Of Monday mornings, referees, interactive polls and other fantastic beasts…
By: Ade C. |
11 Comments
Monday mornings are horrible things. Rainy Monday mornings are horrible, horrible things. Rainy Monday mornings when the first thing you see on your way to work is this should be outlawed by the Geneva Convention:
“AND STILL THEY COMPLAIN ABOUT THE REFEREES!”
Real Madrid mouthpiece sympathisers Marca had that lovely front page today, which greeted me from every newsstand in the city where I live, where taxis try to run you over if they see you wearing a Barça scarf (which is the reason why instead I have a pink Guti t-shirt, but that’s neither here nor there… and don’t judge me for it, alright?!).
I then got to work and, whilst pretending to do something productive, browsed the Barça-centric newspapers in search of good news about the patchwork defence we’ll have to play next weekend, and instead, came across glaring headlines about how “In Madrid they keep poisoning the referees” (Sport) and how “They can’t even stop us with this” (Mundo Deportivo, with ‘this’ referring to the referees and their decisions).
So far, I have followed Pep’s Zen teachings that “Referees don’t exist” to the letter and refused to be drawn into debates about the so-called ‘Villarato’ (a world-spanning conspiracy named after the Spanish Football Federation’s president, Ángel María Villar, who apparently is so chummy with Barça’s Laporta that he’s willing to sacrifice kittens and bribe referees to help us culés), but I think the time has come for a debate (Madridistas and Didier Drogba welcome, as long as you are polite and not easily offended). Read the rest of this entry »
La Liga Review: FC Barcelona 2, Getafe FC 1, a.k.a. “Against all odds”
By: Ade C. | 11 Comments
OK, we actually didn’t suffer from a plague of locusts last night, but I think that was about the only thing missing from our battle for those three precious points.
Getafe FC (Real Madrid’s annoying little brother), who have more pressing engagements in their only chance at silverware with their mid-week Copa del Rey matches, came to visit us at nearly full-strength, with Codina, Mané, Cata Díaz, Rafa, Miguel Torres, Boateng, Parejo, Pedro Ríos, Albín, Miku and Soldado, only missing the injured Pedro León from their dream-team.
In response, Pep Guardiola prepared a slightly innovative starting XI, with Valdés, Alves, Piqué, Milito, Abidal, Touré, Keita, Xavi, Iniesta, Ibrahimovic and Messi. Thierry Henry didn’t even make the bench and Pedrito didn’t get a nod to start, but otherwise it was a good, solid team.
“TAKE THIS, REFEREE FATE!”
But things wouldn’t go well for us. The match hadn’t even started and we’d suffered our first blow: Dani Alves, who had been declared fully fit to play, re-injured himself while warming up (he’s said to be out for three weeks; excuse me while I go and cry in my corner). Seeing this, Maxwell suddenly had to change his Saturday night plans of gazing after Abidal in favour being thrown in the starting XI as a right-back (Puyol, who would have been Alves’ natural replacement, was suspended). Read the rest of this entry »
Liveblog: FC Barcelona vs. Getafe
By: Pedro | Add Comments
Barcelona! Getafe! Josep! Messi! Balls! Goals!(maybe). Join us, for today’s match. Coverage starts 10 minutes before kick off.
Barcelona vs Getafe Preview: Josep’s first league loss of the season?
By: Pedro | 4 Comments
OMFG, A PREVIEW!
A couple of months into the season and the talk of the town was still about whether Josep could replicate an insurmountable yesterseason. Of course, the presence of buzzards could also not be ignored, keenly pointing out the replacement of sure-fire Eto’o for Swedish question mark Ibrahimovic among other points of critique.
Now, half way into the season, it’s definitive that Josep won’t be able to replicate his previous trifecta as Sevilla mustered up enough goals and hung on at the edge of the cliff for dear life long enough to see Barcelona ousted from the Copa Del Rey.
The situation though remained swell. A verbal agreement to extend his contract, left Guardiola worriers with a recovered spring in their step. The clockwork performances and results have also rolled in during league action, as the club has experienced rather strange midweek hiatuses. You know, those mid week days that were normally reserved for sweat, goals and tiki taka.
But all good things come to an end, right? Read the rest of this entry »
Some thoughts on Gijon
By: Cameron | 5 Comments
Yeah. We rock. The scoreline says we only won by one goal, and the last few minutes were hectic and made me nervous, but overall we rocked Sporting. Besides the customary “let’s-go-as-fast-as-we-can-and-try-to-get-a-goal” for 20 minutes, the feeling wears off and we proceed to dominate with other worldy possession levels. This game was no different.
This isn’t a full match review, I’m sure everyone by now has read up on the match. But here are a few thoughts I have about the game:
I have been harping on this all season, but Guardiola needs to use his subs when they’re available. Introducing one sub (Bojan) in the 87th minute is kind of pointless, sure it was a time waster that helped us run out the game, but we had been on fire the entire match and dominated, despite the scoreline. We could have with some reasonable confidence introduced some of our other players earlier, say in the 70th or 75th minute, some time to do something in the game. Read the rest of this entry »
Category: Team NewsLive Blog: Barcelona @ Sporting Gijon
By: Cameron | 6 Comments
Good day to thee.
Join us 20 minutes before kickoff as the irrepressible engine that is FC Barcelona takes on Sporting Gijon in what looks to be a thrilling match.
Category: Team NewsLa Liga Preview: Sporting de Gijón vs FC Barcelona, a.k.a. “Barça is like Viagra, but better”
By: Ade C. | 10 Comments
The biggest news in Catalunya this week have everything to do with Andrés Iniesta and nothing to do with football: nine months after that fateful goal at Stamford Bridge, Barcelona has experienced a baby-boom. I’m waiting to our inboxes to stop being filled with Viagra spam and start being filled with ads for DVDs of Barça’s last season.
Gentlemen, one of these will improve your performance.
But back to what really concerns us, which is this season, Saturday will see us visit Sporting de Gijón, to start the second half of La Liga, after having gone through the first half unbeaten. Read the rest of this entry »
News of the day: Happy B-Day Xavi, ‘Yaya vs Busi’ is back and more…
By: Ade C. | 30 Comments
Let’s start by wishing the birthday boy all the best, shall we?
-Xavier Hernández Creus, Xavi, the best playmaker of the world, *our* Xavi, turns 30 today.
So far, he has played 507 matches in blaugrana and is expected (should all go well) to beat Migueli’s historic record (548 matches played for FC Barcelona) sometimes at the start of the 10/11 season. He has scored five times this season (one less than ‘Golden Boot’ Keita) and has 51 goals to his name as a Barça player, not to mention that he’s the one player (after Valdés) who has played more minutes under Guardiola this season (funny, I would have thought that was Puyol).
-The defeat of Côte D’Ivoire at the hands of Algeria in the African Cup means that Yaya Touré will return to Barcelona soon and is expected to be a part of the team that will face Sporting de Gijón this weekend. This means we’re back to the full-strength squad (save for Jeffren, who should be fit soon), because…
-… on other defensive midfielder news, Sergi Busquets is back after being ruled out for a week with a kidney contusion, and although he didn’t complete the whole training with the team, he was there for part of it, meaning we can have more Yaya vs Busi debates later in the week (I’m on Team Yaya!).
-Txiki the Wizard and his team of minions are planning on getting Dani Alves to sign a new contract tying him to our fate until 2014 and improving his salary; he is one of the players that makes of this Barça what it is (see his assist and his cross-cum-goal in the match against Valladolid as a example), so this shot at keeping him out of ManCity’s greedy paws is great news.
-And, in more happy-happy news, Lionel Messi is now clear at the head of the race for the Pichichi (player with more goals scored in La Liga), pulling clear of David Villa after the Asturian failed to score yesterday against Tenerife. Catalan newspaper Sport is opening a poll on whether our little genius can make it to 30 goals this season. Personally, I think it’s a bit optimistic, but if culés can’t be optimistic now, when can we? Go get those 30 goals, Leo!
Barcelona 3, Valladolid 0 (Who wants to play on ice?)
By: Cameron | 9 Comments
Seriously.
I have never seen so many people fall on a pitch before. It wasn’t just the players from Barcelona, Valladolid players too were slipping the entirety of the match. It was weird to see. I don’t know if it was the pitch or the boots, because if it was the boots, I am sufficiently confident in our technical staff that they would have boots with longer studs to replace the ones that clearly were not adequate enough to handle the playing surface, and yet in the second half the same types of slipping continued to occur. On more than one occasion, this almost led to disaster for both sides.
Anyways, to the actual game. Having a week to prepare a fully healthy squad means that if you’re not one of the best XI that Guardiola can put out there, chances are you’re not going to get to play this weekend. This was the case yesterday, as we put onto the pitch: Valdes, Alves, Pique, Puyol, Abidal, “Golden Boot” Keita, Xaviesta, Henry, Ibrahimovic, Messi. So much for the experimentation at DM, Keita was thrown in right from the start. Read the rest of this entry »
Liveblog: FC Barcelona @ Valladolid
By: Pedro | 1 Comment
Join us for round 19 of La Liga as Barcelona look to complete the first half of the season unbeaten by taking on Valladolid. Liveblog will be up 15 minutes before the match starts.
Category: Team News
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