Galacticos at Real Madrid ready to take on Barcelona

The return of Florentino Perez as chairman of Real Madrid sees the policy of signing big-name stars – or galacticos – back at the Bernabeu as Los Blancos look to challenge Barcelona in the La Liga and on the European stage.

Last season was Barcelona’s most successful in a long time a Josep Guardiola – in his first year as manager – led the Catalan spearheaded by Lionel Messi to success in La Liga, the Champions League and the Spanish domestic cup – the first time a Spanish club has won those three trophies in one year.

Perez has signaled his intent to challenge Barcelona early on by breaking the world record transfer fee twice. First, the Brazilian Kaka was signed from AC Milan for £56million before Manchester United’s Cristiano Ronaldo was bought for £80m. This mirrors Real Madrid’s transfer activity when Perez first took over the club in 2000, when he signed Luis Figo for a then record fee of £37m before breaking that record the following year when he purchased Zinedine Zidane from Juventus for £46m.

As well as Kaka and Ronaldo, Real Madrid has confirmed the signing of Raul Albiol, the Valencia centre back. In his previous tenure, Perez was criticised for his buying policy as he tended to focus on attacking players too heavily and, indeed, the sale of defensive midfielder Claude Makelele to Chelsea is seen by many to be the downfall of Real Madrid after a promising start to Perez’s presidency.

The 2008-09 season saw Barcelona lauded for playing attractive, attacking football and as well as winning a historic treble, the club beat fierce rivals Real Madrid 2-6 in the El Clasico derby – this is the most goals scored by Barca in this fixture and the biggest win since the 1970s when Johan Cruyff led Barcelona to a 0-5 win.

Before the start of the season, a motion of no confident was raised club president Joan Laporta who narrowly survived the attempt to oust him. Spurred into action, he made major changes to the playing staff and brought in former player Guardiola to take charge of them.

This brought great success to the club and many eyes are looking to the Catalan club to see what their next move is. By the end of June, they had yet to make any additions to their squad although journalists had written about many players taking Barcelona flights to join the Spanish and European champions as they look to fend off a new challenge from Real Madrid.

Top Performers of FC Barcelona in 2009

After a torrid season last year, FC Barcelona is looking good to end their silverware drought this season. It did surprises a lot of people when FC Barcelona failed to win any trophies for two consecutive seasons. They had one of the best squad in Europe and still the FC Barcelona side failed to win anything. But Guardiola has revived their hopes with a sterling performance. When it all started even Guardiola wouldn’t have imagined that FC Barcelona would be competing for all three cups available this season. The architects of this turn over are: 1) Guardiola – A Coach is good as his players but with Guardiola that statement has to be reversed. He was a legendary FC Barcelona player and one of the stalwarts in the last decade. Between 1990 and 2001 he made 379 appearances for FC Barcelona. He made senior La Liga debut for FC Barcelona on December 16 1990 in a 2-0 win against Cádiz C.F.. Playing as a defensive midfielder, he went onto become a key member of the Dream Team put together by Johan Cruyff, providing a local presence in a team made up of mainly Basque and foreign players. He became FC Barcelona captain in 1997. There were many doubters about Guardiola’s ability to coach this FC Barcelona side. True to his nature Guardiola on arrival to FC Barcelona announced that he will offload Eto, Ronaldinho and Deco. He revived the team such a way that FC Barcelona is once again playing the best football in continent. 2) Xavi – Puyol might be the captain bu Xavi is the Heart of FC Barcelona. FC Barcelona has produced a lot of little midfielders recently but this Barca player is a tough one. Xavi is a product of FC Barcelona’s youth system and has spent all of his footballing life at the Camp Nou since the age of 11. Ironically he replaced Guardiola in his debut match. Xavi is just second to Rexach in terms of overall appearance for Barca. He not only has become the heart of Barca but also the brain of Spanish national side. He was rightly adjudged as the player of the tournament in Euro 2008. Xavi is that kind of player who is good going forward and while defending. Under Guardiola he has improved a lot and has featured regularly in the score sheet. 3) Lionel Messi – If Xavi is the heart of FC Barcelona, Messi is the brain. Without any doubt Messi is the best player in the world at this moment. His playing style and ability have drawn comparisons to football legend Diego Maradona. Indeed, Maradona himself declared Messi his successor. Messi began playing football at a young age and his potential was quickly identified by FC Barcelona. He left Newell’s Old Boys’ youth team in 2000 and moved with his family to Europe, as Barcelona offered treatment for his growth hormone deficiency. Making his debut in the 2004-05 seasons, he broke the La Liga record for the youngest footballer to play a league game, and also the youngest to score a league goal. Messi was hampered by injury last season; even then he managed to overshadow Ronaldo in Manchester United clash. This season he is in tremendous form scoring 33 goals and assisting 14. He also helped Argentina win the Olympic Gold Medal.

FC Barcelona Players: Lionel Messi

If any player can be said to be the natural successor to Diego Maradona, then surely it must be Lionel Messi.

Born in 1987, he signed for Barcelona from Newell’s Old Boys of Argentina at 13 years of age, and since that time Messi has been marked for super stardom. But for a niggling succession of injuries, he surely would have been a Ballon D’Or winner by now.

What has always singled out ‘Leo’ as being special is his ability to dribble at speed with the ball under perfect control. Although primarily a winger, he can play more central or even deeper but, whatever his position, when he has the ball at his feet, the fans always expect something special from him.
Since scoring his first league goal for Barça in May, 2005 Messi has become a talisman for the team – his modest attitude off the pitch and his constant praising of the work of his team mates ensuring that the fans always hold him in the highest esteem.

Life wasn’t always easy for Messi, though, despite his prodigious talent. As a youngster, Lionel suffered from a growth preventing hormonal disorder – Barcelona helped tempt him to Spain by paying for his medical treatment. This short stature, ironically, has enabled Leo to have that low centre of gravity that enables him to weave through defences.

Despite being wooed by the Spanish national team, Messi has always been eager to represent the country of his birth – he was voted player of the tournament in the Under 20 World Cup in 2005, where he was also top goal scorer. In the 2007 Copa America he was voted young player of the tournament. He was not afraid to let it be known how desperate he was to represent Argentina in the 2008 Olympic Games and although Barcelona appeared reluctant at first to release him, he ultimately helped Argentina win the gold medal – creating the only goal of the final in the process.

Playing for the national team hasn’t brought constant success, however. On his international debut, against Hungary in 2005, Messi came on as substitute in the second half and was sent off 40 seconds later – allegedly elbowing the defender who was tugging his shirt to hold him back. Then, in the 2006 World Cup, Pekerman, the coach, was the subject of immense criticism from fans because of his seeming reluctance to play Messi in what was, for the Argentines, a disappointing tournament.

And those Maradona comparisons? Well, the great man himself did say at one point that Messi was his natural heir. And if you want to see a carbon copy of the ‘hand of God’ goal then search on You Tube for Messi’s ‘goal’ in June, 2007 – against Espanyol in a local derby, would you believe!

While you’re there, though, remind yourself as well of the goal against Getafe in the Copa del Rey, when the little maestro picked the ball up and ran through just about the whole team to round the keeper and score. If that doesn’t bring back memories of Maradona then nothing will.

Despite the comparisons, Lionel Messi isn’t the second Maradona. A modest, cool-headed, softly-spoken personality, Lionel Messi never seems to find himself in the gossip columns. Instead, he just gets on with the job of trying to be as good a footballer as he can be: and that is as good as any forward player in the world game.

Lionel Messi is a great player in his own right. And he can only get better.

How many league goals did Diego Maradona score for Barcelona against Real Madrid?

This question is regarding an online competition for prizes and all i can find on the net is how many goals he scored for Argentina and of course lots about him being the hand of god.
But how many league goals for barcelona against real madrid?