La Liga 2023/24

sportsczy wrote:What was this game? Spanish Super Cup semi-final?

So it wasn't La Liga or Copa Del Rey. It was the semifinal of the supercup? Isn't the supercup supposed to be a nothing exhibition game between prior year's CDR and La Liga winners... and now it has a semi? First off, how does it have 4 teams looool.

Just lol. Glad I missed it.

You missed this one Sports. It’s thanks to Tebas! Instead of doing his job at Marketing la liga, he contrived this nonsense, expanded friendlies in distant Saudi Arabia, mid season for money. This is third season for this! Speaking of money, Tebas has given himself another raise. His annual salary is 600K, head of Spanish federation is 500K and Flo’s by the way is 100K.
Just insane, that these heads of Federations are ripping everyone off and at same time wrecking futbol for their own personal gain.

sportsczy wrote:Agreed Bill.

Also, it had extra time!  at the very least, it should have gone to PKs after regular time.  I saw the game on tape.  Great game.  But very nonsensical.

Tebas is the worse federation president i have ever seen and most of them are terrible.

To be honest, one of the big reasons I'm souring on La Liga is Tebas. Not only is he a criminal, he constantly attacks Ligue 1 every year. You wonder if he doesn't have anything else to do. If he was smart, he would make friends with Ligue 1 clubs since they develop players. For years, Ligue 1 clubs have fed La Liga with great players. But due to Tebas, things have tensed a bit and Ligue 1 clubs prefer to deal with Germany for example.

I detest all of them Tebas, Rubiales (thank god he’s gone, but who knows who will replace him), Ceferin and Infantino! How they can justify salaries greater than country presidents is beyond me. (Note - I have restricted salary comparison to countries not including states as their salaries would be close to head of Cataluna!)

None of them are in it for the good of futbol. And I was talking about salaries, we all know there are lots of paybacks, as per fifa and Uefa scandals, to them as well.

This Spanish super cup is a prime example that we were discussing in another thread regarding too many games, the expansion to 4 teams, the travel, moving from prior to season friendlies to mid season, all for the sake of money, little regard for players plus I don’t believe there is anything in this for players!

BarcaLearning wrote:God, watching Roberto misses the attempt to shoot from that great move we made... depressing stuff.... Ferran still there... so why we signed Roque if hes just gonna warm the bench

I think your expectation of Roque is way off base. He and Endick are very young, show lots of promise but have not played with the big boys yet. They also need to adjust to Europe. If you bother to check, you will find similar SA talents have typically taken 2 years to adjust and develop. The fact that Barca rushed him in January rather than waiting until summer is only because he is 6 months older than Endick. IMO, his actually playing time in rest of this season will only be sparingly.

BarcaLearning wrote:Watching Yamal muscled off the ball every game just shows the game today u need physicality... Barcas midgets are pretty outdated, unless ur Gavi type Otherwise will just end up like Ferran n Roberto weaklings unable to compete... so all our kids need to bulk up evnetually if wanna succeed in the first team.

I just read yesterday that Barca management are concerned about Yamal in that he has made friends with questionable wrong characters! Don’t Barca put these young talents under some mentorship guidance and life management?

Should I call up,Flo and see if he wants to work with us Sports?

I would go for that, but with a slight modification. The number of teams for each country going would still depend on league ranking. I.e. no way an 8th team from France or Portugal or Netherlands should get 8. i’m ok with half getting direct path and second half have to qualify. Plus you have to make some ability for much lower ranked countries get to play, maybe in qualification rounds. i see no problem with multiple qualification rounds as is done today and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a secondary competition for strongest losers (maybe from final round of qualifying).

I also had liked the concept of a semi league type play up to Christmas, although to do this, you can’t have 32 teams qualifying, perhaps the top 4 teams have to play in the final qualification round. Two groups of 8 would work.

The difference Sports is one country vs 30 some, different laws, labor practices etc. As well there are issues of budget capabilities within the domestic leagues.

In Spain for instance, The top 2 have budgets in excess of 300M, Atleti is around 100M, then the next 10 or so are between 40 to 70, bottom feeders are 20 to 40. And then when you go to 2nd division, top budgets are 10M, most closer to 5M.

The top players don’t need a union, they are extremely well paid esp in comparison to the leagues in US you refer to. It’s the squad players that would benefit, but somehow you have to deal with teams with budgets in 50M to 75M budgets (lots below that as well) and what they can pay to their squads.

What I’m referring to is best explained with 2 examples: Mariano was getting 4M (basically bottom salary on a top club) to sit on bench and wouldn’t go to a lower club where he would play and his proper salary would be at a high of 2M. Other example is Ceballos. He could have gone to Betis and be a starter, but his salary would have been substantially reduced from what he gets at Madrid as a squad player. He did hold out until he was made to feel important and getting some playing time by Carlo. Note I am misleading a bit as there was the issue of transfer fee.

But there are a couple of benefits for all players in a say in number of games and some distribution of revenues.

Note - I must acknowledge that I was anti union (and still am) all my business career.

I think a resolution of this would be some player leadership and do what Spanish Women did, i.e. a holdout until conditions such as numbers of games are discussed. However I suspect the reaction from the likes of Tebas, Rubiales, Cerafin, Infantino is what Spanish federation initially did which was to black list them. If it wasn’t for Rubiales stupidity, they would still be black listed.