So, there was a very interesting commentary on ESPN Soccernet about our recent visit to Korea, and how we, in effect, broke the toilets, insulted the host and left the party throwers unhappy.

I read that. I think they’re right. If you roll into a country as an ambassador of your club, you have your business correct. This means that there is stuff that you do and don’t do.
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Okay, this is going to sound crazy, but the man in that picture at left, want-away whiner Alexander Hleb, could be one of the keys to this season. So the news that he is going with the squad on the Asian tour warms my heart, even though I know that it is to put him in the shop window, in the hopes that somebody, anybody, will pay around 7m for our 15m midfielder.
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I was able to watch the Valerenga match today and I have just a few thoughts on it:

Bojan being captain was both chuckle-worthy and wonderful to see. I have this overblown sense of what a “captain” looks like–big, commanding, not 12–so Bojan wearing the armband over Milito, while it made sense, definitely caused me to say “aww” at the sweet little tyke getting honored by Pep for 45 minutes. And he scored! Wait, no, that was the other Bojan. My bad.

Because I watched without commentary (thanks for the links, Jnice), the second half was confusing. There were no graphics about who had been subbed on, so I had to listen to the PA announcer in the background and then guess who was who. Around minute 75 I got bored with it and checked the final score and team sheets. Sure enough no one scored again and I was able to figure out that Nolito wasn’t Sergi Roberto and Edu Oriol wasn’t Nolito, so I had to change some of my match notes.

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Sometimes I wonder why we so often proclaim our cantera to be the world’s best and as being one of the main reasons our club is so much better than all the other clubs in the world.  I mean, it is fantastic and it has given us the majority of the squad we currently field, but if it’s so great and wonderful, why don’t we trust it?

I wrote a piece over at Soccernet (shameless self-plug, of course; get used to it) in which I voted in favor of Thiago and JDS over Cesc, Ozil, or Gourcuff. It’s not that the latter trio is bad by any stretch of the imagination, but rather that the former are ours and have remained with the club in an effort to break through. It’s fun to talk about how some of the world’s great players would fit in our system, but when it comes down to it, are we prepared to remove the direct connection between the first team and the  cantera? Do we want to send the message that canteranos must  be fully developed by the age of 17 or we’ll replace them with a superstar brought in for tens of millions of euros?

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What better way to start the season than with a photo of a man who people are probably convinced didn’t even go out during the day, our own Tiny Vampire, Andres Iniesta, hanging out on the beach. Yee-ha!

I’ll be brief with all this, but no less opinionated, because that’s how I roll.
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Barça is “classless.’ Right. This is so, so tiresome. I’m sure that outraged Gunners fans will visit this site with more of the same. Perhaps this post headline should be “We love Catalan puppies” or some such, but that isn’t going to happen. Instead, here’s a little dose of truth and logic for both sides. It might not all be right, and events might make a liar out of me, but take it as you will:
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There is a lot of news to report from the opening days of Sandro Rosell’s presidency. I’ll try to get through all of it here, but no promises since there’s a lot. Let’s start with the sporting stuff:

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El Mundo Deportivo

And so it begins. Today, Sandro Rosell became the newest president of our beloved club, FC Barcelona. He has some immense shoes to fill in those of departing president Joan Laporta, who presided over a glorious, unprecedented period of sporting and fiscal success. And Rosell has to hit the ground running, because:
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Yes, Les Bleus went down today, as many predicted. As I noted, despite pundits who had them as group favorites, if they even got out of the group it would be amazing. Why? Because they were a damaged side, and have been for years under the aegis of Raymond Dumbenech.

So they’re out, and the joy has been unrestrained. Why? Some say arrogance toward “little” countries. But was there really? It seems like they were too busy fighting among themselves to show any arrogance to anyone.

The World Cup is about deeply felt allegiances to countries, sometimes not even birth countries of many of us. And for the record, I think it’s churlish and mean-spirited to take such pleasure in a nation going out.
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Good news first: Jonathan Dos Santos, our beloved Johnny Two-Time, has been renewed until 2012. He has a buyout clause of 30m. This is an essential move, because the midfielder is, in my estimation, key to the future of tika-taka. Yes, his daddy is a whack job, but the kid’s got skills.

Thiago Alcantara is next up, with a deal that is all but done.
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