i watched the first few minutes of the chelsea spurs FA match but had to switch to dortmund because i don't know crap about the FA cup teams lol

gladbach fouling a lot around the area and got a penalty against them already. now sahin looks like needs attention.

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oooh dortmund loses the ball cheaply and gladbach scores right before halftime

poor merino who came in for sahin is gonna get chewed up for it

Sounds like I'm missing a total classic semi final if a game. Gutting. Currently in the big smoke instead. Ah well there's always the disappointing final to watch...

speaking of classic, schmelzer scored a fantastic... own goal! (ouch)

then auba gets brought in, and a minute or two later he makes a run forward, cuts to the left, dribbles past the goalkeeper, and scores from a tight angle with a defender covering the bottom of said angle with a raised leg

a thing of beauty, that goal

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guerreiro hit the post earlier and the ball spun out the thing.

but THEN on a free kick into the area he lobbed it over the defense with a header and BLAM

go dortmund go! secure the 3rd place! it's worth fighting for it

It was great! It felt far more like a final than I reckon the actual one will.

Dembele's through ball for that goal was brilliant.

and he's only 19!

and pulisic?

man, this team. it's a little unripe still but such brilliant young talent.

Barcelona and Man Utd are both apparently going for Dembele this summer. Rumours of a £50m bid from MU.

oh man. that's bad news

I'll enjoy his season while he lasts

just turned on the teevee to see arsenal's goal!

the chants sound more exciting than the game looks. let's see...

More interesting than good. Two under fire managers playing for the only trophy they're in for. If ManC go out, Pep will have a lot of explaining to do why he replaced Aguero with Delph at 1-1 extra time and then went 2-1 down stright after.

So that's it. Man C out.

I hope Arsenal win the trophy just because, if he does leave, he'll at least go out on some kind of high.

I'm now gonna just sit back with a beer and listen to Man City fans on Talksport, ripping the shit out of Pep.

oh ha haha. my watching got interrupted and i missed the end

now i feel sorry for pep. first time ever maybe

Liverpool did him a massive favour today by losing, because if MC don't qualify for the CL that really will be considered a disaster. But even if they do, it still feels like they've gone backwards this season.

Whatever happens he deserves another season to turn things around but the big doubt for me is that he doesn't seem to be learning from his mistakes.

Also H8kurdt, what do you make of the stories that Rooney might be going back to Everton? Do you think it'll happen? Do you want him?

Just been in a bar here in Seville and met Eric fucking Cantona. I felt like I was gonna cry when I saw him. Incredible.

And yes the man looks as bad ass in real life as he does on the tv.

holy shit! what did you guys talk about?

What! Wait! Ah?

Photos or it never happened!

Id put the sneaky picture I took of him up, but this place is still on picture limits that were out of date 12 years ago.

I was gonna ask for a picture with him, but he seemed to be getting bothered but a few people in between songs (it was a side street flamenco bar at 2am). So I settled to just shake his hand and say thanks and that he was a massive player for me when I was a kid growing up. He just shook my hand back and nodded. That was all I needed.

One of the friends who I was with just didn't get it. I kept trying to tell him "it's Eric Cantona!" But that clearly didn't work.

What a conversation starter, "Did I ever tell you about the time I met Eric Cantona in a Flamenco bar?" Perfect!

2am is early in spain lol. good on you for not pissing him off though-- i wouldn't want to piss him off. i've seen footage!

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anyway for less relevant news, bayern got knocked out of the dfb pokal last week (i didn't see it, but dortmund beat them 3-2)

then dortmund today couldn't score vs cologne no matter how hard they tried so it ended 0-0, which keeps them clear behind rb leipzig and hoffenheim could overtake them if they win tomorrow. ouch

and now bayern is beating wolfsburg 3-0 at halftime which by the look of it will make them bundesliga champions at this point, or so i understand.

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aaaand bayern beats poor wolfsburg 6-0 and wins the title

weanwhile, wolfsburg left just above relegation fight, and luiz gustavo facing red card suspension next. ouch!

Great dive by Rashford granting Man U with a penalty converted by Rooney.
Ashley Young's got competition here.

Meanwhile the latest in the regularly updated series of 'sad Pep' photos ...



Watched the game. Man City were a joke. It looks now like Pep's just randomly picking formations in the hope one of them might work. Ironically, today, the most successful one was a 4-4-2 ... against Middlesbrough. And Sane's dive was all that stopped it being an even bigger embarrassment. Video replays can't come in quick enough for me.

At this point (and after losing to their archrivals!) Wenger would be more than pleased to have City's numbers this season:

so, on bundesliga business, hoffenheim played an ugly game vs frankfurt tomorrow but managed to score near the end and blam, they're in 3rd place now

which makes it interesting for next saturday cuz dortmund and hoffenheim will meet and it should be a straigh-up contest for 3rd place. 1st and 2nd are already taken. well not sure about leipzing guaranteed a second, but pretty much.

i know, this is nothing compared to the upcoming CL matches but hey, some excitement regardless

Hopefully RB will make second place. I know they divide people but they're at least shaking things up.


Both have underachieved relative to expectation. Obviously Wenger would want to be in 4th but Pep can't be happy Man C's title bid was so lacklustre. He has a lot to prove next season, not just in the Prem but the CL too, in which MC did worse than under Pellegrini and with no guarantee yet they'll even qualify for next season's. Both managers have to see this season as a major disappointment.

Also Arsenal losing to 2nd placed Spurs, even if they are their main rivals, is less embarrassing than Man C having to rely on a Sané dive just to grab a point against 19th placed Middlesbrough.

i think they pretty much got it, unless they seriously fuck up their finish, which is unlikely.

if shaking things up is a value (let's call it increasing parity, or unpredictability, or something like that, which is good in sports) it has to be weighed against other competing values though, which are also desirable.

i mean, look at trump "shaking things up" while he demolishes truth, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and so forth :( (i hate that he's in every conversation these days, but how can his cosmic unpleasantness be avoided? he's shaking up every conversation, even...)

so the issue as always is "at what price"? that's up to germans to decide. i'm sort of agnostic here, at least so far, watching from a distance, and waiting for ramifications to develop. i'm taking it as an "interesting problem", sorta

i think they pretty much got it, unless they seriously fuck up their finish, which is unlikely.

if shaking things up is a value (let's call it increasing parity, or unpredictability, or something like that, which is good in sports) it has to be weighed against other competing values though, which are also desirable.

i mean, look at trump "shaking things up" while he demolishes truth, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and so forth :( (i hate that he's in every conversation these days, but how can his cosmic unpleasantness be avoided? he's shaking up every conversation, even...)

so the issue as always is "at what price"? that's up to germans to decide. i'm sort of agnostic here, at least so far, watching from a distance, and waiting for ramifications to develop. i'm taking it as an "interesting problem", sorta

Responding to your point about Trump, something I like about football is the way that it's politics without (significant) social consequence. (Partly why I like art, too: where you can be as irresponsible and as experimental as you like, knowing that ultimately nobody dies, nobody starves, etc. I know the arguments against that but it's increasingly how I feel and actually see it as a strength rather than a limitation) Anyway, I certainly wouldn't want Britain or any other country to be run the way the Prem is but something about the sentiment-free brutality of its economics does appeal to me, albeit only conceptually, which is why I oppose things like Financial Fair Play, fan ownership, salary caps, etc, and embrace (as an idea, anyway) teams like RB Leipzig, PSG, Man City, and Chelsea.

yeah it was yeats that said that poetry makes nothing happen as i recall. and i agree with that mostly.

and sure that is exactly the thing with games: it's just games!

so from that perspective i see the value of a darwinian experiment in fast forward, to paraphrase william gibson (i think it was at the beginning of neuromancer, when he describes chiba city).

the question of the open-market leagues seems to be "if money is no object, what is the best war machine that we can build?"

large/established clubs already operate like that; what open markets allow is for large injections of capital to transform other/smaller/non established clubs into such behemoths.

and in that respect it's a great thing to increase the parity between teams and enhance the spectacle.

on the other side of the issue it seems to be that some games aren't just games. they're social pursuits/institutions/identities/more. and in darwinian experiments some survive and some go extinct. so, while extinction is of little consequence in a pure/abstract game, in social situations involving culture and identity and traditions, extinction is a great source of pain.

so, the social non-game component (fans, institutions, etc) tend to balance against destabilizing ("interesting") forces in various degrees. and here's where it gets fun for me to watch this as an external observer:

on the socioeconomic front, the germans have been pretty successful at balancing the forces of capitalism with social demands. they're both prosperous in business and socially equitable. which is a rare thing in a world where these things are presented as polar opposites.

and now that large capital is becoming more dominant in football, with global tv and the economic dominance of the prem and la liga, plus the prospect of a growing china-- how will the germans adapt? can they have a competitive social democracy in football? how will they cope? ha ha ha. it's an interesting question for me-- as a purely game of ideas anyway.

as for why i favor dortmund over leipzig-- i just know them more and therefore like them. but there are other bundesliga astroturf clubs-- hoffenheim is another one of them actually, backed/invented by a software magnate, ha ha. wolfsburg and leverkusen less so, but still.

anyway-- games today! i gotta get some work done before that...

oh man. atleti leaky defense looks like. or real just too fucking deadly

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ha ha it was funny and terrible to write that just a couple of minutes before real's goal

and now on the 2nd half-- is it just me or has the game gotten duller as it's progressed? i think i'm ready to go back to work at this point.

except that i keep waiting for some surprise goal to chance the landscape...


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and sure here comes cronaldo, the fucking bastard. beautiful goal. must be nice to be a real fan today!

i wonder where h8kurdt is watching this...

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and now 3! well. the commentator asks "if you thought he was in declining form" . lol.

okay i should shut this down and get to work now. ufff.

o wait wait...

Well the Seville/Celta Vigo was a game of two halves. My luck being what it is it was TORRENTIAL rain. That made the fact that the first half was as drab as you can get even worse. However, the second half had everything you could want in a game. Goals, red cards, a penalty, the ball hitting the post three times and all in all a great half of football.

Celta Vigo really weren't anything that night. Gonna be interesting to see how they kick it up against Man Utd.

Also, sitting in a bar with a load of football mad Spaniards watching Real Madrid, getting drunk on great wine and high on decent weed was a lot of fun.

^^ ah, that sounds like an awesome trip!

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and now after initial control by juve, the suprising monaco is starting to make buffon suffer a bit!

dang... i'm liking this game...

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higua higua higua!!!! and dani alves! and dybala!!

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and again!!! whatta goal

it's funny that juve is tormenting monaco with what monaco does-- fast counters. and everything else really ha ha ha. what a great team.

but now come the substitutions! monaco not quitting just yet.

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....aaaaaaaaaand 2-0. NICE. poor monaco! too green

well looks like the final is shaping up...

Sounds like a great time H8kurdt. My mum lives quite close to Seville but I've never been. Will have to next time I visit her, though. Any good bar recommendations?

And yeah, what a well constructed team Juventus are. No real weak spots.

What? Man, just go. You can quite happily wander around looking at the arctitecture​ of the place and wander from bar to bar drinking and eating tapas. Amazing place. Worst thing is I agreed to work today so post holiday blues have kicked in.

Last night's game really was the old boys showing them how to do it. Especially Alves. Now that he's not at Barcelona it's all good for me to love him now.

Whilst watching the game I was reading the live text feed on the BBC website, some KNOB wrote in saying "if M'pabbe wants to be seen as world class he needs to step up in games like this". Lay off him the kid is 18! When I was 18 the most pressure I had was trying to tell a bird I liked her.

As for bar recommendations I'll get the names of them.

!! Ajax !! Ajax !! Ajax !!
I'm a bit disappointed in myself that I didn't watch anything of last night's match, I didn't think they would win it from Lyon. But apparently it was a fantastic match, especially the second half.
A colleague of mine has already arranged an apartment in Stockholm, seriously.

see, this is why we need a europa league

now i wanna watch it!

I think West Ham just killed Spurs's title bid.

Massively. Can't believe they're choking AGAIN.

dortmund vs hoffenheim about to square off

fighting for 3rd place & automatic champions spot

if you watch bundesliga this should be a fun fun game

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...and reus scores soon after 5 minutes from an offside play and the goal stands ha ha ha

not fair, but... he went back over the line before he shot and why should i complain? lol

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then auba misses a penalty ha ha ha damn this game is bananas

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so... game went 2-0 then 2-1 and it wasn't as fun in the middle as it was in the beginning but then picked up again near the end. made for a nice morning though

They've always had a reputation for being a bit soft but I thought they'd got over that. Looks like it's 'Same old Spurs', though.

You won't have liked the Swansea result but god did they go for it today. I love this do-or-die part of the season.

Yeah, I think Lukaku's already left in his head, and the rest of the team know they're gonna finish 7th so don't give a shit. It's annoying, but hey-ho.

The bottom three really is gonna go to the wire, isn't it?