Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

La Liga 2020-21: A Messi Business

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    La Liga 2020-21: A Messi Business

    Starts next weekend.

    #2
    Satchmo Distel from last season's thread;

    "Messi has to play a season for a club whose board he now presumably hates, in a team in which he has lost faith, which presumably cannot rebuild until he leaves next summer. Normally such a player would be benched but this is their best ever player and still the best player in the league by some distance. And he is strongly averse to being substituted in games."

    And Keoman has already started in a hard man manner...it will be interesting...

    Comment


      #3
      Yes, it will. Apparently his family were really unhappy at him requesting a move.

      Madrid still have Bale but, as the Euros are now next year, I'm hoping he'll now take a pay cut and move on to get more game time before next summer. He's our biggest earner. Second is, I think, James Rodriguez who looks like he might be joining up with Ancelotti again at Everton.

      Comment


        #4
        So Rodriguez is off to Everton and the rumours are that Perez may let Bale go at a knowdown price - around 20 - 25 million. Even with these two players off the books, I don't think there will be any more players coming in to the club before the transfer deadline. I think they are keeping their powder dry until next summer when they will splash out big on a galactico, possibly Mbappe. Odegaard coming back after his year long loan at Sociedad is welcome. He impressed in his year there.

        Atleti and Sevilla could both challenge for the title. Both have very experienced coaches and a settled side. Joao Felix is now in his second year at Atleti. He impressed when he came on against RB Leipzig in the Champions League quarter finals and maybe he's just starting to work out how to play within the Simeone system.

        Barcelona - who knows? I remember Koeman's early managerial dabblings as assistant coach at Barca back at the end of last century. I also remember him doing well at Vitesse Arnhem and at the time he seemed pretty nailed on to become Barcelona manager sooner rather than later. Well, 20 years later (rather than sooner), he's finally made it. I can't see him lasting the season, to be honest. His only other managerial post in Spain was with Valencia. Despite winning the Copa del Rey that year (2008), their league form was worse than Gary Neville-era awful. They narrowly avoided relegation and he duly got sacked before the end of the season. Sporting may remember it.

        My prediction is 1: Madrid by some distance 2: Barca 3: Atleti 4: someone else, not Sevilla, but I'm not sure who yet.

        Comment


          #5
          As with last season I'd like to add (with your permission) a little Segunda Division info on this thread - not least because it eas a damned sight more interesting than what was going on in the top flight yet I'm not sure it requires a thread of its own.

          Anyway a really decent away win by Rayo Vallecano today in Mallorca to get the ball rolling. New coach (although they no doubt still have Paco on speed dial) and a few promising new faces on the pitch. Hopes are reasonably high, but then again everybody's are after a first day win.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Tony C View Post
            As with last season I'd like to add (with your permission) a little Segunda Division info on this thread - not least because it eas a damned sight more interesting than what was going on in the top flight yet I'm not sure it requires a thread of its own
            Of course...especially after our last minute win yesterday (things can only go downhill).

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Jon View Post
              Yes, it will. Apparently his family were really unhappy at him requesting a move.

              Madrid still have Bale but, as the Euros are now next year, I'm hoping he'll now take a pay cut and move on to get more game time before next summer. He's our biggest earner. Second is, I think, James Rodriguez who looks like he might be joining up with Ancelotti again at Everton.
              I wonder how much was rodriguez on at Real, and how much is he on at Everton. If there's one thing that the Soccerleaks emails have taught us, it is that top end footballers earn way more than we think they do, and he was on a free transfer, having seen out all six years of his contract, I've got to say that it looks like Bale is going to do pretty much the same thing. One way or another Real Madrid are going to have to make sure he gets fifty million quid over the next two years, whatever club he's playing for. It's a real Alexis Sanchez situation, except on an even more implausible scale. Bale is paid 50% more than sanchez, and real madrid are looking for a fee. He's still quite a bit better than sanchez, but no-one is going to buy him, and no-one is going to pay him a large enough proportion of his wages. They can't get rid of him, and treating like a cunt over the last 12 months hasn't changed that.

              I think that they have severely misjudged Bale. Bale is an unusual figure among top footballers in two ways. The first is that he's not driven to the monumental heights by weirdness or childhood mental damage (hi Roy, Hi Cristiano), he seems very well adjusted. but also success didn't happen until relatively late, and for much of the early part of his career, he was a lower division full back with southampton, and then a bad luck charm full back at tottenham. At best he was hoping that he could knock a decent career out of being a premier league full back, And only then did he became one of the best players in the league. He seems considerably more relaxed as person to begin with, but there's a big difference between 18 and 21. It's like the difference between becoming famous while still at school, and becoming famous after you finish university. He actually really likes living in madrid, and is pretty happy with how things are going. He's won things that no spurs player ever dreams of winning, he's been wildly successful, He's a national hero after 2016. and if things aren't going well in his relationship with his current boss, well that happens to a lot of people,in all lines of work and he doesn't have to see him for too long every day. He reminds me a lot of john o'shea in a lot of respects. Both sound like GAA players when interviewed, In that you suspect that they would basically be the same person more or less if they weren't a footballer.

              Bale isn't going to leave Real Madrid because zidane is mean to him. He only has to see him for four hours a day, and apparently there isn't much direct communication. He then leaves training, and goes back to his house that he loves, and hangs out with his family, who he is also probably quite fond of, plays a bit of golf, and basks in his incredible wealth, and possibly meditates on how well things have gone. He's got two more years on his amazing contract, and if Real Madrid don't want to use him, he likely doesn't lose too much sleep over that. Meanwhile Real Madrid officials are sitting in their office trying to come up with new ways to push him out but making the terrible mistake of assuming he's like Carlos Tevez, or Luis Suarez, or Diego Simeone, and is likely to explode at any sleight, which they construe as an insult to their manhood. Bale likely doesn't notice the half of what they do. if you insult his balls, he'll likely chuckle and say he has been working on his putting but he's not quite there yet. Then if they point out they mean his testicles, he would likely admit they probably weren't his most glamorous part, but that's true of everyone, and they've given him three lovely children, so He doesn't really have any complaints. And then he goes home thinking that was a bit weird, and he couldn't spot the candid camera anywhere.

              Now if they pay him to leave, he might, but this plan of trying to force him to leave without demanding all his money, by being mean to him, isn't going to work. And all it does is gradually make him more and more unattractive to any club that might buy him, because he' s barely ever used, and they keep trash talking him. All it does is make Zidane look like a madman, and paint this new reign of his in an aura of defeat from the beginning.
              Last edited by The Awesome Berbaslug!!!; 14-09-2020, 12:58.

              Comment


                #8
                Are the English really going to call him Rodriguez?

                That seems to be a thing now.

                Football Leaks had him at 7.8 million euro (gross) as of 2016, but given that it involves both Gestifute and Madrid, that figure should be taken with a great deal of salt.

                Comment


                  #9
                  James is difficult for English speakers to pronounce.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    I'm not sure it is. It may be difficult to get exactly right, but we crossed this bridge during the 2014 world Cup. He is already world famous as Spanish James. Also It doesn't seem like there's any part of it that would be too awkward for a scouser. All the sounds are present in the local accent.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      True that.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        They don't seem to struggle with Hamas

                        Comment


                          #13
                          How was Xabi Alonso pronounced in Liverpool?

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Like zsa zsa gabor with a bee at the end. A lot of the sounds that most english speakers struggle with in Spanish are in the scouse accent. So with a bit of effort it shouldn't be a problem

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Remember that Alonso is Basque.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Sure, but you've got a different and broader palette of sounds than in a lot of the rest of the UK. There's a lot going on in that accent. They can definitely handle short names like James.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  You should never under-estimate the inability of English people to pronounce foreign names. I worked with someone who talked admiringly of the then Arsenal striker Terry Henry, he was from Ilkeston though.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Sorry, but what's difficult for English people about either the English or the Colombian pronunciation of James? There's no need to do all the just-let-me-get-this-ball-of-phlegm-out-of-my-lungs stuff with the 'J' for Latin American Spanish, if that's what you're getting at. The first syllable is just the English word 'ham'.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Sam View Post
                                      Sorry, but what's difficult for English people about either the English or the Colombian pronunciation of James? There's no need to do all the just-let-me-get-this-ball-of-phlegm-out-of-my-lungs stuff with the 'J' for Latin American Spanish, if that's what you're getting at. The first syllable is just the English word 'ham'.
                                      Yes, very true, though then the English tendency would be to make the second syllable more schwa-ish.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        True, yeah, but you just have to say the letter 'S'. I get that people might not realise how to say it without being told, but I wouldn't say any part of it is any harder for a non-Scouser to pronounce.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Originally posted by Gert from the Well View Post
                                          You should never under-estimate the inability of English people to pronounce foreign names. I worked with someone who talked admiringly of the then Arsenal striker Terry Henry, he was from Ilkeston though.
                                          On second captains yesterday, garcia and his co host had to gently walk john brewin through how to pronounce matt doherty's surname. The poor lad nearly had a nervous breakdown. He was mortified. He wanted to say it right but he had a mental block of some kind.

                                          The thing is, if you can say dot, her and tea, you can say his name as long as you just drop the t in dot. It was a very strange phenomenon to witness.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            I have real problems with names like Doherty, also pronouncing the benighted hellscape that is Drogheda. Always keep throwing in the ch as in loch sound.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              At least here, some Dohertys do the "ch" themselves. While others insist the first syllable is "dough".

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                It would be ch in Scotland, where weirdly Gallagher gains a "k" sound.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Some US Dohertys actually spell it Docherty, while others do Daugherty.

                                                  The spelling is only episodically a guide to preferred pronunciation.

                                                  Comment

                                                  Working...
                                                  X