In the video below you can watch some clips of Messi as a youngster. It’s amazing to see how his style doesn’t seem to have changed at all!
Tags: Lionel Messi, Video, YouTube
In the video below you can watch some clips of Messi as a youngster. It’s amazing to see how his style doesn’t seem to have changed at all!
Tags: Lionel Messi, Video, YouTube
Lionel Messi won the Ballon d’Or for the third year running, beating team Xavi and Cristiano Ronaldo to the award for the best player in the world. According to The Scottish Daily record:
Messi, man of the match in the Champions League final in 2011, also won the Spanish league, Spanish Supercopa, UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup last year.
The award is well deserved as Messi continues to thrill with his exciting football skills that make any defence weak at the knees.
Read “Barcelona star Lionel Messi collects third straight Ballon d’Or award” at The Daily Record
Tags: Ballon d'Or, Lionel Messi
After months of waiting Cesc Fabregas has finally signed for FC Barcelona in a five year deal. According to Crunch Sports:
The Spanish champions have paid Arsenal €29million [£25m] for the 24-year-old, who the Gunners had insisted throughout the summer would not be allowed to leave for less than £40m.
Barca will pay an additional €5m should they win two La Liga titles and one Champions League title while Fabregas is at the club.
Tags: Cesc Fabregas
While we’ve all been wondering “will he, won’t he?” about Cesc Fabregas, if Arsenal are to be believed Barça isn’t making much of an effort to get him having made no second bid for the Gunner’s captain.
Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood insists Barcelona have not made a second offer for captain Cesc Fabregas.
Yet despite all the talk coming from Spain, Hill-Wood claims Arsenal have not received an offer for the World Cup winner, and he admits they would consider a “very good offer” from the Spanish and European champions.
Tags: Arsenal, Cesc Fabregas
Pedro’s contract has been extended by a year to 2016 according to a report from the Catalan News Agency. The report states:
Pedro will stay at Barça one more season than foreseen in his current contract. The contract has been extended until June 30th 2016, while his buy out clause has been increased from 90 to 150 million euros. Pedro will sign the new contract on Thursday at around 11.30 and, after that, he will be participate in a photo session outside the FC Barcelona offices.
Click here for the full report
Tags: Pedro, Pedro Rodríguez
According to an article on Goal.com Jeffren Suarez will remain at FC Barcelona until his contract expires next year; he had been expected to leave the club this summer. The article states:
Jeffren does not figure in Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola’s first-team plans for the next season and it was suggested he would be interested in a new challenge in order to find regular action.
However, TV3 suggests the player’s father, Efren Suarez, has met with Barcelona sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta to tell him the 23-year-old wants to stay and see out the last year of his contract with the club.
Tags: Jeffren Suarez, TV3
Thierry Henry is to depart FC Barcelona as widely expected, after signing to the Red Bulls in the United States.
“This marks an exciting new chapter in my career and life,†Henry said in the Red Bulls’ release. “It is an honor to play for the New York Red Bulls. I am fully aware of the team’s history and my sole goal during my time here is to help win the club its first championship. Knowing Red Bull’s significant commitment to soccer locally and internationally, I am confident that my teammates and I will succeed.â€
Henry was responsible for the unpunished handball that allowed France to go through to the World Cup in South Africa instead of Ireland, although the French national squad performed poorly in all respects.
Read “Red Bulls Make Henry Signing Official” at The New York Times
Tags: Thierry Henry
Pep Guardiola has finally signed an extension to his contract that will see him remaining as Barça coach until at least 2011. The FCB website notes:
“Josep Guardiola officially secured his future at FC Barcelona on Wednesday when he signed for another season as coach of the first team along with assistant Tito Vilanova.”
Read “Guardiola signs for another year” at FCBarcelona.cat
Tags: Pep Guardiola
New club president Sandro Rosell has announced via the FC Barcelona website that the club has come to a verbal agreement to extend his contract by two years with the option for a third.
“We’ve reached a verbal agreement and now the vice-president for sport and Pep’s lawyer are sorting out the final detailsâ€.
Read ‘Rosell: “We’ve reached a verbal agreement with Pep”‘ on the FC Barcelona website
Tags: Pep Guadiola, Sandro Rosell
An article in The New York Times argues that the Spanish selection has two sides to it; a good side, typified by Xavi and David Villa, while Joan Capdevila and Fernando Torres represent the dark side in getting members of the opposite team sent off unfairly.
Comparing today’s Spanish squad with the 2002 Brazilian team the article says:
“Like Spain, that team had players who were happy to seek free kicks at the slightest sign of interference, as Rivaldo infamously did in a group game against Turkey. Maybe Spain has surmised that to win a World Cup, you need a full array of the footballing arts, including some of its dark ones; the truth is hidden somewhere behind Vicente del Bosque’s Great Barrier Reef of a moustache, and it isn’t emerging anytime soon. What we can reliably say is that the Spanish, with their careful manipulation of both ball and referee, are in the World Cup quarterfinals.”
Read “Noble Spanish Are Also Masters of Game’s Dark Arts” at The New York Times
Tags: David Villa, Fernando Torres, Joan Capdevila, Spain, World Cup, Xavi
