2008/2009 La Liga Thread

[Jolldo87]

Happy with the 2-1 victory. Back up to second on the table but i don't think that there will be any catching Barcelona this season.

Looks like Jozy Altidore could be looking at a loan spell for 6 months in January. Everton are one of the clubs that could possibly be interested.

 

[belfast_bomber]

Sporting's number one fan! This little bugger sits on my couch watching all the La Liga matches with me.

Whereas Real Madrid and Barcelona fans are just muppets.

 

[Bourky23]

haha! that's awesome BB

 

[iSymo]

Barcelona beat Valencia 4-0. Henry had a brilliant game and scored a hat trick, Dani Alves also scored once.

Atletico beat Sporting de Gijon 5-2. Aguero and Forlan got 2 each, also Maxi Rodriguez scored. Scorers for Gijon were Bilic and Barral.

Villareal and Getafe drew 3-3. Villareal came from 3-0 down to get one point. The scorers for Getafe were Granero, Gavilán and Casquero. For Villareal Pires, Eguren and Rossi.

 

[don vito of fitzroy]

The goals have been flying in for Bilic!

Good to see Rossi keep up the good work.

 

[Bourky23]

we are on fire!

 

[Jolldo87]

That's an annoying draw but at the same time it's a good effort to come from 3-0 down to get a point. Barcelona pretty much have the title, i can't see anyone stopping them from here.

Sporting Gijon, 14 games and still yet to have a draw. That's an amazing record so far.

 

[Kompany]

ESPN is so bloody shit

I know this country has a fair amount of Italian migrants who want to see serie A, but bloody hell, we're the world's most in-form team right now and we're not even on playing la liga's number 3!

For tonight, their tv guide says they're having Italian and Spanish football on, but they don't say what matches

Their feeds are often horrible, sometimes there's no English commentary (which is actually quite fun though as the Argentinian commentators are fully out there), this season we need to wait up to 16 hours or longer before a match is on, they start broadcasting matches 30 minutes late which screws up my recording, they have no highlights show, sometimes they pick shit matches... How on earth can they keep getting away with this?

Luckily I can still see the match on Setanta... wednesday night

/rant

 

[Lowie01]

I caught a bit of the Barca game yesterday at 4pm Kompany, but as you said ESPN didn't even bother to tell us which games they were broadcasting. I was keen to catch that one and the Real Madrid-Sevilla match (which sounded like a cracker, 4-3 Sevilla) and I had no idea if they were on.

Crazy weekend in La Liga with Valladolid the second team to overturn a three goal deficit at half time to draw 3-3. Barca are romping away though and clearly won't be stopped.

 

[davey_magik]

Eat shit Calderon .

 

[Kompany]

I was keen to catch that one and the Real Madrid-Sevilla match (which sounded like a cracker, 4-3 Sevilla) and I had no idea if they were on.

Yeah I saw Real by coincidence (was going to watch the Everton game this morning and just checked what ESPN had on) --> match was an absolute classic. You have to give it to Real, very often they're pure quality. The players visibly care a lot and going forward they're very good at times, but at the back they're leaking like crazy. There are not many teams out there you just constantly expect goals to be scored at both ends.

 

[belfast_bomber]

There are not many teams out there you just constantly expect goals to be scored at both ends.

 

[Jolldo87]

Marcelo was rubbish. With Heinze out i'm not sure who the other options are at LB but anyone would have done better than Marcelo on the weekend.

 

[moomba]

Juande Ramos is the new Real Madrid boss by all accounts.

Quite the turnaround for him, bet he can't believe his luck.

 

[moomba]

Thats confirmed now, Schuster sacked, Ramos is the new boss.

 

[ashley12]

Thats confirmed now, Schuster sacked, Ramos is the new boss.

Well Il be ****ed....

Its like crashing a Ford Fiesta and being given a Mercedes Benz to drive instead...

WOW!!!1

 

[moomba]

Well Il be ****ed....

Its like crashing a Ford Fiesta and being given a Mercedes Benz to drive instead...

WOW!!!1

Crashing a scum sucking, classless, delusional Fiesta without an engine.

 

[ashley12]

Crashing a scum sucking, classless, delusional Fiesta without an engine.

If he can make a car that doesnt have an engine crash so spectacularly then I can see how he got the Real gig

Bit of an interesting time to sack the coach. In fact, had he not been good enough to win in Russia on matchday 2 against Zenit then it he would have kept his job for another couple days at least...

 

[moomba]

He made the stupid mistake of saying publically that it would be impossible to beat Barcelona next week. Doubt he would have survived that sort of statement even if results were making him odds on to get the sack anyway.

 

[Kompany]

Schuster's sacking was inevitable but the real problem lies with Calderon and Mijatovic I think.

Interestingly Ramos has only been given a contract for 6 months initially.

 

[Lowie01]

He made the stupid mistake of saying publically that it would be impossible to beat Barcelona next week. Doubt he would have survived that sort of statement even if results were making him odds on to get the sack anyway.

He must have had some cash on himself as next coach to be sacked after making a statement like that.

Giving Ramos a six month deal doesn't sound like the greatest vote of confidence - who will be available in June 2009?

 

[youngsaint]

Mijatovic is the one who makes all the sporting decisions... It was his decision for Schuster to leave and it was he who Michael had to report to about the goings on with the youth system.

He's a dick from my look at it. It's also good though that even though we are only 4points or whatever it is off 2nd that we don't put up with being 5th in the league at this point in the year... Least there is minimal room for mediocrity... Metzelder covers most of that up.

Within 5 days we have signed Huntelaar, had our head of youth resign and sacked our first team manager...

6 month deal i don't think is wrong at all... Ramos has to prove himself again and if he can't within 6 months then have a good evening.

 

[iSymo]

Within 5 days we have signed Huntelaar, had our head of youth resign and sacked our first team manager...

A normal week at Bernabeu.

 

[Bourky23]

A normal week at Bernabeu.

almost a quiet one

 

[Kompany]

The Question: why are Barcelona scoring so many goals?

Barça have scored 43 in a run of 12 unbeaten league games - here's how Pep Guardiola has turned around the club's fortunes

Blunt doesn't do it justice. The cover of El Mundo Deportivo showed a gigantic red arrow pointed to the Camp Nou goal below the headline "lads, it's over here!" The second week had gone and Barcelona had a solitary point. Worse, they'd scored just once – from the penalty spot. Most sides would put racking up almost 60 shots and failing to score down to plain bad luck but Barcelona aren't most sides and there was a worrying familiarity to their profligacy.

Yet still it felt like before long someone, somewhere was going to be on the wrong end of a huge hammering. That someone was Sporting Gijón in week three, against whom Barcelona scored six. It was, they said, a one-off: Sporting were desperate defensively. Proof came three days later when Real Madrid went one better and put seven past them.

But Barcelona had only just started: they scored three against Betis, five against Almería and six against Valladolid. They beat their first big opponents, Atlético Madrid, 6-1; they scored four against Málaga on what was more public pool than perfect pitch; they travelled to Sevilla, the team with the best defensive record in the league, and beat them 3-0. Valencia arrived unbeaten away; Barcelona dispatched them 4-0. Since that arrow pointed the way, Barcelona have won 11 league games, drawn one and lost none, scoring 43. They're on course for a new La Liga record.

Add the five goals against Basle and five against Sporting Lisbon in the Champions League, plus 17 shots against the post, and Barça are Europe's most impressive attacking side. The question is, how did it happen? How has a team that last season finished third, 18 points behind Madrid, recovered so spectacularly? Why are Barcelona scoring so many goals?
Know exactly what you're playing at.

"You can lose a match but never your identity." So said Deco during his spell at the Camp Nou and no side in Europe has a clearer footballing identity. Since the arrival of Johan Cruyff – first as a player, then coach, now unofficial presidential advisor, a kind of eminence gris - Barcelona have shown an almost obsessive desire to maintain possession, best expressed in the Dream Team that won four successive titles between 1991 and 1994.

"Everything revolves around the ball," says one of Pep Guardiola's closest collaborators. It's all about quick and constant movement, short, one-touch passing, intelligent positioning. About running, sure, but running the right way. "Blindly sprinting everywhere is worthless," says Barcelona's No2 Tito Vilanova; Guardiola had to tell Seydou Keita to stop running so much.

Barcelona have had more seven, eight, nine and 10-man moves than any other side - and by over 50% in every case. The key is just how entrenched the Cruyff method is: while Cruyffism can be fundamentalist, it works because it is so much a part of Barcelona's DNA, running right through the club. As Michael Robinson, Spain's most famous football commentator, puts it: "put 20 kids in a park and I can tell you which two are at Barça."

There is a Barcelona model, common to Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta and Cesc Fábregas - traceable to Cruyff's ideology and the classic Barcelona central midfielder: current coach Guardiola. It is the commitment to an identity that led Barcelona to opt for continuity with him rather than employing the iconoclast Jose Mourinho. "Pep suckled from the teat of Cruyff," as one of his staff puts it. The inclusion of La Masia graduates like Xavi, Carles Puyol, Leo Messi, Andres Iniesta, Sergio Busquets, Gerard Piqué, Bojan Krkic and Pedro makes that innate feel for the system even more self-perpetuating.

Re-establish seriousness and hunger; bring back the motivation

As Barcelona collapsed last season, Guardiola privately commented that with the talented players they had, all it would take would be to add a bit of effort, discipline, togetherness and hard work to make them half decent again. Although there's more to Guardiola's method, that's exactly what he has done. Out went Ronaldinho and Deco, in came a new code of conduct. A €500 fine for missing breakfast with the squad, €1000 for not being home by midnight, and €6,000 for every minute late to training.

The players too are hungry again, while Dani Alves in particular has injected new desire. "Motivation became a problem after winning the Champions League," Rijkaard's No2 Eusebio admits. Now, stung by failure, particularly the humiliation of handing champions Madrid a guard of honour, Barcelona have renewed determination. And if that is not enough, Guardiola has taken control of the CD player on the team bus. Not that his choice of tracks entirely convinces: it's Coldplay all the way.

Give width and depth to your attacks

Barcelona's 4-3-3 is not the 4-5-1 in disguise adopted by many sides. All three of the front three play as real forwards, opening up the pitch and create space for the midfield to exploit, constantly interchanging but within a clear framework. "Barcelona make the pitch look bigger than it really is," says the former Barcelona midfielder and current Getafe coach Víctor Muñoz.

On the left, Thierry Henry plays right on the touchline, getting through more running than he ever has before. Behind him, Eric Abidal rarely ventures forward. On the right, it is a different story: Leo Messi dashes inside, leaving the wing free for right-back turned hyperactive child Alves to zoom past from deep.

Alves is not alone rolling forward in that second wave. When Barcelona signed Keita, most assumed that he was coming as a defensive midfielder. They were wrong. What Guardiola likes about him is "llegada" — the ability to get beyond the forwards, creating the element of surprise. Xavi too is entering the area more. When the attack appears static, watch for him suddenly setting off on a sprint.

Push the side right up the pitch, suffocating the opposition

"It's simple," says Guardiola, "I'm happy when we're in the opposition's half and not happy when we're in our own." The defending starts from the front. Messi, Henry and Samuel Eto'o have committed more fouls this season than centre-backs Puyol, Rafael Márquez and Piqué. "I prefer pressuring the opposition to scoring goals," says Eto'o.

But it's not just defending – it's attacking too. Pressuring high, swarming over their victim en masse doesn't just mean winning the ball; it means winning chances. "Barcelona play very high up the pitch and if they get the ball off you there, they're lethal," says Muñoz.

Be alert and get the small details right; work on set plays and quick thinking

Graeme Sounness recently said: "When play stops, bad players rest. Good players ask 'where's the dope?'" Barcelona have good players, properly tuned in after two years of cruising. At the Camp Nou Valencia stopped to appeal for an offside; Alves didn't, steaming 30 yards in the blink of an eye to score. Against Atlético, goalkeeper Gregory Coupet was leaning against the post as if waiting for a bus when Messi clipped the free kick into his empty net.

Meanwhile, a clever free-kick to Messi, pretending not to be interested, broke Recreativo's resistance. Barcelona have already scored more from set-plays this season than in the last two under Rijkaard. "We're working on strategy now," says Xavi. The "unlike before" goes without saying.
Score early

Virtually every team that plays Barcelona does it the same way: 10 behind the ball and on the break. The longer it takes to score, the more entrenched the opposition get, the more edgy Barça become, and the harder it gets. If the opposition score first, the anxiety really kicks in for the Catalans. The solution: score first. Resistance broken, that massed-ranks tactic no longer works. Forced out, Barcelona can pick them off.

Barça scored after just 20 minutes against Sevilla, twice in the first 43 minutes against Sporting, twice in the first 23 against Betis, twice in the first 19 against Málaga and twice in the first 28 against Valencia. After 44 minutes against Valladolid it was 4-0 and after 36 against Almería it was five. When Barcelona faced Atlético they were one up after three minutes, two up after five, three up after eight, four up after 18 and five up after 28.

Have great players

Finally, there's another, very simple reason why Barcelona are so good: Xavi, Eto'o, Iniesta, Alves, Henry and the rest are very, very good football players. Messi meanwhile is the best in the world. And, this year he's fit.