tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87065187746244417022024-03-13T04:00:53.575+00:00Who Are Ya?!A blog about football.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.comBlogger32125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-52314899431778717842010-06-16T22:42:00.002+01:002010-06-16T23:17:35.070+01:00Day 5The consensus seems to have been that if any day was going to be the one when this tournament sprung to life, it would be this one. Group G - this year's Group of Death - gets underway, with Ivory Coast facing Portugal in the afternoon and the potentially extremely weird fixture of Brazil v North Korea to follow in the evening.<br /><br />Before this, though, the small matter of New Zealand vs Slovakia from Group F was up, with both teams looking to capitalise on Italy and Paraguay's fairly dismal draw last night. I say both teams - with New Zealand as rank outsiders for the tournament at a widely-quoted 2000-1 in their first appearance at a World Cup finals since 1982 and their outside-Oceania record of a resounding zero victories, getting anything from this fixture would certainly be something. In the event, they proved to be no pushovers. Slovakia took the lead through a Vittek header and proceeded to sit on their one goal advantage against a well-organised Kiwi side. Come the 93rd minute, however, and New Zealand grabbed an unlikely equaliser through Winston Reid, to secure their first ever World Cup point.<br /><br />This was to be a day for unfancied teams offering up far more resistance than they had any right to - as, after a 0-0 draw between the Ivorians and the Portuguese about which I have literally nothing to say having not seen the game nor any 'highlights' from it, North Korea faced Brazil and did themselves and their curious, secretive nation proud.<br /><br />Brazil won 2-1, having been 2-0 up through a fine Maicon strike from an acute angle and an Elano goal slotted first time from an exceptional Robinho ball (who was, himself, brilliant during the very entertaining match) but met with a well-drilled and extremely unfazed North Korean side. North Korea scored late on through Yun-Nam Ji; which in itself is something of a triumph. Like New Zealand, the Asian side's odds in this tournament were well into the thousands - their only previous appearance having been in 1966 - and to even imagine them scoring against Brazil on this biggest of stages would have been laughable before the game; particularly with most pundits predicting a Brazilian rout. Brazil will get better - and North Korea might never reach higher - but this, I would say, was the first genuinely entertaining match since the opening game.<br /><br />North Korea are what the World Cup is about, in their own way - in that, through football, we are afforded a glimpse into a culture and a glimpse at a people that we have no other way of engaging with. We saw Tae-Se Jong (their outstanding player of the evening) crying during his country's national anthem - and immediately the Western mindest is to question whether this is national pride or terrifying brainwashing - and we saw the banner in the crowd saying "forget politics for 90 minutes". Yes, football allows us to 'forget politics', but it also brings political differences into sharp relief. The North Korean team's joy was for the <span style="font-style: italic;">people</span> of the country, not its oppressive regime. We can only hope that back in Pyongyang some of those people are actually able to see the highlights of what was a truly great moment for them in terms of demonstrating their own humanity to the rest of the world. Another performance like that and they might even end up as a lot of people's second-favourite-team this time round.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-37487431980910835272010-06-15T22:32:00.002+01:002010-06-15T22:47:33.257+01:00Day 4There's still a lot of doom and gloom around this tournament. It's started slowly - with (including Day 4's matches) less than 20 goals scored and some of the drabbest games of football you're ever likely to see playing out with a frightening lack of urgency. Uruguay v Mexico on Friday was awful, as was Algeria v Slovenia and tonight's laboured 1-1 draw between Italy and Paraguay.<br /><br />However, articles headlined 'is this the worst World Cup ever?' are laughably premature - as I saw in one newspaper. Yes, the matches have been uninspiring for the most part and teams seem to be cautiously finding their way into the tournament and struggling with, among other things, the much-maligned Jabulani ball, the altitude and the deafening buzz of the massed vuvuzelas - but this is only the first round of matches. There <span style="font-style: italic;">will</span> be a spark, there will be memorable, exciting matches and there will be shocks and twists and turns. It's only Day 4, people.<br /><br />I'm aware that it's mostly the press creating this atmosphere - but it's also the knee-jerk reactions of the amateur pundits and football fans online. Maybe the games seem boring, but is that just because you've spent too long looking forward to the tournament and got a little over-excited? There's only so much that football can really deliver on the fantasy of football - and we all know that the truly great games come along just when you least expect them. That's what makes them so great, after all.<br /><br />So relax, is what I'm trying to say. I'm staying upbeat about the tournament and taking the fun where I can - great things are just around the corner.<br /><br />Today's matches saw the much-tipped Holland take their bow against Denmark in the early kick-off, another mostly unremarkable game that saw the Dutch win 2-0 against a distinctly average-looking Denmark side - though the own goal which saw Poulson combine with Daniel Agger to ridiculous effect is well worth a watch.<br /><br />In the 3pm kick off, Japan sneaked a 1-0 win past a Cameroon side devoid of the "fun" side they first became known for back in 1990, having seemingly had all the joy and flair sapped from their football by dour French manager Paul le Guen. I do appreciate that it is this tedious sort of result that is inspiring the negative "reviews" this tournament is getting so far - but what these tight results do suggest that, in this group at least, the identity of the team to likely join Netherlands in the second round is completely unknown.<br /><br />Finally, tonight, Italy looked nothing like the world-beaters they were four years ago, despite the squad containing a surprising amount of those already-experienced players. Paraguay took the lead through a bullet header, and were equalised against thanks to a poorly judged cross by their goalkeeper, but Italy found them hard to play against all across the park. I have little doubt Italy will go on to win this group - but they'll have to play much, much better to stand any chance of retaining their hard-won title.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-89823789003638121422010-06-14T20:31:00.003+01:002010-06-14T20:49:37.514+01:00Day 3The England result was disappointing, but I didn't quite expect the negative reaction from various football sources on Twitter and the match reports from the BBC and assorted other media outlets. There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom around this World Cup already; while despite commenting on the queasy ups and downs of watching England play, I refuse to be drawn into writing them off completely at this early stage. Surprisingly few commentators mentioned that, surely, the USA is England's hardest fixture of the group - and that they should surely overcome Algeria and Slovenia. 7 points from three games in this group would absolutely not be a terrible result for England. I'm not one for omens, but it should also be remembered that England started with draws in both of their most successful campaigns - in 1966 and 1990.<br /><br />I didn't see a great deal of the football today what with being away from home and in the middle of a field in Dorset. From what I gather, further evidence that England have little to fear from their other Group C opponents as they played out an unremarkable encounter in Polokwane which, eventually, saw Slovenia put one past the African side to go top of the group.<br /><br />Another tie I'd quite fancied watching was Serbia v Ghana, which - after a well-taken and joyously celebrated penalty by Gyan - saw Ghana become the first African side to record a victory. It's definitely what I want to see more of, African sides doing well, as this year provides as close to a continentally-hosted competition as you'll ever get. Gyan himself said his goal was for "all of Africa" and I'm sure it was felt that way. I think European audiences often fail to grasp this - coming from a continent with a huge number of historic rivalries and massively varying cultures, as well as some of the most successful sides in football history - in that we find it hard to imagine feeling pleased for a continental neighbour. We wouldn't be delighted at a goal by Germany, France, Spain, or Italy - but then Europe hasn't, as an entire continent, been totally marginalised, patronised and under-funded in the way that African football has for the years up to the 1990s.<br /><br />Fans of the African nations will have their rivalries, for sure, but they'll also be sticking up for each other against the rest of the world. Hopefully one or two of the teams will have a decent run - and that <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> will be what we remember 2010 for.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-13637370098544834972010-06-14T08:06:00.004+01:002010-06-15T14:39:58.129+01:00Day 2 - England vs USAThere's nothing quite like watching England in the World Cup. There really aren't any comparable experiences - something that, in the hours and even days leading up to the start of a 90-minute event makes you sick with excitement; something that creates a tangible buzz around every and any town you walk around and turns the TV into a blaring crate of giddy idiots and people like Adrian Chiles and Gary Lineker saying things like "OK, here we go people, hold on tight."<br /><br />Watching England at the World Cup is like queuing up for 3 hours to go on a roller coaster whose track you can't quite see - only to get to the front of the queue to find out that, just like last time, it's excruciatingly painful, depressingly slow and familiarly tedious - like riding the South West Trains service to Feltham while a dentist pokes around your teeth, tutting.<br /><br />But tonight, it all started so well. England began brightly - and instantly it was clear that they were intent on playing decent football; and after only 4 minutes Emile Heskey was able to knock the ball down for Steven Gerrard to finish impressively and make the score 1-0. The first half went on, and while the team were hardly electrifying to watch, they were playing well in a way they simply hadn't in the recent friendlies against Mexico, Japan and the mighty Platinum Stars.<br /><br />Just before half time, Fulham's Clint Dempsey tried a long-range effort that even he was surely expecting Robert Green to gather without a second's thought. As it turns out, the ball bounced out of Green's waiting hands and spun behind him - leaving the goalkeeper crawling after the ball for an agonising second as the ball bounced inexorably across the line. My reaction was, I have no doubt, exactly the same as everyone else watching. "No...no...no...oh, Robert." 1-1.<br /><br />It's not England's first goalkeeping howler and nor will it be the last. And like the last time it happened, during qualifying for Euro 2008, it's still hard to completely blame the man between the sticks. These things happen. But - it happened. To England. Again.<br /><br />And England never bounced back from it (though Green picked himself up sufficiently to tip a decent shot onto the bar later in the second half) - the worst moment of which being Heskey sullying his decent night's performance by going one-on-one with Tim Howard only to, predictably, play the ball right at him.<br /><br />So it finished 1-1 - and it's hard to know how to feel. It was another sickening, literally unenjoyable train ride to Feltham - but there are plenty of positives to take away. England actually played <span style="font-style: italic;">well</span>, and should have nothing to fear from Algeria or Slovenia. As Gerrard said after the game, the target is now 7 points - and if England fail to get them, they probably shouldn't be at the World Cup at all.<br /><br />Man of the Match: Gerrard - a true captain's performance.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-84434369919527120552010-06-12T08:43:00.003+01:002010-06-12T09:06:44.034+01:00Day 1It's finally here - as I'm sure every blog post and article written about today will start. The 2010 World Cup begins today and so does my attempt to keep a daily record of my thoughts about the tournament. It's certainly felt like a long wait - one my girlfriend doesn't quite appreciate in terms of understanding my giddiness and general child-like restlessness.<br /><br />As she's a big music fan, I use an analogy to help: imagine if there was only one big music festival, and it happened every four years - and went on for a month. The festival would have the best bands from all over the world and <span style="font-style: italic;">everyone</span> would be going. It would be especially exciting because for most of the previous four years you'd only been able to watch bands from your own country, save for glimpses of others here and there. Wouldn't it be the most exciting musical event ever? And even if you didn't like all the bands or know much about them, the enthusiasm of their entire nation would be so infectious that you'd be silly not to at least check them out.<br /><br />Does it work? I'm not sure - describing the World Cup as the Glastonbury of football times ten doesn't even begin to do it justice, but can you imagine waiting four years for anything else? The Olympics? Hardly.<br /><br />Something that does, however, is this year's opening ceremony. A riotous explosion of colour in Soccer City's massive calabash sees Desmond Tutu jigging around covered head to toe in Bafana Bafana colours; a giant puppet dung beetle appears and rolls a giant version of Adidas' controversial Jabulani ball around the stadium; R. Kelly bewilderingly appears to sing some sort of song backed with a traditional choir - it's all quite fun, really. The only sad note is that Nelson Mandela is unable to attend after the death of his 13-year-old great-granddaughter on Thursday night; in a car crash on the way home from the concert in Soweto which officially opened the tournament.<br /><br />After the opening ceremony comes the football, of course, and while work prohibits me from watching South Africa take on Mexico in the opening game - I am able to keep up with it via BBC live text and, funnily, Twitter - which manages in its own way to report events before anyone else; albeit in the sarcastic way <a href="http://backofthenet.markwatsonthecomedian.com/">Back of the Net News</a> does or in more cryptic ways that gently hit I should switch tab and go back to the live text to see what's happened.<br /><br />What does happen, in the event, is that the first half finishes 0-0 with Mexico clearly dominating proceedings, before the second half opens to a great deal more Bafana Bafana industry - culminating in a long through ball finding the feet of Tshabalala, who opens the tournament's scoring with an absolute rocket from his left foot into the top right corner of Mexico's goal. I didn't see it happen live - but the online consensus seemed to be that the already-cacophonous vuvuzelas went into overtime. I'd imagine we'll see a few people passing out from blowing those sodding things by the end of the tournament.<br /><br />Mexico equalise in the 79th minute through Rafael Marquez, who finds himself completely unmarked at the far post from a free kick; and it's absolutely no more than Mexico deserve from the game. South Africa narrowly miss a chance to win it late on - but alas the shot hits the post and World Cup 2010's opening game is a draw, albeit an entertaining one.<br /><br />The first game I <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> manage to watch live, however, is Uruguay vs France - the 7.30pm kick off. After watching the BBC's elegant and tasteful buildup coverage, getting us in the mood perfectly, the match kicks off, immediately suggesting how cagey and negative it will prove to be. Uruguay seem to show no desire to get forward - possibly seeing this as their toughest fixture - and park the metaphorical bus at the back.<br /><br />France, by turn, fanny around up front and display the frustrating, Arsenal-style lack of decision in the final third of the pitch that makes watching good players falter so infuriating. Even after Uruguay lose a man to a second yellow card, France simply refuse to take the game from them. It ends 0-0, and hopefully we've got the stinker of the group stage out of the way early.<br /><br />So that's it - we're underway. It's been fun to get in the mood for the tournament, despite the lack of truly scintillating football, but there's definitely promise and, well, England kick off tomorrow don't they? Can't wait.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-11950776501211963142010-03-29T19:36:00.002+01:002010-03-29T20:06:53.666+01:00RubberneckingCrisis. Football <span style="font-style: italic;">thrives </span>on it. I’m talking off-field mostly, but then crisis has a way of jumping over the hoardings like a rabble of disgruntled, misguided, pissed fans and making its way into the heart of the game. Performances, results and whole seasons can hinge on the intricacies of sponsorship deals, boardroom corruption and plain incompetence, tax bills, wage bills, sex scandals, corporate scandals, moral outrage, violence and, often, the combination of all of the above as disparate groups of people in and around the sport work together to Bring the Game into Disrepute.<br /><br />They pay fines for having done so and weather endless media storms, they answer difficult questions at press conferences and ignore witty banners hung over stands by one group of irate fans while pledging to ban for life another group of fans who overstep the line and throw coins at the opposing teams’ players – or worse. They defend the actions of players, defensible or otherwise, then condemn the actions of others. They attack referees, sleep with each others’ girlfriends and cry and hug and fight each other at work – most of which on a regular basis. They are thugs and intellectuals, criminals and UN goodwill ambassadors, comedians and professionals. They are the reason why sports stories are found all the way through the newspaper and round every table in every pub in the land.<br /><br />“They” are the cast of the soap opera that football unarguably is, and always has been. Even better than its competitors, this soap runs 24 hours a day (see Virgin channel 517, Sky 405 and Freeview 83, if you’re interested), has an endless supply of new storylines to work through and every episode is live. And we, the fans, the public, everyone – we love it.<br /><br />Why? Because we’re the same people who slow down on the motorway to rubberneck at a nice big smash and love to read outlandish, lurid tabloid news stories about improbable serial killers and scandalised celebrities. We’re also the same people who laugh at the absurdity of life and human behaviour, make up jokes and funny songs about the things we see and write endless millions of column inches of words in an attempt to decipher those same things.<br /><br />I don’t think there’s anything wrong with this, incidentally. This is what I, as a football fan, signed up for – and anyone who says they wish it was “all about the game” and professes to have no interest in the “circus of modern football” is probably being untruthful, and at any rate would be left with a very different and probably fairly unedifying prospect were it suddenly all taken away.<br /><br />As Portsmouth manager Avram Grant recently put it (and so wonderfully succinct it was too): “Football is more than football.”<br /><br />Portsmouth, of course, are the headline act this season – the long-running story arc that just won’t go away. They’re the soap family that would have been written out of the script were it not for the popularity of their car-crash scenario – they’ve stumbled inelegantly from owner to owner, manager to manager and payslip to payslip, constantly in danger of ceasing to exist altogether. Their troubles have not stemmed from football, but from poor management at the highest level, leading to multiple job losses, administration, a 9-point deduction (their “sporting sanction”, unsporting though it may appear) and certain relegation. The fact that they haven’t been liquidated is the only positive the fans and staff can really take from the season, especially when the consensus seems to be that were they any business other than a football club –one so ingrained in the community, a national symbol of the town and a company whose continued operation is of interest to a large proportion of the town’s population – Pompey would have been wound up a long time ago. Which would have been a shame if only for the fascinating insight into just how badly some football clubs are run and how devastating the on and off-field consequences can be their ongoing misery provides.<br /><br />Supporting acts this season have included the appreciably more heavyweight likes of Liverpool and Manchester United who have both been involved in their own recession-based financial woes with, most visibly, unrest growing between fans and owners even at United, a club who have experienced little other than success since their unpopular owners took over. Liverpool are in a lot of debt and face the prospect of moving into their new ground fading further and further into the future, while their lack of prowess on the pitch this season has hardly helped matters and manager Rafael Benitez’s position looks less and less secure as each disappointing result comes in. At United, regardless of whether they go on to win the league this year, the green-and-yellow Newton Heath colours worn by huge proportions of their fans alongside the Glazer-owned red are likely to be among the most iconic images of the 2009-10 season. It may seem ridiculous to protest against owners who have brought your club nothing but success – but one look at the £700m+ debt the American family have saddled the club with is bound to make fans nervous about the long-term future of their beloved team.<br /><br />There are other recurring characters in this season’s storyline, of course. Recurring characters that pop up with a laugh for the knowing audience, or with another hapless tale of woe to tell. Chelsea’s season has been hit, possibly irrevocably, by the sex scandals and marital indiscretions of John Terry and Ashley Cole – two key players in the West London club’s bid to bring the Premier League trophy back to the capital. West Ham have changed owners and face sweeping cost-cutting measures as well as the very real possibility of relegation under manager Gianfranco Zola. Owen Coyle, once hailed as ‘God’ by Burnley fans, became Judas overnight as he left the club for Bolton and, again, very likely immediate relegation to the Championship. Manchester City, Bolton and Hull City have all sacked managers.<br /><br />And I’d like to put in a small mention for my adopted Bulgarian side, CSKA Sofia, who could barely be in more trouble if they’d actually set their minds to the task. After a riot at rivals Lokomotiv Mezdra saw 100 fans storm onto the pitch, they were handed a 4-0 defeat and a three-match home ban (although in researching this sentence I have since discovered that this is, sadly, not particularly rare). Add to this the horrifying news that CSKA striker Orlin Orlinov has been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a Bulgarian model and reality TV star before beating her for 8 hours and it’s safe to say that the Bulgarian league is experiencing the less light-hearted side of the soap opera – this one is more like a Hubert Selby Jr. novel.<br /><br />What I’m trying to say here is that we should not be ashamed to say that “football is more than football”, and that that’s why we find it fascinating. Of course I drool over a beautiful goal and can often be seen biting my nails into oblivion during a knife-edge Champions League tie or the like, but this compelling <span style="font-style: italic;">narrative</span> is why I like to write about football and I think it’s why a lot of people love to write, and read, about it too. There’s so much material to work with, so much going on in so many places and directly affecting so many people that it can’t be ignored: it’s a roller-coaster drama with real implications for real peoples’ lives. It’s a big part of why football fascinates me – and this is all without a ball being kicked.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-45328565369006119522010-03-16T00:26:00.002+00:002010-03-16T00:30:06.009+00:00BeckhamTurn on the television tonight and you’d be forgiven for thinking David Beckham had died. He probably doesn’t feel far off it, in footballing terms. Neatly edited packages of his high- and lowlights on and off the field are wall-to-wall on both sport and regular news broadcasts – it seems purely to bring a lump to the throats of those of us with a soft spot for the softly-spoken midfielder.<br /><br />Appearing at the World Cup this summer would have been the perfect end to the improbably cinematic narrative that has been his football career. There would surely have emerged at least one more iconic image of the man who has defined the last decade of England’s national side, one moment when the fans and the pundits and the broadcasters could cling to remember this effortlessly photogenic player forever.<br /><br />We all knew it wouldn’t have been Beckham lifting the trophy – unless maybe Ferdinand, Gerrard, Rooney and Barry all got injured in the final? No?! – but it would have been something. Last time out, for me at least, it was the then-captain in tears having limped to the bench in time to watch his team crash out of the 2006 World Cup. This time round it may have been as an anxious benchwarmer watching on and biting his nails with the rest of us. Maybe it would have been the old hand swinging in a cross or a free-kick during a snatched 15 minutes-or-so on the pitch – as that’s surely all his on-field contribution might have been. Maybe he would have done a Zidane on us and ended his career the way he ended his first World Cup; with an impulsive, senseless act of stupidity. I can almost see it now – the great national icon walking past the trophy he was never destined to win, despite the amount of effort and self-belief he devoted to obtaining it, proving himself to be human after all. Sniff.<br /><br />In the event, as with so many things, Beckham’s England career has ended not with a bang, but a whimper. It’s truly a sad day – and it’s hard to imagine how heartbroken he must be, especially as someone who clearly feels incredibly passionate about what he does for a living. It’s easy to dismiss the sadness or disappointment of very successful people, particularly professional sportspeople, given their lavish lifestyles and huge salaries (a sarcastic ‘boo hoo’ or a quick turn on the worlds-smallest violin is usually included somewhere). But an unforeseeable, unavoidable injury such as this crucial Achilles injury will have really hurt – as every single thing Beckham has done since standing down as captain and being ceremoniously dropped from the squad by then-England boss Steve McLaren has been focussed on playing in this tournament – the World Cup that would always have been his last and would always be the final scene in the film of his professional life.<br /><br />Moving to LA Galaxy ensured first-team football and a team built around him as the big star – something that was no longer going to happen at a big European club. It also allowed him time and space to recover from the disappointment of failing to live up to the promise of the much-vaunted ‘Golden Generation’ of English stars in the early part of the decade. His first loan spell at AC Milan ensured he was in the eye line of Fabio Capello and enabled him to demonstrate that he still had a part to play in an England squad hurt by McLaren’s failure to achieve qualification for Euro 2008. His second, which has now come crashing to a premature end, was embarked upon solely to prepare him for his final act as a top-level footballer. And while there is little doubt that he would have been at best a bit-part player in South Africa, his experience, popularity with fans and players alike, role as ambassador for England around the world and the fact that he still has no clear successor in the England setup meant that he was unlikely to be left at home. Indeed, given that the FIFA administrators traditionally choose World Cup tournaments to meet and discuss future host nations, it is likely he will travel to South Africa as part of the FA’s England 2018 bid team anyway.<br /><br />For British football fans of my age, Beckham’s England highlight reel is truly ingrained into the collective memory – this is probably the first career we as a generation will have followed from beginning to end. I have a feeling that his halfway-line goal against Wimbledon in 1996 might have been the first time I even <span style="font-style: italic;">noticed</span> football on TV.<br /><br />Even as the events played out in chronological order on TV today, it was easy to recite from memory what was going to come next, even involuntarily reciting the worn-out commentary tracks. Kicking the back of Diego Simeone’s leg in 1998. Scoring the last-minute free-kick against Greece to take England to the 2002 World Cup. Getting there and completing his comeback by scoring a penalty against Argentina. Running at the camera, yanking his shirt and showing the number 7 to the world. Tearfully resigning the captaincy in his final press conference at Baden Baden in 2006.<br /><br />There is no other player like him for English fans, for English youngsters to admire and emulate. Wayne Rooney, the current England star attraction, is indisputably more of a throwback to an older, more traditionally English style of footballer – in the words of none other than both players’ mentor Alex Ferguson. Beckham, for all the accusations of courting celebrity and shameless self-promoting outside of the game, is the archetypal <span style="font-style: italic;">modern</span> footballer – attuned both to what is expected of him as ‘product’ and as an ambassador for the game, as well as being well-liked among his colleagues and peers and having overcome a fair bit of professional adversity. He is, in fact, much more like the world-class Continental players he has appeared alongside since leaving England than the scruffier, less elegant footballers he left behind. Perhaps this is what made him such a natural <span style="font-style: italic;">galactico</span> at Real Madrid and helped him slide so easily in amongst AC Milan’s band of elder statesmen last year.<br /><br />I’m aware that this, too, is beginning to sound like a eulogy. David Beckham’s film will not have the fairytale South African ending he has tried so valiantly to engineer – but the fact that he has so evidently given his heart, soul and now his body to the quest for that to be the case is enough to serve him well in football fans’ collective memory. He was never going to win the World Cup for England this year – but his absence will certainly make the tournament that little bit less thrilling.<br /><br />So long, Dave.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQyYBl-aozrsC9D9XFcBT2FVuhTkt8byqSzJDPgpBiAZepXWK38kn91plhJAus1x8x76QKTtH7J8Wp130Vlrew5mZ6EQexgFisLM53rjG2l_OhxcNO0FQtSdKbzg4WYCwpdglvdECz9Y/s1600-h/david-beckham-world-cup-2006-england-versus-portugal-1n4lRi.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 271px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNQyYBl-aozrsC9D9XFcBT2FVuhTkt8byqSzJDPgpBiAZepXWK38kn91plhJAus1x8x76QKTtH7J8Wp130Vlrew5mZ6EQexgFisLM53rjG2l_OhxcNO0FQtSdKbzg4WYCwpdglvdECz9Y/s320/david-beckham-world-cup-2006-england-versus-portugal-1n4lRi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449022347431162770" border="0" /></a>Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-55150939575718490302010-03-01T22:52:00.002+00:002010-03-01T22:55:45.469+00:00Morality and Obligation<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />“All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.”</span> – Albert Camus<br /><br />This was the weekend that Wayne Bridge refused to shake hands with John Terry. Formerly good friends and team mates, it was a poignant and – to me at least – really quite difficult to watch moment in the build-up to the Chelsea v Manchester City match at Stamford Bridge yesterday. The various reasons for the snub I won’t recap as they are extremely well-documented elsewhere and so ubiquitous at the moment as to be utterly tedious.<br /><br />This particular moment, though – and that is literally all it was – is one that won’t fade from my memory any time soon. Predictably hyped up in the preceding 24 hours by the written and broadcast press, Bridge’s participation in the Blatter-designed pre-match handshaking ceremony came into question following his decision to withdraw from the England squad earlier in the week. There were rumours that there were more players in the City squad who would refuse Terry’s gesture, jokes that Wayne Bridge might in fact prefer to plant a swift head butt on his former Chelsea and England team mate instead.<br /><br />Sky’s coverage right up to the line-up was focussed. It thankfully wasn’t, and didn’t need to be, hysterical – there was a tangible intake of breath from all present when the City players, led by Shay Given, started making their way down the row of Chelsea men. “Here it comes,” intoned Martin Tyler, clearly eager to get on with the football but no doubt infected with the same rubbernecking impulse as the other 40,000 people inside Stamford Bridge and the various millions watching on TV. Terry held his hand out. Bridge, locked into the familiar rhythm of repeated token handshaking, moved as if to take the other man’s hand, paused…and moved on. As far as brutal, even comic, timing goes, it was impeccable. John Terry’s face was frozen: he surely knew it was coming, but that brief moment cannot have been much fun in any case.<br /><br />He looked lost in thought in that fragment of time. The very idea of a footballer lost in his own thoughts is usually the cue for a tedious joke about the assumed intelligence, or lack thereof, of someone who does something as essentially physical as playing football for a living – something I have always found rather distasteful about lazy football punditry. In this case though, the stresses and strains of the past few weeks were etched on his face for all to see. Was he wondering, maybe, whether it had all been worth it? Was he wondering where it had all begun to fall down around him? Either way, it was a rare moment when the audience, both those in attendance and via satellite, gained a gut-wrenching insight into the personal life of a footballer <span style="font-style: italic;">on the field</span>. The collision of front and back pages was made flesh here – and it left a nasty taste.<br /><br />The usual ‘public right to know’ defence has invoked by the unscrupulous press lawyers throughout the saga. It doesn’t hold up – it is absolutely <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> my <span style="font-style: italic;">right</span>, nor anyone else’s, to know anything about someone’s private life purely because they have a high-profile job. Despite this – and even if I hadn’t even glanced at a tabloid newspaper or clicked around online for the last month – it would be clear to see that something wasn’t right with the mood in West London. And it was, honestly, shamefully, fascinating.<br /><br />This was the weekend that Wayne Bridge refused to shake hands with John Terry. It was also the weekend that Chelsea lost at home for the first time this season – and the first time they have even conceded against Manchester City at home for almost a decade. Are the two things related? It seems hard to imagine otherwise. Based on the evidence of this performance, Chelsea’s labours in Milan and their recent defeat to Everton in the league, it gets trickier and trickier to argue that external issues are not affecting matters on the pitch.<br /><br />Terry was certainly at fault for City’s first goal (as he was on two occasions at Goodison Park) and his temper threatened to boil over into something more serious in a later clash with Carlos Tevez – though to suggest that it is entirely Terry’s problem would be wrong. A lack of concentration and a mood of uncertainty seems suddenly to be running through the entire Chelsea squad. The players’ heads haven’t been in the right place for a few games now – and it remains to be seen whether Carlo Ancelotti will be able to deal with the rift. The big worry, of course, is that this could prove to be a negative turning point in the club’s season, the moment when it all collapses – up there with Arsenal’s William Gallas sitting alone on the pitch at St. Andrews in 2008.<br /><br />Having ridden the crest of a wave of confidence for the majority of the season and turning in the sort of performances that has seen them achieve, among other feats, comprehensive defeats of Arsenal at home and away in the Premier League and cruising untroubled through the group stages of the Champions League, Chelsea risk everything falling away at a time when Manchester United are growing in self-assurance thanks in no small part to Wayne Rooney’s phenomenal form and Arsenal facing an extremely generous run-in, with influential players returning from injury all the time. If a player as spirited and indomitable as Didier Drogba has been this season can lift the team’s fortunes and carry them on his broad shoulders until May then Chelsea should hang on to their lead. Much more scandal, distraction or plain bad luck and Manchester United are almost certain to get their historic fourth consecutive title.<br /><br /> So, morality and obligation, then. John Terry’s now-public transgressions seem to boil down to that incredibly blokey kind of moral code – the whole ‘you don’t shag your mate’s ex’, thing, essentially. It should be remembered that Terry hasn’t broken any<span style="font-style: italic;"> laws</span>, unlike other former England captains and myriad other prominent figures. He does, however, have the burden of professional obligation in a different sense than a scandalised rock star or actor. He has to attempt to put aside recriminations, ignore any abuse he might get from fans during England’s friendly with Egypt on Wednesday and do his job to the best of his ability – for the good of his team mates, bosses and fans of both club and country. The world of football can be as much a harsh spotlight for a person to live in as it is, undoubtedly, an enviable lifestyle, but the point is that, ideally, a player’s private life and professional life should not interfere with each other. Terry’s biggest mistake, perhaps, has been to allow problems outside of work to influence his performance. If morality hasn’t troubled him in the past, his obligations certainly are now.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-59942275069811294972010-02-22T13:37:00.003+00:002010-02-22T13:45:44.290+00:00ConsumerAs I have confessed previously on this blog, I am not the sort of football fan who actually <span style="font-style: italic;">goes </span>to a lot of games. I support a Big Four club which, despite being based in the city I live in (albeit at the other side of it), is prohibitively expensive to watch live, even in the case of low-interest Carling Cup ties or dead rubber Champions League group stage matches. It’s a disgrace, of course, but that’s not what I’m writing about today. The fact that the live games I get to watch are few and far between (both in terms of time and geography – this season I’ve taken in a grand total of three matches; <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/08/pre-season.html">two</a> in <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/08/community-shield.html">London</a>, one in <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/10/cska-sofia-vs-ofc-sliven-2000.html">Bulgaria</a>) has left me thinking a lot recently about how I, and many millions of fans like me, consume football these days.<br /><br />As I write, Arsenal are playing away at Porto in the Champions League last 16, first leg. Due to various factors, including a despicably unreliable national cable TV supplier having failed to install their service in my new house after almost seven weeks* of waiting, I am watching it via an old-fashioned external aerial (and for all the good its ‘signal-boosting power supply’ claims to be, I may as well have stuck a coathanger in the back of the telly) through a haze of constantly undulating, mesmerising visual noise. The scoreboard routinely disappears off the top of the screen and the colours that make it through, other than the ubiquitous green of the pitch, are at best approximations of the shades actually on display all those miles away in the Estadio do Dragao. No matter – it’s the football, not the coverage that matters, right?<br /><br />Last night, by contrast, I watched AC Milan being humbled by Manchester United in glorious Sky HD on a very respectable 37-or-so-inch Samsung screen. It was dazzling – like having a mere sheet of glass between myself and Alex Ferguson’s chewing gum. Every bitter expletive from the grizzled Scot’s mouth was in jaw-dropping, era-defining, slow-motion high definition. The really shocking thing is that Sky HD is no longer the pinnacle of the remote football-watching experience. Last month Sky launched Sky Sports 3D at a select few pubs in the UK for the Arsenal v Man United Premier League encounter – and as one of the many people not invited to any of the events, my lasting impression remains a single TV advert showing a pub full of astounded men wearing dark glasses, bathed in the glow of the Future – like a collection of shady US government officials witnessing the test detonation of a nuclear weapon. Apparently the service will be rolled out across hundreds of other pubs across country come April.<br /><br />I should also add that in addition to the fuzzy wonderland of ITV’s coverage in Porto, I’m watching Bayern Munich v Fiorentina live on my iPhone via Sky Mobile. This really rather spectacular little app lets me watch Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, Xtra, News and ESPN live – in bafflingly high quality – for only £6 per month. There doesn’t seem to be much of a catch: OK so I can’t have a group of friends over to gather round the little screen to watch Premier League and Champions League games, but I <span style="font-style: italic;">can</span> hide away in the corner of the living room watching live games on headphones while the other half watches Come Dine With Me* – and to me that’s a bit of a revelation and well worth the price of a couple of pints. When I wrote about<a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/10/football-and-internet.html"> football and the internet</a> last year at the time of the England V Ukraine World Cup qualifier, I had in mind individual fans being forced to watch blocky YouTube-style feeds on obscure, overpriced websites. It seems I might have been wroing – this particular service even works well via 3G coverage, meaning it can be watched when I’m out of the house (if not, sadly, when on the tube). If online live TV is the way things are headed, Sky Mobile seems to be a genuinely viable option.<br /><br />Of course, not every game is live on Sky Sports, nor on ESPN, the BBC or ITV. The Premier League’s rules regarding the broadcast of 3pm Saturday kick-offs still apply (though it remains strangely difficult to find out exactly why, particularly in terms of the huge potential commercial value in selling said matches to broadcasters). As a result, the vast majority of football coverage is consumed – by myself and most other fans – in purely non-visual format, whether in the form of online live text updates, TV shows like Sky’s Soccer Saturday and the BBC’s Score or simply by catching up on results and reports in the newspaper the following day. This distance between the event and the fan is an interesting one – especially when it is legally enforced or based on obscure clauses in broadcast rights contracts – as it gives rise to some bizarre behaviour by fans and broadcasters alike.<br /><br />Firstly, the idea of staring at an empty scoreboard, waiting for it to fill with numbers and then ascribing meaning to them is fairly absurd on its own. Looking at a list of scoreboards from an entire day’s events, waiting for them to be confirmed and assimilating the information dispassionately also seems to be a strange way of engaging with an ‘entertainment product’ as visual and visceral as football – nevertheless I, and many others, do it every single weekend.<br /><br />The strangest of all, however, must be Soccer Saturday. One of Sky Sports’ most popular shows (not least because it is broadcast free-to-air on Sky Sports News), Soccer Saturday has, among other things, made a cult hero of presenter Jeff Stelling and inspired a host of Soccer Saturday drinking games. The fact that it consists entirely of Stelling reading out scores from the vidiprinter as they come in (albeit in an entertaining and delightfully pun-riddled fashion); live links from match reporters who, despite being at the ground, seem to be facing the opposite way from the rest of the crowd in order to watch (and become hopelessly confused by) the action on a small monitor; and a collection of ageing former pros watching matches that are being televised elsewhere on screens the viewer can’t see, occasionally yelling “Goal!”, “Chance!” or “GO ON LAD!” (if one of the clubs playing happens to be one they used to play for) and ineptly attempting to describe what they’ve just seen. It sounds bizarre because it is – and I can’t imagine another world in which it could take place. Needless to say, I love it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcCJx2hq0YhOSqQN76U9VHRwZxMuZQayOgqqiIUT6cTjrphz2XtKwu_qhGwTGsqpbotgz9aHhMfx-fJd_0Zbv3RHbkN6kIvcer8EEMUxXBnILfn7IQ8iJXgzXBnUGDyWOalMM6cyjpZo/s1600-h/0.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlcCJx2hq0YhOSqQN76U9VHRwZxMuZQayOgqqiIUT6cTjrphz2XtKwu_qhGwTGsqpbotgz9aHhMfx-fJd_0Zbv3RHbkN6kIvcer8EEMUxXBnILfn7IQ8iJXgzXBnUGDyWOalMM6cyjpZo/s320/0.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441063314331810674" border="0" /></a><br />There is a huge amount of choice available to the ‘armchair’ football fan in need of their fix – and it seems, like so many things, to be a question of finance as to how close one can get to the action. If you can’t afford to go to the game, you watch Sky Sports and Match of the Day. If you can’t afford Sky Sports, you rig up the coathanger and (occasionally) watch teams playing in a blizzard of your own creation. And if all else fails, you can watch the cogs turning behind Paul Merson’s furrowed brow as he attempts to describe a Wigan near miss or a dubious Bolton penalty. It’s unbelievable, Jeff.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-49445892419529910542010-01-28T09:39:00.001+00:002010-01-28T09:40:45.311+00:00The Carling CupOne hour from now, at Old Trafford, the second leg of the Carling Cup semi-final will begin between Manchester United and Manchester City. By the time I post this online, the match will be over and we will know the identity of Aston Villa’s opponents in the Carling Cup Final at Wembley. If it is Manchester City, it will be their first major Wembley final for 29 years – and should they win that, it will be their first trophy since they won the same competition 34 years ago. As far as Manchester United are concerned, this will be the eighth League Cup semi-final they have contested under Alex Ferguson – and they’ve won all but one of the previous seven.<br /><br />If this build-up seems to overstate the momentous nature of the game, then good. That was the intention. Because this <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> a big game, and it proves that the competition is not “only the Carling Cup” any more.<br /><br />It is customary (and has been for a long time) to belittle and ridicule England’s second domestic trophy – usually for its unfortunately regular re-branding name changes and occasionally unfortunate nicknames (remember the ‘Worthless’ Worthington Cup?) or for the fact that top Premiership managers, led by Arsene Wenger, have tended to treat it as a youth tournament, and shrug off any supposed disappointment when their sides are inevitably dumped out by lesser opposition playing at full strength. While pundits and older football fans complain that the FA Cup has lost its glamour and importance in the football calendar for the bigger teams, the League Cup never seems to have had any in the first place.<br /><br />So be it, but in recent seasons, with each team’s chances for silverware getting narrower and narrower, the Carling Cup is taking on ever greater importance. And why not? It’s as much a trophy as any other, let’s not forget – as well as a memorable trip to Wembley for fans and players. This should be noted in the case, particularly, of ‘big four’ teams Arsenal and Liverpool, neither of whom have yet played a final at the new national stadium. Fans of each team, starved of any silverware since 2004 and 2006 respectively, would surely not turn their noses up at a Carling Cup win now?<br /><br />I would suggest that Jose Mourinho is at least partly responsible for the tournament’s resurgence in recent years. When he arrived at Chelsea in 2004 he was clearly aware that he would be required to hit the ground running and make bringing honours to Stamford Bridge an instant priority to justify Abramovich’s huge investment in the club. Jose, presumably knowing nothing of national ‘Worthless Cup’ scoffing, put out full-strength sides in every round – and promptly won the trophy in a thrilling final against Liverpool at the Millennium Stadium. Chelsea players of the time, having gone on to win the league that year, later claimed that it was the confidence and excitement lifting that trophy relatively early on in the season gave the squad that helped them to kick on and take their first Premier League title in 2005. Mourinho never changed his approach to the cup while in charge of Chelsea, winning it again in 2007. It wasn’t until Mourinho’s Chelsea and more recently Manchester United and Spurs, started taking the tournament more seriously, that any Carling Cup tie could ever considered ‘big’.<br /><br />But tonight’s game <span style="font-style: italic;">is </span>big – and not just because it’s a derby game. It’s not even because it’s the second leg in a tie whose first leg ended as a bad tempered affair with an ex-player taunting his former employers and Gary Neville once again being a bit silly in the face of a fierce rival club. It’s big because it’s the Carling Cup Semi-Final; and the prize is playing in a cup final at Wembley. For Man City manager Roberto Mancini it’s the chance to emulate Mourinho and start with an early trophy – one that will do his team no harm in terms of confidence or credibility as far as challenging the big four this season and in the future. For Manchester United and Alex Ferguson it’s a chance to dispense with an upstart neighbour in time-honoured fashion and give their season the kick up the backside it needs to get back on track following their disappointment in the earliest stages of the FA Cup.<br /><br />On the other side of the coin, should Manchester City lose, and lose badly, it will cast doubt on the extent of their development since the new owners came on board in 2008, and upon the wisdom of replacing popular manager Mark Hughes mid-season. The Carling Cup represents, alongside possibly the FA Cup, their best chance of rediscovering trophy-winning ways in 2010. Should it slip through their fingers, there may linger the feeling that, so far, the revolution hasn’t quite happened at Eastlands.<br /><br />If Man United lose tonight, it leaves the champions battling on only two fronts. Of course, if, free of the distractions of the domestic cups they go on to win the Premier League and the Champions League as is always eminently possible with Ferguson’s team, there will be little talk of the Carling Cup that got away. If they don’t, however, a barren season that comes down to defeats to Leeds United and Manchester City will no doubt stick in the throat of the veteran manager.<br /><br />Personally, I would be pleased to see Man City go through. In a final between themselves and Aston Villa, there is not a team or a set of fans I would begrudge a little glory after such a long time waiting. With over 60 trophyless years between them, I think only the most embittered Man United or West Brom fans would. As with Spurs’ Carling Cup win in 2008, it’s nice to see the pool of clubs <span style="font-style: italic;">able</span> to be win trophies widen as the Premier League levels out in terms of quality. And, finally, it’s nice that the clubs contesting it seem to actually care.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-71906934018279939872010-01-11T21:56:00.003+00:002010-01-11T22:01:32.564+00:00Too Cold, Too HotAbsence makes the heart grow fonder, apparently. It was in absence that I started this blog – in the arid desert of a football-less summer, in one of the odd-numbered years with no meaningful tournament to watch, with no huge build-up or crushing disappointment to savour alongside a cold, icy cider in a lazy, sweaty beer garden. They won’t be calling it the Long Hot Summer of 2009, but there were a few balmy days in there when I longed for the brisk chill of autumn and winter – when my thick Scottish blood, rosy cheeks and well-padded, hirsute frame would steel me against the bitter elements of the colder seasons, while little African and South American footballers donned gloves, scarves and even tights in attempts to survive 90 minutes of running around in places like Hull, Stoke, Wigan and Wolverhampton. No matter what the weather would be like outside, there was the dream of huddling round the big screen in a cosy pub, pint glasses slipping out of gloved hands, or staying in on a freezing cold Saturday, kept warm merely by the sound of Jeff Stelling’s gentle laughter at another hyperactive, stumbling live report by Chris Kamara.<br /><br />Yes, the football fan craves the winter. The schedules are hectic, the season is starting to take shape and Alex Ferguson’s padded coats balloon into Everest-grade sleeping bags by mid-January.<br /><br />But this year we survived Christmas and New Year to discover: absence, again. This time it’s the winter that’s scuppered us.<br /><br />Last week the Carling Cup semi-finals, one of which was certain to be a pretty tasty Manchester derby, were called off. No big deal, really – I won’t miss a Tuesday night match too much.<br /><br />But this weekend saw the cancellation of all but two Premier League matches, all but four Championship games, all but two League One matches and every single League Two game. Most of the lower league ties were off because of frozen pitches – effective undersoil heating technology does not, alas, stretch to the likes of Aldershot Town and Wycombe Wanderers. The Premier League matches were cancelled because it was deemed unsafe for fans to reach the ground amid the icy conditions found in almost all areas of the UK (but not, it seems, in Birmingham, where City were able to hold Manchester United to a very creditable draw, or in North London, where Arsenal drew with Everton as I struggled to stay on my feet in those very surrounding streets). Fair enough, I suppose – though it does somewhat beg the question why they bother having undersoil heating at all when the match gets called off anyway.<br /><br />As I type, Manchester City are successfully playing against Blackburn, so maybe a thaw is upon us and the Premier League has had its cancellations for this year – but the sad fact of the matter is that there was a Premier League weekend, even a Super Sunday, without a full programme of football. Because of some snow. At the height of the season. No orange balls or hilarious slips by goalkeepers. No insane fat Geordies with no shirts on in the stands. And now the top team in the league has a game in hand, leading a month or so of the usual tedious mid-afternoon sports headlines where “Chelsea open up a five point gap at the top! Oh no, wait, it’s only two points now!” or “Manchester United close the gap on Chelsea to just a point! But have, er, played a game more.” Ugh.<br /><br />******<br /><br />All of which means that the football fan (i.e. me) has to focus their attention on sunnier climes for their football fix.<br /><br />Luckily the Africa Cup of Nations has just kicked off, albeit with an extremely dark cloud hanging over it. When the bus carrying the Togolese national team through Angola came under sustained gunfire on Saturday and three of their staff were tragically killed, it seemed that the tournament might not even go ahead. Even now there is the nagging fear that another violent incident would surely see the competition abandoned. It’s a horrible thought, but I can’t help but wonder what action FIFA would take if something like this happened on the opening day of the World Cup – and it’s not like South Africa is such a safe country, either.<br /><br />More happily, the opening game of the tournament generated a fairly spectacular result, when Mali, 4-0 down to hosts Angola with 11 minutes left to play, managed to come back and draw the game 4-4. Africa Cup of Nations tournaments are known for being high-scoring affairs, with the 2008 tournament seeing an incredible 99 goals (an average of over 3 a game), due, in part I’m sure, to a dearth of defensive quality from some of the weaker nations, but still – it’s eye-catching and entertaining stuff. It would certainly be great to see a truly great competition emerge from such a depressing start.<br /><br />The shocks have continued today, with minnows Malawi demolishing Algeria 3-0 in their opening group game, and Ivory Coast being held to a goalless draw against lowly Burkina Faso. While Malawi’s result will reassure those who made cocksure predictions about the ease with which England will win their group games at the World Cup (listen to my supremely confident colleagues on <a href="http://thefootballbasement.jellycast.com/podcast/feed/2">the first episode of The Football Basement podcast</a> for evidence of this), it certainly proves that the African nations are constantly getting stronger and more competitive <span style="font-style: italic;">as a group</span>, rather than the old days when one or two spectacular teams massively outshined the rest. Having said this, the favourites must surely remain the likes of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon – though they’ll likely have to live up to their high billing to go all the way in the tournament.<br /><br />So hopefully the snow will melt in a couple of days, Chelsea will make up their extra match and I’ll be safely ensconced in the pub watching an Ivory Coast v Ghana semi-final in a couple of weeks time. The winter can’t be all bad, can it?<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJaR1od7WGj5qvpBa1qwMABlojTHJwFpzqilIhGcTvZhvhGPDe91DSlgMUU7orYF0mT5-spGSoioScEJpEUjfatYbRcI61ht1ZGh7r8T-eOF_CIWwtfa7MHAePnVFup4fANjmpZdDmehs/s1600-h/DSC01301.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJaR1od7WGj5qvpBa1qwMABlojTHJwFpzqilIhGcTvZhvhGPDe91DSlgMUU7orYF0mT5-spGSoioScEJpEUjfatYbRcI61ht1ZGh7r8T-eOF_CIWwtfa7MHAePnVFup4fANjmpZdDmehs/s320/DSC01301.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425605478011157954" border="0" /></a>Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-80701791528978498872009-12-27T23:26:00.001+00:002009-12-27T23:27:48.496+00:00Christmas WeekChristmas week 2009 has been, in my opinion, as effective an advert for the Premier League as you could imagine. We’ve seen plenty of goals, big upsets, high quality football, brilliant fan support, mind games, backroom intrigue and even a high-profile managerial sacking. All of which has meant that we finish the year, with one more game to play, with the annual title race closer and more exciting than it’s been in years. It has also demonstrated, somewhat brutally, exactly what a ruthless place the league has become.<br /><br />Last weekend, more so than this one, was the sort one could use as an argument to anyone as to why they should watch the Premier League over any other. Manchester United lost their second consecutive league game in a 3-0 defeat to Fulham, having been forced to play midfielders in defence owing to a crippling injury list – the sort of thing that just wouldn’t have happened last season. Portsmouth finally found a result to go with their improving performances as they beat a woeful Liverpool side 2-0 – the side hotly tipped for the title at the start of the season after their stunning 2008-09 run-in in April and May. Arsenal beat Hull 3-0 to keep up their string of impressive results and ensure that they remain worth keeping an eye on despite being largely unfancied and appearing under-strength. Mark Hughes’ Manchester City finally got a 4-3 over Sunderland win when yet another high-scoring draw looked to be on the cards – and their manager was sacked at the final whistle. And, on Sunday, with the stage set for Chelsea to move six points clear at the top, West Ham held them to a creditable draw – ensuring that no one was drawing premature conclusions as to the destination of the Premier League trophy at the halfway stage.<br /><br />This weekend kicked off with Chelsea being held to yet another draw, this time away to Birmingham City who themselves, impressively, are currently 8th following a run of five consecutive wins. Victories for Manchester United, Arsenal, and Liverpool seem, on paper, to suggest a return to normal service – though with the latter lying in 7th behind Aston Villa, Tottenham and Manchester City, this might finally be the year when we are forced to stop talking about the ‘Big Four’, at least temporarily.<br /><br />The gap between first and second is now only two points (with both teams playing again this year, and with Chelsea facing the prospect of play Fulham with an untested strike partnership) and between third and eighth is only eight. I’m not suggesting for a moment that we’re in a position yet where any one of these top eight can win the league – but would certainly argue that we’re no closer to knowing who will be entered for the European competitions than we were in August (indeed probably less sure) and that when you look at Serie A (Inter Milan eight points clear, Roma in fourth, 11 points behind) or La Liga (Barcelona two points ahead of Real Madrid, who are in turn seven points clear of third place Sevilla), and without wanting to come across too biased given that it’s the league I happen to watch every week, the English top flight does seem to be where the true unpredictability lies. Nothing is over by <span style="font-style: italic;">this </span>Christmas.<br /><br />Except one thing, maybe. Where there is the excitement of unpredictability, there is also bound to be a measure of the crushingly, tediously inevitable to spoil the party. Rumours of Mark Hughes’ demise as Manchester City manager after 18 months were in all the tabloids from Friday morning and all over the internet on Saturday morning during the build-up to the afternoon’s fixture. It’s been well reported that Hughes looked disconsolate and distant throughout the game, despite the pulsating action on the field and the odd-goal-in-seven win for his team, and that his wave to the fans at the final whistle had a look of the farewell about it. Sure enough, here was a man who had effectively been replaced weeks before, by another young manager – this one from Italy and with a more high-profile name and CV. While it seems now that Mark Hughes was the only person in the country who didn’t know on Saturday that the Sunderland game was to be his last, the fact that he clearly knew something was up is heartbreaking.<br /><br />The inevitability of the decision is the worst part. When City’s new owners came in at the beginning of last season, it seemed even then to be only a matter of time before Hughes went. Given £200 million to spend, Hughes survived into this season – but it seems now that only sitting top of the league and with a trail of Big Four scalps behind him would have been enough to save him this indignity (though going unbeaten at home all season and getting wins against Arsenal, Chelsea and narrowingly missing out against Man United was not).<br /><br />Of course, the points that City have dropped this season were never going to be tolerated by ambitious, impatient owners who clearly feel they had given Hughes everything he needed to shape the club into international superstars. Financially, they did. The one thing they didn’t give him was time. Roberto Mancini did not start out with the name and reputation he has. Neither did Ferguson, or Wenger. Hughes was settled into the job, had bought well (mostly) and the players liked him. Mancini will now start from scratch and, in all likelihood, bring in a slew of players in January and next summer. In replacing Hughes, City’s owners have effectively put themselves <span style="font-style: italic;">back </span>a year in development and written off the money they spent on players this year – and if they get the Champions League place they so crave this season it will only paper over the cracks.<br /><br />I wish Manchester City all the best and hope that Mancini does use the club’s financial clout in the same way that Mourinho did at Chelsea when he arrived in 2004 – to bring in exciting new talent rather than marquee shirt-shifters, to make the Premier League even more competitive than before and to help the English leagues show the rest of Europe the way in modern football. My fear is that if it doesn’t happen quickly, I could be writing all this again very soon.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-28396617648899875812009-12-14T21:54:00.002+00:002009-12-14T21:58:14.066+00:00The Football BasementThe blog is late this week because over the last seven days I’ve been part of an experimental new football podcast project. This makes it sound far less ramshackle than it actually is – but when, during a predictably over-excited round of group emailing in the hours leading up to the draw for the World Cup groups, the idea of committing our outlandish predictions to tape in a social setting came up, The Football Basement podcast was born.<br /><br />The podcast has just gone up on iTunes, and interested readers can subscribe and download it by clicking <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=346502623">here</a>, or (hopefully) by searching the iTunes music store. It was recorded, fittingly, in a basement in Borough, South London, which is much less dingy than the image the title probably conjures up. Spacious, well-lit and comfortable, the suggested meeting-place had everything we would need: with even a little fridge to chill the inevitable first-record beers.<br /><br />In the end there were seven of us who were up for the idea – none of whom had ever really done anything like it before but all equally enthused about the prospect of having, if not a record-breaking, chart-storming career-making podcast, then at least a record of our own World Cup hopes and predictions to look back on and laugh at. Chances are it would also be funny (at least to us) as this same group of people is well-used to gathering, bantering, bickering and generally taking the piss out of each other.<br /><br />The football podcast is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time – particularly since stumbling across the excellent Football Ramble, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is well worth a listen and provides consistently funny and well-informed chunks of football banter every week. Incidentally, I was invited to the regular Socrates meeting of London football bloggers last week and managed to meet a couple of the Ramble boys who, although we had already recorded our chaotic effort, were able to offer some brilliant advice on getting started podcasting.<br /><br />There was a lot to get advice on, as it happened – and much to take into account when recording. Seven is a lot of people to record with, especially when you possess the magical, zero-budget combination of a single, internal microphone attached to a Mac laptop and Garageband, nobody with any real recording or radio experience and lots and lots of beer. We all knew it would be noisy – and feared that it would be completely unlistenable. As it happened, the layout of the Basement helped us out in that everyone was able to be positioned more or less equidistant from the mic and that there was absolutely no noise from outside.<br /><br />However, we hadn’t recorded for long before we realised that a free-form, slightly merry discussion just wasn’t really going to work. The urge to shout down whoever is making a point is hard to resist – and in football discussion, particularly in large groups, there is a counterargument to literally every argument. While this is what makes football banter so much fun, it can also be what makes it interminable – and potentially completely tedious to listen to. While we felt the podcast was primarily for our own amusement, it’s nice to think that there might be some other people out there (and at the very least our other friends) who could enjoy it too.<br /><br />There needed to be order, and the appointed chairman (me) was required to step up and rule with an iron fist. Well, kind of. A system of raised hands and pointing out whose turn was next evolved, but the big fear in this situation is that such an officious approach can stifle organic conversation.<br /><br />I don’t think we needed to worry – the podcast definitely improves in terms of listenability as it goes on – but if the organisation of the discussion was manageable, duration was definitely an issue. It’s crazy to think about, but fascinating in itself having given ourselves the remit of discussing the World Cup draw which had taken place only 48 hours before, that we not only had to consciously try not to talk too much about it in the pub before the record, but that we managed, almost without noticing, to talk for <span style="font-style: italic;">two and a half hours</span> purely on the prospects of the members of each group – including a frankly inexplicable <span style="font-style: italic;">forty minutes </span>on Group D – <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> continued to debate during every cigarette break we gave ourselves <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> finally, barely having broken sweat, continued back in the pub after we’d pressed Garageband’s stop button for the last time.<br /><br />This, surely, cannot be healthy. Never mind the fact that I had meticulously prepared an agenda that went on from a “quick” discussion of the group stage to Capello’s team selection, World Cup memories and so on, I honestly think that we could have picked a single team and talked about them alone for just as long. And while this is somewhat shocking, in terms of editing the podcast later in the week, it verged on the maddening.<br /><br />The finished article is a fairly tight 65 minutes, looking at each group in turn and allowing each of the seven of us to pick out our winners and runners-up from each group. Achieving this tight 65 minutes from 150-odd minutes of yelling, swearing, giggling and, occasionally, some really good, well-argued points from a group of silly but thoughtful football fans took <span style="font-style: italic;">six hours</span>. Getting the 40-minute bellow-a-thon of Group D down to the eight minutes it is now took a long, long time (and about three quarters of a bottle of red wine – that was my Friday night sewn up). Clearly, if we’re planning to make this a regular thing (and we are, I think) then we’re going to have to organise. Set time limits and a deadline – and allow everyone to make their points. Have a detailed and realistic agenda on hand. And, crucially, <span style="font-style: italic;">focus</span>.<br /><br />But I think the finished podcast sounds great – and is a lot of fun to listen to – mainly <span style="font-style: italic;">because</span> it’s chaotic, silly, noisy, funny, rambling and, at times, really interesting. In fact, I like it for the same reasons I like talking about football at all. I know that over time we’ll get slicker, more disciplined and we’ll do more research. It might not be the same people every time (seven people is also a tricky number to round up of a regular evening) and it might not always be good – but I’m proud that we have this first, shambolic cacophony of deranged, drunken punditry saved for posterity.<br /><br />*****************<br /><br />So here’s the plug bit, properly:<br /><br />The Football Basement Episode One is now available on iTunes. If it’s not searchable yet, click the link at the top of this entry or try again later in the week. If you’re not an iTunes user, it can also be accessed through hosts Jellycast by clicking <a href="http://thefootballbasement.jellycast.com/">here</a>.<br /><br />If you’re on Twitter, follow what’s happening with the Basement at <a href="http://twitter.com/tfbpodcast">@tfbpodcast</a>.<br /><br />If you fancy getting in touch with The Football Basement, email thefootballbasement@googlemail.com.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-66177298967686234672009-12-03T20:18:00.001+00:002009-12-03T20:21:15.103+00:00The DrawTomorrow evening the draw for the group stage of the 2010 World Cup finals will take place in South Africa. Nelson Mandela will be there, as will Archbishop Desmond Tutu, current South African president and all-round dubious man Jacob Zuma, actress Charlize Theron and soccer enthusiast David Beckham – along with Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner and assorted dignitaries from the 32 football associations represented in the finals.<br /><br />Viewers are to expect nothing less than a glamorous, star-studded firework show of a draw – and why not. While on the face of it a simple administrative procedure that could just as easily take place behind closed doors or be generated at random by computer (and still suffer no greater volume of accusations of FIFA conspiracy or group-rigging), the group stage draw is truly a hotly anticipated date in this season’s calendar in the run up to Christmas – forget <span style="font-style: italic;">El Clasico</span> or the awarding of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ballon D’Or</span>, the fans are <span style="font-style: italic;">actually </span>excited by the prospect of seeing a collection of ancient ex-pros cracking open plastic balls and unfolding pieces of paper, on a stage in Cape Town, probably interminably slowly.<br /><br />One of the most amusing indicators of the hype and expectation surrounding tomorrow’s draw is the high-budget and admittedly rather impressive Budweiser advert showing a packed stadium of people turning over thousands of cards to make a bottle of Bud fill up a beer glass. The ad is fine on its own – but has for the last month or so been followed by the caption ‘FIFA World Cup draw – now only 4 weeks away’, and so on. Can people really be made to be this excited about a <span style="font-style: italic;">draw</span>? It would seem so – as since the announcement of the FIFA seedings for the draw on Wednesday morning the internet has virtually collapsed under the weight of office-chair pundits and their speculation, prediction and ludicrous omen-citing. I haven’t exactly been immune to it, of course.<br /><br />Funnily enough, while taking a look at the stats relating to North Korea’s performance at World Cup 1966 on Wikipedia (as you do, etc) it occurred to me to check what England’s group had been in that ever-so-slightly hallowed year. Having noticed that it is technically possible for England to draw the exact same teams again – Uruguay, Mexico and France – I mentioned this to some friends over email, one of whom in turn mentioned it to a contact at a national newspaper who in turn passed it on to their editorial team. By the late afternoon, <a href="http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/England-could-be-in-line-for-repeat-of-1966-World-Cup-group-article241689.html">this page</a> had appeared on the newspaper’s website. It seems that in amongst a largely pointless conversation about how we would like or would dread England’s draw to turn out, I had inadvertently set the Mirror’s news agenda for the afternoon. I was, needless to say, fairly pleased with myself.<br /><br />Various other insights came out of the conversation. There seemed to be a consensus on what would be bad for England – various ‘Group of Death’ permutations, most of which involved drawing one of the two big name play-off winners from Pot Four: Portugal or France. Such apocalyptic hypothetical draws also tended to include one of the major African sides – particularly Ghana or the Cote D’Ivoire; possibly because as regular Premier League viewers we are acutely aware of the skill and power in the possession of players like Michael Essien, Kolo Toure and the in-form Didier Drogba. The Pot 2 choice for a worst-case-scenario draw seems to be the USA – mainly, it would seem, because few other teams in their pot present much of an immediate threat (or because they are relative unknowns).<br /><br />A favourable ‘Group of Life’ draw is easier to pick – and, worryingly, easier to be too casual about. Should England actually draw North Korea, Algeria and Switzerland, we risk complacency setting in months before the tournament even starts. At the very least this will be the view the press will be keen to hammer home. The FA will doubtless set up friendlies against teams similar in style and stature to England’s opponents, which can only mean a string of dull and deceivingly easy wins against negligible opposition (see England’s 6-0 battering of Jamaica in 2006 as preparation for the group game against Trinidad and Tobago). This in turn ensures all the more shock when England inevitably stumble into the last 16 and are summarily beaten by a much stronger opponent.<br /><br />The other side of the argument, of course, is that playing weaker teams at the group stage will allow England to conserve energy for the knockout stages while another hapless seeded team scraps away in a tougher group, picking up injuries, fatigue and confidence-rattling results against stronger sides.<br /><br />The players and coaches will usually trot out the same line about how if you want to win the World Cup then you have to be prepared the face the best in the world – and that it doesn’t matter at what stage of the competition you meet them. This, it would seem, is a bit of professional disingenuousness, as of course there are draws that would trouble even the most confident of players on paper. There is the risk that, handed a freak ‘Group of Death’ scenario, a possibly great team could be sent packing before they’d even had a chance to get into their stride.<br /><br />England, I think, will want a mix of the two. Personally I’d like to see a couple of teams that Capello’s men should despatch without much fuss and at least one relatively scary name to give them a stern test early on. A good draw, I think, would be something like Australia, Nigeria and Serbia. This would still be a group you’d expect England to win – but one in which they wouldn’t perhaps be tempted to fall into the 2006 strategy of winning without getting out of first gear. They’d hit their peak just in time to beat Cameroon in the second round, Portugal in the quarters and…no, no. Must stop.<br /><br />Either way, it seems foolish to speculate – at least today. From tomorrow the World Cup will really be happening and the countdown to the whole beautiful hysteria of the finals will have begun for real. And if Australia, Nigeria and Serbia come out then the Daily Mirror might just have to put me on the payroll.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-57818906621830413062009-11-26T22:39:00.002+00:002009-11-26T22:41:59.222+00:00The Europa LeagueFor the first time since Manchester United finished bottom of their Champions League group in the 2005-6 season, the Premier League will be represented by less than the full compliment of United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal in this season’s last 16. This week, Liverpool got the away win they needed at Debrecen, but slip out of the Champions League thanks to a 1-0 win for Fiorentina at home to already-qualified Lyon.<br /><br />It is tempting, in this new age of English dominance in Europe that has seen Premier League teams make up three of the four Champions League semi-finalists for three consecutive seasons (albeit only producing a winner once), to view this as some sort of disaster – both for Liverpool and for the English contingent at Europe’s top table. I’m not so sure it is.<br /><br />Liverpool, guaranteed to finish third in their group with a game left to play, will now enter the newly-rebranded UEFA Europa League, previously the UEFA Cup. This will no doubt be reported as Liverpool suffering the ignominy of having to play in a “pointless”, devalued competition that will only make it harder for them to perform as well as they should in the Premier League (though they seem to be making things difficult enough for themselves as it is). And, as something of an insult to teams like Valencia, Roma, Hamburg, Villareal, Benfica, Werder Bremen, last year’s winners Shakhtar Donetsk and, of course, Merseyside rivals Everton, they will likely be tipped as favourites to win the competition.<br /><br />Apart from the fact that having a high-profile English club involved in the tournament’s knockout stages will certainly improve the Europa League’s viewing figures in the UK (the sort of thing I’m sure UEFA will have hoped would happen when they re-launched the competition) just as the still-highly-possible entry of Inter Milan would in Italy or Bayern Munich might in Germany, does it deserve to be so much maligned as a legitimate European competition?<br /><br />At a time when the gulf between the richest clubs and those unlikely to ever break into Champions League qualification spots is wider than ever before – and remembering that no team from outside the now-defunct G14 group of Europe’s ‘elite’ clubs has ever won the Champions League – surely the Europa League can be as exciting, unpredictable and as exotic as the European Cup is and was in bygone days. The team names are weirder, the cities more obscure, the players more appreciative of the occasion, the matches more memorable in the long-run – for many teams making an appearance it will be their first trip into Europe or their first for a lifetime; and most of their fans will tend to believe it’s probably their last.<br /><br />The romance that many curmudgeonly, nostalgic pundits lament the loss of in the big-money Champions League is, I think, still very much alive in the Europa League. Teams who are barely known outside their own countries can have a good run in their division or cup one year and face the prospect of thrilling away trips to clubs in bigger, more high-profile leagues, or – especially in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union – a chance to face old rivals from other nations.<br /><br />Many of these are, to me at least, if not in football terms then politically and historically intriguing, despite those who may scoff at the apparently low level of competiton. For example, this season has seen Croatia’s Slavija Istocno Sarajevo take on MFK Kosice of Slovakia (Kosice won 5-1 on aggregate, incidentally), while Polonia Warsaw of Poland met Dutch side NAC Breda. Exotic ties like these just don’t happen in the Champions League.<br /><br />And the competition is more balanced – and so less predictable. Picking a UEFA Cup winner at the beginning of a season (or even halfway through) is far harder than in the Champions League, where the eventual winner will almost certainly come from a pool of four or five teams. Sure there are favourites, and the fixture list throws up its brutal mismatches – Roma hammering Gent of Belgium 10-2 on aggregate this season springs to mind – but none are ever as tedious as in the Champions League. The gulf between the sides likely to end up in the last sixteen and those destined to return to the drudgery of their minor European leagues is so huge that the competition is, often, barely worth watching before Christmas. Other than maybe the Barca/Inter/Kazan/Kiev group this season, there’s barely a shock in sight going into the knockout stages.<br /><br />So maybe Europe’s second competition is something of a glimpse back in time, to the days of the European Cup of the 60s and 70s, when no one nation dominated and any side could win. The European Cup that Celtic won and Nottingham Forest retained. Maybe. Either way, it’s a shame to denigrate it so much and suggested that winning it “doesn’t matter”.<br /><br />To suggest that Benitez’s Liverpool wouldn’t be ecstatic to be lifting a European trophy at the end of this season and therefore qualifying for the Champions League next season and playing in the showpiece UEFA Super Cup match, is ridiculous. Similarly, how much would David Moyes love to bring Everton their first continental silverware since the 1985 Cup Winners’ Cup victory over Rapid Vienna? A quarter of a century is a long time to wait for prominence on the European stage – that it’s not going to be the European Cup they could be lifting is probably more a matter of finance than football. It certainly won’t matter too much to the trophy-starved fans.<br /><br />I love the Champions League, as I made clear on this blog <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/09/champions-league.html">earlier in the season</a>, but I think the way it completely overshadows the Europa League is unfortunate. Rather than constantly expanding the Champions League to include teams and leagues that the European giants will simply walk over (which for me is the truly pointless part of UEFA’s current strategy) giving the “lesser” tournament a bit of genuine support could really help. There is a great deal of affection around for the long-gone Cup Winners’ Cup, as this was <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> seen to be a trophy worth winning. The Europa League could well go on to be that too, if the governing body can keep themselves from messing around with its format for a couple of seasons. While no one wants endless group stages and seventeen two-legged rounds meaning beleaguered clubs with tiny squads are forced to play 200 matches a season, it’s a shame that, as a tournament, it’s so easily dismissed.<br /><br />The fact that the mostly-empty 20,000 seat Bulgarian Army Stadium where <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/10/cska-sofia-vs-ofc-sliven-2000.html">I sat to watch CSKA Sofia play Sliven in October</a> wasn’t even big enough to host the Europa League tie with Fulham a few weeks earlier (the 38,000 or so crowd packed into the nearby Vasil Levski National Stadium instead) should be enough of an example: to many, this “pointless” trophy <span style="font-style: italic;">does</span> really matter.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-75022900277156321052009-11-19T00:03:00.001+00:002009-11-19T00:12:17.644+00:00How Much Longer, Sepp?Oh, for goodness’ sake, FIFA. You too, UEFA. You saw what happened tonight – just like everyone else did. Do you really think there’s going to be a single newspaper, television show, football fan or impressionable young child out there who thinks that tonight’s result was a fair one? It’s not like they won’t be talking about it – this was no meaningless kick-about, nor even a group match or league game where one unfair decision that turns a win into a defeat can be moaned about and written about and debated over – but forgotten in a few short days’ time.<br /><br />This was a <span style="font-style: italic;">knockout</span> match – and not just any old knockout match. Extra time in the second leg of a play-off tie, the winner of which would be the final European nation to qualify for the World Cup. The <span style="font-style: italic;">World Cup,</span> guys. As the BBC have said in their match report tonight (and doubtless most back pages will in the morning), it’s hard to imagine it being more heartbreaking – or coming at a more devastating moment.<br /><br />Tonight France played Ireland at the Stade de France with a slender 1-0 lead from the first leg in Dublin. Ireland took the lead in the first half through Robbie Keane, levelling the score on aggregate and, an hour or so later, sending the tie to extra time. It was, by all accounts, certainly no more than Ireland deserved.<br /><br />It could be argued that Ireland hung on and defended their slender advantage for most of the second half while France created more chances – but that excuses nothing of the circumstances of France’s victory.<br /><br />The ball floated into the box from midfield from a free kick, falling just in front of the (probably offside) Thierry Henry, who clearly used his hand to stop the ball going out of play – knocking it into a position where he could pass across the face of goal to the arriving boot of William Gallas, who scored. It was a goal – but, clearly, it shouldn’t have been.<br /><br />Naturally the Irish players and fans are devastated, as losing teams so often are; especially when the manner of the defeat is cruel and seemingly unfair. But I wonder if the stakes have ever been much higher? There aren’t many comparable situations. One act of flagrant cheating from a highly-regarded player (and while it is a shame to see Henry do it, it’s certainly not his first offence) here means the difference between Ireland going to the World Cup or not. The World Cup – the biggest, most significant global sporting event of them all, which comes round only once every four years; only the Olympic Games can dream of coming close, and even then I would argue that its level of cultural impact and ability to unite and simply <span style="font-style: italic;">matter </span>to the sheer number of people the World Cup does is way, way off.<br /><br />One only has to look at the way <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8367487.stm">London’s Algerian population is celebrating their nation’s play-off victory over Egypt tonight </a>to get a glimpse into what qualification means to people – especially those from small countries. Take a look at Trafalgar Square tonight and you’d think Algeria had won the whole competition. I’d imagine there are fair few pubs in Dublin whose inhabitants are wondering whether they’ll ever bother watching football again.<br /><br />The impact failure to qualify for the second consecutive World Cup finals – and this time through no real fault of their own – will have on Irish football, particularly financially, should not be underestimated. In a country where football has to compete with rugby and hugely popular indigenous sports like Gaelic football and hurling, whose domestic league is of a relatively low standard and hence whose players almost all ply their trade in the UK (oh and how French coach Raymond Domenech’s decision to spitefully label the Republic’s first team as “England B” was almost made to look so stupid), missing out on qualification in such miserable fashion is a real blow.<br /><br />It is said that the most lucrative single match in football is the English Football League Championship play-off final, the prize for the victor being a place in the Premier League – and hence a share of the money Sky and numerous international broadcasters pay to show matches around the world. This figure is hard to pin down, but it is usually quoted as being around £35 million. Clearly, this would make an enormous amount of difference to almost any club in the Football League (Notts County aside, maybe) – and so were this Wembley clash to be decided on an obvious handball offence? The calls for a replay, for lawsuits, for compensation, would be deafening. Particularly if Neil Warnock happened to be one of the coaches.<br /><br />And yet this is even <span style="font-style: italic;">bigger</span>. It matters to a whole country – and also to plenty of people in Britain and the global Irish diaspora – not just the fans of a single club. As someone with around 25% Irish heritage (the rest is Scottish), I was looking forward to having some <span style="font-style: italic;">blood </span>connection to next year’s tournament.<br /><br />So come on, FIFA, UEFA, chaps. You surely won’t get many more high-profile incidents than this as incentive: bring in the bloody <span style="font-style: italic;">technology</span>.<br /><br />It exists! It exists in lots and lots of other sports – I can only assume Blatter, Warner, Platini et al haven’t watched any tennis, motor racing or cricket in the last five to ten years, such is their apparent obliviousness to the likes of HawkEye. It doesn’t even have to be HawkEye – if anything football moves too fast to really benefit from the sort of detailed analysis the system offers. The only technology football needs is <span style="font-style: italic;">already there</span>. You see all those cameras around the stadium, Sepp? They’re filming everything – from all the best angles and, nowadays, in super-hi-def, super-slo-mo replay-o-vision. Would referring to this handy multi-angle feed cause the game to slow down or stop for too long? Not at all – all that is needed is an official sat at the side of the pitch watching the <span style="font-style: italic;">exact same</span> feed as everyone else. The referee needs only to glance over to him – he either nods or shakes his head: done. Tonight’s incident could have been decided in a quarter of a second, as indeed it was by everyone watching on TV. Goal disallowed – the French would barely have started celebrating.<br /><br />It’s slightly annoying to be moaning about FIFA <span style="font-style: italic;">again</span> this week, but it leaves me feeling incredulous when things like this keep happening, at the highest level, and those at the top remain recalcitrant. Ironically, even UEFA’s half-arsed ‘goal-line officials’ would have spotted Henry’s handball tonight.<br /><br />I love the modern game, but remain most baffled that while the football authorities have embraced everything they can to make football as up-to-date and future-ready as is possible – selling broadcast rights, attracting huge tournament sponsorships, building glittering new stadiums, supporting grassroots projects and creating some dazzling youth training systems around the developing world – they’ve yet to embrace something as simple and as staggeringly obvious as video technology.<br /><br />It’s <span style="font-style: italic;">got</span> to come in soon, hasn’t it? Will it take a team winning the World Cup Final with an illegal goal or a blatant dive to win a penalty for them to finally realise? Maybe it’ll happen in 2010. A big part of me hopes it’s against France, too – and not just the Irish quarter.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-42441629068946438352009-11-12T23:15:00.004+00:002009-11-13T09:50:15.284+00:00Getting Away with MurderHate figures are easy to come by in modern football. Every fan has a team they genuinely hate – and it’s not necessarily their clubs’ rivals. For example, I imagine there’s relatively few Chelsea fans who actually <span style="font-style: italic;">hate </span>Fulham, such is the longstanding and still significant gulf between the clubs’ fortunes on the pitch. The same, of course, cannot be said of Manchester United or Liverpool fans, or, as we’ve <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/08/this-morning-i-woke-up-to-mutterings-of.html">already seen this year</a>, West Ham and Millwall fans, for example. Equally, Real Madrid and Barcelona fans hate each other’s teams so much that in a recent poll where Barca fans were asked which they would prefer, Barcelona winning or Real Madrid losing, the prospect of a defeat for <span style="font-style: italic;">Los Merengues</span> won by a clear majority.<br /><br />The fact that it is the <span style="font-style: italic;">teams</span> they hate is significant. It’s perfectly possible, all over the world, to see groups of friends, all of whom support different clubs, bantering quite happily (and notably <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> kicking the shit out of each other) while still expressing (and probably feeling) heartfelt animosity towards the actual clubs their friends support. I have certainly been part of such groups in the past and while it’s handy for exercising one’s Sky Sports round table discussion show pretensions, there’s no pretence towards balance; some teams we just <span style="font-style: italic;">hate</span>.<br /><br />And it’s absolutely not just teams that get picked on. Everyone has certain players they can’t stand, no matter what club they play for or what country they represent. Some people can fly into a spluttering rage at the sight of rival managers, former players, team owners (poor Mike Ashley, eh?) or even just the sight of a replica shirt or badge. Maybe it’s a controversial goal someone scored once, or some long-held grudge against a nation that knocked yours out of the World Cup twenty years ago. There are people who hate teams because of some perceived injustice that took place long before they were even <span style="font-style: italic;">born</span> – grievances passed down from generation to generation like a festering, anxious and really rather silly family heirloom.<br /><br />It <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> all silly – and totally irrational. I have my own personal hate figures in the game, of course, like everyone. The ones that really interest me, however, are those <span style="font-style: italic;">universal </span>hate figures, the ones that <span style="font-style: italic;">everyone</span>, whether they be on the TV, radio or down the pub, just can’t get on with, and can’t fathom why they’re allowed to exist at all – and often with good reason.<br /><br />They come at all levels of the game. The standard choice, as far as players go, would be someone like Joey Barton. The very mention of his name in almost any football-literate company will elicit the same sort of responses – “thug”, “disgrace”, “ungrateful”, “should be banned for life”, et cetera. I say almost, because presumably he has his fans somewhere. All the bosses that have signed him despite knowing his track record, his appalling discipline, his unforgivable off-the-pitch behaviour. The team mates that have stuck by him and defended his character. And presumably his family must have a bit of a soft spot for him, too.<br /><br />But there can’t be many. If anyone reading this doesn’t know Barton’s record, this is the player who, to name a few “incidents”: stubbed a cigar out in the eye of a Man City youth team player in a nightclub causing permanent scarring, assaulted a 15-year-old Everton fan during a tour of Thailand in 2005, beat up team mate Ousmane Dabo at City’s training ground, leaving him with a suspected detached retina, and, most famously, spent 77 days in prison in 2008 for assaulting a man at a McDonald’s restaurant in Liverpool city centre. The FA make a great deal of fuss about the need for footballers to be role models to young people – and yet he’s still permitted, clubs allowing, to play football at the highest level, enjoying the attendant luxurious lifestyle.<br /><br />Other universal hate figures are found higher up. The biggest – because he’s right at the top, I suppose – is Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, President of FIFA. There is literally no one more important than him in the world of football, and yet whenever his name is mentioned in the press, by a pundit or by a fan, it is usually in the most derisory terms. How has Blatter, despite having held the title of President for 11 years, failed so spectacularly to endear himself to the common football fan?<br /><br />There are a number of reasons. There’s the constant rumours of financial irregularities – including rights payments to FIFA mysteriously vanishing and ending up in the personal accounts of FIFA delegates, and the suspicious halting of an investigation into the loss of $100m by FIFA’s marketing partner in 2002; there’s his comments in 2008 declaring Cristiano Ronaldo to be a “slave” when Manchester United refused to sell him to Real Madrid (but mainly it was because Sepp just really, really hates the dominance of the Premier League); and, of course, his charming suggestion that to make women’s football more successful the players should “wear tighter shorts”.<br /><br />Blatter is a magnet for ridicule – he is a symbol of everything that is just a little seedy and corrupt about the very top of modern football. And yet, despite damning books and articles by dedicated investigative journalists like Andrew Jennings, he remains FIFA President – and is unlikely to be unseated any time soon. With a global audience of fans who love declaring their hatred for teams, fans, referees, managers and administrators, why haven’t people like Blatter and his particularly odious Vice President Jack Warner (but more about him another time), Joey Barton and other petulant, undeserving players, felt a bit more of the wrath?<br /><br />My theory is that in a sport, and in a culture, that is so used to polarised opinions, controversial on- and off-pitch events, and is quite comfortable with casual, irrational “hate”, that sometimes the truly deserving hate figures are allowed to go about their business – bringing the game into disrepute, often, engaging in morally repugnant criminal activity. Perhaps we need to focus less on irrational, decades-old grudges and throw a bit more hate the way of those who have genuinely done something to deserve it.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-81551623739548690582009-11-04T23:59:00.003+00:002009-11-05T00:02:18.063+00:00Naming Rights and WrongsToday Newcastle United announced the ‘new name’ to be applied to St. James’ Park in the wake of less-than-popular owner Mike Ashley’s decision to take the club off the market and put the rights to the historic stadium’s name up for sale instead. Apparently more of a placeholder move than a permanent change – especially given that it is named for Ashley’s own chain of budget sports gear shops – for the remainder of the season Newcastle will be playing at The sportsdirect.com @ St. James’ Park Stadium. Hm.<br /><br />There’s been a predictable amount of noise made about it – scoffs from the majority of football fans who see limitless comedy potential in the prospect of an already-maligned club lumbered with an unfashionable name for their once-untouchable and locally-treasured home; groans and resigned shrugs from the beleaguered ‘Geordie Nation’ who are long past being shocked at anything Ashley has to throw at them in terms of indignity; and of course platitudes from those in the team’s hierarchy who are adamant that this direction can only be a good thing for the club. The same has been said about Tottenham’s proposed new ground (which, based on the concept artwork, I like to call The Naming Rights Stadium).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBK-PBZn67ZbPHuQrQdKAs92WxBQy5L8LPvzveW4a87b-R2j9ZZLbJ2yghYjhQl7YadZYTaQY2dFcz2lGPyn7T7wE-7HAqDZ3CVHf8rAHA6pMeY6I4AAxDAzpIY_H3sKHASyoJSWpg3oA/s1600-h/stadium1_682x400_770332a.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 188px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBK-PBZn67ZbPHuQrQdKAs92WxBQy5L8LPvzveW4a87b-R2j9ZZLbJ2yghYjhQl7YadZYTaQY2dFcz2lGPyn7T7wE-7HAqDZ3CVHf8rAHA6pMeY6I4AAxDAzpIY_H3sKHASyoJSWpg3oA/s320/stadium1_682x400_770332a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400402542049260226" border="0" /></a><br />To be honest, I’m inclined to side with the latter. I mean, the sportsdirect.com @ St. James’s Park Stadium’s not <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> bad is it? OK, so it’s far too wordy and impossible to fit into a catchy terrace chant and the @ sign in the middle is a cringingly dated lunge at sounding modern (much like the awful Stadium:MK where MK Dons ply their trade) – but the fans and TV pundits will still refer to it as St. James’ Park; it’s unlikely that the BBC in particular will spend much time reciting the URL for Ashley’s retailer in fear of giving ‘undue prominence’.<br /><br />Newcastle fans can be consoled with the fact that it could be a lot worse. In America’s MLS, where, unlike in England, the commerce came a long time before the football, the fans take their seats at Pizza Hut Park (FC Dallas), The Home Depot Center (LA Galaxy) and – best of all – Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, home of the Colorado Rapids. Even York City’s KitKat Crescent has a certain assonant poetry to it.<br /><br />The key to selling naming rights for stadiums, it seems, is choosing the right sponsor – and making sure it’s actually a <span style="font-style: italic;">good</span> name. One example is Arsenal’s glittering Emirates stadium; probably the most pleasant place in the country to watch club football and oozing class and expense from every glass and concrete corner – and it has a name that rolls off the tongue; the sponsorship element of it is relatively easy to ignore.<br /><br />When Arsenal first announced that they would be leaving Highbury for the Gulf airline-sponsored Emirates, there were groups of fans who were incensed, declaring that they would refer to the stadium as Ashburton Grove and never, ever, by its corporate name. Three years down the line and you’d be hard pushed to find an Arsenal fan that had a problem with playing at the Emirates (apart, perhaps, from the fact that they haven’t won anything since moving there!)<br /><br />It seems odd, especially nowadays, for fans to complain about naming rights being sold for their teams’ stadiums anyway. For a long time now football clubs have been adorned with advertising: corporate logos and companies names are key parts of the iconography of football – indeed, in the case of shirt sponsorship, they are literally part of the fabric of modern football. Is it really violating the sanctity of a football club to step up from having every single player wear a logo on his chest, every member of backroom staff wear a branded jacket and hundreds of metres of advertising hoardings all around the pitch to playing in a branded stadium?<br /><br />In a previous blog post, <a href="http://whoareyablog.blogspot.com/2009/07/modern-football-is-brilliant.html">Modern Football is Brilliant</a>, I argued that football today, particularly in the Premier League, is as exciting and infinitely watchable as it is <span style="font-style: italic;">because</span> of the increased money and ‘commercialisation’, rather than in spite of it. For me, this also applies to shirt sponsorship’s effect on the look and, yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">feel </span>of the game today.<br /><br />Looking back through photographs from the last 20 years or so of football history, the most notable differences are usually in what the players are wearing (and occasionally the haircuts). The history of the Premier League, for example, can be divided into eras based on shirt sponsorship: for example there was the Sharp-era Manchester United of the 1990s, in which they won their historic treble in 1999, which gave way to the Vodafone-era United of the 2000s. So many fans I’ve spoken to will fondly remember their favourite shirts, whether it’s JVC Arsenal, Sega Arsenal or O2 Arsenal; Autoglass Chelsea, Fly Emirates Chelsea (and how incongruous that sounds even a couple of years later, such is the airline’s association with their North London rivals); and how odd will Liverpool shirts look without Carlsberg emblazoned across the front from next season? And will it herald a significant new era for them?<br /><br />Perhaps this is just me being sentimental as usual – but what is true is that corporate involvement with football is certainly not always some terrible, cynical, money-spinning venture. Often, especially in the lower leagues, local businesses sponsor football clubs who are as much a part of the community as the clubs themselves and form a genuinely symbiotic relationship. Without the sponsorship of local businesses, it is likely many League One and Two clubs would struggle to survive. Is it any wonder that more and more of them sell off their naming rights too? There are always criticisms that teams have sold out or betrayed their long histories by making this sort of move – but when the choice is either changing the name of the stadium or even the club (as many teams all over Europe have – see Wales’ TNS between 1997 and 2006 and FC Red Bull Salzburg, once SV Austria Salzburg) – or ceasing to exist, surely it’s better that a historic club survives in<span style="font-style: italic;"> some </span>form?<br /><br />Football is kept alive by advertising and sponsorship – and is all the stronger for it. It is the reason that England can still sustain 92 league clubs, many of whom are well over 100 years old, despite falling attendances and an overwhelming focus on the top few in the media. So while it’s sometimes funny (I remember as a child when we used to laugh at local team Rochdale because they were sponsored by Carcraft, the local Skoda dealership – could any other sponsor exude less glamour?) sponsorship is a major part of the lifeblood of the sport – and makes for some of the most enduring images of recent football history.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-32384581721752472602009-10-27T22:00:00.002+00:002009-10-27T22:03:43.506+00:00Football and the InternetThis is a time, in football as much as almost any other “entertainment product”, when format, medium and emerging methods of content delivery are paid almost as much attention as the material we enjoy through them. This is strange, as they’re not particularly glamorous subjects. The central issues are bound up in technology, finance and law – a far cry from the concerns of the average punter who simply wants to watch a game of football, listen to an album, watch a film, play a video game or read a book. But their importance cannot be denied.<br /><br />Every part of the entertainment industry seems to have its digital conundrum: the music industry’s struggle to adapt to the digital revolution in the early part of this decade allowed for a culture of illegal music downloading to flourish and for major labels and retailers to almost completely miss the boat in terms of working out how to charge for music that was no longer tangible and could be copied an infinite number of times with no loss of quality, suffering a massive decline in sales of CDs and records in the process.<br /><br />The film industry however, would probably argue that it has been hit hardest – financially at least – as many people have turned away from the chronically overpriced (and, in my opinion, overvalued) multiplex experience in order to download DVD-quality films in a matter of minutes over a decent broadband connection. Re-introducing gimmicks like 3D to the theatres aside, Hollywood has yet to properly work how to combat the public’s natural “like having stuff but don’t like paying for stuff” mentality.<br /><br />And the world of book publishing (the industry I’m most closely involved in professionally) is currently running around like a whole farmyard of headless chickens in an attempt to stay ahead of the digital curve – their problem being the great uncertainty as to how the market will approach even the <span style="font-style: italic;">idea</span> of ‘e-books’. While for films and music the shift to digitisation was simply about changing format, bringing books into the 21st century involves a <span style="font-style: italic;">fundamental</span> change in the way people assimilate the written word.<br /><br />Books as we know them have been around far, far longer than film, music, computer games or the internet put together (and, notably, have survived the newcomers’ existence in terms of sustained popularity and usefulness) and there doesn’t seem to be a mass of people crying out to publishers and manufacturers to free them from the drudgery of the printed page. If the closely guarded (and reportedly laughable) sales figures of the Amazon Kindle and other assorted e-readers are to be believed, books may be one medium that survives the chaotic – yet hugely significant – shift towards all things digital.<br /><br />So what about football? Which of these three case studies is the game most likely to resemble in the coming months and years?<br /><br />Certainly the advent of the internet has already made a difference to the way fans experience football – and not just so-called ‘armchair’ fans either. Outside of Sky Sports News, the internet is the primary source of news, transfer gossip and interviews for even the tiniest clubs all over the world. There is barely a football club on the planet without a dedicated website, well-used fan forum and painstakingly-compiled set of historical statistics: when über-nerd meets football it is quite a sight to behold, believe me. And if you don’t believe me, try googling any club, footballer, manager, stadium or even match that comes into your head. There’ll be something there.<br /><br />More recently, this is largely due to video sites like YouTube. They have made an enormous difference to the way ordinary fans perceive the game and, much more importantly, allows them to see footage of players and teams in action that would never have been possible before. Once upon a time the average English football fan, clearly unable to afford to jet around the continent every weekend, would have to rely on the odd televised European game, TV shows like the much-missed <span style="font-style: italic;">Gazzetta Football Italia</span> (hands up if you just heard someone scream "<span style="font-style: italic;">goooooolaccio</span>" in your head) and World Cup-themed montages of foreign players in action – everything else was hearsay; fans had to take the experts at their word.<br /><br />These days if you even hear a player’s name mentioned, chances are there’ll be some footage of him on YouTube. It might be fuzzy footage camcordered from Argentinian television, edited by a 14-year-old child and backed with appalling techno music, but you can actually <span style="font-style: italic;">see </span>what all the fuss is about. Great goals from the past, great matches, amusing moments, Sepp Blatter falling over at a press conference, they’re all there – as well as clips from all levels of the game, all over the world. Never has the football fan been better informed or better equipped to back up his or her argument about the greatest free kick ever scored, the greatest ever celebration or the funniest clip of the FIFA president falling over (there’s only one, and it’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU0uq4iK3eQ">bloody brilliant</a>) with decent, archived footage.<br /><br />There are also, of course, numerous sites that allow fans to watch live games from all over the world – and certainly not always legally. This has always been possible through dubious means (most of us have, at some point, been into a less-than-salubrious pub on a Saturday at 3pm and seen live Premiership football accompanied by enthusiastic, non-English commentary) and probably always will – but the ways of getting round complicated and constantly evolving rights laws are myriad these days and much harder to clamp down on.<br /><br />Recently, in England at least, this went official for a big game for the first time – England’s penultimate World Cup qualifier away to Ukraine. Following the demise of Setanta, broadcast rights had been sold off to an online company who charged viewers £4.99 each to watch a live stream of the match on their site – and, more importantly, this was the only way to see the game. Like Amazon’s Kindle figures, it seems suspicious that the exact number of subscribers was never revealed, though it looks clear that broadcasts of this type will continue. But is it <span style="font-style: italic;">really </span>how we will all be watching football in the future?<br /><br />I’m not so sure – I can’t imagine sitting in front of my computer for a whole football game, legal or not, although one can imagine that this will soon be streamable to TV sets and, hopefully, into pubs. I’m not sure pay per view is the answer either – as people will always find a way round it as long as broadcast rights deals remain specific to territories and the internet remains borderless.<br /><br />It is for certain that football is not immune from the ‘digital revolution’ – it’s highly commercial nature and massive popularity has more or less ensured that – but to me it seems similar to the publishing industry’s situation, which basically boils down to a version of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Football fans are happy to watch the games they can’t see live on their televisions – and even more happy to pay as little as possible to do so. The game is not crying out for an online solution, but it has been provided all the same. I just hope, as I do for books, films and music, that embracing new ways of enjoying the game does not take anything away from those we already have.<br /><br />Right, I’m off to watch that Blatter video again. And maybe a couple of Zidane clips…Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-39778375741474187172009-10-21T22:55:00.004+01:002009-10-22T09:56:45.296+01:00Zidane<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVYIdSVdTQn99RAiLtbK9Im012D0NhuF0biMmK_AZZ-Mgn90AKHcGCOQB3v4jeke__g6bvOcorkjjQ-djK1dly9JWVdPPtv9AWbFj203eJkbwdM4LFkF-Hg73edyh1AWkFAvlBR-MgXxY/s1600-h/Zidane_749044.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVYIdSVdTQn99RAiLtbK9Im012D0NhuF0biMmK_AZZ-Mgn90AKHcGCOQB3v4jeke__g6bvOcorkjjQ-djK1dly9JWVdPPtv9AWbFj203eJkbwdM4LFkF-Hg73edyh1AWkFAvlBR-MgXxY/s320/Zidane_749044.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395176391344867634" border="0" /></a><br />It feels childish to talk about having a ‘favourite footballer’. It conjures up memories of swapping Panini stickers or the sort of cover feature that would regularly appear in the pages of <span style="font-style: italic;">Match</span> magazine (or even, this month, the ostensibly more grown up <span style="font-style: italic;">FourFourTwo</span>) – endless, meaningless lists attempting to divine the ‘best player in the world’.<br /><br />I mentioned the <span style="font-style: italic;">FFT</span> feature in question to a friend recently. “<span style="font-style: italic;">FourFourTwo</span> have done a 100 best players in the world chart,” I said. “Messi?” he responded, with barely a moment’s thought. “Uh…yep.” “OK.”<br /><br />The utter pointlessness of compiling lists and charts of the ‘best’ in such a non-scientific category as ‘being good at football’ is clear to see.<br /><br />Apart from being fundamentally incomparable – is Cristiano Ronaldo’s goal scoring record as good as Petr Cech’s clean sheets record? How many of Iniesta’s passes are equal to one of Cannavaro’s tackles? – the very idea of it seems to bring out the worst in those involved, skews the transfer value of players made to look good in strong teams and allows the press regular self-congratulatory pieces declaring, “see, we said Messi was the best in the world and look, there he is, winning the Champions League! No one else saw that coming…”<br /><br />The worst story that comes to mind, however, concerns the even-more-useless ‘greatest ever footballer’ lists that magazines and newspapers insist on churning out more and more often. Every single lazy interview with any retired footballer includes the question, “Who, in your opinion, was the greatest footballer who ever lived?” You get the standard answers – Pelé, Maradona, Di Stefano, depending on who’s asked. Or not – the names are almost interchangeable. More recently, though, chubby insane mouthpiece Maradona has begun sniping at Pelé, questioning his greatness as if his assumed spot at the top of this pointless league was up for grabs. If anything, Maradona needs to be aware that the good memories won’t last forever.<br /><br />So what I’m really building up to here is a blog post about my favourite footballer, naturally. Again, it’s the sort of thing you should probably stop bothering to discuss when you’re a kid, but if asked I’d have to say one name: Zinedine Zidane.<br /><br />Now, as the last two or three paragraphs might suggest, I’m certainly not planning to argue that Zidane was the greatest footballer ever – I don’t believe such a thing does or could ever exist. But he, and every piece of controversy and legend that surrounds him, has gone a long way to shaping my view on what makes football such a fascinating game.<br /><br />Zidane – winner of the Ballon D’Or, two <span style="font-style: italic;">Scudetti</span> in Italy with Juventus, one Spanish championship and the Champions League with Real Madrid, one World Cup and a European Championship with France and the FIFA World Player of the Year award <span style="font-style: italic;">three times</span> (phew) –was a player who could be appreciated in still, snapshot images.<br /><br />In my head he’s always motionless (though he rarely was on the pitch, of course) – his giant, Easter Island head with its thousand yard stare burns his image into any piece of paper or any screen, lending him a genuinely iconic and statuesque appearance to the extent that it’s hard to imagine he really exists at all. In my head is a picture of Zidane staring manically at an opponent, or up into the sky after missing a chance. It’s the picture of him ramming Marco Materazzi in the chest during the 2006 World Cup Final (surely the one genuinely memorable moment of the tournament, the one that will resonate for decades) and this picture of him walking past the World Cup for the last time:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1EsB-Oo9ee5kfhJPJYdlbB3dJVW8t_nc7Vb1dYGOSoLPlIiPYC8XVz52G62_Ly32xvZnSOJgtsUPOyNQxOPnkPJLvgsmGKo-bsH94AyX1CppkPGTjl_Raa0Cg8Bm2bXTniLI7L2UcCGo/s1600-h/6a00d83451ce8669e200e54f5d19cd8833-640wi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1EsB-Oo9ee5kfhJPJYdlbB3dJVW8t_nc7Vb1dYGOSoLPlIiPYC8XVz52G62_Ly32xvZnSOJgtsUPOyNQxOPnkPJLvgsmGKo-bsH94AyX1CppkPGTjl_Raa0Cg8Bm2bXTniLI7L2UcCGo/s320/6a00d83451ce8669e200e54f5d19cd8833-640wi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5395175743452448338" border="0" /></a><br />I don’t think I’m the only one to have seen something classical in the great man and how he played. It seems strange now to imagine him alongside the other <span style="font-style: italic;">galacticos </span>who arrived at Real Madrid in the early part of this decade. He seems too big, too lumbering – and not nearly pretty or glamorous enough to be a standard Bernabeu pin-up. And yet he inspired an intellectual response in those who watched him; he seemed to be a cultured, intelligent player who was a student of the game, rather than a mercurial talent who simply came to it naturally.<br /><br />Belgian writer Jean-Phillipe Toussaint wrote a short book entitled <span style="font-style: italic;">Le Mélancolie de Zidane </span>shortly after the 2006 final, a ‘lyrical essay’ dealing with the infamous headbutt. It’s hard to imagine another player inspiring such a poetic response with a rash, explosive act of retaliatory violence.<br /><br />Another reason I find Zidane so fascinating is the extent to which he was a hero to the poor, disenfranchised immigrant communities in France – and particularly in his hometown of Marseilles. Born to Algerian Muslims in 1972, his great success as a footballer made him a beacon for those many thousands of immigrants trapped in the social squalor of many French cities’ <span style="font-style: italic;">banlieues</span> areas. I wish I could remember where I read this, but there was one intriguing theory about Zidane’s headbutt – his final act as a professional footballer – arguing that he felt he needed to do it to show his millions of adoring fans that he was fallible, still human and still prone to anger and stupidity. This is, I admit, a slightly romantic way to view a violent reaction to an insult about someone’s sister, but, hey – when it comes to football I’m nothing if not romantic.<br /><br />I can’t finish talking about Zidane without mentioning the film <span style="font-style: italic;">Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait</span>. If you haven’t seen it and even if you have no interest in football – watch it. It’s barely about football anyway. For one league match at Real Madrid in 2005, 17 synchronised hi-definition cameras were trained on Zidane and their operators instructed to show only Zidane himself – and as little as possible of the game. What results is quite literally what the title says: a portrait. A beautiful, poetic and downright mesmerising portrait. For the full 90 minutes of the game we are able to study his every mannerism, his focus on the game, his rapport with his team mates – and his explosive temper. Football fans will appreciate the insight into how the quintessential ‘midfield general’ operated. Non-football fans will appreciate the chance to see a person fully immersed in that which they were made to do; including their skills, their triumphs and their character flaws.<br /><br />I see this opportunity all through football – and I certainly saw it in Zidane.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-59142074950423333312009-10-15T20:17:00.002+01:002009-10-16T09:58:52.867+01:00Qualified HysteriaIt seems like a very long time since I’ve been excited about June in October – although it’s probably almost exactly four years. The qualifiers for World Cup 2010 are over, and while it’s sad that more of the home nations haven’t made it through, at least England will, this time, have a chance to enter its usual bonkers World Cup Fever mode.<br /><br />England does seem to do World Cup Fever differently to most nations, however. Apart from perhaps the South Americans, there probably isn’t a national team, nation of fans or national media that manage to combine such outrageous, almost offensive optimism in terms of their team’s chances – i.e. ‘we have a golden generation of players, the best league, the best historical pedigree, who else could possibly win’ and so on – with such nail-biting, excruciating hopelessness and doom-laden prophecies of bad omens, injuries that haven’t happened yet and impassioned arguments for ‘all the teams that are clearly better than ours – Spain want it more, the climate will suit Germany’ et cetera.<br /><br />Like a lot of what interests me the most about football, the real indicators of this strange, schizophrenic behaviour go on outside the game itself – and this is not purely about the press, though they undoubtedly play a huge part in it. The whims of the press (tabloid primarily, but not exclusively) have an enormous impact on the team’s fortunes; teams have been picked, players dropped and most disgracefully, in the case of the late Sir Bobby Robson, managers have been cruelly vilified and hounded out of their jobs – even out of the country in his case.<br /><br />More recently, the posing, preening and general twattishness of the infamous WAG culture surrounding the 2006 England team in Baden Baden was a far bigger story for the newspapers than the (admittedly rather dour) displays on the pitch – which can’t have failed to have an effect on the player’s moods or their ability to concentrate on the job at hand throughout the tournament.<br /><br />Outside of the fantasy world constructed by newspapers and TV pundits, however, even now the signs of a country starting to get twitchy for a major competition are in evidence. It’s tricky to walk into a pub without overhearing (or becoming involved in) the usual amusing post-qualification conversations: they usually begin with someone saying something along the lines of “We can’t get too excited” or “I hope this time there’s less hype and we just let the players get on with it” and then ends with one or two overexcited Englishmen trying to name the squad on not-quite-22 fingers and imagining fantasy World Cup Final scorelines.<br /><br />I have one friend who, before the 2006 finals, liked to paint a (delightfully unlikely) picture of Gary Neville rocketing home a late winner against Germany (naturally), causing an ecstatic Sven to tear open his shirt, screaming with the sheer Anglo-Swedish passion of it all. This image was conjured again and again, usually ending with everyone attendant adding their own ideas before eventually calming down and, well, looking a bit sad. It seemed so ridiculous – as if we’d been discussing the plot of a fanciful science fiction movie. But still… it <span style="font-style: italic;">could have happened</span>.<br /><br />And it could happen this time. But it won’t. But it <span style="font-style: italic;">might do</span>.<br /><br />It’s too easy to get involved in it all – and it’ll be too heartbreaking when it all goes tits up again – but it will make the next eight months fly by, I’m sure of that. One thing is for sure, though, and that’s that the country will be mostly a fun place to be from June 11th onwards. Sure there’ll be the cringe-inducing St. George bunting all over the place, those stupid flags will stick out of people’s car windows and poor old women working in supermarkets will be forced to wear plastic hats and red-and-white tabards.<br /><br />Sure, The Sun will have COME ON BOYS and ENGLAND EXPECTS (ugh) as front-page headlines at least five times and Gary Lineker will jinx the whole thing by saying, “so are England the team to beat in this group, Lawro?” and there’ll be a live feed from a pub in Aberdeen full of Scottish blokes wearing Argentina shirts and, Christ alive, Des Lynam might even read another Kipling poem out on some doomed digital channel somewhere – but still. England <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> win the World Cup – and that’s why we do all this, isn’t it?Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-23883582368317066662009-10-06T21:32:00.003+01:002009-10-06T21:41:06.251+01:00CSKA Sofia vs OFC Sliven 2000<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFOUKmOXn1TIgNQ0e8fdleCthMvPhVtC9i0iXtVIRNKbCnm83KbYIpCZt9zHTZUuT7hBJSppamBB3SabsoUc9IwYCtdzHqD-l5ccgkYpr-VoADlyVuYMG2lGDvMmPBLJ-oZHQ98pN8Bmw/s1600-h/DSCF0753.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFOUKmOXn1TIgNQ0e8fdleCthMvPhVtC9i0iXtVIRNKbCnm83KbYIpCZt9zHTZUuT7hBJSppamBB3SabsoUc9IwYCtdzHqD-l5ccgkYpr-VoADlyVuYMG2lGDvMmPBLJ-oZHQ98pN8Bmw/s320/DSCF0753.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389588839578122322" border="0" /></a><br />The Bulgarian capital, Sofia, is a confused, often contradictory mish-mash of a city – a wonky collaboration of different structures and layouts with a landscape suggesting both its chequered history and, seemingly, rather fragile self-image.<br /><br />One of the oldest cities on the European continent, having existed for around 7000 years, and yet one of the youngest capital cities, Sofia’s striking Soviet neo-classical buildings sit alongside and engulf ruins from its Ottoman past and odd, Eastern-influenced religious follies that look an awful lot older than they really are.<br /><br />Apparently harmless stray dogs roam the parks and streets, sleeping in the shade of trees and cars and going largely unnoticed by the locals (though we did manage to somehow pick one up around the Soviet Army Monument who followed us for a good twenty minutes across the park until we were forced to dive into a smoky café to lose him).<br /><br />The roads are broken and slippery – trams and trolley-busses rumble along them as they have for decades with everything including them looking long in need of repair, except, of course, the post-Soviet, Westernised shopping malls and trendy bars.<br /><br />Sofia this weekend was everything I expected it to be – slightly sad, slightly broken, rather beautiful, fascinating, alien and bursting with historical and cultural intrigue. The former Communist party headquarters, emblazoned with the exotic-looking Cyrillic script, brought back every photo I’d pored over as a teenager when teachers started to tell me about this exciting thing that had recently finished called the ‘Cold War’. I was only disappointed to find out that the huge red star that had once been on the building’s roof had been removed in the early nineties when people kept trying to set it on fire.<br /><br />There was another reason I was here, however – the football. Soviet (and in particular post-Soviet) football, to me, seems to represent everything that fascinates me about the former Eastern Bloc countries.<br /><br />During the Cold War, most Soviet countries’ main football teams were, like most other things, state controlled. This was reflected in their names, many of which – in cities like Moscow, Kiev, Prague and Sofia – retain them. The teams controlled by the secret police (first the notorious Cheka, then the KGB) were styled Dynamo, those representing the railway workers became Lokomotiv, the car industry teams were named Torpedo, while the army teams were named CSKA. Naturally, there was much more going on between the various clubs than just football – the clubs were as much organs of the state as anything else, while the consensus between football historians seems to be that football games were always seen as a place where the common man could turn up and speak as freely as was possible.<br /><br />Rivalries between the heads of the various Soviet agencies were played out on the football pitch, while much of Russia’s satellite states’ populations saw their teams as their nation’s representatives in the USSR – naturally the Moscow-based clubs dominated the Soviet ‘Top League’, so when, for example, Dynamo Kiev won the championship in 1961 or, even more shockingly, little Dinamo Tbilisi of Georgia in 1964 and 1978, it was a matter of national importance – and a rare moment for the fans to feel truly separate from Russia.<br /><br />After the fall of the USSR, however, things changed enormously for former-Soviet football – as it did for everything else in the Eastern Bloc counties. No longer state-controlled or funded, the past 20 years in almost every fledgling, individual league has seen teams struggle for funding, lose promising players to the big leagues of England, Italy and Spain, and, crucially, become rife with corruption while its infrastructure crumbled. Much like the nations themselves.<br /><br />The two main teams in Sofia, and indeed in Bulgarian football, are Levski – named after Vasil Levski, the revolutionary who fought to free Bulgaria from Ottoman rule in the mid-nineteenth century – and CSKA, the former Soviet Army team. Both teams’ grounds are based in the huge, overgrown city park once known as Freedom Park (now Borisova Gardens), a sprawling collection of long-drained ponds, dangerous looking playgrounds and weathered busts of Bulgarian and Communist heroes.<br /><br />Levski Sofia’s Vasil Levski Stadium, also the national stadium, is a relatively well-maintained 43,000-seat arena whose impressive façade faces the Soviet Army Monument and also hosts the city’s basketball club. Hidden behind it however, no more than 100 yards deeper into the park, is the Bulgarian Army Stadium (formerly the People’s Army Stadium), home of CSKA Sofia – the most successful of Bulgaria’s clubs and, as the club’s online literature would have it, historically the best-supported. You wouldn’t think it to look at the ground.<br /><br />A crumbling concrete monstrosity, the Bulgarian Army Stadium holds 22,000 and can be accessed from four ancient, rusted turnstiles around each side. There is a modern entrance and an ‘official club store’ (little more than a park-keeper’s cabin), but other than that the stadium, from most angles, looks all but abandoned. Covered in the graffiti of CSKA’s many firms of hooligan ‘Ultras’, tickets cost between 2 and 8 lev – or £1 and £4. Two lev will get you access to the intimidating-sounding (not to mention characteristically Soviet) ‘Sektor G’ – the home stand of the hardcore supporters.<br /><br />We were a little apprehensive, understandably, and bought the 5 lev (£2.50) medium-priced tickets – which sent us to Sektor B (pronounced ‘v’). Sektor B turned out to be 30 or so rows of bird shit and sunflower seed-covered seats (hence at the top of each stand old folks sell pieces of newspaper to sit on for a couple of stotinka each), but we were right at the edge of the pitch, and able to sit where we liked. The stand was sparsely populated, as indeed was the whole stadium for this Sunday evening Bulgarian Premier League game: while the Bulgarian Army Stadium comfortably holds 22,000 people, the average attendance for a league game is around 5,000. Sunday’s attendance, in fact, seemed like far less than this.<br /><br />That’s not to say there was no atmosphere – far from it. The CSKA Ultras were out in force, filling one section of Sektor G and jumping up and down continuously, singing their hearts out and even lighting flares in the second half:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmNwPLNPTvUC2YIBBYD8LiYdyLl-RE_hXI8BNm-FHnX7wr46b-Of5upDE2ybASnwH0vy8GqhBLp5jvQzr_CLCwPb2JoOpXFtdQWHET66ynk_NsWSbfCIA0dZvCx0-r894wABN-nhNvQw/s1600-h/DSCF0768.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgmNwPLNPTvUC2YIBBYD8LiYdyLl-RE_hXI8BNm-FHnX7wr46b-Of5upDE2ybASnwH0vy8GqhBLp5jvQzr_CLCwPb2JoOpXFtdQWHET66ynk_NsWSbfCIA0dZvCx0-r894wABN-nhNvQw/s320/DSCF0768.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389589146886190162" border="0" /></a><br />It’s hard not to compare the experience of seeing CSKA with going to a top-flight match in the UK – indeed it’s in many ways very funny to do so. I have a feeling that the fans sat around us on Sunday, smoking and constantly chewing on sunflower seeds, would express jealousy that in our league we get to watch some of the best footballers in the world, in some of the biggest and most luxurious stadia. I, on the other hand, might express my own jealousy that they get to wander into their local park and watch top-flight football for less than the price of the hot dogs they were selling outside.<br /><br />The quality of the football was also, to my surprise, not as low as I had expected. Fitness levels were high and while some players looked tired – CSKA had been in Rome only three nights before for a Europa League match – it certainly was no worse than Championship football. The quality of the refereeing, on the other hand, was a little more suspect – many of the crunching tackles would certainly have warranted yellow or even red cards in the Premiership, while here there was only one card shown all game. There was also the fact that the referee blew the whistle for half time when a corner was due to be taken – to much jeering and bemused laughter from the generally jovial crowd (the biggest laugh coming when a ball floated into the ‘Sektor b’ stand, smashing one of the old plastic seats to bits).<br /><br />CSKA won 1-0, and after a pleasant stroll back through the park, we were back in town in time for dinner and a couple of cheap local beers. The atmosphere at the match had been friendly, funny, exciting and entirely alien from any experience of the game I had had before. Suffice to say, I found what I was looking for in Bulgaria.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD-zkr0b3wnaGQ9eUb-_XkKcWoKkJf9avCgFu1FMYIh5fAe1JkJbTOhO5OXldfh4_Y0T77ScfvnFf3GHRY1V9A7TUk-K98UzwC51CZpk8LpG4S4xn3eIv-Sgzgt40Jf8bnHsKpl8sOU_8/s1600-h/DSCF0765.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD-zkr0b3wnaGQ9eUb-_XkKcWoKkJf9avCgFu1FMYIh5fAe1JkJbTOhO5OXldfh4_Y0T77ScfvnFf3GHRY1V9A7TUk-K98UzwC51CZpk8LpG4S4xn3eIv-Sgzgt40Jf8bnHsKpl8sOU_8/s320/DSCF0765.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5389589559096465666" border="0" /></a>Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-78244700558606495372009-09-29T00:33:00.002+01:002009-09-29T00:37:38.436+01:00An Important GameI regularly find myself arguing one particular point with my non-football friends. I like to think I keep fairly intelligent company – and this often includes those who feel that football is a frivolous, pointless activity.<br /><br />It’s not so much that they feel that they’re above it in a high art/low art sense, but more that they feel that to be interested in it is to be wasting one’s time – that watching it or reading about it or listening to radio programmes and podcasts about it is as time wasting a distraction from real life as any other form of mere entertainment.<br /><br />I tell some of my more intellectual friends that parts of my weekend will involve watching <span style="font-style: italic;">Football Focus</span>, listening to <span style="font-style: italic;">Fighting Talk </span>and the (wonderful) <span style="font-style: italic;">Football Ramble</span> podcast, reading <span style="font-style: italic;">Four Four Two</span> magazine, being sure to get home from the pub in time for <span style="font-style: italic;">Match of the Day </span>and then, during the week, filling any spare moments checking out the BBC’s excellent football blogs and – my favourite lunchtime tradition – the tabloid nonsense digest that is their <span style="font-style: italic;">Gossip Column </span>transfer news roundup, and they might well scoff. They might roll their eyes, or profess a complete lack of sympathy. Others have their own nerdy passions that they see more in than others do. Their argument, however, generally comes down to the same standpoint: <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s just a game</span>. I’ve touched on this before, but I know that this isn’t true. Football is <span style="font-style: italic;">important</span>.<br /><br />Now I’m not quite the football geek the last sentence might suggest – I’m not the grown man with the replica shirt, duvet cover and collection of programmes, and, as I’ve mentioned in past posts, I certainly don’t go to very many actual football games – but I’m genuinely fascinated by the cultural and political power, significance and sheer <span style="font-style: italic;">scale </span>of football. By its science, its language and its grammar. By the controversy, its sickening corruptions, its compelling and unifying tragedies – and the staggering amount of blood that’s been spilled it its name.<br /><br />The clichés are already in place – it’s the Beautiful Game, it’s the People’s Game, it’s the Global Game – but I think it’s actually at its most potent and interesting when you shed the ‘game’ part. Football is significant not because of the 22 men competing on any one field, but rather because of the thousands watching them live, the small groups of millions watching them remotely – and often in bafflingly remote locations – and for the many more millions discussing the game and its finer points in the days, weeks, months and years surrounding each match. It’s significant because with this many people involved in so many countries so much of the time, all talking about and participating in versions of the same thing, well, it’d struggle not to be.<br /><br />A couple of examples spring to mind. Most recently, and on a touchingly domestic, near-grassroots level, Paul Fletcher’s BBC blog last week brought to my attention the plight of Accrington Stanley – the League Two side made famous in an ancient milk advert and re-established in the public consciousness when they scrambled back into league football in 2006.<br /><br />Stanley are currently facing a £300,000+ tax bill and a serious fight to survive. Recent years have seen a few clubs in England and Scotland go into administration, suffer cruel FA points deductions and, in the memorable case of Gretna, disappear into oblivion. There is, of course, an argument to suggest that there is little to mourn about an unsuccessful lower league team vanishing from the football map – they are, after all, a failing business with too few committed fans to keep their match day takings respectable – and yet there are enough people in this country who see the demise of such a vital part of a community as the local football team as a genuinely sad loss.<br /><br />To this end, the club’s chief executive, Rob Heys, arranged a friendly against high-flying nearby club Burnley – where 5,000 people paid £10 a head to attend, and at the following fixture against Darlington, an unusually high turnout adorned the stands with replica shirts from teams all over the country. Football <span style="font-style: italic;">matters</span> at this level – and completely outwith the intricacies of the game itself.<br /><br />This example of the ‘importance’ of football is possibly a little sweet and nostalgic – not to mention domestic – but there are myriad examples of football having made a genuine, frightening political impact on whole nations and whole populations, to the extent that I find it very difficult to pick a perfectly pertinent one (the best thing to do is try and convince them to read Simon Kuper’s seminal <span style="font-style: italic;">Football Against the Enemy</span>).<br /><br />There’s the story of the Hungarian revolution in 1956 – when public dismay at the Communist regime’s treatment of the once-glorious national team helped to foment unrest and drive students and workers to protest in the streets to revolt against the Stalinist leadership. There’s the infamous ‘Football War’ between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969 – when rioting between fans of the two nations during a 1970 World Cup Qualifier escalated into a full-blown military incident, which, while it only lasted 100 hours, proved that if anything was going to unite the people of one nation against the other, putting aside any differences between themselves, it was the abstract nature of football rivalry. There’s also Argentina’s hosting of the World Cup in 1978 – when the military regime found itself in the global spotlight and erected giant barriers along the roadside to block the tourists’ and foreign journalists’ view of the horrendous slum conditions faced by millions of inhabitants of its cities.<br /><br />Football is absolutely important – and absolutely a game. But I think what amazes me most is that it represents probably my best chance of communicating with any person from any other nation – even if it’s just listing our nations’ great players, or kicking a ball around. I’m off to Bulgaria this weekend, my first visit to a former-Soviet nation, and I’m naturally very excited. I’m having problems learning the Cyrillic alphabet and I’m terrified that I won’t be able to understand any signs or menus, but I know that when I’m in the football stadium I’ll understand exactly what’s going on – and share something genuine with every other person there.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-54937971585172099102009-09-16T20:46:00.003+01:002009-09-16T20:51:54.743+01:00The Champions League<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKTMhUb-x6-vdoSU-2UubB9ZG9iqlf2HnI__fJRNo-VJoSIePpfQIt_-zkXGh4KiTChsAO-SqBg9a_Rk2KVas868VNYOjoOY8iopF64V_L1qkHs9qjvvx5s_tit1D3T-ROEKsX51bAxfU/s1600-h/gun__1219930181_champions_league_beams.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKTMhUb-x6-vdoSU-2UubB9ZG9iqlf2HnI__fJRNo-VJoSIePpfQIt_-zkXGh4KiTChsAO-SqBg9a_Rk2KVas868VNYOjoOY8iopF64V_L1qkHs9qjvvx5s_tit1D3T-ROEKsX51bAxfU/s320/gun__1219930181_champions_league_beams.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5382155142216037426" border="0" /></a><br />The Champions League is, I think, my favourite football competition. There’s something distinctly nocturnal about it – and not just because it’s played in the evening. Forgive the A Level poetry, but for me it has all the buzz and unknowable tension of a night out in a strange city. It’s dark, your face reflecting the glow of hazy neon lights, and you’re not sure what to make of those around you; they maybe talk or act or move differently than you’re used to, but you know they’re all there for the same reason as you are – and they’re all <span style="font-style: italic;">excited</span>.<br /><br />No other competition comes close for the sheer thrill of Champions League football. There’s the ridiculously overblown but nonetheless iconic theme music – a bastardisation of <span style="font-style: italic;">Zadok the Priest</span> with overtones of some imagined European community spirit, sung along to in pubs and bars across the continent at the beginning of every game and, eventually I’m sure, by the players themselves in lieu of a cohesive national anthem – and the image of the football covered in UEFA’s glamorous stars unfurled across the centre circles of fascinating stadia in exotic cities you’ve barely heard of.<br /><br />Then there’s the football, of course. The inimitable spectacle of two-legged contests against foreign or domestic opposition with the horror or glory of away goals or penalties potentially deciding matters is a uniquely CL experience. Anyone who watched the second leg of Liverpool v Chelsea in last season’s quarter finals will be lucky to see a more exciting, closely fought or genuinely action-packed game of football ever again. A 4-4 game is one thing – a 4-4 result at the highest level when it matters <span style="font-style: italic;">so much</span> is truly breathtaking.<br /><br />The atmosphere in any pub, but particularly a partisan-yet-jovial one, is nothing like it is for a league game or an FA Cup tie – the nail-biting tension and (occasional) subsequent party atmosphere is heightened by the evening setting and the presence of random evening revellers. The banter is more lucid, more paranoid – and more wide-ranging. European club history is truly fascinating; and in every boozer there’s a fan of every club. Everyone’s seen at least one inexplicable Anderlecht fan sat biting his nails in the corner of a beer-sodden chain pub at 9.45 on a Tuesday night or a horde of drunken Fenerbahce fans staggering towards an unsuspecting suburban curry house.<br /><br />Then there’s the free geography lesson: I suspect that some of the most geographically knowledgeable people you know are football fans. Were I not an avid student of recent Champions League and UEFA Cup campaigns, I couldn’t possibly tell you the name of three towns in Ukraine, or the biggest cities by population in Serbia. I love the amazingly exotic and obscure names and unfeasibly tiny clubs the European competitions throw up – every time a team like FK Ventspils, Unirea Urziceni, Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk or Rubin Kazan appears on a fixture list for an English club there is a definite buzz, at least for me.<br /><br />As a result, in three weeks time I’ll be in at the Bulgarian Army Stadium in Sofia watching CSKA Sofia take on OFC Sliven 2000 in the Bulgarian A Professional Football Group league. How could that not be exciting?! Were I not a football fan and, crucially, a bit of a nerd for former-Soviet football, I would probably not have suggested the trip to what I’m sure will be a beautiful and historic city (but don’t tell the girlfriend, eh?).<br /><br />However, as much as I love the Champions League, I can’t help but feel that this season’s competition is going to take a little while to get going.<br /><br />The action kicked off last night, as I watched Chelsea labour to a soggy and scrappy win over Porto, and as I type Liverpool are taking on Hungary’s Debreceni as part of a frankly underwhelming first round of games (at the moment I feel fairly happy to be avoiding Standard Liege v Arsenal – it’ll probably turn out to be a classic now) – at least for the English sides. The Premier League’s recent domination of the competition (and resulting high UEFA ranking) seems to have inadvertently thrown up some rather dull group stage opponents, and one would imagine that none of the big four, nor Rangers, should have much trouble getting to the last 16 stage.<br /><br />Sure, Manchester United have a gruelling away trip to Moscow and Chelsea may find Atletico Madrid something of a stumbling block – and one should never discount Arsenal losing their bottle in Europe – but the really exciting groups are those with no UK interest.<br /><br />Tonight Jose Mourinho’s Inter Milan take on Barcelona in a game which is sadly hidden behind the red button on Sky Sports, hence limiting its UK audience dramatically – especially disappointing when it’s a great chance for pub football pundits to actually see the non-Premier League-based players they spend so much time pontificating upon. And last night’s 5-2 away win for Real Madrid over FC Zurich or Wolfsburg’s flying start against CSKA Moscow were almost certainly more of an interesting contest than the two 1-0 wins by English sides who barely got out of first gear.<br /><br />It’d be nice to see more of the big European sides on television this year. As much as it’s been enjoyable to see English sides doing so well in the Champions League over the last few seasons, I’m getting a bit tired watching teams like Chelsea battling to reach a potential final against Man Utd by beating Arsenal and Liverpool, or whatever. Hopefully they’ll all be there in the last eight again – but not all in the last four, please.<br /><br />I’m going to end this post by pasting in the trilingual lyrics to the Champions League anthem that I can hear from the TV in my living room, because I’ve only just read them properly (thanks, Wikipedia). They really are <span style="font-style: italic;">mind-boggling</span>. Next time, you can sing along with me (and, presumably, Michel Platini).<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ce sont les meilleures equipes</span> (Those are the best teams)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Sie sind die allerbesten Mannschaften</span> (Those are the best teams)<br />The main event!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chorus:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Die Meister</span> (The champions)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Die Besten </span>(The best)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Les Grandes Équipes (</span>The biggest teams)<br />The Champions!!!!Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8706518774624441702.post-57154465468194956032009-09-07T23:48:00.001+01:002009-09-08T08:21:37.128+01:00A Week of PunishmentIt’s been, to say the least, a big week for punishments being handed out by the football authorities. It’s very tempting to take up a contrary position to executive decisions and rant about how the faceless and seemingly disconnected powers-that-be hand down apparently arbitrary penalties based on whatever disciplinary issue happens to be in focus at the time, but surely the people running the game have <span style="font-style: italic;">some</span> idea what they’re doing, don’t they?<br /><br />I suppose what I mean by ‘in focus’ is whatever issue happens to be in the headlines – FIFA, UEFA, the FA et al are not, clearly, immune to the ideological whims of the football press and seem often to act only when an incident hits the back pages and is scrutinised by the television networks. The more of a fuss made by pundits, managers, referees and, to a much smaller degree, the fans, on an issue, the more swiftly (and harshly) the authorities seem to act. <br /><br />The first of this past week’s big disciplinary stories is a prime example of this, I think. It’s clear to most who saw the incident in the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/europe/8215721.stm">Arsenal v Celtic Champions League qualifier</a> two weeks ago that Arsenal forward Eduardo dived to win a penalty as keeper Artur Boruc came to collect the ball at his feet – what is unclear is the thought process, and indeed the political process, that went on at UEFA surrounding their response. The overwhelming reaction was one of knee-jerk example-making and chaos.<br /><br />Referee Mejuto Gonzalez gave the penalty, which was the wrong call – but his reading of the game nonetheless – when the dive, had he or any of his assistants spotted it, would have warranted a yellow card for simulation. Eduardo’s punishment, handed out <span style="font-style: italic;">extraordinarily </span>quickly, it seems, was to be a two-game ban – essentially that for a straight red-card offence. UEFA have, then, opened a few predictable cans of worms.<br /><br />The first is the issue of consistency. Are they now going to hand out retrospective two-match bans for every issue of diving they come across? Is simulation now a straight red if the referee sees it? Does this apply to feigning injury or just diving? Will it still be applied if it happens outside the penalty area? This is chaos – rewriting the rules in one swift, ill-defined move as a result of a bit of hysterical press hoo-ha. More troubling is the fact that they seem to be taking power out of the referee’s hands – if UEFA (and presumably FIFA, on the international stage) is to retrospectively analyse every match for disciplinary infringements, why have a referee at all?<br /><br />Which brings me to the second can of worms – which, admittedly, has already been open and squiggling for quite some time: video technology. Laughably, it seems that UEFA in particular are doing anything they can to avoid introducing technology in the Champions League, while it remains a bit of a no-brainer to fans, managers and players alike – hence the introduction of a “fifth official” for Europa League matches whose job it is to watch the penalty area. Why, then, if we are to strip the referee of his executive decision-making ability, have another fallible human watching when there are already several cameras covering every inch of the pitch? Is it really just money? I know plenty of people who’d have more time for watching live football if they knew they were going to get a fair outcome – and probably wouldn’t mind waiting the two or three seconds it would take a video referee to make judgements in contentious situations.<br /><br />I’m in no way saying that making moves to stamp out diving is a bad thing. It was disappointing to see Eduardo go down like that, mostly because he’s always seemed to be an honest player – but this only emphasises that the problem is genuinely part of the game nowadays, and unless proper, sensible rules can be put in place from the top of the game to the bottom (which I’m not sure it can), it should be accepted that it’s always going to be around.<br /><br />See how easy it is to rant?<br /><br />This one might be harder to avoid. After the Eduardo noise had just started to die down came FIFA’s announcement that Chelsea were to be banned from signing new players for two transfer windows – meaning no new faces at Stamford Bridge until January 2011. Even as I read this back now it seems unbelievable, and it feels more and more likely that the Court of Arbitration for Sport appeal will see it reduced to just the one window, but still – where do FIFA get these punishments from?<br /><br />The first thought I had was, for various reasons, the effect this would have on Chelsea. Enforcing a serious setback on a club’s development for almost two seasons felt similar to Juventus’ punishment for match-fixing in 2006, when they were relegated to Serie B for a season (OK, so I was possibly overreacting) but it still confuses me as to the scale on which certain crimes fall for the governing bodies of football.<br /><br />It was a Chelsea statement that described the two-window ban as “arbitrary”, and it’s hard to see it as anything else. Diving = a yellow card or a two-match ban if the referee doesn’t see it. Systemic corruption, referee-bribing, match-fixing = relegation and points deducted. “Inducing” a teenager to break his contract – a two-window transfer ban. Is this really written down anywhere? And if so, why are we looking at isolated incidents, plucked out almost at random? As BBC blogger Phil McNulty<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philmcnulty/2009/09/chelsea_will_suffer_after_ban.html"> put it</a>, if FIFA think this only happens at Chelsea then they are naïve in the extreme.<br /><br />Again, I’m not suggesting that the practice of stealing youth players from small and vulnerable clubs should be allowed (I would probably support a ban on the transfer of players under 18, in fact), but that only consistency will make any sense of this particular cruel punishment in the long run – it would be nice to be able to imagine the authorities in charge of one of the biggest global industries <span style="font-style: italic;">not</span> looking like a bunch of reactionary headless chickens.<br /><br />The final disciplinary issue that’s got me going, that’s only just come to light tonight, involves the domestic game, and the 9-month ban handed to Sheffield United goalkeeper Paddy Kenny for failing a drugs test. For once, this at first seemed fair. Kenny <span style="font-style: italic;">did</span> test positive and performance-enhancing drugs should be dealt with harshly, of course – but in this case it seems that Kenny took the banned substance, ephedrine, accidentally, in an over-the-counter cough remedy. What seems crazy to me is that the FA disciplinary committee have accepted that it was an accident, but handed the player the nine-month ban anyway. This will, it seems, “send out a message” to footballers to watch what they’re taking. No leniency shown, no first warning. Just a <span style="font-style: italic;">whole season</span> on the sidelines for a simple mistake.<br /><br />Hopefully great performances from England and Scotland on Wednesday night can lift the mood, for me at least. At the moment there’s a bit of a rough taste in my mouth.Mat Rodgerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05567745010414003134noreply@blogger.com0