johnnythefirst

Well I don't agree with that either. Wenger is a dick but he made a point today. Either you loan a player for a year and the other team can use him as they please, or you don't loan him at all. All these ifs and whens are annoying. You shouldn't be afraid to play against a player you deemed unnecessary in the first place. ;-)

I'm trying to give my two cents here as a guy who loves football: Look, when Courtois was bought three years ago, he was nothing but a promising young keeper that was seen as a backup for Cech and a possible replacement in the far future. The fact he grew to be one of the world's best so fast, is his own achievement. Chelsea had nothing to do with it. Chelsea had the money to bet a little on this guy and it bet well. Loaning him out proved to be an enormous success, gaining the club (at the very least) a good deal of money and a superb keeper in the years to come. He might join Chelsea next year or the year after that, but in the player's head, right now, he's an Atletico player. This is the squad he trained with, won prizes with and grew with during the past three years. Making him sit this one out will make him grow further away from the club and looking at his character, that wouldn't do anyone much good. It might be business to you, but to a (young) player, there's a lot of emotion involved as well. I don't think he's been at the Bridge much more than I have (which is never. ). Personally, I think there should be a maximum number of players allowed in every senior squad in Europe. If you want to buy more players, you should sell some first. This will stop a lot of what's happening right now, and will make for a more honest game. It's not normal for a club to pluck every decent player away from the smaller leagues and to have a senior squad of 60+ contracted players. This is not a dig at Chelsea btw, you're just rolling with it and doing it very well, this is criticism of football in general. 15-20 years ago, there was much more variety in cup winners, now maybe 6 clubs can still win the CL. Bayern, Real, Barca, Chelsea, Man Utd (in a good year) and City (if they learn how to play properly in Europe). Freak years like Dortmund had last year or Atletico is having currently are very rare exceptions. As a neutral supporter, I don't really like this. How many leagues still matter? The Spanish one and the Premier League. Germany is coming, yes, and in France you have two rich oil-teams and a lot of crappy ones. The Serie A is crumbling to the ground and can only get scraps now. The Dutch league (Champions League winners until the mid nineties) might as well stop trying by now. Portugal has Porto and Benfica (both multiple cup winners), but as soon as they face real serious competition, it's finished for them too. Football is being monopolised. It wasn't like this in the previous century, and it sure as hell isn't very interesting to me anymore.

I'm not saying this is match fixing. I'm saying UEFA should be able to overrule certain deals to make sure match fixing isn't possible. This deal is just unfortunate...

Because you can arrange everything in a contract, things that are close to game fixing. It's normal that there should be some general rules.

Out of the same statement: I don't really see the inconsistency here to be honest, in fact the whole statement was made after the player was already proven eligible to play. "As we, in line with the FIFA regulations on status and transfer of players, consider a loan to be a transfer, we do not have any regulations regarding players not playing against their parent club whilst on loan to another club," the governing body told STV. "If a player is duly registered on the player list of IF Elfsborg then he can play against any team that Elfsborg are drawn against. "Any agreement between the two clubs that this player wouldn’t play against Celtic should Elfsborg be drawn against them is purely between the clubs. "UEFA would not have any involvement or consideration of this agreement, it would be neither endorsed or enforceable by UEFA. (meaning: you can agree on whatever you want, but UEFA rules are UEFA rules)"

See, that's the spirit.

You're obviously not seeing the issue here, so let's just call it quits and have a different opinion.

The standards for sportsmanship are the same in the CL as in a friendly for 12 year olds. You're either are or aren't. If you loan out a player, he's not your player for the rest of that year. The guy trained with this team for 3 years and worked his ass off to get to this game. You're going to tell him he should miss what might be the biggest game of his career (what if it's the final for example). That's not a nice thing to do. Let me put it this way. If Chelsea really wants to become one of the few great historical teams that is universally respected (or feared), it should stop doing all this crap. For a team with the quality you possess, you act awfully scared of a lot of other teams.'Oh no, they will have a good keeper! What now!' A confident team would want to play against the best possible opponent, not weaken them before the game starts. Do you want to win like a man or like a pussy? PS: I just read that Chelsea will drop the clause, only if he signs a longer contract. Is that also good business, or is that, I don't know... perhaps blackmail?

May I remind you that the small club he's playing for now is just 9 points behind you and fighting for a Champions League spot. Six if they win their extra match. I don't believe in the parking the bus theory. A decent striker will score goals for every club he plays for. Btw, I know the pressure at Chelsea is bigger than the pressure at Anderlecht, but it's still the club everyone in the country expects to compete for the title every year, and at the time he was a sixteen year old schoolboy that nobody knew. If you're suddenly dropped in the team at that age in that club: that's pressure for you. And I've said several, multiple times that I agree that Lukaku has obvious flaws, but that he also has a set of combined assets few other strikers possess. The main one for a team like Chelsea would be that defenders fear him by now, because he tends to overpower and outrun them. Him being on the field as such will create opportunities for midfield. In comparison, not even my mother fears Torres at this moment in his career. You might as well play with one less player and be done with it. I don't think he's the new Messi, but some of the people on this forum are acting like he's playing in the junior league and this pisses me off a tad. Never said he should be the definite first striker. What I said is, he shouldn't be benched for hacks like this year. ;-)

Ugh, I hate these comments. The only top team you played in Europe up till now (excluding Bayern in the Supercup) was PSG, and even they wouldn't just walk to the title in the Premier League. Are you seriously going to compare Galatasaray to the likes of City, Liverpool or even Arsenal and Man Utd (even at this time). Newsflash: Lukaku played against the exact same teams as Chelsea this year, because logic dictates he plays in the same league as Chelsea. Fact is: he scored a hell of a lot more goals than the Chelsea strikers separately, and many of them were against the top teams. He lost all his confidence while being third in the picking order behind two sorry ass strikers before Eto'o came to save the day somewhat. What was his reaction in his first two matches for Everton? He knocked himself out scoring a goal as a sub and then he proceeded by destroying Newcastle by himself. The amount of Everton points and goals scored is almost doubled whenever he plays. Check the stats. He's been playing under immense pressure since his first match for Anderlecht, because from the start, half the people said he was a lumbering giant who couldn't hold the ball if his mother's life depended on it. He proved them wrong and he keeps doing it today. Not ready my fat ass he ain't. ^^

I would say that, yes. Anderlecht loans players out all the time, and they play against us several times a year.

Don't think so...

Ok, forget the sympathy then, there's still sportsmanship to consider. He made them get to the semi finals, he should have the right to aim for the trophy with them in my eyes. If football is merely business, why don't we all stop following it and in stead watch a banker count his money for 90 minutes. I'd rather postpone the whole business until the final, and when it comes to it, may the best team win.

I really hope Chelsea and Atletico will not meet in the semi final. I can understand this whole deal to come over as quite disgusting to the neutral public. It was a very bright idea, but it won't get Chelsea any sympathy... (and that's me being polite).

That sounds like bullshit, and would be unprecedented... He can either play or not, there's not gonna be any bargaining going on.

Well, this sucky keeper seems to be keeping Barca out of the semis...

Tell me, if Atletico has such an amazing defensive system, why are there so many clips of him making insane saves? Was this amazing backline on holidays? Did they suffer sudden strokes? Courtois is a big part of that defense, that's why they're so anxious to keep him.

Completely agree with your whole post. Also, how many strikers have the combined, pace, acceleration, strength and finishing to be able to pull off that second goal against Croatia? Benteke, for example, the man he replaced, would never have been able to do that with the skills he has. Look at it. He creates a counter out of nothing, uses his speed to outrun the defender to the ball and then uses his strength to make room for the scoring opportunity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv0QPzhRA8M Seriously, how many other strikers could pull this off? I'm looking forward to him playing Korea and Algeria on the world cup. They're practically midgets. He'll fuck shit up.

Were you looking at the clips posted here? Of course he's not going to catch them, most of them were hard shots from very close by. I can tell you I've never felt so secure about our national goalkeeper since the days of Michel Preud'homme, a European Cup winner who was one of the best of his day and was chosen as the best goalkeeper of the 94 World Cup. That's 20 years ago and I believe Courtois will prove to be better in the end.

Haha, so true. Some guys on here are talking about every decent striker in Europe as if they were Ronaldo, while the one who's already here is of course utter crap. It's sad that the only people who are actually criticizing him are fans of his own club and country (yes, we Belgians tend to pull everyone down too).

Yes, now. ;-)

To get him to play/train with Drogba, you have to get Drogba first. It seems that so many players have already been signed. Drogba, Costa, Cavani. This reminds me of last summer. Wait for what happens, then start talking about which team we should play.

Still not sure if Casillas really had to be dropped. At the end, it looked to me Mourinho was so tired of being at Real he was practically asking to get fired by kicking everyone's shins.

I'm fairly convinced he'll walk by now. Many of you are calling him stupid, but he's smart enough to know he'll never be the first choice striker for Chelsea in the next few years. He'll take a small step back (I think he'll want to stay at Everton if it was up to him), keep scoring them goals and be bought by one of the top teams again when he's 24-25.

He was born and raised in Antwerp, not in the Congo basin. He's 20.