Oh yeah lad
So the lads have no answer. It’s all ok because Messi is really good at dribbling.
To be fair I don’t think he’d sacked anyone in 2010. Barcelona were in their pomp at the time. The downfall came from 2019 onwards. There are elements of truth to what you’re saying. I thought it was sad when he left for PSG. Barca had a great mystique about them until around 2012 but that’s well and truly gone now.
Mbappe hasn’t done very much that I would recount as memorable between the 2018 and 2022 world cups. 85% of the games he plays for PSG are nothing games. That’s a sad indictment of the current game, although the French league has often been a bit of a monopoly, Marseille in the 90’s, Lyon winning about 7 in a row in the 00’s and PSG since the Qatari investment. Although somehow in all that Montpellier, Monaco and Lille have managed to sneak league titles in the last 11 years or so.
1 Like
It’s sad what happened to Barcelona. I recall after the 2015 final @Cheasty or possibly @sidney posted something like it always felt good when Barcelona won the champions league. He was right. Barcelona always played a great brand of football.
I’d love if Messi went back and led pedri, blade, fati, Nico and Gavi - the young players he walked out on and led them to another champions league win.
Messi to Newels would confirm his greatness
The simple fact is money corrupts.
Russian money corrupted European politics and business and led to the situation where Putin was emboldened to inflict mass butchery on Ukraine and elsewhere.
So too money corrupted football.
The most talented players in world football now mostly congregate at clubs which were allowed to be bought by petro-states. Those that aren’t at clubs owned by petro-states are at clubs which wanted to form an excusive Super League.
Barcelona were victims of their own success in a way, victims of the ultra-monetisation of football, and victims of their own bad decisions.
European football became ultra-monetised and Barcelona had to ditch the “more than a club” stuff and get into bed with dodgy people in order to remain financially relevant.
Sporting Lisbon produced Ronaldo and could never have hoped to hold onto him. The other clubs he was at could let him go much easier than Barcelona could let Messi go because they hadn’t produced him.
Messi had been at Barcelona since he was 13. Barcelona felt they could not afford to let the best player in the world go, It was unthinkable the genius they produced could go anywhere else. They were the biggest club in the world, playing in the greatest stadium in the world. Messi ended up being too good at football for Barcelona’s finances. Petro clubs could afford to pay him whatever he wanted, but Barcelona had to match it and keep him for political reasons. Then they made a raft of other, terrible signing decisions, and the pandemic royally fucked them. Now they’re digging their feet further into the financial quicksand.
English football has harnessed its economic power and cultural cachet and is about to destroy all comers and become the NBA of football, except the NBA itself has a draft system so maintains competition, whereas the petro clubs will dominate in England. The traditional European giants and the traditional English giants know this. They are in panic, all of them.
When Lionel Messi left Barcelona there were two clubs in the world who could afford him. They set the market rates, and Messi cannot be expected to turn the market rate for his services down.
Ronaldo will likely go to Saudi Arabia. because they will pay him 200 million dollars a year. He’s a trophy for them. So is Messi.
The golfers they’ve signed are trophies. The fights they host are trophies. Newcastle are their trophy. The World Cup and PSG are Qatar’s trophies and Manchester City are Abu Dhabi’s trophy. The fear the west has of being cut off from fossil fuels are the trophies of all these places.
Compromising people, making them look like fools, is a trophy. Pep Guardiola can talk about the prison sentences handed out to Catalan separatists and the denial of human rights, but when he’s asked about the human rights of people in the UAE he can’t say credibly say anything because the UAE is his paymaster. He’s bought.
LeBron James can speak about the injustice black people face in the US but he can’t say anything about the injustice faced by Uighurs and the general population in China because the NBA, and by extension James, are bought by China.
Football itself is compromised by a governing body obsessed with money and power who are willing to destroy what makes the World Cup great, in order to make more money and because of world football politics.
Football in general can offer platitudes about minority rights but then Qatar can make the whole of football look like fools. Football is bought. FIFA is bought. Infantino is bought. Gary Neville is bought. Richard Keys is a bought propagandist.
If anybody tries to stand against this, the Qatari/Saudi/UAE/Russian bots will savage them. All of this is by design. Money is there to compromise, corrupt and control.
Football is eating itself. The world is eating itself.
The actual World Cup competition, the action on the pitch, is one of the few things that stands outside this and retains an integrity and an innocence. That’s why people love it.
But the ownership of it is a vehicle for despotism. The ownership of everything now seems to be a vehicle for despotism.
Lionel Messi shilling for Saudi Arabia leaves a bad taste, but it is a symptom of something way, way bigger and more malign than Lionel Messi.
Why people are happy that Messi and Argentina won this World Cup is because, regardless of his associations, it was a victory for the pure talent that made him such a monetisable commodity, and one of the world’s greatest football cultures, and because it happened in an old fashioned way that people thought would never happen again.
21 Likes
It’s a mad world though where Richard Keys and Lionel Messi are on the same shopping list…
Piers Morgan and Cristiano Ronaldo are on the same shopping list.
Conor McGregor and the entire US Republican party and right-wing movement and media were both on Vladimir Putin’s shopping list.
Muhammad Ali was on the shopping list of Zaire’s dictator Mobutu.
Diego Maradona was on the shopping lists of Fidel Castro and the Camorra.
Pure talent will always be on the shopping lists of dictators, and so will shameless Lord Haw Haws.
2 Likes
Messi has lived more or his life in Spain than Argentina? Would he go back to a “local” club to finish his club career?
In fairness I’d say mbappe will have some roll call of cuntishness behind him in 12 years time. I’ll be flabbergasted if he’s winning world cups or performing at the top level at 35. The longevity of Messi and Ronaldo is by far their biggest achievement
Peak Mbappé was Sunday. Never again will he score a goal as devastating as that volley.
A goal that feels greater and greater every time you think about it. A game that feels greater and greater every time you think about it.
It is at the very least a live contender for the greatest game ever played.
2 Likes
Better than the first Liverpool v Newcastle game?
Outstanding post.
1 Like
Mbappe relies a good bit on blistering pace he’ll fall back into the pack around his late 20’s
The greatest games and greatest goals are about context. Liverpool v Newcastle could never be the greatest game of all time because it was a clash between the clubs which finished second and third in what was at that time about the fourth strongest league in Europe.
Dean Windass’s goal for Hull against Wycombe Wanderers by definition can’t be the greatest game of all time because it happened in the third or fourth tier of English football.
The greatest games and the greatest goals will invariably be in the matches that matter more than anything else, which usually means the knockout stages of the World Cup or Euros, or the latter stages of the Champions League.
You can’t get bigger than a World Cup final. The greatest World Cup final ever will be hard beaten when ranking the greatest games of all time.
This is worth a watch to sum it all up
2 Likes
There’s loads of articles and a book on Barca’s finances that verify @BruidheanChaorthainn 's claims apparently. A pity its impossible to find these articles and this book doesn’t seem to have a name apparently
He has you dancing all day long all the same
Check the hours between that post and my previous post, good lad