General Football Discussion

[Philippe]

Inter Milan won the Champions League 2-0 against Bayern.
Congrats Wesley!

that was a hell of a boring game, and another fortunate refereeing in favor of Inter ...

[Over Pasanens Head]

Inter Milan won the Champions League 2-0 against Bayern.
Congrats Wesley!

that was a hell of a boring game, and another fortunate refereeing in favor of Inter ...

[Blind3]

Congrats to The Tangerine Dream !!! Looking forward to following their progress next season. As for Inter...meh !! It'll be interesting if/when Jose goes to RM.

[Ajaxfanuk]

Cant wait to have Blackpool in the Premiership get to watch classic post match interviews week in week out

http://msnsport.skysports.com/story/0,1 ... 87,00.html

for example :D

[SE6Ajacied]

Thought I'd post some photo's.....

http://s322.photobucket.com/albums/nn40 ... f%20Final/

Nice One Brian. Enjoy !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cheers Bull, I certainly will while it lasts (which my head says is one season even though my heart says otherwise).

Can't believe all these "bigger" teams we're now looking down on - at least the money will get the ground sorted though.

[Kowalczyk]

Cheers Bull

That's a very appropriate nickname for the good man, actually...

K.

[Over Pasanens Head]

Cheers Bull

That's a very appropriate nickname for the good man, actually...

K.

Nice one Ko

[SE6Ajacied]

Cheers Bull

That's a very appropriate nickname for the good man, actually...

K.

Nice one Ko

Hmm, I feel I need to learn to type better, but in fairness the I is right next to the U on the keyboard. Perhaps too many beers??

[Orange14]

Rather shocking news that Barca are not able to pay last month's player's wages: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... pe&cc=5901 They are seeking a €150 M bank loan to carry things over. I'm amazed that given the current financial situation that the banks cave into these requests. I wonder if the club will get a preferential interest rate. Clearly none of the other Spanish clubs (other than Madrid) who are also in difficulty could get loans of such magnitude. I imagine that any thoughts of Suarez moving to Barca are gone now. It really is time to clean all of this up and also prevent the oil sheiks from moving in like they are doing at Man City.

[Amol]

Spain got a slight downgrade from Moody's and may get one from Fitch. Money won't be so cheap to obtain for the banks themselves. There will definitely be a larger cost of obtaining money for Barca as well as Madrid.

[Orange14]

Spain got a slight downgrade from Moody's and may get one from Fitch. Money won't be so cheap to obtain for the banks themselves. There will definitely be a larger cost of obtaining money for Barca as well as Madrid.

It would still be interesting to see the borrowing terms though I expect we won't. With credit so tight these days, the fact that football teams can get such loans is not ethical in my mind.

[SPL]

Barca and Real seem to be the 2 non English clubs that are in hugh debt but get the Banks or govt in Real's case to bale them out . And still Barca want Greg.

[jamcocteau]

Spain got a slight downgrade from Moody's and may get one from Fitch. Money won't be so cheap to obtain for the banks themselves. There will definitely be a larger cost of obtaining money for Barca as well as Madrid.

It would still be interesting to see the borrowing terms though I expect we won't. With credit so tight these days, the fact that football teams can get such loans is not ethical in my mind.

Very good points made. Currently doing some contract work in bank here in Netherlands and the terms and conditions for borrowing now are so much tighter than I ever remember. This money borrowed will have to be on agreement on a very good business plan for repayment. Even Spanish banks today wont just allow such sums to be borrowed without cast-iron guarantees etc.

Hopefully when financial statements for year ended 30 June 2010 are audited and published then some more of the borrowing terms will be in there.

Btw here is link to last years accounts which although out of date are very detailed and if you can understand some it give a very good idea of how a club the size of FCB operates

http://www.fcbarcelona.cat/web/download ... ca_eng.pdf

[Amol]

Also, Rossell (Barca's new president) pretty much said that they can't afford Fabregas this year. What that means to me is - they don't have 45 million Euros left in their transfer kitty.

I hope this situation lasts for the next 3-4 years at least. That way we'll lose a smaller number of players every year. And it's always easy to replace 1 player a year than having to replace 4-5 players every couple years. I will be extremely happy if we only lose one out of Steks, VD Wiel and Suarez this year.

[Orange14]

Spain got a slight downgrade from Moody's and may get one from Fitch. Money won't be so cheap to obtain for the banks themselves. There will definitely be a larger cost of obtaining money for Barca as well as Madrid.

It would still be interesting to see the borrowing terms though I expect we won't. With credit so tight these days, the fact that football teams can get such loans is not ethical in my mind.

Very good points made. Currently doing some contract work in bank here in Netherlands and the terms and conditions for borrowing now are so much tighter than I ever remember. This money borrowed will have to be on agreement on a very good business plan for repayment. Even Spanish banks today wont just allow such sums to be borrowed without cast-iron guarantees etc.

Hopefully when financial statements for year ended 30 June 2010 are audited and published then some more of the borrowing terms will be in there.

Btw here is link to last years accounts which although out of date are very detailed and if you can understand some it give a very good idea of how a club the size of FCB operates

http://www.fcbarcelona.cat/web/download ... ca_eng.pdf

Thanks for the link! I'll give this a review as it looks pretty much like a regular balance sheet that I'm familiar with in terms of corporate filings here in the US. I did see that they were incorporated as a non-profit association; interesting.

[saddlerian]

Just watched the pre-season game against Al Ahly.....won 1-0, Sulejmani in 93rrd minute....NOT very inspiring...let's just hope that some of the Yong start performing...no evidence tonight, just Sulejmani and Vertonghen broke sweat! At least one good thing came out of the game......clean kit as it could be used again!!!!

[Orange14]

Well, UEFA is finally getting a spine. They ruled that Mallorca cannot play in the Europa Cup because the club is basically bankrupt: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... ue&cc=5901 Now if they can come up with something enforceable across the board for the CL so that clubs cannot accumulate massive debt and continue to rely on CL football to bail them out we may get somewhere. The playing field will still not be quite even but it will be better than what we have.

[Orange14]

One of the downsides of having too much money to spend is that you end up with too many players under contract (Ajax know this all too well). New English League rules say you can only have 25 players under contract and eligible to play. Man City now have to unload 12 players! See: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... rs&cc=5901 There are some real good players who may end up leaving at bargain basement prices (including Nigel de Jong aka the Karate Kid)!

[Amol]

Very interesting. An unexpected outcome of this will be that all the EPL teams will now buy/steal 18 year olds from other clubs.

[Orange14]

Very interesting. An unexpected outcome of this will be that all the EPL teams will now buy/steal 18 year olds from other clubs.

There is the other restriction that 8 players have to be English or Welsh so there is at least a limit there. Arsene Wenger must hate that rule.

[Amol]

Very interesting. An unexpected outcome of this will be that all the EPL teams will now buy/steal 18 year olds from other clubs.

There is the other restriction that 8 players have to be English or Welsh so there is at least a limit there. Arsene Wenger must hate that rule.

BREAKING NEWS: Van Der Wiel is still waiting for Nigel De Jong to call him about that transfer to Man City

[SPL]

No such 8 english rule . 8 home players have to have been with the club for 3 years up to 21 any nationality . Arsenal have only 3 english in their 1st team squad .

[Orange14]

No such 8 english rule . 8 home players have to have been with the club for 3 years up to 21 any nationality . Arsenal have only 3 english in their 1st team squad .

Correct; I misread the original story.

[Orange14]

And we thought we had it bad with the number of players under contract!!! See: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... rs&cc=5901 Presumably many of the players that ManCity want to leave have long term contracts with the club. Clearly they can play the Mido/Bogarde game and stay with the club and draw a salary for not doing anything (and they would even be outside the 25 on the match eligible squad). I hope the Oil Sheik who owns the club loses more than his shirt on this. Truly insane behavior and deserving of swift financial punishment.

[Orange14]

Looks like Liverpool's American owners could lose their entire investment if this sale goes through: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... nd&cc=5901