Crisis. Football thrives 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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
As Portsmouth manager Avram Grant recently put it (and so wonderfully succinct it was too): “Football is more than football.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 narrative 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.
Showing posts with label manchester city. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manchester city. Show all posts
Monday, 29 March 2010
Monday, 1 March 2010
Morality and Obligation
“All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.” – Albert Camus
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.
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.
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.
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 on the field. The collision of front and back pages was made flesh here – and it left a nasty taste.
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 not my right, 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 laws, 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.
Thursday, 28 January 2010
The Carling Cup
One 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.
If this build-up seems to overstate the momentous nature of the game, then good. That was the intention. Because this is a big game, and it proves that the competition is not “only the Carling Cup” any more.
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.
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?
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’.
But tonight’s game is 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.
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.
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.
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 able 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.
If this build-up seems to overstate the momentous nature of the game, then good. That was the intention. Because this is a big game, and it proves that the competition is not “only the Carling Cup” any more.
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.
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?
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’.
But tonight’s game is 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.
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.
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.
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 able 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.
Monday, 11 January 2010
Too Cold, Too Hot
Absence 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.
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.
But this year we survived Christmas and New Year to discover: absence, again. This time it’s the winter that’s scuppered us.
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.
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.
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.
******
All of which means that the football fan (i.e. me) has to focus their attention on sunnier climes for their football fix.
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.
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.
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 the first episode of The Football Basement podcast for evidence of this), it certainly proves that the African nations are constantly getting stronger and more competitive as a group, 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.
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?
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.
But this year we survived Christmas and New Year to discover: absence, again. This time it’s the winter that’s scuppered us.
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.
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.
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.
******
All of which means that the football fan (i.e. me) has to focus their attention on sunnier climes for their football fix.
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.
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.
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 the first episode of The Football Basement podcast for evidence of this), it certainly proves that the African nations are constantly getting stronger and more competitive as a group, 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.
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?
Sunday, 27 December 2009
Christmas Week
Christmas 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.
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.
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.
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 this Christmas.
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.
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).
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 back 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 this Christmas.
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.
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).
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 back 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.
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.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Getting Away with Murder
Hate 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 hate 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 already seen this year, 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 Los Merengues won by a clear majority.
The fact that it is the teams 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 not 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 hate.
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 born – grievances passed down from generation to generation like a festering, anxious and really rather silly family heirloom.
It is 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 universal hate figures, the ones that everyone, 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.
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.
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.
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?
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”.
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?
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.
The fact that it is the teams 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 not 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 hate.
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 born – grievances passed down from generation to generation like a festering, anxious and really rather silly family heirloom.
It is 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 universal hate figures, the ones that everyone, 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.
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.
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.
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?
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”.
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?
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.
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Deadline Day
The transfer window closed – sorry, SLAMMED SHUT – yesterday afternoon to the usual hysterical Sky Sports News/BBC Online fanfare. It’s something I and probably everyone who reads this look forward to at the end of August and January as it offers an opportunity for some genuinely exciting breaking football news. This time last year was the prime example with the incredible one-day takeover of Manchester City by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the audacious snatching of £32m Robinho from under the noses of a bewildered Chelsea – the taste of their own medicine predictably bitter.
The day’s narrative can unfold thrillingly, with Sky reporters at every ground studying the occupants of every car that arrives, online forums buzzing with often hilarious sightings (“My mate works in the doctor’s surgery Hull City use for their medicals and he just saw Sergio Aguero reading Heat in the waiting room”, “My restaurant just took a booking for a Mr. P. Kenyon and a Mr. F. Fabregas – coincidence?!”) and, presumably, footballers, sometimes, actually having meetings in Little Chefs and Airport Hiltons.
There is the other side of the coin, however. There is inevitably hype and a lot of noise made about what might happen on Deadline Day (Sky have had a countdown on screen for the last 6 weeks, as far as I can tell), but on the day itself we tend to forget that there have already been loads of deals completed, and that these have been so because they take a long time and aren’t decisions that are taken lightly by either side. What were we really expecting to happen? Cristiano Ronaldo already transferred to Real Madrid for £700 billion, Man City have already distorted the market with their huge (but actually rather sensible, for me) spending – plus all the European leagues’ windows shut the previous day on account of them not having had a bank holiday.
Could any deadline day deal really have surpassed the hugeness of Ronaldo’s, or the City saga of 2008? I doubt it, unless perhaps Harry Redknapp decided to take his current spending strategy to its ultimate conclusion and re-sign every player he’s ever previously managed including Rio Ferdinand, Shaka Hislop and Linvoy Primus.
As it was, the deadline day activity was a bit of a damp squib. Having followed the ‘action’ on the BBC website from 9am til 5.30, it seemed that their reporters at least were resigned to the fact that nothing particularly massive would happen – there were rumblings at Portsmouth and Everton, as most expected – and yet still, presumably under orders, hung on to the grim hope that a real ‘marquee signing’ would take place. So was I, of course.
Is this all that the window exists for? It’s hard to be sure that it’s of much further use. I read Gordon Strachan’s column in FourFourTwo this week and he suggests that while the window unsettles footballers and stresses out managers – albeit exciting the fans – it does in fact mean that when the window is shut players tend to focus on the job at hand (knowing they can’t go anywhere) and teams with a bit of money are less able to gain an unfair advantage by replacing injured players whenever they like.
Personally, I suppose I like knowing that the squads are as they will be for at least half the season now, making it far easier to analyse how teams will perform in the coming season, but I still find the idea of people just ‘not being allowed’ to change jobs whenever they like very strange and even slightly troubling – it couldn’t happen in any other industry, could it? (Of course, this could be said for a lot about the world of football).
This period, now that the window is shut until January and we’ve seen a few games played and teams start to take shape, is the only sensible time to start making any sort of tentative predictions. So I might make a couple.
As I’ve mentioned before, for me the most significant transfers of the summer have been, of course, Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid – not because of the possible impact of the six-year-old’s Panini sticker fantasy team Madrid are assembling (again), but because of the effect on the teams they’ve left behind.
I predicted in an earlier blog that United would struggle without Ronaldo – for goals at least – but what seems to be happening, happily for them, is that Rooney is looking to be the man to step up his game from last season and prove to be the truly match-winning player we know he is capable of being. I also think that Owen will score lots more goals for them – finally getting the service in front of goal he’s been praying for for years.
Liverpool, on the other hand, have blown it in my opinion. This Aquilani chap is going to have an awful lot of pressure on him when he returns from injury – as the hole blown in the midfield at Anfield by Alonso’s departure looks pretty nasty. Sure, they won against Bolton at the weekend but they could very, very easily have lost – a rather harsh red card swinging things in their favour. Unless Aquilani really does turn out to be something special, and slot in with Gerrard and Torres nicely, you’d have to be mad to back them for the title this season – right now at least.
As far as the other ‘Big Four’ clubs go, Chelsea are looking great at the moment, the only caveat to their 100% start being that they haven’t really been tested. Hull, Sunderland, Fulham, Burnley – these are all clubs you’d expect the Blues to take three points from. The fact that they have, comfortably, makes them my favourites at the moment, however. I feel similarly about Arsenal – but as always their relative youth, fragility and susceptibility to injury makes them hard to back over a whole season. Time, and stamina, will tell on all fronts.
The day’s narrative can unfold thrillingly, with Sky reporters at every ground studying the occupants of every car that arrives, online forums buzzing with often hilarious sightings (“My mate works in the doctor’s surgery Hull City use for their medicals and he just saw Sergio Aguero reading Heat in the waiting room”, “My restaurant just took a booking for a Mr. P. Kenyon and a Mr. F. Fabregas – coincidence?!”) and, presumably, footballers, sometimes, actually having meetings in Little Chefs and Airport Hiltons.
There is the other side of the coin, however. There is inevitably hype and a lot of noise made about what might happen on Deadline Day (Sky have had a countdown on screen for the last 6 weeks, as far as I can tell), but on the day itself we tend to forget that there have already been loads of deals completed, and that these have been so because they take a long time and aren’t decisions that are taken lightly by either side. What were we really expecting to happen? Cristiano Ronaldo already transferred to Real Madrid for £700 billion, Man City have already distorted the market with their huge (but actually rather sensible, for me) spending – plus all the European leagues’ windows shut the previous day on account of them not having had a bank holiday.
Could any deadline day deal really have surpassed the hugeness of Ronaldo’s, or the City saga of 2008? I doubt it, unless perhaps Harry Redknapp decided to take his current spending strategy to its ultimate conclusion and re-sign every player he’s ever previously managed including Rio Ferdinand, Shaka Hislop and Linvoy Primus.
As it was, the deadline day activity was a bit of a damp squib. Having followed the ‘action’ on the BBC website from 9am til 5.30, it seemed that their reporters at least were resigned to the fact that nothing particularly massive would happen – there were rumblings at Portsmouth and Everton, as most expected – and yet still, presumably under orders, hung on to the grim hope that a real ‘marquee signing’ would take place. So was I, of course.
Is this all that the window exists for? It’s hard to be sure that it’s of much further use. I read Gordon Strachan’s column in FourFourTwo this week and he suggests that while the window unsettles footballers and stresses out managers – albeit exciting the fans – it does in fact mean that when the window is shut players tend to focus on the job at hand (knowing they can’t go anywhere) and teams with a bit of money are less able to gain an unfair advantage by replacing injured players whenever they like.
Personally, I suppose I like knowing that the squads are as they will be for at least half the season now, making it far easier to analyse how teams will perform in the coming season, but I still find the idea of people just ‘not being allowed’ to change jobs whenever they like very strange and even slightly troubling – it couldn’t happen in any other industry, could it? (Of course, this could be said for a lot about the world of football).
This period, now that the window is shut until January and we’ve seen a few games played and teams start to take shape, is the only sensible time to start making any sort of tentative predictions. So I might make a couple.
As I’ve mentioned before, for me the most significant transfers of the summer have been, of course, Ronaldo and Xabi Alonso to Real Madrid – not because of the possible impact of the six-year-old’s Panini sticker fantasy team Madrid are assembling (again), but because of the effect on the teams they’ve left behind.
I predicted in an earlier blog that United would struggle without Ronaldo – for goals at least – but what seems to be happening, happily for them, is that Rooney is looking to be the man to step up his game from last season and prove to be the truly match-winning player we know he is capable of being. I also think that Owen will score lots more goals for them – finally getting the service in front of goal he’s been praying for for years.
Liverpool, on the other hand, have blown it in my opinion. This Aquilani chap is going to have an awful lot of pressure on him when he returns from injury – as the hole blown in the midfield at Anfield by Alonso’s departure looks pretty nasty. Sure, they won against Bolton at the weekend but they could very, very easily have lost – a rather harsh red card swinging things in their favour. Unless Aquilani really does turn out to be something special, and slot in with Gerrard and Torres nicely, you’d have to be mad to back them for the title this season – right now at least.
As far as the other ‘Big Four’ clubs go, Chelsea are looking great at the moment, the only caveat to their 100% start being that they haven’t really been tested. Hull, Sunderland, Fulham, Burnley – these are all clubs you’d expect the Blues to take three points from. The fact that they have, comfortably, makes them my favourites at the moment, however. I feel similarly about Arsenal – but as always their relative youth, fragility and susceptibility to injury makes them hard to back over a whole season. Time, and stamina, will tell on all fronts.
Friday, 24 July 2009
Modern Football is Brilliant
The problem with starting a football blog in the middle of summer, of course, is that there’s precious little actual football to write about. Not that there need to be matches being played for football to be happening. Comedian David Mitchell wrote a brilliant Observer column last year expressing his frustration at the average football fan’s fascination with the transfer market – or “human resources” – and that it serves to emphasise how dull a game football is. I disagree. I think any period when the transfer window is open is when, for better or worse, football as it really is in the 21st century is on show. It’s a time of genuine insight into how it all works.
The obscene amounts of money are usually the focus of the press, understandably, but with the tedious side effect of drawing every old school football man out of the woodwork to decry today’s game as having lost it’s way (whatever it’s “way” was – was the game really better in the 70s and 80s? Underpaid undervalued and poorly trained indentured servants playing in front of crowds of thugs on crumbling terraces? I’m not sure its so black and white).
The money is what makes the game what it is now, but that’s certainly not to say it has an entirely negative effect. (I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little here.)
The money started flooding in, in England, certainly, with the television deals that kick-started the Premier League. This in turn has meant that rights to show the English league have been sold all over the world – the fact that the densely populated nations of Asia are the biggest markets for replica Manchester United shirts tells us everything we need to know about why oil-rich Middle East consortiums are buying into, most recently, clubs like Manchester City and now Portsmouth. (The other model for super rich footballing power, of course, is that of Real Madrid, which is run more like a nation than a mere football club, or even a multi-national corporation.)
My argument, however, is that the increased revenue and ambitious foreign owners can only improve the game as a spectacle, and make it more exciting as a contest. Most would retaliate to this statement by arguing that this might well be true for the “big four” and their ilk – pointing to the gulf in finances as the reason why it’s the same four teams in the top four every year and only a handful of teams have a realistic chance of winning the Champions League.
But one only needs to look at Man United’s (and, to a lesser extent, Arsenal’s), stranglehold on the Premier League in the late 90s and early 2000s to realise, surely, that when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea it made the league infinitely more interesting to watch – even before the mighty press-baiting presence of Mourinho. Sure there was initially an enormous gulf in financial clout between Chelsea and the next most able contenders, but this must be better for the game than a tedious duopoly continuing unbroken. Better a three-horse race than a two-horse race.
Suddenly players were moving to a club with ambition for the future, rather than to clubs who believed their rich heritage entitled them to continue winning forever. A takeover for Liverpool followed and, while not on the same scale, the new money has thrust the club (admittedly in no small part thanks to the American owners sticking with Benitez) far closer to challenging for a first Premiership title than they ever could have imagined before the foreign owners came in. Better a four-horse race than a three-horse race!
Look across the top half of the Premier League now and there are plenty of clubs who can seriously push the big boys – if not for the title itself then for vital, historic European places and not-to-be-dismissed domestic cups. While it may very well be that the top four remains unchanged this season (I for one actually think this might just be the year when Arsenal get pushed out), no one can with any real confidence pick the order of the teams that will finish from 1st to 7th. This was certainly not the case before foreign owners came in and “ruined” the English game.
On the same subject, a story that I’ve found heartening this week is that of Sven Goran Eriksson’s appointment as Director of Football at League Two side Notts County. This, it appears, is a true statement of ambition, both for Eriksson (who could just as easily have been sat in the manager’s chair at Fratton Park) and for the team’s mysterious new owners. And even if it is with a significant financial advantage, should the Magpies actually manage to make it to the Premier League in 5 years or so, what a story it would be! Imagine how those fans and players will feel! Eriksson and his sidekick Tord Grip will deserve the praise they hopefully get for going out of their way to try and make something truly extraordinary happen.
I think what I’m trying to say here is that while modern football has plenty wrong with it (Sepp Blatter has mostly seen to that), it’s wrong to dismiss it as having been “killed” by the enormous amounts of money flowing through it. And the summer transfer merry-go-round is more than enough amusing distraction while the players sit on the beach (or are up in court).
Owen to Man United? John Terry to Man City? (never going to happen by the way.) Real Madrid smashing the world transfer record twice in a week? Sven in League Two? Modern football is brilliant.
The obscene amounts of money are usually the focus of the press, understandably, but with the tedious side effect of drawing every old school football man out of the woodwork to decry today’s game as having lost it’s way (whatever it’s “way” was – was the game really better in the 70s and 80s? Underpaid undervalued and poorly trained indentured servants playing in front of crowds of thugs on crumbling terraces? I’m not sure its so black and white).
The money is what makes the game what it is now, but that’s certainly not to say it has an entirely negative effect. (I’m going to play devil’s advocate a little here.)
The money started flooding in, in England, certainly, with the television deals that kick-started the Premier League. This in turn has meant that rights to show the English league have been sold all over the world – the fact that the densely populated nations of Asia are the biggest markets for replica Manchester United shirts tells us everything we need to know about why oil-rich Middle East consortiums are buying into, most recently, clubs like Manchester City and now Portsmouth. (The other model for super rich footballing power, of course, is that of Real Madrid, which is run more like a nation than a mere football club, or even a multi-national corporation.)
My argument, however, is that the increased revenue and ambitious foreign owners can only improve the game as a spectacle, and make it more exciting as a contest. Most would retaliate to this statement by arguing that this might well be true for the “big four” and their ilk – pointing to the gulf in finances as the reason why it’s the same four teams in the top four every year and only a handful of teams have a realistic chance of winning the Champions League.
But one only needs to look at Man United’s (and, to a lesser extent, Arsenal’s), stranglehold on the Premier League in the late 90s and early 2000s to realise, surely, that when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea it made the league infinitely more interesting to watch – even before the mighty press-baiting presence of Mourinho. Sure there was initially an enormous gulf in financial clout between Chelsea and the next most able contenders, but this must be better for the game than a tedious duopoly continuing unbroken. Better a three-horse race than a two-horse race.
Suddenly players were moving to a club with ambition for the future, rather than to clubs who believed their rich heritage entitled them to continue winning forever. A takeover for Liverpool followed and, while not on the same scale, the new money has thrust the club (admittedly in no small part thanks to the American owners sticking with Benitez) far closer to challenging for a first Premiership title than they ever could have imagined before the foreign owners came in. Better a four-horse race than a three-horse race!
Look across the top half of the Premier League now and there are plenty of clubs who can seriously push the big boys – if not for the title itself then for vital, historic European places and not-to-be-dismissed domestic cups. While it may very well be that the top four remains unchanged this season (I for one actually think this might just be the year when Arsenal get pushed out), no one can with any real confidence pick the order of the teams that will finish from 1st to 7th. This was certainly not the case before foreign owners came in and “ruined” the English game.
On the same subject, a story that I’ve found heartening this week is that of Sven Goran Eriksson’s appointment as Director of Football at League Two side Notts County. This, it appears, is a true statement of ambition, both for Eriksson (who could just as easily have been sat in the manager’s chair at Fratton Park) and for the team’s mysterious new owners. And even if it is with a significant financial advantage, should the Magpies actually manage to make it to the Premier League in 5 years or so, what a story it would be! Imagine how those fans and players will feel! Eriksson and his sidekick Tord Grip will deserve the praise they hopefully get for going out of their way to try and make something truly extraordinary happen.
I think what I’m trying to say here is that while modern football has plenty wrong with it (Sepp Blatter has mostly seen to that), it’s wrong to dismiss it as having been “killed” by the enormous amounts of money flowing through it. And the summer transfer merry-go-round is more than enough amusing distraction while the players sit on the beach (or are up in court).
Owen to Man United? John Terry to Man City? (never going to happen by the way.) Real Madrid smashing the world transfer record twice in a week? Sven in League Two? Modern football is brilliant.
Friday, 17 July 2009
Hi, I'm Mat, and this is a new blog about football. Hopefully it'll be interesting, enjoyable and maybe even funny, sometimes. There are a number of reasons I'm starting this blog today:
1. I miss football.
It's the middle of July and football just seems so distant. Not counting the miserably unsatisfying Confederations Cup (there's something that's just not right about matches showing at 7pm on BBC Three, where the USA are winning and the South Africans are blowing those obnoxious horns all the way through the match), football finished with England's demolition of Andorra on the 10th of June.
It's still a month until the Premier League kicks off and I'm literally itching for some real sport. I long for the hilarious new away kits, Garth Crooks arguing every point to the death even when he's wrong, Benitez's paranoid serial killer notebooks and Manchester City trying to squeeze Robinho, Tevez, Santa Cruz and Adebayor into a strike force that somehow works.
Sure, Wimbledon was distracting, Formula 1 is an amusing political car crash and the Ashes does fit perfectly into the gap before the season kicks off but when I flick around on the TV on Saturdays and I actually don't know what to watch (in the absence of the time-honoured Football Focus - Soccer Saturday - Final Score - pub - Match of the Day sequence), I just feel, you know, really really sad.
2. It's a project.
For a few months now I've been rolling around in my head an idea for a project, originally a book (to be called Who Are Ya!?, hence the blog-o-name), that would feature a collection of weird and wonderful football clubs from around the world - looking at their histories, fans and quirky traditions.
In my head it fits into the much-maligned 'gift book' category, and is largely inspired by reading two great books on the world game: Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper and Behind the Curtain by Jonathan Wilson. I can highly recommend both of them to any football fan - and anyone who needs ammunition when arguing that yes, football is important. Essentially, thanks to Kuper and Wilson, I now like to think I can scoff confidently, and rightly, when someone assures me that it's "just a game".
These two books have astounding, jaw-dropping stories on almost every page, and a way of distilling these into a more accessible format really appealed to me - and the assorted football fans I described it to. As such this blog is going to act as a form of research and a test run for the project, I think. I'm going to try to update the blog at least once a week, each time with another fascinating, mysterious football team from, like, around the world.
3. Football is a diary
I've started little emo-ish blogs before as attempts at keeping a diary. I do and see a lot of stuff that I want to record but it either doesn't stick or I just can't be bothered writing about it. Football, I've realised, is the perfect thing to anchor my memories to - mainly because they just seem to do that anyway, but also because it operates on it's own handy cyclical calendar, and is fastidiously recorded by statisticians and far more obsessed individuals than I.
For example, my girlfriend and I take our anniversary from our first proper date. She doesn't remember exactly when this is, but I do: Sunday June 29th 2008. How do I know? Because it was the Euro 2008 final, and i totally wasn't watching Spain beat Germany over her shoulder in the pub we met in. This might seem sad to some people, but, hey, it works for me. As Harry Hill says, you've got to have a system, haven't you?
So that's the blog idea, basically. I hope people want to read it, but don't really mind if they don't. I don't have a lot of close friends that are big football fans (most of them downright loathe it) so it's nice to have somewhere to vent my ideas and observations on the ridiculous, absurd, beautiful, heartbreaking, stressful and, above all, important "game" that lots of us quite like. I'm not going to say who I support yet because if you're reading this a) you might well know and b) you might not like me any more.
Cheers!
Mat
1. I miss football.
It's the middle of July and football just seems so distant. Not counting the miserably unsatisfying Confederations Cup (there's something that's just not right about matches showing at 7pm on BBC Three, where the USA are winning and the South Africans are blowing those obnoxious horns all the way through the match), football finished with England's demolition of Andorra on the 10th of June.
It's still a month until the Premier League kicks off and I'm literally itching for some real sport. I long for the hilarious new away kits, Garth Crooks arguing every point to the death even when he's wrong, Benitez's paranoid serial killer notebooks and Manchester City trying to squeeze Robinho, Tevez, Santa Cruz and Adebayor into a strike force that somehow works.
Sure, Wimbledon was distracting, Formula 1 is an amusing political car crash and the Ashes does fit perfectly into the gap before the season kicks off but when I flick around on the TV on Saturdays and I actually don't know what to watch (in the absence of the time-honoured Football Focus - Soccer Saturday - Final Score - pub - Match of the Day sequence), I just feel, you know, really really sad.
2. It's a project.
For a few months now I've been rolling around in my head an idea for a project, originally a book (to be called Who Are Ya!?, hence the blog-o-name), that would feature a collection of weird and wonderful football clubs from around the world - looking at their histories, fans and quirky traditions.
In my head it fits into the much-maligned 'gift book' category, and is largely inspired by reading two great books on the world game: Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper and Behind the Curtain by Jonathan Wilson. I can highly recommend both of them to any football fan - and anyone who needs ammunition when arguing that yes, football is important. Essentially, thanks to Kuper and Wilson, I now like to think I can scoff confidently, and rightly, when someone assures me that it's "just a game".
These two books have astounding, jaw-dropping stories on almost every page, and a way of distilling these into a more accessible format really appealed to me - and the assorted football fans I described it to. As such this blog is going to act as a form of research and a test run for the project, I think. I'm going to try to update the blog at least once a week, each time with another fascinating, mysterious football team from, like, around the world.
3. Football is a diary
I've started little emo-ish blogs before as attempts at keeping a diary. I do and see a lot of stuff that I want to record but it either doesn't stick or I just can't be bothered writing about it. Football, I've realised, is the perfect thing to anchor my memories to - mainly because they just seem to do that anyway, but also because it operates on it's own handy cyclical calendar, and is fastidiously recorded by statisticians and far more obsessed individuals than I.
For example, my girlfriend and I take our anniversary from our first proper date. She doesn't remember exactly when this is, but I do: Sunday June 29th 2008. How do I know? Because it was the Euro 2008 final, and i totally wasn't watching Spain beat Germany over her shoulder in the pub we met in. This might seem sad to some people, but, hey, it works for me. As Harry Hill says, you've got to have a system, haven't you?
So that's the blog idea, basically. I hope people want to read it, but don't really mind if they don't. I don't have a lot of close friends that are big football fans (most of them downright loathe it) so it's nice to have somewhere to vent my ideas and observations on the ridiculous, absurd, beautiful, heartbreaking, stressful and, above all, important "game" that lots of us quite like. I'm not going to say who I support yet because if you're reading this a) you might well know and b) you might not like me any more.
Cheers!
Mat
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