Real Madrid and RealmadridTalk in 2008

2008 has generally been a good year for me, for Real Madrid and for RealmadridTalk. Now that today is the last day in 2008, it is time to reflect on this year and make goals for the next one!

Real Madrid

2008 for Real Madrid, has been, oh yeah, an Okay year.

We signed and sold many players. The names we offloaded include Robinho, Baptista, Granero, Balboa, Soldado..etc I guess we transferred more players than we signed.

The most notable signings were Huntelaar and Rafael Van der vaar.

Performance-wise, we were up and down. In January, we were probably 10 points ahead of Barcelona and in just a few games they reduced the gap to 2. But we managed to earn more points in the upcoming games and they kept slipping up.

We also won the home match of EL Clasico. It was an incredible game! 

We got knocked-out of the Champions League by AS Roma, but we won the league again. Statistically, it was an impressive year for Real and Schuster, Guti, Rau'l and Casillas have all broken some records.

However, as far as the current season is concerned, it has been pretty bad.

We started off well by winning the Santiago Bernabeu trophy and the Spanish Super Cup. We continued the good form and won a few games but everything went wrong when Ruud, Diarra, De La Red and other key players got injured. That was the turning point.

First we lost to Real Union on aggregate and therefore got kicked-out from Copa Del Rey. Juventus beat us twice but we finished second in our Champions League group.

We have lost many points in the league. We've also lost to our main rivals including Sevilla and Barcelona.

The club sacked Schuster and brought in Juande Ramos who has done a good job so far. We've made a couple of signings but one of them won't be able to help us in Europe.

I said "Okay" because we are still alive in two competitions and if we just sign a winger and Ramos recover a few injured players plus some luck, we can win a trophy. It is not impossible, but it is difficult.

Real Madrid in 2008

Titles:

• La Liga 2007/2008
• The Santiago Bernabeu Trophy
• Spanish Super Cup

Transfers and Signings:

• Lassana Diarra from Portsmouth
• Daniel Parejo from QPR
• K. Huntelaar from Ajax
• Robinho to Man City
• Julio Baptista to AS Roma
• Juan Callejón to Mallorca
• Rafael Van der Vaart from Hamburg
• Javi Garcia from Osasuna
• Ruben De La Red from Getafe
• Ezequiel Garay from Racing Santander (currently on-loan to the same team).
• Antonio Cassano to Sampdoria
• Javier Balboa to Benfica
• Pablo Garcia (contract rescinded)
• Esteban Granero to Getafe
• Roberto Soldado to Getafe

RealmadridTalk

As far as RealmadridTalk goes, I'm pretty proud of what I've achieved but I'm never satisfied. It is just me, I'm not really perfectionist, but I'm a man of ambition who always likes to learn and improve.

I started the site in February 2006. A friend of mine bought the domain (realmadrid-club.net - which was then redirected to RealmadridTalk.com) along with a few others because I helped him with some geeks' stuff. It was based on Joomla and it was a piece of crap in terms of content (it had no original one), design...etc everything was crap.

I remember it was May or June 2007 that I started "blogging" and producing original content. I found it difficult to dedicate more time to blogging as I had school and work, but I kept doing it for fun, more than for anything else.

The site quickly became a favorite destination for Madridistas to the point that the Guardian UK, one of the UK's most popular newspapers, labeled the site as an "authoritative resource" for Real Madrid. 

In August 2008, the site moved to OleOle, where it is now and I'm glad that I joined this fantastic community.

I love all of my colleagues: Joe, Gil, Leonard, Andrew, Nic (oh the Barca blogger), Mr. Knittle and everyone else who works for OleOle.

I have met many wonderful people on this site: Kristen, TheAngleOfMadrid, Daniel, Davorreal, BIM-56, Hamdi, Apoc, Helmet_09, Kid_Rock...etc I can't mention all of you guys, but please know that I'm grateful to all of you and I wish you a happy new year.

Goals for 2009

My goals for RealmadridTalk are as follows:

1. Reach a wider audience (more traffic, fans, email and rss subsribers)
2. Make the blog more useful and authoritative (more quality content, videos, photos..etc as well as better design)
3. Participate in and produce a podcast (It'll be the only and best Real Madrid podcast on the web).
4. Get press coverage to cover Real Madrid games (this includes my dream to visit the Santiago Bernabeu and watch Real Madrid in action - it may take a long time to happen though).
5. Complete all Real Madrid players' profiles on OleOle (you wanna help?)

Alright, Happy New Year Madridistas!

Hala Madrid!