Let’s get something straight from the off. I have no affiliation with Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester United, or any other Champions League, or La Liga club. My team is a bog standard Premier League football team, who I’ve supported for over 25 years. Sometimes we’re in the Europa League, sometimes not. Most of the time we’re distinctly average.
I also very much enjoy quality football, and can wax lyrical about seeing great players like Klinsmann, Matthaus, Brehme, Bergkamp, and McGrath until the cows come home. I’ll watch football from any era and be able to appreciate it like I will a great meal, a classic film, or a cold glass of beer on a scorching hot day because I truly, honestly, love seeing the game played like it should be played. Yet deep in the recesses of my soul, in the reptilian part of my brain, lurks a loathing, an evolutionary disgust and hatred, for the modern FC Barcelona. I’ll try and explain why.
I suppose it started when FCB played Chelsea in 2005/2006. I’m no fan of the Abramovich project, but I’ll admit, I do like seeing English sides do well in the Champions League. Neutral games don’t normally get me irked enough to launch tirades at my TV, yet the Messi dive, roll and triple somersault when tackled by Asier Del Horno led to me being told to calm down and take up smoking again by wife number one.
Yes, I know that English players dive too, and I know that Chelsea have never been whiter than white, but was there any need for Messi to pretend he’d been tackled by the hybrid mutant offspring of Jonah Lomu and the Incredible Hulk? Ludicrous.
More recently, we’ve seen Sergio Busquets act like he’s been harpooned by a Japanese whaler when an opposition player comes within 20 feet of him. We’ve seen Dani Alves leap into the air like he’s trod on an IED in Helmand Province, and we’ve seen poor Sainted Lionel hit the deck like Trevor Berbick after a whiff of Mike Tyson. Why do players who are this good need to do this?
Anyway, let’s not pretend that the diving is the only thing. The rise of FC Barcelona to the status of saints amongst footballing men, to a level of nirvana us mortals can only imagine in our dreams, has been alongside the presence of Pep Guardiola. Wonderful Pep, with his skinny shirts and ties, his rugged good looks, and his adherence to tiki taka, tippy tappy nonsense. Pep – let me tell you something mate, and this advice is free. Your team is dull. Duller than a black hole sucking the light out of the universe, duller than the disappearance of every photon in existence.
So you have 99.9999% possession with 8 men? Nobody cares. The opposition are most likely as bored to tears as the viewers on TV are. So your team plays 98438 passes across the midfield before someone pops the ball to the most freakishly gifted footballer since El Diego? Not in the slightest bit fussed. You don’t get my blood pumping, my heart racing. Your team doesn’t make me roar at the game like Milan in the 90’s, like Liverpool in the 80’s, like Bayern and Manchester United did in 99/00. You play what seems like a trillion passes, win the game without breaking sweat, and guess what? Nobody outside of your little coterie of admirers in FIFA, UEFA and Catalunya gives much of a toss.
Click HERE to head to PAGE TWO…
Football has moved on – I think you should too
Bloody mourinhista, madridista, penaltista, franco kisser, frustrated english rubbish fan! What a load of faecal drivel, go to the loo you crappy joke of a writer. Ashamed to name the team you support, fool! What a waste of space!
This is one of the many issues with this “great” Barcelona side. The question is, when will Barcelona win a CL without any controversy? The Del Horno/Messi case of 2006 CL edition, the Ovrado controversy of 2009 @ Stamford Bridge, then the controversial sending off of Van Parse @ Nou Camp. I totally agree with you that Barcelona is yet to win the trophy “Clean”.
U are a very foolish writer who is unworthy of emulation. Get out!
What a load of rubbish. Just one of the haters being jealous of the mighty FCB. Why dont you do the world a favour & ******,instead of stooping so low, you idiot!
Visca FCB, The Greatest Of All Time!!!
“So I’ll finish this mini tirade by saying this. Screw you Andres Iniesta, screw you Xavi Hernandes, screw you Lionel Messi. You’re ruining football. Man up and take a tackle, look forward before looking sideways, shoot from 25 yards. You don’t have to walk the ball into the net. You don’t have to cheat to win. Just play football like it was meant to be played. It’s not difficult.”
What a envious piece of jealous English scum. So you want Barca to play like the English and win F**K all. Why don’t you write about the diving Ronaldo, Di Maria, Marcelo, Pepe, Ramos and Real Madrid. Or divers like Drogba, Molouda and Chelsea.
Rubbish. Just absolute rubbish.
jealousy,jealousy,jealousy,in life there will always be haters like this writter no matter how good u are
This piece is hilarious, so congrats to the author for that! & for having the considerable cojones to put it out there.. But as a very hurt, profoundly disgusted & deeply unforgiving Chelsea fan, I have to say “Balderdash” mate; for aside from their regular, unsavoury, unseemly & extremely unedifying spats with their arch-nemeses Real Madrid, which seem invariably to degenerate into farce & scandalous, shameful fraudulism, Barcelona are unequivocally football’s equivalent of a wet dream: probably the only team on the planet more diverting, entertaining & fun to watch than their own WAGs in their skimpies!!!
Why was this useless person employed to write rubbish.if u prefer the english type of wrestling football so be it but dont try to pass your unfortunate coments on the type of football that has been found after been lost for so long.you are just a piece of menstrual pad. Useless man.
If you want to talk about referees in the 2009 tie, you should add Barcelona deserved a penalty (on Henry) in the first leg and Ballack a second yellow, so with normal refereeing, Barcelona would have gone to Stamford Bridge with 1-0 against a Chelsea withtout ballack, which would have given another game. Second, all penalties Chelsea claim in that game certainly weren’t 100% penalties. Barcelona also deserved a penalty when it was 0-0 (handball Ballack, if we’re not wrong) and the red card of Abidal was a dive from Anelka.
Going back further, you can’t forget Collina (Mourinho’s favourite referee as he had said a week earlier) handed Chelsea the qualification for the quarter-finals in 2005, when he overlooked Carvalho ridiculously holding back Valdes on his line when Terry headed in the 4-2.
So in general, you win some, you lose some, saying referees favour Barcelona in the Champions League cannot be backed up if you look at it neutrally.
no wonder england does not win anything.you really think barca game is boring and you are aroused by kick and rush football.
idioooot!!!!
after harsh tackle from del horno messi is injured for the rest of the season and you are saying he dive???
morooooon!!!!
did ur mother by any chance ran away with a barcelona player!!!