Barca - 2, Hamburg - 1 | Barca Starts Pre-Season with Win

Dani Alves and Adriano Celebrating

FC Barcelona started their 2012-13 pre-season tonight with a victory against German side Hamburg. It was the first match after Tito Vilanova has taken over as the coach and he should be delighted with victory. Lionel Messi who was expected to feature in the match had to pull out due to a calf strain. The club doctors are monitoring the situation and making sure that the World's Best Player will be available for the start of the season in top condition. Coming into the match, the jersey looked horrible on the pitch and I cannot wait to watch that horrible away jersey. The squad consisted of available first team players and a host of B team players. Vilanova has left out players who were coming out of injury and also the Spanish players who featured in Euro cup. Tito started with Pinto, Alves, Mascherano, Batra, Adriano, Espinosa, Dos Santos, Sergi Roberto, Afellay, Alexis and Deulofeu. The second half saw a different line-up with Pinto, Balliu, Sergi Gomez, Muniesa, Planas, Patric, Llie, Sergi Roberto, Joan Roman, Rafinha and Lobato.

Continue Reading...

Star Sports to Telecast La Liga in India

La Liga Right goes to Star Sports

ESPN-Start Sports announced that have secured live and exclusive broadcast rights of Spanish football championship La Liga for three years in markets across Asia, for an undisclosed amount. The statement further mentioned about the deal that "This acquisition underlines our commitment to football fans in the region as we continue providing the most compelling content to our viewers, and an excellent promotional platform for our business partners." Business definitely, that's in their mind. Some of you would be very happy not to listen to some crappy pre-match commentary in Ten Sports. But I still cannot forget the fact that it was Ten Sports who came to our rescue after ESPN-STAR decided not to telecast La Liga anymore after the 2009-2010 season. Most probably La Liga matches will be shown in STAR Sports channel. Get ready to miss a lot of matches or get ready to watch deferred lives regularly as STAR will always give priority to EPL ahead of La Liga. Don't get surprised when you see Stoke vs Aston Villa match shown when Valencia is playing FC Barcelona or Real Madrid. With Ten Sports at least there was a guarantee that we would not miss any of Real Madrid and FC Barcelona matches. There is no such Guarantee with Star Sports, the only Guarantee is that you won't miss a single EPL match. The big question here is that the leagues have the right to sell the TV rights to anyone, but don't they have a duty to ensure that those are telecast live.

Joseph Pep Guardiola - The Miracle Manager

Joseph Pep Guardiola

What Josep Pep Guardiola achieved with Barca in four years cannot be termed anything less than a miracle. May be it cannot be termed as a miracle in the literary sense, simply because this was nothing unexpected and also was carefully planned. But still fourteen titles in four years does tell the story. Titles and individual honours actually does not tell the story of the miracle manager, it's more than that. Guardiola redined football as we know or atleast as we we were all following. In an era when football is becoming more static with unchanged tactics and predictable styles, Guardiola brought the fun back to the game. Watching Guardiola's term at Barca is the only lesson a keen football fan need to understand the nuances associated with the game. He was also able to squash the stereo type associated with the today's game(especially the English game), that "Beautiful football does not win Titles". Guardiola's Barca did play beautifully and they definitely won titles, lots of them. In an age when football is becoming more and more negative, Guardiola can hold his head high as he not only bucked the trend but also managed to instill some belief in them among others.

Continue Reading...