Metal Reviews

1. Money to buy world class players.
2. Coaches who want their team to play actual football.

And Italy clubs are slowly vanishing, replaced by German ones. Germany has the 3rd european league nowadays. They have big stadiums, huge financial means, clubs with secure financial status. I would not be surprised if 10 years from now they're the top dog.

http://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uef ... k2012.html

La Liga got back to work, but now the Seria A is on strike.

interesting read: http://www.atkearney.pt/images/portugal ... utebol.pdf (portuguese URL, but it's in english).

as for the French league, lack of money? it's more like misuse of money. with much smaller budgets, Portuguese clubs have been far more successful abroad and have much more valuable "exports" than French clubs. last year, French champions Lille were defeated by Sporting Lisbon in one of their shittiest seasons ever. PSG, Lyon, Marseille and Lille have all been put to the sword by Portuguese clubs in recent years.

the French people in Toulouse were all like "oh but we have such a COMPETITIVE league and shit". competitive? more like inconsistent! a competitive league is like the Bundesliga or Premier League (especially the latter this year, with 3 title candidates and 3-4 other teams fighting for 4th place).

on the CL draw: Benfica got Man United, Basel and some Romanian side playing their first-ever CL. hope we don't fuck it up like we did last season when we faced Schalke, Lyon an Hapoel Tel Aviv and came out 3rd.

Group A: Bayern Munich, Villarreal, MAN CITY, Napoli
Group B: Inter Milan, CSKA Moscow, Lille, Trabzonspor
Group C: MAN UTD, Benfica, Basel, Otelul Galati
Group D: Real Madrid, Lyon, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb
Group E: CHELSEA, Valencia, Bayer Leverkusen,Genk
Group F: ARSENAL, Marseille, Olympiakos, Borussia Dortmund
Group G: FC Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Zenit, Apoel FC
Group H: Barcelona, AC Milan, BATE Borisov, Viktoria Plzen

PLACE YOUR BETS!
mine:
A: Bayern, Man Shitty, Napoli, V.
B: Inter, CSKA, Lille, Trabz
C: Man U, Benfica, Basel, Otelul
D: Real, Ajax, Lyon, DZ
E: Chelsea, Valencia, Bayer, Genk
F: Borussia, Arsenal, Marseille, Olympiakos
G: Porto, Shakhtar, Zenit, Apoel
H: Barcelona, Milan, BATE, Viktoria

I almost totally agree with you. Except for one bit: French clubs misuse their cash, BUT they also have to pay more than Portuguese clubs (transfer fees and salaries) in order to sign players. It's a fact. Our clubs are cows ready to be milked. Fucking Bosman crap.

And you should not pay any attention to what Toulouse inhabitants may say about football, for they don't know shit about it.

And last but not least, my BET ! :

Group A: Bayern Munich, MAN CITY, Napoli, Villarreal
Group B: Inter Milan, CSKA Moscow, Lille, Trabzonspor
Group C: MAN UTD, Benfica, Basel, Otelul Galati
Group D: Real Madrid, Lyon, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb
Group E: CHELSEA, Valencia, Bayer Leverkusen,Genk
Group F: Borussia, Marseille, Arsenal, Olympiakos
Group G: FC Porto, Shakhtar Donetsk, Zenit, Apoel FC
Group H: Barcelona, AC Milan, BATE Borisov, Viktoria Plzen

Then both Lyon and Marseille get ass raped in 1/8 finals. I hate group stages, they always suck. They're boring. I wish there was ONE AND ONLY ONE European Cup, full "home & away matches". 128 teams, it would take 13 games to win the Cup, same number as currently, except every single round would be intense.

A fool's dream.

why higher transfer fees and salaries? most of our imports and exports are sadly South Americans... who cost the same for everyone.

1) Price discrimination: aka the "Hey it's a French club, those guys have money, let's ask them 50% more than we really want" syndrome. Let's say Benfica and Lyon want the same player. He's valued 8M€. Benfica starts bargaining at 5, and would eventually sign the player at 7-8. Lyon starts bargaining at 5, get "THE FUCK YOU SAY? GIMME 15" as an answer, and eventually sign the player at 12. Examples of that are numerous. The latest is Javier Pastore, bought by Paris Saint-Germain for 42M€, which doesn't make any sense. But at less than that : no deal.

2) Tax. Here, to give 100 to a player, a club must actually pay 250. Really. No joke.

But I don't want that to sound as excuses. Mainly and more importantly: we suck. We. SUCK.
I'm sure Portugal will get France's current 5th place in the years to come. It would be justice after all, if I'm not mistaken, Portuguese clubs won 5 (6 perhaps?) European Cups, against 2 only for French clubs (one C1 only). We're a disgrace.

it's 4 European Cups (2 for Benfica and 2 for Porto), 2 UEFA Cups (Porto) and 1 Cup Winners' Cup (Sporting). Plus Benfica's 5 European Cup final defeats :facepalm:

Pastore's transfer is not so absurd. i mean he was expensive and a few years ago, back when Figo and Zidane, then the best players on the planet, cost "only" €50-60M, it would have been ridiculous, but not now when Torres cost Chelsea €60M and Ibrahimovic cost like €40M plus fucking Samuel Eto'o, not to mention the fact that these petrodollar-powered clubs always pay as much as they are asked and that the Palermo chairman had always stated that he would make any suitors pay dearly for Pastore's signature.
French clubs have to bargain harder. good point about taxes though.

So it's 7. All apologies, I forgot about the C3 won by Mourinho the year before he won the C1, and had no idea about Sporting's C2. But C2 doesn't exist anymore anyway, so let's say it doesn't count. So we have Portugal: 6, France: 1.
You know what? When at the end of the season you'll be above us at the UEFA index, not only I won't be sad, but I will be glad.



The biggest rip off of the past thousand years. But later we knew Joan Laporta did it on purpose in order to fuck up the club financial status, to kill his successor's mandate. But anyway, I don't like Inter, but I respect them for making that deal.

Fuck me Celtic, what the fuck was that??

Happy for Sion though. Good thing for Swiss football.

Arsenal

8-2 ...

Really?! Against who?

Makes them look like a second division Scottish team

Milan: Man United, at Old Trafford, but still... 8-2

Holy crap, no wonder my brother was so pissed.

Benfica is playing Man U for the Champions League... holy shit.

Arsene Wenger really has to get his shit together. he did an incredible job with The Invicibles, but the past few years trying to put a new squad together were clearly for nothing.

:lol :lol

Albania - France 1-2


I swear I want them all dead. Benzema and Lloris excepted.