Village Idiot

Grassroots football could be affected if the Catalan FA truly went bankrupt, which is doubtful since only part of their budget comes from the Catalan government (the Spanish FA gives them most of their monies and they are stinking rich). Still some small semipro or amateur clubs which depend from public support could fold easily. All the pro clubs wouldn't be affected. Maybe they'll call in Espanyol's loans though

Yes, and it's one of the reasons secessionism is on the up around here, since we transfer a shitload of wealth to the rest of Spain and we can't even finance ourselves. And the Spanish Constitutional Court just cut our autonomy. Awesome. The guy in that forum is full of s*** though, despite what people believe we have one of the smallest regional governments in Spain (given to said transfer of wealth). And we have the lowest civil servant/population ratio of the whole country. Thoroughly agree on the shitiness of our politicians, though.

Can't remember, it's true that I remember watching some other game after it but for some reason that's the one that became engraved in my head.

I have a special place in my heart for a 2007-2008 Bolton-Fulham that ended 0-0. The entirety of the game could be summarized as this: 1) Fulham player gets a panic attack when crossing the midfield line and loses the ball. 2) Bolton player hoofs it. 3) Kevin Davies flicks to nobody. Rinse and repeat

The other two being...?

Gai Assulin has signed for City on a free. Yeah, that's the club to go for a young player...

Bigger losses than us, yay!

Not trying to paint our legal system as a lovey-dovey thing, far from that Just that remorse is a mitigating factor when sentencing. So in football the first thing players do (like Ufjalusi did), is very publicly apologise before the FA issues the ban.

9 times out of 10 he would fail to connect with the ball. Him and most players in this world, mind.

Saw it on the telly yesterday. Awesome goal

Here it's pretty common to issue a verifiable apology as soon as possible (too late and it works against you, as is seen as insincere and motivated only to mitigate punishment). I'm no law expert though, and you might be right that it's only done when guilt is beyond doubt. An apology (or lack of) actually carries weight on a penal sentence here. The whole point of our system is rehabilitation so remorse plays a part. And it's observed in footballing courts.

I suspect he's been advised against that by lawyers. If Ben Arfa's career is over, he could get sued, with an apology used as evidence. I thought it was the opposite, demonstrable remorse would weigh in his favor (that's how it's reported in Spain at least).

Yank-tastic

FIFA has demanded that La Liga docks 6 points from Segunda outfit Recreativo de Huelva for defaulting on payments to Boca Juniors for the transfer of Sebastián Nayar. It would be the first time that a Spanish club gets a point deduction on financial grounds (there's relegation for defaulting on player wages repeatedly but that's about it). Recreativo are currently in administration.

If I was a pro footballer, I'd die to play in the real Clásico. La Bombonera full to the brim, man...

International breaks are only boring when your national team has 0,0005% of not qualifying, which is the case for England or Spain, so there's not much going for those games. I need to dig up my French genes and support them, that would be entertaining.

Still can't get around that De Jong hasn't gone out to the press to even pretend he's sorry.

Masked vigilantism is the only answer, imho.

Samuel was truly awful, I rate him as a player but was genuinely not fit for La Liga. Woodgate had a 'mare but wasn't his fault most of the time. Good times.

Not as such, but there's some emergency funds for relegated sides set in place.

I'm a Barça fan but would love a bit of financial rebalancing in La Liga. I'm afraid that would mean PL teams winning the CL for years to come, though.

The La Liga clubs are debating a counter-proposal from Barça and Madrid regarding TV rights sharing. Sevilla and Villarreal are the only ones objecting as of now. The new formula would be as follows (currently RM and Barça get around 50% of La Liga money via their separate agreements): 34% of all TV revenue shared between RM and Barça (minimum €100m each) 11% to Atlético and Valencia (minimum €50m each) 9% to Second Division teams remaning 46% distributed according to league position, overall audience, etc... Sevilla wants to be in Atlético/Valencia's share, while Villarreal wants a model like the Premiership. Preliminary calculations show that RM and Barça would lose around €20-30m compared to their current gross, which should be offset by increasing overall TV revenue in the forthcoming years.

There seems to be a lot of guesswork and eyeballing on that list. Not much credibility there.

To be honest I think the gist of it it's right: Van Marwijk is a hypocrite.

Aye, it isn't. As SEMTEX said, this is hardly the strongest group and I consider this game the toughest tie in it.