Aye but I think the Spanish would rather let their banks go to the wall than lose one of those clubs. And austerity might make it even easier for Real and Barca to stay afloat - all the banks will be in hock to the government and hence under even more pressure not to call in any loans they've made to the clubs.
Aye. Ironically enough the "poor" teams who knocked us out are now closer to reaching the quarter finals than either of the remaining English teams. What are the odds that Basel get further than Arsenal, Chelsea, Leverkusen and Marseille?!
Marseille have just put themselves in a better position though. If Marseille or Basel can nick an away goal they'll have Bayern or Inter in big trouble.
Thats because whiteside and the wums who claimed man u had an easy group are just wrong. Football is getting more even at club level. There are more and more good players. It used to that you drew top players from maybe 6 countires (italy, france, germany, spain, argies, brazil) but now they are being drawn from literally hundreds of countries. Top players are coming out of asia and africa. This means there are more players to choose from who can play at the top level. This means that even for the biggest clubs like united there is going to be hard games. I know this is exageratting a bit. But I think football will move to be more competitve and it will be harder to buy success like the premier league clubs have in the last 10 years.
Bayern can get goals but inter are burried imo. They are a shambles atm. Bayern are a shambles too atm. I dont really understand most in this thread (incl u) claiming bayern are so amazing. You cant of seen them much this year because they started amazing but have sucked big time recently. They are still quality and might win it. But just because you see the name bayern and saw them beat city once doesnt mean they are almighty. All the second legs bar the barca and arsenal ones look exciting.
I'd like to think so but ultimately money talks and FFP will only serve to perpetuate a concentration of football talent at a relatively small number of top clubs. I'm not knocking Basel - they deserved to knock us out but we shouldn't have let it happen and Bayern underperformed today and got mugged. I'm all for freedom of movement but the Bosman ruling and abandoning foreign player limits has definitely had a dramatic impact on the top teams in the smaller countries. Whenever a smaller club overperforms you can bet they'll soon lose their best players. Shaqiri of Basel has already signed for Bayern and joins them in the summer.
Very true without barca and real nobody would ever go to spain, that is unless they are poor, or very very common
Well yeh. The FFP rules imo are terrible. Esp as we all know that if barca dont meet the criteria they wont kick them out of the cl. So its a complete joke. I think what you are missing is that there are going to be more and more top players. The demographics in africa and the emergence of football in south east asia prove this. Its only really now that we are seeing all those african kids grow up to be 20-somethings. There will be alot more to come. And there will therefore be alot more top players. It will become easier to get top players for less money and so the small clubs, if well managed, will have more and more a chance to compete with the big clubs (unless they pay the refs like barca surely do).
I'm not entirely convinced by your argument about how there will be more top players. Football definitely has a more global reach these days and the athleticism and fitness is definitely higher but I'm not convinced that there are more players now with better technique and skill than there used to be so I don't see the trend that you think ought to have started by now.
Well the adult male population in the world is probably due to explode in the next 10 years. Add to that that football is growing in the middle east, asia and africa and I think its a fair hypothesis. Just looked at nigeria's stats. 44% of their population are under 14. 3% are over 65.
The infrastructure just doesn't exist though - most of the top African talent is developed from an early age in Europe and in most of Asia football still isn't seen as a respectable occupation.
