₦airaland Forum

usbcable:
@pharoh,
why stop the news reporting nah?

Because only Barcelona are in the news

Mcleo007:
Nice bargain that favours him and the club. The move would help build his game confidence and afford him sufficient playing time to explore his talents. His goal scoring decimal is too poor for a striker speakless of one in this current Barca team.

The deal itself is a little strange. It's usually a loan + option of purchase or an outright sale + option of buy back but this deal combines everything. It's like our transfer guys have smartened up. They hardly sell any youngster without inserting a buy black clause.
As for our Sanchez deal. . . It's like Jeffren wants to ruins it. He doesn't want to move to Udinese.

Bojan set to join Roma. . .
Bojan will join Roma on loan with an option for Roma to buy him for €10m and an option for Barca to buy him back for €15m.
Dunno how long the loan is for.
With Roma likely to sell Vucinic, I'm sure he'll get enough game time and under Enrique's guidance, he just might get his groove back.
Wishing him the very best. . . I'd have preferred he stayed in La Liga though.

ritchboy:
In terms of  team achievement Rooney has more league and domestic cup titles, Pedro has the world cup. Since we are comparing players and not clubs, individual honors should clearly take precedence and this is where Rooney completely blows Pedro out of the water. From Wikipedia:

   PFA Players' Player of the Year (1): 2009–10
   PFA Young Player of the Year (2): 2004–05, 2005–06
   PFA Fans' Player of the Year (2): 2005–06, 2009–10
   PFA Premier League Team of the Year (2): 2005–06, 2009–10
   Goal of the Season (2): 2004-05, 2006–07
   Goal of the Month (5): October 2003, January 2005, April 2005, January 2007, March 2007
   FWA Footballer of the Year (1): 2009–10
   Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year (2): 2005–06, 2009–10
   BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year (1): 2002
   Bravo Award (1): 2003
   UEFA Euro 2004 Team of the Tournament
   FIFPro World Young Player of the Year (1): 2004–05
   Premier League Player of the Month (5): February 2005, December 2005, March 2006, October 2007, January 2010
   Barclays Player of the Season (1): 2009–10
   FIFA Club World Cup Golden Ball (1): 2008
   England Player of the Year (2): 2008, 2009

I can't even find any tangible individual honor for Pedro anywhere. . . They are not mates.

Of course, Rooney would have more personal awards, he has been playing top flight football for God knows how long. . . Pedro only just broke into Barca's first team two seasons ago.

2010/11 was Rooney's worst season of his career and he still had a better goal+assist ratio than Pedro. Rooney played deeper than Pedro last season so your claim of Pedro playing wide holds no water. Telling us Pedro has more assists is a big fat smelly lie and you should be ashamed of yourself.

If we look at other season's besides 2010/11, the gap grows exponentially wider.

Pedro had a better strike rate and made 10 assists.

Cesc had a goal and about 3 assists(he also scored the winning penalty in the shootout vs Italy) for Spain @ Euro 2008, he played at least 20-30mins in  all the games and started 2 of them(including the final). Pedro, Busquets, Pique didn't kick a ball, in fact they weren't even in the squad.

At the world cup he saw less playing time but was still instrumental whenever he came on, and assisted Iniesta's winner in the final. That's 4 assists and a goal + a decisive penalty for Cesc to 0 goals and 0 assists for Pedro(an attacking player) + whatever Busquets/Pique offered in the final third.

Anyone with half a brain should be able to deduce who played a bigger role in Spain winning BOTH titles.

Another embarrassing lie, you're getting really good at this.

2 starts in 13 games(Euro + world cup). 0 start at the world cup. . . Pique and Busquets played every minute of Spain's world cup win. Spain's defence is a major reason why they won the world cup. They had the best defensive record at the world cup, conceding just two goals.

Myopic logic. When did Xavi(the player keeping him out) emerge?

Yet more daft reasoning. Spain changed their system at the world cup because of Busquets or because they had a different manager with different ideas? The fact Alonso was on the bench at the Euros and started at the world cup proves you don't have a clue.

Spain could have still played 4-4-2 at the world cup with Alonso on the bench and Busquets & Xavi in the middle / Torres & Villa upfront. Why did they have to change their system to accommodate Busquests? Oh i forgot, you don't have a the faintest idea!

It simply means he is not as good as the player that emerged before him(Xavi). Do you expect them to play their "greatest talent since Rooney" just for the sake of it? Blimey, maybe they should just make their starting XI a team of "greatest talents since Bleep"  GK: "greatest talent since Casillas" CB: "greatest talent since Hierro" etc. SMH

Nonsense! Spain continued with 4-4-2 after VDB was appointed coach. They played 4-4-2 at the confed.cup with Alonso, Xavi, Cesc and Riera. The switch to 4-2-3-1 was majorly because of Busquets emergence. Busquets and Alonso are two of Spain's best midfielders and they both had to start.
Xavi is not benching Cesc. They can play together. They played together at the confed. cup. They can play a 4-4-2 diamond with Alonso/Busquets, Xavi, Iniesta and Cesc at the apex. They can play a 4-5-1. . . Cesc is not good enough to start, period!

And you capped it all off with the most idiotic comment of the lot, bravo!

whatever

1025:
@medjai,
both la liga and epl provide 4 teams each in the champions league, in the last five years now, can u tell me of any of the 4 teams from spain that goes into the knock out stages and can u tell me in any of these yrs that the 4 epl teams no make am?

Crap! In the last 5 years, la liga teams have won the champions league three times compared to the EPL that has won just once. 

can the six first teams of la liga  face the first six of epl?
tothenham messed up inter and ac milian in their debut appearance of champions league so tell me apart from madrid and barca, which other team in la liga can stand these english teams.

Villareal made the champions league s/final in its debut in 2006.
Man Utd and Villareal have met four times and United have never won. Infact, Villareal qualified ahead of Man Utd in the group stage of 2006 champions league.
Sevilla defeated Arsenal 3-0 in 2008.
Valencia have defeated Arsenal so many times and actually knocked them out in 2004
Atletico Madrid defeated Liverpool in 2010 Europa League s/final. . . The mid table teams in Spain will win the league and finish unbeaten if they were in the EPL.

in football, money controls the players and in england, funds are flowing and teams are buying so other countries have one or two teams with these financial muscles to stand the test of time.
like i said, at the begining of every new season in la liga, madrid and barca will set their targets on winning the league while other teams will target finishing third unlike in england where, tothenham, man city, liverpool, arsenal, chelsea and man u work towards winning the tittle.

EPL is a two horse race - Man Utd and Chelsea. City, Tottenham and the other teams you mentioned challenge for the title every season, yet only three teams have won the league in the last 11 years - the lowest amongst the top leagues in Europe. What sort of challenge do these teams offer? Challenge that yields no result

have u asked urself, why ronaldo no score 50+ in epl but is doing that is spain? rossi, forlan kanoute will all tell u why they are doing better in la liga then epl while robinho will always shiver at the mention of epl. preasure, competition and business is greater in epl.

If this isn't the height of crap, nothing could ever be. . . The French and Russian league are better than the EPL since Odemwingie never managed to score 15 goals during his spell there?

He now earns X4 what he earned at Marseille plus a $120,000 Maserati ride #living the life

Abeg, what's Murray doing on the poll?

honeric01:
But is Lokomotiv Moscow not bigger than Malaga and West ham?

My point is he just keeps moving. He plays in a different team and a different league every season. Who knows where he'd be playing after next season? It could be in the Persian Gulf. . . Wishing him the best though.

AjanleKoko:
I'm sure the 'variables' will include at least one player. Maybe Jeffren, as Bojan is already likely to sign for Roma.

. . . Heard the deal is around £33m, that's around 37m or €38m, I guess that includes whatever "variables" we are adding. . . I really don't know if I can call that a bargain considering that City and Chelsea were in the race to sign him.

Agree fully on Spain U-21. However, they showed some hesitation and lack of killer instinct going forward that was a characteristic of Spanish sides pre-2008. That game could easily have ended 8-0 even, with the way they tore the Ukranians apart.

Bojan worries me. He's clearly brilliant, but lacks a forward's killer instinct. In that game, he got into some outstanding positions, but somehow could not bring himself to kill off the move. I think he needs to play more frequently, in a more physically demanding league. He has the potential and intelligence. Maybe Italy might make him sharper.

Bojan is low on confidence. He needs games and goals. . . strikers feed on goals. I'll suggest we sell him to Roma with a buyback clause.

Meanwhile, I just read on Goal.com that Mou is planning to roll out a 4-3-3 to accomodate Sahin. Playing 2 defensive midfielders, Khedira on the right, Alonso as the pivot, and Sahin on the left. He will supposedly deploy CR, Benzema, and Oezil up front.

Talk about learning from Barca. I think that formation will be interesting to see. What do you guys think?

Hmm. . . Interesting. I thought Khedira would be the fall guy if they were gonna accomodate Sahin.
IMO, he's Madrid's weak link.
I don't know but it seems they are gonna be moving Ozil to the flanks and that might just be the problem - width. I don't know how Ozil'd fare playing on the flanks. He'll have to run at defenders and he seems a bit slow. He'd have to do a lot of back tracking to help out the full-backs and it doesn't look like he's got the energy for that. Let's just wait and see.

Dis Guy:
I mean Globacom premier league players Like Ajani Ibrahim with Sanusi Rabiu, Gambo Mohammed ect etc

you never see them on newspapers outside the pitch!

she na on top the 100k wey dem dey collect once in 6 months na him go on vacation?
Making basic ends meet is a difficult enough task.

Na wa o! Inter - Malaga - West Ham and now Lokomotiv Moscow. . . Na real wa

Dis Guy:
which one is wafu cup again, thought it was countries that play wafu, no?

lol. There's a WAFU club competition. I think it's a new tourney, I found about it last year. Rangers won the last edition, they defeated a Togolese team in the final.
Good start for them and great stuff from Uche Nwafor.

Ehiosun on target yet again. . . Dude can't stop scoring.

khanye:
Barcelona made a bid of "28M+11M variables" for Udinese attacker Alexis Sanchez (22). The player could be in Barcelona on Wednesday. [sky]

Good! I just hope it doesn't involve sending any of our players the other way. I'd be delighted if we could land him.

Spain U-21 still doing very well. Defeated Ukraine 3-0. Adrian and a Mata brace. De Gea also saved penalty. Fantastic stuff from the youngsters. . . These guys will tear apart most senior teams in Europe. Thiago and Montoya have really impressed so far.

AjanleKoko:
. . . and the young English talent just crashed out of the European U-21s

despite having a £20m rated Henderson. . . Sunderland must be cartwheeling to the bank.

[quote author=A-40 link=topic=567773.msg8548218#msg8548218 date=1308492627]Cesc's dime to iniesta outweighed every single minute Busquets and shakira played

We are talking contribution u are talking starts! Spain played two holding MF's in both triumphs so UNless u wanna Tell me displacing Marcos senna is harder than displacing Xavi u really don't have a Point[/quote]That was just the final. Busquets and Pique made sure Spain got to the final conceding just two goals - a world cup record.
Spain played with one holding midfielder in Euro '08. They played 4-4-2 with Silva, Senna, Xavi and Iniesta, in midfield.

mystikal:
I repeat o, Pique n Busquets, how?
Just decent abegi.

Pique = Samba
Busquets = well, Busquets

Pique: member FIFPRO XI

ritchboy:
Based on anything. Talent - Rooney. Achievements - Rooney. Stats - Rooney. Hype - Rooney. Fanfare - Rooney. It's a flawless victory, there is absolutely no basis for comparison.

Achievements:
Pedro is a world cup winner. He has won everything there's to be won in football. Only thing missing is a Euro championship. Rooney?
Pedro is the only player to have scored in 6 different competitions.

Stats:
2010/11
Pedro: 54 apps 22 goals
Rooney 40 apps 16 goals

Pedro had a better strike rate last season and that's despite playing on the wings and not scoring any penalty. . . Pedro even has more assists.

Hype and fanfare: Exactly what Rooney has got.

This argument is supremely reetarded considering the fact Cesc doesn't play the same position as Pedro, Busquets or Pique. Like i said before, XAVI is the one benching Cesc. Maybe Capdevila is also better than Cesc because he started for Spain.

Perhaps you didn't read A-40's post. . . He said Cesc is a more of a reason why Spain are European and world champions than Pique and Busquets. . . How? By having his Bottom on the bench?

Cesc only started one game in Spain's Euro 2008 triumph and didn't start any game at the world cup. . . If Cesc were Spain's "greatest talent" since Rooney, he'd be playing more than a bit part role for country. Rooney features regularly for England. . . If Messi were to be a Spaniard, do you think he'd be getting benched despite Spain having Villa and Torres?
Spain played a 4-4-2 formation at Euro 08 but because of the emergence of Busquets, they played 4-2-3-1 at the world cup. . . If Cesc were so important, the manager would have at least found a way to accomodate him in the starting line up.
Rooney's breakout was Euro 04, right? Only Casillas, Puyol, Xavi, Marchena, Alonso and Torres, were in Spain's Euro 04 squad and also in the Euro 08 and world cup winning squad. The rest made their way into the team after Euro 04. . . Spain more or less assembled a Euro and world cup winning squad after Euro 04 and its "greatest talent" since Euro 04 sits on the bench, how's that?

Cesc is very good but Spain's greatest talent since Rooney? Abeg. . .Even a fully fit Santi Cazorla plays a bigger role for Spain.

ritchboy:
Busquets and Pique aren't forwards so i'll avoid comparison. But Pedro as good as Rooney? This is ludicrous even by your standards.

Pedro's not as good as Rooney? Based on gini? Talent, achievements, basic stats, hype or fanfare?
[quote author=A-40 link=topic=567773.msg8545349#msg8545349 date=1308433153]Maybe u guys are mistaking Cesc for Valdes or Reina. Cesc is a bigger reason why Spain are euro and World Champions than Pique,busquets and Pedro combined[/quote]Busquets and Pique played every single minute of Spain's world cup win. Cesc?

ritchboy:
How many "great" Spanish talents have emerged after Rooney besides Cesc?

Cesc doesn't even start for Spain.

Shiny Suit Theory - Jay Electronica ft. Jay Z

I'm not sure Rossell has taken the best course of action. Things are only going to get worse between the two clubs now.
It definitely needed to be said, but why say it now? Why not back when it all happened?
This will only serve as a distraction and this certainly won't be the end of it.

I think Rossell should have just let it slide. El classico has come and gone, let's just forget about everything and move on.
Rossell also blamed City and Chelsea for making prices go up in the transfer market. True! But I think that's being disrespectful to them and it's not like we're saints ourselves:
€40m + Eto'o for Ibra happened on his watch.
I don't think it was smart letting the whole world know that we have more than €45m to spend on transfers. Now, the prices on our targets will definitely go up.

Dis Guy:
Sunshine FC top of the league!!

Na wa o! But can they hold on? It's just one point. . . Dolphins seem a bit tepid since the restart of the league after the break. If Dolphins get their mojo back, they'll blow all the other teams apart.
Meanwhile, Enyimba are 5th, 10 points off the pace. . . They're still very much in it.

Due to continental assignments, Kaduna United and Sunshine Stars had their weekend league matches rescheduled. . .
Results of week 27 rescheduled matches:
Kaduna United 1 vs Heartland 0
Sunshine Stars 2 vs Niger Tornadoes - Ibrahim Ajani netted his 12th goal in this one

slimshay:
^^^In that scenario we have 2 front men in RVP and Chamahk, this 'can also play upfront' guys are talking about Gervinho, I dunno about o. I've not really seen him play alone upfront like we seem to do in away games.

That said, I seem to be the only one who thinks letting Bendtner go is a loss. At his age, some tops strikers in Europe now were 'nowhere' to be found.

He might not be as good as he thinks he is, but IMO better than most people are willing to admit. Playing him wide has not really worked for him either.

All said and done though Gervinho is a better player.

Bendtner is a good player, Wenger is just struggling to get the best out of him. He does well when he plays as a targetman like he did during his time at Birmigham and he does for Denmark.
He's got good movement, is quite skillfull, good in the air and very intelligent. I really wouldn't mind if Pep signed him.

daybyday:
Although Kanu happens to be the most successful but talk of glamour, innovation, entertainment, and value to football, give it to Okocha. No Nigerian player has ever taken entertainment football beyond the chores of this continent than J.J Okocha. Ask Ronaldihno who inspired him with all the tricks he performs in football, its Okocha. He may not win awards but Nigerians and indeed the whole world knows J.J is the greatest footballer thus far in Nigeria.

People keep saying this but it's not true. Ronaldinho has always been good at dribbling since his days at Gremio in Brazil.

Syenite:
Rashidi Yekini. Nigeria hadly played a goaless game during his reign.If we won 4-0 Reshidi would score atleast 2goals.
If he was in that team to Ethiopia we would probably had won 4-2.
If it was Yekini that got that chance Yak got and missed against Korea during the last WC the ball would have toren the net and killed a spectator at the stand.

He is (argueably)our most prolific striker ever.

Not arguably, he's our most prolific striker ever.
37 goals in 58 appearances for the Super Eagles. He's our all time highest goal scorer.

I miss Okocha the most. We've not had a midfield since JJ retired.

Looks like our interest in Rossi has cooled. Our main transfer targets now are Sanchez, which I'm afraid we may lose to Man Utd or City as they're willing to offer Udinese more; Fabregas and a left back - Jose Angel or Jose Enrique.
Heard we are close to sealing a deal for the Hercules winger, Kiko Femenia. . .

Stealthy:
Silva is one of the best CBs around. But I'm sure he'll be VERY expensive. Milan have the best transfer guru around, while we are notoriously bad so if this happens, only Milan can gain.

We have about 24 hours left to sign Botia back. I really hope we exercise our buy-back, especially since Gijon got him free to start with,

Botia's transfer to Gijon wasn't free. They signed him for €1m or thereabout.
I can't believe we are letting go the chance to sign a quality CB for just €2m. Perhaps, Pep doesn't really rate him.
Valencia are also interested in him.

Euro U-21 Championships. . . Czech 0 Spain 2. . . Two Adrian Lopez goals and two Mata assits. .  Ole football at its finest.
Jeffren was dropped for Muniain. Montoya was brilliant and Thiago really caught the eye playing in central midfield alongside Javi Martinez. . .Dude's a box of tricks - he can really dribble and he plays box to box too. . . I wish we'd hold on to him. Bojan was on the bench all through.
Quality footie from Spain. I wasn't joking when I said this U-21 team can the win the world cup.

There's no way we can sign Thiago Silva, not with our 45m transfer budget

medjai:
Other news:
Zamfara to play behind closed doors. . . fans issue

A certain club physio(can't remember which club now) has been suspended and fined N 100,000 for attempting to beat up a referee in its club's last match.

It was Kwara United's team doctor that was suspended for two matches and fined a N 100,000 for throwing water on the match referee, Paul Umuago, in its game against Heartland.
Zamfara United will play its next three matches behind closed doors(starting from last weekend) and Shooting Stars will also play its next two matches(starting from last weekend) behind closed doors.
Shooting Stars already lost its last home game to Rangers. . . Next time, they'll learn to behave themselves.

Confederation cup group stage:

Group A
ASEC Mimosas(CIV)
Club Africain(Tunisia)
Kaduna United(Nigeria)
Interclube(Angola)

Group B

Maghreb de Fes(Morocco)
JS Kabylie(Algeria)
Sunshine Stars(Nigeria)
Motema Pembe(DR Congo)