Guillem Balagué

Guillem Balagué (born Barcelona, Spain) is a Spanish football journalist and pundit. He is a regular pundit on Sky Sports' show Revista de la Liga and has also written for some of Britain's newspapers as well as several popular Spanish newspapers. He is currently the director of football at Biggleswade United.

Journalism

In June 2008, Balagué launched his own personal website[1] featuring a blog, news and the opportunity to interact with him directly. He predicted correctly that Cristiano Ronaldo was going to Real Madrid. In fact, he broke the news of a pre-contract agreement between Real Madrid and Ronaldo. This was confirmed by the former chairman Ramon Calderon. Balagué also reports for Sky Sports News from Spain. He consistently breaks exclusive stories regarding transfers to and from La Liga. Some other stories that Balagué broke were David Beckham's move to Real Madrid, Fernando Torres leaving Liverpool for Chelsea and David de Gea to Manchester United. He always denied that David Villa or David Silva were going to go to Liverpool as others pointed out.

Balagué is a journalist and has written for several English and Spanish newspapers. He is currently preparing a football documentary and also the first Pep Guardiola biography in English. He is popular on social networking site, Twitter, with over 843,000 followers. He has written articles in British newspapers The Times and The Observer, as well as a weekly column in the free daily commuter newspaper The Metro commenting mainly on stories involving continental football. He also occasionally writes for sport website Bleacher Report.

He is also well known for his work with Spanish football newspaper AS and Spain's national radio station CADENA SER,[2] where he features on phone-ins regularly.

From 2003-2006, Balagué was responsible for match reports on the now defunct lachiesa.co.uk, website of the Essex Sunday morning outfit, La Chiesa Del Corno.

Balagué was a co-host, along with Gabriele Marcotti, of TheGame, a football podcast hosted by The Times, for the 2007-08 Premier League season, but for the 2008-09 Premier League season he was replaced by Phill Jupitus.

In November 2008, Balagué started his own Podcast in conjunction with GNB Radio 2 UAE. A weekly look at La Liga and various other features from his website.

In November 2014, Balagué was threatened with legal action by Cristiano Ronaldo after writing that Ronaldo refers to Lionel Messi as a "motherfucker".[3]

Personal

Balagué speaks fluent English which he learned while at university in Liverpool. It was during this time Balagué became a close follower of Liverpool F.C., subsequently writing a book on the club (see below).

He is a close friend of former Liverpool F.C. coach Rafael Benítez,[4] and in 2005 he wrote a book called 'A Season on the Brink: Rafael Benitez, Liverpool and the Path to European Glory' after their dramatic Champions League victory over A.C. Milan in Istanbul in 2005.[5][6]

References

  1. ↑ "Guillem Balague Football Website Home" (in Spanish). Guillembalague.com. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  2. ↑ "ONDACERO - Radio en Directo, Noticias, Deportes, Podcast, Olimpiadas 2012". Ondacero.es. Retrieved 2012-08-05.
  3. ↑ Gill, Kieran (12 November 2014). "Cristiano Ronaldo denies referring to Lionel Messi by 'motherf*****' nickname as Real Madrid star fights back over claims". Daily Mail. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
  4. ↑ "Sport". Telegraph. Retrieved 2013-10-23.
  5. ↑
  6. ↑ "Spanish La Liga - ESPN FC". Soccernet.espn.go.com. 2006-11-10. Retrieved 2013-10-23.

External links