Village Idiot

Leo Gogogo... we seem to be playing better with 10 than 11.

Meh, we are going through the same bad patch we went through last february-march, problem is that Madrid are in a much stronger position now to profit from it than last year. Can easily see them going top today. Zlatan is just not the same player he was from September-December.

Aw crap.

Messi can't take freekicks, nossir. let's see if we get that game back on track. Almería are being more steely than I expected from a Lillo team. Fair play to them, mind. Guardiola's been sent off in the first half, for those of you not following it

Henry again on the bench for us today, Pedro taking his place. Ibrahimovic on top, Iniesta/Xavi/Touré in midfield... looks sweet. Almería have improved greatly under Lillo (which I'm delighted since I love the guy), but he plays an extremely positive brand of football which should favour us greatly.

Holy fuck, I just woke up and saw this. What's happening?

Kneejerk-ism and petty villain figures are the salt and pepper of sports fandom.

Wonder what did he really write on that paper

And really, I'm genetically impaired to cheer for Raúl at anything. I'd die of a brain aneurysm or something. What happens is that with all the over the top patriotism getting trotted out during World Cups, etc... as Catalan sometimes I find myself uncomfortable to throw my lot with them. But having Xavi, Puyol, Piqué, Busquets, etc... helps.

That sounds pretty awful, from the outside. I know the connotations of it being Raul, but howay man, it's your own country. I'm Catalan, so my passion for the Spanish NT is admittedly dependant on the amount of Catalans being fielded. Spanish Barcelona players kinda count. I'm not very political, but for some reason it happens in football.

To be honest, I cheered when Raúl missed a penalty against France in the EC of 2000, which sent us packing.

I'd be supporting Argentina, obviously. Nothing particularly against England, but the Argies are our estranged cousins.

Absolutely class For some reason this reminded me of a game of Calcio Storico but without the violence and the mud

I hope you can get one. They're cracking games always, and lately they do better against us than the difference in squads might suggest. I'll keep an eye and post here if I hear something about the ticket sales.

8m, yes. He was on his last year at Liverpool.

I always thought that football needs some kind of sin bin like hockey for "orange card" situations. Or make it like basketball and allow the sent off player to be subbed for "orange" offences (that would still count against your substitution limit)

So you see that Owen still retains a name (in Spain at least), this is making top news in our international football coverage and reported as "Owen will miss the World Cup".

Brum have lost 20m in their season in the CCC. Wonder how your own results will compare next year. http://www.sportinglife.com/football/news/story_get.cgi?STORY_NAME=soccer/10/03/05/SOCCER_Birmingham_Losses.html&TEAMHD=soccer The current chairman seems critical of the previous board decision to keep an inflated wage bill, but that's probably one of the reasons they made it back at first attempt. Is 20m losses an acceptable price for promotion? (I think so if you can stabilize the club in the PL the following years)

You could make it 4-5-6 places and give the 4th placed team a bye to the "final".

To be frank, you were in the top flight when this list was made. Will be interesting to see what kind of turnover you retain while in the CCC, though.

Oh, and they don't play at the Olympic stadium anymore. Cornellà is smaller and this will affect ticket availability (15,000 less seats).

Yo. Espanyol-Barça are pretty weird games to get tickets for, and until the date approaches one doesn't know how it's going to work. Last year only Espanyol club members were allowed to purchase tickets, for "security" reasons, so the only way to get them were through resale websites (incredibly expensive) or if you knew a club member. Otherwise, this is the site to buy tickets for any of the Barcelona teams at base prices (with a nominal surcharge for third party ticketing). Most of the time I get them through there, unless it's a high demand game, when you gotta go and queue at the ticket office the day they go out. www.servicaixa.es There's a caveat, though, and that is that I have never tried buying tickets with a non-Spanish credit card and it might be restricted to the Spanish market (in the same way you can't buy in the USA I-tunes with a non-yank card, etc...). You can probably test it buying tickets for any other game and just not confirming the sale. In the case of Espanyol, though, you can also buy tickets straight off them. http://www.rcdespanyol.com/ticketing2/index.php The problem is... that this is a derby game. If Espanyol sells tickets openly again this year, they will sell out pretty quickly and I'm not sure you'll have much chance of catching them online. They can't fill their stadium on their own though, last year with the "members only" policy they only got something like 85% attendance So you gotta wait until news come out and see if you can get them through any of these two sites.

A real Spanish keeper would be at least 45 yards off his line when his team is in possession of the ball. I was quite atypical on that regard, only left the box at half time and that only after some convincing by my teammates.

I was actually quite a bastard as a keeper. I'm quite built (for an average Spaniard at least, we are the shortest and smallest EU nation), and at schoolboy level I was pretty much always the biggest bastard in the pitch. When I dived for a ball, if I secured it I would always let myself go and use my size and momentum to bring the forward down (without fouling since the ball was already mine). My defence was shit and I had to deal with tons of one-on-ones so intimidating forwards was a bit part of my game! Of course it had drawbacks like the aforementioned hand stomping incident I was the archetypical Spanish keeper: great reflexe saves and one-on-ones, pure shit at crosses and high balls into the box.

South Korea have as good chance as anyone to make it out of their group I think, wouldn't surprise Lee attracts interest from stronger clubs after the world cup.