I stand corrected.. it appears jayzonce were invited to the match by Becks who apparently signed a contract with Paris St Germain.... again I have no idea, I dont follow league futbol, but in LA Barcelona was always scorned as the villain.. my bad yo!

eta: buffon's kissyface was with tiago (who used to play @ juve)

Curious as to why that would be. Chelsea fans tend not to like Barcelona after they felt they were cheated out of a final due to their cheating and Real fans obviously hate them, but I don't know why a US city would be anti. Most neutrals like them and, even if they don't, it'll probably be cos they're perceived as being a bit too 'nice'. At least that's how the media presented them during the Mourinho-Pep years. A bit of a Beatles v Stones thing. Barca were definitely playing the Beatles role in that rivalry.

so far the game pretty clogged up and a bit violent

best part of it all was simeone kicking the ball in ha ha ha

Hahaha. Totally agree. All a bit meh so far. Both teams playing in the centre. Probably favour Juve but nothing much in it. They both probably know they can afford to draw this one. Ref needs to stop blowing up for every bit of contact.

Chiellini looks like precisely the player Man U should've bought. Love that man.

man, what a letdown. juventus pretty horrible--- lost a lot of balls with bad passes, vidal had a pretty horrid day, pogba in spite of the hype looks like a slow lumbering beast, tevez the only one trying something until they got scored on. meanwhile, for all the fouling and interruptions, madrid was more interesting on the attack, and so they got their goal.

now with 4 minuts to go, the butchery continues, pogba carded, and i don't see a juve goal coming from anywhere.

The UK commentator was finally praising Atletico for providing a masterclass in destroying a game. Kind of see what he means but kind of enjoyed it too. Not a pretty match, probably neither side deserved to win but Atletico weren't giving anything away. Am I right in thinking Juve's best chance was probably that near own-goal towards the end? Simeone's building a massive reputation right now.

I honestly have no idea why Barcelona is a villain in LA, possibly a bunch of Madrid fans? What I do know is (a) only the worst kinds of LA people supported Barcelona (from celebs and trendy hipsters to over assholes and snobs) over the past 20 years and (b) if you did vocally support Barcelona you'd get a lot of shit.

Again, I don't follow league futbol because simply put, its too damned complicated. All these different cups, trophies, and competitions, I can't hardly invest any more time trying to figure out what it all means. American sports are simple, win your division, win your conference/league, win the Championship, done deal. There aren't lesser championships and while there are lesser leagues (the D-Leagues in basketball and the minor leagues in baseball) nobody pays any attention to them aside from locals.

i thought they were both equally destructive but juve was more wasteful with their chances. but tell me about pogba. after all his years of promise, we get this???

Yeah, Pogba looked more likely to get a card than a goal.

Juve had all the possession and probably should've created more, but Atletico were very well organised. The game itself probably needed Juve to score first just to bring Atletico out. As it was, once Atletico went ahead they just shut Juve down completely.

on good news (for me) dortmund beat anderlecht 3-0 and leverkusen beat benfica 3-1. can't wait to watch the replays.

schalke unfortunately tied with maribor--i didn't know about this maribor until recently, i thought it was made up, a printing error, but no, they exist, even though they sound like a shipping company or something, it's an actual city (!). i feel fucking ignorant.

Big news in England was probably Arsenal's win, although the radio phone-ins were all about Liverpool's defeat. The usual crap. Fans calling in saying Rodgers should be sacked. One even arguing he should be replaced by Pulis.

It's an interesting thing with football fans. They're mostly silent when their team wins. It's only when they lose that they seem to have something to say.

Ronaldo opened vote for FifPro World XI, where players choose their best XI (gk, 4xdf, 3xmf and 3xfw) from the 2013-2014 season.

Team from the 2012-2013 =

Manuel Neuer
Dani Alves, Thiago Silva, Sergio Ramos, Philipp Lahm
Franck Ribery, Xavi, Andres Iniesta
Lionel Messi, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Cristiano Ronaldo

Obviously plenty there who won't make the 2013-14 team. Surprised if Messi or Zlatan keep their place, making way for Robben? Neymar? Costa? Suarez? Definitely can't see Xavi remaining, either. Xabi Alonso going in instead?

from last season? see if i can remember... hmmmmm… er….

from the pro season or does this include the world cup?

if including world cup i'd say

neuer
lahm boateng mascherano godin?
di maria james? ----?
robben muller bale?

i dont know.

Yeah, seems like years ago now. I really don't know either, but I think it's for the regular season. Not sure though. Would probably include a spine of

Neuer
Lahm, ?, ?, ?
Alonso, ?, Ronaldo
?, Costa, Suarez

but not sure/can't remember who else.

Of course you can. Just stop letting yourself get distracted with all that NFL and NBA silliness. It's not a lack of time that's your problem so much as poor management of it.

Hahaha... that may be, let me rephrase that. I have not INTEREST in getting into league futbol ;)

haaa haaa haaa haaa

so true.

ANYWAY

caught the first half of dortmund/anderlecht this morning (on replay). lively and amusing, catch it if you can, the opposite of juve vs. atlético-- open and dynamic, and also less interesting tactically-- at least the portion i've seen. lots of chances for goals on both sides, and yet it remained 1-0…. tomorrow i'll try catching the 2nd half to see the other 2 goals.

one good piece of this puzzle was that kagawa is finally firing on all cilinders sitting behind immobile (lewandowski's replacement). that's his best spot, and that's what manchester united didn't figure out (and kloppo complained about) by putting him as a pure striker. some of the balls he put there were so pretty…. eh, try to see it. here's hoping that dortmund gets out of the muck in the bundesliga table….

I kind of want Dortmund to do well, mainly cos of Klopp.

Re Kagawa, you might find this article from a couple of weeks ago quite interesting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...gen-Klopp.html