Just getting warmed up..
By: Luke | August 4th, 2009
First of all, thanks to Angela for the opportunity and the warm welcome. We’re going to work hard together to give our readers more expanded coverage of FC Bayern as the Louis van Gaal era begins. We’ve got some exciting ideas in the planning stages, and we hope to unveil some of those very soon.
I’ve got to start out with the news that GOLTV has decided to pass entirely on showing Bayern vs. Hoffenheim this weekend. Not even a delayed broadcast. Instead, they will show the Friday night Wolfsburg-Stuttgart opener (as they should), Dortmund-Cologne live at 9:30 Eastern on Saturday, and…get ready for this one..Bochum vs ‘Gladbach live on Sunday. I’m really starting to believe they have a chimp pick the matches out of a hat. They correct the error of not showing a live Saturday match, only to skip what was the most thrilling matchup in the Bundesliga last season. This is made all the more galling because it pretty much conflicts with everything their COO expressed in a recent interview.
The 11:30 Eastern match was created by the league to be a “marquee match”, and it’s a major problem if the American broadcaster doesn’t understand that well enough to show it. In the meantime, if you rely on GOLTV for your live matches, make your displeasure known at info@goltv.tv Also readers, let us know if a live matchblog would be helpful to you in situations like this weekend. If there’s interest, we will try to make that happen here at the Bayern Offside.
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Tags: 1. Bundesliga, Bochum, Cologne, Dortmund, FC Bayern Munich, GOLTV, Hoffenheim, Live Blog, Louis van Gaal, MoenchengladbachSubscribe
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The really sad part of this is last year they were not showing a live game and waiting until 11:30 to show a tape delay game… Now the Bundesliga hands them an 11:30 game on a silver platter and what do they do? Boggles the mind, Gol-TV does…
Anyway I could get off on a rant about Gol-TV but I have a more pressing rant… Is anyone else as totally and completely disgusted with the amount of money Real Madrid, and to a slightly lesser extent, Manchester City have spent in this years transfer market? I thought past seasons were bad, but now even ManU, Liverpool, and Barca have been priced out of the market… I really hope both those teams crash and burn this year, especially Madrid. It’s quite possible that all those Type A’s on Madrid will not gel together and play as 11 individuals and not a team… We can only hope…
Why do most leagues have to live on a budget and then you have the EPL and La Liga make a mockery of everyone else, paying more and more money every year? Now even teams like our beloved Bayern Munchen need to watch their back. Hell even ManU and Liverpool are getting their rosters raped… Erddivision and Ligue 1 (France) have just become feeder leagues, and it seems the Bundesliga and Serie A are next… UEFA really needs to come up with some kind of sound policy that contains spending so these clubs who seem to be able to print their own money can be curbed… How do Madrid and Man City get away with over half a billion dollars in transfer fees in one off season?
Congrats Luke. It’s nice that Angela has some help now so she can also have more of a life.
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United States
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Also Luke, all is not lost…
http://www.bundesligatalk.com/bundesliga-games-coming-to-espn/649
My guess is if GolTV does not want the game, ESPN360 would be more than happy to broadcast it. Especially with Hoffenheim being much improved defensively and barring serious injury, will be a contender for a position in Europe, if not the Bundesliga title this year.
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oh yes and one other thing… http://www.livesoccertv.com does links to a peer to peer broadcast for games like this every week. If you don’t mind watching things that are in a gray area legal-wise, you can get the peer to peer links just before the game is scheduled to start, and go from there…
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Real Madrid are so heavily indebt, it’s a house of cards waiting to crumple! If I recall correctly Madrid borrowed 70 million euro each from two different spanish banks this summer.
In the past when they bought the Brazilian Ronaldo they had to sell their training ground in order to fund the transfer. I would think Madrid has few liquid financial assets left in which to borrow against.
I’m betting that Madrid will play as 11 egocentric individuals and will not play as a team!
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I’m looking forward to the season getting started it seems so long since it was finished
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Cool! Good luck Luke, looking forward to the new and improved blog and the upcoming season!
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United States -
@Luke: I’m glad to have you! I can’t even begin to tell you the disgust that I feel towards GolTV, but then, I know I don’t have to since you feel the same way.
@Roger: A life? You mean there is life outside of football during the season? You joke right?
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Although I hate that I will have to catch an online feed of the Bayern-Hoffenheim game on Saturday, I am glad that GolTV is at least showing live games despite their early times. Watching a tape delayed game is unbearable for me as I know that the result is already decided. I just hope that GolTV stays with this trend and continues to show Bundesliga games live (and hopefully the later ‘premiere games’ like they should be doing).
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I am somewhat puzzled to report that the Bayern-Hoffenheim match will air on ESPN Deportes at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. There have been rumbles about GOLTV sublicensing Bundesliga matches out to ESPN the same way they’ve done with La Liga, but here’s the proof. Still entirely unsatisfactory for a game of this magnitude, but we will find out feeds.
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@ Angela I didn’t say a life, but more of one…
@ Zermatt: Guessing they are probably borrowing from the same banks that took the world economy down last year…
Manchester City has an endless supply of money, they really could go crazy… Only thing holding them back is not being qualified for European play, but if they get there, they will start to attract more and more players and will make Liverpool, Chelsea and ManU look like spendthrifts…I know I should probably try to stay more on a Bayern frame of mind, but this spending has the potential to impact everyone, even our boys in red.
If it were me, i’d see how much Real was willing to give for Franck. If they even come close to what they paid for Ronaldo, you could replace him, get a GK, and a center defenseman and have money left over to buy every fan a weissbier.
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@ Luke Ugggh I certainly can’t justify spending more money for the spanish channels when I would use them… what… 1 or 2 times a year?
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@Roger: Real have really set things up to be a referendum on their approach this season. Nevertheless, barring an injury, I expect Bayern won’t be getting any less for Ribery than what they’ve asked for, perhaps even more if he carries France deep in the World Cup. Even if they come up short, let’s hope we still score enough goals that Paulaner will end up buying every fan a weissbier!
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@Roger: Certainly not worth it for top matches delayed 8 hours. What I’m hoping is that this is some sort of aberration, and what we’re going to get normally are two live matches on Saturday, and then possibly a Sunday match, hinging on La Liga. I don’t think we’re going to see many Friday matches.
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Well, next year we won’t even get half that if we wait… You’d be stupid to not wait a year for the free transfer you could have, not to mention by FIFA rules, he can opt out of his contract next year because of the stupidest rule ever in sports and we may get nothing next year…
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oh and one other thing… Please tell me these uniforms Barca are wearing tonight are some kind of joke… They may be the single worst looking kit I’ve ever seen… What do they call that color anyway, Salmon?
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omg i gotta link this… for all of you who complained of Bayern’s kit, just thank whoever you worship or don’t that this is not it… my words alone can’t even descrie how ugly these are, so here is a pic…:
http://www.soccer.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=1&Ne=645&N=4294960638+614+4294959198&Product_Id=496537look for the shorts after you are done laughing at the shirt…
I would have to consider boycotting any Bayern game if they wore something like that…Posted from
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@ Zermatt (and whoever else even cares):
I actually did some research on Real and some intersting facts came out…1) Yes they did fund the initial Galacticos on the rezoning and sale of their practice grounds netting aroun 500m Euro.
2) The original ‘Galacticos’, also under the leadership of club president Florentino Perez, was really not that successful. They won some titles initially, but they spent all the money on offensive players and none on defense (Hmmmm, sounds familiar) and eventually were not only not winning European titles, but were overtaken by Barca in Spain.
3) This time around, they are built totally on the fact that Perez has almost unlimited credit as he is the CEO of the largest Spanish construction company with a 16B Euro annual turnaround. His company actually holds a 9B euro debt, which was at 16B in 2007. With this kind of money going around, banks fall over themselves to keep Perez (and his business interests) happy. Real doesn’t publish much financial stuff, but their debt is estimated at over 500B Euro right now.
4) Spanish clubs can negotiate their own TV contracts. This rule alone makes Real and Barca the only two teams who are ever going to win anything in Spain. You can say what you want about the EPL, but at least they divide TV money equally. Same with the Bundesliga. In fact Spain seems to be the only major league without any real revenue sharing as per the TV contract. As much as it would help Bayern to be able to do their own TV contract, I’m glad there is this type of revenue sharing in the Bundesliga. It makes the league itself more competitive. Madrid also has many corporate sponsors. In short, they have a much better income because of the inequality in Spain (or as Republicans would say: No socialized football in spain) and the vast resources afforded to their club president. Their previous club president signed a 7 year, 1.1B Euro TV contract in 2006.Anyway, I really hope I am not boring you guys with this business stuff. It just really bothers me that this irresponsibility is allowed to happen. I’m pretty sure the average Real fan is just as apt to be able to afford seats in the stadium as the average Yankee fan. I am pretty sure the seats are out of most peoples price range.
Anyway, let the season begin so we have something to write about that isn’t going to bore half your readers. I hope this post interests someone.Posted from
United States -
lol one correction: Real’s debt is estimated at 500M Euro… My bad.
Posted from
United States
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