Neymar tries Isco Busquets: La Liga 13/14

barca betis 1-0 messi pk after alexis shows messi level close control and drops a leg

not hugely fond of 34 y/o xavi, messi and iniesta playing at home vs worst team in league before the cl qf

2-1, ruben castro takes advantage of typically risible adriano defending

messi still fucking playing at 70 mins

75 mins, granada 1 barca 0

only half watched about 20 mins of this but it's grim viewing from a barca pov

and so it finishes

barcelona didn't seem to lack 'passion' or whatever, they just couldn't get past a solid defensive line, liverpool's lightning fast on loan cb tiago illori was creditable and the cameroonian rb nyom whom was brilliant, locked down the right side of defence and at 6'2 nearly outpaced jordi alba over a short sprint, which virtually never happens

everything with barcelona is as cristiano ronaldo used to say, 'polemic' and happens against the backdrop of idiot entitled fans and emotionally incontinent sports-press but i'd like to exculpate

i) tata, who landed his first european job at the last minute and has been dignified and mostly competent

he was outwitted by simeone and he will probably narrowly lose la liga, but neither of those is a disgrace

ii) messi, who for the second year running was tasked with rescuing their entire season as soon as he came back, and who has done that until the last two games -- took them past manchester city, kept their faint hopes in la liga alive with a hat-trick at the bernabeu

no idea what happened to him lately, but he took them to a position they would not otherwise have got to

the whole club has been traduced by cunts and idiots, the rossell administration

i) alienated guardiola
ii) tried to neg messi
iii) humiliated the club with the corrupt neymar payments disaster
iv) mismanaged the squad renewal by (eg) failing to give thiago the contract he deserved and thereby let a gold plated successor to xavi leave for scarcely more than they wasted on the very clearly inadequate alex song
iv) may well have given them a two year transfer ban, and even if this is eventually defeated on appeal, they will have to plan for this summer on the presumption that it stands

they urgently need to get their shit together now

two /window/ transfer ban

gr8 posts. i shall add the simplistic & plebeian notion that should results now proceed as expected, we may be faced with real madrid needing a title-excluded barcelona to get a result against atletico on the last day, and the consequent pressure on barca to not play 11 teenagers

hopefully that doesn't happen

atleti would win the title on the penultimate game if they win the rest of them, though they have valencia away and a couple of other tricky games

if not and barca are out of it then they owe it to themselves & everyone else not to be cunts about it, no youth teamers and no transparently shitty play like gerrard's assist to drogba in may 2010

Be fair, that was the purest most genuine shittines on Gerrard's part.

everything with barcelona is as cristiano ronaldo used to say, 'polemic'

:)

Furious Barcelona fans surrounded the team's bus and hurled insults when the players arrived back at the Nou Camp following the 1-0 defeat at lowly Granada in La Liga.
Full story: Marca

Yeah have at them current champions who have had a rough year and could still win the league.

should buoy them up for the copa del rey final on weds

they ranted at messi for supposedly conserving his energy to prepare for the world cup, and racially abused neymar

you can be sure that football supporter logic also holds neymar personally responsible for the irregularities of his transfer, and for not being maradona in his first season in europe

great football players must hate the fans and their inchoerent 'passion', not that they have much to do with them but if messi finds himself approached by people in barca shirts what is he likely to think? fawning sycophancy, aggressive requests for autographs or pictures, unless he has one bad game played on the right wing for the first time in half a decade, in which case he is suddenly a traitor and a disgrace

in spain the worst tendencies of the very worst fans are given license by the general febrile and political atmosphere

spain is in a state of deep sociopolitical sickness yh

there is a terrible recession but catalunya and barcelona specifically are probably the worst affected areas of the country, which has intensified the secessionist movement because catalan nationalists take umbrage at subsidizing the rest of spain

it doesn't help that from laporta onwards they have fused the pseudo-collectivist ethnic pride thing with a parallel identity as unicef branded evangelists of the one and only right way to play football, and the mourinho era worsened the tensions between the teams

football supporters don't need any of this superstructural nonsense in order to be cunts though

/least/ affected

copa de ray final between you know who and you know who else at 830, please may tata obey reason and not play messi or neymar on the right

del

looking frwd to seeing a alex song/mascerano CB pairing tonight seeing as the rest of Barca's CB's are injured. Pedro better fucking start and maybe Alexis too.

Ho hum it's the team that played last Weds vs Atleti I think.

nothing but scorn for whichever wastemen bought alex song play in order to play at least some of the time at cb

he played there occasionally for arsenal only because he was the only other > 6' tall outfield player they had at the time but it was obvious that his best qualities were never defensive ones, even as a defensive midfielder his most obvious assets were more to do with his playmaking ability than conventional defensive skills

Only Barca would buy a DM that didn't like playing DM and wanted to play further frwd and turn him into a CB

they underestimated how good seydou keita was, if they wanted to buy a player to do replace everything he brought to the side then they needed to spend more than £15m, and they needed to buy a dedicated centre back as well rather than attempt to buy one good but not great player to do both

not hugely enthused with the prospect of another attempt to buy david luiz in the summer

barc bought a dungeon master?

thought that was offside? shit from pinto

is modric now better than the current versions of xavi and iniesta?

pinto is a disgrace

fulham can have david stockdale as a reserve goalkeeper, west ham have jussi jaaskelainen and barcelona have that shithead

iniesta left neymar right is sort of painful to watch

1-1

excellent header from bartra

HANDBAGS

The Welshman Abroad

that goal probably establishes him as a real madrid player

it's been quite noticeable this season how reticent the rest of the players (not just the queeny 'cr7') are when bale scores a goal, he is one of only three non-latin players in the squad in addition to whatever resentments his record fee created

it wasn't really refined but good technique and sangfroid in the penalty area aligned with lightning quickness makes him a great player, maybe not a €100m player but enough to show the fee had some basis in reality

the way that neymar shot bounced off the post and into the arms of casillas was comical

kinda hate neymar now. hope he has a shite world cup tbh.

a lot more criticism of messi (and to a lesser extent neymar) from the worthless fans

anything other than robotic brilliance every single week and these wastemen congregate at airports etc and harangue him as a parasite and freeloader

there is something seriously & grotesquely sick in the mind & heart of anyone other than lionel messi who wears a barcelona shirt with 'messi' on the back. it is this sickness you describe

still think tata has fucked up but trying to avoid making a decision out of which 2 to play from the iniesta/xavi/cesc trio. Trying to shoehorn iniesta in wide left and neymar wide right clearly hasn't worked yet stil he persists. Messi central, Neymar left, pedro or alexis right. busquets at the base then pick 2 of the others. Maybe barca would still have lost the last 3 games but i'm p sure they'd have played better at least.

cesc has worked at times as a pseudo forward who bulks out the midfield but neymar on the right and iniesta on the left is an almost moyesian level of deliberate self-limiting

i never thought barca needed him, i said here years ago that modric would have been a better choice, and thiago is as good a like-for-like successor to xavi as one could hope for but the next manager needs to work on a post-xavi barcelona with cesc, iniesta and busquets together

that means they will have to adapt to something less than a pure retention style, and i can see why tata as such a belated essential caretaker appointee doesn't want to try to upset the ship

yup letting tiago go thru not giving him the required number of starts last season is 1000x more damaging than anything tata has done this season.

when you add in the neymar transfer shenanigans then you have the 2 most crippling blows to Barca's season. Kinda think they'll let tata go and try to consign this season's probable failure to his door.

thiago

tata is gone, rumours months ago that he didn't like the goldfish bowl lunacy of barcelona and would leave anyway

lot of shit about klopp in the barca press but i) did they read his comments the barcelona style (he would rather watch tennis) and ii) he doesn't seem any more likely to desert his self-made project than wenger was in the mid 2000s when he was linked constantly with madrid and barcelona

valverde is a possibility

http://www.marca.com/2014/04/17/en/football/barcelona/1397732354.html

lol

http://www.marca.com/2014/04/24/en/football/barcelona/1398371676.html

so farewell tito, a lot of dignity and a good manager who may well have become a great one
a lot of guts too, to manage barcelona in the midst of a hideous illness

i worry for atletico
away to valencia on sunday then chelsea three days later with the possibility of extra time

sevilla in 2006/07 were in an analogous situation where they tried for both the europa league and la liga and they couldn't manage it, they played a high intensity rapid sort of football and they didn't have great squad depth

i'd rather they won the league than the champions league but since it's chelsea, they have to at least reach the final

at least valencia had a game on Thurs night and may be more concerned with their 2nd leg vs Sevilla.

Think Atleti are good for a draw on Weds, hopefully a scoring one.

superb finish for raul garcia 0-1

oof costa fails to score one on one with the keeper