Barcelona Vs Liverpool I(Tactic vs Strategy)

In Rafa, Liverpool is blessed with the most tactical manager/Coach of them all. Rafa is the ultimate chess manager always adopting, shifting and changing both his personnel, style and formation. Many have try to tinker like Rafa, but only Rafa is successful.

In Spain his team Valencia was known as the well oil-Machine! Put any player they’ll know their part and their function. The ultimate balance between defence and attack that made the Galactico of Madrid and Rijkaard’s Barca Crumble twice in the hand of the tubby one. He even humiliated Houllier’s Liverpool when we were top of our game(just after the treble).

Indeed it is a EPL gain and La liga Lost when Rafa switch to the Red. Sudenly with Rafas Red and Mourinho Blue addition to the Preimership has now eslips the La Liga! In Rafa And Jose we have the new generation of thinking coach in the world football.

Barca on the other side have Frank Rijkaard the legendary Dutchman of the holy Milan trio of Rijkaard,Van Basten and Gullit. Winner of the 1988 European Cup for both his Country and club Ac Milan. A superb player indeed!

Rijkaard is the more natural flowing coach who is a strategist which involves mainly of free flowing attacking using optimal width and the use of individual brilliance skills and expression. His team is the balance between individual and team attack. Allowing individual brilliance without sacrificing the team play.

They have the best attacking team in the world! Barca always use the most of the pitch with free flowing passing and moving with fast inter-switching the width. Barca usually always play the with same style. With the player that they possesses it is probably the best strategic reason to play like this way.

There is no need for them to constantly change the formation and style of play to suit their opponent. The only tactically consensus that Barcelona need to make is a play to stop Crouch from punishing them! everything else is the same.

So can Liverpool beat Barcelona? If Barcelona was in optimal condition with a fit Messi and Eto vs. a fully optimal Liverpool, Liverpool will srtruggle to draw let alone win at Barcelona. But that is not the case!
Eto is not ready and Mesi are not fully fit. some hope!

Tomorrow in-dept analysis before match game!

Dont wanna Play! Don’t wanna Sing!

The anticipation is building, alleged rift and argument spreading on both sides is a sign that the game is getting closer. Who will emerge the stronger of the two? But even after this there is still there is round 2!

Barca’s Samuael Eto had refuse to play in a game as the last 8 min as a substitute. Eto claim his knee was feeling funny! Later Ronaldinho publicly criticize him for not thinking of the betterment of the team. Eto responded to Ronaldinho if he care about the betterment of the team, he should not publicly criticized him.

Later as the always do in Spain, both Ronaldinho and Eto publicly kiss and each other. To add some spice to this is Rafa suggested that Barcelona were too quickly to rush their long injured player into getting fit. Thus he is putting the blame not on the individual player but the coach!

Liverpool on the other-hand have a different kind of problem. The problem is not because a player refuse to play rather a player had refuse to sing!

A drunken Bellamy was so upset and felt humiliated at a late dinner function when Riise repeatably refuse to sing! What a passionate guy who can’t take a No for answer. On the way back, Belamy is reported to use a golf club to swing at Risse. No injury just some macho kind of thing happening. Dudek, Fowler and Pennant were also reported to be drunk too.

What is it with player who like to intoxicate himself? Rafa is a thinking coach, he values thinking player who use their brain. There is a place for passion and a place for brain. Drinking until one is drunk is a no no for professional footballer. If you can’t stay insane don’t drink at all except maybe the wine with the food.

Dudek and Fowler will be both leaving at the end of this season. Looks like this season bad boys both Pennant and Belamy will have to reconsider their future carefully.

So Belamy, Pennant and Eto would most likely have sit on the bench. The remaining fixture would see a win for The English team will win their game, Valencia can beatthe italian and Lyon has a good chance to the next stage.

From Portagal To the Land of Catalonia

Liverpool had been training in the warm climate in Algarve Portugal for the sole reason to accommodate themselves to the condition of warm Mediterranean weather for the rainy cold of Liverpool. Also this is a chance for team building exercise and for Rafa’s team to spy closer on our rival Barcelona. This match is on this Wednesday. Let us look at our rival, Barcelona a bit closer.

Barcelona is the biggest club in the world. They have a 100,000 seated stadium call Camp Nou (Nou Camp). A city of 10 million citizen who are also supporters. Inside a region call Catalonia which is a nation inside a nation on it is own. With their own language distinct to Spanish. For the people of Catalan, Barcelona is not just a football club. It is a symbol of national pride but of a different colour to Spain! A symbol of opposition against the oppressor their Spanish conqueror which is represented by the white colour of Real Madrid!

For me personally I have always supported Barcelona FC over Real-Madrid FC. Not just because of political reason alone. The only time I despise them a bit was when they choose the orange colour of Holland(Van Gaal). Now they still have a dutch coach in Rijkaard but at least it is not infested with Ajax style player and football. They play with the true style of passionate Latin flair not some second rate dutch total football. Barcelona is a true passionate club with real success, tradition and history. One of the finest club in the world.

This is a Biggest clash among the Giant clubs in a huge and magnificent tournament. The biggest and most anticipated match among the other Champ League fixture. Barcelona vs Liverpool, 2006 champion vs 2005 champion and the beloved Latin club vs the beloved Anglo Club! Both team need to win. For Barcelona is to revive their great but fracture side for Liverpool to continue process of rebuilding a potentially great side. Only one team will prevail! Who will it be? Barcelona or Liverpool?

Next: Can we beat them?

The Day of Dependence

So it had finally been confirm. The Dubai deal had been canceled and the Americans one had been accepted. I have been feeling down this whole time and was hoping for a miracle to happen but alas things came to a conclusion that the inevitable had to happen. We had been sold, hopefully not sold out. Sorry for the belated update.

What made me question the decision from a business prospective is not who will Liverpool fc be sold to but why do Liverpool fc need to be sold? Was Liverpool Fc that poor? Was we that bad in debt? Were we worst than we were 5 years ago? The answer actually is No !

We were only had a debt as reported of around 80 million but a revenue of around 122 million pound. This year we are the 10 world richest football club with our English rival Manutd being No.4 with of annual revenue of 167 million. But their debt is around a whopping 600 million due to refinancing of Mr. Glacier debt(when purchasing ManUtd) by retransferring(restructuring) his personal account to his personal club account!

So why is this dependency on foreign money? The only financial decision were because we needed money to finance a new stadium. Nothing else! We didn’t have the money nor the guts to borrow more money. A new stadium is needed for the long term success both on and of the field. Any delay in building it, will not only be a loss of future increase of ticket revenue but also the cost of building a stadium later, will rise much more due to the rising of oil, steel and inflation.

Still they were many question that needed to be answered. Like how much extra money do we really need? It was reported that Mr. Parry initially was searching for just only a 50 million pound extra investment? And what about the future extra potential revenue come the new season? Was there any other alternative? We will look into this with another post.

Suffice to say the first good thing that comes from this historical event is our new owner first official speech. “We are custodians, not owners of the franchise,”

Leaving the word franchis, what a great talk for a starter. Just hope they can walk the walk and also walk our walk! You’ll Never Walk alone!

From LiverpoolFc to Dubai! Is it a Bye-Bye?

After having our hope made so high with this Dubai Money and we all wanted a new football-fantasy dream-life that makes Chelsea $billions into child-play, it may seams we just have to play our fantasy at some computer screen by just playing the latest (and self-editing version) of Championship Manager.

Now with the DIC bid gone out we have an American or two, with roughly the same amount of money with roughly the same deal. A New Stadium, debt free, Some Cash for the current owner and some cash for new player(80 million war-chest?). But the most important thing for the Liverpoolfc fans is no ground sharing with the Evertonian blue-nose! No Mas! No Mas! Only problem is these American(Gillet) really are poor or not rich enough? You wonder how a 440 million pound rich guy wanna buy a 470-500 million pound club? So now you see the problem

Now we simpleton may think for a rich guy it is a simple matters, by borrowing of course! This mean that he needs to borrow money and get himself into debt(not just the poor by the way) to finance the required cash to buy liverpoolfc. Now with him having to service his debt every year, liverpoolfc or now his personal soccer club is require to make profit so he can repay this loan. Then the cash for players will becomes tight and ticket may increase! so its again our fans problem! The so call 80 million debt free wipe out is now multiply as the owner debt because a liverpoolfc clubs problem and debt(indirectly).

To make matters worst is a weakening dollar, which means his American base empire will shrink and cost less while his overseas asset(liverpool) will becomes his bigger asset(or liability). The very reasons the dollar is weakening is because American are spending beyonds their means. Spending money they don’t have. If Liverpoolfc problems becomes too big, this weakening American dollar won’t save our(or his) club. So that is why we need someone like those Arab people with money to burn , cause their money not like the paper dollars and is really worth in Gold, black one that is.

So now you know why I rather have the Dubai’s shekels rather than the American version But I have been thinking, We really don’t need the money. Do Rafa needs it?? not really he is doing fine and next season we don’t really need lots of new player. Do the clubs needs it? No i think they are doing fine the debt is not that big, plus next season the premiership we have a new deal and may increase to 15-20 million pound per club. It’s only the New stadium that needs some money. Rafa and the board don’t really need extra money. So whats the solution?

Me thinks me have the solution, But will discuss it later, bye.