Ongoing Soccer Thread

[GeoffLacey]

Wow, not sure how new/old this news is since I haven't been checking football news the past few days, but I just checked ESPN's page and they're reporting that Man U have agreed on an £80m transfer for Ronaldo to Real Madrid. Wow. Looks like Ronaldo's getting his "dream" fulfilled now. Wonder what this means for Tevez and Man U?

I was about to say something along the lines of us hearing this all before. But looking around, it looks pretty solid.

 

[tenbob]

That sort of money is sick, and the sport and players are not worthy of it. I will never watch a soccer match again (no joke)

 

[Swear Engine]

I just think it's laughable that a club like Real who are supposedly very much in debt can find these sums of money. Aren't they propped up by the state or something? Also, when Man City tried to sign Kaka people like Platini slammed them for trying to buy success. In fact this is a bit of a theme from the English-hating Platini who loves to criticize English teams for everything from their business models to their reliance on foreign players. I wonder what his reaction to Real's business deals this week will be.... condemnation? Or good for the game.

 

[beardyian]

Well - a new transfer record and it wasn't Man City!

PartII

Never did like Real - so no reason to change my opinion now

 

[beardyian]

Looking for Eric

Eric Cantona & Ken Loach (weird i know) looks good though

YouTube - Ken Loach's Looking for Eric teaser trailer eric cantona

 

[S93]

Real Madrid are the dumbest club in the world.
Why on earth spend hundreds of millions on strikers and midfielders when there real trouble is in defence?

When u have a midfield/attacking line up of Huntelaar,Higuiin,Van der Vaart,Snjeeider,Raul,Robben,Diarra and Saviola,Nistelrooy
,Drenthe and Guti as back up why the **** do u buy attacking midfielders?

Just look at the back four there a joke, sure Ramos is awsome going forward but cant deffend for shit.
Pepe is about as good at marking as my grandmother and has some seriouse attidute problems , Heinze wasnt good enough for Man UTD and he isnt good enough for Real. He is low standard wing back even for la liga.
Marcelo is overrated,Salgado is way past his prime and they just lost Canavaro and i can go on.....

Maybe they should have just added 20M to the offer and bought Newcastle instead?

 

[Crystal Blue]

£80M it is, sold.

 

[Gesshoo]

Mad. I agree with Sindri - two great midfield players but can they defend, create, score, play in goal. - all at the same time...they are still only 2 players and there is no guarantee that they will form part of a great "team".

Just think - another 20 million and they could have bought Newcastle United Football Club - the whole thing! Is Ronaldo worth NUFC? I don't think so.

Will this affect ManU next year? Ronaldo was their best player. They have money to buy another player, or several, but will he/they settle in quickly and do as well as Ronaldo? It will be interesting to see who ManU buys to replace him.

Oh for the days when KK left Liverpool and we bought KD for 400,000 to replace him - pennies by today's standards!

 

[Crystal Blue]

If things go according to plan at Madrid, they will have recouped that £80M fee inside of two years commercially through marketing and merchandising. That's the way Perez works things when he is president there. It's very likely that Madrid will actually make lots of millions from Ronaldo and co over the next 5 years.
It doesn't change the fact that the fees paid for Kaka and Ronaldo are astronomically high though. Perez is bringing back the Galactico factor like he had there before with the likes of Zidane and Figo etc. The fairly recent successful commercial activities they produced when Beckham was there shows that it's do-able.
The idea that a single player can cost the same sort of amount of money that an entire top flight club might cost including fixtures and fittings is rather worrying though. The salary offered to these record signings doesn't make things any better either. That's football though, or should I say business.

 

[Swear Engine]

Real wiped out their previous huge debt by selling their training ground. Prime Madrid real estate. Apparently now they've run up another huge debt. They may be the biggest club in the world in terms of turnover but that doesn't make them rich. It just baffles me why clubs like Real, Chelsea etc are allowed to operate at such huge losses.

As for Tango Ronaldo his move to Real will allow Rooney the chance to play up front instead of on the wing. I would imagine it will also be a useful bargaining chip in trying to persuade Tevez to stay as he would inevitably get more game time. All this talk from certain newspapers about Ronaldo scoring 67 goals in 2 years from midfield is hogwash. He's been playing up front more than midfield for ages now. Don't get me wrong he's brilliant, but not irreplaceable. Things like this are why Ferguson is the great manager he is, he's made this tough call and now he'll shuffle his pack, bring in one or two new faces and get on with grinding out another Premiership title.

 

[Crystal Blue]

I agree with you about these clubs being allowed to operate with such huge debts/losses, it just doesn't seem right. I read a couple of weeks ago that the big four in the premiership owe a combined total of over £2 Billion in one way or another. Should that sort of thing be allowed.

 

[Worak]

Uli Hoenes, manager of Bayern said this year that Bayern can't and doesn't want to compete with the top clubs in Europe because they are running way out of bounds financially.

Bayern is the only one of the top 8 teams in Europe without debt afaik - solid management >> short term titanic teams imo.

 

[Gesshoo]

That sort of money is sick, and the sport and players are not worthy of it. I will never watch a soccer match again (no joke)

That's Sligo Town's loss IMO .

 

[Gesshoo]

Real wiped out their previous huge debt by selling their training ground. Prime Madrid real estate. Apparently now they've run up another huge debt. They may be the biggest club in the world in terms of turnover but that doesn't make them rich. It just baffles me why clubs like Real, Chelsea etc are allowed to operate at such huge losses.

I agree with you about these clubs being allowed to operate with such huge debts/losses, it just doesn't seem right. I read a couple of weeks ago that the big four in the premiership owe a combined total of over £2 Billion in one way or another. Should that sort of thing be allowed.

Agreed on both counts. Especially when you see what happened to Leeds. They spent big for a few years then hit financial trouble, had to sell players for a song and look at them now.

And consider the teams like Leeds (again) and Luton who received huge point deductions for financial issues - former top division team Luton are now out of the league.

ManU and Liverpool's debts are totally due to the Americans who have bought the clubs. They incurred the debts in buying the clubs. Hicks and Gillett agreed NOT to put the debt on to the club - then turned around and did exactly that. Scary stuff.

 

[Gesshoo]

Well - fixtures are out already for next season! Looks like Liverpool have a tough start away to Spurs.....

 

[Az__Avfc]

Real wiped out their previous huge debt by selling their training ground. Prime Madrid real estate. Apparently now they've run up another huge debt. They may be the biggest club in the world in terms of turnover but that doesn't make them rich. It just baffles me why clubs like Real, Chelsea etc are allowed to operate at such huge losses.

Im not sure if there making losses, chelsea possibly still are. Ive read that 15 out of the 20 premiership clubs are insolvent and pratically all of them have huge debts. The debt is often to the owner however, I know this is the case with Villa so if Mr Lerner decides to pull out one day and recall all that debt the club could potentially be crippled, this was the case with Valencia hence the problems they now have.

I don't think the premiership is sustainable, when the revenue clubs recieve from TV begins to fall, if it does, our top league could implode thanks to the massive wage bills of the top clubs. In Italy there are restrictions to how much debt a club can have as with the German leagues. I think the football league has restrictions aswell.

Platini wants to bring in debt restricitons to all leagues and I agree with him on this as I do with the 6+5 rule. I think people over here feel that he has an agenda against the premier league but in fairness these changes would effect every other UEFA member aswell so I fail to see the arguement. I think these changes could improve football, defiently in the long term and should help to reduce the chances of more clubs going the way of Leeds, Southampton and Luton. Football needs to be about the fans not about the business.

 

[beardyian]

Platini wants to bring in debt restricitons to all leagues and I agree with him on this as I do with the 6+5 rule. I think people over here feel that he has an agenda against the premier league but in fairness these changes would effect every other UEFA member aswell so I fail to see the arguement. I think these changes could improve football, defiently in the long term and should help to reduce the chances of more clubs going the way of Leeds, Southampton and Luton. Football needs to be about the fans not about the business.

UEFA have never liked the English/British leagues because of the block votes we have (Wales,ireland, Scotland & England) 4 votes in any European poll - Sepp Blatter was just the same.

Remember when Platini accused Man City of trying to buy titles when they bought Robiniho - any complaints forthcoming about Real Madrids recent spending? not yet

He even complained about the Premier League being too popular around the world the other month! - i thought it would be what any sport would want .


Football is and always will be about the fans, after all if we/they stay away the clubs are in trouble.

 

[Worak]

Platini wants to bring in debt restricitons to all leagues and I agree with him on this as I do with the 6+5 rule. I think people over here feel that he has an agenda against the premier league but in fairness these changes would effect every other UEFA member aswell so I fail to see the arguement. I think these changes could improve football, defiently in the long term and should help to reduce the chances of more clubs going the way of Leeds, Southampton and Luton. Football needs to be about the fans not about the business.

I think it would only be fair given the tight ruling of the DFL (german football leage). Clubs failing the strict debt control measures induced by the DFL are being banned from the pro leagues 1-3 and sent to the amateur leagues instead.

So in fact the rules you're speaking about are in effect here already.
The clubs here can't spend rediculous sums on players anymore, not even B. München.

 

[Swear Engine]

Platini wants to bring in debt restricitons to all leagues and I agree with him on this as I do with the 6+5 rule. I think people over here feel that he has an agenda against the premier league but in fairness these changes would effect every other UEFA member aswell so I fail to see the arguement. I think these changes could improve football, defiently in the long term and should help to reduce the chances of more clubs going the way of Leeds, Southampton and Luton. Football needs to be about the fans not about the business.

Apart from Platini's well documented dislike of the English the fact is he didn't suggest any of these measures when Italian and Spanish teams were doing it. But anyways i agree that those ideas would probably be good for the game. It's not right to run clubs at a loss. Real have taken out big loans to go on their current spree btw, can't be right. Oh and Chelski are dead if Roman bogs off.
But anyway, that's not why i came on. I just came on to bait the Reds fans about the fact that Alonso and Mascherano are buggering off to Spain and Rafa's spent £18m on a fullback.....roflmfao. And the Man U fans thought things were bad.

 

[Swear Engine]

ManU and Liverpool's debts are totally due to the Americans who have bought the clubs. They incurred the debts in buying the clubs. Hicks and Gillett agreed NOT to put the debt on to the club - then turned around and did exactly that. Scary stuff.

It's okay they've refinanced... but i doubt it's on better terms, prolly more money over longer time. Another season trying to make a few quid just to pay the interest on the loans. House of Cards i reckon...and it's pretty blustery here on Merseyside most of the time...

 

[KMC1828]

US beats Spain 2-0, wowzers

 

[PC69]

U.S WINS
U.S WINS
U.S WINS


HOLY S%$#


WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THEY WOULD COME BACK AFTER THAT HORRIBLE ASS DEFEAT TO brazil

WAY TO PUSH YOUR TEAM DONOVAN!!!!

 

[dublin_kopite]

Congrats to the USA.. They beat the top team in the world at the moment. They stopped them from playing through the middle and manage to defend with everything they had. A well deserved win and it's a pity they had a player needlessly sent off!

 

[tubbs65]

Yeah well done to the USa for rwaching the final, I am a Glasgow Rangers fan and we have 2 American players in our team Demarcus Beasley and Maurice Edu, we won the league and cup double with Edu coming into the team for the last few games and he was superb for us pity he missed the cup final due to injury but I'm sure he'll have plenty more cup finals to look forward to while with us.

Tubbs

 

[S93]

Michael(Judas, in it for the money) Owen at his medical at United