Village Idiot

Isaac Success to Watford seems pretty likely to happen. I've been rooting for this player to play in England for ages; that pun potential is sorely wasted in Spain.

Will be his last big contract, and they are offering a lot of money. Wants to play in midfield too.

Apparently Mascherano wants to go to Juve. Damn.

Oh god, just seen that dance. Even if they ended up losing the smugness is unbearable. I want to see this man broken. And I'm not a nasty person at all.

Random. The club was owned with some millionaire from Azerbayan that had business with Atlético, so it's not that random, I guess. They're partnering with some investment firm that has taken the remaining 65%. I'll go and assume the whole business is shady.

Atlético have become owners of 35% of Lens.

And Mágico González was truly ridiculous, and the comparison to Maradona very apt. He made Diego look like an altar boy in off-the-pitch behavior.

Da fuck, is Kubala that unknown? Before Messi he was Barça's most legendary player. The Camp Nou is known as the house that Kubala built FFS.

Their president at the time was the former bodyguard of the leader of the Spanish far right, says it all

Aye Koeman ahead of Pellegrini is mental to me Koeman was so out of his depth at Valencia, I know he's done very well since, but I can't shake off that from my mental picture of him.

The Manchester derby will be pretty interesting this season...

Vicente Calderón is the cool dive bar that the tripadvisor crowd has still not found about. Glad you enjoyed your trip.

f***, this one was intense. Piqué and Iniesta were truly imperial tonight. Over the moon. :frantic:

More on this, this graph is pretty damning (and no, I'm sure that Valencia aren't nowhere near the only outfit where this is happening) http://e02-elmundo.uecdn.es/assets/multimedia/imagenes/2016/05/21/14638536879364.jpg It's in Spanish, but the thing that you have to look at is the breakdown of the transfer monies paid for each player (second graphic). The number at the basis of each column is the money paid to third parties (commissions, bungs, third party owners, whatever) from the transfer total. So, for example, Valencia paid €30m for Rodrigo, but only €17m reached Benfica. Makes you realize how utterly corrupt the whole thing is.

The Spanish IRS is investigating Valencia for alleged tax fraud in their transfer business under Peter Lim.

Jémez heavily linked with Espanyol I don't want to delete my sig.

The Pozzos are selling Granada to a Chinese holding. Pere Guardiola (Pep's bro), will be the new managing director.

Another shady Mendes deal, no doubt.

The Deadpool one was already ridiculous, but that one had an excuse since it's a ridiculous movie

Weird furrin' name, must be a dago Love Kasabian.

Possibly? I have had little sleep.

No proper Barça fan calls the team "Barcelona", though. Still, Espanyol have never used the "Barcelona" part of their name. They don't care. Why should they? It wasn't part of their official name during most of their history. They are RCDE, we are FCB. NUFC does use "United" quite a bit though. They do have it though. They are Atlético, and proudly so. My Atlético friends have mastered the art of pronouncing "El Madrid" with the kind of phlegmatic disdain I thought only the English could muster. There's also Bilbao, they *hate* being called Bilbao. Their name is Athletic Club.

Leeds, Scunthorpe, Newcastle, Sheffield, Carlisle or any of the other teams named united? Which one?? The one universally known as United. Get over it. Nah, not having that you dog end, not on a Newcastle united forum. Why pick out United then? Should have questioned Real and said "Betis? Madrid? Zaragoza? Santander?" United = Manchester United. Newcastle = Newcastle United. Because you're not on a Betis, Zaragoza or Racing forum. You're welcome to f*** off to any of them though if you fancy. To be frank, in Spain practically nobody says just "Real" when talking about Madrid (except Madrid fans among themselves, ofc), precisely because of how many Reals there are out there. They are "Madrid".

We had a bunch of in-form strikers to choose from this year. Rubén Castro and Borja Bastón were in great form and scoring 18+. Bastón seems to have what it takes to go on to become a very good striker, I hope he doesn't get lost in the shuffle when he goes back to Atlético. Morata is an odd one, you watch him play and you see that he has it all, but he actually has a poor goalscoring record. I suppose he's the kind of striker that one day will have *that* breakthrough season and he will never look back. But he's the future, and Torres is the past. I think Aduriz is what the doctor ordered, we have never had a striker of his abilities that actually managed to score (Llorente and Negredo failed at NT level). It's the first time where we could have a working Plan B.

It's not really a fine. What happens is that the equivalent of the "facilities fee" in our new collective deal depends partly on how much you pack your stadium and provide atmosphere. In a perfect world this will give incentive to clubs to lower ticket prices. Somehow I doubt that will happen.