what i wonder is if the catalan players you mentioned above have any problems whatsoever playing with their fellow non-catalan players...but let me drop this, this is a football thread not a political one.
Orhan, but he played this Euro, no? at least at the semis with Germany.
Emilio, you should ask them that personally (and not in public, because, guess what? when a player refuses to play with the Spanish "national" team he's banned by law from any official competition (including clubs, which are private companies)... just the fact of insinuating a negative to play would put them in a black list (as it happened to Oleguer Presas)...
now, that's a democracy, eh? you don't know what the Madrid press can do -even what the government himself can do too, as they did in Fresno with the Catalan hockey team, pure institutional mafia-...
just one last thing: I don't usually go around calling "fascists" to people/countries if I don't know what I'm talking about, and I'm aware of the "importance" of that word, what it means, etc... so if I said that is because things aren't as pretty as it may seem seen from the outside, Italy or the US (some readings and a holidays here are not enough, I'm afraid...). Life is quite beautiful when you live in places that doesn't need to fight constantly to survive. Or when your language is not attacked constantly (as it happened this same week with our Catalan), etc. So you can feel sorry for us any time you want. You lucky, you! :)
well, when they score a goal theyseen to hug each other all together, not with the catalans on one side and the rest on the other. but you're right, i don't have direct experience with some of the things you talk about.
what i feel sorry about is the deep divisions that exist among us humans and not just where you live...so i don't know about lucky.
i do admit that in some cases the only solution is independence, like Czechoslovakia and other former ussr countries. in many of those cases, though, independence did not alleviate the hatreds.
medit, rustu did play, and was responsible for winning the croatia shootout.
we have to discuss something until sunday.;.)
what i heard is that both in austria and switzerland, citizens are complaining about unruly, low social grade soccer classes running amock in their homogenious cities and causing hi end people to stay at home stranded. the other day i read a new york times article titled soccer 1 culture 0. by michael kimmelman, the art critic voicing some of these complaints...
okay i have this game on and i admittedly do not follow the game. but why do they just assume that anyone watching knows the game. they never explain anything to the novice. the whistle blows everytime someone falls down but they never explain what happened. and the one announcer sounds like fat bastard from the austin powers movie and since there may be two goals in the entire game there is quite a bit of time to explain whats going on. go krauts!
i hope rosetti doesn't fuck up the game. he has a stupid way to raise the tension and start flying yellow and red cards at will.
it was all spain and no germany in first half.
beautiful goal by torres and the announcer had the nerve to say it was a bit of luck! c'mon it was a pure concentration and talent.
there was another game on tv before this one; dc vs. la, sad state of american soccer leauge.;.(
Poland losing to Germany at the hands of two Polish players on the German team is perhaps the most ironic and disappointing thing I have ever witnessed.
congratulations to Spain (sorry medit: they were the best team today and in the tournament. they could have probably scored one or two more goals. agree about the officiating, he was calling ridiculous stuff, not playing the advantage rule.
it's true what vado says about the announcers: they should explain more about the calls, and the scottish one, although he can be funny, is also unintelligible half the time.
it's ok Emilio, we aren't suffering that much here... ;)
in Barcelona, a metro area of 4,000,000+, and where soccer is king -beyond what's reasonable- only 10,000 people went out to the streets to celebrate Spain's victory... same % -even lower- in the rest of Catalan cities... so you get an idea of how things are...
of course The Guardian's Graham keeley will give you his typically pro-Spanish biased opinion on how soccer "unites" people in the Spanish state... but we're used to his ridiculous, pretentioulsy sociological b/s anyway
last time Barça won a league, more than a 1,6 million people took Barcelona streets, thousands in the rest of Catalan towns ... oh but then Keeley wasn't here to take note of that... he was in Madrid
Glad, you have had a good time with this soccer succedaneum, but you don't need to wait for two years for good football.. just a couple of months, when the Champions League starts! yeah! :)
good point, Medit. i didn't know of that rift until a semester of studying and working in barcelona many years ago.
i quickly learned not to refer to someone from barcelona as being "spanish." it didn't help that i only spoke castillian spanish and not catalan, and the professor of each of my classes had to speak castellano just because of my presence in the class.
as for the euro final, i'm glad that it was a decisive victory, even though it was just by one goal, and not surrounded with contraversy like the 2006 world cup final and its penalty shot finish.
Spain right down rocked. I cannot talk for Catalunia, but Castilla Leon went crazy, I was watching it in Salamanca´s Plaza Mayor and it was a party the whole time. People were out until 5AM partying and honking in the streets.
Canal cuatro, the local station that carreid the game, used a version of ´Yes We Can´ (Si POdemos) to rile up the audience during the entire euro2008.
germany hardly attacked at all, but some of the worst officiating i've seen in recent history from this series. spain did, alas, deserve the win. and the torres goal had a touch of luck.
i wish pierluigi collina hadn't retired...
which part of that goal was luck? torres got a nice pass from xavi, then created the goal by sheer force of will. he left lahm in the dust with three strides, then made a lovely tap over lehman...didn't see too much luck there, unless your thinking is that lehman misplayed it, which is bad luck for him.
rosetti after the croatia game.. he may very well cost turks the final after yellow cards to arda and tuncay.
guess what? he didn't congratulate the turks... i am surprised he counted semih's last second goal.
it is nice he is consoling the croatian player but he was consistantly scoulding turks.
holz, collina was a superstar! couldn't agree more...he should come out of retirement for the 2010 world cup (at least for the post-group play stages).
this batch of euro 2008 officials was pitiful. maybe it's fifa's fault, but play was stopped far too often for far too many little things that are just part of the game. that and the overabundance of yellow cards was hugely frustrating (for a fan, let alone for the teams and coaches).
nevertheless, i don't think officiating played too big of a role in Spain's victory. they were the better team on the day and deserved the win (44 year drought ended)...
I just want to clarify that the fact that I didn't want Spain to win, doesn't mean I don't acknowledge their merits...
they probably deserved to win but sometimes soccer can be anything but fair.. so I just wanted the Euro to be unfair one more time and the Germans to win, even if that wouldn't have helped for the prestige of the "art" of futbol/football/soccer.
in the end, sports, like life itself, are all about luck...
mation,
the question of the catalan vs. spanish classes in Catalan universities (especially in public unis, where everyone pays taxes and have the same constitutional rights -though some of the Spanish consitutional rights can be laughable from a democratic point of view- to be teached in the language they chose) it's a more complex thing altogether... and since that debate infuriates me -and saddens me- much more than a mere soccer game I'll leave it here.. :p
Emilio,
there are soccer games in this summer Olympics at Beijing, no? you don't need to wait for the World Cup..
true, medit, but that contest gets barely any coverage or interest. i think that most countries don't even send their true national sides, more like youngsters or amateurs, but i could be wrong.
olympics has to be U-23 i believe, but for Spain (for example) that could include some great players from the national team (cesc fabregas, sergio ramos, others)...
or from the US....our under 23 team is pretty decent..not necessarily world class...but i think a few of the players will be.
i think altidore is nice, adu, anda few others will be on the national side soon enough.
but the olympics are watered down national team soccer..
it's a legacy of believing that somehow the Olympics is still about "un-spoilt sports". by being U-23, it assumed that these guys are not just a repeat of the main national team. the fact that most (if not all) of these players will be professionals (at least for the main powers) is supposedly mitigated by the fact that they are 'young'. given that some of them have been playing professionally (with large salaries) since they were 17 or younger, seems to make this a rather tenuous assumption.
as well, each team gets a few "wild card" players who can be older than 23.
still, it does mean that you can't just assume that the main world powers will win the gold - as shown by previous Olympics since this system was adopted:
1992 - spain
1996 - nigeria
2000 - cameroon
2004 - argentina
so just after the day you turn 23 you turn into a sort of corrupt, dirty, unethical player? what's the point of the under-23 rule? why not 22 or 25?
like dlb say there are archimillionaire players at 18 or 20 who are already fucked up with all that fame and money (and drugs, and steroids, and..), their 'spirit' not being exactly very 'olympic' in the more idealistic sense of the term
medit - i don't think it's a case of corrupt or dirty or whatever...i think it's more a case of physical development...a difference similar to college basketball vs. the pros...
of course it's a bit less defined in soccer since most transcendent players started playing pro a lot earlier...rooney, ronaldo, etc...soccer development almost requires that you're playing pro that early or earlier for development teams.
i don't think major players who are considered pros really play in the olympics...but i could be wrong...now on the women's side it seems to be a different story..and a more important contest.
interesting indeed... and regarding the Catalans "erupting in an explosion of patriotic delight" last Sunday, completely misguided...
as it couldn't be any other way when someone from the other side of the world tries to analyse something he doesn't have a clue about...
Euro 2008 Semis
what i wonder is if the catalan players you mentioned above have any problems whatsoever playing with their fellow non-catalan players...but let me drop this, this is a football thread not a political one.
Orhan, but he played this Euro, no? at least at the semis with Germany.
Emilio, you should ask them that personally (and not in public, because, guess what? when a player refuses to play with the Spanish "national" team he's banned by law from any official competition (including clubs, which are private companies)... just the fact of insinuating a negative to play would put them in a black list (as it happened to Oleguer Presas)...
now, that's a democracy, eh? you don't know what the Madrid press can do -even what the government himself can do too, as they did in Fresno with the Catalan hockey team, pure institutional mafia-...
just one last thing: I don't usually go around calling "fascists" to people/countries if I don't know what I'm talking about, and I'm aware of the "importance" of that word, what it means, etc... so if I said that is because things aren't as pretty as it may seem seen from the outside, Italy or the US (some readings and a holidays here are not enough, I'm afraid...). Life is quite beautiful when you live in places that doesn't need to fight constantly to survive. Or when your language is not attacked constantly (as it happened this same week with our Catalan), etc. So you can feel sorry for us any time you want. You lucky, you! :)
well, when they score a goal theyseen to hug each other all together, not with the catalans on one side and the rest on the other. but you're right, i don't have direct experience with some of the things you talk about.
what i feel sorry about is the deep divisions that exist among us humans and not just where you live...so i don't know about lucky.
i do admit that in some cases the only solution is independence, like Czechoslovakia and other former ussr countries. in many of those cases, though, independence did not alleviate the hatreds.
anyway, may the best team win on sunday.
"they seem" to hug
medit, rustu did play, and was responsible for winning the croatia shootout.
we have to discuss something until sunday.;.)
what i heard is that both in austria and switzerland, citizens are complaining about unruly, low social grade soccer classes running amock in their homogenious cities and causing hi end people to stay at home stranded. the other day i read a new york times article titled soccer 1 culture 0. by michael kimmelman, the art critic voicing some of these complaints...
it's got to be Spain in the final. they do more for the art of football than do Germany. let's hope the Gods of the sport are supporting this result.
okay i have this game on and i admittedly do not follow the game. but why do they just assume that anyone watching knows the game. they never explain anything to the novice. the whistle blows everytime someone falls down but they never explain what happened. and the one announcer sounds like fat bastard from the austin powers movie and since there may be two goals in the entire game there is quite a bit of time to explain whats going on. go krauts!
i hope rosetti doesn't fuck up the game. he has a stupid way to raise the tension and start flying yellow and red cards at will.
it was all spain and no germany in first half.
beautiful goal by torres and the announcer had the nerve to say it was a bit of luck! c'mon it was a pure concentration and talent.
there was another game on tv before this one; dc vs. la, sad state of american soccer leauge.;.(
Poland losing to Germany at the hands of two Polish players on the German team is perhaps the most ironic and disappointing thing I have ever witnessed.
ouch right in nuts!
agreed...terrible officiating, but spain is playing beautiful soccer. they deserve the cup.
from someone who knows little about the game, i thought it was a pretty damned good game.
best team won...
bravo!
definitely. best team won. good result for football.
congratulations to Spain (sorry medit: they were the best team today and in the tournament. they could have probably scored one or two more goals. agree about the officiating, he was calling ridiculous stuff, not playing the advantage rule.
it's true what vado says about the announcers: they should explain more about the calls, and the scottish one, although he can be funny, is also unintelligible half the time.
damn, now it's two whole years to the world cup :(
it's ok Emilio, we aren't suffering that much here... ;)
in Barcelona, a metro area of 4,000,000+, and where soccer is king -beyond what's reasonable- only 10,000 people went out to the streets to celebrate Spain's victory... same % -even lower- in the rest of Catalan cities... so you get an idea of how things are...
of course The Guardian's Graham keeley will give you his typically pro-Spanish biased opinion on how soccer "unites" people in the Spanish state... but we're used to his ridiculous, pretentioulsy sociological b/s anyway
last time Barça won a league, more than a 1,6 million people took Barcelona streets, thousands in the rest of Catalan towns ... oh but then Keeley wasn't here to take note of that... he was in Madrid
Glad, you have had a good time with this soccer succedaneum, but you don't need to wait for two years for good football.. just a couple of months, when the Champions League starts! yeah! :)
good point, Medit. i didn't know of that rift until a semester of studying and working in barcelona many years ago.
i quickly learned not to refer to someone from barcelona as being "spanish." it didn't help that i only spoke castillian spanish and not catalan, and the professor of each of my classes had to speak castellano just because of my presence in the class.
as for the euro final, i'm glad that it was a decisive victory, even though it was just by one goal, and not surrounded with contraversy like the 2006 world cup final and its penalty shot finish.
Spain right down rocked. I cannot talk for Catalunia, but Castilla Leon went crazy, I was watching it in Salamanca´s Plaza Mayor and it was a party the whole time. People were out until 5AM partying and honking in the streets.
Canal cuatro, the local station that carreid the game, used a version of ´Yes We Can´ (Si POdemos) to rile up the audience during the entire euro2008.
germany hardly attacked at all, but some of the worst officiating i've seen in recent history from this series. spain did, alas, deserve the win. and the torres goal had a touch of luck.
i wish pierluigi collina hadn't retired...
countdown to 2010 WM can thus begin.
which part of that goal was luck? torres got a nice pass from xavi, then created the goal by sheer force of will. he left lahm in the dust with three strides, then made a lovely tap over lehman...didn't see too much luck there, unless your thinking is that lehman misplayed it, which is bad luck for him.
rosetti after the croatia game.. he may very well cost turks the final after yellow cards to arda and tuncay.
guess what? he didn't congratulate the turks... i am surprised he counted semih's last second goal.
it is nice he is consoling the croatian player but he was consistantly scoulding turks.
holz, collina was a superstar! couldn't agree more...he should come out of retirement for the 2010 world cup (at least for the post-group play stages).
this batch of euro 2008 officials was pitiful. maybe it's fifa's fault, but play was stopped far too often for far too many little things that are just part of the game. that and the overabundance of yellow cards was hugely frustrating (for a fan, let alone for the teams and coaches).
nevertheless, i don't think officiating played too big of a role in Spain's victory. they were the better team on the day and deserved the win (44 year drought ended)...
WARNING: Totally Unrelated to Euro 2008
AP - Did you get my email last week? I never heard back so I wasn't sure if you got it. I don't want you to think I left you high and dry.
I just want to clarify that the fact that I didn't want Spain to win, doesn't mean I don't acknowledge their merits...
they probably deserved to win but sometimes soccer can be anything but fair.. so I just wanted the Euro to be unfair one more time and the Germans to win, even if that wouldn't have helped for the prestige of the "art" of futbol/football/soccer.
in the end, sports, like life itself, are all about luck...
mation,
the question of the catalan vs. spanish classes in Catalan universities (especially in public unis, where everyone pays taxes and have the same constitutional rights -though some of the Spanish consitutional rights can be laughable from a democratic point of view- to be teached in the language they chose) it's a more complex thing altogether... and since that debate infuriates me -and saddens me- much more than a mere soccer game I'll leave it here.. :p
Emilio,
there are soccer games in this summer Olympics at Beijing, no? you don't need to wait for the World Cup..
true, medit, but that contest gets barely any coverage or interest. i think that most countries don't even send their true national sides, more like youngsters or amateurs, but i could be wrong.
olympics has to be U-23 i believe, but for Spain (for example) that could include some great players from the national team (cesc fabregas, sergio ramos, others)...
or from the US....our under 23 team is pretty decent..not necessarily world class...but i think a few of the players will be.
i think altidore is nice, adu, anda few others will be on the national side soon enough.
but the olympics are watered down national team soccer..
why wouldnt they use pros like in basketball or hockey?
it's a legacy of believing that somehow the Olympics is still about "un-spoilt sports". by being U-23, it assumed that these guys are not just a repeat of the main national team. the fact that most (if not all) of these players will be professionals (at least for the main powers) is supposedly mitigated by the fact that they are 'young'. given that some of them have been playing professionally (with large salaries) since they were 17 or younger, seems to make this a rather tenuous assumption.
as well, each team gets a few "wild card" players who can be older than 23.
still, it does mean that you can't just assume that the main world powers will win the gold - as shown by previous Olympics since this system was adopted:
1992 - spain
1996 - nigeria
2000 - cameroon
2004 - argentina
so just after the day you turn 23 you turn into a sort of corrupt, dirty, unethical player? what's the point of the under-23 rule? why not 22 or 25?
like dlb say there are archimillionaire players at 18 or 20 who are already fucked up with all that fame and money (and drugs, and steroids, and..), their 'spirit' not being exactly very 'olympic' in the more idealistic sense of the term
medit - i don't think it's a case of corrupt or dirty or whatever...i think it's more a case of physical development...a difference similar to college basketball vs. the pros...
of course it's a bit less defined in soccer since most transcendent players started playing pro a lot earlier...rooney, ronaldo, etc...soccer development almost requires that you're playing pro that early or earlier for development teams.
i don't think major players who are considered pros really play in the olympics...but i could be wrong...now on the women's side it seems to be a different story..and a more important contest.
here is one short history of soccer at the Olympics:
www.soccerhall.org/history/OlympicFootballTournaments.htm
here's a couple of interesting editorials on nationalism, multiculturalism and european football.
la times
slate
interesting indeed... and regarding the Catalans "erupting in an explosion of patriotic delight" last Sunday, completely misguided...
as it couldn't be any other way when someone from the other side of the world tries to analyse something he doesn't have a clue about...
oh, reporters...
yeah, i thought about what you had said earlier in this post as i read that.
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