(thought this belonged here more than in the “Messi leaving Barca” thread)
Impatiently awaiting Ansu Fati’s return, who still needs a couple more weeks before training, and maybe start after the international break. Hoping he’s salivating at the eventual opportunity to lead Barca. The pressure on him will be considerable, but with the speed, skill and confidence the youth has amply shown, he should sway any doubters as this season goes along.
Anyone know Griezmann’s future there? FFS he was a letdown last season, despite him maintaining his high level of (unfortunately underrated) 2-way defensive play. (An offensive letdown, let’s say, especially for the first half of the season.)
completely unrelated ETA: kinda neat, in a geographic sense, with the two main footy threads, where one is for a little island, while the other is basically for the rest of Planet Earth.
Yeah, Fati was very impressive when healthy for both club and country and really the winger that Barca needed on the left.
Griezmann was just a bad signing. I’m not really disappointed in his play since he was played out of position his entire tenure. Now, Barca doesn’t play a formation with his best position, so he’s a pretty expensive marketing signing. Just very indicative of Barcelona shambolic management for a while now.
Gerd Müller died today. Was to be expected any day, he was very ill, but still sad to read it. Alzheimer is a bitch.
And now let’s see how Barça plays without Messi. I am still unsure, maybe it would have been preferable for him to leave much sooner, maybe he should have stayed forever… but:
I am afraid I see more signs of fraud, embezzlement and corruption there than of incompetence. Just have no proof, so I’ll shut up.
Purely on footballing terms, they should have sold him to ManCity for $100M last summer. Would have saved them over $200M. Which I guess would have translated into Lautaro Martinez and a little less debt, so not super exciting, but neither was Barca last season.
Far more exciting so far. Really looked like a fun attacking squad against Real Sociedad - even managed to make the game super exciting late in the 2nd half when they let Sociedad back in it 
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Rumor mill is saying that Mbappe is going to force an exit this summer. That’d be wild. Because of Messi?
Mbappe eventually to Real Madrid I thought I heard?
I heard a ridiculous rumour that after Ronaldo’s contract is up next year that he might go to PSG, which would be really freaking silly.
The rumor that’s going around is that Mbappe will force a move this window and then PSG will use the money to buy Ronaldo (and have $80M left over, I would think).
I don’t know if I buy any of this, but it would have for a very dramatic end of the transfer window.
Forgot to mention seeing some real ugliness last Sunday while watching Nice vs. Marsellies. Almost surreal seeing a good-sized swarm of Nice fans just barrel out onto the pitch. Can’t remember seeing anything quite like that. Even the bottle-throwing was happening a bunch of times during corner kicks (the ref doing squat about it) heading up to that gong show. The last time I saw bottle throwing was in the South American leagues 15 years ago.
Man City, PSG, and RB Leipzig is a heck of a group. It’ll be less scary if Mbappe gets his wish to leave though. Kinda surprised he’s not interested in at least one season with Messi
If Mbappe stays and CR7 comes to Man City it might be the best group in the history of the CL.
Depending how you define it, yeah, probably. I mean, that’s 2 out of the 3 best ever, someone that’ll eventually be the CONMEBOL all time top scorer, and a guy whose career trajectory is just as high as the other 3. Plus KDB who might be the best player in the world at the moment.
Strickly on a top to bottom competitiveness level I might go with Dortmund, Real Madrid, Ajax, Man City in 12-13. Dortmund and Real Madrid met up again in the semifinals.
Of course I don’t know and not going to go through the group stages for the history of the competition.
Ready to break out the popcorn (rare) beer tomorrow for Messi’s wierd PSG debut in Riems.
Not expecting the Big Three to be on the pitch all at the same time, but just seeing number 30, alone, will take some getting used to.
With Upamecano and Konaté gone, and Sabitzer likely about to leave, RB Leipzig isn’t quite the team it was when it qualified. That said, it will still be a really fun group to watch.
They added Andre Silva too. And the loss of both starting CBs is a pretty big deal, but that’s quite an addition up top.
Barca loaning Griezmann back to Athletico with a 40M option to buy. They spend 120M on him and got ~20 goals for it. Has to be the worst ~5 years of transfers in the history of the sport, right?
Dembele, Coutinho the list of bad transfers in shocking.
It’s not clear to me if Coutinho is the worst of all these, but his putting up an assist and two goals against Barca in the UCL quarterfinals certainly added injury to insult.
I dont think its the worst by any means but his cost measured against his performance at Barca is pretty poor.
