Aymeric Laporte

[Marvin]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

Very strange post. Few City fans have criticised your club. What is wrong with bidding for the player? he chose to stay at Athletic Bilbao. Good luck to him.

Remember that City fans supported our club long before the money came. We are football fans like you, who just got lucky because a billionaire bought our club. You'd be happy if a Basque billionaire bought your club and invested millions in it

I don't like the principle behind your club. Do you not like foreigners? Perhaps that explains your remark about the Arab Sheikh?

 

[Barcon]

Sounds like another clueless fucking yank to me.

 

[BlueDeadHead]

Sounds like another clueless fucking yank to me.

I think Marvin is a Brit.

 

[IanBishopsHaircut]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

What a Balloon

 

[JoeMercer'sWay]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

forget how many mancunians in our squad, how many cunts are in your support? Well, at least one, you're the first.

You keep your defender from Agen, France, and pretend he's truly from Bilbao. In fact, seeing as Basque these days means anyone from Southern France to across Northern Spain, keep pretending your Basque players are really local talents, seeing as you nicked most of them from Pamplona which is almost 100 miles from Bilbao, equivalent of us signing Nottingham/Birmingham based players to our academy, or anyone from across the North. So be fair, you're not exactly the homegrown local palace you make out to be.

"Basque" in the glory of that truth.

 

[CitizenTID]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

By the way, in answer to your last statement... We we were heading towards bankruptcy before the Sheikh bought us. Thanks to the Sheikh for wiping out our debt, bringing us out of obscurity and investing in a new £150m-£200m academy and training complex (as well as a LOT of investment in Manchester, regenerating a largely derelict part of Manchester with housing and education), one of the club's biggest aims is to build a future first team with a majority of local players trained through our academy system. This obviously takes time with a club that previously had very poorly managed finances (this is before the time in which all premier league teams now receive huge money from TV etc.). Our u18s and under teams are mostly Mancunians and have been dominating the youth leagues here, so the future is looking bright for us in terms of the ideals that you hold dear - although, we can have the aspect of what you desire and still compete at the top of world football also thanks to the money.

You are not aware of the bigger picture to our owner's visions and values, you don't seem to know much about our fans either.

 

[itisrising]

Question: Is Laporte any better than Boateng(when he was 22), Savic, Nastasic etc?

This isn't attempting to slag the player but highlight that it's possibly our style of defending the last few years as opposed to the quality of CB's we've had that's the real problem. We've had some top, top CB's at our club but thay've all been failures except for Kompany who arrived here 8 years ago. I would say Nastasic is very similar to Laporte and it didn't work out with him. I certainly think it's something we could delve into.

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

Great for you but why are you acting like any of us have been slagging off Bilbao? He decided to stay which may or may not be beneficial to his future. We'll move on and it's really not a huge blow to us. And I'm not going to slate your club because it's uncompetitive because that was us for years.

 

[CitizenTID]

forget how many mancunians in our squad, how many cunts are in your support? Well, at least one, you're the first.

You keep your defender from Agen, France, and pretend he's truly from Bilbao. In fact, seeing as Basque these days means anyone from Southern France to across Northern Spain, keep pretending your Basque players are really local talents, seeing as you nicked most of them from Pamplona which is almost 100 miles from Bilbao, equivalent of us signing Nottingham/Birmingham based players to our academy, or anyone from across the North. So be fair, you're not exactly the homegrown local palace you make out to be.

"Basque" in the glory of that truth.

 

[argyle]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

Laporte is French you idiot, by your reasoning he shouldn't be in your squad.

Also, taking a swipe at 'Arab' money. Can we ban this **** for clearly being racist.

 

[Shaelumstash]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

It's a difference of cultures, mate. You think that excluding anyone that wasn't born in a certain region is a positive thing. You think it makes you David. I think it makes you Adolph.

Rangers used to exclude Catholic players from playing for the club. 25 years ago they realised it was a silly and antiquated policy and they abolished it. Now anyone is welcome to play for Rangers, no matter their religion or place of birth.

25 years on, your club continues to discriminate against players not born in a certain region. And you are inferring our club has no soul or character because we don't discriminate against players not born in Manchester.

Well just to let you know, in case you were confused, I'm proud to live in a country, and proud to support a club, that welcomes people born in any part of the world, with any religion, and treats them all equally.

By all means carry on supporting your backwards, antiquated policy that takes pride in excluding people based on things completely out of their own control. Just don't expect us to want the same. We're a bit more culturally advanced than that.

 

[totalfutbol96]

Didnt want him anyway

 

[Dribble]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

You're so wrong on so many points, I can't even be arsed to tackle them. Needless to say though, you're nothing but a jealous, xenophobic prick.

 

[ianw16]

Aymeric is such a silly name, anyway. Sounds like a character from one of the Asterix books. Mind you, they were Gauls, not Basques. Either way, I'm sure we'll survive.

 

[Credo]

I never wanted to sign him. Debated my case here. I am pleased we are not signing him. With our injury list last year, let's not look at players recovering from a broken leg and fractured/dislocated ankle.

 

[the_game_161]

So who else are we targeting in defence?

 

[mosssideblue]

Txiki pulling a blinder, as per.

Care to elaborate on such a ridiculous comment

 

[mosssideblue]

Not sure how people are blaming Txiki here. The lad is turning down a chance to play at the highest level under Pep freaking Guardiola for considerably more money. He clearly wants to stay at Bilbao and that's not Txiki's fault at all.

It's gut wrenching and all too embarrassing, but City needs to move on.

Why is it embarrassing

 

[tenententen]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

We respect Laporte's decision. Maybe the entire saga was a ploy by his agent to get him a better contract.

Had Txiki lowballed for just £1m, then sure that would have been disrespectful. But no, the potential deal (if true) was huge, especially for Athletic. A very handsome compensation was in the works, so where's the disrespect in that?

No one at the club were publicly stirring the pot, and they are always professional with their pursuit of players.

But is unfair to accuse the club of being disrespectful when nothing atrocious has been commited.

 

[blueinsa]

Matt Le Tissier: "To play in the best clubs is a nice challenge, but there is a much more difficult challenge. Play against them and beat them. I dedicate myself to that".

Reading you guys made me understand that you don´t know anything about us or about proper football. Football is not the amount of trophys or the exchange of players from all over the world. Fuck that.

As Jon Uriarte said once: "Athletic Club, this is our Club. Everyone's and no one's. As singular in philosophy, as plural in followers . So respected as misunderstood. Some teams make history , Athletic becomes a legend . And that's because an undetermined day in an unwritten agreement , we decided to follow a peculiar way. We chose to be David when everyone wanted to be Goliath. That day we decided to be less victorious but to win more. And we understood that Athletic is a family matter. Football, believe me, has a secondary role."

Keep blaming Laporte about not signing for you. Maybe you should take a look at yourselves and ask the question again. Keep playing monopoly with the arab sheikh. And try to show some more respect.

And yes, the signing is OVER. We don't want or need the stupid money. All for you. Get over it.

By the way, how many mancunians in your squad?

Says the red dipper pmsl.

What's it got to do with you anyway?

 

[Chom]

Hi
London-based Athletic fan here, I've been following Bluemoon for the last few days to try to keep up to date on the Laporte situation.

I'm not Basque, been a fan of the club since living in Bilbao for a while in the 1990s. I just wanted to respond to some of the recent posts about the club.

I obviously get how the club's philosophy can be seen as xenophobic, but I think that to the majority of Athletic fans, it's about supporting a team that is made up of players who just as much fans of the team as they are.

The philosophy of the club is to sign players who are either basque or were "formed" as footballers in the Basque Country, so are likely to share the fan's passion for the club. Laporte isn't French basque, like Bixente Lizarazu (for those who remember him) or Didier Deschamps in fact. Laporte moved to a French basque team when he was 14.

When David Beckham was at Real Madrid, a journalist asked the then president of Athletic Club if Brooklyn Beckham could ever play for Athletic. The reply was yes, if he moved to the Basque Country as a young player so could learn what the club means to the fans and the players.

I went to watch Athletic U19s play Arsenal U19s a few years ago, and watching the youth teams made the philosophy make more sense in my mind. The Athletic players were all kids who had grown up supporting the club. The majority of the Arsenal players probably hadn't ever thought, let alone dreamt, about playing for Arsenal until they were recently signed from whatever club they were previously at.

Anyway, all of this isn't to say that the Athletic way is a "better" way, and there are obviously Athletic fans out there who would swap the "philosophy" for more success. But I don't think it's fair to write it off as racist or xenophobic.

I'll stop boring you all now!