I'd have loved if Messi had one more FK goal than Mr. Cristiano "Has a better FK than Messi" Ronaldo (who has 0 in 23 attempts this season).

I'm like a junkie that needs more and more pure dope to get high, until I die of an overdose.

Yeah thanks. Seems I only had to ask.

Puyol-Xavi-Cesc all rested today, we are winning 0-1 and dominating but looking to lack penetration without that lot. I hope we f***ing score another one, I'm a bit tired of late away equalisers.

Definitely, as for my comment about it being underrated i meant by people in this country some people act like its on the level of holland or something. In general i would agree its rated fairly also winning the CL doesnt show the strength of a league, Barca are in the semi's nearly every yr for half a decade it doesnt make Spain the best tho. Spanish clubs have won 4 of the last 10 Europa Leagues too, you know. Personally, I'm not too impressed by the strength in depth of the German league, particularly the bottom half. I do like watching it, mind. But the fact that Cissé has performed so well in a rather bad team is actually a good sign.

Interesting article Some interesting stats in there, and Taylor/Colo showing up in those lists.

They cannot be promoted. So how is that more competitive than reserve team leagues??? Spanish B teams can't play in the same division as their senior teams. They can be promoted or relegated as long as this restriction is met.

They cannot be promoted. Yup. There was a time where they could, which let to a lot of weird situations until the system was regularized. Barça B promoted to the Spanish first division (we were forced to severe our ties with them), Real Madrid playing a cup final against their B team...

I fondly remember the "mini-derbies" my neighborhood team played against Barça B when we were in the same division. Biggest games of the year. Also, I'm going to make the opposite case here. I do think that our standard of player improved once we started developing structured and competitive non-league youth competitions. When I was a kid U19 competitions were just an afterthought, more recreational than truly developmental. It was thought that B and C teams were where young players had to be developed, and outside them no much effort was put to have good training and playing structures. I don't think it's by chance that Spain has come to the fore coinciding with the reforms in the late 80s-early 90s to professionalize youth football.

Fair enough, but you can't transplant one system from an entirely different culture and expect it to work. Put simply, B teams would not work in England and the only people who want them are the people who they would benefit the most... Was just responding to the claim that our system is set up to help the big Spanish teams. As I said in my first post in this thread, I don't think our system would work in England.

Our B sides aren't set up to just help the big Spanish teams though, there are many non-top flight clubs with B sides for their youngsters, playing down in the lowest divisions. I played in my neighborhood team's B side as a kid. It's just part of our footballing tradition too.

This is it really. English league system is '27' levels deep (the further down you get the crazy it becomes). There are so many teams in England, compared to say Germany and Spain. To take away a place in the higher leagues (even conference) from one of these teams for a Premiership B-Team is crazy. Imagine a Chelsea B-Team playing in the conference and disrupting/influence of the league for teams who can actually benefit from being promoted to the Football League and beyond. That Chelsea B-Team can never progress further than (lets say for arguments sake) League 2. What happens when that feeder reaches League 2 and isn't allowed to progress further, yet keeps sitting top of the league? If managers didn't have so many fears about loaning younger players out, this wouldn't be an issue. I personally think that Spanish B teams should be capped at Segunda B. Of course, we are benefitting massively from having Barça B in Liga Adelante, but I feel ours and Villarreal B's spot should be held by a proper team.

For what is worth, our B teams started in the 1950s-60s as independent teams that just had agreements with the big Spanish teams so they received a massive amount of loanees, some of them even got promoted to our first division (like Barça's B team in the 50s). It wasn't until later on that they were fully assimilated. Maybe you could use a similar model, just allow the big Premier League sides to "adopt" a struggling lower league team, and relax the loan restrictions so they can send a good amount of youngsters there.

Well... practically all of them? Except the ones developed abroad like Piqué and Cesc. Any young player will play for his team's B squad first and then get promoted to the senior squad.

In Spain it works since our third flight (which has the majority of "B" teams from La Liga clubs) has 80 clubs in it, which means that there is still space for all the strong regional sides which the division is meant for. Since your divisions only have 20-24 clubs, I can see you second-third flights being monopolized by Premier League B squads. But indeed, it does help a lot to give the lads a taste of regular competitive football at a critical age.

Teams like Hércules, Mallorca, Numancia, Levante... all have a better league record against Barça than Real Madrid since Pep took over.

Sevilla derby tomorrow, can't wait for it. It's the most passionate rivalry in Spain, and the two years without it should make it even more intense.

Not that you probably care anymore, but Erdinç linked to Espanyol.

Jonathan Soriano to Salzburg for €1m. A bit disappointing, I expected him to go to a better league than that.

Oh, and Alexis was great last night, once he really gets used to play with us, he's going to be amazing.

Yesterday was brilliant. After their first goal Madrid played us like they were Alcorcón, defending a 1-0 lead for 80 minutes. Lovely stuff for their ego. Pinto didn't make a single save, I could have played in goal and it would have ended with the same result. Flipped through the pro-Madrid channels and they were all fuming at Mou (turncoats the lot of them). Neil