Three and in – not just another football blog

There are two sides to every story, as they say. FC Barcelona is a great example of this.

Story 1 - a team of wonderfully gifted, athletic, highly skilled, incredibly hard working and well drilled players, augmented by the incredible Lionel Messi who lifts their football from the sublime to the ridiculously sublime. You can’t help but admire the way they try and play, attacking, more attacking, close passing, a high intensity pressing game and just a fantastic ability to unlock teams in the final third.

It’s a beautiful thing. Or it just be a beautiful thing, because now we have:

Story 2 – a team of inveterate cheats, conmen, divers, and actors who seek to gain advantage in the most unsporting way possible at all times. In Mascherano, Busquets and Dani Alves they have a trident of footballing flimflammers who showcase the very worst in the modern game. The slightest contact, or even none at all, and they go down, wailing, shrieking, crying, acting, trying to get their opponent booked or sent off.

You might call it clever play. It’s not. It’s shameful cheating, nothing less. And they’re not alone. I accept that Barcelona’s style of play invites challenges, they nick the ball away at the last second, but Xavi and Iniesta like a jump in the air. Pedro too. Puyol ‘uses his experience’. Or, to put it another way, he cheats. They all do it to some degree and they’re put to shame by Lionel Messi who must get kicked and fouled more than any footballer on the planet and most of the time tries to stay on his feet.

He’s not whiter than white, no professional player is, but often Messi gains an advantage by staying on his feet instead of going down clutching his face/knee/ankle as if he’d been pole-axed.

For me, this Barcelona team’s legacy is tainted by the cheating. You can play great football without diving, without pretending to be kicked when you weren’t, and the thing about it is that no matter how often we see replays of them engaging in this behaviour it doesn’t change.

So they don’t care that they cheat and that’s an insult to anyone, Barcelona fan or neutral, who loves what they do when they actually play football.

It’s symptomatic of football at the moment that every good performance somehow opens a door to a potential transfer. At least in the eyes of the press.

As we all know, regardless of who you support, every transfer window means your team will be linked with countless players. The bigger the team the more players you’ll be close to ‘swooping’ for. And not just regular swooping. ‘Sensational’ swooping. Or ‘shock’ swooping. That’s if they’re not busily engaging in ‘battle’ with another club over that player.

And mostly, and when I say mostly I mean 99% of the time, there’s about as much truth the story as there is in a politician’s explanation as to where he got that cash he keeps in his safe. Yeah, yeah, your friends had a whip around. You won it on a horse. Pffff.

So when Jack Wilshere played outstandingly well against Barcelona the natural consequence of that that is to be linked with a move to Spain. Forget that he’s just broken into the Arsenal first team. Forget that he’s yet to reach 50 first team appearances. Forget that he’s a young player who still has a lot to learn. Let’s whack out some lazy transfer nonsense.

To his credit Pep Guardiola laughed it off, saying:

He is a great player – a great player for Arsenal. And in any case Arsène Wenger doesn’t sell his best players.

Well, Arsene Wenger does sell his best players but only when he chooses. And the idea that just months after seeing off Barcelona’s attempts to bring in Cesc Fabregas he’d sell the finest English talent the club has produced in years is just staggeringly nonsensical.

I know there’s not much to it, and it was probably a question asked of Guardiola, but that the question was even asked says a lot. And while it’s easy to point fingers at the media, the fans who devour transfer tittle-tattle help provide the market for it.

It’s a symbiotic relationship, each feeding off the other, and each quite willing to point the finger rather than accept their part in it. “We don’t create the demand”, say the papers. “We only read it coz it’s in the papers”, say the fans. Anyway, the point is, in a world full of transfer rubbish, Wilshere to Barcelona is as rubbish as it gets.

Until 2021 when Wenger lets Wilshere and Fabregas go, Overmars/Petit style, for a combined €240m fee.

If the noises coming out of South America* are to be believed, we are on the eve of the retirement of one of football’s greats.

After a weekend in which we drooled over a wonder strike from Wayne Rooney, the footballing fraternity prepares to bid farewell to a man who scored goals of such audacious quality on a fairly regular basis.

Forwards are often divided in to two categories: great goalscorers, and scorers of great goals. Ronaldo was undoubtedly both.

Yes, in his latter years he piled on the pounds. There was more gelato than golazo. But fat is temporary; class is permanent.

Kevyn Doran on Vimeo has put together this rather exhaustive retrospective. Take a glance at a career littered with goals.

*not all of the noises, of course. As continents go, it’s fairly noisy. But some of the noises, particularly those on twitter. Which don’t really make any actual audible noise. But you know what I mean.

Barcelona beating Real Madrid 5-0 might well be uncommon but at the same time it wasn’t surprising. Anyone who has watched them – or indeed travelled to see them stuff your team in a Champions League quarter-final – will know that when they click they are simply unstoppable.

It’s safe to say last night was one of their clickiest ever and they deserved the win and the scoreline. And I know we know this already but they did it with eight players who have come through their youth system. Only Villa, Alves and Abidal are ‘outsiders’.

It’s a testament to the Barcelona set-up, they have produced a couple of generations of outstanding footballers, so it just makes you wonder what Real Madrid would be like if they had invested just some of the Galactico money on their own youth system. Only Iker Casillas is a Real youth team product.

Does it really have an influence? In games like these, when overall the qualities of the two teams are fairly close, little things can make the difference. Witness Pique holding up his hand to celebrate the 5th goal. There’s no question that winning this match means more to local players than to foreigners. You can be quite sure if Barcelona had lost the Catalans would feel a lot worse than Özil or Benzema or any of the Madrid players do. Leaving professional pride aside it doesn’t hurt the same way, regardless of how much you stress the importance of the fixture.

I looked at Barcelona last night and the thought that went through my head was that if Arsenal players hated the idea of losing to Spurs as much as Barcelona players enjoyed beating Madrid the capitulation from the other week would not have happened.

There wasn’t much in the way of home grown talent on the Madrid bench either and although last night’s performance would have taken apart any team in the world maybe Madrid need to look at a bit more long-term planning when it comes to their team. Maybe they need to take a step backwards to take two or three forwards. More players for whom losing to Barcelona is not just a bad day at the office but simply unthinkable.

On paper there’s not that much between them, on the pitch however they were worlds apart.

Welcome to this week’s round of La Liga action from Week 2 and a look ahead to Week 3.  The headline story from last weekend is, of course, Barcelona’s 2-0 home defeat to league newcomers, Hércules, on Saturday night.  And to a lesser extent, the huge slice of humble pie I must now consume for being so quick to write the Alicante side off in last week’s blog.

In short, Hércules turned up at Camp Nou with a clear game plan and, through outstanding teamwork and unity, achieved a thoroughly deserved win.  There were no excuses for Barça, as was accepted by Pep Guardiola, who refused to blame Spain’s fixture in Buenos Aires the previous Tuesday, and simply admitted his side were unable to solve the problems Hércules caused them and that on the day “they were simply better”.  Paraguayan striker Nelson Valdez was the Catalan team’s nemesis, finding the net either side of half time, firstly with a clumsily struck volley which deceived his (almost) namesake Victor in the Barça goal, following some sloppy defending.  There were no debates regarding the intention, nor the quality, of the second goal however, when Valdez took advantage of the wealth of time and space Barça’s back 4 afforded him, to curl a delightful finish high into the net.  Following my admittedly rather patronising initial opinions on Hércules last week, I will now duly upgrade them to the ‘ones to watch’ category.  Granted, this is hardly going out on a limb, having just seen them pull off a sensational result that no-one else has managed in the league in 16 months, but the La Liga niños, led by Valdez, David Trezeguet (yep, that’s where he is now) and on-loan Royston Drenthe, will definitely cause problems for other teams this year, who have now been duly warned.  Either that or they’ll be complete toss for the rest of the season and make me look like an even bigger idiot than they did last week.  Time will tell, on both counts.

A few hours later, another historic win catapulted Real Madrid above the slain Catalans, Mourinho recording his first league victory in charge since moving from Inter in the summer, beating Osasuna 1-0 at the Bernabéu.  However, as anyone who witnessed the match will attest, it was by and large a dull, dreary affair and Real were far from prolific going forward.  It was left to Mourinho’s fellow Portuguese henchman Ricardo Carvalho to seal the points just after half-time, after a great run from Mesut Ozil teed up Ronaldo, whose shot Ricardo could only parry back to him.  Ronaldo decided to pass rather than shoot – seemingly for the only time on the night – leaving the unlikely hero, Carvalho with the simple task of side-footing into an empty net.

Real’s city rivals Atlético continued their strong start to the season, beating Athletic Bilbao 2-1 to go top of the table, in a niggly encounter in the Basque Country that produced 9 yellow cards, presumably as tempers flared over what the correct Spanish way of spelling ‘Athletic’ should be.  In amongst the acrimony, Forlan and Tiago scored for Atlético before Llorente grabbed a late consolation for the hosts (suspiciously, Forlan again celebrated with his shirt on – maybe he’s grown a third nipple over the summer).

Elsewhere, Valencia beat Racing 1-0 to propel themselves to second and Racing to second bottom in the table, Racing spared last place due to Levante’s 4-1 defeat at the hands of Getafe.  Ex-pat favourites Malaga beat Zaragoza 5-3 away from home, suggesting neither team will do much this season, with that sort of defending.  Conversely, what promised to be an interesting encounter between Sevilla and Depor ended anticlimactically in a goalless draw.

Former Manchester United Italiano Americano, Rossi scored twice for Villareal in their 4-0 defeat of Espanyol, proving himself to be anything but a sloppy Giuseppe (sorry…), with Espanyol having Chica sent off late on, for good measure.  Completing the round-up, Almeria drew 2-2 at home with Real Sociedad whilst Mallorca’s 2,000km round trip to Gijon saw them head back to the island with only air miles to show for it, suffering a 2-0 defeat to Sporting.  

In Week 1 of the Champion’s League, Barça demonstrated their bouncebackability on Tuesday when they began their bid to win their 4^th European Cup by destroying Panathinaikos 5-1 at home, in what was almost the performance of the week (come on, Arsenal were sublime).  With the home crowd fearing a repeat of events 3 days prior, when the Greeks opened the scoring, Lionel Messi decided he wasn’t going to miss out on 2 concurrent win bonuses and turned on the form once again.  Seemingly behind everything Barca did all night, the Argentine scored 2 and created the 5^th for Dani Alves with an exquisite spooned pass.  Despite this, he was still unable to avoid being labelled ‘rubbish’ in an amusingly honest, if not particularly insightful, piece of commentary from Sky Sports, after missing a penalty to complete what would have been his hat trick.  To be fair, it was a rubbish penalty.

Valencia also began their Champions League campaign with a 4 goal win, beating a poor Bursaspor side 4-0 in Turkey.  2 goals from Higuain was enough for Real to open with a 2-0 win at home to Ajax on Wednesday, though Ajax looked a shadow of their former selves.

In the Europa League, Atlético’s run of form seemed to desert them as they began their defence of the trophy with a 1-0 loss away to Greek side Aris Salonika, former Barcelona youth player Javito with the decisive strike to seal the shock result of round 1.  Villareal also lost, 2-0 away to Dinamo Zagreb, in a miserable night that saw captain Marcos Senna sent off for 2 bookings.  Sevilla lost 1-0 at home to Paris Saint-Germain, leaving it to Getafe to salvage some national pride on the night, producing a brilliant comeback to beat Danish side Odense 2-1, having trailed by a goal at half time.  Javier Arizmendi cancelled out his first half own goal soon after the break, before Pedro Rios scored a late free-kick to seal the victory.

So, looking ahead to this weekend’s action the fixtures are:

Espanyol v Almeria (Saturday, 5pm)
Mallorca v Osasuna (Saturday, 5pm)
Sporting Gijon v Athletic Bilbao (Saturday, 7pm)
Real Sociedad v Real Madrid (Saturday, 9pm)
Hercules v Valencia (Sunday, 4pm)
Levante v Villarreal (Sunday, 4pm)
Racing Santander v Real Zaragoza (Sunday, 4pm)
Atlético Madrid v Barcelona (Sunday, 6pm)
Malaga v Sevilla (Sunday, 8pm) 

The matches available on Sky are highlighted in bold.  Although, annoyingly, despite having no fewer than four dedicated sports channels to choose from, Sky appear to only be showing the 2^nd half of Atlético v Barça, preferring to subject us all to Andy Gray’s ‘last word’ on the weekend’s premiership action until 7pm instead.  I for one find it hugely insulting that Sky’s schedulers assume I’d rather watch Andy twat about with that touch-screen gadget that he still doesn’t seem to have familiarised himself with, rather than watch one of the biggest matches of the weekend happening anywhere in the World.  Even worse, the other Sky Sports channels available are showing yank football, a repeat of the 2005 Ashes and International Showjumping.  Showjumping for f*ck sake?!  Still, with any luck the first half might be available via the red button, as it should be a cracker of a game and the first real test of Atlético’s credentials if they aim to compete with the big two this season.

I’ll be back next week to review and preview.  Meantime, enjoy the weekend and what you can of the action from Spain.

¡Hola!

Welcome to the first of my weekly-to-be blogs covering all the ticker, tacker, olés and hankie waving of the Spanish football season.  I’ll be doing my best throughout the season to keep you up to date with all La Liga’s goings on, including pressing issues such as: how many consecutive hat-tricks Messi has scored; who Mourinho is mostly upset with; and how many Barcelona players have publicly outed themselves and declared their undying love for Cesc Fabregas.

Those of you with access to a televison and/or a calendar may have noticed that La Liga is already underway, with the LFP deciding to organise Week 1’s fixtures a fortnight ago, before taking a well earned rest for two weeks, to accommodate the international break.  In a fit of liberty taking akin to George Bush’s early days in the White House, I decided not to bother covering week 1 and simply await the return to action this weekend to post my thoughts.  So, to bring everyone up to speed, what have we missed?  Well, quite a bit actually… But if you’re reading it here for the first time, you really need to, erm, stay in more.  Nevertheless, to summarise;

Real Madrid have a new manager.  Some Portuguese chap – used to coach in England I think.  It is of course, ‘de uno especial’, Jose Mourinho.  Not wishing to overshadow his own arrival and share any limelight, Jose brought an end to the annual practice of signing overpriced, overrated prima donnas.  Instead, he chose – weirdly – to focus on team players with a strong work ethic, bringing in Germany’s World Cup stars Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira, from Werder Bremen and Stuttgart respectively.  Less surprising arrivals at the Bernabéu were Spanish child prodigy Sergio Canales (from Racing) and Portuguese elder statesman Ricardo Carvalho, from Chelsea, who despite saying he’d “swim to Madrid” to play under Mourinho again, probably just got a flight.  Especially when he glanced at a map and realised Madrid was some 400km from the nearest coastline.  Of the players leaving Madrid, Rafael van der Vaart was arguably the highest profile departure, taking a huge cut in wages (and standards) to sign for Spurs.

Barça also had an active summer, managing to finally rid themselves of Swedish youtube show-pony Zlatan Ibrahimovic, concluding a disastrous piece of transfer business, right up there on a Manchester City-esque scale.  Coach Pep Guardiola also finally landed David Villa from Valencia (pre-World Cup, wisely), Javier Mascherano from Liverpool and Brazilian defender Adriano Correia from Sevilla.  Rumour has it they were also involved in a clandestine and ultimately unsuccessful approach for a Spanish midfielder currently playing in the Premiership, but they kept their cards close to their chest on that one, so we can only speculate as to who that might have been…

Now, before anyone accuses me of ‘big two bias’, this blog will also give plenty of attention (or at least a proportionate amount) to the non-classico teams in the league.  I for one am particularly interested in following the fortunes of newly promoted demigods, Hércules CF, if only because they should provide at least a couple of occasions for me to use lazy journalistic clichés, such as ‘Herculean effort’, each time they achieve a decent result.  Don’t hold your breath for this in next week’s blog though – they’re off to Camp Nou this evening.

After winning the inaugural Europa Cup last year and beating Inter in the UEFA Super Cup, big things are expected of Atlético Madrid this year, despite the loss of Jurado to Schalke late in the transfer window.  World Cup Player of the Tournament Diego Forlán remains to lead the charge though – expect to witness many six-pack revealing goal celebration from him this season.  Seriously, I’ll be keeping tabs on how many yellow cards he picks up for this ridiculous exhibitionism throughout the season.  Jealous, me?

As for the other challengers… well, there aren’t really any title contenders but it’ll be interesting to see how Sevilla and Valencia cope with the loss of some major players and who the movers and shakers in the race for 3^rd place will be (sound familiar, Scottish readers?).

So, on to the football, the season’s curtain raiser, the Spanish Super Cup, saw Lionel Messi demonstrate that he has no intention of taking his foot of the gas, with a sensational hat-trick to almost singlehandedly turn round the tie in Camp Nou, after a first leg 3-1 away defeat to Sevilla.   Barça triumphed 4-0 on the night, 5-3 on aggregate.

In Week 1, Mourinho’s Madrid stuttered away to Majorca where, despite finishing with 5 up front, they failed to break down the islanders and had to settle for a 0-0 draw, giving Jose the perfect excuse to moan to his board about them not buying Drogba for him before the transfer deadline.

Barça started impressively away to Racing with a 3-0 win, Messi, Iniesta and Villa the scorers, with Victor Valdes keeping a clean sheet which included a tremendous penalty save to deny Mohammed Tchite, after a dubious decision to award a foul against Maxwell.

Atlético Madrid started strongly, beating a toothless Sporting Gijon 4-0, including two from Forlan (who celebrated with his shirt on for a change) and one for the soon to depart Jurado.  Simao added a 4^th in stoppage time.  Elsewhere, Espanyol and Valencia both started with 3-1 wins against Getafe and Malaga respectively.  Sevilla went one better away to Levante, coming back from 1-0 down to win 4-1.  A 1-0 home win for Real Sociedad against Villareal, a 1-0 away win for Bilbao at Hercules and goalless draws between Deportivo and Zaragoza, and Osasuna and Almeria, completes the round-up.

At this early a stage the table is still fairly meaningless so deserves little attention, other than to point out that Barça are 2 points ahead of Real, which, if the tight race between them last season is anything to go by, could actually prove to be quite significant later on.  Today’s fixtures include Barcelona v Hércules, Valencia v Racing (5pm GMT), Real Madrid v Osasuna (7pm) and Athletic Bilbao v Atlético Madrid (9pm).  The pick of Sunday’s action sees Villarreal host Espanyol at 6pm and Sevilla entertaining Deportivo immediately afterwards, at 8pm.  Sky are showing all 5 of the games, so there’s plenty to enjoy for the armchair aficionados.

So, that’s it for the for this week, I’ll be back next week to review this weekend’s action and look ahead to Week 3.  Hope you’ve enjoyed my inaugural blog, I look forward to reading any comments.  Unless you’re a pedant desperate to highlight a flawed translation or misplaced piece of Spanish punctuation, in which case – Me cago en tu leche…

Buenos diás.

Personally I’m not much into the concept of ‘second teams’. I support who I support and everyone else is the enemy. It’s a good way to be. You never know when you might get a 2nd division team in the FA Cup (and painful experience means you are wise never to underestimate them) or who you might draw when playing in Europe.

However, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest that many people have long held Barcelona in distant admiration. There are historical reasons, the ying to the fascist yang of Franco’s oppressive regime, and seen as the club of the people rather than the club of the (mostly right wing) government like Real Madrid.

Los Merengues’ training ground deal, which allowed them to re-finance and splurge on the Galácticos, did nothing but perpetuate the perceived villainy of Madrid and play up the plucky, underdoggy zeal with which Barcelona competed.

There’s also the footballing philosophy of Barcelona. It’s impossible not to admire the way they play football, it’s the perfect combination of hard work and sublime talent, making them hugely entertaining to watch as well as incredibly effective.

Yet this summer has changed people’s perception of them in a big way. Their public pursuit of Cesc Fabregas was a shameless exhibition in ill-mannered, orchestrated bullying and tapping up. Regardless of his situation at Arsenal there’s little doubt Fabregas had his head turned by Barcelona as he spent the final part of last season recuperating from injury at home.

Promises were made yet Barcelona knew they couldn’t afford him, especially after signing David Villa for €35m earlier in the summer. They tried, day after day, to drive down the price, using the player to try and damage his relationship with Arsenal fans, with the Arsenal manager, and organising a succession of current players to do likewise. Messi, Iniesta, Valdes, Puyol, Villa, Busquets, Pique and most consistently Xavi all had their say, often more than once and almost always repeating the mantra which must have come from on high.

Then at Spain’s World Cup celebrations Pique and Puyol just happened to have a Barcelona shirt which they pulled over a clearly uncomfortable Fabregas. Anyone who thinks that stunt wasn’t carried out with the knowledge and/or organisation of Barcelona officials is living in a dreamworld. What it illustrated, more than anything, is that Barcelona will do whatever it takes to get what they want regardless of who it hurts. And in this case the person it hurt most was Cesc Fabregas.

He kept his counsel all summer, as he should have done, yet he was used by the club and its players to ensure they didn’t end up losing face having promised the signing. We might have become fed up with the drip-drip of their behaviour but step back now and look and it – it is unconscionably wrong on so many levels. There’s a total lack of respect both for Arsenal and for Cesc himself, something they seem blind to. But then they don’t really care about the players, just the public face of Barcelona.

Take Alexander Hleb, for example. Lured from Arsenal where he was an important, if not always popular player, he started a grand total of 5 league games with them and his career is now in the doldrums. He was never a player they needed, it was just a way for them to flex their muscles and show the football world they could get whoever they wanted at a mere snap of their fingers.

Now they’re at it again, this time with Liverpool’s Javier Mascherano. According to Roy Hodgson the Argentine wasn’t in the ‘right frame of mind’ to play against Man City last night in the wake of interest from Barcelona. Without Mascherano’s destructive presence in midfield Liverpool were overrun and lost 3-0. They might not have won with Mascherano but you can be quite sure it wouldn’t have been that easy.

Have Barcelona offered anything approaching the player’s valuation? Absolutely not, but they’ve made sure he’s well aware of their interest, it’s unthinkable that personal terms haven’t been agreed, even in ballpark range, and they’re using the fact he and his family haven’t settled in England to do a deal as cheaply as possible. And unlike Fabregas, Mascherano seems prepared to aid and abet to ensure the move.

Sure, you can argue that they’re only trying to get the best deal for FC Barcelona, it’s just normal business practice, every club does it. Perhaps they do but to my mind very few of them behave the way Barcelona do. They are arrogant ill-mannered bullies, and they continue to prove it. This idea that they are paragons of virtue is nonsense. Don’t be fooled by the shirt sponsorship deal – allowing Unicef on the front of the jersey is nothing more than carefully planned PR to allow them to sell real sponsorship having allowed fans get used to the sacred shirt with a logo on it.

‘Més que un club’ is their motto. ‘More than a club’. I’m afraid not. Just like every other club, if not worse.

Do you love La Liga? Do you like to suckle Serie A?

Well, if those thoughts haven’t set you off dry heaving into a bin, Three and in are looking for a columnist for each of those leagues for the season ahead. At the moment all we can offer you is a platform for your as yet untapped genius – but once this dot com business starts kicking in again we can offer you billions of shares in the site which, on paper at least, could be worth tens of pounds.

We’re looking for a Spanish columnist and a seperate Italian columnist who will provide weekly updates, or more if they fancy it, on La Liga and Serie A. They should be opinionated, witty and ready to fit in with the overall style of Three and in. Intelligent football comment that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

If you fancy it, please submit a 300-400 word sample article via our contact form and we’ll be in touch once we’ve had a read.

Tell your amigos and amici.

Ciao.

Adios.

And thanks.

It’s hard to imagine Raul in anything other than the white of Real Madrid but after 323 goals in 741 games at the Bernebeu he’s announced his departure. He says his future lies in Germany or England and Schalke are supposedly favourites, but he could definitely do a job in England. Any one of these clubs could use him.

1 – Liverpool: Another free signing would suit the budget and let’s face it, Liverpool need a striker. Perhaps the arrival of Spanish legend might just convince Torres he should stay and try and get Liverpool back into the Champions League.

2 – Spurs: Harry Redknapp might have ruled out a move for him already but we all know what Harry says and what Harry does are often very different. If they get through their qualifying round Raul’s Champions League experience could be a godsend.

3 – Man United: He might be slowing down but with the kind of service he’d get at Old Trafford he’d still score goals. Decent insurance while we wait and see if Michael Owen can stay fit (hah!) or Javier Hernandez can make the step up to the Premier League.

4 – West Ham: They tried to sign Thierry Henry, Sullivan and Gold clearly have plenty of cash to throw around on wages, and Raul would get plenty of football. Would have to face the stiff challenge of Luis Boa Morte though.

5 – Man City: Hey, they seem to be signing every other striker in Europe. It’d be rude if they didn’t at least try.

—

Raul at Madrid.

Fair play to El Niño, he had a dreadful World Cup, though in fairness he was never fit, culminating with a snapped hamgroin in the last minute of extra time.

That hasn’t stopped him acquiring a new agent. And not just any old agent. No sir. He’s got the scorer of the winner in the World Cup final, Andrés Iniesta, to represent him. The ghostly pale Barça player says:

Fernando was fully focused on Spain and we didn’t even talk about his future until last night. He is going to take a break with his wife and daughter, speak to Liverpool and take things from there.

Any club that has him is lucky to have him.

Fantastic. Except for one thing. Iniesta really shouldn’t be talking about the future of a player who is under contract to another club. Everyone knows his future at Liverpool is somewhat in the balance. It’s hard to keep one of the best strikers in the world when you’re going to play Europa League football in the coming season, but Iniesta should mind his own business and refrain from commenting.

Then again, it’s quite clear that wearing the Barcelona shirt means you can say and do what they like with no regard for the club or the employee in question.