Village Idiot

He dropped out after picking a knock in the Clásico. We can't do it without his pecs He dropped out of a meeting because of injury? I presume he's just pissed off. Poor form but he (or any other football celeb) wasn't going to make any difference at this point.

He dropped out after picking a knock in the Clásico. We can't do it without his pecs

Interesting bit of trivia I just realized about the last 3 times we beat Madrid 5-0: 1974: Reixach and Cruyff in the pitch 1994: Reixach and Cruyff manage, Guardiola in the pitch 2010: Guardiola manages

I know for certain that Mino Raiola was getting €1m/year of Zlatan's wages, paid directly by us, and other deals were structured like that. It could be for tax reasons too.

free transfers like sol will still have agent fees and contract renewals will also have agent fees They are still high anycase imo. Don't agents also take a % of the overall wage (in addition to any signing on bonus)? This may have been paid up front in some instances That is from the player. The club will pay a agent for the deal & will sometimes pay the agent as part of the deal on behalf of the player but the % per week is usually direct form the player. Yeah, clubs would be stupid and daft to pay agents a % of a players weekly wage. We do...

Don't think Russia will be scheduling games in Vladivostok, probably all will we arranged west of the Urals.

Apparently Sevilla asked about Park too, but gave up because of his wages at Manchester. Higuaín will know if he has to have an op today. He faces 3 months in the sidelines if that's the case. And Madrid will shop for a striker in January.

He has put up rather strong sides in it, I think he understands the opportunity and the importance of giving his players a taste of victory.

Arsenal just ended their trophy drought, then?

Best thing is that after Mou said that all teams that go to Camp Nou throw the game, they are the ones that put up the least fight After saying that Villa is as big as a flop as Benzema, he gets a brace Keep yer mouth shut next time! (I'll calm down now, I promise!)

Better than Piqué!

My bro used to play basketball, and they had two twins in their team. One was shit and one was good, so if the good one got sent off they just switched shirts in the dressing room.

Outrageous.. Should be 5 at least.. The ref didn't write down in his report the circumstances of the sending off and the shoving of Puyol/Xavi, so was only given the minimum punishment for a red.

Well, Piqué was like fifth choice after Jonny Evans, pretty sure Wes Brown was picked in front of him for ManU's central defence. If he had been shown more confidence he could have been persuaded to stay.

It was dirt/grass after he dived into a tackle, I think, although it looked very red on the telly.

Mou given a 1 match touchline ban by UEFA for the Ajax game incidents. The players involved have been fined. Sergio Ramos given a single match ban for his sending off yesterday...

Adebayor has been added to the shopping list now.

€5m we paid, five. It's like we loaned him out to ManU to develop him.

Rumor is that he's banging Shakira. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aQoRZQmEj2Y/S8M9ZGkxHII/AAAAAAAAPd8/-CxXQVS6M9c/s1600/pique2.jpg

Piqué is very good at covering Ramos' marauding runs forward when both play for Spain, he does the same for Alves at Barça afterall. For some reason Madrid have always had problems dealing with that part of his game.

I think your tabloids cover much of that need. Sensationalistic football reporting (that what our sports "newspapers" are). As I said, Marca and El Mundo Deportivo were pretty classy sports rags until Sport and As came around in the 1980s and cannibalized their sales with partisan, tabloid-like reporting. They eventually switched to that style themselves.

Sergio Ramos has just the brain of a squirrel, and is prone to this kind of idiocy. 10 Reds in 175 games for Real Madrid. He'd be one of the top 3 rbs in the world if he fixed his head, mind.

Sevilla linked with a €7m January move for Muntari.

Sid Lowe is probably my favorite football writer.

In Spain, Marca and El Mundo Deportivo used to be like that until they found out they sold more by turning into partisan rags.