Still Not Worthy Of A Thread

[Village Idiot]

Higuaín's injury in pictures.

 

http://estaticos01.marca.com/albumes/2013/08/27/accidente_higuain/1377608898_extras_albumes_0.jpg

http://estaticos01.marca.com/albumes/2013/08/27/accidente_higuain/1377609005_extras_albumes_0.jpg

http://estaticos01.marca.com/albumes/2013/08/27/accidente_higuain/1377608979_extras_albumes_0.jpg

http://estaticos01.marca.com/albumes/2013/08/27/accidente_higuain/1377608958_extras_albumes_0.jpg

http://estaticos01.marca.com/albumes/2013/08/27/accidente_higuain/1377608929_extras_albumes_0.jpg%5D

 

Most posh football injury of all time?

[Dokko]

Oldguy is having a proper stare. Gan on son.

[Robbo]

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/thetoepoke/id/4429?cc=5739

 

Video: Robert Pires spotted in crowd at local Greek game, invited to play second half

 

As things stand Robert Pires hasn't officially retired, but seeing as he made his last professional appearance for Aston Villa over two years ago now, it's fairly safe to assume that the 39-year-old former World Cup winner didn't spend his weekend in the Greek coastal town of Rafina on the hunt for a new club - though that's exactly what he got!

 

At a loose end and with approximately 90 minutes to kill, Pires toddled along to watch local side Storm Rafina play a pre-season friendly against AO Mykonos, but fans quickly spotted the Arsenal legend in the terraces and the fuss was duly noticed by the Rafina players, who sidled over at half-time and politely asked the Frenchman if he'd be willing to turn out for their side in the second half to help overturn a 1-2 deficit.

 

Pires agreed to pull on the Storm Rafina strip and unsurprisingly proved to be the difference after coming on after the break, both scoring a goal and setting up another as his new side came from behind to win the game 3-2...

[joeyt]

Mrs Higuain looks areet like

[Village Idiot]

Naples to raise more transfer funds: http://www.football-italia.net/38834/napoli-sue-after-higuain-stitches

[LRD]

Naples to raise more transfer funds: http://www.football-italia.net/38834/napoli-sue-after-higuain-stitches

 

Amazing how many football club chairmen/owners are mental.

[54]

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/thetoepoke/id/4429?cc=5739

 

Video: Robert Pires spotted in crowd at local Greek game, invited to play second half

 

As things stand Robert Pires hasn't officially retired, but seeing as he made his last professional appearance for Aston Villa over two years ago now, it's fairly safe to assume that the 39-year-old former World Cup winner didn't spend his weekend in the Greek coastal town of Rafina on the hunt for a new club - though that's exactly what he got!

 

At a loose end and with approximately 90 minutes to kill, Pires toddled along to watch local side Storm Rafina play a pre-season friendly against AO Mykonos, but fans quickly spotted the Arsenal legend in the terraces and the fuss was duly noticed by the Rafina players, who sidled over at half-time and politely asked the Frenchman if he'd be willing to turn out for their side in the second half to help overturn a 1-2 deficit.

 

Pires agreed to pull on the Storm Rafina strip and unsurprisingly proved to be the difference after coming on after the break, both scoring a goal and setting up another as his new side came from behind to win the game 3-2...

Class

[Fenham Mag]

 

Well then.....

[Guest bimpy474]

 

Well then.....

 

He's on £800,000 pounds a year ffs.

[54]

Wow, a free Jaime Oliver recipe card, i'm going to have a good dinner tomorrow.

[Guest bimpy474]

Wow, a free Jaime Oliver recipe card, i'm going to have a good dinner tomorrow.

 

Big Mac or Big Tasty ?

[54]

Wow, a free Jaime Oliver recipe card, i'm going to have a good dinner tomorrow.

 

Big Mac or Big Tasty ?

Undecided , seriously though shouldn't he be able to pay off them debts, being on the amount of money he's on, seems stupid.

[wormy]

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/thetoepoke/id/4429?cc=5739

 

Video: Robert Pires spotted in crowd at local Greek game, invited to play second half

 

As things stand Robert Pires hasn't officially retired, but seeing as he made his last professional appearance for Aston Villa over two years ago now, it's fairly safe to assume that the 39-year-old former World Cup winner didn't spend his weekend in the Greek coastal town of Rafina on the hunt for a new club - though that's exactly what he got!

 

At a loose end and with approximately 90 minutes to kill, Pires toddled along to watch local side Storm Rafina play a pre-season friendly against AO Mykonos, but fans quickly spotted the Arsenal legend in the terraces and the fuss was duly noticed by the Rafina players, who sidled over at half-time and politely asked the Frenchman if he'd be willing to turn out for their side in the second half to help overturn a 1-2 deficit.

 

Pires agreed to pull on the Storm Rafina strip and unsurprisingly proved to be the difference after coming on after the break, both scoring a goal and setting up another as his new side came from behind to win the game 3-2...

 

Feels like much longer than 2 years ago that he was turning out for Villa.

[mattypnufc]

Wow.

 

http://twitpic.com/daqy3f/full

 

Warsaw fans showing UEFA what they think.

[Guest bimpy474]

Wow, a free Jaime Oliver recipe card, i'm going to have a good dinner tomorrow.

 

Big Mac or Big Tasty ?

Undecided , seriously though shouldn't he be able to pay off them debts, being on the amount of money he's on, seems stupid.

 

Aye, just read (daily fail), that he's on more than £1m a year 

[nemtizz]

Are memberships seriously £30 now?

[Deuce]

For fans of free-spending clubs in the English Premier League (EPL), the summer transfer window is like an early Christmas present. Every year, the top division’s richest owners unleash their wallets on the finest footballing wares from the rest of the world, giving their supporters a new batch of superstars for whom to cheer. So far, Manchester City has coughed up £85m ($132m) to acquire Fernandinho, a Brazilian midfielder who played in Ukraine; Stevan Jovetic, a Montenegrin forward who excelled in the Italian league; and a pair of Spaniards playing in Seville, the right winger Jesús Navas and the striker Álvaro Negredo. The next-busiest club, Tottenham, exchanged £52m for the Brazilian midfielder Paulinho, the Spanish striker Roberto Soldado and the French midfielder Étienne Capoue.

 

Yet the same fans who will applaud this influx of foreign talent when it is deployed to topple Manchester United, the reigning EPL champions, may come to rue it by the time of next year’s World Cup in Brazil. The English national team currently trails Ukraine in its qualifying group, and has not reached the World Cup semifinals since 1990. There is no shortage of explanations for the side’s long record of disappointment. But its own assistant coach, Gary Neville, attributes its underperformance to the EPL’s transformation from a more or less national circuit to a truly global league. Barely half as many Englishmen played in the Premiership last year as Spaniards did in La Liga or Frenchmen did in Ligue 1. Local players represent an even smaller share of the core talent on the EPL’s best clubs. “We need to protect our English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and Irish national teams,” Mr Neville told the Guardian, “by giving more boys from those countries more opportunities. England not winning trophies, or even reaching the semi-finals of major competitions any longer, is a problem for us.”

 

Mr Neville’s argument is straightforward enough: unless English players have the opportunity to participate at the highest club level, they will not develop the skills necessary for the country to field an elite national team. To address this problem, he suggests that the EPL reinstate an old requirement that every club include a minimum number of local players. When not coaching England, Mr Neville also works as an analyst for Sky Sports, and his broadcast partner, Jamie Carragher, has proposed an even more heavy-handed fix: banning English youth academies from signing foreigners.

 

Both ideas would have destructive side effects. If Mr Neville’s floor were set high enough—it would probably have to be above five players per team per match to have an impact—it would displace talented foreigners, who would be driven back to rival leagues in other countries and decrease the quality of play in the EPL. That would make for a worse spectacle for Premiership fans, and hurt English clubs’ performance in the high-stakes Champions League. It might also be self-defeating, by softening the competition faced by the very players England hopes to transform into international stars. The same arguments apply to Mr Carragher’s policy, only more so: if English footballers are deprived of the chance to hone their skills against foreign talent when they are young, they have little hope of beating the world’s best once they mature.

 

Besides, the other countries that host the world’s best club leagues—Spain, Germany and Italy—have all outperformed England in recent World Cups without resorting to athletic protectionism. The last two tournaments were won by Spain and Italy, while Germany finished third in 2010 and 2006 and second in 2002. How have they managed to develop such strong national teams, even as footballers the world over vie for a spot in La Liga (Spain), Serie A (Italy) or the German Bundesliga?

 

The simple answer is that for all three of England’s rivals, the international transfer market is a two-way street. Many of their nationals are indeed crowded out from their local leagues. However, those players are happy to ply their trade abroad in one of the other elite circuits. According to Transfermarkt, a football information database, 65 Frenchmen played in the top divisions in Spain, Germany, Italy or England last season, and 45 Spaniards, 20 Germans and 19 Italians played in another major league. The English, in contrast, prefer to toil in the second division on their own scepter’d isle than to try their luck in the first tier on the Continent. Just one Englishman, Michael Mancienne (pictured) of the Bundesliga’s Hamburger SV, suited up in Spain, Germany or Italy in 2012-13.

 

It’s hard to pinpoint a single reason why English footballers are such homebodies. One potential explanation is the language barrier. Since English is the global lingua franca, many foreign players already speak it well enough to be comfortable in Britain, whereas Britons are among the world’s worst at acquiring a second tongue. Yet numerous English players believe that their reluctance to play abroad runs deeper. A majority, says David Preece, an English goalkeeper who had a successful spell in Denmark, have “a fear of something that is alien to them. Many players are unwilling to move their families across this country, never mind the continent”. Sam Parkin, a striker for Exeter, agrees: “The majority of English players,” he says, “are intimidated at the prospect of having to adapt to a new culture.” They may be influenced by the high-profile parochialism of their predecessors: Ian Rush, himself a Welshman, infamously characterised the year he spent in Italy in 1988 with the truism that “it was like living in a foreign country.”

 

What is clear is that such sentiments have generated a negative feedback loop, which ensures that most English players stay at home. Because it is so hard to lure them abroad, most foreign clubs have given up efforts to scout in Britain. Mr Parkin, who trained with Chelsea, witnessed the fruits of the team’s international recruiting efforts first-hand when it brought in a pair of Italians, Gianluca Vialli and Gianfranco Zola, to play ahead of him. Unfortunately, he says, “there wasn’t much in the other direction”. Lacking the opportunity to put himself in the international shop window, he accepted a move down to Swindon Town in the second division.

 

Mr Neville clearly has England’s best interests at heart. Unfortunately, he seems to have the solution to his country’s player-development woes backwards. Rather than carving out quotas for talented youngsters at home, the best way to train future stars is to encourage them to mimic their foreign counterparts, overcome their hodophobia, and spend their formative years on the other side of the English Channel.

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2013/08/player-development-football?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/gosouthyoungman

[Beren]

Podolski out for ten weeks.

[AyeDubbleYoo]

I think Carragher's idea of banning academies from signing young foreigners has a lot going for it. They should be focussing on developing homegrown talent. Problem is what happens to all the young talent around the world that is desperate to get a break in Europe.

[henke]

I think Carragher's idea of banning academies from signing young foreigners has a lot going for it. They should be focussing on developing homegrown talent. Problem is what happens to all the young talent around the world that is desperate to get a break in Europe.

 

I quite like this idea but i'm not even sure it would be legal. The number of foreigners in a squad / starting XI has to be limited though. And the sooner the better. But of course that would mean less viewers, so less tv money, so not going to happen.

[Guest neesy111]

Can't see the difference it would make.  Spanish clubs nick youngsters from South America and still are able to produce world class players.

 

The problem is coaching, we produce a small amount of good qualified coaches.

[Village Idiot]

It should be that way, we used to have such a policy back in the 90s (Messi was a big exception at the time) but now we are signing way too many foreigners. It's not a "SPANISH FIRST!!!!" thing, it's just that's nearly immoral to snatch these children (the parents are as guilty mind) from their countries and bring them into a foreign culture with a different language, disrupting their education, with vague and for the most part unfulfilled promises of making it as a footballer.

[Ameritoon]

Basically it comes down to coaching at the youth level; in academies, in schools or clubs, and in the youth national team setup. Your ex-player pundits can say all they want about restricting foreign talent from coming in at youth or the top level but it's about accountability from the people at the top of the FA. They have to create a training method that is used from the beginning and they have make sure they're producing enough studied youth coaches every year. It's not about Premier League teams forcibly playing English players when they're not good enough for the good of the national team, or about not letting foreign kids coming over to train, it's not like a few signings from Europe and the English prospects are suddenly just ignored. If there's one thing about the English press and the cunts that run the FA is that there's always someone/something else to blame, the Premier League in this instance, when it is no one's fault buy their own.

[Cajun]

Work with an Arsenal fan and two Spurs fans, feel really sorry for the gooner

 

He really sounds like a Newcastle fan though, has been moaning about how Arsenal are putting in 'fake' bids lower than their true valuations to look like they are trying but the best bit was today when it was said Podolski could be out for up to 10 weeks instead of the 2 mentioned the other day he said "typical Wenger injury, a month usually means six!".

 

We are definitely following the Arsenal model, I feel like mentioning us but I don't want to look like I'm competing. Every whinge he has could easily be a post from here

[toon25]

Basically it comes down to coaching at the youth level; in academies, in schools or clubs, and in the youth national team setup. Your ex-player pundits can say all they want about restricting foreign talent from coming in at youth or the top level but it's about accountability from the people at the top of the FA. They have to create a training method that is used from the beginning and they have make sure they're producing enough studied youth coaches every year. It's not about Premier League teams forcibly playing English players when they're not good enough for the good of the national team, or about not letting foreign kids coming over to train, it's not like a few signings from Europe and the English prospects are suddenly just ignored. If there's one thing about the English press and the cunts that run the FA is that there's always someone/something else to blame, the Premier League in this instance, when it is no one's fault buy their own.

 

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