Village Idiot

Looks like the injury fairy is looking after the England team, preventing Capello from selecting duds.

I think the thread title is still too vague and prone to misinterpretation, since you're in the higher echelons of the Football League.

April 10th or 11th.

No. Just watching the reviews of the other La Liga games. Almería bagged another win and they climbed to 10th. They are the 3rd best team in the league since Juanma Lillo took over Also chuffed that Tenerife won 4-1 against the scum. They play a very silkly brand of football and I would love if they pulled it off and managed to stay up.

Yes, I do rate him. How come he's lost his place? Last time I watched Birmingham a couple months ago he was playing great.

Pretty much like over here tbh. The coverage of Spanish/European football in papers is non-existant, don't suppose you know any good English language websites dedicated to (or atleast focus on partly) Spanish football? To be honest, I don't know of any. This is the only football forum I write in (I also usually read bigsoccer for the yank footie coverage).

Regarding Higuaín, he is a very good player, but also has an extreme case of tunnel vision syndrome that he needs to address (he is still very young). I think that's what's preventing him from performing against good sides.

One of the most mong-tastic things going around Real Madrid nowadays, is how people are elevated from heroes to villains to heroes again in a matter of single games. The whole club just needs to take big breath and relax.

Valladolid are an extremely poor side. I expected Real to put a handful past them today. They're as good as relegated. Horrible refereeing also.

is marca basically a real madrid paper? Yes. All major sport rags in Spain are partisan to either Barça or Madrid. It used not to be that way, but in the 1980s one of them (Barcelona's Diario Sport), changed its editorial line to a clear pro-Barça one and increased its sales dramatically. All Spanish sport papers followed suit the following years. Marca, however, has the best coverage of them all. It's still irritatingly partisan, but it's the paper neutrals buy because they have pretty good coverage of other la liga teams and sports (the Barcelona papers are better for Catalan teams, though).

Not much actually, a couple pages in our sport rags, usually shared with Serie A/Bundesliga stuff. Have in mind that Barça/Madrid info usually takes up around 50% of the things. Their online editions have more coverage, particularly Marca.

he kept saying for 2 years, that ronaldo wud join real, had to get right sometime! he has got some stuff right, but he must be a small time reporter when you have 2 national sports papers! especially when 1 is madrid biased He writes for AS, the second national sports paper, as "English football expert". He usually writes 50% of the time about Liverpool, the other 50% being stupidly obvious stuff "Rooney is having a great season", or just copy-pasted from your media. He is also one of the main engines behind the Liverpool love-in in our media, which I utterly despise.

Incidentally, who decided that Guillem Balagué has a f***ing clue about anything related to Spanish football? Nobody, absolutely nobody takes him seriously in Spain Guy's quite smart though, he is the "Spanish football expert" when working in the UK, and the "English football expert" when working in Spain. And is usally full of shit when talking of both.

You ever watch Revista de la Liga? They're in some kind of mock up Spanish bar now with sound loops of talking and plate clattering in the background, it looks stupid. Oohhhh... I need to catch that and get pissed off with all the slightly pejorative Spanish clichés. Plus "Revista de la liga" has a very 1960s ring to it, nobody would use this expression nowadays

Messi :fwap:

Was wondering, when was the last time Barca and Real kicked off at the same time? El Clásico Never happens unless it's in the last week or weeks and the title can be sewn up by one of them if the other drops points. They are the two most watched clubs by a country mile and they want to maximize pay-per-view revenue. And with that, I'm off to the pub!

Still no official lineups, but it seems that Villa may start afterall tonight despite picking up a knock midweek. I'm off to watch it with some friends, it should be a cracking game and a pretty important one for the short term future of La Liga (Real Madrid is going to put several past Valladolid, so if we lose they go 3 clear and we still have to go to the Bernabéu). EDIT: And just as I type that, they announce that Villa is definitely out.

Have to say that I'm with the mackems on this one too, don't want City to be successful.

Infrastructure is another problem. Clubs can't obviously manage this on their own. I don't think sky has the infrastructure either to make it cost effective for them. It's not the same for a small market like Norway than it would be to build up the datacenters, etc... to stream the Premier League worldwide.

ESPN already streams a lot of minor sports events through ESPN360, I think it's just a matter of time until they add a pay-per-view option with more "premium" content I think. There's already a lot of streaming options for watching non-sports content legally here in the US, so I guess it will happen. I guess one of the stumbling blocks might be how current broadcasting rights are worded, however. A lot of current entertainment contracts don't address internet issues well, since it's still fairly new.

I think that what you are trying to convey is that he has good heading technique, but not the physique to challenge for them. I have seen quite a few forwards like this. Messi for example is an excellent header of the ball, he just won't win any unless unmarked* *or marked by Rio Ferdinand

Their run-in is piss easy compared to ManU or Chelsea.

I think they were doing a Red Product charity thing with the ball, actually.

For all his qualities, Higuaín is a headless chicken with the ball at his feet. He just runs forward and looks to shoot, he needs more intelligence to his game. But it is still pretty idiotic that Marca has started a campaign to get him sold.

And just not to waste time, Marca opens again today with a supposed ManCity offer for Gago and Higuaín, €50m