Village Idiot

Thank fuck I have two changes in my fantasy footie team.

We lost against the scum! The only blight of our greatest season of all time. But it's true that Guardiola chose Zlatan because of him being a completely different player than Eto'o was. We already have a complement of small and pacey forwards (Messi, Bojan...) so he obviously wanted to add another dimension with a big guy.

On last season? I think it is a fair call tbf as The Drog was out for periods of time with knocks & Big Phil not liking him. Rooney was banging goals in for England, helped his team to win the PL & get to the CL final. Torres spent large periods of last season injuried and apparently he's the second best striker in the world.

I remember Belanov's goal from that game. Such a stunner! Also, regarding the game on itself... memory is very fuzzy but I remember it being a pretty exhilarating game on both sides, not only the USSR. How has Belgium become so crap in a few generations...

Well since he's named Zidane maybe he'll get a game in the first team.

Next stop the MLS I reckon. He'd be a giant amongst that rabble. Plus I'll get to watch him live again if he moves to NYRB.

Carles and Sergio Busquets won the CL once each as father and son for Barça (although Carles was still only reserve GK at that point, he became first choice later). Manuel Sanchís father and Manuel Sanchís son did the same for Real. The two Juan Veróns have also been very succesful, mainly in SA. Cruyff has had himself, son, son-in-law and grandson playing for Barça. Not particularly illustrious careers other than his own (although his son-in-law almost signed for the Dallas Cowboys as kicker). On a similar note President Lorenzo Sanz had at one point son Fernando Sanz and son-in-law Michel Salgado lining up in Real Madrid's defense. I'll try to think of some more... maybe we should split the thread? It's an interesting topic and the title was already vague to begin with.

More on the Robinho rumors, seems City would be interested in a swap deal of some kind with Henry, which I doubt it's true (he's 32...). Other names thrown in are the usual suspects Puyol and Messi, which are not going to happen.

Sweden not making it is a small upset, but it was a tough group to begin with. Would love to see some fresh faces come out of the playoffs, even if it costs the place to some storied teams (Portugal!).

Honduras? Second time they do. But still a fresh face, and they are not shit.

How many first-timers do we have this time around? Only Slovakia? I guess Bahrain is a first timer too in the unlikely case they qualify.

Back then I'd say Michael Laudrup was the key player in your team. The amount of goals he setup for Romário was fantastic. Laudrup was one of the best players I've ever seen, yet he tends to be underrated as his name never seems to be mentioned amongst the greats of the last 20 years or so. In my life I can possibly only think of Zidane who had vision that good. Guardiola & Laudrup were the engines of that team no doubt (Romário only played one season and a half afterall). Laudrup is probably the best assister I have seen at the team... he was able to set up goals out of nothing, with such elegance. He doesn't get the credit he deserves because a lot of us were left embittered when he poofed out to Real, but he was a genius for club and country.

Keep up man I was unsure if he'd gone up to 1100 with his stint at Miami. Has no one at Fifa called him up on his claims? I think FIFA only acknowledges 900-something of his goals.

I watched the game in a pub in here, people went nuts when they equalized. Great to see an USA game with decent atmosphere

I really doubt that had Italy lost Ireland's game they would be losing to Cyprus.

Particularly when you're shit.

Is Newcastle's boy playing? Gonna do wonders for his morale if he does.

He only had a good season with us before he became a lazy twat, but what a season it was! His goals were so beautiful. Had he just been more professional, he would have been considered one of the great legends of the game (you can say that of dozens of Brazilians though!)

Our weakest link no doubt. South Africa gets Puyol too late and Piqué maybe too soon, they should still put up good performances though, just not "Best XI". Ramos is great going forward, but prone to Bramble-like blunders. Capdevila, Albiol, Arbeola, Marchena are just "decent" not top material. Piqué scores so much lately is silly. I think he has 4 in 12 or something like that in international games.

I think people are always putting us up as role models for supporter-owned clubs and we are not quite what these groups are trying to implement in the UK. Fans have really *no* presence in Barça's (and Real's or Bilbao's) board, we just vote it every few years. A small number of them (selected by lottery) then can approve/reject the board's budget every season but that's about it. It's like voting for your PM. Other than that we have no say on how the club is run, and it's all for good if you ask me. Putting emotional football fans in charge of an enterprise managing hundreds of millions is just mental. But it's good that the team doesn't belong to anybody but us (which limits asset-striping and overleveraging since the president is just an employee, not owner).

Yeah, I was talking about positions on the field. Marca publishes them with the lineup and had most of them all wrong.

Spain's game about to start, and if Marca is correct we seem to be putting a rather dodgy lineup due to injuries with a bunch of players out of position (Iniesta on the right wing, Silva on central midfield...) EDIT: Watching the game now, and Marca was full of it. Iniesta seems to be on centre midfield, Silva on the right wing.

What were you odds, if you want to tell?

"Dead certs" are iffy at this point when a lot of sides have already clinched their places/play for nothing.

We do have a great traditional winger, his name is Dani Alves. In our system fullbacks play the role of wingers more often than not (particularly Alves, Abidal is more conservative). Of course, we look like an expensive fragile piece of china at the back, but that's been our way for the last two decades. We have had traditional wingers over the years, and for different reasons they have never succeded, not necessarily of their own fault. Our most legendary wide men of recent times (Stoichkov, Rivaldo, Larsson, Ronaldinho, Messi...) have very often been central men put out wide. The reasoning is that packing the wide positions with our fullbacks and bringing our wingers inwards provokes positioning difficulties for the defence that our probing style can then pick up and exploit.