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Football Thread 13/14 |OT18| Coming Early by L. Piscium

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S

Salvadora

Member
Have you guys read the extract of Diego Torres' book 'The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho' that has recently been translated into English? Long read, but totally worth it.
The presence of a mole at Real Madrid worried Mourinho so much that between 2011 and 2012 he ordered two sweeps of the hotel where the team stayed to search for hidden microphones. The investigations were unsuccessful. The Sheraton Mirasierra was apparently clean.

The control of information was another thing that deeply exercised Mourinho; he assigned a group of people to carry out a daily analysis of everything that the media said about him. Every morning Mourinho received a package containing the summary. His day began at 8am in his office at Valdebebas, studying videos, articles and broadcasts. He realised that he and his colleagues were not the only sources of the content, and that certain things that were being published did not exactly project an image of infallibility.

He began to suspect that there were leaks in his organisation. The proximity of the Clásico ramped up his sense of suspicion. According to club sources, the growing fear of leaks made Mourinho ask the directors to set up a study of the phone records of players and club employees. Some players were warned about this informally, as it was in their interest to be careful about whom they spoke to on their mobiles. The secrecy, however, did not prevent the boss’s intentions becoming widely known. In fact they were obvious in every training session.

At 5pm on 16 April 2011, shortly before Madrid’s home league match against Barcelona, the newspaper Marca reported in its online edition that Madrid would play Pepe in midfield, along with Khedira and Alonso. The team selection was unprecedented: Casillas, Ramos, Albiol, Carvalho, Marcelo, Pepe, Khedira, Alonso, Di María, Ronaldo and Benzema.

The 1-1 draw did not help the home team’s title chances but the crowd applauded their team off with a certain relief, Barça’s last couple of visits having ended with scores of 0–2 and 2–6, and filed out of the stadium reasonably content. Not so Mourinho.

He waited for the team in the dressing room before issuing a torrent of accusations and insults that distorted his face until he began to sob loudly: “You’re traitors. I asked you not to speak with anyone about the team selection but you’ve betrayed me. It shows that you’re not on my side. You’re sons of bitches.

“The only friend I have in this dressing room is Granero . . . and I’m not even sure that I can trust him any more. You’ve left me all on my own. You’re the most treacherous squad I’ve had in my life. Nothing more than sons of bitches.”

Casillas did not wait for the outburst to finish. He pretended that nothing was happening, turned around and went to the shower; he was not the only one who ignored the commotion. But Mourinho was filled with such intense emotion that he grabbed a can of Red Bull and hurled it against the wall. It exploded and drops of the sugary energy drink ran down the faces of those nearest to him.

Squatting on the ground — some say he was kneeling — he rattled off a further series of insults, then, getting up, he wiped the tears from his face and announced that he was going to speak with Pérez [Real’s president] and Sánchez [a director] because they would be able to find the mole. He promised reprisals and also made an analogy between martial law and football: “If I’m in Vietnam and I see you laugh at a mate, I’d grab a gun with my own hands and kill you. Now it’s you yourselves who have to look for the one that leaked the line-up.”

For everyone present it was difficult to work out if what they had seen was a real loss of emotional control or a piece of spontaneous theatre. By improvisation or calculation, Mourinho had ensured that everyone had been on edge. The team had been emotionally stirred up and he had adjusted the final details of his grand tactical plan. All his work, all his energy, the planning of more than nine months, were now focused on one goal: to reach a state of ecstasy in the final of the Copa del Rey in Valencia on 20 April.

The days were filled with impassioned talk until finally 20 April arrived. He talked about politics, about nationalism, about the inexorable division between the Castilian and Catalan peoples. He told the players that they had nothing in common with Barça. He knew, he said, because he had lived in Barcelona for many years, and was well aware of the local culture and the education that Catalan children receive. He explained that people like Puyol, Busquets, Xavi and Piqué had been taught from childhood to distance themselves from Spaniards such as Casillas, Ramos and Arbeloa.

He insisted that his players were wrong if they thought they had made friendships with the Barça players over their years together in the Spanish national team. The Barça players were not their friends because they took advantage of this supposed friendship by betraying the Madrid players, trying to snatch their prestige from them through their manipulation of the press.

They, the Madrid players, were not to participate in this charade any more. They must accept their role as bad guys and should refuse to acknowledge their rivals. Mourinho warned his players that if he saw any of them shaking hands outside of the formalities of the game they would be turning their backs on him — and on their team-mates. Anyone making any such friendly gesture towards the opposition ran the risk of becoming something very much like a traitor.
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Sounds like a maniac.
 
J

Jack cw

Member
dc89 said:
How is it on Vita? I just have it on PS3 at the moment.
Click to expand...

Pretty great. I like the swipe menu that lets you instant heal the party on the fly and the port is beautiful. Mostly 30 fps but not native in resolution. Still, the best looking Vita game after Killzone. The gameplay fits so well for the handheld.
 
FootballFan

FootballFan

Member
Salvadora said:
Have you guys read the extract of Diego Torres' book 'The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho' that has recently been translated into English? Long read, but totally worth it.

Sounds like a maniac.
Click to expand...

“The only friend I have in this dressing room is Granero . . . and I’m not even sure that I can trust him any more. You’ve left me all on my own. You’re the most treacherous squad I’ve had in my life. Nothing more than sons of bitches.”

Hahahahahahahahaha

I don't know if I should laugh at Mou or the team of cunts.
 
C

Clegg

Member
Madrid and Mou were too similar to ever really work.

An institution built on favouritism, arrogance and pride as evidenced by Casillas and a manager that just ups the ante at every opportunity in Mou.

And yet they're still not as bad as Barcelona.
 
D

dc89

Member
LTWheels said:
I would be quite happy if SE just made vita FF with the same graphical fidelity as the FFX HD remakes.

The vita is really the only system I want to play long JRPGs on. The suspend feature makes it so easy to play half an hour here and there. I don't have to commit to a couple hours like I would on the consoles. No more, need to keep playing until I reach a save point.
Click to expand...

Jack cw said:
Pretty great. I like the swipe menu that lets you instant heal the party on the fly and the port is beautiful. Mostly 30 fps but not native in resolution. Still, the best looking Vita game after Killzone. The gameplay fits so well for the handheld.
Click to expand...

Hnnnng. I NEED to get it then.
 
C

Clegg

Member
You know it's bad when the manager has to resort to this in looking for a positive. Give up the ghost, Moyseh.

"Some of the stuff he has done with the ball on his chest has been great".
 
K

Kikarian

Member
Salvadora said:
Have you guys read the extract of Diego Torres' book 'The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho' that has recently been translated into English? Long read, but totally worth it.

Sounds like a maniac.
Click to expand...
He wasn't wrong about the leak, though.

He definitely knows how to spur a team on, but at the same time cause feuds.

Clegg said:
You know it's bad when the manager has to resort to this in looking for a positive. Give up the ghost, Moyseh.

"Some of the stuff he has done with the ball on his chest has been great".
Click to expand...
So what, after managing him for years, he knows what he's all about, the sort of player he is etc. But persist to buy him for no legitimate reason other than "We need to buy someone quick". Then comes out with that. Joke.
 
C

Clegg

Member
Ex United chief operating officer Michael Bolingbroke has joined Inter Milan.

So they've got our COO, our current captain and are after our vice captain. Strange organisation.
 
T

TrueBlue

Member
Salvadora said:
Have you guys read the extract of Diego Torres' book 'The Special One: The Dark Side Of José Mourinho' that has recently been translated into English? Long read, but totally worth it.

Sounds like a maniac.
Click to expand...

Mourinho just can't get anything good from guys with Torres as their surname.
 
F

Feorax

Member
Blablurn said:
liverpool gaf. if you could get torres for 10m , would you take him?
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No.

Borini is better, and we're getting him back for no money at all next season.

Sell Aspas for a few million and we have a better strike force for a marginal profit.

No need to spend £10 million on another donkey.
 
S

Salazar

Member
Wilbur said:
That game was incredible
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Cannavaro was raised in the same shoebox as Vurnon Anita.

His posture makes me fucking wince.

I love the fact that when the commentator says "Ballack, gee what a classy midfielder", I think "lol, he fucked Milch's girl".
 
L

LTWheels

Member
Dirty tactics from West Ham

Steven Gerrard has revealed how West Ham “tried everything” to unsettle his title-chasing Liverpool side.

The Reds' team coach wasn't allowed to park in the usual place at Upton Park – leaving the players with a walk to the dressing room.

“It was a very tricky game. We knew what to expect and we got a bit more than we expected – a hot dressing room, a dry pitch and the bus had to park a mile away,” Gerrard said.

“I think they tried everything to upset us. It was a good test of our character.
Click to expand...
 
B

Blablurn

Member
Linius said:
Huh? Aren't emulators piracy in any case? I mean it's not like Nintendo would make money from people playing their games on a PC emulator.
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yeah, but everyone thinks you rip them by yourself since you have your own copy. gafs handling of emulators is strange.
 
Y

Yen

Member
Annoyed that Cosmos airs a week later in the UK.
On an unrelated note, also annoyed that my parents ISP does not share my uni ISP's laissez-faire approach to torrenting.
nzmp8vD.png


My parent's dl speed is 60kB/s
iiua15MM00Hgw.png
 
S

subtles

Member
Milchmonster said:
Sahin just shouldn't have left Dortmund that early. He was excelling at Klopp's kind of counter attack football, in which he was the key player. Something that just wouldn't work at Madrid. He hardly played for a year and obviously had no confidence left when he arrived at Liverpool. He should have developed with us, the opposing teams were getting more defensive minded against us and that would have helped him a lot. At least he improved his defensive work, he was basically useless before he left lol

How does Reus hate Bayern? He'd play there already if we hadn't been that successful in the last few years.
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The move was too early, such a pity.

I say Reus hates them to make myself feel better. Dortmund don't need Bayern to come back for the next two to three decades.
 
C

Clegg

Member
Bearded Genius is a funny guy on twitter, but something is lost in the transfer to newspaper blogs. Like he doesn't have the momentum to sustain a longer article and his ideas aren't given enough time to develop.

He's right about Magawa (Kata?) though.
 
W

Walshy

Member
Blablurn said:
liverpool gaf. if you could get torres for 10m , would you take him?
Click to expand...
I was originally going to reply to this saying yes, but I think it's past performances in a Liverpool shirt clouding my judgement. He'd come here knowing he would be third choice and our manager has been known as a really good man-manager. He'd still have the opportunity to play at the highest level and would add depth into our Champions League squad.

However when you think it through, it has to be a no. At his time at Liverpool there were questions around his attitude but it was sort of given a pass due to his outstanding performances under Benitez. He would also demand huge wages and wouldn't offer anything that Borini couldn't.
 
W

Walshy

Member
Yen said:
Annoyed that Cosmos airs a week later in the UK.
Click to expand...
Have you ever heard of Hola Unblocker?

It's a firefox add-on that allows you to get past region-specific content online. Just go to the Cosmosontv.com, then use Hola Unblocker and you should be able to watch it in HD on your laptop.

I use it to watch US Netflix.
 
W

Wilbur

Banned
Clegg said:
Bearded Genius is a funny guy on twitter, but something is lost in the transfer to newspaper blogs. Like he doesn't have the momentum to sustain a longer article and his ideas aren't given enough time to develop.

He's right about Magawa (Kata?) though.
Click to expand...

I think I prefer him in articles. He's getting a bit up his own arse now, complained and cried on twitter a few times if someone's knocked him knowing his fans will come stroke the ego.

Salvadora said:
Magawa will be broken by the return of RRVP.
Click to expand...

I know :(
 
Y

Yen

Member
Walshy said:
Have you ever heard of Hola Unblocker?

It's a firefox add-on that allows you to get past region-specific content online. Just go to the Cosmosontv.com, then use Hola Unblocker and you should be able to watch it in HD on your laptop.

I use it to watch US Netflix.
Click to expand...

Didn't think of that. I do use Hola for Netflix.
 
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