2023-24 Spanish La Liga Discussion Thread

[SgtPepper]

It's an academic scenario, but If UEFA and the PL can overlook 300+ infractions from City over a decade they're more likely to find some excuse to let both the parent and feeder club participate than cut out the most dominant PL team from a competition that makes its money from eyeballs viewing the late stage matches.

Also it's absurd to compare Girona with Atletico Madrid. Atletico is a traditional favorite for la liga, has won it 2x, made 2 CL finals, and has regularly beat heavyweights both in la liga and Europe for the last decade. Girona, on the other hand, is the 3rd team in a row in la liga to dominate the table for most of the campaign before losing it to a giant. In previous campaigns Villareal did the same pretender pattern 2x. La liga is barely more competitive at the top than Germany currently; Europe altogether is predictable with the exception of Italy.

[SgtPepper]

I wonder how at risk Rodrygo is of being sold. He just re-signed a contract, but he's at an interesting development point where in the scenario that he's relatively peaked his market valuation is probably near it's peak as well. Madrid has run a butterfly spread on him - can as easily see them continue to build the squad around him as use him as makeweight for a volume goalscorer. Currently he seems roughly Pedro level and isn't performing at starter level against continental teams. A situation to watch over the next 2 summer windows.

[SgtPepper]

even Real has a 3-1 L vs Atletico. I hope they can at least challenge until the end! What a story that'd be...i'm officially on the bandwagon

https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/manchester-city-and-gironas-special-relationship-explained

Girona is a feeder club to City. Nothing like Leicester story, more like the City B team finishing 2nd in the EPL last year. There's also like a million conflicts of interest between Barcelona, City, Pep & his brother Pere. But Pep has been pulling his sort of stuff since Thiago was transferred to Bayern using private contract info he would have only had access to while Barca coach.

[magik9113]

even Real has a 3-1 L vs Atletico. I hope they can at least challenge until the end! What a story that'd be...i'm officially on the bandwagon

https://www.thesportsman.com/articles/manchester-city-and-gironas-special-relationship-explained

Girona is a feeder club to City. Nothing like Leicester story, more like the City B team finishing 2nd in the EPL last year. There's also like a million conflicts of interest between Barcelona, City, Pep & his brother Pere. But Pep has been pulling his sort of stuff since Thiago was transferred to Bayern using private contract info he would have only had access to while Barca coach.

In terms of them having been in the 2nd division recently, and not a soul predicting them having this type of success, it is pretty similar. also I'm not sure what you mean by City B team finishing 2nd in epl

[SgtPepper]

I'm talking about Arsenal last season, which was managed by Pep's former assistant coach and was recently upgraded by ex-City players like Zinchenko. This is also a football manager game pattern realized in real life too, and is a sign of Europe's talent getting monopolized by the richest clubs at a greater level than the past.

Barcelona's ex-players are involved with a lot of league doping these days. Pique got a lot of press last year because his agency collected a lot of money from setting up the export of the copa del rey to Dubai and Puyol also is collecting a lot of fees similar to Pere via his own player agency.

[magik9113]

The Arsenal thing is a stretch in my opinion

[SgtPepper]

Arsenal spent almost half their transfer budget on Zinchenko and Jesus that season. Both also slotted in as starters. It's hardly a claim I was alone in making.

This is Girona's inbounds this season:


Do you really believe some team which is traditionally not even top 6 gets players from Bayern, Barca, City without Pep's affiliations coming into play? Girona doesn't have a record of transfers with these clubs either. The only unpolitical merit they've shown is in hiring high quality and undervalued Ukrainian attackers. Savio is a wonderkid but I wonder what politicking was necessary for Girona to land him.

[magik9113]

Man City is filled with star players. Each season, some of them will fail to carve out a regular enough roll for themselves. Arsenal are a good team who will always try to buy good players. Those two transfers alone convince me of nothing, and i dislike both Arsenal and City

Big teams have been loaning out their young players for as long as I can remember. These are players who are good at the sport, but not experienced enough or developed enough to be regulars at their current team. It is a win-win situation for everyone, and every team does it.
On this Girona squad, there is only one player owned by City, and Herrera who is fully owned now by Girona. The article you provided was a good read, though, and enlightened me to the amount of politicking involved here.

[SgtPepper]

C'mon UEFA, please don't be as incompetent and cartel-like as Tebas' SPL. This Spanish Utd could pave the way for a future Spanish Chelsea.

Read on Twitter

[SgtPepper]

City's players have been consistently speaking of Barca as a favored feeder club these days:

Poor Gavi by Rodri
Joao Felix is finally home, by fellow Benfica union member Bernardo
Not to mention that Eric Garcia and Ferran Torres were part of City's COVID relief package to Barca and that Gundogan and Cancelo were dropped into the Barcelona development team this year

Meanwhile an Argentine phenom is about to be bought by City and 'loaned' to Girona, where European nationalization timelines for the age group are much shorter than England: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/dec/27/manchester-city-agree-25m-deal-to-sign-teenager-claudio-echeverri-from-river-plate

La liga is becoming a City zone of influence.

[The_Brecht]

Simeone subbing off Griezmann and Morata - who had a hattrick - to secure the point away at Girona, only to lose in the last minute.

Football heritage.

[MetalFingaz]

City's players have been consistently speaking of Barca as a favored feeder club these days:

Poor Gavi by Rodri
Joao Felix is finally home, by fellow Benfica union member Bernardo
Not to mention that Eric Garcia and Ferran Torres were part of City's COVID relief package to Barca and that Gundogan and Cancelo were dropped into the Barcelona development team this year

Meanwhile an Argentine phenom is about to be bought by City and 'loaned' to Girona, where European nationalization timelines for the age group are much shorter than England: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/dec/27/manchester-city-agree-25m-deal-to-sign-teenager-claudio-echeverri-from-river-plate

La liga is becoming a City zone of influence.

From that Guardian article, it seems like Echeverri will be loaned back to his original club, River Plate, not Girona (where City Football Group have a minority but controlling 47% interest). Rodri and Bernardo speaking about their compatriots doesn't really strike a conspiratorial tone. Gundogan went to Barca on a free and a player like Cancelo doesn't have a lot of options for loan destinations on his wages.

[SgtPepper]

^Let's see. There's rumors they'll loan him to Girona next season (https://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/girona-favourites-as-man-city-discuss-echeverri-options-4481334). The weighing scale of proof will only come in Dec 24 or future windows as we won't see which clubs the current Girona squad move from/to. From a strategy pov, it makes sense why CIty would want a LL feeder though. One of the big stories of last winter was about their failed bid for Enzo, and the drivers for the failure include slow citizenship timelines and lower odds of protection till naturalization due to competitive squad.

As for the names mentioned - my main point is that they fit within a bilateral view of the continental transfer window. You don't see win-win free market transfers coming out of the City allied clubs outside the cartel anymore, such as when Madrid really needed Cancelo over 2021-2 and Guardiola was underusing him. There is a clear preferenced relationship between City to Barca like Benfica to a bunch of the continental clubs, and if UEFA didn't have such a consistent history of corruption or if this was a different market this would be enough of a basis for anti-trust lawsuits since it hurts the competitiveness of Europe and player mobility.

[MetalFingaz]

^Let's see. There's rumors they'll loan him to Girona next season (https://www.tribalfootball.com/articles/girona-favourites-as-man-city-discuss-echeverri-options-4481334). The weighing scale of proof will only come in Dec 24 or future windows as we won't see which clubs the current Girona squad move from/to. From a strategy pov, it makes sense why CIty would want a LL feeder though. One of the big stories of last winter was about their failed bid for Enzo, and the drivers for the failure include slow citizenship timelines and lower odds of protection till naturalization due to competitive squad.

As for the names mentioned - my main point is that they fit within a bilateral view of the continental transfer window. You don't see win-win free market transfers coming out of the City allied clubs outside the cartel anymore, such as when Madrid really needed Cancelo over 2021-2 and Guardiola was underusing him. There is a clear preferenced relationship between City to Barca like Benfica to a bunch of the continental clubs, and if UEFA didn't have such a consistent history of corruption or if this was a different market this would be enough of a basis for anti-trust lawsuits since it hurts the competitiveness of Europe and player mobility.

The citizenship/naturalization point is a very interesting one! It's unfortunate that ownership is moving in this direction, especially with teams leading La Liga acting as feeders for the Premier League. Very bad long term.

[SgtPepper]

This week and the next month are probably the most interesting and important phase of the domestic season. Real beat Atleti and Barca in attackfests this week in the super cup. While I tend to view these as friendlies, it looks like the Barca's board is finally skeptical of Xavi's management a bit after the commanding loss. Zooming out, Real faces Atleti in 3 days again for the copa del rey and later in the month face Atleti and Girona in la liga before the r16 UCL matches start, while Girona have an easier la liga schedule leading up to the Real Madrid match. Real is 2nd in the table but have a game in hand that would put them top if that fixture is a win or draw.

[MetalFingaz]

Barca looked lazy and disjointed yesterday. No structure to the press and awful decision making from Kounde and Araujo on the first 2 goals.

[SgtPepper]

Atleti beat Real in the copa in a heritage football manner. I hope they don't bottle it against this Barca as they tend to do. Fortunately I think most of the current CdR survivors are competitive enough to have a good shot at beating Barca too.

[wco81]

So what’s the deal with Girona and Bilbao? They’re not usually in the UCL are they?

City is stashing players at Girona?

[SgtPepper]

Madrid losing 2-0 to 20th placed Almeria at home with a full strength lineup. Yup, Ancelotti's preferred 0 rotation policy at play. I'm honestly hoping Girona win the league because Ancelotti is so bad at league competitions that if Madrid win it under him it usually means all rivals deeply underperformed. Kepa playing with the fear of Chelsea return in his heart.

[SgtPepper]

Comeback complete 8 mins into stoppage time with a Bellingham orchestrated assist to Carvajal. Reffing was very biased towards Madrid and they got lucky.