Real Madrid (old thread)
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bishoprho
Guest
26 players -12 midfield player= 14player
solution fire somebody hire a math teacher.
solution fire somebody hire a math teacher.
antimadritista
A masterpiece of DNA
Hope is the denial of reality.
Beast
The Observer
I know but i also didn't mean it's this season ..
this is the first time we give a manager a 4 year contract.. do u know how significant that is ?
I'll leave you some food for thought read this
Jose & Pep Change Places In La Liga
The football season in Spain still has over a week to go before it finally gets going, but everything is already a touch topsy-turvy with la Liga's supreme beings, Barcelona and Real Madrid.
The narrative in recent years reads that the president of the Camp Nou likes to humour his managers by affording them a certain freedom in the hiring and firing of players. The coach's job at Real Madrid tends to be given as much importance as the poor soul responsible for oiling up Cristiano Ronaldo's pre-match pecks. Come to think of it, the latter still had more say at the club than Manuel Pellegrini did during his one and only year under Florentino Pérez.
However, these roles have been reversed over the pre-season in what has been a fairly dramatic shift in the balance of power at both clubs.
Soon after being dismissed for the crime of not being José Mourinho, Pellegrini admitted what everyone pretty much knew was the lot of the coach at Real Madrid under Florentino Pérez - that if the footballing statues in Spain allowed the inflation of a manager-shaped figure on the bench like the auto-pilot in 'Airplane' then that's exactly what the club president would do.
However, pesky regulations require someone both qualified and alive to be nominally in charge of the team, although that still wasn't much help for Pellegrini who confessed to having neither "a vote nor a voice" whilst at Madrid. Instead, his bosses "sold players I thought were important" - namely Arjen Robben and Wesley Sneijder - moves that fundamentally messed with the Chilean's plans for the season.
Meanwhile, the more laissez-faire former Barcelona president Joan Laporta - who ended his two-term tenure at the Camp Nou in July - allowed Pep Guardiola to do more or less what he wanted in terms of transfers, thanks in part to the six trophies he won. This explains the still baffling Samuel Eto'o plus cash deal for Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a move that swapped a fine striker for whom he had no 'feeling' with a frequently misfiring forward, whilst knocking the club's coffers for six in the process.
Whilst Guardiola and Laporta had a fairly close relationship, the same cannot be said for the new president Sandro Rosell. The former Nike marketing head (and VP in the early years of Laporta's tenure) and the outgoing president's chosen successor fought out a deliciously spiteful campaign before Rosell won the eventual poll with 61% of the vote.
And in his short spell in the charge of the club, Rosell seems to have done everything he could to upset his manager, including stalling on negotiations to extend the contract of a less than enthusiastic Guardiola to June 2011.
Pep favourites Yaya Touré and Dmytro Chygrynskiy were sneakily sold by Rosell with the excuse that the books had to be balanced after the purchase of David Villa. However, no-one truly knows what the state of play with Barcelona's accounts is with claim and counter-claim - and the occasional insult - on the healthiness of the club's finances from both the new and old board members.
"He's a fearful and sinister director," spat one member of Barcelona's board, Alfons Godall on the new finance head, Javier Faus.
Rosell also sidelined Pep confidante Johan Cruyff and dismissed Guardiola's sporting director, Txiki Begiristain, before failing to land Cesc Fabregas and - for the moment, anyway - Javier Mascherano, a much-needed replacement for Touré.
The latest battle between the pair is over the future of Ibrahimovic, a player who Guardiola staked an awful lot of his professional reputation on and continues to have faith in - but one that his bosses are reportedly desperately keen to either sell to Manchester City or send out on loan to AC Milan.
"For the good of the institution (of Barcelona) it's best if I don't say anything about Ibra," shrugged a sullen Guardiola when questioned on his striker's future last Friday.
In contrast, life couldn't be any better for rival, José Mourinho, who appears to have become the first manager in recent Real Madrid history who is actually allowed to do his job. Rather than the traditional routine at the club where the coach is handed a player who is pretty and sells lots of shirts, Mourinho is able to pick and choose his targets with the arrivals of Sami Khedira and Ricardo Carvalho as proof positive of his influence.
But Mourinho showed that he was the one wearing the trousers at Madrid from day one at his first press conference. Sat next to the newcomer at the Santiago Bernabeu was the club's very flustered director general and right-hand man to Florentino Pérez, Jorge Valdano.
And the first thing that the former Argentinean international said after his introduction of Mourinho was to explain away his comments from the infamous 'sh*t on a stick' article in Marca in 2007, that doubted the managerial abilities of the former Inter boss - and Rafa Benítez too - because he had never made it as a player.
All the time he was spluttering his excuses, Mourinho gave him his best 'I own your ass' expression. Since that watershed moment, transfer demands have been communicated - often through the press - and have largely been met when possible.
It remains to be seen whether this culture change at Madrid is down to a rethink on the club's transfer strategy from Florentino Pérez - who blew €100m on the ineffectual Kaká and Karim Benzema last summer - or if is because it is quite impossible to say 'no' to his new manager.
However, it is clear that it is the Madrid coach who is in a considerably happier mood at the start of the season with a smirking Mourinho giving the starting line-up of the side to face Standard Liege on Tuesday two days early, telling the second-guessing press that "they won't be wrong this time" with their predictions.
Pep Guardiola could not have looked more glum after the 3-1 defeat to Sevilla in the first leg of the Spanish Super Cup just a few hours before with the worsening relationship with his club president very much on his mind.
"If they have come to blows in just a month-and-a-half, imagine how it could end...in the final part of the season" wrote Eduardo Inda, the director of the Madridista Marca enjoying the sight of institutional uncertainty and a coach who isn't trusted at the Camp Nou, for once.
After all, that's something that normally happens a little closer to home.
Moe
powered by;
which makes sense to a certain extent tbf. they will play with 5 midfielder's (if you count in wingers). that's like 45% of the starting line-up. the only area where they need a reinforcement ASAP is surely LB. Benzema, Higuain, and Cristiano (can play as a striker when needed) are enough strikers for now (or at least until the winter break), if they rush themselves to sign a player right now he'd probably cost them twice as expensive.
el tren
Adolfo Valencia
... now you made me a sad panda ...
House of Flies
all your bases belong to us
me too... i am a sad wabbit 
Nándor
New member
Just one more thing.
Once Kaka returns to full form, he is definetely going to replace Özil as the number one AM, unless Mou finds a way to, somehow, accommodate both of these players in the first team. Is it possible? Can Kaka, Alonso, Pedro, Ozil and Ronaldo all be on the pitch at the same time?
with the exception pedro león, yes.
-------???????----------xabi alonso--------
özil--------------kaká--------------cristiano
----------------higuain----------------------
there you go
well, the fight is on...valdano vs. mourinho.
valdano: no more signings
mourinho: 1 striker and 1 LB
valdano: the no.9 striker is in the castilla (morata & joselu)
mourinho: yet way too green, therefore it has to be llorente, drogba etc...
valdano: VDV out, granero stays
mourinho: VDV stays, granero out (no idea who mou would like to be the 4th cantera player required)
probably just about to become a team when josé leaves for man united.
i know about the 4 year deal...but IMHO it's nothing more but a nice gesture directed at madridistas, faking an attempt for stability. in the end it very much likely is down to when SAF retires and not to how many years were agreed in the contract.
in the interest of the club, let's hope SAF doesn't retire within the next few years.
btw...josé getting fed up with benzema???
"if it was for you, i would have to train at 12. cause at 10 you arrive sleeping and at 11 you continue sleeping." (MARCA)
Ode to Django
You're not even a real journalism
If Real Madrid wouldv'e bought maicon and moved ramos to the centre and perhaps got a better left back they would be insane.
Beast
The Observer
Man you are getting worse than Marca
In case your imaginary conversation didn't notice Granero won't and can't be sold as we have to meet the minimum requirement for the Cl as well
Nándor
New member
Man you are getting worse than Marca
In case your imaginary conversation didn't notice Granero won't and can't be sold as we have to meet the minimum requirement for the Cl as well
visually better now?
and who said anything about a conversation?! certainly not me...i just opposed valdanos views to those of mourinho.
as for granero...if it wasn't for that 4th cantera rule, he'd be out by now. we'll see how many minutes he'll get under mourinho.
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