They Signed Neymar
The New World’s Greatest Player signed up by the World’s
Greatest Team. Maybe he was just sick of
people who really should know better (Pele) saying he was already better than
Messi and wanted to stand on the same pitch as him to make it easier for people
to realise that he really isn’t. Among
all the other perfectly valid reasons to hate Neymar (his haircut, that
celebration dance he does, the fact he’s quite often great at football) is the
fact he spends more time trying to win free kicks than any player in
history. He’s worse than seventeen year
old Cristiano Ronaldo. It’s less winning
free kicks as a consequence of good play, more as the desired end result of
it. And then Barca end up not scoring
from most of them anyway. Be a different
equation if he played for Stoke.
They Play Football
The Right Way
No you don’t. The
team who put eleven men behind the ball do, because at least they realise that
you occasionally have to change your team’s set up to match the situation. And repeatedly passing the ball short is as monotonous
as doing it long. The only thing that separates
the two is that you’ve shown short passes can be more successful. Also putting Gerard Pique up front in the
last ten minutes of games is an admission that you’ve given up on the very
principles you so piously exhorted in the first place. This is why people laughed when Bayern beat
you.
They’re Sponsored By
Qatar
When Barcelona broke with an almost hundred year tradition
and allowed Unicef to sponsor them free of charge seasoned observers pointed
out that this obviously a tactic to allow them to move into paid sponsorship
with less controversy. And now they’ve got
the highest shirt sponsorship deal in the world and Qatar plastered all over their
(supposedly still representative of the Catalan nation) shirts. You can sell out or you can remain pious
about not doing so. Pick one. Which brings us on to…
It’s More Than A Club
No it’s not. Might
have been once with the Catalan dialect only being allowed to be spoken in the
stadium and the General Franco stuff. But now?
It’s just a football club, one of the two biggest in a league that’s
allowing them to get further away from the rest of the poor shmucks but just a
club all the same. You lost the right to
say any different a long time ago. Doesn’t
stop them claiming that though does it? Say
what you like about Real Madrid, least they’re honest.
They Wasted Zlatan
They had Zlatan for a year and all they did with him was to
win a forgettable title and end up royally pissing him off. He behaved himself for a bit, scored some
good goals then had enough of it all and started shouting at people again. We can debate the merits of Pep Guardiola’s
management all you want but if you can’t find room in your side for Zlatan then
you’re a dick.
We Build Players,
Madrid Buy Them
Bollocks. Alves,
Sanchis, Song, Mascherano, Neymar and that’s just in the current team. And that’s without counting Messi who they
took from another country when he was fourteen but counts as a signing all the
same and the ones they’ve brought back after other clubs have given them first
team experience like Alba, Pique and Fabregas.
Yes they’ve got a good youth system but still rely on signings as much
as anyone does. And most of the time
they’re shit at it. They once signed
Giovanni for ten million pounds because he looked good on video. No one at the club had ever met him.
Sergio Busquets
The most annoying of them all. I’ve made an effort to not hate
Busquets. Has a real claim to being the
world’s best holding midfielder for both club and country. And he can reasonably say that he’s underrated
by most. But this is because he’s a
knob. And the times you notice him the
most are when he’s demonstrating this God given talent. That Motta tackle roll on the floor holding
his face alone should leave you with a desire to slap him hard if you ever met
him. Yes there are other players who do
it but no one to the level Busquets does.
I’ve been all the way from disliking him, then making the effort to appreciate
the talents only a purist could love then gone right back to disliking him
again. It’s for the best.
All of Messi’s Goals
Messi’s never ending excellence past his second season has
been if we’re truly honest with ourselves, pretty boring. The standards he’s maintaining are
impressive, the statistics unarguable but there’s just something about the
whole thing that leaves you colder than it should. I think it’s because for some reason once you’ve
seen let’s say ten of Messi’s goals you’ve pretty much seen them all. The one where he runs past two players before
a near post finish, the chip over a slow moving onrushing keeper, the one two
with Inesta then first time shot and so on.
They all seem the same. Might be
because he scores so many but the feeling’s there. And also if more keepers stood up when one on
one with him they’d have (slightly) more of a chance.
They Refuse to Sign
Defenders
It’s beyond a joke now.
And Martino has already been affected by it, telling reporters before
the transfer window ended that they didn’t need to bring anyone in. Just in case it needs repeating; Mascherano is
not a defender, Song is not a defender, shit if we’re getting technical neither
is Danny Alves. It’s become so obvious
that it’s gone past the point of parody.
Having the transfer policy of an eleven year old playing his first game
of football manager and then acting surprised when it doesn’t pay off is not
the way a football club should behave.
They’re Sore Losers
When they turned the sprinklers on Mourinho’s Inter after
they were knocked out of the Champions League they forfeited any slick suited
attempt to represent the spirit of football.
Chelsea have more of a claim. At
least they just got a massive Ivorian to fight the referee.
Brilliant!!!
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