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Village Idiot

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One of the reasons, yup. If you have been in there, it's very cramped inside. The talk was that there would be a major revamp to gain interior space for restaurants, corporate lodgings, etc... and modernize the structure, but the costs are so high they are thinking wether it wouldn't be just better to build a new one from scratch.

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Yeah, I only went on the tour but on that side of things it was a long way behind the Bernabeu from what I can remember. Hopefully it won't come to that though, any locations been mentioned?

 

Always a shame to lose an iconic ground but at least with Valencia and Bilbao theyre staying in the same area.

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According to the report, they are looking for a site in the same general area (all our stadia have always been in that neighborhood, which is where the club was founded). One hypotesis is that they would build it in some of the unused ground that the Barcelona University owns further north of the current location. To be frank, it's a great place for a football stadium, much better connected.

 

But yeah, if it really comes to pass it will be a piece of our history gone. But we tore down a 40-year old stadium to build the Camp Nou back in the 1950s, we shouldn't sacralize the past if a new stadium really would be best for the club.

 

Just DON'T sell the name rights.

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According to the report, they are looking for a site in the same general area (all our stadia have always been in that neighborhood, which is where the club was founded). One hypotesis is that they would build it in some of the unused ground that the Barcelona University owns further north of the current location. To be frank, it's a great place for a football stadium, much better connected.

 

But yeah, if it really comes to pass it will be a piece of our history gone. But we tore down a 40-year old stadium to build the Camp Nou back in the 1950s, we shouldn't sacralize the past if a new stadium really would be best for the club.

 

Just DON'T sell the name rights.

What happened to those crazy plans to build a new offshore stadium? Or did I make that up?

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According to the report, they are looking for a site in the same general area (all our stadia have always been in that neighborhood, which is where the club was founded). One hypotesis is that they would build it in some of the unused ground that the Barcelona University owns further north of the current location. To be frank, it's a great place for a football stadium, much better connected.

 

But yeah, if it really comes to pass it will be a piece of our history gone. But we tore down a 40-year old stadium to build the Camp Nou back in the 1950s, we shouldn't sacralize the past if a new stadium really would be best for the club.

 

Just DON'T sell the name rights.

What happened to those crazy plans to build a new offshore stadium? Or did I make that up?

 

That was a hoax.

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"By the c*** of your mother, 90 minutes! Use your head!"

 

People say that Pep means how Alexis played the full midweek game and worsened his hamstring problems, but the way he says it, and what he said afterwards in the press room, I think he is referring to the way he injuried himself: it was injury time and he made an unnecessary run with the side already 3-1 up, despite carrying a knock.

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Small little cool picture: the oldest photo of a Spanish football club, taken in 1900 in Barcelona and showing Escocés FC (nowadays UE Sant Andreu in Segunda B). As you can see, most of the players were British.

 

http://img01.lavanguardia.com/2012/03/06/Retrato-del-equipo-titular-del_54264455863_53389389549_600_396.jpg

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Great article by Sid Lowe on Bielsa's methods at Athletic:

 

Athletic Bilbao's Bielsa – obsessive and dangerous for United's chances

The Argentinian is called El Loco for his attention to detail but he has built the most exciting Athletic Bilbao team for decades

 

The exchange was eloquent, a treatise on image and reality, the two faces of Marcelo Bielsa. It was played out at Estadio el Madrigal where Villarreal had just drawn 2-2 with Athletic Bilbao. Athletic's coach was addressing the media in his normal way – voice low, gaze lower – when he was asked about his odd touchline behaviour. Was it coincidence that after every Villarreal attack, he got up from his haunches and paced to the other side of his technical area, taking exactly 13 steps?

 

Bielsa did not look at his questioner. He never does. Staring down, he spoke in his usual slow monotone. "What is coincidence," he replied, "is that when there's such a nice game going on, someone spends time counting my paces."

 

They call the Argentinian El Loco and maybe they look too hard for madness. The way Athletic are playing, watching him not his team is absurd, yet it is hard not to be drawn to him. Bielsa is unusual, there is something addictive about his actions. Besides, person and professional are inseparable. The question is: is he really as mad as he is portrayed? "No," says the forward Iker Muniaín. "He is madder."

 

Bielsa arrived last summer and Athletic's players still have not completely worked him out. They have never seen anything like him and do not think they ever will. He is disconcerting, praising awful performances and bemoaning brilliant ones. Above all, he is intense. Compulsive. Obsessive. Mad. "He lives for football," the striker Fernando Llorente says. There are days, adds teh midfielder Javi Martínez, when he does not leave the Lezama training ground until the small hours. It is, he says, "insane".

 

When he arrived, Bielsa had watched their 38 league games last season, writing all the details on colour-coded spreadsheets. And that really is all the details – he says: "There are 36 different forms of communicating through a pass." He watches thousands of games, building a footballing taxonomy, like some kind of botanist. If a player does something new, he labels and stores it, learning from it. Teaching from it, too. Few are so didactic: he once drew on his shoes to show players exactly which part of their foot to use, wearing them for days after. Video sessions can last five hours and players joke that they do not dare make a mistake lest the green laser rest upon them and Bielsa demand a convincing explanation.

 

Training is intense, even when Bielsa takes children from the crowd and gets them to deliver instructions for him. Stopwatch in hand, he preaches high pressure, constantly interrupting and demonstrating. Gangs of players sprint from pole to pole, hunting as a coordinated pack, their errors revealed to them on a laptop. There is an almost childish wonder about Pep Guardiola's description of Athletic: "They all run up … and they all run down again. Up, down, up, down, up, down. They're fascinating."

 

All endeavour, no aesthetics? No. Bielsa, a former Argentina and Chile manager, has altered Athletic's historic identity as the most "English" of teams, teaching them in the words of one insider "not to be afraid of the ball any more". They have scored almost twice as many headers as any other team in Spain but where the ball used to be thumped into the area at the first opportunity, it is now being worked up the pitch. Only Madrid and Barcelona have completed more passes or scored more goals. "The style is totally different," says the defender Andoni Iraola; Llorente does the "opposite" of what he did before.

 

Synchronisation is fundamental, attacks automatic, movement mechanised, the pitch partitioned with tape, moves constructed and deconstructed piece by piece, passes made instantly. The circulation is constant. One exercise involves eight squares: two players cannot occupy the same space; if a team-mate enters your square, you vacate it. Crossing and shooting exercises, following specific, interchanging "passageways", do not end with the shot but with players sprinting back into their starting positions. Defence and attack are not separate.

 

"A man with new ideas is mad until he succeeds," Bielsa notes. Athletic did not win in their first five games as they struggled to assimilate new ideas; since then, they have lost only three of 21 and are one point from the Champions League places, their best finish for 13 years on the cards.

 

They are in the Copa del Rey final, seeking a first trophy in 28 years, and supporters are enjoying their football like never before. The sparkle in the eye of players, the sheer number of fans travelling to England – Old Trafford's highest ever away contingent – reveals what facing Manchester United means.

 

A few weeks ago, Bielsa was stopped by a group of kids who asked him to sign their sticker album. He said no, he had a better idea. He took the album off them and told them to meet him the following day, same place, same time. When he turned up 24 hours later, the entire team had signed the album. Not just any team: El Loco's team, the most exciting Athletic have had in three decades.

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Another report today in the Barcelona newspaper "Sport" about the possibility of building a new Camp Nou. It would be a 110k seater and the suggested location - truth be said - would be great and much more accessible than the current one. They say they are planning on partly financing it by installing a led light skin that would work as a gigantic billboard (SIGH), as we have done with our new youth facilities.

 

Same report says that renovating the Camp Nou is considered almost unfeasible, as the new regulations on the use of concrete and the age of the material used in 1957 would demand a vast rebuilding of the stadium.

 

I'm certainly not against a new stadium (the Camp Nou really shows its age), as long as we don't sell the name rights and it stays within Barcelona (unlike Espanyol's).

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Another report today in the Barcelona newspaper "Sport" about the possibility of building a new Camp Nou. It would be a 110k seater and the suggested location - truth be said - would be great and much more accessible than the current one. They say they are planning on partly financing it by installing a led light skin that would work as a gigantic billboard (SIGH), as we have done with our new youth facilities.

 

Same report says that renovating the Camp Nou is considered almost unfeasible, as the new regulations on the use of concrete and the age of the material used in 1957 would demand a vast rebuilding of the stadium.

 

I'm certainly not against a new stadium (the Camp Nou really shows its age), as long as we don't sell the name rights and it stays within Barcelona (unlike Espanyol's).

 

http://www.totalbarca.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Barcelona-New-Camp-Nou.jpg

 

Still think this design looks absolutely brilliant.

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Guest guinness_fiend

Another report today in the Barcelona newspaper "Sport" about the possibility of building a new Camp Nou. It would be a 110k seater and the suggested location - truth be said - would be great and much more accessible than the current one. They say they are planning on partly financing it by installing a led light skin that would work as a gigantic billboard (SIGH), as we have done with our new youth facilities.

 

Same report says that renovating the Camp Nou is considered almost unfeasible, as the new regulations on the use of concrete and the age of the material used in 1957 would demand a vast rebuilding of the stadium.

 

I'm certainly not against a new stadium (the Camp Nou really shows its age), as long as we don't sell the name rights and it stays within Barcelona (unlike Espanyol's).

 

http://www.totalbarca.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Barcelona-New-Camp-Nou.jpg

 

Still think this design looks absolutely brilliant.

 

Aye, imagine "SPORTS DIRECT" rotating around the ground on a cold Monday evening.  It would look LUSH.

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