Village Idiot

Our general director has confirmed that we have agreed a deal with ManCity for Touré. No figure yet but rumoured to be €25-30m. He's also confirmed that Henry will leave in the next few days.

Real Madrid have confirmed the signing of Di María for €25m No word on Real Madrid players going the other way.

Also, I have never understood why people rate Bielsa so highly. He ballsed up the 2002 WC pretty badly and was pretty unimpressed with his brief stint in La Liga myself.

Man, Brazil are so going to win this thing.

Dani Alves on the wing, interesting. We have tried that at Barça without much success. He's much better coming from deep.

Love how the cunt strikes back at the camera.

Best player of the side winning the WC gets it. 1994: Romário 1998: Zidane 2002: Ronaldo 2006: Cannavaro Only WC winners in WC years since the award was established.

Robben

We actually tried that when he was at Sevilla Agree about Johnson. I have only seen him play this season for City and the England friendles but he was really impressive.

Out of the current Spain squad, 18 out of 23 players come from the academies of the richest clubs in the land, however (Barça, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Atlético). Only David Villa comes from a small team academy (Gijón). It is true that the academies of these rich clubs have become really good at scouting and snapping up prospects in youth tournaments, however. I agree on the overall point that it's cheaper for Valladolid to field a bunch of local lads than buying Arriaga, Arriaga II and Barriaga. Looking at the last world cup winners a lot of their squad was spread around. Bologna - Zaccardo Parma- Buffon, Barone Roma - De Rossi, Totti, Peruzzi, Amelia Renato Curi - Grosso Messina- Materazzi Napoli- Cannavaro Rondinella - Barzagli Padova - Del Piero Perugia- Gattusso Modena- Toni Piacenza - Gilardino, Inzaghi Lazio - Nesta Reggiolo- Iaquinta Como- Zambrotta Reggina- Perrotta Brescia -Pirlo Milan- Oddo 16 different clubs there. The current Spain NT FC Barcelona: Iniesta, Xavi, Cesc, Puyol, Piqué, Busquets, Valdés, Reina Real Madrid: Casillas, Arbeloa, Mata Sevilla: Ramos, Marchena, Navas Bilbao: Javi Martínez, Llorente Valencia: Albiol, Silva Atlético: Torres Espanyol: Capdevila Gijón: Villa Real Sociedad: Xabi Alonso San Fernando: Pedro 10 clubs. We can split hairs about some that moved academies in their teenage years like Pedro, Silva, or Cesc and Piqué.

Out of the current Spain squad, 18 out of 23 players come from the academies of the richest clubs in the land, however (Barça, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Atlético). Only David Villa comes from a small team academy (Gijón). It is true that the academies of these rich clubs have become really good at scouting and snapping up prospects in youth tournaments, however. I agree on the overall point that it's cheaper for Valladolid to field a bunch of local lads than buying Arriaga, Arriaga II and Barriaga. As I said I did no research into whether its actually correct or not, just a general thought i had. Arriaga II could definitely do a job for them though. No, it's a good intuition. As I said, big clubs are getting a lot of their players from these clubs' academies. Players like Iniesta, Silva, Pedro, Mata, even Raúl... were snapped up by Barça/Madrid/Valencia from other clubs' academies.

Out of the current Spain squad, 18 out of 23 players come from the academies of the richest clubs in the land, however (Barça, Madrid, Sevilla, Valencia, Atlético). Only David Villa comes from a small team academy (Gijón). It is true that the academies of these rich clubs have become really good at scouting and snapping up prospects in youth tournaments, however. I agree on the overall point that it's cheaper for Valladolid to field a bunch of local lads than buying Arriaga, Arriaga II and Barriaga.

Nice, I knew our foreign/domestic player ratio was good, but didn't know it was so much.

Is that foreign players as in any foreign player or is with that "homegrown" bullshit clause? http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/article4031314.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2 I see, so it's the real deal. Can't see it getting past the UE, however.

Is that foreign players as in any foreign player or is with that "homegrown" bullshit clause?

The "same set of rules across all levels" is a bollocks excuse. I don't remember having 4 refs when I played in regional cups and the like. Heck, the rules of the game are the same, you're just changing the mechanisms to enforce them. I agree that it could probably not be implemented in all top divisions of the UEFA system from the start which would be unelegant and maybe unfair, but at least continental and international tournaments (which ultimately are the stalwarts of the game) should have it.

I always support Hispanic teams in tournaments but this year I'll single out Argentina because of Messi and Maradona. I understand the animosity most English fans will have against him but if he won the WC as manager it would be f***ing mental.

Can be an interesting WC. Out of the big European leagues, only Spain and Germany remain in contention (and we still have to play). The Bundesliga has much less foreigners than the PL, I don't know how Italy fits in these numbers (Inter plays with close to no Italians, Milan has a big foreign contingent too but I'm not familiar with the lesser clubs)... so maybe it is true that big European leagues are nowadays developing other national squads instead of their own, and that's why we see a decline of UEFA nations in this tournament. Spain has quite fewer foreigners than the PL too, but I won't include us in the reasoning until we see how far we get (on paper we have a great deal of talent, though).

I think after all the incidents today FIFA just can't fight goal line technology anymore. Now we'd only need to punish divers/feigners (which have been rather disgraceful during the group stages) after reviewing the game's video and the game will be 10 times better. One can wish. And I think the Jormans were great today. Their athleticism and dynamism in moving the ball was remarkable. I agree that Uruguay is an average side that happens to have two great forwards, however.

Was the 5-1 German side much different to this one?

Hope Argentina beats them, if we get to semis and meet Germany they will rape us with these counters.

Taking the piss now.

Has James done any merit save today?

First memorable game of this WC, for both good and bad reasons. Hope there's still more goals in it

Wikipedia fiends at work already.