Yeah, Reece Oxford. Decent player, defender, but slightly surprised BM are that interested in him, tbh.

the bundesliga in many ways is all about the young player that's a good value

from pulisic to démbélé to guerreiro to renato sanches, they're always looking for a teenager with potential

not sure about reece oxford but i guess i'll find out this season ha ha

oh btw i totally missed the concacaf gold cup final. apparently the usa beat jamaica 2-1.

Oxford's definitely a prospect player, still learning but shows good signs. I remember one game where he absolutely had Ozil on toast for 90 minutes. Pep was apparently wiling to pay 15m for him last summer but it fell through, and he sort of disappeared after that. It'd be great for him if he could nail down a starting spot in the Bundesliga., but he is still really young.

Of which I've actually changed my opinion on goal poachers

yeah, gladbach haven't tasted real glory since the 70's but since i've been watching they've been a solid team with a usual european spot. except recently they've had some coaching problems. they finished 9th last year (out of 18) after stemming a dangerous downward slide. they now have dieter hecking, who had wolfsburg fighting for the top spot against bayern when dortmund was suffering. should be an interesting season for them.


ha haaaa! good to know. cuz nothing wins a game like goals :o

Urgh, this whole Neymar farce is just grim.

In other news, Salah is clearly gonna be a great singing for Liverpool. The swines.

oh ha ha thanks for the notification, i just started reading about it

where's the farce part and the grim part?

i just see megatons of money

I wonder how prices for football players will be in 5 or 10 years. Will there ever be a threshold? same goes for any other sports btw, e.g in NBA.
all those people earn in a day what I earn in a month, and all they can do is kick a ball in the right direction.

The youngest Kluivert is 9 years old and already signed a contract with Nike ....

good for the kid! as long as he can still receive a dope slap when he fucks up he should do alright

as for salaries-- it's whatever the market can bear

there could be a bubble and it all collapses when people can no longer afford to watch and/or buy the merchandise

the other day i met an immigrant inglés who told me he can watch more prem games on NBC than he could do in england.

but let's face it, the expansion of the global middle class is gonna bring mucho dinero to the most popular sport on the planet

(it's not cricket is it? im seriously asking)

The farce is that the money is being put up by Qatar's oil money. It's a farce that the idea of FFP is totally ignored/circumvented and supposedly the way they're doing it is by paying Neymar (not Barcelona) the £200 million clause. With that £200 mill they're saying he's going to be an ambassador for the (bullshit) Qatari world cup. Football goes down the pan further and further.

So in effect, Neymar would be buying himself out of the clause.

Neymar wants to do things on his own and away from Messi's long shadow. I get that. However, the fact is he knew Messi was #1 at Barcelona when he signed for them. Messi is always going to be #1 whilst he's still there. Neymar wants to win the Ballon D'or and essentially carry PSG to the Champions League on his own. However, going to the fucking French league is NOT going to win him the Ballon D'or. And I really hope UEFA see the money being spent and know that it's not legally right and slam down on PSG hard.

And how can you not think it's grim? If Neymar is worth £200 million, what's Coutinho, Aubameyang and the rest "worth". It lost any semblance or reality a long time ago, but this kicks it up a level.

I'm praying there is a bubbe and that it's bursts real fucking soon. There's only so much tv money to be made.

The U.K channels aren't allowed to show 3pm games.

People are streaming more and more games now and it's no wonder. In my eyes anyone who pays £70 a month for sports channels is a total mug.

And don't get me fucking started about Neymar Snr. getting about £20 million for "facilitating" the move. The cunt doesn't have to do anything.

right, bubbles do burst. footballers might follow tulips in the annals of economic history. well, not that bad, but... yeah. there's always a limit.

im sort of relaxed about this because my bundesliga/CL stream (good signal and no weird languages or malware or legal persecution) come out to only 11 or 12 bucks per month, and that's good enough for me. for now, anyway.

but i didn't know all this bullshit about qatari petrodollars. the world cup... might have seen worse venues. argentina 78 comes to mind, historically. but let's see what records putin might set. you never know with the kgb.

anyway so you're in favor of FPP? i didn't know this. demonyo is on the other end of the issue, saying it favors the status quo in perpetuity. who knows?

i try to practice detachment. at least till it really hurts ha ha ha. hasn't yet.

economics is an interesting science. i can always get my kicks from that. not as thrilling as neymar's 100 barcelona goals but o well. i'll take whatever i can get.

ps- neymar has always been a douche schooner

The money talked about at that level is effectively abstract to me now. It's as difficult for me to conceptualise 200m spent on a player as it is 1bn, or almost any price, if I'm honest. I can only look at this deal in terms of how it affects players and teams. Barca lose a great player and gain 200m they probably don't need. PSG get a great player and lose 200m they'll hardly notice. Neymar gets a team built around him, but in a league that few outside France watch or are interested in. I agree with h8kurdt: he'll never win a Ballon D'or at PSG, even if he deserves to. Ultimately PSG are the only real winners here - besides Neymar's dad, of course.

i think that few IN france watch or are interested it. no? i mean. i often see half empty stadiums in french games. so i don't know how this whole operation is sustained.

as for money, we're in the middle of a bull market, as i just read in this morning's paper. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...or-first-time/

and yeah, "emerging markets" are the key to this. china, india, latin america are bringing people into the middle classes at a fast pace, and they all want to enjoy themselves.

so i don't see this growth in wages necessarily as a pure capriciousness, but rather reflecting of the new global audience who gets satellite tv in the middle of the amazon jungle or the mongolian steppe. just look at how much it costs to make a hollywood blockbuster that takes years to make. meanwhile, neymar can potentially provide one or two shows per week for years and years. it's not so much when you see it as that.

not saying that it's not a bubble and that it can't burst. just saying we have to think about global audiences rather than national ones at this point. i guess im hedging my bets with this argument ha ha ha.

and speaking of money-- are you seeing that tv money have much effect on the prem's hires yet? or is it the same?

yeah but it's not a farce really is it? i mean neymar is an idiot and his dad wants to cash in on his raising the boy wonder, and they will take it from whoever offer it. the stuff about psg being his ticket to glory is where it's lies and a bit of a farce yeh ok. however going after big money isnt.

the point that the guardian makes is that the inflation will trickle. sure. but there are 2 sides to the story.

for example, i don't know how dembélé's contract is structured, but since he's bound to go anyway, dortmund might potentially get MORE to let him go (but again im not sure). so the price increases trickle down-- a rising tide lifts all boats.

there's more money in football than ever. it only makes sense as the audience expands globally.

But at a rate of the record signing doubling in barely a year? Na that's not a good thing, no matter how you look at it. I get there are always going to be increases in the signings of player. Look at the last 5 record signings

2016 Pogba £89 million
2013 Bale £86 million
2009 Ronaldo £80 million
2001 Zidane £46 million
2000 Figo £37 million
(Well done to Real on being in the top 4 :D )

That I get. Steady increases that in an market is sustainable. A doubling of it n a year is just daft. How long will it be before we see the first £500 million man? Normally you'd say "pfft, not for at least 20 years" now? I woudn't be surprised if it was in the next 5 years.


Not necessarily. The only reason PSG is able to do this is because of a bullshit corrupt government handing the money over like it's a bag of sweets. All this does is push the gap from the top few further and further.

You only have to look at the last few champions league finals, or even semi-finals to see how it's going. It's generally limited to the massively richest teams and that's it. That's not a good thing for football. The big teams buy from who they see as a threat to their hierarchy and they go further ahead.

Juventus, Real, Barca, PSG, Bayern are the worst for this.

:mad: Not often I go on Severian length rants :D

haaa haa haaa

ok

so seems to me there are 2 keys to your argument




that's a bull market yeah? all sort of commodities shift in price, sometimes quickly sometimes slowly. whether it is daft is up to the market. i've identified 2 possible scenarios for this. a) it's a bubble (and it very well might be), or b) it's the rational reflection of an expanding global market and audience.

im not qualified to say which one though. my "hope" is for the 2nd scenario-- more people achieving a comfortable standard of life around the planet. the end of poverty for billions. but really i couldn't make a pronouncement here. i can only entertain hypotheses.

anyway the other part:


that goes to the effectiveness of the so-call financial fair play. i understand the good intentions behind it, but i don't know that they actually work. im not saying this to cast doubt on the regulations which i don't understand, it's just a statement of my own ignorance.

i'd like to invite demonyo to argue this one with you though because he seems to be against fpp regulations on the basis that they actually maintain the existing hierarchy.

because as i understand big money injections are actually capable of turning a lil' shitty team like, let's say, rb leipzig, into actual contenders that break the monopoly of the establishment.

or what's the other-- monaco?? didn't they get russian money too?

or manchester city which went from a nothing to getting their first title in history and what not?

but i dont know the actual details of the fpp regulations or how they're supposed to work, so i couldn't sensibly argue them with anyone. i just know that the opposite point of view exists and i'm quoting it a bit. so i'm declaring my ignorance here and standing back and hoping for a good match. i really like questions more than answers, ha ha.