from massive to enormous is where i think might be a bubble-- tv needs a return on its investment and we'll have to see if there's any more cash in that cow. there's only so many matches one can watch per day.

btw, the french are also worried and have been whining. platini told them to score more goals, ha ha ha.

ultimately i am not overly concerned. the prem is already bigger/richer than the bundesliga and everyone else, so that will just continue whether the other leagues adapt or no.

even if each english team were crammed with megastars, like a permanent world cup, there is always going to be football outside of it. there are way too many games for anyone to watch as it is, and at some point only rappers and royalty will be able to afford prem tickets. maybe that will be good for the championship when you think about it-- people might say "fuckit" and follow smaller teams they can afford to see.

btw, you need to prep for price increases in your cable package. those 5 billion are coming ultimately from you.

It'll burst eventually but God-knows when. People have been predicting it for years and it just gets bigger. The global audience will eventually exhaust itself or simply say no, but it's the empire all over again, finding new territories to conquer and convert. Once we offered Christianity and rail tracks, now we offer 4-3-3 and Joe Hart. It even comes with its own legalised slave trade (aka transfer market). So yeah, like the last Empire, it'll fall eventually, but it took a long time last time and no doubt the FA are dusting off their khaki shorts as we speak, in readiness for yet another adventure in India.

The Spanish conquistadores are carving out there territories, now we just need to see if France, Belgium and Portugal can get their acts together and re-live their glory days, too.





We're watching you Germany. We certainly don't need any of your silliness again.

ha ha ha ha ha!

basil... that's the best episode ever



--

last i recall you guys ate the dutch who in turn had eaten the portuguese. the germans had... tanganyika.

india is a damn good market, as they become richer.

anyway, best wishes w/ all that.

later today: dortmund vs. juve!!!

Really? That's the game that's got you excited? Surely City/Barcelona would get you wetter?

when i was 15 i'd get wet at the tip. these days the hardness is just dry. well maybe a drop. ha!

but yeah i have no emotional investment in man city or barça. go barça? i'll watch a recording.

what i wanna see live is dortmund return to good form. so far they haven't disappointed in the champions but bundesliga teams have shown how to beat them. i'm a little nervous for them.

The build up to Suarez's second goal was pure Barcelona. Beautiful!

thrilling first half over here. had me eating cheddar popcorn from stress.

juve 2 (tevez, morata) dortmund 1 (reus)

piszcek & pirlo out injured

the ref a bit too lenient w/ the fouls i think

--

barça highlights lookin' pretty!

Better second half for City but Clichy's sending off pretty much killed the game. Neither team looked great at least for the full 90. And I maintain, Kompany's looking like a bit of a liability for City right now, and has done for a while. Never thought I'd say it but I really think it's true.

well, shit, the 2nd half wasn't as good and juve kept their 2-1. could have been more but dortmund got lucky at least twice.

makes me sad to see that dortmund has lost its edge. where they used to be lightning fast on the break now they are slow and ineffectual and extremely vulnerable to their opponents' counters.

i think the original lineup was an error-- mkhitarian and immobile were as ineffectual as ever, and aubameyang was ... where was he? don't know but he's a better target man than immobile.

many times i wished reus had just hogged the ball and scored instead of making passes to useless people.

the words "pupu platter" just came to my mind. word association is truth.

I'll watch a rerun of it later. How did Juve look?

juve looked pretty great generally. pogba great, tevez great, morata good. chiellini/bonucci ruled their area. chiellini made a mistake which allowed reus to pick up the ball and score--but almost scored also near the end. they really did a good job of breaking dortmund down.

pirlo got hurt during the game. i thought they'd suffer more with pereira as his replacement but no.

game could have easily ended 4-1.

Saw the highlights. Dortmund's away goal will make the second leg very edgy for Juve, but yeah, they really should've put the tie way beyond Dortmund's reach. Lovely finish from Reus though, even if it was a result of Chiellini's mistake.

Hard to know what to make of Barca last night. First half they looked immense but City just approached them all wrong. 2nd half City really went at them but I'm not sure if Barca were just protecting their lead at that point.

Either way, Messi was brilliant. If he's this good after his peak, it only goes to show how almost supernatural he was during it. Suarez too was immense. Neymar hardly had a kick though. Zabaleta gave away the pen at the end but until then he did a great job of keeping him out of the game. Probably City's best player over the 90, along with Hart. Kompany though, has to be some big questions asked about him now.




No, definitely. Lots of people love La Liga in the UK too, although obviously in most part as a supplement rather than alternative to the Prem.

I suppose with the Bundesliga, the elephant in the room is that it's German and in large parts of Europe still deeply entrenched German stereotypes don't fit with romantic ideas about football. No problem when it comes to cars; there the stereotype works in its favour. I definitely think it has an image problem when it comes to football, though, as reflecting stereotypes of a slightly passionless, ultra efficient, rather too disciplined culture. (Not saying they're right but stereotypes are stereotypes). Klopp's probably done a lot to overturn that prejudice but even Pep seems unable to put a positive spin on Bayern's image. And Germany's image overall has been rocked by the Eurozone crisis. A lot of younger people who don't really care about old issues concerning the war will be aware of the situation over Greece, which is putting Germany in a bad light%2

i don't know man. those are cartoons. just like throwing bananas at black players. and greece has a long history of alliance with britain-- even though you guys stole the parthenon marbles and renamed them "elgin," there's a strong connection that goes back centuries. you should have given them the money for the bailout.

i'm not trying to argue that any other league is more marketable than the prem or any of that. seriously, that contest has already been won. nobody is debating some other league is going to overtake them in the next decade or two, barring major global turmoil.

what i'm trying to say here is that there are limits to that top dog status. world football is never going to be a monoculture. there will always be options and alternatives. some people will never give 3 shits about european football. maybe the next huge league will come out of china. doesn't matter. gandhi will make his own salt and not everyone will watch the same thing even though a majority will follow a certain thing.

me i'm going to continue following the bundesliga until i'm bored with it. then maybe i'll watch something else-- a grownup MLS, or international waterpolo, or i'll start attending rodeos.

No forget about competition with the Prem, I know that. That's not gonna happen. All I'm saying is the Bundesliga has an image problem in Europe, and part of the reason for that is because Germany has an image problem in Europe. I'm not saying that image is based on facts or has any credibility (quite the contrary) just that it exists. You were saying it should resist selling out to global tv deals. I'm saying I don't think it's a viable option anyway. That's all. But then some pundits are now saying the effect of the deal is being exaggerated. Maybe they're right, in which case it's all irrelevant. So we'll see.

exactly. much is (always) up in the air.

im not gonna be able to watch any live games today, but i hope to read "you guyses" reports until i catch a recording.

So I've thought about this comment today and come to my conclusion.

As we've talked about before truly great defenders are a rarity these days and with that the defense (and it could be said the whole squad) is only as strong as their weakest link. City are pairing up Kompany up with Demichelis and that's a big problem. I honestly don't think Kompany feels like he can truly trust Demichelis to do as good a job as he should be. With that, he's feeling like he's having to cover Demichelis' ground as well as his own, and he's inevitably going to leave space where he's meant to be covering which teams like Barca and co are gonna exploit. Kompany, in my eyes is a great defender, however he's let down by the players around him who he's meant to trust.

Demichelis is an ok player. He's slow as fuck, but when he wants to he can do some good stuff. However, that's not gonna cut it (and hasn't) in the Champions League.

What makes it even worse it City paid what? 30 million? for Mangala? And he's played a handful of games and he's been a liability in those games if I remember rightly (including a kung fu kick against Everton this season). If you can't trust a 30 mil signing to do well as a defender should then they're screwed and never will win the Champions League.

So yeah that's my two pence and re-reading pretty much sums why I'll never be a writer.

ps thanks (demonyo) for that link. if you read what commenter "paul" wrote, i agree with about 98% of what he said.

Kompany's definitely trying to do too much but his judgement seems shot and if you look at at least one of the mistakes he made yesterday it was actually MDM (who I think has got a lot better since Pellegrini arrived) who came in and recovered the situation. Quite honestly, if I was Pellegrini I'd be thinking about starting with DM and Mangala (who I also think is getting better), giving Kompany a break to see if it gets his head straight. It worked for Hart. No way will it happen though.

Since when?!

I agree that resting Kompany would be a good idea. However, relying on Mangala straight away would be a bad thing.

He was decent against Newcastle last week. OK. I take that back, I reckon I would've been decent against Newcastle last week.

Arsenal ... eww ... Booed off again. Hard to say how good Monaco really were. Arsenal just didn't turn up.