SolidGoldBomb

I still think the "European Super League" idea is nothing but a pipe dream. It's been coming "Within the next 5 years" since, at the very least, the late 1990's (before that I couldn't say). At least he basically says it's a bad idea, so that's good. Interesting piece, seems like someone who has some genuinely decent ideals about the game, though we all know how quickly politics can twist those. Anything but Sepp. Yeah we all know the Super League would be a horrible idea, glad to see some more top brass feel that way also. I did find it funny he was against "naturalization doping" (ie taking kids from foreign lands and giving them citizenship to play for your national team) when that's basically how his country France has stayed relevant in the last few years. But it's a weird question to think about... for instance, should a kid from Africa who comes to France as a teenager to live and train, retain citizenship in his home country? If that was the case most European countries wouldn't take any foreign children at all.

All I know about Jerome Champagne is that Andrew Jennings said he was clean, which, for someone involved with FIFA, is really something. Yeah he seems like a stand-up guy, but big organizations like FIFA seem to have a way of corrupting people with good intentions like this guy and ruining their initial ambitions. At least he realizes the inequality and money gap between the top clubs nowadays, and would hopefully work on leveling the playing field. He certainly seems like the lesser of two evils when compared to Blatter.

Sadly no. I don't think Tampa could get a draft beer for Glennon, much less the #1 draft pick. I'm just hoping Manziel lasts til #7

I really hope Tampa drafts Manziel, we need a QB and Glennon ain't gonna cut it.

Interview with FIFA presidential candidate Jerome Champagne http://www.goal.com/en/news/3790/world-cup-2014/2014/05/08/4797359/champagne-champions-league-elites-looting-must-stop Some of this is more FIFA crazy talk, but I do like some of what he's saying about bringing back financial equality, but can he actually get any of it done? Or will Sepp Blatter run again and keep things, business as usual...

I would kick Cheeseburger's ass I would also fuck Truth Martini up...just for a chance to talk to Scarlett Bordeaux

The new Black Keys album is jammin.

Agreed. Fining clubs that don't care about money is kind of a smoke show. Unless you're UEFA...then it's PROFIT~

Well Spain is the best league in Europe, and Portugal is like the minor leagues for La Liga, so i'm not surprised. Portugal just passed Italy in UEFA coefficient rankings also...sad to see as an Italian, but Portugal has been a hot bed for developing talent for decades now. http://www.goal.com/en/news/10/italy/2014/05/01/4772517/portugals-europa-league-supremacy-speeds-up-italys-decline?ICID=SP

I guess I will back Benfica too, they looked great anyway. They have awesome jerseys, a cool ass bald eagle mascot, they are the last non-Spanish side in a Euro final, and they beat my boys, so props to them. Just heartbreaking to see Juve get to the semis and miss the final in their own stadium.

Valencia/Sevilla was just devastating. SO was Juve/Benfica

@ The Madrid fans singing "Jose Mourinho, Hijo de puta...Jose Mourinho, hijo de puta" That went just how I hoped it would. Looking forward to an exciting All Madrid final!

Yeah Mourinho's footballing "philosophy" is very negative and a bit fucked up, but if all people care about is results I guess it works. I's just not something most people find enjoyable, especially with the attacking talent they have it's stupid to play so negatively. http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/editorial/2014/04/30/4785187/mourinho-anti-football-jibes-are-wide-of-the-mark One: The game is won by the team who commits fewer errors. Two: Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition. Three: Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it's better to encourage their mistakes. Four: Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake. Five: Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility of making a mistake. Six: Whoever has the ball has fear. Seven: Whoever does not have it is therefore stronger. Hopefully Atleti smash them today like Madrid did to Bayern, and we can have an all Madrid final.

Loved the Cena/Wyatt stuff, can't wait for the cage match Was it just me or were Cody & Alberto stiffing/sandbagging each other? I think my favorite part of the show was when Flair was getting into the ring and Dean Ambrose said something like "I don't know, I can't hear shit". The end segment was awesome, Ambrose eating the spinebuster on the floor was hilarious.

To me it just means

This is the best pic I could find of the stage shot

The battle between Netero & The King in Hunter X Hunter is one of the most badass fights i've ever seen If you're not watching it you need to check this series out, classic! And Attack On Titan is coming to Toonami in May....YES!

So... which member of the creative team are you? Maybe you should get out in the sun more and get a tan, that Vitamin D deficiency is making you a real Debbie Downer

Anyone have a screencap of when the Wyatts were on the stage and they showed close ups of their faces lit up...that was an awesome visual! Daniel Bryan getting totally wiped out was crazy, great opening segment. Steph is next level heeling, she's been awesome. Sheamus/Barrett was badass, those 2 guys never hold back on each other Santino/Emma cracked me the hell up with the cobras getting tangled together. Also, Dat Layla Paige/Aksana was great, it was like if Regal & Finlay had daughters for a second there Dat Lana....OMG. Oh yeah, Rusev is cool too I don't get all the RVD hate either. It's not like he's winning any major matches and getting a major push, he's putting over the next generation of heels and being used to elevate the Barrett kind of guys. Exactly how he should be utilized. I was really hoping the crowd would go with the Harper vs Cena singles match, but I get the story they are going for. The Wyatt promo was awesome, this angle is getting so good...can't wait for Extreme Rules!

Fuck Man Utd's squad, Rio specifically has got some crazy fucking nerve speaking out about anyone with the way he has played this season. Fuck him to the fullest extent, that old washed up piece of trash deserves to die in a hail of coins. United's squad has played like shit all season and now with their collective sandbagging they have conned the powers that be into blaming it all on the manager, when ultimately the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of Rio, Rooney, Vidic, Evra, Van Persie, Carrick etc. Rooney has held the team for ransom twice, and that's exactly the kind of attitude that has caused them to lose so much this season. Each player is just trying to dodge blame this year while none of them have stepped up to play like a cohesive team. Moyes only real fault is he should have talked trash about this side from the beginning and made it more public that this squad was old, uninspired and needed a complete overhaul, too bad he was too dumb to realize he got played by everyone this season as the scapegoat.

The whole crisis talk about Barca is hilarious to me, they are still like a top 5 team in the world but they expect nothing less than perfection it seems. Like you said, they could still possibly win the league even. And their problems aren't even new problems, their defense has always been relatively shaky and they have needed to buy a couple center backs for at least 2 years now. It's just so happened that injuries have finally caught up to the back line and left them having to put Busquets & Song in as emergency CBs. The biggest problem for them is that they signed Neymar for an outrageous price when they should have used that money to sign Thiago SIlva or David Luiz, or pretty much anyone defensive minded. I think Neymar is their biggest problem this season, his transfer saga has shamed the club and forced their President out, he's a huge disruption on field because of his diving antics, and because his salary is so high it has caused many players on his team to become jealous of him. They didn't really need him at all, it's just pushed the other quality players like Sanchez, Pedro, Tello to the 2nd team when they deserve to be starting ahead of Neymar, and it's caused lots of internal friction with Messi as well. You can obviously see how pissed Messi is when Martino plays him on the wing too, like in the CL vs Atleti and in the Copa match vs Real he was non-existent and essentially sulking when he's not played exactly how he wants. I feel kind of bad for Martino with all the talk of him getting fired already, it's not like he destroyed the team, he's doing the best with what he has, but he's not to blame for 2-3 years of bad transfers and failure to reinforce the defense that caused them to get to this point.

This extract from Andrea Pirlo's autobiography, 'I think therefore I play', explains the legendary midfielder's recipe for success when it comes to dead-ball situations Andrea Pirlo is regarded by many as the world's best free-kick taker and one of the greatest of all time. Below he reveals the secret behind his success. I THINK THEREFORE I PLAY by Andrea Pirlo is out now in paperback and ebook. BOOK EXTRACT By Andrea Pirlo I'm Italian, but I'm also part-Brazilian. Pirlinho, if you like. When I take my free-kicks, I think in Portuguese and at most I'll do the celebrating in my native tongue. I strike those dead balls alla Pirlo. Each shot bears my name and they're all my children. They look like one another without being twins, even if they do boast the same South American roots. More precisely, they share a source of inspiration: Antonio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Junior, a midfielder who's gone down in history as Juninho Pernambucano. During his time at Lyon, that man made the ball do some quite extraordinary things. He'd lay it on the ground, twist his body into a few strange shapes, take his run-up and score. He never got it wrong. Never. I checked out his stats and realised it couldn't just be chance. He was like an orchestra conductor who'd been assembled upside down, with the baton held by his feet instead of his hands. He'd give you the thumbs up by raising his big toe – somebody at Ikea was having a good laugh the day they put him together. I studied him intently, collecting DVDs, even old photographs of games he'd played. And eventually I understood. It wasn't an immediate discovery; it took patience and perseverance. From the start, I could tell he struck the ball in an unusual way. I could see the "what" but not the "how". And so I went out onto the training pitch and tried to copy him, initially without much success. In the early days, the ball sailed a couple of metres over the crossbar, or three metres above the sky to borrow from the Italian film of the same name. Much of the time it went right over the fence at Milanello and I'd end up lying to the fans gathered outside, pretending I'd done it deliberately. "Boys, I want to give you a present," I'd say, glossing over the fact that the session was behind closed doors and they shouldn't have been anywhere near it. As I was speaking to outlaws, I told myself that what I said was neither a sin nor a crime. The misses went on for several days and by that time the bloke in charge of the kit store was getting somewhat peeved. For him, it was a case of too many lost balls becoming a ball ache as I persisted with my experiments. Days soon turned into weeks. 'The Architect' | Pirlo has scored an incredible 43 free kick goals in his career My own Eureka moment arrived when I was sat on the toilet. Hardly romantic, but there you go. The search for Juninho's secret had become an obsession for me, to the extent that it occupied my every waking thought. It was at the point of maximum exertion that the dam burst, in every sense of the term. The magic formula was all about how the ball was struck, not where: only three of Juninho's toes came into contact with the leather, not his whole foot as you might expect. The next day I left the house really early, even electing to skip my usual classic PlayStation battle with [Alessandro] Nesta as I rushed to the training paddock. All I had on my feet was a pair of loafers – I didn't need proper boots to demonstrate what I was now convinced was the right theory. The kit-store guy had already turned up for duty. "Can you pass me a ball, please?" I asked. "Get to f***," he said under his breath, almost hissing at me. "What was that?" I replied. "I said I saw a duck." "Right you are. Go on, you fool, throw me over a ball." Reluctantly, he chucked one across. Mentally, he was already preparing himself for a trip to the woods to recover it. Instead I stuck it right in the top corner, just where the post meets the crossbar. A geometric gem. I placed the shot so perfectly that it would have gone in even with a keeper. Luckily for our goalies, none of them were around. "Why don't you try doing that again, Andrea," came a provocative voice from behind. This was now a battle of two against one. Me on one side, the kit store guy and the ghost of Juninho Pernambucano firmly on the other. "Okay then, spoilsport. Just you watch," I said. The ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. Keep your foot straight and then relax it in one fell swoop" Up I stepped and unleashed a carbon copy of the previous free kick. It was a thing of absolute beauty, stylistically impeccable. I lined up another five strikes and it was the same story every time. By now it was official: I'd cracked it. The secret was no more. In essence, the ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. You have to keep your foot as straight as possible and then relax it in one fell swoop. That way, the ball doesn't spin in the air, but does drop rapidly towards the goal. That's when it starts to rotate. And that, in a nutshell, is my maledetta. When it comes off exactly as I want, there's no way of keeping it out. It's specifically designed to head over the wall before taking a direction that nobody can predict. For me, the best feeling in life is watching the ball fly into the net after it whizzes a couple of centimetres over the heads of the defenders. They can almost reach it, but not quite. They can read the maker's name, but they can't stop it going in. Sometimes a pinch of sadism is the ingredient that makes victory taste that little bit sweeter. The further away from goal I am, the better. As the distance increases, so does the effect I can impart. The greater the space between me and the keeper, the quicker the ball tends to drop as it hones in on its target. I can obviously mix things up a bit, throw in a few little tricks to make every free kick unique, but the underlying concept never changes. Scoring from a dead-ball brings me massive satisfaction. It sets me up as an example for other players to follow, copy and perhaps even emulate over the course of time. For them, I'm a Juninho Pernambucano 2.0, a Brazilian with a Brescia accent. I've never told anyone, but my ambition is to become the leading all-time scorer of free kicks in Serie A.

You should, why not jump on the Pool wagon?

This extract from Andrea Pirlo's autobiography, 'I think therefore I play', details some of the hilarious pranks that the Italy star played on his former team-mate Rino Gattuso http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/editorial/2014/04/16/4754499/the-hilarious-story-of-rino-gattuso-trying-to-kill-andrea?ICID=HP_FT_2

Game Of Thrones director Alex Graves has claimed that the finale of series four will be the "episode to end all episodes". He added: "Episode 10 of the season is, you know, as David and Dan will tell you, it's the first true finale they've ever done and it's really the episode to end all episodes. It's the largest episode they've ever made." Read more at http://www.nme.com/filmandtv/news/game-of-thrones-director-teases-huge-series-final/336967#bRoSuixZjKwSOsXr.99 How does book 3 end again?