Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia Kids with cell phones?!?!? What's the world coming too, Americans at La Masia and kids with the ability to communicate long distances.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia I'm hearing that there is a U-13 tournament coming up in the summer and he might play in it. There could be some live streams and on demand replays for it as well. Gotta love Spain... It should be fairly easy to follow his progress if he sticks around.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia I'm not a car guy, but that team all get free Audi A7s and I get the impression they're encouraged to drive them to training, so that would be my guess. One thing Ibrahimovic did to piss off Guardiola was ignore the rule about no Ferraris for driving to training.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia Facebook stalker...I have a few mutual connections with his mom. All Israelis in the LA area.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia Yeah I remember that.... How European is that rule. I wonder if there's rule at Milan where you can only drive a Vespa to training.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia isn't Audi ironically the sponsor of AC Milan too? I remember the Gooch thread about it when he was there
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia "Hey kid, could you take my picture with Javier Mascherano here?" Messi: "uhhhhh, sure."
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia Both his parents are Israeli which means that he is required to hold an Israeli passport. He could have even been born there.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia being cut as a youth is not a death knell. As a youth stuart holden was cut, tom huddlestone was cut, Ronaldo fenomeno was cut at 15 thats how he ended up at Cru. Its more common than you think. Its all a judgement call and as been mentioned before its all a gamble. As a coaching staff the only thing that is guaranteed in one's control is to create a positive nurturing safe environment and see who takes advantage of the benefit and comes out of the tunnel successfully. The coaches understand the nature of things and it is accepted. The unpredictability must be fun because everyday brings a new perspective and chance
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia It looks like Ben and his team are learning about losing these days. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-75gknXmSE"]FC Barcelona - Alevín A: como afrontar una derrota - YouTube[/ame] I think that is him at 0:43
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia How do you know they lost. They could have been so happy to win they started to cry? Wow that was tough to watch for a few seconds. I now know I have a heart in there.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia They do when it's Barcelona playing Espanyol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derbi_barceloní Even at such a young age level I would imagine that it's still referred to as a derby.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia So true. I'm tired of the Barca worship. They do a wonderful job bringing through the youth, and they should be applauded and emulated for that. However, watching that match yesterday. Their onfield antics are old. When neutrals start to feel some sympathy towards Mardrid....you know Barca is doing something wrong. I cannot STAND how Busquets, Alves, and the newest member of the diving squad...Sanchez etc...will go down and roll around like an 8 year old girl. Enough already. And the pitiful Spanish refs still buy the crap. Pepe's stamp wasn't good, but I can understand a certain amount of frustration from dealing with the diving every time someone challenges for a ball. That team play is incredible from a technical and tactical perspective. I have 2 or 3 that could play that way technically, but no way I could find a squad full. Then to be able to apply it under pressure in game situations. Very, very impressive. The politics behind that rivalry are quite deep and nasty. Espanyol are seen as the nationalist club, and Barca are the face of an independent Catalan. I have no doubt that it would translate down to the youth level.
Re: Ben Lederman at La Masia This is way overstated. There have been some high profile incidents with Busquets and Alves, but the exaggeration about the amount of diving Barcelona does is absurd. Real Madrid regularly tries to kick the crap out of them as a primary strategy. You either retaliate against that strategy, accumulating yellows and reds, or you try to win free kicks and cards as long as they keep that up. Obviously they try to win, but the excellence of the youth program there is that winning really is not the point. In other words, there are ways to win that they aren't interested in. We could learn a lot from that focus, which is training a lot of kids to play a certain way, with the entire goal being that a tiny percentage of them walk on to the senior team and outperform the mega-million transfers coming into that system from outside.