Messi Won't Forget: Slams Chelsea Performance In Champions League Semi-Final:

"If a team comes and tries to play football against us, then fine," he told Four Four Two magazine.

"But at no time did Chelsea want to play football. They just refused.

"They wanted to make it a messy, broken-up match, very stop-start. A physical contest more than football.

"That's not our way. Our way is to want the ball all the time.

"When a team plays like that, you think. 'How can it be a team with players as good as that doesn't even try to play the ball? How can they just sit there?' "

"They got the ball, gave it to the goalie and he thumped it. And that was it. It's hard to believe a team that reached last year's final and have been Premier League champions could play like that." (Source)

Is Cristiano Ronaldo Right? Does La Liga Have A Higher Quality Of Football Than The Premiership?:

Ronaldo said this after his presentation to the fans of Real Madrid at the Bernabeau:

"I think La Liga is going to have more quality because of the players that are arriving," he said.

"All the players have a lot of quality and the referees protect the players."

"I expect a different league. I have played six years in the Premier League, it is very different. It is faster and players are strong but here the small teams and the medium teams try and play football," he stated. (Source)

Pretty insightful if you ask me - though this is not a new opinion among people who really know football.

Spain - and Italy as well - are countries which do have lesser teams which "try and play football".

You'd be hard pressed to find a team like Stoke in either La Liga or Serie A - a team which openly eschews the "playing of football" at all.

One of the reasons I think that Ronaldo's point is going to be correct is that I think that this season - because of the high stakes of staying in the Premier League, several more teams - including the newly promoted teams - are going to emmulate Stoke. (Not coincidentally the team that broke Eduardo's leg - Alex Mcleish's Birmingham - will be back to add to the ugliness.)

And that's going to be appalling - when you've got up to a quarter of your teams not interested in the ball and teams with top-drawer Euro talent struggling to use their talent. That won't make for the Best League In The World in my mind.

My prediction? We will see more than one Eduardo Moment this season and the Premier League won't have the Best Player In The World any more to mask its ugliness and weaknesses.

Moreover, the most recent three Best Players In The World - Kaka, Ronaldo, Messi - will all be in La Liga, playing good, beautiful football against big teams and small.

Gattuso's Beautiful Gesture To His Beloved Club:

AC Milan president Galliano:

''Wednesday night I was at dinner with Gattuso who told us that he was ready to reduce his salary. He still has two years left on his contract, so it will move to three years, reducing the salary.

''Gattuso is an example, a true man, extraordinary.'' (Source)

Arsenal Are Impotent And Maybe Even Ugly

Some are wondering whether Cesc Fabregas actually criticized his team or if it was a creation of the Spanish media when he said these words yesterday:

"The absence of titles at Arsenal is what angers me the most.

"Cristiano said he's leaving Manchester United because he had nothing else to win. For me right now it is the exact opposite, seeing the impotence." (Source)

For me, it doesn't really matter who called Arsenal impotent.

Whether it was Fabregas or the media, everyone who knew and loved the Arsenal of Viera and the Arsenal of Flamini, should admit that the team has taken on an unbearable quality.

Let's look up the word in a thesaurus:

adjective:
Lacking power or strength: helpless, powerless.
Not capable of accomplishing anything: helpless, inadequate, incapable, ineffectual, powerless, weak.
Unable to produce offspring: barren, childless, infertile, sterile, unfruitful.

Yep - that pretty much sums up what the team has become. And yet between 2006-08 they were on the verge of greatness. Close to perfection. But you can't be a perfect football team, nor a beautiful one, if your team has no fight and no idea of how to defend.

You could almost argue that the team that only recently was thought of as the most beautiful team in the world, has become one of the ugliest.

Impotence = ugliness.

Believe it.

Iraq Manager Milutinovich Praises Spain's Happy Football:

“They play happy football...They have talent superior to other countries. They win the Euro and people like them, which is not a combination you often see in soccer. They have a great generation, like Brazil in 1970, Italy in 1982, France in 1998. They play spectacular football; they enjoy the game. It’s perfect.” (Source)

Milutinovic packs a lot of praise for Spain into a few short sentences: happy football, winning and still being liked, a great generation, perfection - and he's right.