Friday, July 11, 2008

The Transfer Window


This is the time of year when all of your favorite footie sides end up looking completely different. It's harder than hell to follow and completely understand from Stateside, but here's a quick rundown of what's happened so far and what might come in the next few weeks:

Peter Crouch (Liverpool) - £11 million transfer to Portsmouth
Steve Sidwell (Chelsea) - £5 million transfer to Aston Villa
Giovani dos Santos (Barcelona) - £4.7 million transfer to Spurs
Deco (Barcelona) - Undisclosed transfer to Chelsea
Jens Lehmann (Arsenal) - Undisclosed transfer to Stuttgart
John Arne Riise (Liverpool) - £4 million transfer to Roma
Harry Kewell (Liverpool) - Free transfer to Galatasary
John Heitinga (Ajax) - €10 million buyout by Atletico Madrid
Gregory Coupet (Lyon) - Undisclosed transfer to Atletico Madrid
Dani Güiza (Real Mallorca) - Undisclosed transfer to Fenerbahce
Samir Nasri (Marseille) - £12 million transfer to Arsenal

Possible Moves:

Frank Lampard (Chelsea) - Inter Milan
Ronaldinho (Barcelona) - AC Milan
Emmanuel Adebayor (Arsenal) - AC Milan
Gareth Barry (Aston Villa) - Liverpool
Lukas Podolski (Bayern Munich) - FC Köln
Christiano Ronaldo (Manchester United) - Real Madrid

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're absolutely right about the hard to follow nature of the transfer window. If European soccer could figure out even a vague salary cap and contract structure, it would be great.

Anyway, as a Liverpool fan I'm sorry to see everyone jumping ship. Peter Crouch, aka Big Bird, Riise, and Kewel will be missed. And why does everyone want to jet off to Italy? Their league has been proven to be corrupt, so why would you want to go play there?

Sometimes soccer drives me nuts and that is why I don't follow the transfer window. So thanks for giving me the briefing.

Michael Orr said...

Good call about Italy. They also usually play a rather boring game, I think. It's not as exciting as watching the English clubs, for example. I know there's big money with the Milan teams, and now that Mourinho is at Inter, he'll attract guys who have played with him in the past. But come on.

Check out Rusty's comments on the superiority of the EPL: http://theadhall.blogspot.com/2008/05/premiership.html

Anonymous said...

yeah, thanks for that link. who is your team by the way? i mean i already admitted to my liverpool devotion (you'll never walk alone!) so i was wonder who your team was.

actually i was thinking about writing something about how someone not familiar with soccer should go about picking a favorite team. i mean once, someone makes that initial investment of fandom, then they start to care about the sport. so basically americans need to just ante up and pick a european squad to root for. put picking a team is more complex than just looking at which uniforms are the prettiest.

i dunno, just wondering.

Michael Orr said...

That's funny you ask, we're going to each be following an EPL side this season and posting regularly about them. Pratt with Newcastle and Rusty with Liverpool, both teams they actively root for. I actually don't really have an English team, though I do follow the Scottish team Hearts (from Edinburgh). But since they suck even in Scotland, I've decided to pull for Tottenham for the purposes of our blog. I like some of their players, they're rivals of Arsenal who I don't really like and my wife really likes Robbie Keane, haha.

But yeah, the idea of just picking a side to follow and then actually going through with it makes a big difference. That investment can definitely give a sense of connection and you can really pick up a lot just by being committed to paying attention, as you know. I always hope that people who don't know anything about it will try to pull for teams that aren't in the big four at the top. I feel like losing makes you a better fan. Or maybe that's just me as I pull for UVA, the Indians and Browns and Redskins, haha. Battle tested...