Barcelona: Charged with corruption .... again!

FatTails said:
They'll make an attempt for ETH I think but end up with Xavi. We'll see.
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BTC is interesting too, but we will probably go for Doge

Noot said:
Don't think it was Bartomeu he was against. It's all of it. The club runs themselves like a country ffs, holding elections every few years to choose a president. Whoever's in charge is more concerned with winning the next election than doing what's best for the team. And all that left Pep to do an insane amount of day-to-day work, he even used to be responsible for organising the team buses and making sure everyone had the right sponsored gear.

Unless Barca realise they are a football club and not a political party I can't see Pep ever wanting to throw himself back into the cesspit that is their managerial structure.
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barça, real madrid, real sociedad, athletic... all of them have elections
barca, real and athletic are the only teams that have never been relegated. athletic was always a candidate until all the foreigners came along (8 leagues and 23 cups).

real madrid has 13 champions league and barça 5.
it doesn't seem to me that the results are bad.

clubs owned by fans... what a tragedy! much better to be owned by a random billionaire! even better if he has oil!

VanDeBank said:
Who are you talking about?

ETH is never going anywhere near that dump.

Besides, Barca can't afford a top manager and there's nothing to gain by managing Barcelona. Their entitled fans/board are living in lalaland and expect silverware.
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the only people living in lalaland are people like you. insulting because... yes.
not a single fan expects ten hag or anything else than xavi or a second rate coach.
the only place i have read it is here. nothing in spain. maybe you can find him in a typical article with 10-20 interesting coaches so you can vote your favourite.
 
FCBarcelona said:
BTC is interesting too, but we will probably go for Doge



barça, real madrid, real sociedad, athletic... all of them have elections
barca, real and athletic are the only teams that have never been relegated. athletic was always a candidate until all the foreigners came along (8 leagues and 23 cups).

real madrid has 13 champions league and barça 5.
it doesn't seem to me that the results are bad.

clubs owned by fans... what a tragedy! much better to be owned by a random billionaire! even better if he has oil!



the only people living in lalaland are people like you. insulting because... yes.
not a single fan expects ten hag or anything else than xavi or a second rate coach.
the only place i have read it is here. nothing in spain. maybe you can find him in a typical article with 10-20 interesting coaches so you can vote your favourite.
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Good luck! Hard to imagine Xavi doing any worse than Koeman.
 
FatTails said:
Good luck! Hard to imagine Xavi doing any worse than Koeman.
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Really? It is hard to imagine that a manager whose only experience of managing is in the Qatari league doing worse than a manager who has experienced of managing in the Netherlands, England, Spain and Portugal?

Not saying Xavi will be a bust but there is absolutely nothing in his managerial career to suggest this.
 
Stupid decision really. No manager will perform any better with the situation they're in at the moment.

Xavi, a bit too early I reckon. A bit like Lampard, he should get more experience before taking on a big club.
 
Dave Smith said:
Really? It is hard to imagine that a manager whose only experience of managing is in the Qatari league doing worse than a manager who has experienced of managing in the Netherlands, England, Spain and Portugal?

Not saying Xavi will be a bust but there is absolutely nothing in his managerial career to suggest this.
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I take your point, but it felt like Koeman had checked out mentally from that job a while back at this point. He knew he was only there because sacking him was a bit complicated, not because he was wanted. He didn’t seem very invested for the past couple of months.

We’ll see. Like you said, Xavi is inexperienced but so were Pep and Zidane (and Lampard). It can go either way. Most likely he will be crap, but we’ll see.
 
FatTails said:
I take your point, but it felt like Koeman had checked out mentally from that job a while back at this point. He knew he was only there because sacking him was a bit complicated, not because he was wanted. He didn’t seem very invested for the past couple of months.

We’ll see. Like you said, Xavi is inexperienced but so were Pep and Zidane (and Lampard). It can go either way. Most likely he will be crap, but we’ll see.
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Yeah, I get that. However, to be fair to Koeman it felt like as soon as Laporte came in he was a dead man walking.

Not sure he would've done much better if given full backing as he has proven himself to be a very average manager. However, Xavi to me feels like a crap shoot, as whilst he could be a Pep Mk II he could equally be the complete opposite based on his resume and the current situation.
 
I do hope Xavi fail miserably but in all honesty the performances under Koeman had been abysmal so in reality the bar is already super low. They might not have hit bottom yet but in the position they're right now it seems a logic choice. (?)
 
God bless him for that game where he went full Tony Pulis and was playing shameless hoofball with Luuk de Jong and Pique up front.
 
FCBarcelona said:
the only people living in lalaland are people like you. insulting because... yes.
not a single fan expects ten hag or anything else than xavi or a second rate coach.
the only place i have read it is here. nothing in spain. maybe you can find him in a typical article with 10-20 interesting coaches so you can vote your favourite.
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Excuse me? Where did I insult you?

Your president himself said that Barca needs to compete and there's no write off year for trophies. He's elected by the fans, right? The fans expect good results, evidenced by all booing after every loss and the harrasment of Koeman. That reeks of entitlement. They want trophies and aren't accepting the reality of them being a Europa League team at best.

I never said fans expected ETH, I said he will never go to Barca because it's a mess. Someone else brought him up, I wasn't responding to you or a Spanish newspaper.

At least read the post properly if you're gonna getting all worked up about it.
 
Dave Smith said:
Really? It is hard to imagine that a manager whose only experience of managing is in the Qatari league doing worse than a manager who has experienced of managing in the Netherlands, England, Spain and Portugal?
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His experiences were largely bad.
 
RedDevilQuebecois said:
Is it really that important? If he gets the sack, he gets the sack. The way to do it matters very little when everyone is disgruntled.
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I think it matters when it comes to your reputation as a place of employment. Then again, it is a deeply personal question. How would you like to be fired if it came to that. With Koeman it just feels like Laporta wanted him gone long ago but just kept the finger of the button for reasons unknown. It cannot have been their crippling and colossal debt because they still have to pay him so it makes no difference really.
 
V.O. said:
God bless him for that game where he went full Tony Pulis and was playing shameless hoofball with Luuk de Jong and Pique up front.
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Everytime I’ve watched Barcelona recently, which granted isn’t much but they have been games where they ended up behind, they always end up with Pique up front trying to be a target man :lol:
 
Cheimoon said:
Barcelone have had elected presidents since forever, same for Real Madrid. I don't know how widespread this practice is in Spain, but I think some Portuguese clubs do this as well. In any case, given the history of success of Barca and Real, it seems odd to connect their current issues to this practice.
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It's well documented that Pep left because he was burned out by the politics at the club, so I don't see how that's odd. After Pep joined City I read a couple of books on him (written by people who know him well, too) where he says as much.
 
Wait, so clubs are allowed to sack their managers when things are not going well?
 
Noot said:
It's well documented that Pep left because he was burned out by the politics at the club, so I don't see how that's odd. After Pep joined City I read a couple of books on him (written by people who know him well, too) where he says as much.
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I'm sure that some of it might need reigning in; club presidents recently seem to have been willing to plunge the club into debt just so they can buy a player that will guarantee their own re-election. But I wouldn't say the whole system is necessarily bad. And certainly I would think that the idea of a club president elected by fans should seem attractive compared to the English contexts, where club owners are about as far removed from the fanbase as one could imagine.
 
Scorpy said:
Wait, so clubs are allowed to sack their managers when things are not going well?
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You’re not allowed to draw parallels between Barca and United. It upsets some of our more sensitive fans who are looking for a safe space on the Caf where United and Ole don’t get mentioned.
 
From 3-0 to 3-3, Fati could be out for a month according to reports, Garcia and Nico injured, Aguero with heart issues that could end his carreer good luck to Xavi in this mess...

 
Pogba, Lingard and Cavani are leaving end of year so that will bring the wage bill down by loads.

Unless of course we do end up giving Pogba 400k a week :wenger:
 
spiriticon said:
Pogba, Lingard and Cavani are leaving end of year so that will bring the wage bill down by loads.

Unless of course we do end up giving Pogba 400k a week :wenger:
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I think the concern is more who we sign when he goes. You would imagine we look into a DM and possibly another B2B midfielder, unless the new manager decides that he wants to make VDB the mainstay of the team. Even with the Pog going we probably need at least one other quality CM for rotation purposes, so the wages might end up close to what Pogba would have taken up anyway.

Fortunately we're at a point where the team doesn't need massive investment, at least not in the next year.

It does make you wonder about Haaland though. It's clear the club is interested in him, but will we be able to work him into the equation if he does move next year, or will we be hoping he moves on the year after, when Ronaldo will be gone and we can use those wages for him?

Or is this tweet just oversimplified and I'm overthinking things because I'm not really a business person?

Either way we need to get back to winning things soon to justify this massive outlay, and try to offset some of it with prize money and sponsorships.
 
Cloud7 said:
I think the concern is more who we sign when he goes. You would imagine we look into a DM and possibly another B2B midfielder, unless the new manager decides that he wants to make VDB the mainstay of the team. Even with the Pog going we probably need at least one other quality CM for rotation purposes, so the wages might end up close to what Pogba would have taken up anyway.

Fortunately we're at a point where the team doesn't need massive investment, at least not in the next year.

It does make you wonder about Haaland though. It's clear the club is interested in him, but will we be able to work him into the equation if he does move next year, or will we be hoping he moves on the year after, when Ronaldo will be gone and we can use those wages for him?

Or is this tweet just oversimplified and I'm overthinking things because I'm not really a business person?

Either way we need to get back to winning things soon to justify this massive outlay, and try to offset some of it with prize money and sponsorships.
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Without wanting to derail this thread too much, I'm not so sure we'll get Haaland. Yes the transfer fee may be low, but I think Raiola has priced us out of the running with his wages and agent's fees.

We'll very likely sign a CM but I don't think he'll command 300k a week unless it's Frenkie de Jong, but that's a very long shot.
 
Cloud7 said:
It does make you wonder about Haaland though. It's clear the club is interested in him, but will we be able to work him into the equation if he does move next year, or will we be hoping he moves on the year after, when Ronaldo will be gone and we can use those wages for him?

Or is this tweet just oversimplified and I'm overthinking things because I'm not really a business person?
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Haaland will be transfered this summer, that's almost a guarantee. And he won't go to a club that doesn't play the champions league so United would need to be top4 to entertain the idea.
 
The above tweet makes a comparison without context. United didn't spend 400million on the transfers of varane and ronaldo. And more importantly we're coming out of covid not going into it. A series of catastrophic event came together to send barca into free fall, I don't quite see the same thing here. What can be said is united need to stop paying bench players so extravagantly and remove deadwood quickly. But if united do go into such a mess they're gonna have a harder time coming out of it than Barca. Barca's academy and cheap buys are already saving them millions with new players. I don't quite see the same structure around united.
 
Looks like they're going to europa for first time in about 20 years.

If Benfica defeat already eliminated Kiev at home in final match I think Barca have to win in Munich.

Europa probably best place for them in current situation and also could be more viable route into CL compared to the league so might work out best in long run.
 
Xavi will have to find some verticality in the team (maybe thanks to Dembele and Fati if they manage to stay fit for more than 3 games), otherwise there's a very fine line between tika taka and a shitty boring team that makes a lot of pretty short passes but can't score any goal (like their national team after 2014).


FootballHQ said:
Looks like they're going to europa for first time in about 20 years.

If Benfica defeat already eliminated Kiev at home in final match I think Barca have to win in Munich.
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Yes that's the case, if Benfica wins and Barça draws, they're out.
 
Could play Europa League for first time since 2003/04 season. They're a bigger mess than United which says a lot. Big challenge for Xavi.
 
They lack goalscorers and overall quality in the final third and there is no amount nor quality of coaching that is going to rectify that. I think Xavi will improve their general quality of play and cohesion and to me it seems there are already signs of that but without proper attackers it just won't matter in the end.

Dembele as crocked as he is instantly makes them much more dangerous even when he plays bad and he's the only proper winger in the squad.
 
BorisManUtd said:
Could play Europa League for first time since 2003/04 season. They're a bigger mess than United which says a lot. Big challenge for Xavi.
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I feel we actually have a proper play style. I wouldn’t trade your problems for ours. I think we are in good hands with xavi and I love our youth much more than United’s
 
De Portago said:
They lack goalscorers and overall quality in the final third and there is no amount nor quality of coaching that is going to rectify that. I think Xavi will improve their general quality of play and cohesion and to me it seems there are already signs of that but without proper attackers it just won't matter in the end.
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Fati and dembele healthy will fix that but we need more attackers for sure
 
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