Official FOOTBALL Thread

[Tuffty]

I may be ever so slightly late, but:

What. A. Cock.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter believes Cristiano Ronaldo should be allowed to leave Manchester United for Real Madrid if he so desires, criticising a trend towards "modern slavery" in football.

The Portugal winger is one of the hottest properties in the sport after a superb season at Old Trafford last term and speculation about a move to the Spanish side has dominated the summer's transfer gossip.

There has been an ongoing war of whispers emanating from both clubs for several weeks and when asked about the protracted wrangle over the 23-year-old's future, Blatter insisted players should be allowed to leave with impunity when they want to move clubs.

"The important thing is, we should also protect the player," he told Sky News.

"If the player wants to play somewhere else, then a solution should be found because if he stays in a club where he does not feel comfortable to play then it's not good for the player and for the club.

"I'm always in favour of protecting the player and if the player, he wants to leave, let him leave."

Blatter believes the issue raises interesting questions about the way transfers and contracts are dealt with in the game.

"I think in football there's too much modern slavery in transferring players or buying players here and there, and putting them somewhere," he continued.

"We are trying now to intervene in such cases. The reaction to the Bosman law is to make long-lasting contacts in order to keep the players and then if he wants to leave, then there is only one solution, he has to pay his contract." 

There's a number of issues I have with his claim of 'slavery':

1. Footballers are only hired to play football for as long as their playing careers (10-20 years or so). It's very much unlike slavery when entire lives were bought and were ordered to fulfill any of their master's wishes.

2. Slavery gives an indication that none of the slaves are paid for their services. Footballers are quite handsomely paid to do a job that they (supposedly) love. A modern day footballer in the top flight could earn at least £20k a week.

3. Footballers are never ever forced into a club. They are perfectly entitled to stay at their club and should the club no longer want them, they leave to find a different well paid job.

Today, Ronaldo has backed Blatter's claim that he is a slave. I suggest he write it on his cheek whilst he's playing, much like Prince. Personally I think the pair of them should read a history book to find out what slavery really is and stop comparing what was a despicable practice which left scars on the histories of many countries, to a job that many people would kill to have.

Ronaldo is supposedly injured til October, but after this I could hardly care less anymore, which I'm sorry to say.

Oh but wait, hold on! David Beckham is putting his weight into this transfer saga. Having left on rather controversial terms himself, it'll be interesting to hear what he has to say...

"Living in Madrid and playing for Madrid - there's not many better clubs than that apart from Manchester United, which is equal"

Uh....yeh.....cheers for that David....

[ferrar1]

Honestly Blatter has been so biased against England and English teams that i wasn't surprised he made those comments.

[Tuffty]

Well the longest saga of the transfer season is finally at a close. For now. Ronaldo's staying for next season.

But then he will go. He says it himself, he wants to join Real. Which I've come to accept. 5 years of service for the club, you just have to appreciate the things he's done for the club, the good times you've had and accept that he will go.

So who's with me in agreeing that it's been the worst transfer season they can remember? Little activity full of rumours, speculation, tapping up (from managers and players) with nearly no end result. Let's run through some of the changes for this season:

- Scolari is new manager of Chelsea. Deco joins in so Chelsea can now fund his party time outings.
- Crouch joins Portsmouth
- Keane joins Liverpool (in which Benitez will probably play him out of position and rotate him on a regular basis ). Fair play to him though for how he went about it. No bullshiting, no hinting in interviews of how great it would be if he could join Liverpool, no tabloid rumours, nice and simple handing in a transfer request to Spurs.
- Bentley & Modric join  Spurs. Arshavin (Arse-shaven as I call him), has now joined the Blatter band wagon and claimed Zenit St Petersburg are treating him as a slave by not allowing him to join Spurs.
- Nasri joins Arsenal but faced a huge exodus from players like Flamini, Hleb (funny enough Hleb said he left Arsenal because the city life didn't suit him. So what does he think Barcelona is?! ) and close to losing Adebayor who begged and pleaded for any other club to take him, only to do a 180 and claim he'd be more than happy to stay at Arsenal provided they give him a ridiculously large pay check for someone who went missing in the 2nd half of last season.
- Robinson joins Blackburn
- Friedel joins Villa
- Mark Hughes becomes Man City manager. Which I'm sure he'll be pleased of after hearing the club owner, Shinawatra, has had no success in gaining possession of his accounts and the money is still frozen by the government. Not only that but his wife is in jail for 3 years.
- Paul Ince becomes Blackburn manager and the first black manager in Premier League history.

And that's really it. This whole Barry saga has bored me to tears as well, but fair play to Martin O'Neill. What he's done is send a message out to other clubs, if you're going to tap up any of my star players, I will reject it or force the transfer out for as long as possible. And well done to Barry. 10 years of service at Villa and you flush all the respect and admiration the fans had for you by openly criticising your manager and trying to join Liverpool in the seediest way possible. Not cool.

We've lost more players than we've taken in, and as much as I like Berbatov, I don't think he's worth £30 mil. Though if we can get him, then it's good news for me. God knows we need someone. Start of the season and Ronaldo's injured til November, Rooney's out with a virus, Saha is still as fragile as ever (I love the guy, great player, I feel so sorry for him, but he just has to be sold) and new guy Manucho hasn't got a work permit. If it stays like this Giggs will have to be paired up with Tevez up front. It's quite worrying.

[Tuffty]

Manchester Utd 0 - 0 Portsmouth (Man Utd win 3-1 on penalites) - COMMUNITY SHIELD WINNERS!!

Always nice to get off to a good start!

[Tuffty]

[size=8]THE PREMIER LEAGUE HAS KICKED OFF!![/size]

Manchester Utd 1 - 1 Newcastle Utd

Damn, not the best of starts but I'm not too worried. We drew on the opening day last season as well and look where that got us.
Premier League is always a marathon, not a sprint despite what the media tells you. It's painfully clear though, we do need a striker. With Ronaldo injured, Nani suspended, Anderson at the Olympics, Tevez away for famliy reasons and Hargreaves injured, we can't rest on our laurels too much. Rumours are flying around that the Berbatov deal is done and dusted and he'll officially be a player this week. Fergie has made it clear that he's bringing in a striker soon. He was captured watching the Blackburn v Everton game yesterday. Could there be a twist in the tale by signing Santa Cruz?

Elsewhere, expect the media tomorrow to fawn all over Chelsea's 4-0 win at Portsmouth. "Scolari finally brings the attacking flair to Chelsea!", "Abramovich's dream is realised", "Scolari makes a statement of intent". I heard the Sky Sports commentator today say:

'They're just like Brazil!'

[size=8]BOLLOCKS[/size]

Don't make me laugh! The so called experts and panelists are falling all over themselves to declare Chelsea the new champions. Which will make it all the more sweeter when we win it again.

Arsenal won with a decent debut from Nasri, although West Brom didn't do that badly to lose just 1-0, and they say we're a one man team with Ronaldo? Then WTF does that make Liverpool? Without Torres (surely the best striker in the world right now), Liverpool wouldn't have won yesterday. Expect that to be true many times this season. It just gets worse at Man City with a 4-2 loss adding to the rumours and speculation that Mark Hughes was threatening to leave already over the owner's financial crisis. And congratulations to Hull City who won their match against Fulham. They only have to win 4 more matches and they'll have eclipsed Derby's dismal score at the end of last season

Ah it's good to have football back!

[redux]

^ I couldn't agree more with that last line...though as a Liverpool fan it's about the only thing I did agree with.

If Liverpool are anything at all then they're most certainly a TWO man team, at the very least. Why? Because when we had just Gerrard everyone called us a one man team so Torres makes us a two man team right?

Sarcasm doesn't travel well across the Internets.

Alonso won MOTD yesterday and why? Because he was far better than anyone else on the pitch, forget Torres and Gerrard; yes good goal by Torres obviously but Alonso's vision throughout the second half was back to his old self from hsi first year at Anfield.

It may as easrly in the season as it can be but I'm alrady predicting a swift return to the Championship for Stoke and WBA really look like they'll struggle as well as they simply don't look good enough up front. Hull are my favourites to stay up out of the three teams that have been promoted this season but I'm still not quite sure what to make of them.

Arsenal were very much how I expected them and although I'm not predicting a strong challenge from them this season (though I did say that last year too...) I think they'll get 3rd or 4th simply because no-one is anywhere near the top four. Sorry Spurs fans, sorry Villa fans but the consistency leveles are what are missing right now and it may take a couple of years to fix that.

Or they could go the way of Eveton, which is seemingly right downhill this year (not that I'm complaining about that! ). No new players and no money to buy anyone? That is shocking, I thought Liverpool's financial situation was disgusting but that really takes it...I jsut hope they buy Alan Smith to go alongside the likes of Neville and Hibbert.

As for Chelsea, well sorry Tuffty but I tip them to win it this year and I hope to god that they do. They have by far the strongest squad, perhaps not the strongest starting eleven but not even United comes close to Chelsea's squad this year.

Hopes for the season? Chelsea to win; oh, why not Liverpool? Because unlike most typical football fans I'm a realist and not biased as fuck, Liverpool will not win the league this year; ambition is to finish third and with a great amount of luck possible possibly second. Frouth would be disappointing as it would represent exactly what we've done in the transfer market: bugger all. As I said a couple of months ago a lot of Liverpools ambitions have to lie with what other teams do, not themselves. It's a sad state to be in but it's true, if Ronaldo, Lampard and Drogba had all moved on and Liverpool had brought in two wide men like they had originally intended things would be very different...but they're not.

...and I'm not going to mention Adebayor moving on for Arsenal because despite what other people may think he is awful; jus the luckiest striker in the world.

[Tuffty]

And funnily enough the last line of your post was the only one I could agree with!

Alonso's a decent player I will admit, but what do you think of the rumours that he could be on the way out after hearing how adamant Benitez wants Barry? Not likely that Barry will join the Liverpool squad now, but these Alonso leaving rumours seem pretty fresh:

http://www.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_4000998,00.html

For the record, I think it's a lot of media speculation, I don't think Alonso would go. The fans seem to endear to him quite strongly and I'm sure Benitez realises this.

And you're right, Chelsea do have a full squad. A squad full of complete cocks. Now I can appreciate the talents of say Drogba and Carvalho, but do I respect them? Hell no. To name a few, Drogba falls down if a butterfly lands on him, Cashley Cole is a money grabbing cheat (both on and off the pitch), and the less said about the 9/11 taunting, disabled bay parking prick that is John Terry the better. Now I know you'll probably raise the argument that these are against the people and not the players, but I just can't distinguish between the two anymore. Maybe because it's easier as they are our main rivals, but I feel they sum up what's wrong with modern football. I'm sure you dislike some of our players for similar reasons. Maybe Rooney's berating of the ref, which I can throw my hands up and say it's pretty unnecessary. And God only knows what you think of Ronaldo

[boykun]

Didn't realize the games started already.

Horay. Good start for the Gunners. The Frenchman doing what he's paid to do.

[redux]

Like a lot of people have been saying, there doesn't seem much of a difference in terms of quality between Alonso and Barry; and you're right there, I can't see Barry coming now. I suppose if Alonso had gone and Barry had come in then I could have compared the two a bit better but...

If Alonso does go and no new faces come in I think that'd be a poor poor decision for obvious reasons. Yeah we've got al lot of players who play in the centre of the park but he's scertainly one of our better ones; and sticking central players like Benayoun on the side is an awful decision as the Sunderland game proved. So yeah, I don't think he'll go, especially with Arsenal being the main team linked with him, I jsut can't see that myself.

As for that link you've provided, I'm sure Benitez doesn't really believe Plessis is an adequete replacement for Alonso should he go...I hope not anyway.

One thing we can certainly agree on are that Chelsea are complete arseholes, and in my opinion more so than United. The sheer lack of respect they showed to referees over the past number of seaons is just the start of it but I won't go into other stuff as we both know all about what other shit they do. I also think you named the three Chelsea players I can't stand either and for pretty much the same reasons. Carvalho has to get away with more blatant fouls than any players in the history of the Premiership too.

One thing I will say about Chelsea's squad which is really the only weakness I can see is the lack of a holding player. Against Portsmouth it didn't really matter too much but in games were they won't be completely dominant I think that'll be a massive miss for them. Saying that, it was right to let Makelele move on as his best uyears are behind him now but they should certainly have replaced him with some one. Who's going to go there? Mikel?

You're right too that I'd say the same things about some of the United players, though not all. After all there are players like Paul Scholes who are United through and through yet I don't really have anything against him as he hasn't really done anything offensive like some of the Chelsea players have. If anyone annoys me it's Gary Neville,; his constant remarks about Liverpool just make you kind of feel sorry for him as it sounds that's all he cares about.

Ronaldo, well a few months ago yeah I'd probably say I hated him but now...not really. The whole thing that went on with Real Madrid made me realise that if he did go to Madrid then I wouldn't hate him anymore, the only thing I don't like about Ronaldo is the fact he plays for United! Oh, and the fact that if he gets tackled by anyone he complains as if football is a non-contact sport...which must be annoying as a United fan as he doesn't even attempt to win the ball back half the time. It surprises me that a lot of United fans I speak to hate Ronaldo too, obviously for his attitude rather than his skill but still...a bit odd. Well it'll be interesting to see the fans reactions when he does come back from injury.

[Tuffty]

[size=8]TRANSFER WINDOW CLOSED - BERBATOV FOR MAN UTD!!, ROBINHO GOES TO MAN CITY?![/size]



Just typing this now at 30 minutes past midnight, so I'm only going to talk about what's confirmed at this moment of time.

Bloody hell what a crazy day. In the space of 18 hrs, Man City go from a club in some kind of crisis, to perhaps one of the most financially powerful football clubs in the world. Abu Gharib is about 10x richer than Abramovich, and it showed today as they outbid Robinho for £34mil Apparently when Calderon told Robinho he was going to the blue half of Manchester instead of say, the red half, or his desired destination of blue London, he started to cry! And threatened to move to Brazil and never come back! Well you would too if you found out you were playing for Man City right?

More important though, naturally, is Berbatov going to Utd. As I'm typing, Spurs have confirmed the deal has gone through for £30mil

[shurastriker]

fucking rich people they don't know what to do to avoid drowning in their money so they expend lots and lots in football \o/ premier league now is an multimillionaire egos battle... I think that the FIFA needs to top salaries cuz the ammounts moved for every pair of legs is insanely huge!!

saying that i just have to say that FUCK THEM ALL Manchester will owns everything once again

[Tuffty]

Robinho's transfer has caused quite the controversy in Brazil. Pele claims the boy needs counselling and that Chelsea were very lucky not to have him. Other important Brazilian football figureheads also say that Robinho's brought disgrace upon Brazil, that he's purely moved for the money and that he's no longer considered a rolemodel. Apparently Brazil wasn't even aware there was a Man City and simply referred to Man Utd as just Manchester. The best thing about the whole saga comes from Robinho himself.

The Brazilian stunned football by making a £32.5m move to Eastlands and not, as expected, to Londoners Chelsea.

However, it appeared the 24-year-old's deadline day move had still to sink in when he said: "On the last day, Chelsea made a great proposal and I accepted."

To this a reporter replied: "You mean Manchester, right?". "Yeah, Manchester, sorry!" answered Robinho.

  Call me Captain Obvious, but I'm going to declare that this will get ugly

[JDAckers]

lol, now the season has started this thread has dried up Hull for Champions League? There can't be many teams that have picked up 6 points in North London in a season, let alone one week! The mighty Milton Keynes Dons have made a good start and are currently holding a play-off place (they are in League 1 if you have never heard of them, which is 2 leagues lower than the Premiership

[JDAckers]

Fenerbahçe S.K. 2 - 5 Arsenal

[ARS] Adebayor 10
[ARS] Walcott 11
[FEN] Silvestre 19 (o.g.)
[ARS] Diaby 21
[ARS] Song 49
[FEN] Güiza 78
[ARS] Ramsey 90

What a game! Silk Arsenal attacks, against a team that are very hard to beat at home!

[BakHamNoi]

PARIS S.G 4 vs. 2 MARSEILLE

 

[sh15uya]

^ R O F L
( enfin bon ... pas grand chose à dire sur Nantes xD )




— Maradona to coach Argentina —
Incredible but apparently true —
Diego Maradona is to be the new coach of the Argentine national team.

That is according to reports running on Argentine TV at the moment and the news has apparently been confirmed by the 1986 World Cup winning coach Carlos Bilardo, who may be signing up as part of Maradona’s staff.

Maradona, as we all know, has had a colourful past (to put it mildly) and if true it must go down as one of the biggest gambles taken by a major national association.
 — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

[Tuffty]

^ Gamble? Yes of course, but Maradona has something that other coaches do not.

He's Maradona.

If the Argentine squad keeps in mind they're playing for one of the greatest footballers ever, they'll obviously set out to do well. But then he could be a shambles as a coach, no-one can know.

Now I could have sworn I made an epic post of all the events that have happened since I last made a post here. Oh well, I'll just go over it briefly once again

- Hull What a run they're on. Don't see it lasting though, injuries, suspensions can all play their part on the 2nd half of the season. Incredible work though, a real credit to them for even being in the Top 3. Fuck, even I'm not looking forward to Utd playing them on Sat!
- Spurs What an utter shambles. Ramos sacked after 7 months and Spurs at rock bottom with 5 points in 9 games. A comedy club and a mistake on Harry Redknapp's part for joining them IMO
- Speaking of comedy clubs, Newcastle! Keegan leaving, Kinnear entering without even knowing how long he'll stay, Joey Barton just being Joey Barton, fans boycotting the club and an owner who just can't seem to sell it on lead to Newcastle having a bad time as well
- Fortress Stamford Bridge is no more. Pains me to say Liverpool broke it though
- What's the deal with these 'problems' Utd have with Tevez? A load of conjecture over his 'unhappiness', Fergie would gladly pay over £30 mil for him and he's being rested is all. Gotta love the experts though. Before Berbatov we had 'too few strikers' and that 'we'd suffer as a result'. Berbatov comes in and now it's 'oh they have too many strikers'. What crap.

[JDAckers]

Well they do already worship Maradona in Argentina, so it will do wonders for the team spirit. Not sure how good he is on the tactical front though, seeing as all he did was attack as a player

Ramos got 2 pts from 8 games, Harry Redknapp has now got 4 pts from 2 games, with the same squad! I can't believe Arsenal let in two late goals against Spurs, I was speech-less. Harry moved there because that was the first club he ever played for as a school-boy. Although it means that Tony Adams now gets his chance at the big time! He was terrible at Wycombe Wanderers, but that was about 4 years ago, and he has spent two years coaching in Holland and two being #2 at Pompy since then - so I hope he does well, but it will be hard.

[redux]

What the hell...it's been quite some time since this place has seen the light of day hasn't it?

I'm expecting that to change pretty soon with the January window coming up.
Let's hope we get to see Adriano at Chelsea!

...and so people know, I'm still not holding my breath at a shot at the title this year...

[Tuffty]

Bloody hell so it has! Guess the biggest news is:

[size=8]Man Utd - WORLD CHAMPIONS[/size]

yeh it's a pithy tournament but still!

Elsewhere, Keane and Ince have gone, with Ince only 3 months into the job. Shame really, as it's not always the manager's problem in some cases, but the attitude of the players, which I think Blackburn definately had with Ince. So funny what happened with Oliver Holt, the sports columnist. Prior to Ince's sacking, he claimed that the reason why Ince is getting so much stick is because he's black. Not taking into consideration that there was no large movement of a racist attitude from Blackburn supporters (though I'm sure there's been a few idiots who have) and not taking into account that any manager gets blamed by the press when they've lost games. Sells more copies that way you see. Anyway back on topic, Holt made this his big campaign, appearing on tv to talk about it and stir up the PC brigade. But on the same week that Ince was sacked, Holt opened his column with "I don't think Ince was sacked on racism, he was sacked because he won 3 points from 18" Uh, cheers for that Holt. Idiot.

Pool top of the table, even if it's been somewhat shaky staying up there and Chelsea, Man Utd and even Aston Villa playing catch up. Have to say it's been great seeing Aston Villa do well. I'd like it as much as anyone for the top 4 monopoly to be broken and I hugely admire Martin O'Neill as a manager:

Reporter: Martin, do you think you can win the Premiership?
Martin: Have you been drinking?

Getting a bit tired of this Tevez transfer talk. As if we'd sell him to Liverpool or Arsenal when I bet there's interest overseas. Wait, what am I saying?! He's not leaving. Period! Berbatov looks a great player, just needs a bit more time to adjust is all. Some players hit the ground running in the Premiership, like Torres or Deco, and suddenly every player match their success to be considered a good signing. It's what I dislike the most about the Premiership.

Some cracking matches in the Champions League though. Fergie v Mourinho, Scolari v Ranieri, Rafa v Ramos (that is if Real decide to keep him that long). Should be pretty good, a real test of character for English clubs and would suit us pretty nicely if the likes of Real Madrid, or Juventus were knocked out at this stage.