2012 – The Year Spain Dominated World Football

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Rooneil Standard Reply

This year’s Ballon D’Or saw Barcelona’s Leo Messi claim his 4th title as the world’s best player and all 11 players in the World 11 being Spanish-based players with 5 from Barca and 5 from Real Madrid.

Messi with his 4th Ballon D’Or

This has led to a huge deal of moaning from those in England who can’t deal with the fact that they no longer have the best league in the world. The truth is, La Liga is far superior to the EPL or any other league at this point in time.

As someone who watches both leagues every weekend its easy to see that La Liga now has the best players, and so I thought I’d outline my World 11 below, which evidently is really not that different from the official one.

Even as a Manchester United fan I don’t see Robin Van Persie as deserving a place in the team, with both Radamel Falcao and Zlatan Ibrahimovic being steps ahead of him.

As for Messi, there is absolutely no doubt he deserved to win the trophy, he’s been in a different class to everyone else in 2012 and may well be the greatest player of all time. I would have been delighted to see Iniesta, a player I love, get the trophy but any unbiased fan will tell you Messi deserved it.

Iniesta celebrating a goal for Barca

My World 11:

Buffon

Arbeloa – Pique – Ramos – Alba

Xavi – Alonso – Iniesta

Messi – Falcao – Ronaldo

As you can see, that’s still 10 La Liga!

Also, Sergio Busquets and Pepe are unlucky not to make the final team.

RockNess 2012 Line Up Announced

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Rooneil Standard Reply

At midnight last night Scotland’s second biggest music festival (as far as I’m aware) RockNess announced its lineup, then confirmed in a poster this morning at 9am. For anyone who hasn’t seen the line up but has been considering going to the festival here it is:

Personally it doesn’t strike me as a great line up, but it would appear they’ve focused on getting in the dance acts so far. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops when they start announcing some guitar bands but as it stands I’d have no plans to visit RockNess this year.

Although I’m sure both Biffy Clyro and Mumford & Sons will be great they’re not exactly breathtaking headliners: Biffy have been everywhere the last few years and Mumford only have only album. (Should be noted that other headliner Deadmaus5 played T In The Park 2011 too). Other than those two only Noah & The Whale really stand out for me but they too were at T In The Park, Reading & Leeds and other festivals last year. Also, Ed Sheeran in a slot that high seems pretty poor to me and has drawn a lot of criticism on the RockNess forums.

Looks like a bit of a let down from RockNess so far but if you’re a dance fan you’ll be loving Deadmau5, Justice and a lot of the other, I’d imagine anyway.

Finally, I’d note that this probably rules all of these acts out of playing T In The Park this summer.