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I grew up a Milan FC fan, till Mr.Berlusconi started using the team for political reasons. Since then I have had no favourite team, except perhaps for Wimbledon AF. Now, however, I've made up my mind that any team that is hated by vicious Jew-bashers and neo-Nazis is good enough for me.
Refereeing
Jun. 27th, 2010 09:31 pmSo far, THREE goals at least have been wrongly awarded - scandalously so - in the view of billions of spectators. This is getting beyond a joke. Unless that crass bastard Sepp Blatter starts acting as though this were the 21st century and technology is in common use, the image of soccer will be damaged. And it is by a long chalk not the first time that the image of refereeing is threatened by bizarre decesions at these levels.
the basic failure of the 2010 World Cup
Jun. 26th, 2010 05:14 pmI don't suppose anyone is seriously willing to argue that giving South Africa the opportunity to organize a World Cup was not a political decision - much like giving it to the United States back in 1994 or to Japan and South Korea in 2002. You may call it a piece of Political Correctness; you may, if you are more benevolent - and I am, in this case - call it an investment in the future of soccer in a continent where it is spreading like wildfire and has produced remarkable players and good teams for a quarter-century now. (Anyone remember Roger Milla and his magnificent Camerun side? Or George Weah? Or the excellent Nigerian side of the same period?)
However, the gamble has been a failure in the only way that matters, and may actually do harm to soccer in South Africa at least. One just has to look at the half-empty stadia for any game that does not involve South Africa to see that it has completely failed in attracting the visitors the country wanted, and that there are not enough soccer fans there to make the difference. To see rows of empty seats in games featuring Brazil is really beyond belief. This means that the expected ticket revenue will not materialize, and that South African football may end up out of pocket. I don't know how the finances add up, but by all accounts South Africa is in no condition to afford a money-losing international event in this time of economic crisis.
The facts are quite simple. From the moment it was decided that the 2010 World Cup should take place in Africa, only two countries were ever in the running: Egypt and South Africa. No other country in the continent could even pretend to have the organization, the number of stadia, and the infrastructure, to run the world's largest show apart from the Olympics. And even disregarding the small matter of terrorism, one would have to be quite insane to stage a football competition in Egypt in the summer; the USA were hot enough in 1994, when most teams suffered from heat exhaustion. At least South Africa would stage it in the austral winter, as soccer is meant to be played - in cold wind, occasionally in the rain, running up and down for ninety minutes.
But there is one thing that Sepp Blatter and FIFA had not thought of. South Africa is indeed a famously beautiful country, an ideal tourist destination, and would be a good place to stage a sports contest - except for one thing: it is the restaurant at the end of the universe. Almost literally. It is harder and more expensive to get there than almost anywhere in the world. It is not even very close to the Latin American heartlands of the game, Brazil, Argentina and neighbouring countries; as for soccer's other chief markets, Europe, Asia, North and Central America, it is literally at the other end of the world. Even the heartands of soccer in Africa - which means essentially West Africa and the Arab countries - are not much closer. It is probably easier to travel from Nigeria or Cameroon - let alone Egypt or Algeria - to Europe than to South Africa. Besides, the income of most African football fans places a journey to Johannesburg or Capetown well beyond their means; they could never replace missing European, Asian or American visitors. It is the kind of place where most people go once in their lifetimes, when they have saved enough. Staying there for weeks to watch a long competition is not even on the radar of the average football fan.
Sepp Blatter, a man I detest for many reasons, was quite right in seeing Africa - as he had previously seen North America and East Asia - as a field of natural growth for the game, to be cultivated and encouraged. But to give South Africa the World Cup was a step too far. From now on, keep it in places where the greatest players in the world won't have to play to half-empty stadia.
However, the gamble has been a failure in the only way that matters, and may actually do harm to soccer in South Africa at least. One just has to look at the half-empty stadia for any game that does not involve South Africa to see that it has completely failed in attracting the visitors the country wanted, and that there are not enough soccer fans there to make the difference. To see rows of empty seats in games featuring Brazil is really beyond belief. This means that the expected ticket revenue will not materialize, and that South African football may end up out of pocket. I don't know how the finances add up, but by all accounts South Africa is in no condition to afford a money-losing international event in this time of economic crisis.
The facts are quite simple. From the moment it was decided that the 2010 World Cup should take place in Africa, only two countries were ever in the running: Egypt and South Africa. No other country in the continent could even pretend to have the organization, the number of stadia, and the infrastructure, to run the world's largest show apart from the Olympics. And even disregarding the small matter of terrorism, one would have to be quite insane to stage a football competition in Egypt in the summer; the USA were hot enough in 1994, when most teams suffered from heat exhaustion. At least South Africa would stage it in the austral winter, as soccer is meant to be played - in cold wind, occasionally in the rain, running up and down for ninety minutes.
But there is one thing that Sepp Blatter and FIFA had not thought of. South Africa is indeed a famously beautiful country, an ideal tourist destination, and would be a good place to stage a sports contest - except for one thing: it is the restaurant at the end of the universe. Almost literally. It is harder and more expensive to get there than almost anywhere in the world. It is not even very close to the Latin American heartlands of the game, Brazil, Argentina and neighbouring countries; as for soccer's other chief markets, Europe, Asia, North and Central America, it is literally at the other end of the world. Even the heartands of soccer in Africa - which means essentially West Africa and the Arab countries - are not much closer. It is probably easier to travel from Nigeria or Cameroon - let alone Egypt or Algeria - to Europe than to South Africa. Besides, the income of most African football fans places a journey to Johannesburg or Capetown well beyond their means; they could never replace missing European, Asian or American visitors. It is the kind of place where most people go once in their lifetimes, when they have saved enough. Staying there for weeks to watch a long competition is not even on the radar of the average football fan.
Sepp Blatter, a man I detest for many reasons, was quite right in seeing Africa - as he had previously seen North America and East Asia - as a field of natural growth for the game, to be cultivated and encouraged. But to give South Africa the World Cup was a step too far. From now on, keep it in places where the greatest players in the world won't have to play to half-empty stadia.
I had expected it, as you may remember, but it still makes me sick. The Slovaks put in so many kicks and shoves - each carefully weighed not to place the player in danger of being carded - that the Italians were soon physically shrinking from contact. They tried to make up for it by superior passing, keeping the ball away from the opponents and in constant movement, but in the end, given the constant Slovak pressure, that was not enough. It was not a great game, in spite of the four goals, and not what one would like to see in football. It has always been said that one of the reasons why Association Football is so universally popular is that any physical type can play it, but this sort of thing makes you doubt it. Other sports, beginning with tennis, have been ruined by the prevalence of enormous and hugely muscled players; tennis at present ought to be played with weight categories, like boxing. I don't want soccer to head in that direction.
The funny thing is that probably the best way to neutralize brutal playing of the Slovak kind lies in the bad, old, negative catenaccio strategy of sixties Italian teams, that journalists hated so much. Hammer them early on, score a goal or two, and then shut down in a choking defensive phalanx, with ten players behind the ball and the striker having a relaxing time alone in mid-field. In 1973, Rivera's Milan met the ultimate butcher team, Leeds United as it was then, in the final of the Cupwinners' Cup in Thessaloniki, scored at the sixth minute and then defended ferociously for the remaining eighty-four and let Billy Bremner and his fellow SS rejects fuming at the unmanliness of it all. Unfortunately, Italians have taken the criticism of foreign journalists seriously and would now no longer be able to produce a really murderous catenaccio, which, let us remember, was a style of play designed to equalize the chances between the small and sometimes downright starved products of Italy's lean postwar period (Gianni Rivera, the greatest player Italy ever produced and the closest thing the game ever had to pure genius, was a positive weed with no stamina whatever, who really committed himself only twenty minutes per game) against beefy and brutal characters from places like Germany or Leeds. And, yes, Slovakia.
The funny thing is that probably the best way to neutralize brutal playing of the Slovak kind lies in the bad, old, negative catenaccio strategy of sixties Italian teams, that journalists hated so much. Hammer them early on, score a goal or two, and then shut down in a choking defensive phalanx, with ten players behind the ball and the striker having a relaxing time alone in mid-field. In 1973, Rivera's Milan met the ultimate butcher team, Leeds United as it was then, in the final of the Cupwinners' Cup in Thessaloniki, scored at the sixth minute and then defended ferociously for the remaining eighty-four and let Billy Bremner and his fellow SS rejects fuming at the unmanliness of it all. Unfortunately, Italians have taken the criticism of foreign journalists seriously and would now no longer be able to produce a really murderous catenaccio, which, let us remember, was a style of play designed to equalize the chances between the small and sometimes downright starved products of Italy's lean postwar period (Gianni Rivera, the greatest player Italy ever produced and the closest thing the game ever had to pure genius, was a positive weed with no stamina whatever, who really committed himself only twenty minutes per game) against beefy and brutal characters from places like Germany or Leeds. And, yes, Slovakia.
As everyone knows, Freemasonry is the target of all kinds of conspiracy theories. Some may even be true - Freemasonry certainly played a major part in the unification of Italy and in the American Revolution. But perhaps the most influential thing Freemasonry ever did was the series of meetings at their central London building - known at the time as the Freemasons' Tavern - in 1863, which established the rules and set up the first national association for Association Football.
Otherwise known as soccer.
Otherwise known as soccer.
Turkey - Czech Republic 3-2
Jun. 15th, 2008 09:42 pmIf anyone wants to know why so many people love soccer, this game has a lot of the reasons. Unless, of course, you happen to be Czech. In-bloody-credible.
Great God in Heaven!
Apr. 22nd, 2008 09:36 pmOn the ninety-fourth minute of play, a Liverpool defender has been hustled by Chelsea's Nicholas Anelka into placing the ball in his own net. Chelsea being away, the goal could be worth double if the next match ends in a tied score. ON THE NINETY-FOURTH MINUTE! THE LAST MINUTE OF PLAY!! I swear I cannot remember the last time I saw anything like this.
The first thing the BBC commentator said of Italy (three times world champion and so on) is that we "bought referees - allegedly."
Subhuman scum.
If you want to see why I am furious, check out what happened to Italy in 2002. Then, in case you had any doubts who bought the refs and for what reason, check what happened to Spain in the same tourneament.
Subhuman scum.
If you want to see why I am furious, check out what happened to Italy in 2002. Then, in case you had any doubts who bought the refs and for what reason, check what happened to Spain in the same tourneament.
Within a few days, and only a few weeks before the World Cup, two legendary former Italian soccer players have been arrested for serious criminal offences and the leading club has been caught cold manipulating refereeing to its own advantage. First, phone taps proved practically beyond doubt that management of Juventus, Italy's most successful club (owned by the Agnelli family, who also own FIAT) had connived with footballing authorities to fix the assignment of particular referees to particular matches, presumably for the purpose of obtaining the right results. Then, the legendary Welsh-born striker Giorgio Chinaglia, who won Lazio's only national title in 1972-73 and is still beloved by all the white-and-blue half of Rome (Lazio and Roma are Rome's two football teams, and obviously the city is split down the middle about them), was charged with fencing stolen goods (in practice, laundering dirty money) for the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. (I now find that he was already being investigated for market rigging and insider trading on the Italian stock exchange.) And today Michele Padovano, a recent former player who had won several titles with - guess who - Juventus, was arrested along with 32 other people and charged with being a member of a gang smuggling hashish from Morocco. And this was not due to any kind of personal need or distress: as he was arrested, he was employed as director of sport for Alessandria, a respected second-division football club. I said long ago that Italian football was corrupt to the bone and that the best thing might be to let it go bankrupt. Now tell me I am wrong.
