I know some of you will enjoy this

[ALVAREZ6]

...lol

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/864960/sepp-blatter:-la-liga-is-the-best-league-in-the-world?cc=5901



Blatter: La Liga is best in the world

FIFA president Sepp Blatter thinks that the English Premier League could learn from the Spanish Primera Division and pointed to the fact that no player based in England made it into FIFA's World XI as evidence for his claim.

In recent years, Spain has seen an influx of world-class players arrive and Blatter now says that La Liga can claim to be the game's top domestic competition.

"It must be the strongest league in the world," he told CNN World Sport. "And when you see the starting XI of the Spanish national team, all of them play their football in Spain. The Spanish league also has the highest number of local players."

The World Team of the Year featured six players from Spanish champions Barcelona, two from Real Madrid and three from Champions League winners Inter Milan, but Blatter pointed to the absence of the usual English-based contingent.

"The Premier League is the best-marketed league in the world," he added. "It's a good league, with good players, but when you consider not one player made the best XI of the world, maybe they should think about whether something can be adapted."

Blatter also took time to praise the 2010 FIFA Ballon d'Or winner Lionel Messi, who picked up the honour for the second year in a row.

"Leo Messi is what I identify as a wonderful football player and a good boy. He is really humble. It's not a game he's playing, he's not an actor,'' he added.

"When I compare Messi to Maradona, both are excellent, talented players. They could not be more talented. But the difference is their personal educational characteristics. One is still in football, modest and not trying to get into the extravaganza. The other did it."

[resistanze]

lol, I laughed at that report, tbh.

Everyone on the XI team is from either Barca, Real or Inter.

[ALVAREZ6]

lol Blatter & the rest of FIFA are pathetic

[Spurologist]

http://cdn.worldcupblog.org/usa.worldcupblog.org/files/2007/11/sepp-blatter.jpg

[lefty]

The EPL is better balanced than la Liga that's for sure

It's more competitive because it's not a 2 headed monster

But please, don't compare EPL's teams trophy cases to Real's or Barcelona's

[Sense]

La Liga has some of the best players in the world, but it's definitely not the best league..

[Phenomanul]

La Liga has some of the best players in the world, but it's definitely not the best league..

And two of the top 5 teams...

[DAF86]

I don't know if La liga is the best league in the world, what I do know is that it has the best team and probably the second best too. Also, I know that no league is head and shoulders above the Spanish one like a lot of people tried to make bealive with the EPL.

[sonic21]

tbh, spanish teams don't have good results the past six years in the CL, only barça went far (and Villareal in 2006).

[sonic21]

Real Madrid may be a top 5 european team, but we have no proof of that yet.

[diego]

"When I compare Messi to Maradona, both are excellent, talented players. They could not be more talented. But the difference is their personal educational characteristics. One is still in football, modest and not trying to get into the extravaganza. The other did it."



Maradona

He played, he won, he peed, he lost. The analysis snitched ephedrine and Maradona ended his WC 94 in a bad way. Ephedrine, which is not considered a stimulant in professional sports in the United States and many other countries, is prohibited in international competition.
There was stupor and scandal. The thunder of moral condemnation deafened the world, though some voices of support for the fallen idol were still heard. And not only in his hurt and dumbfounded Argentina, but also in places as far away as Bangladesh, were a large mob roared to the streets damning FIFA and demanding the return of the exiled. In the end, it was easy to judge him, and easy to convict him, but it wasn't as easy to forget that Maradona had spent years committing the sin of being the best, the misdemeanor of denouncing out loud the things the powerful keep quiet y the crime of playing with his left, which, according to the Illustrated Larousse, means «with the left» as well as «opposite of how it should be done».
Diego Armando Maradona had never used stimulants, before matches, to multiply his body. Its true he was immersed in cocaine, but he drugged himself in sad parties, to forget or be forgotten, when he was already corraled by glory and couldn't live without the fame that didn't let him live. He played better than anyone despite cocaine, not because of it.
He was burdened by the weight of his own character. He had problems in the column of his back, as far back as the day the crowd chanted his name for the first time. Maradona carried a load called Maradona, which made his back crunch. The body as a metaphor: his legs hurt, he couldn't sleep without pills. It didnt take him long to realize the the responsibility of working in the stadiums as a god was unbearable, but from the beginning he knew it was impossible to stop. «I need them to need me», he confessed, already having spent many years with the halo over his head, submitted to the tyranny of supernatural performance, soaked in cortisone and analgesics and ovations, stalked by the demands of his devotees and the hate of the offended.
The pleasure of knocking down idols is directly proportional to the need to have them. In Spain, when Goicoechea hit him from behind and without the ball and left him off the pitch for several months, there was no shortage of fanatics who carried the prepetrator of this premeditated murder on their shoulders, and in all the world there was a surplus of people willingto celebrate the fall of an arrogant south american intruding on the peak, that new rich who had escaped from hunger and and gave himself the luxury of insolence and vanity.
After, in Nápoles, Maradona was saint Maradonna and saint Gennaro became saint GennArmando. In the streets images of the divinity in shorts were sold, illuminated by the crown of the Virgin or wrapped in the robes of the saint who bleeds every six months, and also coffins of the northern Italian clubs and bottles with the tears of Silvio Berlusconi. Children and dogs wore Maradona wigs. There was a ball at the foot of the statue of Dante and the salamander of the fountain wore the blue jersey of club Nápoles. It had been more than half a century since the city's club had won a championship, a city condemned to the fury of the Vesuvio and eternal losing on the football pitch, and thanks to Maradona the dark south was able to, finally, humiliate the white north which disdained them. Cup after cup, in Italian and European stadiums, the club Nápoles defeated, and each goal was a profanity against the established order and a revenge against history. In Milán they hated the one guily of this affront by poor people coming out of their place, they called him ham with curls. And not just in Milán: at the 90 World Cup, the majority of the crowds punished Maradona with furious whistling every time he touched the ball, and the argentine defeat by germany was celebrated like an italian victory.
When Maradona said he wanted to leave Náples, there were those who threw wax dolls filled with needles out the windows. Prisoner of the city that adored him and the camorra, the mafia that owned the city, he was already playing wronghearted, wrongfooted; and then, the cocaine scandal exploded. Maradona suddenly became Maracoca, a delinquent who passed himself off as a hero.
Later, in Buenos Aires, television broadcast the second payback: live arrest, as if it were a match, to the delight of those who enjoy the spectacle of the naked king the police took prisoner.
«He is a sick man», they said. They said: «he is finished». The messiah convoked to redeem the historic curse of southern italians had been, also, el avenger of the argentine defeat at the Malvinas Islands, by a cheaters goal and a fabolous goal, that left the british spinning like tops for several years; but at the time of the fall, the Golden Child was no more than a drugged, whoring fraud. Maradona had betrayed the children and dishonored the sport. They left him for dead.
But the cadaver jumped up in one step. After serving the cocaine suspension, Maradona was the fireman of the argentine national team, that was burning their last tickets to the World Cup 94. Thanks to Maradona, they made it. And in the World Cup, Maradona was being once again, like in old times, the best of all, when the ephedrine bomb went off.
The power machine had sworn their revenge. He had attacked them, and that has a price, which is paid in full without discounts. And Maradona himself gifted the justification, by his suicidal tendency to serve himself on a platter to the mouths of his many enemies and that childish irresponsiblity that pushes him to jump into any danger that comes in his way.
The same journalists who chase him with microphones, reproach his arrogance and tantrums and accuse him of talking too much. They aren't without reason; but its not that they cannot forgive: in reality, they don't like what he says. This short feisty big mouth had the habit of throwing punches too far up. In 86 and 94, in México and the US, he accused the television dictatorship, that was forcing players to work at midday, frying in the sun, and in a thousand more occasions, all along his accident filled career, Maradona has said things that shook the wasps nest. He wasnt the only disobedient player, but it was his voice that gave universal resonance to the most unbearable questions: ¿Why don't universal worker's rights apply to professional futbol? If it is normal for any performer to know the utilites of the show they offer, ¿why aren't players allowed to know the secret accounts of the opulent futbol multinational? Havelange stays quiet, occupied by other tasks, and Joseph Blatter, FIFA bureacrat who has never kicked a ball but rides in 8 meter limousines, driven by a black chofer, limits himself to comment:
—The last argentine star was Di Stéfano.
When Maradona was, finally, thrown out of the 94 World Cup, the pitches lost their most clamorous rebel. And also a fantastic player. Maradona is uncontrollable when he speaks, but moreso when he plays: no one can forsee the trickery of this inventor of surprise, who never repeats and enjoys forcing the computer's error. He is not a fast player, a little bull with short legs, but he carries the ball sewn to his foot and has eyes all over his body. His acrobatic tricks light up the field. He can resolve a match shooting a missile with his back to the goal or serving an impossible pass, from way off, while fenced in by enemy legs; and no one can stop him when he takes off with his dribble.
In the frigid futbol of the end of the century, that demands victory and forbids enjoyment, this man is one of the few who proves that fantasy can be efficient.

translated by me from the book Futbol in Sun and Shadow by the brilliant Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano

[TDMVPDPOY]

2 of them have the talent on the roster, but only 1 so far has proven for the last5 years...

real madrid needs to win if its to be considered serious