Your Lance Armstrong analogy is quite weak. Specifically : 1. He was quite a decent rider (although not "grand tour" pedigree) prior to getting cancer 2. His doping era was not due to having the financial power to indulge in practices that other riders/teams could not afford
Alternatively it is strong because they both achieve huge success by flouting the rules. Very different circumstances sure, but cheating is cheating end of the day.
And analogies are good or bad. In this case, a quite weak one for "cheating is cheating" . Citeh won the lottery BEFORE there were "rules" . That was where and when the damage was done. Whether they flout any current rules is now academic.
Superior stats for club and country, in anger, in all competitions. One of a handful of players for which the word "legendary" can rightly be reserved for.
There is no.possible way they are not flouting the rules if they have £250m available for transfers after a year without attendances. I can't think of any large fees incoming.
Pep disagrees (hardly a surprise)!! Pep Guardiola: Manchester City manager challenges critics over club's spending - BBC Sport The paragraph where he speaks about Messi and others coming through the academy at Barca to win the champions league in 2009 & 2011 is also a little misleading as the players bought into those squads cost more than £150m, which in 2009 was a lot of money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Masia#Notable_alumni Their academy had a golden period, where a number of good players came thru the pipeline and served the club for a long time. However, ordering the careers by date, you can see that the pipeline has dried up on the stellar front (I do not have data on how many academy players had similar longevity but were 'squad' level only) .
I am not disputing that they had a very succesful academy, but to suggest that as a result they didn't spend anything (which is the implication in the article) when the likes of Henry, Etoo, Alves, Villa, Toure,and Abidal were bought in is clearly not exactly true.
Any mention of the Barca academy is a joke, Where are the numbers and longevity from the Citeh academy ?? Spurs over the Arry to early Pochettino era were regularly producing players who at least had one full season in the squad and a certain number of starts, before twas decided whether their skill/attitude was of the standard desired. That is what clubs with functioning academies (Soton, Spurs etc) are supposed to do.
