Village Idiot

You seem to concede a lot of late home goals when you're pasting other teams, kinda takes the wind off the sails. Still canny result

Quite lovely how a lot of these dudes labelled "the new Messi" are maybe 1 or 2 years younger than him only Salvio hasn't looked nowt special for Atlético so far, but still early days.

Can't see Racing going for him, hasn't really had a brilliant season there.

We and Madrid have been linked to Ashley Young :lol: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1264765/Ashley-Young-22m-target-Spanish-superpowers-Barcelona-Real-Madrid.html#ixzz0ke0YukZ6

those white towers and wembley way were 'wembley' and were actually a bit of a let down when there. Dunno, I have been to Old Wembley and I was pretty impressed by the whole way and the the towers as you approached the entrance. Then the stadium on itself was admittedly a bit of a letdown.

They should have kept some architectonic elements of Old Wembley, though. Granted I have only seen aerial shots of the thing, but nothing in it makes you think of Old Wembley. I mean, the white towers...

I went to see us play at Athletic Bilbao in the UEFA cup 12 years ago, and it is without a doubt the best place I've ever seen us play football. Fantastic people, unbelievably welcoming, and we made a lot of friendships that day. That's a great place to play football. (Unlike Atletico Madrid, where we mostly got beaten up by riot police). San Mamés is a great stadium, and the Bilbao crowd are some of the most welcoming and great fans you'll find in Spain. The reason Spain doesn't play there is because of the terrorist threat.

The good thing about not having a national stadium, though, is that Spain plays their games throughout the whole country. So fans everywhere have a chance of eventually seeing them live They very rarely play in Barcelona, though, and haven't played in the Basque Country in decades.

I must say I kinda envy your Wembley tradition. We just play our cup finals in neutral venues, and the semis in home/away legs and it doesn't have that special feeling. But we have never had a "national stadium".

The only thing I can think he possibly means is to work hard to get the ball when we don't have it (he can't possibly mean anything else, mind). I was hugely impressed with that in your matches against Arsenal. It wasn't just about what you did when you had the ball, you worked unbelievably hard to get it back - and not just one man, two or three closing down the player with the ball. I read this week - and this is probaby not true, but it is still interesting - that in training at Barca, players are told that in practice matches, when they lose the ball they have five seconds to get it back. to be honest, the only similarity we'll have with Barcelona is the colours we wear. Yeah, our pressing game was introduced by Rijkaard, and Guardiola has put even more stress on it through all levels of our youth structure. I think it's the key to our success actually, before that you took the ball from us and we were useless.

Also, the Spanish press has quoted O'Neill saying that "they have to play like Barcelona" to beat Chelsea, which doesn't make much sense given how we struggle every time we play them! (and I'm sure he's been misquoted somehow).

I'm actually going to watch that one with some friends as a warmup to the Real Madrid - Barça game. Good luck there, brummie.

Why did they sign Niemi at all? They had James, Begovic and Ashdown at the time.

Then goes to general GD, which at this point they lead by one.

Maybe he doesn't have injury at all, very convenient timing. That's been rumoured, but don't think that's the case to be honest. Kaká hasn't lived up to expectations, but surely they'd rather want him on the pitch than Granero.

Mancini surely is smarter than that, though.

Kaká has missed 12 games this season already due to his groin injury. Seems like Milan knew what they were doing, crafty c***s.

prediction VI? is iniesta back for this? He is. Dunno if he will start, though. The loss of Zlatan is a big blow. Without him and Henry being useless, Messi is the only credible goal threat we really have. 2-3 to us since I'm not supposed to predict us to lose

Tomorrow.

But it happens. I'm pretty sure Puskas would be mentioned in these lists had Hungary won the WC in 1954, for example. I mean, look at his club record!

I kinda agree, it probably shouldn't matter that much in terms of showcasing your ability (I do rate club football higher than international football) but it puts your name in the minds of people. Incidentally, do people consider Di Stéfano one of the greats outside Spain? He didn't even play in a WC.

They were linked with Villa recently, guess this rules that signing out. Seems SAF is Arsenaling a lot with his side recently? Buying a lot of prospects (Nani, Anderson, Smalling, Obertan, Diouf, Tosic...) and very few "Finished article" footballers (Berbatov, Tévez/Owen, not sure where to put Valencia)

One of the most exciting games I remember watching at the Camp Nou was a 0-0 draw that sent us to the CL final. Sometimes what's at stake matters more than how many goals are scored. My Atlético friends are delighted with their EL campaign and they couldn't care less how they got there. I reckon Liverpool will do them, sadly.

Atlético is going to bottle it against Liverpool, they got themselves an European final and somehow they will manage to claim this season as "successful". Imagine if they somehow scraped 4th.

Torres back to the Calderón, nice one.