Champions League Final : Barcelona v Arsenal

[Yoda]

WHY THE f*** ARE PEOPLE SLAGGING AN ENGLISH TEAM ON HERE? I could understand if it was palARSE.

They talk about corruption in Italian football?

I thought Barca were extremly poor tonight. Where was the 'Best player in the world' for most of the match? How many goal scoring save's did Almunia have to make (apart from the goals)?

And, Why was a referee, whose performance in the Chelsea V Barcalona match, allowed to be in charge of the BIGGEST club match in the World?

Well done UEFA, you've f***ed this country right up, yet again!!!!

Forgot to add something to this.

How come it took 69, yes SIXTYNINE, minutes for the ref to finally book a Barca player?

I counted at least 3 foul's by them, before this, that should have had a name taken. CT of a ref! I can see another on being forced to retire following Anders Frisk last year.

 

[itszamora]

The ref was shit, but he was not biased, just shit. If anything I think Barca were more screwed by Lehmann's sending-off than Arsenal, as Barca were denied a perfectly good goal by Lehmann's foul and the ref's incompetence.

 

[Yoda]

The ref was shit, but he was not biased, just shit. If anything I think Barca were more screwed by Lehmann's sending-off than Arsenal, as Barca were denied a perfectly good goal by Lehmann's foul and the ref's incompetence.

That is very true, but it also changed the game and how it was played.

 

[Gwylan]

Forgot to add something to this.

How come it took 69, yes SIXTYNINE, minutes for the ref to finally book a Barca player?

I counted at least 3 foul's by them, before this, that should have had a name taken. CT of a ref! I can see another on being forced to retire following Anders Frisk last year.

Er...because he was quite lenient when he came to cards (he had little choice with Lehmann). Some refs would have given Toure a straight red and would certainly have given him a second yellow. Henry might well have got a second yellow too for following through.
The ref gave players of both sides the benefit of the doubt.

Like I said, the two major cock-ups both benefited Arsenal so I really don't think they could have any complaints.

 

[London Calling]

How good are Barca, two key games againgst English teams, have been played againgst only 10 men. In both cases the English teams held their own.

Not a fair test tonight. Arsenal did us proud. And Henry did flap at two chances, which I reckon Shearer would have blasted away!!

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

it's not every day a team from Europe gets to the final

be a bit boring if the final was every day mark!


yeah anyway, arsenal represent the ENGLISH LEAGUE, not english football, only two players in that whole squad were english, hell, only 2 of them had english as their first language!

i was backing the arse tonight however, as it would've been a good advert for the premiership, two winners in a row and that...the sending off lacked common sense...common sense to allow play to continue, and common sense to realise the situation and only award a yellow card...i wish you could see refs thinking outside of the rule book and just using their brains


yeah anyway, well done to barcelona, best team in europe so i guess they deserved it

 

[SussexSpur]

Cry me a river bitch

Funny you should say that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW7YIOxb2gQ

 

[Munkfish]

f***ing hate all the twats who are against arsenal really annoys me just hope we get the spanish in the world cup and beat them i hate the barca fans

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

f***ing hate all the twats who are against arsenal really annoys me just hope we get the spanish in the world cup and beat them

why ESPECIALLY spain? why them over any other country?!

i hate the barca fans

why?

 

[SussexSpur]

Entirely apart from tonight's match, the way Barca operates as a club is fairly fascinating and has been throughout their history.
Here's an admirable essay from yesterday...

Barcelona's model of integrity shows right is might

Vital role of fans in success and culture of Catalan club sets example for giants and minnows of English game

David Conn
Wednesday May 17, 2006
The Guardian


In the summer of 1999, after Manchester United fans had beaten off the attempt by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB to take over their club, London's Birkbeck College hosted a conference on how to restore heart and soul to a game becoming ravenously commercialised. In the flush of victory Andy Walsh, a United supporters' group leader, talked fervently about "rolling back the plc" at Old Trafford. Brian Lomax, a Northampton Town supporter, explained how disaffected Cobblers fans had formed a pioneering supporters' trust, bought a small stake in the club and elected a director to the board.
In the front row were four well turned out men, including a little chap with a neat side parting, Joan Laporta. They were from Elefant Blau (Blue Elephant), a group lobbying for more supporter democracy at FC Barcelona, which was then tumbling from greatness under its president, Josep Lluís Núñez.
The Catalans' presence inspired a movement here to show that supporter owned football clubs are not Utopian visions conjured up over a beer in the Gorse Hill pub in Stretford or the Butcher's Arms in Northampton. Almost all British football clubs began as members' organisations and here was Barcelona, one of the world's greats, still owned by its 100,000 fan-members.

The Elefant Blau campaign had rounded on a "Barça 2000" commercial redevelopment planned around the Camp Nou, scorning it as tat - "a kind of Disneyland park," Laporta said - and a selling out of the club's proud traditions and values. Theirs is a history with which many British fans are now familiar; Barça became a Catalan rallying point, first against the Spanish dictator General Primo de Rivera in the 1920s, then throughout the rule of General Franco, whose fascist troops bombed Barça's social club in 1938 and murdered the club's president, Josep Sunol. FC Barcelona proclaimed itself "more than a club", becoming a focal point for a region and for sporting and democratic values.

By 2003 the UK Government had backed the progressive idea of supporter ownership and established Supporters Direct to help fans form trusts, yet it has never given the organisation any funding or had the gumption to introduce reforms to big business football which might help fans gain a stake. The current chief executive, Philip French, talks spiritedly about trust-run clubs becoming "community hubs" but first he must secure money simply to keep the organisation going. Still 140 supporters trusts have formed, and, particularly after ITV Digital's collapse in 2002, Supporters Direct's threadbare staff, led by Lomax, toured the country helping fans form trusts. At Lincoln, Chesterfield, Exeter, York and elsewhere, trusts took clubs over minutes from the knacker's yard of insolvency.

In the Premier League and Championship, however, the financial value of clubs has blocked supporter ownership. When Roman Abramovich resolved to drop some of his unholy oil fortune into a football club, he found that Barcelona and Real Madrid are member clubs and cannot be bought. All our great names, by contrast, are limited companies and are available.

In Barcelona Laporta had an avenue for his protest. He stood for election against Núñez's successor, Joan Gaspart, promising a renaissance through reinvigoration of the membership and David Beckham in midfield. He won.

Since then Laporta, a lawyer, has not always conformed to an idealised view of how a fan might behave in the halls of football power. His approach has been relentlessly commercial, seeking to turn around £100m debts by signing major stars. The fans missed out on Becks so, poor souls, had to make do with Ronaldinho. Barça are not shy of the language many fans here detest: of the club as a brand, the membership an opportunity to sell merchandise.

Some United campaigners who met Laporta in London feel let down because he lent no support to their anti-Glazer campaign. The plc was dissolved not by fans but by the Glazer takeover, and Walsh and many fellow disenchanted United fans turned away to form their own democratically run club, FC United, which had a storming first season at the base of the football pyramid.

Some say that, as Barça are part of the G14 group of elite clubs and hungrily claim their imbalanced share of the domestic Spanish TV deal, they are setting no example for a more collective, sporting way to run football.

Yet that is a harsh view. Barcelona make money and are obsessively ambitious but they still take the field in Paris tonight embodying a more inspirational identity for a football club than being a private company owned by businessmen or an oligarch's toy.

"The fans truly own this club," Ferran Seriano, one of the club's vicepresidents, says. "They control its destiny and can decide how it will be managed. This is totally different from Arsenal [two-thirds owned by ITV, businessmen Danny Fiszman and David Dein, and Lady Nina and Sir Charles Bracewell-Smith] or Chelsea, owned by one guy who could one day withdraw his investment."

Laporta and his new board have turned the club round by capitalising on playing success, including two La Liga championships orchestrated by Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o, Deco and the rest. The membership has grown from 106,000 to 142,000. While the club does work hard to turn that loyalty into cash, democracy is real. The need for the board to be accountable and stay popular with the fans means that season tickets are affordable compared with other major clubs, with the cheapest €101 (£69), enough to make the holder of a seat at Arsenal's new Emirates Stadium weep into his credit card statement.

"It is a challenge to remain memberowned and compete against the richest clubs," Seriano said. "For example, we run other sports, like handball and basketball - which make a loss - because our constitution states we must promote all sport in Barcelona.

"But we do compete, with pride in who we are, our history and values. Our supporters would feel alienated if we had a structure like Arsenal or Chelsea."

Of the famous, remarkable absence of advertising across the team shirt, Seriano said that the club's fans voted in 2003 to allow it, given the scale of the debt, but as the finances improved the club never took the plunge. Barça have decided they will not, anyway, accept sponsorship from a gambling company, as Spurs did this week, and are considering instead carrying a humanitarian message on their shirts next season. It is difficult to picture the Glazers mulling over the same idea.

Tonight the players Laporta signed may bring more glory but, whatever happens, next spring he must stand for re-election. That democracy maintains Barça's status as a sporting beacon, a people's club: if supporters do not approve of the people running it, they can vote them out. Imagine that at Old Trafford.

The Camp Nou way

142,000 Barcelona members or socios

4 Major shareholders in Arsenal

£69 Cheapest adult season ticket at the Camp Nou

£885 Cheapest at the Emirates Stadium

£579 Most expensive adult season ticket at the Camp Nou

£1,825 Most expensive at the Emirates Stadium

£84m Barça's income in 2002-03, before Joan Laporta took over

£163m Barça's income in 2005-6

2 Maximum number of four-year terms a Barça president may serve

 

[turienzo's lovechild]

£69 for a season ticket at barca?!

thats OBSCENE!!!

 

[perth seagull]

Arsenal were the better team despite all the hype about Barcelona and Ronaldinho. Just a damn shame they were not able to prove it. I agree with Andy Gray, the ref bottled it. The sending off was an understandable call (even though the ref could've just allowed the Barca goal and kept Lehmann on instead of ruining the match) but throughout the match he seemed bent on penalising the Arsenal players yet did nothing for Barcelona when they made the exact same challenges. he also turned a blind eye to their diving, especially Deco who was having a field day.

And even when Arsenal were down to 10 men, Barca struggled against Arsenal, it was only fatigue and numbers caught them in the end. I suspect that if this match was 11 vs 11, Arsenal would've won the game comfortably!

Still, have to give credit to Barca for remaining composed and not panicking and taking their chances in the later stages of the match. But they had the rub of the green with this bent Norwegian official.

 

[Dandyman]

Funny you should say that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW7YIOxb2gQ

Genius.

 

[Dave the OAP]

very clever apart from 1 thing....tottenham have won f*** all ever , whereas Arsenal have won lots and lots and did get to the final. and will be there next year.....Tottenham wont

Very clever effort though

 

[Les Biehn]

f***ing hate all the twats who are against arsenal really annoys me just hope we get the spanish in the world cup and beat them i hate the barca fans

I on the other hand hate Arsenal. There may be a heated debate over this at the weekend munkfish me old marra.

 

[pornomagboy]

English team? who?

well it wasnt arsnic, wit a great englist team they are when they have two english players playing

 

[Dandyman]

very clever apart from 1 thing....tottenham have won f*** all ever , whereas Arsenal have won lots and lots and did get to the final. and will be there next year.....Tottenham wont

Very clever effort though

Remind me what trophies Arsenal won this year, Dave.

I think you'll find Spurs "f*** all" includes two league titles, a Cup Winners Cup, two UEFA cups, eight FA Cups and 3 League Cups.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

1. If the letter of the law were applied and the advantage had been played, surely the goal should have stood AND Lehmann should have gone.

2. It was a blatent dive that gave Arsenal the free kick from which Sol scored.

3. The first Barca goal was not offside.

I wanted Arsenal to win as much as anybody, but all the moaning and cries of "we was robbed" are just another example of the wingeing hypocracy that we get whenever a British team lose.

 

[Pavilionaire]

What I find funny is that all us English are supposed to support Arsenal because they're meant to be English, but what happens?

1. A German cheats and gets sent off.
2. A bloke from the Ivory Coast cheats to win a free kick, from which his team score.
3. The French manager bleats because the first goal was offside - when it wasn't.
4. The overpaid French striker bleats that the ref should be wearing a Barca shirt, the Barca players should have been booked, the goal was offside, the keeper should have stayed on, Ronaldinho and Eto-o are not "big" players etc etc.

When will people realise Arsenal are a foreign club who do England a disservice with their whingeing, cheating, diving attitude? The 2 English that are there are the quietest of the bunch.

There was no grace in defeat from Wenger last night, and Thierry Henry showed that underneath that classy football exterior there is the mind of a twat.

 

[perth seagull]

The referee admits...the sending off was wrong!

Referee regrets Lehmann red card

Hauge could have let Barca's goal stand and not sent off Lehmann
Referee Terje Hauge has admitted he may have acted too quickly in sending off Arsenal keeper Jens Lehmann during Barcelona's Champions League triumph.
Hauge dismissed Lehmann in the 18th minute for fouling Samuel Eto'o, with Ludovic Giuly's resulting effort ruled out as Hauge had blown for a free-kick.

"I would have liked to have taken a few more seconds before I made a decision," Hauge told a Norwegian newspaper.

"If I'd done that, I could have given a goal and given a yellow card as well."

In other circumstances I would perhaps have done something different with Lehmann

Referee Terje Hauge

Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger and captain Thierry Henry have both slammed Hauge's performance in Paris and claimed his decisions favoured the Spanish side.

But the Norwegian said he was pleased with his overall display as Barcelona won the match 2-1 thanks to goals from Eto'o and Juliano Belletti.

And he said the Lehmann incident was a difficult one to judge after the German became the first player to be sent off in a European Cup final.

He added: "We had full control of the match and all in all I'm quite happy with my performance.

"Under other circumstances I would perhaps have done something different with Lehmann, but this mostly rested on the positioning in relation to the situation.

"Everything happens quickly on the pitch and for me it looked as if there was physical contact.

"As well as that it happened in the linesman's working area and I had no reason to doubt him in this instance.

"It was obviously a big game for Arsenal, and to lose is a huge disappointment so I understand their frustration. But we'll have to give it a few days so we can discuss this more sensibly."