Let the silly season begin

[Patrick Thistle]

Let the silly season begin

Antepli Ejderha wrote: Swansea expected to bring in about six players, didn't think we needed that many.

Getting ready for Europe. Need to strengthen the squad.

Also, someone may poach Michu.

[Sundeporino]

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ursus arctos wrote: Those Sunderland targets are definitely on the obscure side:

Roberge: Guingamp youth product, didn't make it at PSG. Reasonably established at Maritimo.

Diakite: After being a semi-regular for Lazio last season, played only one game in the Coppa Italia this season.

Viana: Porto youth product playing in the Portuguese second tier. Not Hugo Viana.

Ba: a dozen appearances in the French second division.

I'm a bit surprised to see that they don't share an agent.

That's what I was fishing for. That and to see if any otfrs have seen any of them play.

With a soon-to-be-appointed DOF/GM at the SOLE theres a wariness on the main fans forum about this coming summers deals. Especially with the entire scouting dept being sacked last week.

[Kevin S]

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Any Football League teams looking for a striker? Norwich have released Simeon Jackson. Plus a few other players including Tom Adeyemi, Lee Camp, Elliott Ward and Korey Smith.

Chris Martin's off to Derby, and Marc Tierney to Bolton I believe.

[steveeeeeeeee]

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James and Moutinho to Monaco for €70m has been confirmed in A Bola

James has gone right off the boil since getting injured in February. Up until this season he was a great substitute for Porto, with the exit of Hulk he became their creative focus and was up to the job until his injury. I haven't seen him produce the goods for 90 minutes, every game, for a whole season. So, probably a good move for him rather than the big step up to Man Utd, which was rumoured - it could've all gone a bit Anderson for him.

Apart from that, god knows Moutinho's motives for the move beyond money. One of the greatest players in world football, I'm so disappointed in this move because I would have loved to see him team up with AVB again. On the other hand, Benfica already have their name written on the 2013/14 league trophy, Moutinho has been the most consistent and brilliant player Porto have had for the past three seasons. His arrival saw Porto change immediately into consistent winners after Benfica won the title in 2010.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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aston villa have released curvaceous mature centre half Richie dunne, have somehow move on makoun to rennes, and are set to pay shay given a lot of money to leave. They've also released andy marshall, eric Lihaj and simon dawkins and stilian petrov has retired. they're also desperate to sell alan hutton, and will accept bids for nzogbia, and bent. This way they will have gotten rid of the last of the o'neill signings, and have got rid of most of the houllier and mcLeish mistakes as well. Move on those players and they will finally be able to build a new team within their budgets.

Unfortunately christian benteke seems to have had enough of birmingham.

[dalliance]

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Given has another 3 years left on his deal. Who on earth thought it wise to give a 35-year-old keeper a 5 year contract?

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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it was to make up for the drop in wages. 3 years at 90K is £14 million. 60k a week for 5 years is £15 million.

jesus it's such madness

[The Bean Counter]

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Neymar off to Barcelona.

He's got so many investors, stakeholders etc. all entitled to their cut that the Guardian haven't even tried to calculate a transfer fee and are just reporting the value of the whole deal, including agent's fees and wages: €100 million.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Let the silly season begin

I have a feeling Neymar might end up the new Riquelme by moving to Barca of all clubs. And in Real he would have become the next Robinho.

I'm trying to think of the list of Brazilian players who have made a success of their European move by moving directly to Barca or Real.
Not Ronaldo, not Ronaldinho, not Rivaldo...
Hmm, or players from Argentina?

[The Bean Counter]

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Worked out ok for Maradona, didn't it?

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

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zbigniew wrote: Worked out ok for Maradona, didn't it?

But wasn't Maradona a bit of a disappointment at Barca?

[The Bean Counter]

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Actually, I have no idea. I'm not really qualified to answer that. In terms of his overall career, though, he did pretty well. Which is what counts, surely?

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

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Yes, but what I meant when I was thinking out loud is how many players from Brazil or Argentina made a direct move to Barca or Real and were a success there.

[Janik]

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Lionel Messi? He was so direct, he didn't even bother ever playing for a South American club...

Dialling way back, Di Stefano managed the transition pretty brilliantly.

[Janik]

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Would you deem Gonzalo Higuaín a success? He made the move directly from River and has been at Real for six years ago, making 250+ appearances and scoring 100+ league goals.

Roberto Carlos had zero trouble settling in European football. He did have one season at Inter prior to going to Madrid, but that isn't a noticeably lower level or lesser weight of expectations. It's not like he went to smaller club and worked his way up, so he sort of counts.

[dalliance]

Let the silly season begin

I think you could say that both Madrid and Barcelona have done a little better with Brazilians and Argentinians already settled in Europe and doing a good job for a smaller club than when they have shopped directly in South America.

Romario, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Dani Alves,: there's been quite a few Brazilians signed at great expense by Barca in this manner while the only great success I can think of who made the journey directly was Evaristo in the late 1950s. Ironically he was swapped for another player and moved to Real Madrid where he flopped there.

Real Madrid had Roberto Carlos second-hand of course but I think have done better with Argentinian players like Roberto Martinez, Valdano, Redondo and Enrique Wolff signed from other Spanish clubs. They used to have some success when shopping directly back in the 1950s though with the already mentioned Di Stefano as well as the brilliant Hector Rial and Roque Olsen.

Didi was a big name flop when he moved straight to Real Madrid but to be honest his situation was more complicated and the reason for his failure was much broader than his own performances - a bit like Maradona at Barcelona.

Robinho was rather hit or miss and Marcelo was signed directly from Brazil as a youngster too.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

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It eventually turned out that barcelona paid nearly £35 million for Javier Saviola, and were paying him nearly £7 million a year basic. He was a fucking total disaster.

[ursus arctos]

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Napoli's president has confirmed Rafa Benitez' appointment as their new manager.

[Sundeporino]

Let the silly season begin

It really is the silly season. Linked with Sunderland so far:

Greg Sandomierski-Genk
Danillo D' Ambrossio-Torino
Shomari Kapombe-Simba
Willy Bolly-Auxerre
Stoppills Sunzu-TP Mazembe
Aurelien Chedjou-Lille
Aleksander Dragovic-Basle
Sergei Gomes-Barcelona
Salif Sane-Nancy
Onyekachi Apam-Rennes
Jorge Casado-Real Madrid
Ivan Strinic-Dnipro
Aymen Abdenour-Toulouse
Mobido Diakite-Lazio
Vaentine-Roberge-Maritimo
Simon Moore-Brentford
Tom Allan-York
Paolo Hurtado-Pacos de Ferreira
El Hadji Ba-Le Havre
David Geteri-African Soccer Development(?)
Emmanuel Casgoine-Pescara
Joel Obi-Inter Milan
Remy Gomis-Valenciennes
Leandro Salino-Braga
Ola Toivanon-PSV
Jessy Pi-Monaco
Luke Murphy-Crewe
Sunny-Numancia
Abdisalam Ibrahim-Man City
Victor Wanyama-Celtic
Andrea Cittadino-Roma
Georges Mandjack-Auxerre
Diogo Viana-Penfield
Valentin Stocker-Basel
Charlie Atsu-Porto
Franck Tabalou-Toulouse
Shaun Maloney-Wigan
Andre Cavalhas-Naval
Aidan McGeady-Moscow
Charlie Austin-Burnley
Sebastian Govinvo-Juventus
Thomas Rocchi-Inter
Mahatma Ootoo-Hearts Of Oak
Alfred Fingobassan-Heerenveen
Atabey Cicek-Genklerbiligi
Jeremie Aliadiere-Lorient
Dari Cvitonic-Nice
Mauro Zarate-Lazio
Dieumerci Mbokani-Anderlecht
Andreas Cornellius-Copenhagen
Ante Rebik-RNK Split
Bas Dost-Wolfsberg
Cabral-Basel

We've actually signed a kid from Altrincham who's dad was one of the FA bosses a few years back during its musical chairs period.

Problem is that the transfer speculation s more exciting than the football itself.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

Let the silly season begin

So Falcao is in Monaco for the medical, with Barca's Vales.

[Sam]

Let the silly season begin

Neymar ought to come good as long as they're reasonably patient with him (and given their other attackers, they can surely afford to be). Plenty of talk in Brazil suggesting that moving now is the worst possible timing for him personally and the national team, though - if he struggles to settle, he'll have hit an obstacle in his career right at the start of the season building up to the World Cup in his own country.

He definitely needs the move, though. Cracking player, but I agree entirely with m'colleague Tim Vickery who reckons he'd hit a bit of a rut and needs new challenges if he's to develop.

I do hope they give him the chance to develop though.

[danielmak]

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I will be curious to see if Neymar can be the first attacking player since Pep started this new revolution who can succeed when coming from outside Barca's youth set up. Everything runs through Messi, which is somewhat understandable given his overall greatness, but he has basically killed off a range of very talented players who can't seem to fit into a system that runs through him: Ibra, Villa, Alexis Sanchez. And moving beyond attacking players, it seems like very few signings actually settle at Barca. Their transfer successes seem few and far between. The best I can tell, Mascherano and Alves are really the only two signings who play regularly and have actually settled well at Barca. Adriano has also done ok but he is a part-time player. The others seem to do well but are shipped off (YaYa, Keida) or come and go quickly (defender from Shakhtar whose name I couldn't even begin to spell enough to google and paste here). I expect Song to be sold off soon enough, Cesc hasn't really found a place in the team.

To switch gears back to the Monaco topic and taxation. Remember that Monaco had been in the French league system so the only new issue is that the France government has changed its tax structure for football clubs (and maybe other high earning businesses) in the last year. Andy Brassel used to speak about this topic from time to time on the World Football Phone In. Monaco has always had support from the monarchy to make up for poor attendance and the inability to generate revenues from other sources (minus the one excellent run in the CL a decade back) but the tax system did not favor them because other French clubs had the same or similar tax breaks. Now Monaco would have an advantage that did not exist prior to their relegation a two or three seasons back. I'm sure it will work itself out as these things always do. The French government will work out a deal with the federation, Monaco will work out a deal, Qatar via BeIN will pay more money.

[Patrick Thistle]

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If Sunderland sign Willy Bolly, Alan Shearer won't be able to say his name on MOTD without laughing.

[Kettle]

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Can't see why not. Vinnie Jones once released it as a single.

[dalliance]

Let the silly season begin

but the tax system did not favor them because other French clubs had the same or similar tax breaks

Well, I'm not sure they had tax breaks as such in terms of what players and managers pay, more that since the 1980s they introduced this rule that allowed municipalities to fund their local clubs with grants.

This seems something of an anachronism especially when you consider that the City of Paris is still paying several million euros to PSG at the moment - a little like the UK giving foreign aid to countries that have their own space programmes.

I'm not sure the grants on offer ever matched the level of largesse the Rainiers provided at Monaco though. The timing is especially bad now with this Russian chappy ostentatiously spending at a time of austerity, an act that's hardly likely to endear him to the tax authorities who have permitted this Monaco tax sham for too many years.