Liga Pundits articles

[Beast]

well there is plenty of weekly column about the liga and its teams..Eduardo replaced Phil Ball so here is the first one this week
I hope the mods could make it a sticky and i'll copy them to the thread every week ..

Valencia recovers its pulse

Valencia is the land of the flowers, land of light, land of love" (lyrics from the song "Valencia", by De la Prada and Padilla).

The city of Valencia and its most popular football club, Valencia CF, can probably tell the story of Spain's recent monetary rise and subsequent financial collapse better than any other Spanish region or team.

Once a provincial capital with very few tourist attractions (the authentic paella, no less, and the San Juan feast with plenty of firecrackers and noise), Valencia made the most of the economic bonanza Spain went through between the late nineties and 2008. Its infrastructure was vastly improved (roads, trains, airport), and the city changed its face with the addition of several marquee locations (the amazing Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias or the L'assut de l'or Bridge are must-sees), most of them designed by local architecture genius Santiago Calatrava.

Valencia CF was already a team of large tradition in Spain, but their titles were precious few, most of them won back in the forties and fifties, with President Luis Casanova at the helm. With both the country and the city blooming, the football team refused to be left behind. In 1999, Claudio Ranieri led the club to win the Copa del Rey, their first silverware in twenty years, which started an amazing spell in which Valencia also won two Ligas (2002 and 2004), one UEFA Cup (2004), and got to the Champions League final in 2000 and 2001.

If you are not familiar with the demanding Valencia fans, you would think no supporter would ever complain during such a successful phase. You'd be wrong, as things were never easy for the gaffers in Valencia, even when the victories were piling up. Their supporters always want to win in style.

When you take into consideration that Claudio Ranieri, Hector Cúper and Rafael Benítez were prominently involved with the club in that spell, you can imagine that the fans' thirst for top class entertainment wasn't really satiated. Valencia became a top tier club through a very physical approach, based on an inexpugnable defence and a tireless midfield that scored more often than the strikers, with the exception of Claudio López.

Like their approach or not, the fact is that, by 2004, Valencia CF were serious contenders in every competition, and appeared to have conquered the unofficial title of "Third Spanish Club" in its own right. And then a certain Juan Bautista Soler became President.

Mr. Soler's negative impact on the club is beyond belief. He broke each and every sensible rule to running a club, starting with the lack of stability for the executives (an endless parade of sporting and medical directors, director generals, and coaches have worked for the club in the last five years), followed by amounting a huge level of debt (over €400m, not surprising when you continuously hire and fire all those executives and players) and obviously finishing with the chaotic management of the footballing aspects, the Ronald Koeman fiasco being the cherry on the cake.

In pure Spanish fashion, the solution for all these troubles was real estate. Inspired by other clubs (Florentino Pérez had pulled a similar stunt for Real Madrid a few years back), Soler designed an operation to sell the current Mestalla stadium for a stunning profit, and then move the team to a new, more modern, cheaper home already under construction.

Soler, just like many others in Valencia and the rest of the country, did not see the real estate crisis coming. And once it came, he did not think it would last long.

Finally, he understood he had no way of selling the current stadium nor finishing the new one, and decided to quit. The following three presidents (Morera, Villalonga and Soriano) promised several measures but delivered none, and eventually the club stopped paying the players and most of its creditors.

At that point, during the last week of March, it seemed impossible for Valencia to get out of the hole without selling their best players, David Villa (with several proposals in England and Spain) and David Silva (linked to Italy's Juventus and also Liverpool). The team had gone six matches without a win, and the near future looked bleak, especially if they had to sell their best two players.

Then Bancaja, the regional savings bank and Valencia's largest creditor, decided to take over and appointed a new CEO, Javier Gómez, who gained management responsibilities over those of the current President, Soriano. Fortunately for Valencia, Gómez has done more in two weeks than the combined last four presidents have in two years. Last week the club obtained a €50m loan from a local company that will cover the players' salaries and the debt with the construction company that's building the new stadium. The club also announced a €92m capital increase to be done in June.

Their money issues are still far from being solved, but the impact of the good news is already apparent. "We feel relieved", said Villa before Sunday's match. They finally looked like their old selves on the pitch, in a 4-1 win over a relegation-threatened Getafe. Raul Albiol's final goal, an unprecedented strike from over 20 yards, appears like a good omen for the "Ches" and the team are now just two points behind Villarreal and should fight for a Champions League spot.

Both sides will thank rivals Atlético for yet another surreal defensive display in their 2-4 home defeat to Osasuna. José Antonio Camacho's team have grown remarkably during the second half of the season, and their Iranian duo (Nekounam and ball magician Masoud) are hugely entertaining to watch. Unluckily for them, their calendar is the most difficult together with Mallorca's, as both clubs will have to play all of Barcelona, Real Madrid and Sevilla before the end of the season.

In other matches, all the top three teams won 0-1 away from home, which maintains the status quo with one match less to go. Barcelona and Villarreal (missing injured Santiago Cazorla) will play Bayern Munich and Arsenal respectively in the Champions League quarter-finals in midweek.

But the real fun is at the bottom. Last-place Espanyol managed to win on Sunday, so literally any team between the 11th and the 20th can go down. The stereotypical "every match is a final" has actually become true, and there's nine weeks full of finals before us. Let's enjoy it while it lasts.


=========================

[Beast]

Tim is one of the best writers about the liga with his witty comments about every team..
he writes in 4-4-2 every 2 days and football365 weekly..

Are Barça The Best Or Big Bullies?

Once the uncharitable chuckles had died down after Real Madrid's titanic tonking by Liverpool, the game in Spain sat back with a HobNob, a cup of tea and began to think the unthinkable - what if la Liga was really, really rubbish?

Depending on which side your bookshelves are varnished, there are arguments supporting the sensation that la Primera is completely pony, and those that cheerfully give such sacrilegious talk the footballing finger.

Although the traditional big two are once again duking it out for the league title, there has been enough carnage and chaos scattered around the rest of la Liga to have made the championship a very enjoyable affair this season.

After twenty-nine rounds of frantic action, 856 goals have been scored in the Spanish top flight with an average of nearly three strikes per game.

As a wee comparison, that's nearly a hundred more than the Premier League which has played two rounds more than its Spanish cousins.

What's more, goalless draws have been rarer than a good English goalkeeper, with just two snore-fests taking place in 2009.

This weekend's action alone saw two relegation battlers, Betis and Numancia, slugging it out in a 3-3 thriller and Champions-chasing, Atlético Madrid, shipping four goals at home against another struggler, Osasuna.

Cheerleaders for la Liga will attribute these fiestas of football to admirable attacking philosophies with the coach of struggling Mallorca, Gregorio Manzano, noting that "teams at the bottom feel that one point isn't enough and look for three to save themselves."

Other wiser and cooler heads have suggested that this season's glut of goals has occurred for a very different reason.

"There aren't any great defences left in Spain," tuts veteran manager, Javier Irureta.

Leading the way in the striking stakes this season has been Barcelona who have already whacked in 85 in la Liga and possess a goal difference of plus 61. The last of these efforts was a goal to Samuel Eto'o away to Valladolid in an energy-saving 0-1 win.

But with doubts lingering over the less than watertight nature of defences in la Liga, the question has to be asked ahead of the business end of the Champions League of whether Barça are genuinely a footballing force of nature or being made to look very, very good, because everyone else is very, very bad.

Those folk crazy about the Catalan club will argue that the amount of times that Barcelona have wiped opponents off the face of the universe is no fluke.

The side has knocked four or more goals past hapless stooges on ten occasions this season and in most of those games, chivalry and too much poncing about prevented even bigger whitewashes.

Barça's front three of Leo Messi, Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto'o have managed 78 goals between them in all competitions, this year, with the Argentine striker leading the way with 30.

Sir Alex Ferguson sees Barcelona as his side's biggest threat in this season's Champions League and hailed their first-half performance against Lyon, when they went into the break 4-1 up as "absolutely brilliant."

However, too many of those opponents simply waved the white flag of surrender against what they saw as an unstoppable force after conceding the first goal.

On the times when clubs like Getafe and Espanyol got stuck into Barça at the Camp Nou, the league leaders were rocked back on their heels.

The other feeling that suggests that Barcelona may simply be big old bullies is the cold hard fact that the club is just six points ahead of Real Madrid. And as everyone witnessed last month, they are undeniably crap.

Anyone with the misfortune of watching Juande Ramos' men labour to beat Almería and Málaga in the last two rounds of action must have come to the conclusion that the quality of clubs in la Liga is very poor indeed.

And it's a conclusion that becomes even stronger when realising that the distinctly average Sevilla are third in the table and that the disastrous Atlético Madrid are in the UEFA cup places.

Real Madrid were not hammered by Liverpool because of the inferior quality of their players - Gabriel Heinze aside - but due to the ponderous and infinitely slower nature of Spanish football.

The Spanish game is like a fabric softener commercial where sun-blessed, fragrant midfielders have decades on the ball allowing them plenty of time to pick out that perfect pass.

This is one of the reasons why the battle-hardened Lassana Diarra has flourished so in his first three months with Madrid.

Liverpool overwhelmed their opponents with a high-tempo, powerful performance which sent Madrid into instant shellshock in a game that was also refereed to a much harsher standard than the stop-start Primera.

Barcelona's way of doing business is based on a hardworking midfield giving constant ammunition to their fearsome front three.

But this could be the club's downfall in Europe, if opposition teams attempt the same tactics that battered Real Madrid, so successfully.

However, there is one big difference with Barcelona. Robbing the ball off the likes of Xavi and Andrés Iniesta is no easy task, something that England's panting players discovered in their recent friendly defeat.

An all out ankle-antagonising assault on from Bayern - and potentially Liverpool or Chelsea should the German threat be overcome - could simply see an opposition chasing shadows and knackering themselves out.

For the record, this particular correspondent - the same visionary genius that declared Madrid to be a real threat to Liverpool and once argued that Giovani dos Santos was Ronaldinho's heir - has yet to be convinced by Barcelona's brilliance.

Too many of their opponents in Spain have been defeated even before games have begun and the first-half demolition of Lyon was against a French side with a less than dazzling pedigree in Champions League football.

The quality of Barça's defence is still an unknown quantity, whilst gaffe-prone goalkeeper Víctor Valdés is beginning to repeat some of the flaws and failures of his past.

Over the next fortnight, the football world will begin to find out whether Barcelona are a very, very big fish in a very average - but highly entertaining pond - or simply, a very, very big fish.

Round 29 Results

Athletic 2-1 Mallorca
Almería 3-0 Villarreal
Betis 3-3 Numancia
Recre 0-1 Sevilla
Valladolid 0-1 Barcelona
Málaga 0-1 Real Madrid
Espanyol 2-1 Deportivo
Atlético 2-4 Osasuna
Valencia 4-1 Getafe
Sporting 0-2 Racing
=====================
shortly i'll post his weekly Monday good day / bad day the moment it comes out

[Warik]

Whatever happened to ol' Phil anyway? Hope he hasn't come to any harm...

[Beast]

what he said in his goodbye article is that he is leaving for the middle east.. but where no one knows.. he promised to come back for an article every once in a while.. i think by the end of the season ..

[shadows]

Excessive debt and massive wages for players have left vulnerable teams facing financial meltdown. The industry must change, say Simon Bowers and Elena Moya, but can it ever be match fit?

well i cannot post the entire article..so here is the link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...otball-finance

[Beast]

La Liga’s Good Day, Bad Day - Round 29

Monday 06 April 2009 12:34
Good Day

Armchair fans

On Friday, a doom-mongering La Liga Loca feared a gaggle of match blackouts due to the increasingly petulant Great TV War. Instead, the complete opposite happened with almost every game being up for freebie grabs to Spain’s lucky viewers who were able to consume up to six matches from their starting-to-smell sofas.

The latest spat in the long-running saga began with the ‘G30’ clubs - there are only 22 of them, mind - refusing entry to AVS, their match broadcasters, in revenge for what they claim to be unpaid debts.

Instead, the likes of Valladolid stuck their fingers up at their sugar daddies by allowing free-rein broadcasting to rival tv company Mediapro.

“A fiesta for fans”, screamed Marca. “A war where football loses,” grumbled AS. Guess which papers are owned by which media groupings?

Barcelona and Real Madrid

Of course, the downside to Saturday’s football free-fest was that the encounters of these two table-topping teams were broadcast. A couple of fairly dull 1-0 affairs where the eventual outcomes were never in any real doubt.

Barcelona will offer up this week’s Champions League clash with Bayern as an excuse for their slackness, whilst Madrid will grumble about missing a number of starters through injury.

Juande Ramos

Despite taking one for the team and ploughing through the likes of Marca on a daily basis, La Liga Loca is still baffled by the batty world of the Spanish sports media. And why so few people seem to be recommending... er... Juande Ramos as the Real Madrid boss next season.

Since taking over from Bernd Schuster, the former Sevilla man has played 15, won 13 and lost just one – his first match, against Barcelona in the Camp Nou, only lost by an ant’s picnic basket.

The Champions League debacle against Liverpool is Ramos’ only real blemish, although the blog may perhaps be overly charitable in its opinion that there was probably little that the Madrid manager could have done to prevent it.

Whilst the likes of Wenger, Ancelotti and Pellegrini are being bandied around as Ramos’s replacement, why aren’t people looking a little closer to home? (Continues to scratch head. Possibly because of lice.)

Athletic Bilbao

Over the past two months, Athletic Bilbao’s players were either preparing for their Copa del Rey semi-final clash, drunk from winning it or being b*tch-slapped by La Liga’s big four.

For these many and varied reasons, the Basque club had not mustered a victory in seven attempts. But this rather rubbish run ended on Saturday night with a slightly spawny 2-1 win over Mallorca which owed a great deal to an early spot-kick awarded harshly for a ball-to-hand incident – something that even Athletic manager Joaquín Caparrós owned up to.

Freddie Kanouté

Now the equal highest foreign goalscorer for Sevilla with 90 strikes. The same as Davor Suker. The blog man-love for Steady Freddie continues.

Espanyol

For once, the blog doesn’t have to patronisingly put Espanyol in the Good Day section after a plucky draw or a defeat where they did their very, very best. Sunday’s 3-1 win over Deportivo gives the Pericos a glimmer of hope of survival that will surely be snuffed out by the water pistol of reality. Here’s a potty Paul from Barcelona who saw a monumental match in Montjuic...

“I'm still in shock. First home win since 1994 (well, it feels like it). Totally deserved against, it must be said, a very very poor Depor. The first bit of luck for ages came when De la Peña played a pass for Ivan Alonso and the keeper allowed it to bounce off his chest and Alonso put it in from a tight angle. 1-0.

Then, just before half time, De la Peña beat two defenders on the edge of the area before passing the ball into the corner of the net à la Steven Gerrard. A fantastic goal. But this being Espanyol, we allowed Depor to score about two minutes later.

Second half was very poor and Espanyol had two cleared off the line and could have had a penalty for handball. Rufete ran clear in injury time to score a third which gave a truer reflection of the play.

Espanyol have played much better and lost – but we won't be playing teams as bad as Depor every week.

Stray cat count 0, but one in the car park.”

-- Paul, Barcelona

Masoud Shojaei

On the few occasions that La Liga Loca has caught the Iranian winger in action, the blog had a feeling in its waters that it was he was a bit special. Either that, or the old prostate's playing up again.

It was Masoud the Magnificent on Sunday afternoon in the 4-2 win over Atlético Madrid in the child-filled Vicente Calderón. The cherry on the trifle of a fine performance was his solo effort in the second half which had half the Atleti defence on their backsides and mentally ringing their agents for a way out.

Valencia

“We owe a debt to our fans,” admitted Unai Emery before Valencia’s Sunday’s 4-1 win over Getafe and adding to the club’s ever-expanding list of creditors.

Alvaro Negredo

His salmon-leaping header in the 3-0 win over Villarreal was the Almería striker’s 17th league goal of the season.



Bad Day

Atlético Madrid

Now, La Liga Loca can occasionally be prone to exaggeration and, well, making stuff up. So readers may have justified doubts when today’s update claims that Atlético Madrid were so bad that even those who apparently could not walk rose miraculously from their seats and left the stadium.

During the first half, La Liga Loca spotted an Atlético fan in a wheelchair repeatedly raise himself to his feet to berate his idiot players. The same fan abandoned his chair at half-time and never returned.

But there’s more. Atlético Madrid were so blooming awful that one supporter changed his footballing allegiances halfway through the second half. Off came his rojiblanco top to be replaced by a Juventus shirt.

“You don’t normally begin building a house with a roof,” sighed Marca, lamenting the home side’s fantastic front four and naff-all else. "As always with Atlético, you know how the film is going to end after 10 minutes,” wrote AS.

In Sunday’s case it was eight minutes – the time it took for Osasuna to have a goal disallowed, hit the post and score the opener.

Guti, Maniche

And so both midfielders' careers swish even further down the U-bend of despair. Guti was left unused and unwanted on the bench after warming up for much of the game against Málaga. Aside from the final five minutes, that is, when he was recorded by TV cameras refusing to get up from his seat after being told by the club’s trainer to go run around a bit.

Maniche was left out of the rojiblanco squad, once again. The portly Portuguese player has not played a single minute for Abel Resino since informing the Atlético coach that he got his tactics all wrong against Porto in the Champions League second leg goalless draw.

Santi Cazorla

Villarreal’s 3-0 collapse against Almería was fairly predictable - although not for La Liga Loca on Friday - but what did come as a huge shock was poor Santi Cazorla breaking his ankle.

The magic midfielder is now out for at least four months and his absence severely scuppers Villarreal’s chances against Arsenal in the upcoming Champions League clash.

Ricardo

Comedy gold in the Manuel Ruiz de Lopera and “the perfect example of what Betis has become in recent years,” write Marca.

With just seconds on the clock, it looked as if Betis had been let out of jail with a penalty from Ricardo Oliveira putting them into a 3-2 lead.

But that was before a long ball was hoofed into the Betis box and a red-carded Ricardo came flying off his line to take out Numancia forward, Aranda. The inevitable penalty gave Numancia the chance to finish the game 3-3.

“He took their forward out, but these things happen,” shrugged a so-close-to-being-sacked Paco Chaparro.

Getafe

Muñoz Out! Muñoz Out! Muñoz Out!
------------------
hahahaha

[shadows]

Anyone with the misfortune of watching Juande Ramos' men labour to beat Almería and Málaga in the last two rounds of action must have come to the conclusion that the quality of clubs in la Liga is very poor indeed.

damn...But its funny!

Real Madrid were not hammered by Liverpool because of the inferior quality of their players - Gabriel Heinze aside - but due to the ponderous and infinitely slower nature of Spanish football.

..Heinze shud retire 2 save himself some grace!

[Warik]

The guy has always been anti-Barça tbh.

Last season when Madrid romped to the title it was because they were unstoppable.

When Barça do well it is because all the other teams let us win.

Same story, different day/week/month/year/decade/century.

[maz]

He has ripped into madrid lots of times. Even when they won the title he was talking about the lack of competition. He is pro/anti everyone. I havent noticed any particular bias with him thats why i enjoy readong his articles.

[Beast]

then you missed the entire idea behind the article

[Beast]

He has ripped into madrid lots of times. Even when they won the title he was talking about the lack of competition. He is pro/anti everyone. I havent noticed any particular bias with him thats why i enjoy readong his articles.

exactly Maz...

he is not talking about the liga competition as much as liga in terms of European strength.. and lets face it the competitions this year in the liga is a joke , its getting weaker every year... the table never lies ...

[Warik]

The point of the article was to say how shit La Liga is, and as usual he held Barcelona up to count for it.

Yes Tim we know Barça would get thumped 25-0 by Stoke or West Brom, as the EPL is vastly superior and Barça are just a shit team made to look good by the league they are in. We know you don't want us to win anything. We know you wish we'd lose every week...there there.

[Beast]

And how did he held Barca accountable for it ? did you really read it cause i doubt it my friend

[Evil]

So Liverpool beat Madrid because La Liga sucks ? lol .. I really hope we can get through Bayern so then we can play one of the english sides.

[maz]

I think all of his articles are majorly satirical. Take them with a with a bucketful of salt, your sarcasm detectors switch to the ON position, and your tongue firmly implanted in your cheek.