FC Barcelona - More Than A Football Club

 

Barcelona FC is “More than a football club”. That’s what they say isn’t it? Well they are 100% correct. Barcelona FC is more than a football club, it’s also a heartless money making tyrant, who will stop at nothing to destroy football and bury anyone that stands in their way. Also they steal children.

Is that too harsh? No, it’s really not, not in my eyes anyway.

Let me start by saying that this current Barcelona team play breathtaking football and its great, and we all love it, Messi, Xavi, blah blah blah…Okay the usual boring sycophantic, play the best football ever tirade has been done to death. If you look at the way that Real Madrid are playing this season, they are just as devastating and that boy Ronaldo? Whatever Messi can do eh? Eh, and Ronaldo’s also pretty good on the International stage too, I don’t see Argentina qualifying for the Euro’s.

Barcelona president Sandro Rosell said this week, that the top leagues in Europe, excluding the Scottish Premier League for some bizarre reason, need to cut their participating teams to 16. This is so they can play Champions League games on a Saturday and also have time to play glamour international friendly matches. What gives Rosell the right to say to teams like Wigan,Nancy,Lecce or Freiburg that they need to go find a new league as their domestic league is now limited members only?

Greed is a disease in football, that’s always been there, but recently it seems to have become a very prominent way of doing business. The rich are finding ways to become richer and at the same time stealing the smaller club’s lunch money. Ultimately the product will suffer, as it has in recent years, with the Champions League becoming as predictable as …something that’s really easy to predict.

The same teams’ playing each other is not what European competition should be about. How can the Anderlechts, Ajaxs and Celtics really compete with the Real Madrids, Manchester Uniteds and Bayern Munichs?

But that’s what Barcelona FC and Sandro Rosell want. They don’t want your club to compete; they want your club to die. They want to set up a league akin to a gentleman’s club, where the poor and unprivileged are not allowed to tread. If your club isn’t one of the top sixteen teams, isn’t one of the big five leagues, they hate you.

Mr Rosell also wants Barcelona to go whore themselves in the Middle East and America with pointless mid week friendlies. That’s all well and good but why should the Bolton versus Fulham fixture have to suffer because Barcelona want to make a few bob from a friendly in Chicago? (Maybe Bolton versus Fulham isn’t the best example of a top flight fixture to save).

People may point out that Rosell is also vice-president of the European Club Association (ECA) and that the majority of the G14 clubs, yeah I went there, would have agreed with his sentiment …..BUT that would destroy my point about Barcelona being solely responsible for the downfall of fair and sporting behaviour in football, and therefore I choose to ignore that fact.

What really left a bad taste in the mouth is how Barcelona and their players dealt with the whole Fabregas situation. Players coming out comparing his situation to that of a slave and how big bad Arsenal weren’t giving them their player back…. just a second, don’t Barcelona go around the globe and capture, yes I’m using the word capture, youngsters and relocate them to Spain, without their local clubs every getting a chance to play them?

Will Messi ever play in Argentina? Maybe, but he’ll be way past his best and there is already a certain level of resentment from Argentinean fans towards him due to a lack of connection to Argentinean football. Did Giovanni Dos Santos ever get the chance to feel the pride of pulling on his local team’s Jersey? No he didn’t, although he probably will soon because he is shit.

People tend to paint Arsenal as the villains of the piece for signing Fabregas and Merida but it was all done legally and Barcelona had no right to complain. Yes, Arsenal exploited a Spanish loophool but good for them. If Barcelona could have done the same thing they would have, in a heartbeat. It’s fine for them to do it though; they are a proud, family club etc.

And another thing if Puyol, Xavi and Piqué are so proud to be Catalonian, why do they play for Spain? Listen pal, if you have a belief that resonates within you and is to the very core of who you are as a person, you can’t pick and choose when you want to believe it. Look at Oleguer, he got called up to the Spanish team for the Euros and did he accept it? No, he advised that he was in fact Catalonian not Spanish. They may have World Cup and European Championship medals but they’ve basically taken Franco’s 10 pieces of silver.

So if they’re not out stealing children or destroying domestic leagues all over Europe, you’ll probably find them selling their soul for a World Cup winner’s medal. BarcelonaFC – more than a football club indeed.

When Chris isn’t campaigning for socialist reform in football, he’s usually found complaining on Twitter @SubSceneRecords.

Tagged: Barcelona, Barcelona football club, G14 clubs, Lionel Messi, Sandro Rosell, Spain, Spanish Football

Posted in: Europe