That Ronnie will always be one of the best ever

I’ve been watching live games via http://www.live-footy.org. It usually has 2-10 Barca streams from which actually work 80-90% of the time. And you can watch matches all times of the day that you’ll never see on TV…(any body catch Beijing Guoan – Guangzhou Pharmaceutical or Drogheda United – Levadia Tallinn today?)
(Caveat is that the site uses various downloadable torrent softwares…which could harbor malware, though as far as I know I’ve never caught anything.)

So I’m thinking of going “legal” this year…anybody have experience with BarcaTV via the official Barca site?

I paid for a UEFA pass and CL has been great on demand.
If I could watch Liga games on demand that would be perfect, as the 2 hour lunch is hard to come by.

Silva’s agent admits that we are among the teams interested but he’ll be happy to continue with Valencia… nothing new there. Not the right time to buy him IMO. He isn’t what we need at the minute. The problem is that as a winger, he does not stay nearly wide enough and on the left wing we will need width.
Thiago Neves or Arshavin would provide much more width and if a big name no.9 arrives and Henry plays on the left, either of those would accept a bench role. As Kxevin said, Silva would expect a starting place, and a starters’ wage.

Ronaldinho to Milan seems a done deal. Hopefully we get €20million at the very least. Otherwise we should make him pay the difference to go to Milan instead of City.

For the €60million we should pick up from Deco, Gudjohnsen, Eto’o and Ronnie, we could probably afford Hleb(15), Henrique(8), Thiago Neves(12) and Huntelaar(25). I’d be satisfied with that business, all things considered. 4 hard working players with potential to improve and no egos anywhere to be found.
I’ll argue with anyone who thinks Huntelaar wouldn’t score a truck load of goals in our system

i think the influx of Barça B transfers is due to their promotion to Segunda División B and the elevation of 7 of their players to the first team.

JC, I think that the reason we won titles isn’t just because of RED. Our back line was stronger, and the midfield was deep and fresh. The arrival of Messi also helped a lot.

Yes, an on-form RED was very formidable. That will never happen again, so we have to move on. I, like Guardiola, like who we bring to the table. Henry as a “9″ will scare the crap out of a great many sides, because he is still one of the best strikers in the world and, given the right feeds, will produce goals. He loves playing with Hleb, so expect to see that combo a lot.

What will make Henry, Krkic and Messi scary is the addition of Hleb, Keita and Alves. Recall that last season, Abidal’s moon rocket crosses were hilarious, and Zambrotta was too concerned about getting beat on the counter to come up with any conviction.

Now, we don’t need Abidal to come up. Alves is a potent offensive force, as is Keita. Yaya can return to his proper role as holding mid without needing to come up, thus making us vulnerable to the counter. Hleb or Iniesta will keep possession on the left and Xavi, freed of having to hold back in support of Yaya, can become the offensive force that he was during the most recent glory years.

I’m not at all concerned about the absence of RED.

The broadcasts might well be messed up again this year. Hell, the season might well be messed up at the start, with the possibility of labor action by the players. Not likely, but certainly possible. Fox Soccer is making an overture toward Barca matches. Getting the rights to BarcaTV is the first step.

GolTV is the third-party broadcaster here. What messed things up last season was the re-broadcast squabble between the host broadcaster and the company who claimed to have re-broadcast rights. That got worked out (sort of) last year, but GolTV is still in the odd position of supplicant. Frankly, the only thing keeping our diet of Barca steady is that La Liga isn’t anywhere near as popular as the Premiership.

Hope that doesn’t change. If Fox Soccer takes over, you’ll NEVER again see another Clasico on free TV. Think about how many big EPL matches were broadcast in a non pay-per-view state on Fox Soccer last year.

Now, for my daily Ronaldinho screed. He met with Guardiola yesterday, and was asked if he “felt like training.” His mind wasn’t right, so he declined. Unreal. Guardiola said that at the end of the week, if his situation wasn’t resolved, that he would be expected at training with the club. Ronaldinho said not to worry, that there was no way he would be back.

Good. Best of luck to him wherever he lands.

It’s still Milan or Citeh. We would LOVE the latter, as they have met our extremely optimistic valuation of the Brazilian. Ronaldinho believes, rightly so, that Milan will be a force in Serie A this year, and will make Champions League for sure next season. Citeh will probably wind up in their usual outside-looking-in slot.

Plus Milan would offer more marketing opportunities, though Nike would be rolling in its boots at him going to an Adidas side. That’s an intense war in Europe.

Look for him to land at Milan, for about what he actually is worth, given last season, and the immense uncertainties surrounding him. Can Ancelotti get the best from him? He isn’t really needed at Milan, who already have Pirlo and Kaka as well as Pato, so they can afford to take the risk. The money they are offering will be made back in about 10 seconds in shirt sales.

I still think that Ronaldinho’s behavior has been very rotten in this case. First the “injury,” then the partying, then the getting fat, then the animus, now the belligerence. It’s like he showed up at the Nou Camp famous or something. As I have said before, much respect to R10 for all that he’s done, but he can go to hell for what he’s doing.