Activate Another Lever and Still Lose to a Madrid Remontada - The Small Teams Thread

It's not strange. It's either being willfully ignorant or having dangerous low IQ.

 

Frankly, I couldn't care less what you've seen or experienced. This case is on a different scale entirely.

You do realize that the evidence/wiretaps stacked against Moggi (that you were singing about a few days back) didn't find direct match-fixing attempts, requests for specific referees, or favor demands. Juventus, nonetheless, had title(s) stripped, points deducted, executives jailed and they got shipped to the 2nd division because they demonstrated they could potentially benefit from their relationship with the refereeing committee. Potential is the keyword here.

The charges against Barcelona are far, far graver. They paid to corrupt the refereeing system to guarantee favorable results. The Liga count and the refereeing circus we witnessed over the years demonstrates that.

Arguing whether RM's failure to win the league in that period stemmed from internal or external factors is irrelevant to this discussion.

How can you compete in a league where the odds are skewed against you? When your title challenger has paid the refereeing committee to gain unfair advantage?

To me every Liga won by RM in that period is worth 5 under normal circumstances. It shows the greatness of Real Madrid.

 

Somehow 8 Ligas became 2-3 to suit his flawed argument. Levante won the remaining 6

 

The hits keep coming. El Confidential is reporting that Laporta also paid over 750,000 euros to Negreira's son during his first presidency.

I have seen some people claim that Laporta started paying the year when assigning refs went from a digital raffle to a committee. I am waiting to see a credible source confirm this because I don't remember what year that was.

What is true is that Barca stopped paying Negreira once he no long had the position in the referee's committee.

 

4x4, sorry, but you're wrong. Maybe you read too much social media where people don't make sense. But people here have been very rational about this.

Madrid is a behemoth, and we certainly had our share of privileges here and there.

But there's a major scandal now being exposed, and it involves Barcelona. People want that to be investigated because it smells rotten. It's Barcelona in the spotlight, there's no reason to downplay the severity of this case, or even bring up Madrid's name.

While you say things are much more complicated than a simple us against the world scenario. You oversimplify the scandal itself, even though there are daily developments about it that are certainly not helping Barcelona.

You insist you want proof on the pitch that they were favoring Barcelona, but you know it's not that simple. These people are criminals, they wouldn't be so stupid to make things blatantly clear like that, hahahaha.

This is an underlying scheme, which apparently has created a culture or system to benefit certain refs who made certain decisions. It's a classic case of corruption.

There's a reason major media outlets are talking about it all the time, and the Catalan press remains in almost complete silence. They know it's ugly.

I have seen you talking about corruption in football before and expressing your concern about it. Now that a case of corruption emerges, you seem to downplay its importance. It's... funny.

In short, if you're on Twitter, tiktok, whatever, just drop it dude. It is messing with your view of how things are being discussed here, and you're being unfair to many of the posters here.

 

Dude, the situation where Barça was drawing 0-0 and people saying "here comes the PK or red card" became a joke because it was so obvious it would happen, and it did many times.

Even if we sucked (and we did) Barcelona got tons of points thanks to more than questionable calls, that were so constant and expected, we would even joke about it. Now it's not a joke anymore.

 

I always enjoyed reading 4x4s posts, insightful and moderate. However, on this point I'm just skipping completely, they make no sense at all. I have no idea what his points are anymore. I can't understand how one cannot see the corruption here. Whether Barca benefited from what they paid or not is irrelevant (overall status show they did in a big way). Barca PAID high official directly controlling all referees. It cannot be more clear than that.

 

The video thing was bad, I don't want the club acting like that.

There needs to be an investigation and it should be quick, the typical Spanish 4 or 5 year lengthy back and forth would be really bad for the league and the clubs.

That said, Barca deserves whatever criticism it gets. They said it was for referee reports and the coaches have no recollection of these reports, they say other clubs have paid officials, the truth is nobody has credibly provided evidence that a current employee has been involved in a similar arrangement with any other clubs.

There's tape of Barca administrators talking about how to lie about this and other tape of them trying to bribe UEFA. That club presents itself as a morally superior institution built around sporting values when in reality it bends rules serially and apparently breaks rules as it sees fit. They are nihilist, bullies, hypocritical and project on everyone else what they are doing.

 

If the officials are being told to look for certain types of contact, they really don't have to be in on it. They are reacting to what they were told to watch out for.

Also the officials are people with their own biases, getting moved up or down after voicing those opinions can help impact results too.

It's very easy to see how pressure to treat certain situations in a specific way can over the course of a season result in points.

 

This is the x factor here too. We only know what was uncovered. Let's not be naive and think we're ever going to get to the bottom of this rabbit hole. At this stage it's safe to assume Barca did way more shady stuff that we'll never learn about.

That would be wonderful. I have to tune in to this one, haven't really seen Xabi's Leverkusen that much.

 

@4x4s is either extremely distraught by Barcagate and denial is a coping mechanism where if Barca get away with it all he can say well obviously we’ve not been robbed let’s move on and enjoy the football.

Or he’s getting a weird kick by making shit arguments to rile people up on purpose, there’s no in between. A shame.

 

He’s been a contrarian for a few months now. I think someone hit him on the head with a frying pan around Christmas.

 

We all have battered with each other for almost two decades and the guy he has shown himself to be is just beyond an utter disappointment (I realize he doesn't care).

 

😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/EmXBiCW9de

— Paul Tenorio (@Paul_Tenorio) March 17, 2023

 

From my perspective, there's little room for sentiment or forum loyalty, based on a poster's longevity of commenting, or the narrative they may have had many years ago. Let's all judge on recent history and the quality of posts, irrespective of how long they've been around on this forum.