capriccioso

He's been spotted at White Hart Lane.

What's that enormous dog doing in Lille's kit launch?

It was a tongue in cheek post, I was implying that he would resign immediately after that

He wanted a year out, right? Don't see it happening.

You only have to blame Sir Rafael Benitez of Liverpool for that

What's he going to do if someone like Switzerland decide to park 2 banks of 4 in front of goal?

Pep can bugger off to somewhere where short passing is ingrained. He's not shown at all that he's capable of making a significant paradigm shift in the philosophy of a football club. What's with this sudden craving for 3-4-3, 1 million passes per game anyway? When we beat them in the semi's it was all talk like "That's why Barca tactics will never work against quality opposition", "Pep has no plan B" and other such gloating/general dismissal of his ability. Now the guy responsible for that resigns and the same posters that were mocking it on the 25th of April suddenly crave it? He's just the flavour of the month now he's out of work. Fuck 'pretty' football anyway, the concept of pretty football is subjective and I for one find a well executed counter attack a la Ramires and Torres at the Camp Nou infinitely more entertaining than 10000% possession, with a million passes, nearly all of which are sideways or backwards. I'm not knocking on the guy and his achievements at all, yes, he's a fine manager, yes, he has won a truckload of trophies but there is no reason for either a drastic restructuring of how the club plays or an expensive manager to come in when we have one that's proven himself to be capable. Even if Di Matteo had wanked it up and we'd gone home trophyless or we did need a drastic restructuring, Pep's not the man for it.

I think there needs to be a clear definition and example (other than the Hazard thread, which was an extreme) of what off-topic is. For example, just then in the CL Final thread, Ollie posted an article to which I replied in a slightly off topic manner involving the finer points of the German language. Does that constitute derailing a thread?

Hi! I think there's more Indians (I'm half, by the way) than any other ethnic group on this forum

Why not? He's potentially missing one friendly match (Community Shield) to play in a few more. None of the above 23 players take the Olympics seriously and as far as I know most don't care about the Community Shield either.

It is by far the biggest thread on the entire forum.

That article, while otherwise great, didn't translate brilliantly. From memory 'stadt' means city not club.

Hi Fans of different clubs are always welcome here

Also Matthias Sammer, like 90% of the German footballing community, is a massive wanker.

But it's a general chat thread!

9 more days, then.

Sorry to be pedantic... but its typo

Ah, my bad. Well, more than Ronaldo is still not half bad.

Sorry to be pedantic, Spike, but it's hypocrisy.

Still not confirmed?

I think that will be his swansong, he'll probably retire from all football after that. He'll be 36 by then, I can't see the legend being able to carry on much longer than that. And what better way to bow out than to produce a last few exceptional performances to power Cote D'Ivoire to a good run in the World Cup?

I think our mods are a fair bit smarter than those on rawk! With off-topic, its a tightrope to walk. Lean too strictly and the thread may die altogether, lean too leniently and there may be repeats of the Hazard thread.

You're right, there's nothing wrong with a player holding up his arms and saying "I did nothing to deserve this trophy, so for me, the hunger to win it is still there". In fact, in today's world of football, such a sentiment is admirable.

Anyway, Pep's football is redundant now. Forget tiki-taka, 'the Chelsea' is the way to play football now

"Who needs Messi, when we've got Kalou?"- that will stay with the world forever. Bosingwa now has more CL medals than Cristiano Ronaldo and the same as Lionel Messi.