Village Idiot

Yeah, FIFA has forbidden the Spanish FA to hold the Cup final on May 26th because of that (and if Atlético and Sevilla were to make it to their respective European finals - doubtful I know! - we wouldn't have any date for it...). That means that the MLS would be without their internationals for one full month + knockout rounds (the league only stops for the group stage IIRC).

You also forgot to mention that the US will be one the fittest teams at the WC too. If there's one thing we do well as Americans it's training and fitness. How's the USNT calendar going to work? Since the MLS will be playing until right before the WC.

True. Football would be a boring game if everybody was your straight as a dye, model professionals. It's like Raúl, I hate him and love him for being the arrogant cunt that he is. Or when Stoichkov played for us, now that was a big mouth

I quit "serious" football after a guy kicked my foot in a 50:50 tackle and I was sidelined with it broken in a million pieces. It was only supposed to be 3 months, but it never healed well and I still can feel pain from time to time.

Aye, that's a bit farcical. The whole league is anyway (that table split a few games before the end of the season )

Our rivalry with Madrid is heavily politically driven... makes it tastier if you ask me (it's not like we have violence problems anyway). Although I always found the whole Irish thing regarding the Old Firm games to be a bit bollocks (yet again I have never been there).

Reminds me that an England - Argentina this WC with Maradona coaching them would be truly entertaining, any chances of that happening?

How profitable the PL is for Skysports at the end? The Real Madrid and FC Barcelona contracts have since long been deficitary for their holders (satellite and cable have never taken hold in Spain, they are trying now with digital on-air TV which might work better)

You lack a bit of bite in the midfield to play some of the stronger sides, in my opinion. Pity about Hargreaves being such a crook (or not, since I'm Spanish )

Were you there for that Barcelona CL game when it was so foggy you could hardly see from one end of the pitch to the other? Aye, I was living in Prague at that time so I took the time to travel up north and watch the game and visit the city. My memories of the game itself are equally foggy... Luís Enrique opened for us, they drew no much later on... and then the remainder of the thing was rather dire to watch. In the second half I couldn't see any of the play at all when it was down the Barcelona end. Gabor Király was the only player visible, standing on the edge of his area and peering down the field. Players would come back into view only when Barça attacked up the right. Whenever this happened everyone in my area starting singing a song which went (rough translation): "So nice, so nice, to see you again!" I didn't stay until the end. The match had been going to make me late for a date with a beautiful Slovenian woman, so when it all descended into opaque ridiculousness, I f***ed off to have a drink and get laid instead. Good choice.

Is Jesus Navas overcoming his homesickness? Noticed he came on last night. He underwent psychological help last year and he is fully available for the Spain squad now.

Adu couldn't get a game at Benfica, and iirc he was involved in some off-the-field misbehavior. He's now on loan to Aris for this season and the next. He's still young and has shown flashes of ability, but doesn't seem to have the mental strength to make it at a high level, imho.

Cool ownage to France. Let's see if we can do that again when it counts (2006 ) Gutted about Holden, I think he's class.

He wants to be paid as much as Benzema (€6m a season net). Surely he deserves it. He's still 3 years away from his contract ending though, he doesn't have that much leverage although Madrid would be idiots not to keep him happy (his release clause is €150m, would ManCity be up to pay that?).

Were you there for that Barcelona CL game when it was so foggy you could hardly see from one end of the pitch to the other? Aye, I was living in Prague at that time so I took the time to travel up north and watch the game and visit the city. My memories of the game itself are equally foggy... Luís Enrique opened for us, they drew no much later on... and then the remainder of the thing was rather dire to watch. One of my favourite ever players. And mine, guy's a legend for us. Doing a good job in our B team now, can't wait for him to have a managerial career in the top flight, will root for any club he manages. The rumor is that Guardiola wants to eventually become a DoF and have Luís manage us (they worked together before Pep stepped up to the first team). Pant-creaming setup if it works!

Spanish press reports ManCity are monitoring Higuaín's situation after he has turned down Real Madrid's new contract offer.

Marco Materazzi is such a tosser http://www.marcomaterazzi.it/blog/ http://www.marcomaterazzi.it/public/mercibeaucoupmonsieur.jpg

It is broke but only since they introduced that wanky 'interfering with play' rule. No f***er knows what's going on, not even the referees. They should just revert back to the old system - if you're offside, you're offside. Whistle blows, freekick, everybody's happy. Old rule ain't that great, I remember refs ruling out long range goals because some random guy was offside inside the box.

Were you there for that Barcelona CL game when it was so foggy you could hardly see from one end of the pitch to the other? Aye, I was living in Prague at that time so I took the time to travel up north and watch the game and visit the city. My memories of the game itself are equally foggy... Luís Enrique opened for us, they drew no much later on... and then the remainder of the thing was rather dire to watch.

I like the away USA shirt a lot actually, I think I'll get one (my family will disown me if I ever buy a Spanish kit).

Lots of stories I have heard about people meeting Souness seem to indicate that he was a very gracious person outside football, funnily.

I guess the main change would be that all defences would be forced to sit deep, which is pretty boring. If the opposition plays with goalhangers you need to be shoulders with them, and if they don't you would be forced to sit deep too as pacy forwards would have a very easy time ripping an advanced defence without offsides. So pretty much every goal would be a lumped ball or a lucky deflected shout outside the box. Yay.

I was at the Olympiastadion before the remodellation too, and it was a horrible, horrible place. Unnecessarily big and uncomfortable...

Ashley's best chance of recouping part of his investment is to rebuild the club to an acceptable level (which he is in a good position to do now with a cleaned up wage bill) and flipping it.

i was in the museum in september, don't recall having the goals in their We bought a shedload of stuff from Old Wembley: the dressing room tunnel, some of the steps, the goals, dressing room hangers and benches, squad benches, the Queen's chair... they wanted to make a small replica of it besides the replicas of our old offices and dressing rooms at the museum, but the whole lot is stored at some warehouse somewhere which is a crying shame until the museum is expanded, which has been put off several years. The goals were on display in the early 2000s, though.