Do You Root For Madrid Or Barca?

Crimson wrote:Yeah Qatar Foundation is a disgrace......

The xcx wrote:

windkick wrote:

izzy26 wrote:

windkick wrote:31 to 16 in favor of Madrid

Honestly not surprised at all, given all the swarm of Barca bashing at any given chance that goes on around here

So?

Honest to God, Madrid got it worse on the old vbulletin forums by Cyber and Fever. There were daily threads about Madrids failures in the CL and their spending without success.
And we weren't even successful at that time.

So what? What's your point? I said I wasn't surprised that the poll was lopside and you respond with "so?"

I don't care about what posters put on the old board as it isn't going on anymore.

Also, LOL at Madrid fans thinking they are mighty cause they are sitting there using this poll or barca's success as a means to argue that they don't have a ton of bandwaggoners too. ALL big clubs in the world have them, not just Barca. Madrid has a massive amount of them, just like Man U and Arsenal etc. Who gives a frak, it comes with the territory of having success

Now who thought that way?

DeviAngel wrote:

omarish wrote:

Immaculate_Mole wrote:

DeviAngel wrote:always liked Madrid more even when madrid had the galacticos ....because they always showed respect to juve and they are close clubs I think ....

Barca I don't hate them or dislike them i don't dislike teams but their recent philosophy of buying any1 thats good wing ( Affelay,Sanchez) just to make the opponent weaker and put them on bench is putting negative things in my eyes and some of Xavi sayings to ...but I support their supporters I mean the real ones

OH MY FREAKING GOD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You do realise that if they did'nt have those 2 players they would have 3 players for 3 positions?

Even Juventus have more depth ffs. Why cant people understand that Barca have little depth upfront and in defence and are one of the smallest squads in europe?

/facepalm.

I think Juve was interested in both but Barca got them and he is disappointed?

tbh I am glad that juve didn't get them .....I want players who want to play for our club with heart and leave the heart on their field ...... thats my opinion thou ...agree with it or dislike it thats that

mole !

Seppuku wrote:

Crimson wrote:

Seppuku wrote:

No it's not its actually a publicly listed company, go buy some shares you can be a part owner too :-)

Just because a company is based in a country it does not mean that country therefor owns the company

Saudi Telecom is state owned. State owned companies can allocate a percentage of their shares for public offerings.

"State-owned Saudi Telecom 7010.SE (STC) reported a 11 percent fall in first-quarter net profit due to bonus salaries ordered by King Abdullah, missing analysts' average estimates." (Reuters)

St_Nick09_of_Goal wrote:Mole, did affelay improve his odds at playing time with Sanchez and fab coming? i mean, he had decent time last season with less depth, is it gonna go down?

zizzle wrote:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Barca doesn't have a lot of fans in this forum because, chances are, we beat your team, too

actually last time we beat you

alexjanosik wrote:It doesnt get any more epic.
A Stoke fan taking digs at Barca for being sponsored by a Middle Eastern organization.
Another Stoke fan reminds the first Stoke fan that Stoke themselves are sponsored by a state owned company from the most barbaric Middle Eastern country of them all!!!

alexjanosik wrote:It doesnt get any more epic.
A Stoke fan taking digs at Barca for being sponsored by a Middle Eastern organization.
Another Stoke fan reminds the first Stoke fan that Stoke themselves are sponsored by a state owned company from the most barbaric Middle Eastern country of them all!!!

In those countries where soccer is known as football—i.e., most of them—one word is guaranteed to recur throughout any conversation on the subject: Barcelona.

Barcelona’s supporters will tell you that their team is more than a word. Mes que un Club (More than a Club) is FC Barcelona’s motto, reflecting its self-regarding status as a concept, an idea, a history—even an ethic. For if soccer is the beautiful game, Barcelona supporters will boast, no team better embodies that quality than ours, both on the field and off.

We, they say, are nothing like Europe’s other star teams.

Yes, yes, they’ll add, Barcelona may be a global brand, but it has become so on its own terms. The team remains the most tangible symbol of the elegant capital of Spain’s artsy, trendy, and restive Catalan region. It still celebrates its pivotal role in rousing opposition to General Franco’s regime—the cause of its bitter rivalry with that other Spanish soccer powerhouse, Real Madrid. Its core is composed of local boys cultivated in the Barcelona academy system—while other European teams have obliterated their regional identities by plucking stars from around the world. And while those teams, like England’s Manchester United, are quite happy to sign shirt sponsorship deals with (cue horrified gasp) American insurance companies, Barcelona’s shirts are emblazoned with the logo of UNICEF, the UN agency charged with improving the lot of the world’s most vulnerable children.

For all these reasons and more, Barcelona is especially attractive to the kind of folk who bring to mind Thomas Paine’s scornful phrase about “sunshine patriots.” Their acquaintance with soccer is fleeting. They are instinctively uncomfortable with the game’s embrace of free market economics and, more understandably, the ongoing blight of fan thuggery. Amid such turbulence Barcelona stands out as a beacon, playing out a delightful narrative of athletic progressivism against the reactionary tide.

As with many “narratives,” this one is essentially a myth constructed from nuggets of fact. Indeed, about the only aspect that isn’t artificial is the team’s prowess on the field. Those of you who don’t follow soccer, pay heed: everything you’ve heard about Barcelona’s sheer, breathtaking brilliance is true. Their peerless matrix of playmakers and goalscorers—Iniesta and Xavi, Alves and Pique, Messi and Villa—was on stunning display during their victory in the UEFA Champions League final last month.

None of that dazzling business, however, is of concern to me here. The story beyond the myth is more interesting.

Let’s start with the UNICEF thing. As of next season, a different logo will take its place, thanks to a deal worth nearly $250 million in the most lucrative shirt-sponsorship in soccer history. That logo belongs to the Qatar Foundation, whose airily defined mission is “to prepare the people of Qatar and the region to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world.” When Barcelona reconvenes at its famed Nou Camp stadium following the summer break, expect such Qatar Foundation luminaries as Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the architect of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, and Yousef Hussain Kamal, the emirate’s current finance minister, to be sitting in the executive suites.

This is not the first time that petrodollars have flowed into soccer’s coffers. Arsenal of north London plays in a stadium called the “Emirates,” thanks to a lucrative deal with the Arab airline of the same name. Manchester City was bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, for over $400 million. Still, as today’s biggest name in international soccer, Barcelona’s arrangement with the Qatar Foundation is the most spectacular example of both the purchasing power and the political power of the oil sheikhs.

Over the last decade, the alliance between European leftists and recidivist elements in the Middle East has been glaringly apparent at street demonstrations. With the Barcelona deal, it has graduated to a boardroom phenomenon. Yet just as the notion of the Gadhafi Foundation as a purely philanthropic outfit was laughable, so it is with the Qatar Foundation. The Gadhafi Foundation, remember, suckered some of Europe’s most eminent liberal institutions and individuals. Now it’s the turn of the Qatar Foundation to step up—if I may swipe an analogy from baseball—to the plate.

The Qatar Foundation is an arm of a state which has refashioned the traditional model of slavery for the thousands of hapless Asian migrant laborers trapped within its borders. The Emirate is also a generous backer of Hamas; the Iranian regime’s propaganda station, Press TV, recently reported that the Hamas leadership may even be relocating to Qatar from Syria. Given that Qatar has been a key base for the Egyptian Islamist leader Sheikh Yousef al Qaradawi, and that its Al Jazeera satellite network has long been a mouthpiece for Hamas, such a move seems eminently plausible.

The Qatar Foundation itself is directly implicated in the financial network of Islamist terror. Professor Hatem Karanshawy, dean of its faculty of Islamic studies, chaired an Islamic Development Bank committee which just awarded a prize for “the promotion of Islamic economics” to the Islamic Foundation in the United Kingdom, a body closely tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan’s Jama’at-e-Islami. The Foundation is also linked with the Union of the Good, an umbrella body of Islamist organizations which includes other ostensibly charitable Qatari institutions, and which financed the pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in May last year.

Buying a stake in the world’s most popular sport, through its most august club, provides Qatar’s rulers with an excellent instrument for fending off the criticism that Hamas terrorists, if they didn’t insist upon civilian clothing when fighting, would, like Barcelona’s players, be wearing uniforms embossed with the emirate’s name. Indeed, last year’s successful bid by Qatar to host the 2022 soccer World Cup, a project for which the ruling family enlisted the assistance of Barcelona’s dashing coach, Pep Guardiola, was the investment’s most handsome dividend yet.

Except that the Qataris may have overextended themselves. Right now, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is mired in a bribes scandal, and the Qataris are up to their necks in it. Already, Theo Zwanziger, Germany’s soccer chief, has called for an investigation into just how this thoroughly nasty little kingdom landed the most coveted prize in international sport.

Will that bounce back onto the Barcelona deal, or even derail it? So far, there’s precious little indication from the club itself that its distinctive version of the Red-Green alliance is to be dumped. However, if this agonized Barcelona supporter is anything to go by, the Nou Camp faithful may feel rather differently—and it is this “army of assorted liberals” that holds the key to the club’s policy.

Maybe, just maybe, we are about to see an isolated example of the European left shrugging off the Islamist embrace. Mes que un Club? We’ll see.

Immaculate_Mole wrote:

St_Nick09_of_Goal wrote:Mole, did affelay improve his odds at playing time with Sanchez and fab coming? i mean, he had decent time last season with less depth, is it gonna go down?

Wont change nothing, he competes with Pedro like always, Sanchez competes with Villa and Fab Competes with Xavi and Iniesta.

Still very much against Fab though

Crimson wrote:

alexjanosik wrote:It doesnt get any more epic.
A Stoke fan taking digs at Barca for being sponsored by a Middle Eastern organization.
Another Stoke fan reminds the first Stoke fan that Stoke themselves are sponsored by a state owned company from the most barbaric Middle Eastern country of them all!!!

In those countries where soccer is known as football—i.e., most of them—one word is guaranteed to recur throughout any conversation on the subject: Barcelona.

Barcelona’s supporters will tell you that their team is more than a word. Mes que un Club (More than a Club) is FC Barcelona’s motto, reflecting its self-regarding status as a concept, an idea, a history—even an ethic. For if soccer is the beautiful game, Barcelona supporters will boast, no team better embodies that quality than ours, both on the field and off.

We, they say, are nothing like Europe’s other star teams.

Yes, yes, they’ll add, Barcelona may be a global brand, but it has become so on its own terms. The team remains the most tangible symbol of the elegant capital of Spain’s artsy, trendy, and restive Catalan region. It still celebrates its pivotal role in rousing opposition to General Franco’s regime—the cause of its bitter rivalry with that other Spanish soccer powerhouse, Real Madrid. Its core is composed of local boys cultivated in the Barcelona academy system—while other European teams have obliterated their regional identities by plucking stars from around the world. And while those teams, like England’s Manchester United, are quite happy to sign shirt sponsorship deals with (cue horrified gasp) American insurance companies, Barcelona’s shirts are emblazoned with the logo of UNICEF, the UN agency charged with improving the lot of the world’s most vulnerable children.

For all these reasons and more, Barcelona is especially attractive to the kind of folk who bring to mind Thomas Paine’s scornful phrase about “sunshine patriots.” Their acquaintance with soccer is fleeting. They are instinctively uncomfortable with the game’s embrace of free market economics and, more understandably, the ongoing blight of fan thuggery. Amid such turbulence Barcelona stands out as a beacon, playing out a delightful narrative of athletic progressivism against the reactionary tide.

As with many “narratives,” this one is essentially a myth constructed from nuggets of fact. Indeed, about the only aspect that isn’t artificial is the team’s prowess on the field. Those of you who don’t follow soccer, pay heed: everything you’ve heard about Barcelona’s sheer, breathtaking brilliance is true. Their peerless matrix of playmakers and goalscorers—Iniesta and Xavi, Alves and Pique, Messi and Villa—was on stunning display during their victory in the UEFA Champions League final last month.

None of that dazzling business, however, is of concern to me here. The story beyond the myth is more interesting.

Let’s start with the UNICEF thing. As of next season, a different logo will take its place, thanks to a deal worth nearly $250 million in the most lucrative shirt-sponsorship in soccer history. That logo belongs to the Qatar Foundation, whose airily defined mission is “to prepare the people of Qatar and the region to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world.” When Barcelona reconvenes at its famed Nou Camp stadium following the summer break, expect such Qatar Foundation luminaries as Sheikh Zaki Yamani, the architect of the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, and Yousef Hussain Kamal, the emirate’s current finance minister, to be sitting in the executive suites.

This is not the first time that petrodollars have flowed into soccer’s coffers. Arsenal of north London plays in a stadium called the “Emirates,” thanks to a lucrative deal with the Arab airline of the same name. Manchester City was bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, brother of Abu Dhabi’s ruler, for over $400 million. Still, as today’s biggest name in international soccer, Barcelona’s arrangement with the Qatar Foundation is the most spectacular example of both the purchasing power and the political power of the oil sheikhs.

Over the last decade, the alliance between European leftists and recidivist elements in the Middle East has been glaringly apparent at street demonstrations. With the Barcelona deal, it has graduated to a boardroom phenomenon. Yet just as the notion of the Gadhafi Foundation as a purely philanthropic outfit was laughable, so it is with the Qatar Foundation. The Gadhafi Foundation, remember, suckered some of Europe’s most eminent liberal institutions and individuals. Now it’s the turn of the Qatar Foundation to step up—if I may swipe an analogy from baseball—to the plate.

The Qatar Foundation is an arm of a state which has refashioned the traditional model of slavery for the thousands of hapless Asian migrant laborers trapped within its borders. The Emirate is also a generous backer of Hamas; the Iranian regime’s propaganda station, Press TV, recently reported that the Hamas leadership may even be relocating to Qatar from Syria. Given that Qatar has been a key base for the Egyptian Islamist leader Sheikh Yousef al Qaradawi, and that its Al Jazeera satellite network has long been a mouthpiece for Hamas, such a move seems eminently plausible.

The Qatar Foundation itself is directly implicated in the financial network of Islamist terror. Professor Hatem Karanshawy, dean of its faculty of Islamic studies, chaired an Islamic Development Bank committee which just awarded a prize for “the promotion of Islamic economics” to the Islamic Foundation in the United Kingdom, a body closely tied to the global Muslim Brotherhood and Pakistan’s Jama’at-e-Islami. The Foundation is also linked with the Union of the Good, an umbrella body of Islamist organizations which includes other ostensibly charitable Qatari institutions, and which financed the pro-Hamas flotilla to Gaza in May last year.

Buying a stake in the world’s most popular sport, through its most august club, provides Qatar’s rulers with an excellent instrument for fending off the criticism that Hamas terrorists, if they didn’t insist upon civilian clothing when fighting, would, like Barcelona’s players, be wearing uniforms embossed with the emirate’s name. Indeed, last year’s successful bid by Qatar to host the 2022 soccer World Cup, a project for which the ruling family enlisted the assistance of Barcelona’s dashing coach, Pep Guardiola, was the investment’s most handsome dividend yet.

Except that the Qataris may have overextended themselves. Right now, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is mired in a bribes scandal, and the Qataris are up to their necks in it. Already, Theo Zwanziger, Germany’s soccer chief, has called for an investigation into just how this thoroughly nasty little kingdom landed the most coveted prize in international sport.

Will that bounce back onto the Barcelona deal, or even derail it? So far, there’s precious little indication from the club itself that its distinctive version of the Red-Green alliance is to be dumped. However, if this agonized Barcelona supporter is anything to go by, the Nou Camp faithful may feel rather differently—and it is this “army of assorted liberals” that holds the key to the club’s policy.

Maybe, just maybe, we are about to see an isolated example of the European left shrugging off the Islamist embrace. Mes que un Club? We’ll see.

It's funny how ignorant some people can be?

But I guess it's easier to close your eyes when you need the money

St_Nick09_of_Goal wrote:

Immaculate_Mole wrote:

St_Nick09_of_Goal wrote:Mole, did affelay improve his odds at playing time with Sanchez and fab coming? i mean, he had decent time last season with less depth, is it gonna go down?

Wont change nothing, he competes with Pedro like always, Sanchez competes with Villa and Fab Competes with Xavi and Iniesta.

Still very much against Fab though

really? i look at things in terms of priority players. Let's say that in the attacking 3, messi is n1, and doesnt compete with anyone, that's two positions for 4 players.

you would agree that Villa comes first than Pedro, no? which means pedro is left to compete with the new super signing Sanchez, and Afellay will scrap time here and there, and be part of the rotation.

isnt it how it works? i think we have more chances of seeing villa-messi-sanchez, than sanchez-messi-pedro

Crimson wrote:Maybe, just maybe, we are about to see an isolated example of the European left shrugging off the Islamist embrace. Mes que un Club? We’ll see.

Crimson wrote:

Two things.
I never claimed the moral high ground.
I am practical about the clubs situation.Barca neeeded money and a shirt sponsorship was inevitable.
It was hypocritical of the Stoke fan to criticize us when Stoke themselves are sponsored by a Saudi company.
Any day of the weak Saudi Arabia is a more oppressive regime than Qatar.This is a country that flogs women for getting raped!!!!
And if bothered I could come up with a hundred far more believable articles about the reprehensible practices and tyranny of the Saudi regime.You can do that yourself.
So get offf your high horse.
If we are guilty Stoke are just as guilty.

alexjanosik wrote:

Crimson wrote:

Two things.
I never claimed the moral high ground.
I am practical about the clubs situation.Barca neeeded money and a shirt sponsorship was inevitable.
It was hypocritical of the Stoke fan to criticize us when Stoke themselves are sponsored by a Saudi company.
Any day of the weak Saudi Arabia is a more oppressive regime than Qatar.This is a country that flogs women for getting raped!!!!
And if bothered I could come up with a hundred far more believable articles about the reprehensible practices and tyranny of the Saudi regime.You can do that yourself.
So get offf your high horse.
If we are guilty Stoke are just as guilty.

Firt of all, the Stoke joke is not funny; unless you suspect a long, cold night in the Bernabeu next Classico.

Second, Saudi Arabia is obviously a country with a terrible regime that no one should support (which I stated earlier too); however Saudi Telecom is not exactly a country concerned with keeping this regime into power (don't say that they fund the government, their revenues are peanuts in comparison to Saudi's oil money) whereas Qatar Foundation has EXACTLY this goal in mind. VERY, VERY big difference. And while I agree it would be better not to do business with Saudi Telecom, I wouldn't call it as morally reprehensible as putting a propaganda machine on your horrendous new home-kit.

Crimson wrote:I love how people can't tell the difference, shows how intellectually impaired, ignorant and small minded some people on this forum really are.

Seppuku wrote:

Seriously though, I can't believe I am talking Barca's side here.lol.

Lionel Messi wrote:

zizzle wrote:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Barca doesn't have a lot of fans in this forum because, chances are, we beat your team, too

actually last time we beat you

We beat Inter last year twice.

zizzle wrote:

Lionel Messi wrote:

zizzle wrote:

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Barca doesn't have a lot of fans in this forum because, chances are, we beat your team, too

actually last time we beat you

We beat Inter last year twice.

ehem, we beat you when it mattered the most

zizzle wrote:ehem, we beat you when it mattered the most