tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60718303955768961102024-03-18T09:47:52.168+00:00Magic SpongersMagic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.comBlogger318125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-39008058816237007912020-12-15T01:21:00.008+00:002021-01-24T16:26:41.735+00:00From the Jaws of Victory II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJkdZgrgdsECODh-zo1_W9xPY3xx-TuOVr5FU3IVX2dNYXO3g5UTgP5xbyT4brMlrz8VBp-yuSBjlLO4bJr0N5pyjDu-DgmdODBVKeWUgua6N82O8CNJoQj1yP00P2mJ-hGQ7RqUTZLc/s1280/Barry+Davies.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxJkdZgrgdsECODh-zo1_W9xPY3xx-TuOVr5FU3IVX2dNYXO3g5UTgP5xbyT4brMlrz8VBp-yuSBjlLO4bJr0N5pyjDu-DgmdODBVKeWUgua6N82O8CNJoQj1yP00P2mJ-hGQ7RqUTZLc/s320/Barry+Davies.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">Just Barry Davies there, reading our book ...</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">We're beyond excited to announce the launch of 'From the Jaws of Victory', our new book about football's glorious nearly men. It is available to buy <a href="https://halcyonpublishing.co.uk/collections/frontpage/products/from-the-jaws-of-victory">direct from us, here.</a></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">The book wouldn't be what it is without the phenomenal team of writers that have contributed to it - and before our pre-order period we'll be listing them here so you can get a taste of what's on offer. Here's Part 2!<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Stuart Fuller - West Ham United (1985-86)<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /></span></p><div style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"West Ham manager John Lyall had been in charge for nearly a decade and his zenith had been and gone. After the FA Cup win against Arsenal in 1980 and then building on that team to waltz through the 1980-81 Second Division, taking Liverpool to a replay in the League Cup final and reaching the quarter-finals of the European Cup-Winners Cup, the club hadn’t invested in the squad and the good times had departed E13. Even the mild-mannered Trevor Brooking had had enough by the end of 1983-84 season and retired. It wasn’t the hope that killed me, it was the crushing reality that I’d seen West Ham’s golden period before I reached puberty. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"But then came the summer of 1985, when I fell in love with a blonde and a brunette, and never felt as happy in my life."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Daniel Storey - Nottingham Forest (1990-91)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"The FA Cup was the one domestic trophy that Clough never lifted and so desperately wanted to win. Until 1988, he had never even reached the semi-finals, an odd flaw on his CV given the prodigious cup record in his first half-decade at the City Ground. For six straight seasons from 1981, Forest never progressed beyond the fifth round of either domestic cup competition. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"But in 1988, Forest began to re-emerge as a cup team. They won consecutive League Cups in 1989 and 1990 and the Full Members’ Cup too. They reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 1988 and 1989, losing to old rivals Liverpool both times, the second an incredibly emotional affair at Old Trafford three weeks after the Hillsborough disaster. Finishing third in the First Division in both seasons, Clough had somehow manufactured a second era of Nottingham Forest wonder after several years of comparative mid-table mediocrity. The final dream came into focus: prepare to chalk off that last remaining domestic honour at Wembley."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Richard Hall - Yugoslavia (1992-94)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"But events outwith their control were overtaking Osim’s men. In June 1991, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence from Yugoslavia. As a consequence, the team completed qualification without Slovenian Katanec, and Croats Prosinečki, Boban, Jarni and Šuker. They would never play for Yugoslavia again. </span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"Three clean sheets and 11 goals in their last three matches saw Osim’s depleted team top the group, with Darko Pančev outscoring the rest of Europe with ten goals in qualification and the Danes booking their summer holiday on the beach. Or so they thought."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">John Brewin - Manchester United (1993-98)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"At a time when European football was, as Ian Rush once had it, “like a foreign country”, with only Channel 4’s Serie A coverage and issues of <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">World Soccer</em> providing much of a window to anyone who did not have a satellite dish, the newly-forged Champions League was saturated with glamour and difficulty. Attending European nights at Old Trafford, where the crowd stood all the way through matches — very much against the advice of Trafford Borough Council — and watching players like Romario, Zinedine Zidane and Alessandro Del Piero skate across the turf remained exotic and other-worldly."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Emanuel Roș</span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">u - Romania (1994)</span></span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"Historically, Romanians had been waiting for the USA to help set the country free ever since the communists came to power after World War II. There was the hope of freedom every time a ‘suspicious’ plane was seen flying over the cities of Romania. Every army plane could have been an American one, part of an armed operation to take the communists out. The Americans were eagerly awaited in Romania for 45 years, but they never came. Instead, a bloody revolution that officially cut short the lives of 1,104 people was what changed history. But although America never came to the rescue, Romania didn’t stop dreaming about it."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Daniel Gray - Newcastle United (1995-96)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"In one of those combinations that could only happen during the Premier League’s mid-1990s sweet spot of homespun heart and continental innovation, Paul Wilkinson, Nick Barmby and Juninho had Newcastle pinned back. Then Tino rose from the dugout and sauntered up and down the touchline a few times, in a bench coat the size of a factory chimney. The black and white thousands in the away end roared once as he ran, and again when Keegan invited him to remove his abundant jacket.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"In the 67th minute, Asprilla made the sign of the cross with a gloved hand and entered the bitter fray. Geordies hollered their delight. Teessiders jeered nervously and sang for Juninho. It was an unlikely setting for such Latin American rivalry."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Michael Gibbons - England (1996)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"It was a long old haul. With no qualifiers to contest, England ploughed through over two years of friendlies, mostly at a deserted Wembley Stadium against opposition with little more ambition than expending as little energy as possible to secure a stalemate. Venables workshopped a variety of formations and trawled the Premier League for players to suit what he needed. Forty-seven players were used in 18 internationals, 27 of them debutants. Results were in binary combinations, and one of the rare forays away from Wembley was a disaster; England’s match with the Republic of Ireland in February 1995 was abandoned after 27 minutes when the neo-Nazi group, Combat 18, rioted, ripping up parts of the Lansdowne Road stadium and using them as projectiles aimed at the Irish fans. It was a stomach-churning sight. Had it not happened so close to Euro ‘96, it may have seen the tournament taken off England."</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: inherit; font-weight: var(--font-weight-body--bolder);">Giancarlo Rinaldi - Fiorentina (1998-99)</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">"I think I bought a book that year as well, a history of the club, written by a local priest. Its title really should have warned me to pick another team but I was in too deep by then. It dubbed Fiorentina the ‘joy and despair’ of its followers — there was a lot more of the latter than the former in its pages, though.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">It would be the 1998-99 season that would really deliver both of those in spades. A bittersweet cavalcade of emotions that, to this day, still makes me both smile and almost weep in nostalgic reminiscence. There was something so special within touching distance, that you could almost feel the significance grow with every passing week. Even the most cynical <em style="box-sizing: border-box;">tifoso</em> began to believe that the lengthy wait for the Scudetto — as the Serie A crown is known — might be ending.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><img alt="" src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" /></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px 0px 19.4444px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">You can check out more of our brilliant contributors (and us) in <a href="https://halcyonpublishing.co.uk/blogs/from-the-jaws-of-victory/contributors1" style="border-bottom-color: currentcolor; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom: 1px solid currentcolor; box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 1px; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" title="From the Jaws of Victory contributors, Part 1">Part 1</a>. Part 3 is coming soon.</span></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; color: var(--color-body-text); margin: 0px;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: inherit;">In the meantime, if you want to know any more, drop us a tweet <a aria-describedby="a11y-new-window-external-message" href="https://twitter.com/magicspongers" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="border-bottom-color: currentcolor; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-bottom: 1px solid currentcolor; box-sizing: border-box; padding-bottom: 1px; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;" target="_blank" title="Link to Magic Spongers on Twitter">@magicspongers</a> (long story). We'd love to hear from you.</span></p></div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-74445235013123986112020-11-26T10:25:00.004+00:002020-11-26T10:25:55.190+00:00From the Jaws of Victory I<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF9jnu4iQeORDC0TUVTAvmwFfvCNzFaaFKztbGXgC84YXAd9LoMvgx9cW9BDiDF0S3V7D5ogwF7E7cLxnIS-SvxMhbTnY4E78EmcRYC_vafBsfC3ZYVHnO-_6ng7FRHr8B9MrEPck4pE/s1280/From+the+Jaws+of+Victor+fig+1.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="1280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF9jnu4iQeORDC0TUVTAvmwFfvCNzFaaFKztbGXgC84YXAd9LoMvgx9cW9BDiDF0S3V7D5ogwF7E7cLxnIS-SvxMhbTnY4E78EmcRYC_vafBsfC3ZYVHnO-_6ng7FRHr8B9MrEPck4pE/s320/From+the+Jaws+of+Victor+fig+1.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">"The best football anthology since Falling for Football" — Magic Spongers</div><br />In time-honoured fashion, it has only taken us six years, but we're beyond excited to announce the launch of 'From the Jaws of Victory', our new book about football's glorious nearly men.<br /><br />This book wouldn't be what it is without the phenomenal team of writers that have contributed to it - and before our pre-order period we'll be listing them here so you can get a taste of what's on offer. Here's Part 1!<span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br />Scott Murray - Bolton Wanderers (1953)<br /><br />"The goal put the Trotters 3-1 up, and their star striker Nat Lofthouse, the newly-crowned footballer of the year, allowed himself to start dreaming. “The cup’s in our hands!” he told himself. Matthews, 38 years of age, several pints necked at the last-chance saloon, tired and emotional with the bell long rung and the landlord getting increasingly impatient, contemplated his journey into the long, dark night: the greatest English player ever to pull on boots appeared destined to end an otherwise storied career without tangible reward."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />John Ashdown - Hungary (1954)<br /><br />"No team before or since has held a two-goal advantage in a World Cup final and failed to lift the trophy. No team before or since has entered a World Cup final on the back of a 30-game unbeaten streak. No team before or since has ever faced, in a World Cup final, a team they had already battered 8-3 in the group stage. But then no team before or since was ever quite like Hungary’s Aranycsapat, the Golden Squad, the Magical Magyars."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Andi Thomas - Wales (1958)<br /><br />"Looking back at World Cups, you see ‘Brazil won’ quite a lot. You don’t see ‘Wales didn’t’ all that often, even though Wales have failed to win many more World Cups than Brazil have won: 21 and counting. A 100% 0% record. The dragon prances under starless skies. <br /><br />"Twenty of those tournaments came and went with Wales gone in qualifying, a melancholy litany of inadequacy, injustice and penalties sent over the bar into nothingness. All smaller footballing nations have their own version of this story, of course; there are Paul Bodins of Syria, of Finland and Venezuela. But not all of them have a 1958."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Patrick Barclay - Dundee (1961-63)<br /><br />"Dundee had enjoyed great days before. I’d learned about them at the knee of a grandfather who often mentioned the Scottish Cup triumph over Clyde. The winning goal was scored by John ‘Sailor’ Hunter. This was in 1910, two years before the Titanic went down and four before the outbreak of the First World War. My grandfather would have been about ten when the team rode gloriously home to the city of jute — in which industry he was to make his living — and jam and journalism and I was roughly the same age when he agreed to take me to a match at Dens in the mid-1950s."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Rob MacDonald - Scotland (1964-68)<br /><br />"On a spring Saturday afternoon in London, Scotland led from the 28th minute. Law bundled the ball in from a few yards and, in contrast to Baxter’s detached grace, tore into England throughout. Not that anyone was surprised, even among the opposition — Law’s Manchester United team-mate Nobby Stiles later reflected: “I knew the Scots were taking it very seriously when Denis came on to the pitch wearing shinpads. I had never seen him wear them before.”"<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Daniel Chapman - Leeds United (1967-70)<br /><br />"When the time was right, Giles flicked the ball sideways, and when Lorimer hammered it, Peter Bonetti had no chance of keeping a sensational equaliser out of his top corner. And Leeds had nowhere to turn when referee Burns refused to let the goal stand.<br /><br />"He said Chelsea’s wall had not been ten yards back. The Leeds players crowded him and jostled him and lost their minds. Eventually they took the kick again as if trapped in a nightmare, and as soon as the ball was cleared, they were sunk into reality by the referee’s final whistle. They fell to the grass, Don Revie felt numb, Tommy Docherty would have been very sick if it happened to him. But it didn’t happen to him. It happened to Leeds United."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Adam Bushby - Netherlands (1974)<br /><br />"There were two-footed tackles. Off-the-ball smitings. Rugby tackles. Punches were exchanged. Indeed, Neeskens was knocked out cold by the elbow of Marinho Peres, who would become his teammate at Barcelona after the tournament.<br /><br />"But amid the cynicism, there was also splendour. Neeskens beautifully floated Cruyff’s perfect centre over Emerson Leao shortly after half-time then Cruyff’s controlled flying volley made it 2-0 and Brazil’s fate was sealed. Luis Pereira saw red in the dying minutes for a vicious hack on Neeskens, but by this point, the jig had long been up."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />Rob Langham - Brazil (1982)<br /><br />"It’s often said that South American teams of the era were all the more beguiling because they were so unfamiliar. The Brazil squad contained only three Europe-based players in Edinho, Falcao and Dirceu, all playing in Italy, while the majority of the squad were holed up in the customary pre-tournament training camp of extended duration, away from prying eyes.<br /><br />"In reality though, the Seleção were already on the radar. A whistle-stop tour in May 1981 had seen the Brazilians emerge with three away wins from a fierce schedule against West Germany, France and England; Eder’s dipping and swerving shot against the crossbar and Zico’s goal were indelible memories from the game at Wembley, a glimpse of fantasy on a par with the visit of a youthful Diego Maradona in Argentinian colours to London a year before."<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><img src="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0492/7615/8101/files/Screenshot_2020-10-27_at_17.25.05_50x50.png?v=1603820182" /></div><br />We'll be back for Parts 2 and 3 in the next few days.<br /><br />In the meantime, if you want to know any more, drop us a tweet <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">@magicspongers</a>. We'd love to hear from you.</div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-82687488197757938852020-10-10T21:35:00.002+01:002020-11-26T10:18:57.110+00:00Match of the Data<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2O0vuVEfVD3yWNKWQHGp0HBP9knyVDhpxEHYFGTDBFeP4c8MrtT60Bky7zh-z7QNqKrfMgs8gUgf6qnLl-w3ZQzJjiCEIRKhQYocM8gLQ5XbgDqEeW11Fyj6YtDZHeeUDm1yKNGKfyus/s930/VAR-big-screen-Man-City-cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="620" data-original-width="930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2O0vuVEfVD3yWNKWQHGp0HBP9knyVDhpxEHYFGTDBFeP4c8MrtT60Bky7zh-z7QNqKrfMgs8gUgf6qnLl-w3ZQzJjiCEIRKhQYocM8gLQ5XbgDqEeW11Fyj6YtDZHeeUDm1yKNGKfyus/s320/VAR-big-screen-Man-City-cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">The best thing that ever happened to football </div><div><br /></div><div><i>A strategy memo definitely not found on the printer at Premier League HQ (because no one works in offices anymore or prints things out). But, if they did happen to have a Zoom call that they forgot to put the security settings on, what follows is a purely fictional account of a purely fictional presentation to a blue-sky thinking session by consultant Stu Richermore that might have been overheard by our crack investigative reporter Doug Out [is that good enough for the lawyers? - ed] … </i></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Richermore:
“Football without fans is nothing,” they keep saying, or some Scottish bloke did anyway. Can we get United to take that banner down by the way? It’s not really the message we’re after and the Glazer guys seem to be doing okay and they never go anywhere near the ground. </div><div><br /></div><div>But is it nothing? Is it really? Fans might not be allowed in stadiums but 3.9 million people watched Crystal Palace beat Bournemouth in Britain* alone and that was a truly terrible game. The product is as popular as ever, more so in fact. No one’s got anything else to do these days. And we didn’t even have to have a close season this year so, of course it goes without saying that no one would have chosen for it to happen this way, but we’ve actually made really good progress on our goal of getting 99% global saturation coverage (remember it’s not 100 because we promised they could have a winter break in exchange for that Christmas Day fixture on Back of the Netflix, or is it Sportify? – first three weeks free if you sign up for life anyway).</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, fans in stadiums, look, let’s face it, having to host 50,000 angry middle-aged blokes was becoming a bit of an unnecessary hassle anyway. The tight bastards are mostly there just to drink in the local pubs, which we don’t even profit from and use the kind of language we keep having to apologise for on air. We’re getting pretty good at that crowd noise technology now too, they even got the goal celebration sounds in for the first three seconds after a shot hit the side netting the other night.
</div><div><br /></div><div>And think how much happier must David Gold be now that he can watch West Ham in peace, and it’s not as if he needs the gate receipts to pay the rent. And how much money could Spurs have saved if they’d just stayed at Wembley rather than spending all that cash on cheese rooms and gravity-defying beer pumps? Which got me thinking, now that fans are out of the way, what else could we just as well do without?
</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Grounds? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>What’s the point really? No need for those anymore. Let’s just have a game 39 every week and take this show on the road! Think what it will do for shirt sales in Saudi Arabia and TV rights in Turkmenistan. Visit Rwanda is says on the Arsenal sleeves. What better way to leverage that key stakeholder relationship than playing a couple of Carabao Cup games there, the two legged semi-finals have just been scrapped anyway, so there’s no need to worry about who has home advantage. Emerging markets and, er, let’s call them developing democracies, will be desperate to bid for the right to host us, it's a whole new market we can manufacture. In fact the air-conditioned superdomes in Qatar could be just the place to house the Premier League permanently if we wanted, it’s got great tax advantages and really flexible labour regulations too.
</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Clubs?</b></div><div><br /></div><div> Look, I know that there’s the best part of 150 years of history here but why not take this reset opportunity to reformat the league around a few key franchises. Brands that don’t need to be held back by ties to post-industrial towns in northern England. It’s really only a natural extension of where we are already for City to become Etihad FC or Newcastle to be ‘your name goes here’ United. Who’s ever heard of Sheffield anyway, apart from snooker fans (actually snooker’s quite big in China now isn’t it? So scrap that last bit, in fact maybe there’s even an opportunity there, think of the market reach they could have if they weren’t called bloody Wednesday!) </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Managers? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Well it turns out they don’t even need to be in the grounds (in fact, West Ham starting playing better when Moyes wasn’t there, funny that), so you have to wonder what they really do anyway. Team selections? Sponsored Twitter polls can sort those. Training? Ah come on, for a hundred grand a week they should be able to take a flipping corner. Signings? Don’t be silly, we’ve got a scouting database and prime-time TV talent competitions for that. The fans care more about the transfer gossip and the announcement video than what they do on the pitch anyway. Team talks? Have you seen All or Nothing? How hard can it be? In fact, the tunnel club experience could be seriously enhanced if our corporate entertainment guests (not fans, obviously, they’re still banned) could bid to give the pre-match dressing room speech and the half-time bollocking.
</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Half time?</b></div><div><br /></div><div> Who only has two halves these days? Punters want to see storylines unfold over at least eight episodes. The drinks breaks were a good start but I can't help thinking we could go a bit further. Is it eight episodes per match? Sixteen with a mid-season break? Four games per screen? Two balls on the pitch? Let's not limit ourselves in our thinking here.
</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Balls? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Bobby Robson used to do a training drill where they practiced without balls and just ran around a lot until he was happy they were all running in the right positions. Apparently, it didn’t go down too well at Barcelona. But maybe he was just ahead of his time. Look at how excited everyone gets about Bielsa and Wilder and their obsession with shape. The ball isn’t anything to do with that. Just think about it, we can transform the whole brand down to one syllable like we’ve always wanted to. "Foot". The graphics guys could do loads with that.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Feet?</b></div><div><br /></div><div> Actually, why even keep the foot element? “Ball” would be much more exciting. We might need to rethink that new handball rule though.
</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Matches? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>Yeah I know what you’re thinking, but hear me out. More people play fantasy football than actually watch football these days. It’s not the actual matches they want but the goals, assists, clean sheets and those bonus points that no one really understands. It’s just data. There’s got to be an algorithm that can just do that for us right? Then you just display the stats being produced in real time, but the beauty of it is that you still need five different pay TV subscriptions to watch every data stream live, sponsored, obvs, or you can just watch Matt Le Tissier watching it and trying and explain it to you at the same time (although there’ll be no ban on showing the actual data at 3 o’clock on a Saturday because there’ll be no other matches on anywhere anyway). Those statto nerd fans can pay for premium content like XG and heat maps and all that and do their podcasts about those, and the BBC will still pay decent money for a highlights package of content everyone’s already seen, analysed and argued over on Twitter. They could call it Match of the Data, or be a bit off the wall and use a couple of comedians and call it Fantasy Football League or something. The hipsters will probably prefer the German version but they’ll still want to watch our data against the German data in the European Super Data League, so we’ll take money off them that way anyway. £14.95 a pop should do it.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Players? </b></div><div><br /></div><div>I mean yes and no. We need players, obviously, it is still football. But not players per se. Humans are just cost and it’s only data and content we need to provide remember. Look at the popularity of e-sports. You can just create your own avatars on them now. It could save us a fortune on wages. We would own all the image rights to them too. And the PR would be a breeze, avatars can’t campaign against the government on free school meals or invite girls over to their hotel rooms while they’re away on England duty, or scream in the face of refs.
</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>Refs?</b></div><div><br /></div><div> Refs? Nah come on, some things are sacrosanct surely, you could never do away with those, the technology is just never going to work is it?
</div><div><br /></div><div>*(it’s a small country about halfway between China and the States, about 0.5% of our audience share, used to be quite useful for access to European markets, but it’s less strategically important now that most of its major assets are held overseas anyway).
</div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-62021739007125200792020-07-13T14:24:00.006+01:002020-07-13T15:15:10.134+01:00FFP FFS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVe2N-70VfdUYV_-PqZKDUhJ959v7r5Bhn3-G_4U4UD2M9m9mZV4XdrGUef_DzZz4UrYMYyOWsvh-MhbKu17uEm5i9MCucTVg75Kj-pRb2Q714FcClSk8GwCd_DfEA6UvUNruiexxeY4/s1400/2785168-57487370-2560-1440.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="787" data-original-width="1400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguVe2N-70VfdUYV_-PqZKDUhJ959v7r5Bhn3-G_4U4UD2M9m9mZV4XdrGUef_DzZz4UrYMYyOWsvh-MhbKu17uEm5i9MCucTVg75Kj-pRb2Q714FcClSk8GwCd_DfEA6UvUNruiexxeY4/s320/2785168-57487370-2560-1440.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">"Go on then. One extra year."</div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "times new roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p>The verdict is in. File away Financial Fair Play (FFP) with the 'Fit and Proper Person' test. As Manchester City's two-season European ban was rescinded by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland, the big dead albatross that had been hanging over City’s head for a year was chucked into the sea in return for €10m-worth of pocket change. Ergo de Bruyne and Sterling stay, and financial spiral is avoided. As you were. New money 1-0 UEFA <b>*fake crowd noises*</b>. It’ll make for a fun summer at least. <span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><div><br /></div><div>UEFA has claimed that FFP was implemented to prevent big clubs having a significant financial advantage over smaller clubs through financial doping. However, it must be borne in mind that the overarching aim of FFP was never to stop clubs doing a City. It was to stop clubs doing a Leeds. Hence, we find ourselves in a situation where the penalty for spaffing money illegally (insofar as the laws of the game determine) can be circumvented by simply appealing, having king of Lydia-level money to pay for the best legal team and then accepting a punishment of … a €10m fine. A €10m fine for a club that is spending loads of money? That’s akin to telling the local bully who is stealing other kids’ sweets to give the headmaster a packet of jelly babies, origin unquestioned. It misses the point SPECTACULARLY. And we are experts in that particular field so we should know.<br /><br />UEFA has pointed out that the CAS panel found many of the alleged breaches were 'time-barred' – that is they occurred before the five-year time-period stated in UEFA regulations. They were, however, found guilty of failing to assist the investigation. While undoubtedly a great result for City, total exoneration it is not. City said in a statement: “The club welcomes the implications of today’s ruling as a validation of the club’s position and the body of evidence that it was able to present.” Translation: the allegations were either not founded or were time-barred. <br /><br />“The club wishes to thank the panel members for their diligence and the due process that they administered.” This was a panel that judged City had shown a “disregard” for the principle that clubs must cooperate with a governing body’s investigations. Translation: Aubergine emoji next to the sweat droplets one and followed by a laughing face just for good measure.<br /><br />It is easy (and fun) to give UEFA a kicking but the story in German magazine Der Spiegel only broke in November 2018, despite relating to FFP infringements taking place in 2013. Sheikh Mansour was alleged to be mostly funding the £67.5m annual sponsorship of City’s shirt, stadium and academy by his country’s flag carrier, Etihad. City, for their part, repeatedly denounced Der Spiegel's reports as the product of a "clear and organised" attempt to tarnish their reputation. <br /><br />Oh and while we’re at it, here’s the breakdown of Champions League prize money: €15m for reaching the group stage, €9.5m for reaching the round of 16, €10.5m for reaching the quarter finals, €12m for reaching the semis, €15m for getting to the final and an extra €4m for winning the thing. UEFA has also committed to paying €2.7m for a win and €900k for a draw. So in layman’s terms, City are quids in by simple virtue of winning the court case as they’ll be up €5m just for the decision being overturned. Aubergine emoji. Sweat droplets emoji. Laughing face emoji.<br /><br />So what now of FFP? With both PSG and Man City overturning serious punishments in recent years, it is essentially dead in the water. In 2017, Arsene Wenger warned of its toothlessness. He acknowledged that big clubs had found a way to get around UEFA’s rules and despite lobbying for their inclusion for years, he bemoaned regulations that “cannot be respected”. And in the summer of 2017, PSG duly broke the world transfer record by bringing in Neymar for £198m from Barcelona and took Kylian Mbappe on a season-long loan from Monaco (splashing out a mere £166m on him the following year).<br /><br />All of this begs the question — what was FFP designed to do? And is football completely incapable of self-regulation? It certainly seems so – we are now in the shitty situation where at one end of the scale, human rights abusers can financially dope with abandon. At the other, Bury, Macclesfield and Wigan (all in the same catchment area as Manchester City) are going to the wall due to pound-shop versions of sheikhs and oil tycoons thinking that owning a UK football club is a great idea.<br /><br />The whole sorry episode reeks of, let’s say, a government special advisor retaining the full confidence of the prime minister after being found to have travelled to the north-east in breach of lockdown rules and, while there, checking his eyesight by driving 30 miles to a local beauty spot. Punishment being a) proportional and b) a deterrent to future law-breaking seems to be a fairly distant concept – remember when you had to resign as an MP if you so much as used taxpayer money to build a little moat round your garden for your ducks, or whatever the hell they were all playing at at the time? <br /><br />It's easy to ignore the 'rich getting richer' and dismiss it as something that doesn't really apply to those of us that are fortunate enough to have clubs, or lives, that remain untouched. But it's pretty hard to stomach – at the VERY least – when the little clubs get shafted and the biggies just carry on doing whatever the fuck they want.</div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-6259131118637264312020-06-24T16:02:00.005+01:002020-06-24T16:06:06.152+01:00LOUD NOISES<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh5mXziJJSMH7QBt9GvAqUZXYhOxwwuZaBapRHy0NQenU5egznA9yaRohycsMbwRjbqPbZj-JgJbO_8BxSuaFDyGgo6-ic7-rgcZxf_nyEovnuTBdweHd3VUtALeluUdRfzzszeZ4UrG8/s1400/1216514899.jpg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1400" data-original-width="1400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh5mXziJJSMH7QBt9GvAqUZXYhOxwwuZaBapRHy0NQenU5egznA9yaRohycsMbwRjbqPbZj-JgJbO_8BxSuaFDyGgo6-ic7-rgcZxf_nyEovnuTBdweHd3VUtALeluUdRfzzszeZ4UrG8/s320/1216514899.jpg.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Anxiously awaiting a throw-in</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>It didn’t take long for THAT to lose its sheen, did it? The Premier League came back with no one quite sure how to react to it and has continued with no one quite sure how to react to it. Broadcasters have gamely tried to analyse bits and pieces while the rest of us have gamely tried to sit through entire days during which not very much has actually happened, with the only swift resolution we were promised – Liverpool’s title coronation – also extended into an interminable timeline with no end, just like the rest of existence. Even Sartre would baulk at the level of anguish involved in watching Leicester v Brighton.<span><a name='more'></a></span>That the quality of football on show is a bit lacklustre isn’t really a surprise. That our response to it after a few days in a row is a fairly shruggable one, perhaps is. But it really does go to show just how weak the hype machine can be if it’s not backed up by all the correctly-timed loud noises, flashing lights and absolute meltdowns recorded on Twitter for all to see. <br /><br />As John Nicholson said in his Football 365 article on Monday: “This season just has to be voided from football’s body like an especially hard, compacted stool.” As we’ve written before, “if we wanted to only get a result after 90 minutes of straining and sweating and nothing actually happening then we’d stop eating fibre and try and have a poo. That’s the problem – the last couple of weeks have seen football become a horrible constipated mess”. That was about Euro 2016 but it is easily transferable to this first week of Premier League action. It’s not pleasant but it’s necessary. And it’s going to take a while so you’d better bring your phone. <br /><br />Undoubtedly it’s the quiet stadiums that have had the most profound effect on how both fans and players are experiencing matches. We are in no way suggesting that circumstances are dictating slightly less intense professionalism among employees who find themselves under slightly less intense scrutiny*, but the urgency brought about by an actual crowd calling you ‘fucking useless’ would be plenty exaggerated if they were in the ground, rather than shouting at you while sitting in their living rooms in just their pants, from where you cannot hear or, mercifully, see them. Besides, government guidance says you’re not allowed to shout or sing in public anyway.<br /><br />For spectators it’s equally difficult to engage without the social and aural cues that live broadcast of a crowd would normally provide, particularly as far as returning their attention to the TV screen from Twitter is concerned. The way it currently works is a layer of general audio from EA Sports/FIFA as a basis with a producer responsible for additional layers of sounds to give context (e.g. cheers, boos, a couple of (broadcast-friendly) chants… and that’s about it, going off what we’ve heard so far). And the thing is, if not much is happening in a game, you don’t have many avenues to liven it up, meaning people are getting more than a little bit bored. More and more boredom is to football’s detriment, obviously, so it’s high time to move the goalposts (not literally, but also literally, if that would help) and redefine football viewership so it sounds way more interesting.<br /><br />Being that producer, you have the opportunity to change how we perceive football in this country forever, which given the utterly mindless behaviour that goes on in and around football grounds at times would be an absolute godsend. <br /><br />Mike Dean had obviously read the Spongers manifesto for changing football (2016) when he rocked up with a BEARD to referee the Merseyside derby, especially as it duly proceeded with a goalless draw following plenty of running and tackling. If you’re not already privy to our plans to save football, it might be worth reading them first, but to summarise – beards, tackling, running, heading, 38% possession, more beards. <br /><br />Got it? Now, we suggest you strap yourselves in because if we ever get behind the sound desk at Sky or BT this is how we will be rescuing football FOR THE SECOND TIME.<br /><br />YOU’RE WELCOME.<br /><br />GOAL – give a shit lads. Does not play into the narrative at all. If anything, they are a distraction from throw-ins (see: THROW-INS). Any hint of a celebration and we’re going straight to the ‘howls of derision’ button. <br /><br />DRIBBLING, PASSING, BEING IN POSSESSION – now roundly booed. The ONLY thing you should be doing is getting rid and getting set (see: GETTING RID AND GETTING SET).<br /><br />CORNER – mild murmurings of concern as you could get caught on the break VERY EASILY and we absolutely do not want that. Leaving a few back to cover that by excessive tackling (see: TACKLING) is nevertheless met with the outbreak of a favourite broadcast-friendly chant, as voted for by the fans.<br /><br />THROW-INS – let’s just turn the audio bed up slightly, as there’s a fair chance you can get a big hoofed secession of possession out of this, which, unless a header is won (see: HEADER) could let to you getting rid and getting set (see: GETTING RID AND GETTING SET).<br /><br />TACKLING – the ‘Gawoon’ sound you normally get when your winger has skipped past someone and has a few free yards ahead of them. This could lead to a get rid and get set scenario (see: GETTING RID AND GETTING SET). If the tackle becomes a clearance into touch (see: CLEARANCE INTO TOUCH), we’re going to be throwing the sort of exhortation in that used to be reserved for injury-time corners, even though you’ve been noticeably failing to score from them for the previous 90 minutes.<br /><br />HEADER – As Samuel Johnson said, “when a man is tired of heading he is tired of life”. The staple of new world order football and one that will be treated with the hushed reverence it deserves, making up as it does 66% of all touches under the Spongers manifesto.<br /><br />GETTING RID AND GETTING SET – the emotional pinnacle. As soon as the ball is zero threat to the goal, go fucking nuts. The further away the better. It’s an absolute winner – if we can’t concede, we certainly can’t lose, and our beards, belief, passion, running and tackling can get ready to go again. And if that’s not worth celebrating then we don’t know what is.<br /><br />CLEARANCES INTO TOUCH – the absolute cerebral peak of the game, now to be met with the polite applause that used to be reserved for the ‘return to civilisation’, i.e. the pass from a midfield melee to a full-back in acres of spaces.<br /><br />Let’s just summarise our strategy: teams want to draw every game. 38pts, feet up, thank you very much. Two points a week should keep us safe and the way the game’s going would probably have us in Europe via 17th place given the amount of FFP bans, appeals, counter-bans and counter-appeals. You get a LOT more noise on your TV than you do now, which keeps it interesting (that’s SCIENCE) and no one has to worry about the ‘quality’ of football ever again because this is the English model and as we all know will be copied by other countries the world over just as soon as they realise how great it is which we will tell them loudly and slowly until they adopt it.<br /><br />Of course, we are mostly joking here (although it would be lovely to see every tackle greeted with an animalistic roar). Life is already all running, sweating and defending. And beards. Please football, don't go the same route.<br /><br />*We absolutely are, but only because a quick glance at our Twitter profile is really very fucking incriminatingMagic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-40945556405325204862020-06-19T12:21:00.000+01:002020-06-19T12:21:13.898+01:00THAT interview with Andrea Dossena<div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYTLnF_SUVLHAQQmbNlFZGA_aSU9qLkkROLkrcqJGTDk-7o0GmTBYe_naZT_xiA30jGUzj88MJE-OrFrhtg9jZa3q8J9ujE89v3IaV-pRvfrYUcM4t9lS5Lv7BYf1zs0rYoT9GPUAF4t4/s634/Dosser+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="634" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYTLnF_SUVLHAQQmbNlFZGA_aSU9qLkkROLkrcqJGTDk-7o0GmTBYe_naZT_xiA30jGUzj88MJE-OrFrhtg9jZa3q8J9ujE89v3IaV-pRvfrYUcM4t9lS5Lv7BYf1zs0rYoT9GPUAF4t4/s320/Dosser+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The greatest story never told</div><div><br /></div>When Andrea Dossena was a little boy growing up in Lodi, northern Italy, he would spend hours sat cross legged outside the cathedral on the historic Piazza della Vittoria, telling strangers how he would change the world one day, many miles away from where he now sat. <span><a name='more'></a></span>Of course, the strangers laughed at the claims of the little boy and told him to go to school. “Correre e cagare allo stesso tempo comporterà un disastro,” the young Andrea would snap back. ‘By running and shitting at the same time will result in a mess.’ <br /><br />The strangers grew tired of the boy’s insolence and started telling him in no uncertain terms that he was deluded. “Il cane che abbaia non morde,” the old man who sold rosaries outside the cathedral told him. ‘The dog that barks doesn’t bite.’ Quick as a flash, Andrea would shout: “Fatti i cazzi tuoi vecchi testicoli, ca campi cent’anni.” ‘Mind your own business old bollocks and you’ll live 100 years.’ Growing tired of being called ‘old bollocks’ by the young man, even the kindly rosary seller stopped talking to him. Andrea was often left alone with his thoughts.<br /><br />In July 2008, Dossena arrived at Anfield for £7m and a plan a lifetime in the making was beginning to come together. The first part was to make everyone think he was a bit shite. It was at this that he truly excelled, managing to look like a plumber who had won a competition to train with a Premier League side for the day. Shonky first touch. Average passing range. Mediocre at tackling. Making Paul Konchesky look good. Ok, maybe I got carried away there, but you get the general idea. He was just really quite shite all the time and, of course, he became a bit of a joke for being really quite shite.<br /><br />Speaking to The Guardian’s Neil Johnston in November 2008, Dossena explained his struggle to get up to speed: “I must now get to a high level and maintain that, but first I have to battle to win selection.” He added: “Eighteen months ago I would not have expected to be playing for one of the most famous clubs in the world.” <br /><br />But what the interviewer fails to mention is the twinkle in Dossena’s eye. And this is what a lot of people, nay, everyone (except me and Andrea Dossena) don’t appreciate; he was trying to look shite on PURPOSE. For a laugh. He told me as much when I travelled to Naples to talk to him, but I’ll get to that later. <br /><br />March 2009. You may remember it for China’s first lunar probe impacting the moon. I don’t. I remember it for a ludicrous five-day period when Liverpool beat Real Madrid 4-0 and Man United 4-1. But above and beyond this, I remember it for Andrea Dossena. <br /><br />For a week, he was the best player in the world. Real Madrid at Anfield. The 87th minute. One touch. Bang. “Pick that out Casillas”, he seemed to say. And here’s the thing. He had predicted this TWENTY years previously. On the steps of the cathedral on the Piazza della Vittoria. When he lobbed Edwin Van Der Sar in the 90thminute with a swish of that wand of a left foot, you can clearly see Dossena mouth to the camera “that one’s for you old bollocks”. I remember crying when he scored. Because Dossena had purposefully hoodwinked everyone into thinking he was absolutely shite when in fact he was the best player in the world and by some margin. He wore number two on his back at Liverpool did Dossena. He would score two goals. One against Real Madrid and one against Manchester United. I cried at the remarkable beauty of it. At its implausibility.<br /><br />June 2011. Naples. When I travelled to the Avvocato district to research this piece, everyone I met had something to say about Dossena. Most often, I would hear him described as a ‘visionario’. In a little coffee shop on the Piazza Dante, Professor Paolo Vittorio explained to me the impact of Dossena’s conscious choice to showcase his sublime skills for just 36 minutes, over two substitute appearances against two of the biggest clubs in the world. “Andrea knew from a very early age he was blessed with a God-given talent,” Vittorio told me in impeccable English. “But he was very modest. Too modest. Rather than play beautiful football week in, week out, he decided that the best thing he could do was to condense all of his skills into essentially what was a 36-minute cameo, spread over two matches.”<br /><br />When I finally met Dossena, at Napoli’s training ground, I was tense. Who wouldn’t be. I had been told by the Napoli press officer that I was to have no more than two minutes with the Italian and there was so much I wanted to ask him. When he arrived, Dossena was intense and enigmatic. He told me he still watched English football when he could and that he missed the atmosphere in the English grounds. He joked that he even missed being called a “shite, bald tosser”. But when I asked him about his premonition, his face hardened and he held me with a powerful gaze. <br /><br />“I’m from a large Catholic family. My mother and father, they worked very hard so that I could have football boots and kit. They worked from seven in the morning until eight at night. I respect them for their sacrifice. When my father saw the talent I had in my left foot, he told me that it would be wrong to humiliate the other players. He said I should let myself have one week where I show my talent but no more than this. This is why I chose the week we played Real Madrid and United. I had always known that March 2009 would be the time. To coincide with the first Chinese lunar probe landing on the moon.” With that, Dossena shook my hand and left. I knew I’d been in the presence of greatness. And the best part is, now that I can tell his story, maybe people will finally realise what a very special talent Andrea Dossena really was.<div><br /></div><div><i>This interview first appeared on the now defunct Surreal Football in 2011. There is no record of it anywhere.</i></div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-83240010846756430252020-06-18T15:45:00.001+01:002020-06-18T15:46:35.659+01:00Saturday at 3pm<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhWsC4Ye7hNrRVMG_Ig8ds6ZyKxsgIx-x7yeyW24QVqByvNYQS5Pz8Dtdqc2u1vb6QcWmzQADdegI9cZacZRgIki8d3IFsE6V2CEoceIznEQ1EGpsXszU2XUp_B-X5Z7nV54r8hcRQBdw/s1920/GettyImages-1172521900.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1201" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhWsC4Ye7hNrRVMG_Ig8ds6ZyKxsgIx-x7yeyW24QVqByvNYQS5Pz8Dtdqc2u1vb6QcWmzQADdegI9cZacZRgIki8d3IFsE6V2CEoceIznEQ1EGpsXszU2XUp_B-X5Z7nV54r8hcRQBdw/s320/GettyImages-1172521900.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Joyful chaos (despite how it looks)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">In many ways, normal services has resumed hasn’t it. A technology slip-up (our theory is that Michael Oliver didn’t have his watch set to vibrate), a fairly dour 0-0, a City (Kevin de Bruyne) masterclass and David Luiz playing as if controlled by a teenager wearing a headset, albeit a teenager wearing a headset that wasn’t plugged in to a console playing a game he or she had no idea how to play.<span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><o:p></o:p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">But a reassuring return, nonetheless, no matter what you make of piped-in crowd noises or relatively limited insight into what players and managers are ACTUALLY shouting at each other. Particularly reassuring for one half of Magic Spongers Adam Bushby, whose recurring middle-of-the-night terror awakenings worrying that he’d turned into a giant asterisk appear to have receded now Liverpool should be able to wrap up the title fairly easily*.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Today feels very much like a World Cup group stage sort of day where none of the games particularly appeal but, you know, it’s football. So it’s the League Two playoffs for now, before the Premier League takes over again for what is frankly the foreseeable future. So far, so normal service.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">But that foreseeable future includes a game that WILL be genuinely unique to football in this country, an unexpected by-product of the need to cram in as many viewable matches as possible so people can have their arms twisted to sign up for Sky/BT if they haven’t already. It is also a development, however temporary its intention, that could have far-reaching implications for clubs further down the football pyramid, because let’s face it, they’re not finding life difficult enough at the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Brighton, Arsenal and BT Sport will be the first teams and broadcaster to take part in a televised 3pm kick-off in England since the 1960s. Widely reported to be the policy of then-Burnley chairman Bob Lord, broadcasters were not permitted to show 3pm kick-offs live on telly so as not to harm the income stream generated by stadium-going fans. The full ‘blackout window’ was from 2.45pm to 5.15pm, with the only exception being the FA Cup final.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Naturally, there are workarounds that have been duly exploited, which is why it’s nigh-on impossible to find the biggest matches in the Premier League, Championship or League One taking place on a Saturday at 3pm. You’ll also have noticed that the final day of the Premier League season, when everyone has to kick off at the same time, is always a Sunday.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">This is a rule that’s just become part of the furniture of English, Scottish, Northern Irish and bizarrely, Montenegrin football. And, if you’re traditional old romantics, like we are, there’s something very appropriate about Saturday, 3pm, being a protected time when, if you want to watch football, in its rightful place at its rightful time, you have to get yourself to an actual bloody ground, pay your money to a club directly, have a pie, bemoan the fact that you could be doing literally anything else, call the referee all sorts of horrible things, freeze your balls off and tramp off to the pub afterwards to watch a game that’s inordinately better in terms of both quality, view and availability of a nearby bar.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It’s the very soul of football. The blackout and its rationale have been enshrined in UEFA Regulations: “<span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0cm;">The present Regulations are designed to ensure that spectators are not deterred from attending local football matches of any kind and/or participating in matches at amateur and/or youth level, on account of Transmissions of football matches which may create competition with these matches”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Now, it makes perfect sense to lift the blackout window for Premier League matches behind closed doors, which currently seems to be as far as the measure will extend (‘for the remainder of the 2019/20 season’, according to UEFA). But it does raise the question what happens when fans are allowed to start going to matches again, when the familiar arguments for and against the blackout will again be applicable.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The arguments for are well-advanced. The only area where this has been studied in any detail is in Germany, where it was found that live broadcasts from 3pm kick-offs had no impact on attendances in stadia. The European Court of Justice, commenting on a dispute over the Premier League licensing its broadcast rights on a territorial basis, thought it was ‘doubtful whether closed periods are capable of encouraging attendance at matches and participation in matches’.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Not very clear then. But the evidence, as you might expect for a restriction that’s been in place for 50 years, is difficult to come by. Not that this is going to stop us from espousing an opinion anyway.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">With the blackout lifted permanently, the threat to football isn’t as direct as suggesting that all those match-going Premier League fans will no longer spend their alternate weekends going to lower-league when their teams are away. Indeed, this hypothetical flurry of feet doesn’t really happen anyway, with the biggest clubs already being on telly at times other than 3pm. Moreover, if the 78,000 Old Trafford attendees decided to pitch up at Macc Town on a Saturday then we absolutely couldn’t cope and the town would probably fall in the sea, despite being nowhere near the sea.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">It is a potential problem though. Let’s face it, are you going to head out in the depths of winter to watch lower-league football when you could stay at home or in the pub to watch the pick of the 3 o’clocks in the Premier League? Where those lower-league clubs are already routinely hit by postponements, completely skewed cashflows from football’s great wealth (mostly from broadcast rights, of course) and little to no protection from a host of other threats to their existence (including a PANDEMIC), why take away a small bit of extra income when it would be needed most?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">What’s uncomfortable for us is more the further subtle erosion of tradition. Saturday, 3pm. It means much more than a mere slot in the TV schedules. It’s bonding time, social time, escapism time, and it has been for generations. It’s a setup that really ain’t broke, given everyone pretty much wins from the current arrangement – Sky and BT have worked out a way around it, aside from the inconvenience to match-going fans when away games are shifted so as to miss the last train home (that’s an article for another day). The FA and Premier League can even convince themselves they’re doing their bit for the grassroots and amateur games, which would be nice for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Football showed itself in a pretty good light last night, as it often does when the important parts – the players, the fans – are allowed to judge the voice and message. The best bits of the game can be truly great and we’d very much like this to continue.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">*All of which is to say get your money on City right now</span></p></div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-27514565745435801752020-06-17T15:35:00.005+01:002020-07-03T18:48:06.077+01:00Things we learnt about the football during lockdown: a note to the reader of the future<div class="separator"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM1QFTtJRqt_htoyiv0EttLh2TVas8vnFW15yd0iXY2XPlI6eTwLjQZoOuUXD7KBUWH0e4DXPG6rlrgcJKTjSAe53z3i833txqGcIWnqg179ngna8GaTMyigzr7c8q_RzhIfDQR8Frd-c/s900/skyscape-3-900x550.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjM1QFTtJRqt_htoyiv0EttLh2TVas8vnFW15yd0iXY2XPlI6eTwLjQZoOuUXD7KBUWH0e4DXPG6rlrgcJKTjSAe53z3i833txqGcIWnqg179ngna8GaTMyigzr7c8q_RzhIfDQR8Frd-c/s320/skyscape-3-900x550.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">The future, brought to you by Ask Jeeves</div><br />This can go one of two ways. In 80 years’ time, the reader of the future takes one look at this blog and is utterly baffled by talk of pandemics, lockdowns and The Queen’s Nose*. Or else said reader of the future becomes all at once furious, seething over the trivialities of a) having a blog and b) dealing <i>only</i> with pandemics, lockdowns and fondly remembering ‘90s TV shows that showcase Gary Mabbutt scoring a hat-trick.<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><div><br /></div><div>Remember those time capsules that were all the rage in the 90s up to 2000? When we realised that the planes weren’t going to fall out of the sky and genuine fear of the Y2K bug morphed into a punch line**? In 1998 (bear with us), Blue Peter presenters Richard Bacon and Katy Hill buried a time capsule underneath the Millennium Dome which, although supposed to be excavated in 2050, was dug up by some builders in 2017. Among other things, the capsule contained a Tamagotchi, photos of Princess Diana and the Oblivion ride at Alton Towers, and a France ’98 World Cup football. It is no coincidence that between us, Rob and I have owned all of these items at one time or another. </div><div><br />If anything, we see this blog post very much like one of those time capsules. Terribly dated, but with a nice little novelty factor. When a bloke with a metal detector digs up a laptop buried in Greenwich 80 years earlier and asks Jeeves*** (which retakes its number one search engine title in around 2050) “What did the most underrated football blog 100 years ago write about the pandemic in 2020?”, this post will inevitably pop up on their screen.<br /><br />It is, therefore, our duty to inform the reader of the future what was going on with the football in 2020 during a pandemic. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, but here goes.<br /><br /><b>The virtual quiz</b><br /><br />When the football disappeared on March 10, it left a vacuum. But football doesn’t exist in a vacuum, we hear you say. No, it doesn’t. And what does nostalgia like best? Yep. How else can you explain the rise of the virtual football quiz? We used to be a nation of shopkeepers, now it’s a nation of quizmasters. Well – shopkeepers and racists, but more of that later.<br /><br />We are now at the business end of our own football quiz league and a few things we’ve learned is that football fans in their mid-30s know A LOT about all-time Premier League top scorers, can identify Regi Blinker from a Merlin sticker photo and can at least muster an educated guess at which iteration of Joey Barton included a moustache (a round called ‘Moustache or not’ since you ask).<br /><br />The pubs may have closed and the football may have stopped, but one British institution prevailed. And it has been a welcome return to the structure and habits that football reassuringly offers. And it includes a league table. Here’s to the virtual quiz; all at once a symbol of normalcy in extraordinary circumstances.<br /><br /><b>Wikipedia wormholes</b><br /><br />Reminiscing over times when football was better is certainly nothing new at Spongers HQ; we edited a book on it after all. But what of the siren song of Wikipedia after watching old football clips? In the age of the nasty knee-jerk reaction, of irrational hysteria, there’s something reassuring about going two-footed down a Wikipedia wormhole. <br /><br />Rea-life example of wormhole associated with watching old football:<br /><br />See the delicious Dennis Bergkamp goal against Brazil at France ’98 on @90sfootball on Twitter. Remember how brilliant The Netherlands were at France ’98. Google ‘The Netherlands France ‘98’. Click on ‘1998 FIFA World Cup’. Scroll down to ‘Semi-finals’. Click ‘Semi-finals’. Quickly see the France 2-1 Croatia result and remember that Lilian Thuram, who you loved, scored a brace in that game. Ignore that because it’s not what you came for. Click ‘1-1’ next to Brazil and Netherlands. Ronald de Boer missed a penalty? Don’t remember that. Click ‘R. de Boer’. Scroll down. Ronald de Boer played for Rangers? Ah, I sort of remember that now. See ‘he is the older twin brother of Frank de Boer’. Make a mental note in case this crops up in this week’s football quiz. Click on ‘Frank de Boer’; he was always the better player out of the two. Scroll down. He played for Rangers as well? Do I remember that? Not sure. Make mental note in case this crops up in this week’s football quiz. See that under the ‘Teams managed’ sub-heading he currently manages ‘Atlanta United’. Didn’t know this. Scroll down. See the ‘Players’ section shows current squad and Atlanta United have an English lad playing for them. Click on ‘Anton Walkes’. See he once played for Portsmouth. Make mental note (not for quiz, just because, you know). See he scored an own goal on his debut against New York Red Bulls. Click on ‘New York Red Bulls’. Scroll down to ‘Notable players’. Both Wright Phillips boys played for them? Make mental note (possibly for quiz, you never know). Look at the clock on laptop. 20 minutes has gone by. Roberto Donadoni? Yes please. Cli … <br /><br />The future reader will likely have to take my word for this sequence of events, seeing as Ask Jeeves is the search engine of choice and you’ll be lucky to get as far as the second de Boer. <br /><br /><b>Watching old football</b><br /><br />Why the over-abundance of old football clips? The very obvious answer is that there is no football, so any football will do. But that’s not quite it. I wouldn’t be interested if they showed Man City shellacking Watford in last year’s FA Cup final, or if they showed the 2016 Charity Shield when United beat Leicester 2-1. I did find myself watching the England v Cameroon Italia ’90 game on the Beeb the other week, though. And if they were showing the ’92 Charity Shield when a Cantona-inspired Leeds beat Liverpool 4-3, I’d have watched that as well. <br /><br />Rather than <i>any</i> football, it is <i>old </i>football. Nothing offers that narcotic allure quite as well as the nostalgia attached to watching old football; for ‘old’ football, read anything that is from 15 years ago or beyond. The hypothetical ‘they’ say that things were better in their day. Of course, they were because you were young, had two working knees, Woolworths still sold pick n mix and you didn’t have to worry about things like pandemics, statues or Wikipedia wormholes. <br /><br />With football’s hiatus in the UK running into the months, it is little surprise that nostalgia has emerged as the content of choice to fill the void. Italia ’90? Check. USA '94? Euro ’96? Check. The only thing missing is the communality. Have you ever tried clapping while sat on your own? It is unsettling, bordering on perverse.<br /><br />We’ve already covered the fact that the appreciative applause when order resumes after a scrappy bit of play sees the ball played out to the full back in space has been replaced by the clapping en masse at 8pm on a Thursday. This is what happens when you take away the football. Everyone likes a good old clap and the old football has an actual crowd, actually clapping, therefore, it is better.<br /><br /><b>Social change</b><br /><br />If there is one thing that the pandemic and ensuing lockdown have shown us, it is the power of the collective to achieve goals that wouldn’t have been made possible singularly. After all, the ‘football lads’ needed thousands to protect all the statues. And protect they did, even after it became very apparent that precisely no-one was coming for all the statues, and offers little to no explanation as to why they decided to have a go at the coppers who were protecting the very statues that they’d got all frothy-mouthed about being protected in the first place.<br /><br />There was the decision of Liverpool, among others, to bin plans to furlough around 200 non-playing staff after a huge backlash. It probably wasn’t wise for the seventh-richest football club in the world, who had just announced a pre-tax profit of £42m, to attempt to save themselves £1.5m through the furlough scheme, considering the club’s wage bill stood at £310m last season. Supporters groups were furious and local MPs Dan Carden and Ian Byrne plus the mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, all got involved the force the club’s hand and sanity (and fairness) prevailed.<br /><br />Speaking of U-turns, hands up who thought at the beginning of lockdown, a 22-year-old England international would upend the government's attempts to stop feeding poor and vulnerable children over the summer? Prior to this, Marcus Rashford had helped raise over £20m during lockdown to feed three million kids. Rashford showed more moral leadership in a few days than the Tories have in 10 years concerning child poverty. That this Tory government would be happy to see kids starve tells you all you need to know. But, hey, what do we know, liberal media elite that we are.<br /><br />It was Camus who said: “All that I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football.” The goalkeeper on Renford Rejects wore a long-sleeved t-shirt adorning this quote, which takes us full circle to Sachin Nakrani’s tweet on Renford Rejects, which prompted our penultimate blog post. Football eh. The opiate of the masses. And if you have dug up this post you can remind us of it – we’ll be the ones walking up and down our gardens to raise money for something called ‘universal healthcare’, as we approach our hundredth birthdays. And if you don’t get that reference you can always Ask Jeeves.<br /><br />*Kids TV programme, originally aired in 1995. Rub a 50p coin, 10 wishes.<br />**An actual thing.<br /><a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/</a><br />***Rather than Googling things, people would ask Jeeves on the eponymous Ask Jeeves<br /> <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#">https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94784/why-everyone-stopped-asking-jeeves</a>.In the future, of course, normal service will be resumed, but Jeeves will be a robot, and so will all the people.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-11838909596440413632020-06-11T19:12:00.001+01:002020-06-11T19:12:20.611+01:00A job not even Jesus wanted<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPn-uyU-Bns1ITT9H_wNfQrX47d-Lra8a50szViv0L9EPNYP5D9TF2wmlSljQbOZHXvR-0wQ0h_qMgRzas31wYqa-zzptBcVopbCGxKnJdNbfNDo5nBf8nG48ROoOGGQCpZgsbpO3uuoQ/s2400/campbell.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1796" data-original-width="2400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPn-uyU-Bns1ITT9H_wNfQrX47d-Lra8a50szViv0L9EPNYP5D9TF2wmlSljQbOZHXvR-0wQ0h_qMgRzas31wYqa-zzptBcVopbCGxKnJdNbfNDo5nBf8nG48ROoOGGQCpZgsbpO3uuoQ/s320/campbell.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">In your FACES, doubters</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Imagine, if you will, 92 bits of fruit and veg. Actually, be a bit less ambitious – it’s the end of the week and you might be tired, or an idiot. Imagine 92 apples and onions. Quite a lot of fruit and veg that, isn’t it? Only it isn’t. Not when just six of the 92 bits of fruit and vegetables are apples. Then it becomes rather more like a massive pile of vegetables with little to no fruit in there at all. What happened? Did you forget to write out your shopping list properly? Aren’t you in favour of a balanced diet? DO YOU WANT TO SMELL LIKE ONIONS FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE?<span><a name='more'></a></span><br /><br />Probably not, would be my guess.<br /><br />Here’s another one for you. Imagine a man who never played professional football getting a job as a football manager, and later declaring himself the ‘special one’ having won a few trophies. One was a Champions League title with an unheralded club, so maybe fair enough, he had something on which to base a fairly arrogant claim. And what's this? We all fall in love with him anyway and fawn over him and it’s all very unedifying.<br /><br />Now imagine a different man is talking about getting a job as a football manager, and declares himself one of the ‘greatest minds in football’ when talking about his ambition, having won a few trophies. Two of those were Premier Leagues, and two were FA Cups. He also played 73 times for his country, for which he became the second-youngest captain after its World-Cup winning captain, played over 500 times in the Premier League and had completed all the available UEFA coaching qualifications, so maybe fair enough, he had something on which to base a fairly arrogant claim. And what's this? We all have a good old laugh because he’s obviously a bit weird and why would you hire someone so arrogant.<br /><br />I think you can see where this is going. But let’s make the comparison slightly more contemporary. Another man, who made the exact same number of appearances in English football and played more times for England, who won a Champions League, UEFA Cup and two FA Cups also wanted to be a manager. He’s done all the relevant qualifications, now at least, because he didn’t finish the ‘Pro’ one until after he’d been appointed manager of one of the biggest clubs in the UK.<br /><br />Here’s one more. ANOTHER MAN (I’ve got lots) who made more appearances for both clubs and country, won more, but DOESN’T have the Pro licence you need to coach in the Premier League. Got a job in the Championship immediately and then after one season went to one of the biggest clubs in Europe, who are about to spend the GDP of a small country on new players ahead of the next Premier League season.<br /><br />Now this is absolutely not Steven Gerrard’s fault, or Frank Lampard’s fault, and good luck to them, and well done so far, and all the rest of it. But it seems a bit out of order to us to call Sol Campbell a ‘shit manager’, or suggest that there aren’t differences in these respective routes into management, despite the anecdotally similar qualifications in terms playing and ACTUAL better qualifications in terms of managing of all those involved. And denying it is fucking stupid.<br /><br />We will not be hearing a bad word about Sol Campbell’s managerial record in this parish, or the very obvious and stark fact that he has been made to start at the very bottom of the professional football system, when scarcely believable opportunities have been offered to his less qualified and untested peers. Especially given he achieved a major miracle with Macclesfield… and had he been handed Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount upon arrival, then been able to sign Hakim Zyech and Timo Werner, we might even have scored a few more goals (I’m kidding, Elliott Durrell and Harry Smith, I still love you).<br /><br />If you didn’t already know, Campbell had to do everything himself. And that’s not ‘everything’ in a Premier Leaguey way, which might include having to wash your own socks (not even sure it does, actually), but almost literally EVERYTHING* - including paying for stuff, training at a school when the club got kicked out of the facility they were using, foregoing wages, even leaving without the bonus he should have had for keeping Macc in the league. All that just to get a chance at a first job – I feel bloody sorry for him that it had to be with us, the worst-run club in the fucking universe, as evidenced by how completely tits-up things have gone since he left.<br /><br />Jesus Christ wishes he had a miracle on his record as good as keeping Macclesfield Town up, but even he thought it a little audacious and ended up doing something with loaves of bread and fishes somewhere that presumably had better training facilities than Macc and could actually afford bread and fish.<br /><br />When Campbell left Macclesfield, having made some quality signings in the summer SOMEHOW, we were seventh and our shirts were covered in blood from the nosebleeds. And where did he pitch up next? Southend, a club more or less relegated in October and getting drilled by four or five every week. I can’t imagine it was his overriding fetish for baskets and cases that meant he went off to another shambles.<br /><br />So what is the difference between manager A, manager B and manager C(ampbell) then? Is it any wonder that if Lampard goes to Chelsea, Gerrard to Rangers and their black contemporary’s first job is at the lowest-ranked club in the footballing pyramid, questions might just be asked? As we all know, Twitter can be a swamp if you delve just below the surface. Using win percentages as a stick to beat Campbell with is an absolute false equivalency to, well, just about anyone who hasn’t managed Macclesfield when they were five points adrift at the bottom of League Two.<br /><br />Oliver Holt pointed out the disparity between the scorn being poured on Campbell as a manager and reality, adding: “attitude towards Campbell is a golden example of way black managers are treated”. It’s worth pointing out Campbell didn’t get sacked from Macc. He left because it was a shitshow. Then linked with Sheffield Wednesday, you only have to look at some of the comments flying around in August 2019 to see that one was destined to never get off the ground.<br /><br />So what is good enough? Is the only way to close the gap to perform a Champ Man-esque ascent and take Welling United to the Champions League final? Even then someone on Twitter would ask to see how many saves he’d made.<br /><br />Sachin Nakrani mentioned this in response to Holt, and he’s absolutely bang on: “Prior to Macclesfield, it was claimed he was too arrogant and aloof to be a successful manager, which is precisely the type of character tests that only BAME coaches have to pass to secure a job in football. Essentially - “he’s got above his station”.<br /><br />Now, this is not to say that the people doing the hiring at the numerous football clubs that have rejected Campbell and other BAME managers are overt racists who haven’t given them a chance because they’re not white men. But it is to say that the bar is different, no matter how subtle the difference, and that professional football is not set up to encourage diversity. If Campbell doesn’t have any experience on his CV, how can he gain any? If there aren’t routes into jobs for aspiring people, how can any of them expect to find opportunities at all? It’s unfathomable that this is even up for debate, and it’s even more unfathomable and deeply troubling that Raheem Sterling should be subject to yet more abuse for having to articulate as much.<br /><br />Oh, and if anyone was wondering why we’re a bit late on this, we’ve been quiet for a few days because we’ve been building a statue of Sol Campbell for Peter Shilton’s garden. And it’s the promptings of Shilton – along with, it must be said, more than a few ignorant Tweeters – behaving like a man entering a shit insight competition and winning ‘most improved’, that a) make us despair and b) give us the momentum to write rebuttals like this when you have Wayne Whataboutery and Eddie Extremeexample spouting undiluted shite about ‘playing race cards’, with the unmistakeable scent of onions in the air.<br /><br />*And as you well know, we don’t use the word ‘literally’ lightly, which is why we’re still keeping it at arm’s length here.<br /> Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-70126593899996738822020-06-09T10:23:00.000+01:002020-06-09T10:48:14.945+01:00Football as Art: a retrospective (a.k.a Sachin Nakrani’s Tweet, the Totti/Heskey advert and Gary Mabbutt in the Queen’s Nose)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"So, I've been having some weird dreams ..."</div>
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‘They’ say that people are experiencing extremely vivid dreams during lockdown. Apparently, Google searches of “weird dreams” have doubled year-on-year. According to an article in the Independent at the end of April, a Tweet asking: “Is anybody else having really weird/vivid dreams during this whole lockdown or is it just me?” got 4,600 likes, which perhaps says more about Twitter than it does about dreams.<br />
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Presumably though, those are dreams of the night variety. I’m troubled to say the least because these past few weeks I’ve been experiencing vivid day dreams. Presumably other people are struggling with the uncertainty Covid-19 has caused so they are having dreams so realistic that it is scaring the shit of them. Well imagine not being able to wake up. Because you are awake. Like some knock-off version of Nightmare on Elm Street.<br />
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Google searches of “weird dreams” may well have doubled since this time last year, but there’s been no coverage of searching “weird Fiat advert where Totti is having a knockabout in his back garden and then says ‘round Emile Hesker*’ and then he scores and shouts GOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLL TOTTI,” has there? No, there hasn’t. And I should know, because I HAVE Googled it.<br />
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One result pops up. One. Out of the whole internet. And it is ‘“You were miles offside” — Totti v Heskey Advert’ on the Ad Turds site**.<br />
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When you watch that version, there’s something in German about “Ballack, Ballack, Ballack”. It’s quite frantic. A real frantic ballacking in fact. Turns out it's Michael Ballack. But there’s certainly no Emile Heskey. Now the lads at Ad Turds were good enough to inform us on Twitter that the Heskey version did indeed happen, but has been expunged from history, as if it didn’t happen. But it did happen.<br />
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I was sure we had written an article on this a few years ago so I checked and we had. We wrote this in 2013 — http://magicspongers.blogspot.com/2013/03/flogging-dead-totti.html— quite how that doesn’t come up in Google when searching “weird Fiat advert where Totti is having a knockabout in his back garden and then says ‘round Emile Hesker’ and then he scores and shouts GOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLL TOTTI” is anyone’s guess, and maybe something to do with algorithms.<br />
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Let’s very quickly re-set the scene (and just copy verbatim what we wrote in 2013 because it will save time).<br />
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“Francesco Totti is having a knockabout in his back garden. He’s just dicking about. So far, so good. He’s feigning going past imaginary opponents. He’s just generally having a laugh. But HANG THE FUCK ON THERE. WHAT’S THIS? WHAT HAS ITALY’S FRANCESCO TOTTI JUST SAID? Too late.<br />
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“Next thing we know, Totti has jumped in his plush little Fiat Stilo – a car I’m reliably informed is very fashionable among multimillionaire footballers in Italy.<br />
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“Now, in the present, Totti has just received a message from someone saying he was offside. That’s offside in the knockabout he was just having on his own in his own back garden, which to this day is something I’ve not been able to begin to comprehend. The message is from none other than Emile Heskey, who, and again, for reasons unbeknownst to I’d imagine anyone, including Totti, signs off ‘Emile Heskey’.<br />
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“And now back to the bit where I wrote ‘WHAT HAS ITALY’S FRANCESCO TOTTI JUST SAID?’
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“When I first saw this advert – and it was this atmosphere of ‘what it feels like when you first see an advert’ that I was trying to recreate – I could have sworn Totti said “round Emile Hesker.”. Emile Hesker? I know an Emile Heskey, but… HANG ON… WHAT THE FU… and before you know it the advert has swept you onto a narrative arc that incorporates Totti celebrating a goal on his own by shouting “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLL TOTTI”, Totti seemingly and somewhat ludicrously owning a Fiat Stilo, and Emile Heskey, who has somehow become a close friend of Totti’s, not only signing off messages with his full name, which only a psychopath would do, but also somehow knowing that Totti was JUST playing football on his own in his own back garden.”<br />
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Like the greatest adverts, it leaves you with more questions than it answers.<br />
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Which leads us nicely to Sachin Nakrani of The Guardian’s Tweet from Monday June 8 (yesterday). As I am famously shit with technology, I can’t do one of those little ‘embed Tweets’ or whatever it is called. So I have to write it out manually, which is annoying. Sachin, who is patently suffering from similar day dreams to me, tweeted: “Won't bore you with the details, but I've been watching clips of Renford Rejects on Youtube. Came across this utter mind-bender that I have no recollection of whatsoever - Martin Keown plays like Messi in the same game Gianfranco Zola acts the enforcer.”<br />
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I used to watch Renford Rejects and I also have no recollection of seeing Martin Keown and Gianfranco Zola in an episode. So I clicked the link and watched. It is quite incredible. It is quite incredible seeing Keown beat a player, albeit a 13-year-old. It is incredible that I don't remember this, which leads me to think I didn’t watch it. But why didn’t I watch it? Was I playing football myself? Against Martin Keown? Then I found another link*** and realised that I had missed the Shaka Hislop one an all. Unbelievable.<br />
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But what I DO remember is an episode of The Queen’s Nose**** that had Gary Mabbutt in it. Hello Google. After searching “episode of The Queen’s Nose that had Gary Mabbutt in it”, there it is. Aired on December 20, 1995. And what’s this third search down? ’10 times Premier League footballers made random appearances on 90s kids’ TV’ from last year’s Four Four Two, strangely on Yahoo! Sport? It’s only Gary Mabbutt having an absolute stormer on … you guessed it … THE QUEEN’S NOSE.<br />
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Mabbutt has way too much nous and skill for his opponents, scoring a second-half hat trick and grabbing an assist for the injury time winner. The problem is, I remember Mabbutt scoring a header in it. And he doesn’t score a header in it. I also don’t remember Mabbutt scoring many hat-tricks for Spurs but as has already been established, my memory has many holes in it.<br />
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They say ‘don’t meet your heroes’, but I haven’t. I never met Bowie, although I did see him at the MEN in 2003. I have never met Jay-Jay Okocha, although I did see him at some Champions League fans park thing in London with Rob Mac in 2011. And I have never met Gary Mabbutt. Or Emile Heskey.<br />
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What they don’t say, AND THEY SHOULD, is ‘don’t watch any footage of Premier League footballers in kids TV shows 25 years after you initially watched them’. It will only make you realise that a) all of your memories are wrong; b) TV was better when we were younger; and c) Martin Keown should have played up front for Arsenal with Thierry Henry.<br />
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*Yes, I am aware I have written Hesker and not Heskey. In my mind’s eye, Totti says “round Emile Hesker” and in the absence of any hard evidence, that is how it will remain until I die.<br />
**Decided to put the links at the end to stop the few people reading this from clicking on one, buggering off and not coming back — http://adturds.co.uk/2009/11/30/you-were-miles-offside-emile-heskey/<br />
***See *— https://www.planetfootball.com/quick-reads/12-of-the-best-cameo-appearances-in-renford-rejects/<br />
****The Queen’s Nose, based on a Dick King-Smith novel, WHICH I KNEW BUT HAD FORGOTTEN I KNEWMagic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-64334447291417143562020-05-27T15:17:00.000+01:002020-05-27T15:17:04.797+01:00It's Coming Back <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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GET AWAY FROM ME</div>
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Turns out we were mega-prescient, as usual, and were only a couple of days ahead of the government in declaring coronavirus to be completely over and looking forward to football coming <strike>home</strike> back now we can all just do whatever the hell we want without consequence.<br />
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With the Bundesliga providing a welcome distraction from rolling coverage of a balloon with a hay wig and no spine – not necessarily a surprise, given that it’s a balloon, covered in hay – it’s been cautiously mentioned that the Premier League may make a return sometime around the middle of June. A resumption of contact training has today been given the green light, praise be. Regular testing will become a feature as games return behind closed doors, so goes the plan.<br />
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So far so good. But the Government also hinted that at the end of June, in England at least, five-aside football may also return, which raises a few questions and more eyebrows, given the massive care being taken to protect professional footballers for presumably the duration of the remainder of the season, however long that ends up being, and possibly beyond.<br />
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Now, five-aside football doesn’t overly bother us, possibly because it’s been a good couple of years now since either of us were in any danger of getting nearer than 2 metres to anyone on a football pitch. But there does seem to be something of a discrepancy between the way the Government, who we know love a ‘one rule for some, another rule for everyone else’, have outlined this, particularly given the alacrity with which Premier League clubs and those in the EFL contemplating playoffs, have made testing a priority. They employ doctors, too, while we can only assume that ‘Inter Yer Nan’ and ‘Fred West Ham’ do not.<br />
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So what to do? Amateur football for 11-aside club teams, or at least those that are FA-affiliated, is cancelled until the regular resumption of leagues as would normally happen in August/September. But there will be thousands of us returning to our local leagues the minute that we’re able to. And we don’t know about you, but we’d feel far more at risk of coronavirus when Sweaty Barry from the Horse and Jockey shoulder barges us in the face en route to hoofing our ball onto the railway than if we lost a header to Mats Hummels.<br />
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Handshakes, hand sanitiser, face masks may allow the Government to mount the ‘common sense’ defence, but as you’ll know if you’ve ever been on a football pitch, you check your common sense at the gate that refuses to close on the way in.<br />
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And fair enough, this is perhaps a little sensational (us?!). Exercise is literally the only thing we’ve been allowed to do for the last couple of months and living healthily is a pretty good defence against most stuff, so received wisdom goes. So people-wise, maybe we can live with it.<br />
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There is another consideration though and that’s whether or not we’ll have quite as many options to go back to. Providers of five-aside facilities will have been hit by the same considerations as many others – in fact, even before the lockdown came into effect, Powerleague was requesting cash from its customers to keep it in business. What’s more, this was only a year or so after it closed 13 sites, costing 109 jobs, in order to stay afloat. Before that, according to the BBC it had 50 sites across the UK and Ireland, and employed over 580 people. Falling revenues for the three years prior to the closures can only have exacerbated the ‘no revenues at all’ the company’s had since March and we can only speculate what that has meant for the remainder of the 580 staff in the meantime.<br />
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They’re not the only provider to be struggling. The Goals Soccer Group was, to put it delicately, in the shit to the tune of £13m, although this one was due to an accounting scandal (*Googles Goals, sees part-owned by Mike Ashley, shuts browser*) but having delisted was bought by Soccerworld at the end of 2019. Complete closure for a good portion of 2020 may also affect how they are able to look after their 750 staff.<br />
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Perhaps more desperate to get back than most, Powerleague reopened some sites on 22 May, offering ‘Home games’ (for you and your housemates, should you have any), ‘Family games’ (for you and your family, should you have any), and ‘1-aside challenges’ (for you and a mate, should you be completely fucking nuts). They’ll be sanitising balls between sessions (presumably they mean footballs, although maybe that’s an intriguing money-raising strategy they have come up with during lockdown) and the whole idea seems like a perfectly reasonable way to get the pitches open and things up and running again.<br />
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The question is how long ‘making do’ can really last. Some facilities that were already struggling are in renewed difficulty given vandals/bored people have been either trying to access closed facilities or succeeding and for reasons best known to themselves, cutting up the pitches and fucking off with them. And the last thing any of us really need right now is entitled pricks thinking they are above the law.<br />
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Like everything else there will be a price to pay for the interruptions to normality and a lot of it won’t become clear until we have a stab at normality ourselves. But a bit like pubs – and if there’s one thing we know about other than football, it’s pubs – some might survive, but it looks like it’ll be a lot of feeling our way back into it before they can flourish … very much like us in five-aside. Hopefully by then it’s not too late.
Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-86604704336623811512020-05-22T14:28:00.001+01:002020-05-22T18:59:50.619+01:00The returning face of football<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri";">The new-look Old Trafford, </span><span style="font-family: "calibri";">post-covid-19</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, it only took a pandemic that has seen more than half the world’s population on lockdown to get us out of semi-retirement. We’ve gone 10 weeks without football in the UK and so, in time honoured fashion, here we are with our two-penneth when every horse bolted weeks ago and all that’s left are the donkeys*, some onions, and the stable door smacking us in the balls. Even the horses with underlying health conditions have finished isolating and bolted. EVEN THIS METAPHOR HAS BOLTED.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As the Bundesliga returned last weekend, it got us to thinking: once everything has been stripped away and you are left with just the football, just the actual game, how does that play out? It’s hard to be Pollyanna-ish when the UK daily death toll is still in the hundreds. That said, there has never been a time when escapism is more needed. If Premier League football does return as planned in June, it will be a bare bones version, the like of which we have never seen.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Project Restart could herald a short-lived brave new world where, once the whistle goes, football is suddenly, dramatically demystified. Without a crowd, hearing Troy Deeney tell Aymeric Laporte to “fuck off” or Jose Mourinho shout “can we not knock it?” at Harry Winks may be the great leveller that those of us in thrall to the professionals doing it much better than us have always secretly dreamed of. Will we be the only ones listening out for players shouting “mine” or “leave it” and seeing if the referee will punish it with an indirect free kick? <a href="https://www.dreamteamfc.com/c/news-gossip/288302/harry-arter-tricked-nathaniel-chalobah-into-leaving-a-free-shot-with-classic-five-a-side-tactic/" target="_blank">Harry Arter shouting the latter at Nathaniel Chalobah</a> to stop him from shooting in 2017 is shithousery we can all get behind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s not a theory that in terms of ability, fitness and generally being elite athletes, people that get paid to play football are way better than us at playing football. But the sheer weight of constant analysis has built up such a level of mystique around tactical battles, set-piece routines, assists, xG, and so on and so forth, that we can’t possibly see how the gulf in class can be THAT significant without some kind of secret additional insight or input from somewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">After all, for every Paul Ince writing ‘SHOOT’ on a notebook, or Sol Campbell prowling the touchline but only shouting ‘Squeeze’ at his Macclesfield players the entire game, and <u>literally </u>nothing else, there’s a Mourinho European Cup win with Inter Milan or a Jurgen Klopp cult of personality so compelling that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/may/21/jurgen-klopp-liverpool-clothes-keys-to-coaching-team-talks-kick-it-out" target="_blank">The Guardian have basically written up a Zoom conversation they eavesdropped on</a>. The packaging of the Premier League as an elite product is so complete that it’d be a genuinely lovely surprise to hear Kasper Schmeichel scream at his defenders to just "fucking get rid of it" as though he was down the park on a Sunday like the rest of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Either way, the new normal for football in this country will be quite the eye-opener for those very used to the unattainable and the unimaginable brilliance peddled by Sky and BT. If you needed any indication of the product being the be-all and end-all, consider that both are planning to offer watchers the option of recorded crowd noise when the football returns. It’s not been confirmed if you’ll be able to make out the specific abuse of your favourite players yet, and the consequent reinforcement of the clear and obvious bias of all major media outlets against your club.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Being slightly glib aside, there is of course good reason for the offer of crowd noise, and that is the power of the collective. Everyone likes to relate, after all. And everyone REALLY likes being part of a relatable group with something to agree on. The appreciative applause when a scrappy bit of play sees the ball played out to the full back in space (we wrote about this previously: <a href="http://magicspongers.blogspot.com/2011/08/return-to-civilisation.html" target="_blank">‘A return to civilisation’</a>) has been replaced by the clapping <i>en masse </i>at 8pm on a Thursday. Maybe pots and pans will make an appearance in football grounds across the land once some semblance of normality resumes. After all, vuvuzelas were an actual thing once.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The demystification of football expands that collective to the side of the players and staff as well. They may have the abilities that are out of reach for the vast majority of us, but hearing that their in-game insights extend about as far as ours (were we to be able to catch our breath after a 25-metre sprint to say anything) makes you realise – they’re just like us, really. And that is a welcome perspective at a time when some people are genuinely, mystifyingly annoyed by some players not being keen on returning to training at clubs that are reporting confirmed cases, out of concern for themselves and their families.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We are all desperate for football to return and we know the security that the well-known structures of the game can provide. As we wrote back in 2011: “Attending football is a habit; a supporter’s behaviour inside the ground even more so, all part of the ritual. It’s a pre-programmed experience... being part of the groundswell of noise is quite cathartic, at any rate.” The clap for carers has, if anything, reinforced that. Let’s just hope that Sky and BT get the appreciative applause spot on when after a couple of tasty challenges in the centre circle and with tempers fraying, Harry Arter plays a simple 20-yard pass to Adam Smith on the right in a bit of space, and we can all relax.</span>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-8667725560586311982018-07-03T12:09:00.000+01:002018-07-03T12:09:44.014+01:00England Expects (Way Too Much. As Ever. Ad Infinitum)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"You know what we said pre-tournament about getting to the knockouts being a success ... FUCK. THAT. Final or you're shit."</div>
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Well well well. It seems by all accounts that England have become the first ever side in the history of the World Cup to get a bye to the final. Clearly a huge oversight on behalf of FIFA, seeing as though they wouldn’t even award us hosting rights to the tournament. Or maybe it’s their way of keeping us sweet? Either way, it’s a hell of a development for a side that have only won five knock-out games at a World Cup since 1966 (and only three of those inside 90 minutes).<br />
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A lot of right-minded football fans, us included, felt that, for once, expectations for this England side were about right. Namely, we should qualify from the group, probably in second place, then depending on the opposition in the round of 16, either bid farewell to the tournament there or else go one step further and then meet a bigger boy in the quarters and leave quietly via the back door [insert ‘Golden Generation’ infidelity gag here]. The media appeared to agree. And then the actual football begins and so does the collective amnesia. The sort of collective amnesia that leads to talk of a ‘clear route to the final’.<br />
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By coming second in the group and due to this World Cup seemingly being directed by M. Night Shyamalan, England’s half of the draw on the dreaded paper does look tantalising. One of England, Colombia, Croatia, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland will be in the final on July 15. That is pretty fucking mad, all things considered. And yes, we aren’t so austere as to begin dreaming a bit. But therein lies the problem. For every English fan thinking this is a cakewalk, there is Swede, Colombian and Croat thinking exactly the same thing. And you could forgive a Croat for thinking like this given they are ACTUALLY IN THE QUARTERS. Against Russia.<br />
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Stumbling to a 2-1 win against Tunisia and spanking a very poor Panama side does not a World Cup winner make. The arrogance of the big sides so far in this World Cup against inferior opposition has bitten a lot of arses. Think Germany. Think Spain. Think Argentina. Think Portugal and also (very nearly) Belgium last night. This tournament is up for grabs. But when that happens you do actually have to grab it.<br />
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We’re not trying to be killjoys here (believe it or not), but England have been so poor for so long at major tournaments, that expectation levels reaching mass hysteria level is utterly ludicrous. Yet again. Gareth Southgate has created a decent-looking side with youth very much on its side. But it is untested in the big games, so we aren’t really any the wiser as to how good this England side actually is. After enjoying the very unfamiliar feeling of watching England without chewing off our fingers against Panama and Belgium, it would be advisable to get out some big old gardening gloves for tonight.<br />
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This Colombia side are very good. They were unlucky enough to be a man down after just three minutes in their opener against Japan. And even then they only went down 2-1. Since then, they have essentially been playing knock-out football, needing two wins to guarantee progression, which they achieved with relative ease. Throw in the fact that Colombia beat Uruguay 2-0 at this stage four years ago in Brazil and it does make something of a mockery of England’s favourite status heading into this match.<br />
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They may be missing pronunciation’s James Rodriguez through injury but it’s not as if the absence of the side’s shiniest apple means that the rest of them are all going to be trundling around the pitch like a bag of onions. Falcao, if he fancies it – apple. Cuadrado – apple. Quintero – the loveliest remaining apple. England’s much-vaunted footballing back three are going to have to become England’s much-vaunted defensive back three if they’re not to get dragged all over the place for 90-plus minutes.
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Now, back to all this ‘clear route to the final’ nonsense. There may be a different vibe to this England set up and that’s a lovely thing, but we’re pretty sure that England lost to Iceland in their last knockout game two years ago. So forgive us for not looking past Colombia on this one. Or Sweden/Switzerland. Or Croatia/Russia. As Harry Kane would undoubtedly say, only less industrially, “let’s take each game as it fucking comes, yeah?”.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-49861340047548541462018-06-30T11:52:00.000+01:002018-06-30T11:52:10.191+01:00A lovely game of charades<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"Lads I can't use it to check where your Uber is"</i></div>
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Now the dust has settled on the group stages, let’s address some of the things we’ve learned from the World Cup so far. In short, Germany are rubbish so we don’t have to worry about them in tournaments ever again, England are going to win it, four games in one day is NOT too many and no one has been kidnapped, poisoned or otherwise defiled by the Russian state (that we know of). All in all, something of a success.<br />
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But, lest we forget, there is an elephant in the room. Most erstwhile pundits and commentators seem to be falling on the side of it being a good thing, and we’re inclined to agree. However, there’s a slight long-term sense of foreboding, which we’re going to greet with minor hysteria, much like we would if there was an elephant AND some pundits in the room, which we’ve just established that there is.<br />
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VAR has, in the main, worked brilliantly. There’s something compellingly excellent about the fact that for the most part, mistakes are being eradicated. It’s almost reassuring that after decades of suffering abuse at the hands of either the fans or the press (with the benefit of TV screens and a studio in which to assess split-second decisions), the referee now has a little team of referees who live in a box in Moscow and accompany him everywhere, a bit like the little daemons in His VARk Materials by Philip Pullman.<br />
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Ultimately though, VAR is going to be creating more dreadful shithousery than you can shake a stick at. It’s quite amusing to see the level of incredulity with which pundits like Alan Shearer and Pablo Zabaleta have met these initial happenings when reviewing them in games. Shearer in particular genuinely could not BELIEVE that players knowing the referee has the option to review incidents in slow motion had increased the occasions on which they would desperately beseech him to do so. Zabaleta looked so profoundly sad about the gamesmanship he was seeing that you worried he was going to hand in his notice once they were off air and go and write some poetry.<br />
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There’s absolutely no reason for them to be remotely surprised. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a lot of the players are – as well as being very good at football – complete and utter con artists, and it’s not like they don’t know how things look on TV. In slow motion. VAR might cut down on grappling at corners, which it has done maybe twice or three times, but it will only increase players looking for, and finding, contact in the box, and making the most of it because the VAR will show that there was contact. Those sorts of things ARE clear and obvious errors to them, unfortunately.<br />
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And if you find the whole desperate appeal culture in football a bit unbecoming then you’re not going to like the next couple of weeks much at all – needing to win the World Cup likely brings out the very worst in people, like Ben Affleck in VARmageddon by Bruce Willis. And when games get tight, as they will because ultimately NO ONE is above shite football and eight at the back for long, it’ll quickly become the deciding factor.<br />
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The only way to mitigate this on the players’ side is making the ‘VAR sign’ a bookable offence immediately. Or for the player making it to have to stop playing and referee the game for five minutes while the ref follows him around the pitch absolutely bollocking him for every decision he makes. The whole thing is already a horrible new fad, like brandishing the imaginary yellow card, or ‘flossing’, whatever the fuck that is, and there’s something really unedifying about it all. It’s like a shit game of charades. ‘It’s a film?’ ‘No?’ ‘One word?’ ‘What?’ ‘Screen?’ ‘Booking?’ ‘Oh wait – CHEAT’.<br />
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On discussing the success of VAR at the World Cup so far, head of Fifa’s referees committee Pierluigi Collina has extolled its virtues, claiming that VAR has seen the 95% of correct decisions made by referees enhanced to 99.3% — not bad for a first effort at a major tournament. Presumably the 0.7% was Tunisian wrestling moves on Harry Kane. However, in perhaps of a sign of things to come, Collina has declared that he sees no need to issue yellow cards for players making a VAR gesture. “The reason to caution is not the gesture itself, more the manner it is made,” he said. So that’s as a lovely grey area for the shithouses to exploit then.<br />
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Time will obviously tell. Maybe the players will ultimately fall in line, forget about VAR even being used and just get on with the game safe in the knowledge that stuff will get picked up. Maybe they WON’T see it as a short-cut to penalties every single time the ball goes in the box and maybe corners will be an orderly procession of pairs of players like in that Noah’s VARk book by God. But it feels unlikely, given the never-ending desperation for an advantage. The only guarantee is there’ll still be plenty of subjective moments for us all to disagree on, which really is the only important thing when it comes to football anyway.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-36413570829017573252018-06-18T13:47:00.003+01:002018-06-18T14:06:51.278+01:00Everything is different yet again (i.e. exactly the same as before)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"One-nil up lads. Keep it tig... oh."</i></div>
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It’s very un-Spongers for us to piss on everyone’s chips at
a major tournament. But here we are, chaps in hand, aiming for the McCains. Don’t
say we didn’t warn you. After four days of football, England are in town
(Volgograd to be precise). Aside from witnessing the game of the tournament so
far (Spain vs Portugal), we’ve seen Germany humbled by Mexico. France limping
to a 2-1 win against the Aussies. And Brazil and Argentina stuttering to 1-1
draws against two banks of four aka Switzerland and Iceland.</div>
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Anti-football is back with a vengeance. We extolled its
virtues back in 2016, explaining it thus: “Fucking shite. It’s the new tiki
taka everyone. Impossible to defend against, because they’re the ones doing the
defending thanks very much and you have to have 59% possession and concede from
a throw-in. Or a tackle.” Remember when you were 10 and playing with your mates
on the playground? When everyone would be tactically disciplined and your team
would be hard to break down? No, NOR DO WE.</div>
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Yes, we get it. We get you can’t go out all guns blazing
against teams containing Messi or Neymar. But it’s hardly easy on the eye is
it. Especially when there’s four games in a day and you’ve polished off the
Fosters by 6pm.<br />
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Which segues
us nicely to England. We have a man in charge that is so sensible he should
have a range of sensible slacks at Burtons. For all we know, he does. We
haven’t been in Burtons since David Beckham had a hand in designing the 2002
England suit with its lovely narrow lapels (this isn’t true). That, to quote
The Guardian’s Barney Ronay, Gareth Southgate looks like “a 1930s intellectual”,
we think is a good thing. It’s a ‘radical sensibleness’, as the brilliant Brian
Phillips muses for the New Yorker. Very much in evidence by the switch to a 352
harking back to the good old days of France ’98. And it’s more radical and
sensible than having Allardici in charge and having to suffer yet another
tournament with Rooney waddling around, seemingly eating cake, playing like
he’s eaten a whole one, then mostly pointing and swearing. Be grateful for
small mercies.</div>
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So this is an England side with a wee bit of swagger, last
seen some time around 2006. A fully fit Harry Kane supported by Raheem Sterling
and Dele Alli is a nice thing. Kyle Walker and John Stones are nice things. And
this seems like a nice squad, with youth on their side. Whether ‘nice’ wins
tournaments is another thing entirely, but it’s all very, well, nice. When you
hear talk of previous squads being ‘interned’ rather than simply chilling out
in their camp, Southgate appears to have taken his own experiences of being an
international player as recently as 2004 and decided to take the best bits of
this, while discarding the bad bits.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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It’s smart and it will help this squad hopefully actually
enjoy the experience of representing their country at a World Cup. Because as
Southgate himself has said: “When I have been at World Cups before, whether
working with the media or following the games scouting, there is a kind of
carnival of football out there that sometimes as a player you don't access and
don't feel part of. We have got to feel that it is a festival of football that
you are fully involved in, and look to play as well as we can." Wise words
and good to hear.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s the crux of the matter though. Although Southgate
talks an awful lot of sense, England are notoriously slow starters at major
tournaments. For all the talk of a brave new dawn, a 1-1 draw seems a
relatively safe bet, given that this is exactly the score line England kicked
off Euro ’96 with against Switzerland. And before that in Italia ’90 against
the Irish. And after that in 2010 against the USA in the infamous E-A-S-Y
group. Remember England’s opening game against Russia in Euro 2016? Yep, 1-1. Remember
that 26<sup>th</sup> minute opening goal by Ray Wilkins in Euro 1980? No, us
neither. But it was cancelled out in the 29<sup>th</sup> minute by Jan Ceulemans
in a 1-1 draw. When Sol Campbell put England ahead in their first game against
Sweden in the 2002 World Cup, we can’t say we were massively surprised when
Niclas Alexandersson pulled one back in the second half. The final score? 1-1. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Oh, and I just remembered something else. I just remembered
Jolean Lescott heading England ahead in their opening game against France at
Euro 2012. Must have shut up shop right? Cheeky 1-0 win against one of the
favourites? Na. 1-1 mate. Samir Nasri saw to that. Oh and we drew 0-0 with
Uruguay in ’66. And 0-0 with Denmark in Euro ’92. And 2-2 with the USSR in the
’58 World Cup. And 4-4 with Belgium in Switzerland ’54. In fact, England have
won just five opening games in major tournaments since 1950 – that’s a 21.7%
success rate. Indeed, the last time England opened with a win was against
Paraguay in 2006.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Not that a draw in the opening game is a disaster,
considering England’s finest tournaments (1966, 1990 and 1996) have all started
with a point. And there’s always the cliché about ‘playing yourself into a
tournament’, which at least has some merit. But let’s break the habit of a
lifetime and not expect too much. Then, just maybe, when Kane puts
England ahead tonight, we don’t feel too cheated when Wahbi Khazri equalises
with 10 minutes to go.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-3829609046125907762018-06-14T12:44:00.002+01:002018-06-14T13:04:33.910+01:00Preview #2: The World Cup is ACE<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH8JbNget_A5bo5qNStlqorIDwvRaznGbQ1hFLEOaF-hsmnCfTbnwr9zipfu5nxRNwmK3753l20kw_BXJ4waXwqZscuM1fIii__E83CPwjU42nYAxy0DG14LRP5BTmBhuXKpnA8sYNOwA/s1600/180608024429-france-world-cup-win-1998-robert-pires-marcel-desailly-full-169.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH8JbNget_A5bo5qNStlqorIDwvRaznGbQ1hFLEOaF-hsmnCfTbnwr9zipfu5nxRNwmK3753l20kw_BXJ4waXwqZscuM1fIii__E83CPwjU42nYAxy0DG14LRP5BTmBhuXKpnA8sYNOwA/s320/180608024429-france-world-cup-win-1998-robert-pires-marcel-desailly-full-169.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Just the best thing ever</i></div>
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There’s a major tournament on, which in time-honoured fashion means Spongers HQ is a relative hive of activity. Relative in that someone is actually sitting in front of a laptop for the first time in two years, albeit staring at a half-finished article wondering how to write an intro. But, given it’s a major tournament that’s got us off our backsides to do so, how about a preview that actually takes place BEFORE the first match? First time for everything. Here we go then. The World Cup is amazing. Here’s why…<br />
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Let’s start with the obvious. It’s wall-to-wall football for a period of a month, when otherwise all we’d be doing is sitting in front of the telly pretending to give even the faintest of flying fucks about cricket/tennis/the Olympics/other people. Not our style. Other people are all well and good when there’s some football to watch with them; less so when they’re in your flat trying to have a ‘conversation’.<br />
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Wall-to-wall football is so great that I’m going on a stag do on Saturday at which the only activity is watching all four matches. On the flip-side, the prospect of wall-to-wall football made my wife leave her engagement ring at home this morning (she maintains it was by mistake), but whichever way you look at it, there’s a big month of wide-eyed incredulity on the cards.<br />
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Let’s move on to the bit we have to get out of the way. We’ve repeatedly laid into England on these pages but, as you’ll have read LITERALLY EVERYWHERE, it’s a bit more difficult to do this time. It feels wrong eulogising a group of players before they’ve achieved anything, particularly as Gareth Southgate’s record at major tournament reads ‘played three, lost two, finished bottom of the group’ – a Euro U-21 group which admittedly contained Portugal, Italy and Sweden. But, you know, we’ll see.
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Instead, let’s move into familiar territory and absolutely (and needlessly) fucking hammer the former manager. It’s an unquestionable delight that we won’t be watching Sam Allardyce’s England at this World Cup. Rooney a guaranteed starter. Lurking throwback Andy Carroll on the bench. A 1-0 loss to a very mobile Tunisia, 0-0 against Panama and a dead rubber versus Belgium. This World Cup will be ace because at least England will try and play a bit of football.<br />
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Even though we don’t expect England to unduly trouble the hearts and minds of aspiring footballers at home and around the world, there are more than enough players that will. Some of them we know, some of them we haven’t heard a lot about yet. And this is the real reason the World Cup is ace. You can’t win it by buying the best players (although you can be rich enough to invest in decent infrastructure regardless of population, but let’s not split hairs). It’s about as near to a level playing field as you get in football these days.<br />
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And for that reason, there are always stories, and they’re better stories than Ronaldo has scored 80 goals in 40 minutes, or City have scored 100 goals that technically cost them £3.5 million per goal, or whatever. It’s the story of a team that embarks on a complete journey into the unknown, or of a player that single-handedly drags them there. Moments of drama, emotion, controversy that become etched in your memory because of the glorious detachment of it taking place halfway around the world, football seemingly from another planet.<br />
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Of course, there is a political and social context to every World Cup and any preview worth its salt can’t ignore that given the many and far-reaching effects the World Cups can have on host nations. But we measure value solely in apples and onions, which contain basically no salt, so you’ll excuse us if we just fucking crack on with the whole thing being amazing.<br />
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The best bit so far has been the reactions of journalists and commentators who have packed all their most ridiculous preconceptions and travelled to Russia truly believing that absolutely everything exists in the political theatre trumpeted by their own papers and TV channels. Most are wandering round one or more of the host cities genuinely baffled that they haven’t been arrested simply for being Western, or been detained by the FSB for some extra-curricular and surprisingly over-friendly ‘customs checks’.<br />
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And that’s because, whatever you think about a country’s state apparatus, that rarely, if ever, applies to its millions of citizens. Alright, there are undoubtedly heavy stenches of corruption surrounding the whole circus, and a lingering threat of hooliganism, but it’s not as if all 145 million Russians are in on it. The streets aren’t paved with Putin and its people don’t deserve to be tarred with the same brush. Russia is as football-mad a country as anywhere else and, at risk of making ourselves look like utter twats when everyone gets their heads kicked in at the opening ceremony, will mostly be there to enjoy the tournament. It may surprise some people, but football can bring people together and that’s why it’s ace.<br />
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The sport is at its most powerful as a shared experience, and part of the reason this blog was born was down to us standing in one of London’s many pubs, as people left us alone because they thought we were having a fight simply because we were northern, reminiscing about World Cups. And it’s specifically World Cups because your fairly tiresome club loyalties are set to one side. And it was specifically World Cup 94 that we bonded over particularly, probably because neither England nor Scotland were actually there. But Romario, Gheorghe Hagi, Gabriel Batistuta and Hristo Stoichkov were.<br />
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And, in case you missed it, and because far be it for us to let the opportunity for a plug pass us by, the World Cup ultimately led us to publish a book – a book sincere in its depiction of football as a uniting force, a book that features a huge number of international teams from those eras of grainy television coverage and players you’d generally never heard of. A book that attempts to capture exactly why the World Cup is ace (get it <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Falling-Football-teams-shaped-obsession/dp/0957141041/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_pdt_img_top?ie=UTF8" target="_blank">here</a>).<br />
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Anyway. The World Cup 2018 is the next step on that journey. One that has already produced stories and memories involving all the greats: Eusebio, Charlton, Pele, Maradona, Baggio, Ronaldo, Zidane, erm… Danny Mills. Football at its simplest – you may not know about a lot of these teams, but you’re sure as hell going to find out over the next four weeks. It’s going to be gloriously unpredictable, surprising, exciting and above all, fucking ace.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-83204128143451333992018-06-14T12:15:00.001+01:002018-06-14T12:16:59.965+01:00Preview #1: The World Cup is AWFUL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"We'll just say you're on holiday"</i></div>
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There’s nothing like a global football tournament held every four years to spur the semi-retired Magic Spongers team into getting their arses in gear and do some typing. So in time-honoured fashion, here’s the first part of a double header on the World Cup. Ladies and gentlemen, the World Cup is awful. Here’s why…<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
On the surface, the 2018 incarnation of the World Cup will look like all the other World Cups that have gone before. And that is exactly what Russian president Vladimir Putin wants. With the eyes of the world on the country for a month, the World Cup offers up a perfect opportunity for Putin to launder his regime’s reputation, with James Kirchick, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, explaining: “Russia is causing a lot of problems, and this is part of a strategy to airbrush their image.”<br />
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It is these problems that makes it slightly difficult to separate the event from the host nation. Ignore military interventions in the Crimea and Syria, and the whole meddling in the US election, the ‘pee tape’ and the Sergei Skripal episode, and let’s go back to the World Cup bidding process. Now, we’re not ones to court a libel case (we are), but we’re going to stick our necks out and say that Fifa has perhaps struggled with transparency and free and fair voting processes in the past.<br />
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There was a taste of rancid onions in the mouth immediately after the decision to award Russia the 2018 tournament and Qatar the 2022 edition. Not least from English representatives, with former prime minister David Cameron and Goldenballs both crying foul on Russian attempts to influence the voting. ‘Well, there’s no smoke without fire’, as absolutely no one says these days.<br />
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Of the 22-man Fifa executive committee who made the decision to hand the greatest show on earth to Russia, Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini and Worawi Makudi were provisionally suspended over backhanders, the ever-likeable Jack Warner and Mohamed bin Hammam banned for life, Chung Mong-Joon banned for six years, Angel Maria Villar Llona fined, whistleblower Chuck Blazer banned for life and Ricardo Terra Teixeira was under FBI investigation. Franz Beckenbauer was banned for 90 days from any football-related activity for allegedly refusing to cooperate with an inquiry into corruption.<br />
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<i>*Takes a deep breath*</i> Meanwhile, Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu did not take part in the 2018/2022 voting process as they had already been suspended after being caught on camera by the Sunday Times demanding cash for votes. There were also allegations surrounding Issa Hayatou, Nicolas Leoz, Marios Lefkaritis and Jacques Anouma. That’s essentially the whole lot of them. What a fucking roll call.<br />
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In a spectacular, Sergio Ramos-esque display of bastardry, it came as little surprise that Putin has invited Blatter to attend this year’s World Cup as a personal guest of the Russian president. That alone should be enough to make you want to put back at least one of your packets of Panini stickers. And call us sticklers but we’re pretty sure that THE WORLD CUP counts as ‘sporting activity’ from which Blatter is supposedly banned. Blatter has unashamedly described the all-inclusive jolly as a “sporting and diplomatic mission for me”.<br />
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So there you go; it absolutely isn’t a sporting activity, except that it is ABSOLUTELY A SPORTING ACTIVITY. THE BIGGEST SPORTING ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD.<br />
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If all this wasn’t enough to make you want to just focus on Wimbledon and Love Island this summer, throw in Russia’s appalling stance on LGBT rights and you have a veritable shitty mix of politics and football, with the choice being to either ignore it all or else feel a bit grubby that a Russian World Cup is, to some degree, a vote of confidence for Putin and his cronies.<br />
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Fear is something that should never seep into watching football. And that’s precisely what members of the LGBT community will be feeling if they have made the decision to travel to Russia. Even if there is no major incident over the course of the tournament, when the bells and whistles are packed away on the evening of July 15, it should be remembered that the anti-gay laws will remain.<br />
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The hooligan element may have been downplayed by the Russian media too, but as Bob Mortimer put it on the Athletico Mince podcast, when he was in France for the Euros in 2016, the level of violence from proportions of the Russian contingent was “like something from fucking Spectre”. Lest we forget, the violence is roundly applauded by Russian MPs with Igor Lebedev, a member of the Russian Football Union [RFU] executive committee and MP of the Liberal Democratic party, taking to Twitter to offer a bit of encouragement for the army of MMA fighters: “I don’t see anything wrong with the fans fighting. Quite the opposite, well done lads, keep it up!”<br />
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We’ll be controversial and say there’s something really shitty about hooliganism, especially when it completely detracts from the football during a World Cup a la France ‘98 and the warzone at the waterfront area of the Old Port in Marseille. No repeat please, morons.<br />
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Lastly, the football itself. Kicking off festivities today will be Russia and Saudi Arabia in the inaugural human rights derby. The pre-tournament excitement gives way to a certain indifference when you remember that the World Cup will open with a potential stinker, especially given that we don’t want either team to win. Or care that much.<br />
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Rather (ok, massively) disingenuously, we can’t hand on heart say that we think the World Cup is awful. In more than shades of our last World Cup preview, perhaps ‘Putin/Fifa is awful’ would have been more apt. Ok, that absolutely would have been more apt, but then how would ‘Putin is awful’ have fit into a two-part preview when the other article is called ‘The World Cup is ace’? Ask yourselves that. You could say we’ve created our own problems there, but we’d just blame Putin. Or Fifa. Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-88792772745032448832017-04-12T13:16:00.000+01:002017-04-12T13:18:00.808+01:00The End is Nigh. Match preview: Leicester City v Atletico Madrid <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"10% possession lads. That's all"</i></div>
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It’s not very often that Life throws us a bone here at Spongers HQ, probably because if that hateful bastard did decide to throw one at us it’d somehow break all our windows just as we’d agreed to sell Spongers HQ based on its incredible windows. That’s the kind of relationship we have – Life is generally only interested in building us up to tear us down.<br />
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So imagine the scenes when not only were Leicester City drawn against Atletico Madrid in the Champions League – the soon-to-be-infamous 38% possession tie, as we predicted back on the old Twitter back in 2016 – but somehow, Macclesfield Town and York City beat Tranmere and Lincoln respectively to set up a Spongers Wembley final. A Spongers. Wembley. Final. </div>
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The scenes were of elation, obviously. Elation immediately replaced by trepidation. How is Life going to ruin this one for us?<br />
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The answer, of course, is that with only 38% possession each in their first leg tie at the Vicente Calderon, Atletico and Leicester are going to open a vortex and the world is going to end. So we won’t even make it to the Spongers final. Which you have to admit is staggeringly well played by Life. Most of us thought it would be Trump nuking China. But no. It’s Life not being able to stand Bushby and MacDonald enjoying a day out at Wembley with their friends.<br />
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Anyway. Why is Leicester-Atletico going to cause the end of the world? We’ll tell you why.<br />
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This is what we opined about Leicester mid-way through their title-winning season:<br />
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“Leicester are still going into games, especially away from home, as underdogs, so the home team feels bound to boss possession, which plays right into the hands of a team who are electric on the break."<br />
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This underdog nature still plays into Leicester’s favour, of course, though it helps to cement it by being shit for two-thirds of a season. But let’s deal with this distinct style thing and, as this is 2017, let’s do so by making a point via arbitrarily quoting from a website whose veracity is ultimately unknown, but seems on the surface to be very impressive.<br />
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Having a look around <a href="http://whoscored.com/">whoscored.com</a> suggests to us that Leicester’s average possession per match is 43.9%. Atletico’s is 48.9%. Not that instructive, albeit both are less than 50%. The instructive comparison is to look at what we’d consider ‘big’ games – against, in most cases, superior opposition, in which they’ve got a positive result. Not that it matters, because the world’s going to end.<br />
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When Atletico beat Bayern Munich at home in the group stage in September, they did so with 33% possession. When they won 4-2 at Leverkusen, they did so with 38% possession, with the goalless draw in the return seeing them with only 44%. Similarly, Leicester overcame Porto at home (44%) and beat Sevilla 2-0 with just 29% possession (having had 27% away). In the Premier League, just because the numbers are so remarkable, they’ve beaten Manchester City and Liverpool with 22% and 31% respectively.<br />
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In each of these games, whoscored.com notes, the main principle of each side is frequently winning the ball from the opposition and creating large numbers of chances relative to possession. Neither is going to boss possession, which is exactly what the other team needs to be successful. It’s going to be pretty bloody tough to win the ball and be direct against a side that specialises in winning the ball off you and being direct. And 33% possession plus 22% possession does not 100% of possession make. Where the hell is the rest of it going to go?<br />
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Into creating a vortex, that’s where. Into creating the end of the world. The end of the world as 22 lads just keep aggressively winning the ball off each other every three seconds then leave it for the other team to pass it around so they can hit them on the break, which they won’t because they are waiting for the other team to pass it around so they can hit them on the break. This, until the ground opens up and the Earth turns inside out.<br />
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But wait a minute. This all sounds kind of familiar. Like there’ll be lots of running. And plenty of tackling. And then some more running. Possibly a header. A run. A tackle. Some pride thrown in for good measure. A clearance or two into touch. A lovely sideways pass from a defensive midfielder to the full back in space that English fans so love. Followed by some more running and a tackle. And what’s that? A fucking BEARD?<br />
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It’s shite football, as expounded by us back when we got our UEFA badges a few months ago and vowed to change football. Little did we know. Little did we know that it’d lead to Riyad Mahrez’s spindly legs being ripped off by the massive gravitational pull of the Earth’s core, or Jamie Vardy’s little wrist bandage being completely melted by molten magma. Or Fernando Torres still missing presentable chances even though he has the entire universe to aim at. Or Marc Albrighton still just running around regardless.<br />
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Shite football, our guaranteed way to win any match no matter who you’re playing against, will ultimately do for us all. Sorry about that everyone. Turns out this is all our fault. But you do have to sit back and admire just how well Life has stitched us up on this one.
Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-72673391353561168992017-03-07T14:24:00.000+00:002017-03-07T14:24:33.923+00:008 Reasons Donald Trump is like a goalkeeper*<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i> "Let me tell you something about soccer"</i></div>
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Rarely can societal shocks have been as seismic as this. When Donald Trump swept to the US presidency with all the elegance and grace of an ice-skating Iain Dowie, Spongers HQ was in no little shock. And while we wish that was our excuse for writing precisely zero blog posts since July 2016, in fact we just couldn’t be arsed. Does anyone even do this anymore?<br />
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Anyway, what better way to come roaring back like a really angry Iain Dowie than to combine current affairs with the way we tend to end up analogising most things that happen to us through the prism of football. And in this light, looking at Donald Trump suddenly becomes very straightforward. The man is simply a frustrated goalkeeper. And given that, surely, 150 years of football has taught us all about how to handle goalkeepers, life should be about to get a lot easier. You can thank us later.<br />
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It’s a bold claim, but the evidence stacks up like a big lovely pile of apples, albeit a pile of apples doing their usual bastard trick of hiding an onion at their core, a bit like a fruit and veg incarnation of Iain Dowie. So here we go:<br />
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<b>1. He needs to wear massive gloves </b><br />
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Now it’s not really like us to go in for the personal taunts, particularly not from the outset, but the world has changed and everyone’s being a shitstick so you’ll excuse us if we pick up on the most widely reported of Trump’s physical traits, his tiny hands. Having really small hands seems a counterintuitive place to start as a goalkeeper, but it does mean that like lots of keepers, Trump has the almost primal need to wear really massive gloves so his hands look bigger.<br />
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Besides, goalie gloves these days are almost like giant suction pads anyway, so it gives Trump extra grip when teetering at the top of a ramp like with all the panache of a tightrope-walking Iain Dowie. It’s surprising Theresa May managed to get away from him at all – bet her hands still smell like goalie gloves – you know EXACTLY what smell we’re talking about.<br />
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<b>2. You are not welcome in his territory </b><br />
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It’s a well-known fact that goalkeepers are incredibly territorial and are renowned for bollocking defenders for coming anywhere near their personal space even when there’s absolutely no threat. For years, Peter Schmeichel would threaten to leave dead animals in Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister’s wives’ handbags should they ever encroach into his penalty areas. David James used to keep an elastic band and some paper clips in the back of his net just to ping at Mark Wright and Rob Jones if they got too close. That’s how Rob Jones lost his eye.<br />
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And for slaughtered weasels and childish weaponry, read an executive order banning a select few from entering the country Trump now views as his personal territory. Even if there’s absolutely no threat whatsoever, and the ball’s halfway up the other end of the pitch, you can guarantee your goalkeeper will be screaming ‘GET OUT’ at you with all the wide-eyed fanaticism of Iain Dowie exorcising demons from a small child. It’s Trump all over.<br />
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<b>3. He has an unhealthy obsession with walls </b><br />
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Goalkeepers have an almost indelible attachment to walls. To spending absolutely ages putting them together, aligning every element until the perfectionist at their heart is truly happy that the barrier is insurmountable, then watching them have precisely no effect whatsoever on the exact scenario they were meant to be stopping.<br />
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We probably don’t need to add anything to that particular analogy, do we?<br />
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<b>4. He’s part of a union of other fucking nutcases </b><br />
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Since time immemorial, the mythical ‘goalkeepers union’ has existed to implicitly support those psychopaths of a similar persuasion, and there’s no question that Trump is a fully paid-up member of some kind of mad association that bears all the hallmarks of being a group of goalkeepers. For one, it’s a union of men widely considered to be nutcases. For another, it’s a lot like the football fan’s relationship with goalkeepers where you can name the main one from each country but precious few others – you know, like Lloris. Neuer. Buffon. Putin. Assad. Jong-Un. And obviously Trump.<br />
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<b>5. He talks complete and utter shite </b><br />
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Footballers generally can be relied upon to deal only in banalities, but in goalkeepers there’s a particular brand of nonsense that really leaves you wondering if they’ve got any idea what they’re meant to be doing at all. Again, it’s not a huge leap from here to the President of the United States but we can at least highlight a few examples to conclusively prove that all Trump really needs is to be put between the sticks and have some balls pelted at him for 90 minutes to truly find his place in the order of things and leave the rest of us alone.<br />
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“I was a bit anxious when I got to the stadium, but in all fairness if hadn't been anxious I'd have been worried” - Paul Robinson<br />
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“If I could be a superhero, I would be Batman. He's got the least silly tights” - Paul Robinson<br />
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“If you don't believe you can win, there is no point in getting out of bed at the end of the day.” - Neville Southall<br />
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“In football, you don't really know what is going on but we will worry about that when it happens.” - Neil Sullivan<br />
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“I think mercurial is a too-often used word, but he had mercurial pace, mercurial ability and a mercurial love of the game, and I think that’s very important.” - Iain Dowie<br />
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“Bing bing, bong bong, bing bing bing” – Donald Trump Lincoln Day” speech on political lobbying, 2015<br />
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<i>*Oh what, it’s not actually eight reasons, it’s only five? Well no, it’s 8. It is 8. Let me tell you something about numbers. I’m great with numbers. The best. Period. And if you feel a little bit let down by that, I suggest you blame the fake news media who promised you 8, because I never promised you 8. Never happened. Ask Russia. I mean don’t. I never met Russia. Don’t know them. Great people though. I have a great relationship with them. Lev Yashin? Old friend. The best guy. Awesome guy.</i>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-29057354112291585642016-07-18T17:07:00.000+01:002016-07-18T17:07:41.249+01:00Badges done. Time to change the football<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Fucking yeeeeeessssss!"</div>
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Last week we said we were off to get our badges from UEFA. We’ve got them now. And what an experience it was. For one, we now can’t move for cones and bibs at Spongers Towers. You can't even get in the bogs without doing those daft jumps over those daft bars, and that's not solely down to the fact that 'the bogs' double up as 'the cupboard'.<br />
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It’s cost us about £3,000 each and we’ve both been sacked from our jobs, but that doesn’t matter because we’re going to crack on with implementing the newest tactical innovation in football. As you might have read on these pages previously, it’s a perfect blend of running, tackling, beards and occasional headers that may as well have been designed for the English game. Just look at these hallmarks.<br />
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Pride? Check. Beards mean pride. Just ask illustrious beardies the world over. Like ZZ Top. Or Hashim Amla. Also, if you’re going to be running about a lot you need to be bloody proud of it because there’s precious little to recommend the idea otherwise.<br />
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Passion? Check. Show us someone who isn’t passionate about beards and we’ll probably have to admit there’s more to the world than North London, a lesson which [SATIRE KLAXON] the current Labour Party leadership would do well to pay attention to. Also, if you’re going to be running about a lot you need to be bloody passionate about it because there’s precious little to recommend the idea otherwise. Loads of things have been won just by really caring about them, as you’ll remember from Andy Murray only becoming good once he had cried in front of some posh people.<br />
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Belief? Check. This is one of those philosophies you really have buy in to, involving as it does an average of six touches of the ball every game, with only one of them being a pass (and God help you if it’s more than that) and one every four touches being a header. The rest are tackles. Or clearances. Into touch. Clearances into touch are the new switching it out to the opposite fullback and will be met with the same polite applause, as if to acknowledge some semi-cerebral activity has just taken place when in reality anyone could do it.<br />
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Anyway. Pride. Passion. Belief. All key ingredients in this most innovative of philosophies, itself a potent mixture of statistics, intuition and creativity. Are you ready?<br />
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We’re going to draw every game. When translated to the Premier League, this is 38 points. Basically 38 points is more than likely enough to keep you up and a goal difference of zero is essentially an extra point. It might not be the magic ’40-point’ mark we hear of every season but 39 points saw Sunderland safe in 17th place last season and their manager is being touted for the England job. In fact, 38 points with a goal difference of zero would have seen you come in at 16th, while in the 2014-15 season you’d have done even better – 14th and feet up by April. A nice 38 points would have you safe in 16 of the 21 seasons in which the Premier League has had 20 teams.<br />
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So how are we going to do it?<br />
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We’re playing 5-5-0, which is very fluid (we’re not idiots) and can easily become an 8-3-0 when out of possession, which is effectively all the time. Because we draw every game either 0-0 or 1-1, invariably involving a set piece, we are never favourites with the bookies, which allows us to de facto cede possession every game because we are always the underdogs. Six touches each, remember. A defensive midfield that specializes in the new fans’ favourite, the clearance into touch. Somewhere around the halfway line preferably, so we’re no vulnerable to long throws. Which we won’t be, because one in every four touches is a header.<br />
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With TV money basically rendering prize money completely irrelevant, and THIS BEING A RESULTS BUSINESS REMEMBER, finishing on average 17th every year should ensure we remain on course for yet another triumph. Rather like Arsenal’s Invincibles, we will go down in history, but unlike the Invincibles, no one will ever go out of their way to watch us. Or will they? Because from a 5-5-0 and a £60m transfer war chest from the Sky money, we could buy one skillful lad and one fast lad and switch to a 5-4-1 and then the sky’s the limit. And because 5-4-1 occasionally looks like a 4-3-3, we will probably be hailed for our tactical flexibility. You’re welcome, Sunderland fans.<br />
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Now we know ‘difficult to beat’ is usually code for ‘really fucking boring’, but as we keep being told, no one cares if you’re winning. Well, we won’t be winning, but we won’t be losing either. And that is now statistically way more than half the battle.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-61575829530174281172016-07-11T15:33:00.000+01:002016-07-11T16:03:56.076+01:00Shite is the new good<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>'What do you mean no more nutmegs?'</i></div>
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Tactical trends borne of tournaments are nothing new and it’s fitting that one has yet again emerged from the denizens of France 2016. And make no mistake, it’s our absolute favourite.<br />
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‘Fucking shite’ it’s called. It involves tackling and running and doing one or two (usually one) good thing in 90 minutes. We look forward to Jose Mourinho implementing it at Man United and running away with the league this year, because just remember it’s all about running. And tackling.<br />
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Fucking shite. It’s the new tiki taka everyone. Impossible to defend against, because they’re the ones doing the defending thanks very much and you have to have 59% possession and concede from a throw-in. Or a tackle.<br />
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Austerity football. Bereft of any investment of skills or talent or trickery and stripped back to its bare bones. If we don’t concede lads, we can’t lose. Get used to it. The only nutmeg you’ll be seeing from now on are going to be when you get lost looking for beans in Sainsbury’s.<br />
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And obviously, like every other thing the English national team has ever done, we’ve pioneered it, being fucking shite, but we’ve now decided to back away from it and out of Europe and just let everyone else do it way better than we ever could. Brave new Brexit England still have a chance to adopt this mindset – and judging by the fact the FA have been busy calling Big Sam, we will be – and finally compete.<br />
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We English can do the running, of course. That’s how we breed footballers from their inception. It’s just the single bit of football that we can’t seem to manage. As soon as we learn ‘football’ we’ll be in prime position to win the football. Only ONE bit of footballing needs to come off in 90 or 120 minutes, and we’ll be in.<br />
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We’re off to do our UEFA badges this week and next week we’re going to set up our teams to win the football as follows:<br />
RUN<br />
RUN<br />
THROW<br />
GOAL<br />
KEEP RUNNING<br />
HEAD IT<br />
KICK IT<br />
RUN<br />
RUN AND KICK<br />
FUCKING RUN!!<br />
BEARDS<br />
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Beards, of course, are critical. Borrowed from Iceland, but with notables elsewhere, you’re going fucking nowhere without a good beard or two. If we run, with beards, we’ll get out of the group. If we can head after a bit of running, we’ll score the goal. Then all we have to do is loads of running, a tiny bit of passing and something with beards. Maybe don’t worry about the passing though. Blood, sweat and beards is all we ask. We’ve done our football for the day. Three passes, five beards and a header. Get in there. Then run.<br />
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Fucking shite lads. That’s the way forward. Let’s sacrifice all trappings of style and just suffer it, because, in case you didn’t know, only the result matters and anyone who wants to actually watch a bit of adventure is in the wrong game. We can’t remember if that makes us purists now or twats, given that none of our erstwhile media colleagues can decide if the game’s in a fucking ditch or if winning against all the odds is the best thing since winning with some degree of artistry (clue – it’s the latter; you’re a twat).<br />
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Well frankly, if we wanted to only get a result after 90 minutes of straining and sweating and nothing actually happening then we’d stop eating fibre and try and have a poo. That’s the problem – the last couple of weeks have seen football become a horrible constipated mess. France were totally jammed up. They needed to have a vindaloo and loosen the fuck up. Shit with some artistry, for God’s sake. You’re FRENCH.<br />
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On the one hand, admittedly, we really cannot begrudge a minnow nation defending like their life depends on it and then hoping to nick a goal via a header or a beard. On the other though, we like watching football as entertainment. We didn’t begin watching the sport aged 7 thinking ‘I want to play in a side that plays with two really solid banks of four. One that doesn’t concede. One that is really hard to break down’. We just wanted to be Romario.<br />
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‘Aha, you smug pair of twats,’ some of you will say. ‘So are you saying that Iceland SHOULD have taken the game to Portugal, exactly as Ronaldo wanted, just because you two want to be entertained? They did what they had to do and were vindicated because they got the draw.’ WE KNOW THAT. IT DOESN’T MEAN WE HAVE TO GO AROUND SAYING IT’S THE BEST THING EVER*/**.<br />
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Talking of potential logjams, one major flaw with the ‘fucking shite’ way of play arises when you have two austerity football sides playing each other. We once hilariously wondered on Twitter what would happen if Atletico Madrid were to be pitted against Leicester in the Champions League this season and both teams have 39% of possession? We sort of have a point you know. In this instance, the team with better players will have more of the ball. So that’ll be Atletico.<br />
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But what happens when you get ever-expanded UEFA and FIFA tournaments, where you get more minnow match-ups? Do they both look at the bookies odds pre-kick off and work out through that logic who therefore has most of the possession in the game? Can’t be an underdog if you are playing an underdog can you? And because 39% plus 39% does not equal 100%, what happens to the remaining 22% of possession? Something with beards no doubt.<br />
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Having to listen to rehashes of ‘Portugal won’t care how they won it’ and ‘the trophy won’t have parentheses next to the winners name saying ‘They played shite for most of the tournament’’, we just got a bit miffed, that’s all. Which is why we wrote this piece. And why we’ve written most of our pieces these past six years.<br />
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We know that history will merely say ‘Portugal – European Championship winners 2016’. But that alone should not and is not the sole fact that should shut down any conversation from the purists, sorry twats, like us that are still partial to a football match providing some degree of solace from the drudgery of our day jobs and shite chat in the pub. Life is already all running, sweating, and defending. And beards. Please football, don’t go the same route.<br />
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<i>*We do actually really like Iceland so maybe that analogy is a bit crap, but why break the habit of a lifetime.</i><br />
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<i>**Maybe we should have used Northern Ireland v Wales as an example, or something like that. You know, when a minnow plays a smaller minnow. Ah well.
</i>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-38908847444809222732016-06-17T16:02:00.002+01:002016-06-17T16:14:59.351+01:00Not one for the nines, is it?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>'Help me Dave'</i></div>
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Dave from accounts is looking like me like I’ve just chucked his chicken triple in the bin, poured his bottle of Coke down the sink and hidden his Mars bar. And Dave from accounts is well within his rights to look at me like this, as that’s exactly what I’ve done, plonking down a salad and a Lucozade in front of him and telling him to ‘pull his finger out’. You see, I’ve just got Dave from accounts to win the Euros in our office sweepstake, and I’m going to be a hell of a lot nearer the £40 first prize if he gets off his backside and goes for a run before his game against Portugal at the weekend.<br />
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To be fair to him, it’s not Dave’s fault that no one checked the bag had been emptied after Secret Santa (does this mean the poor bugger didn’t get a Christmas present and now I’ve chucked his sandwich in the bin? Jesus, sorry Dave). But I’m stuck with him now and I can’t buy back in to the sweepstake. Dave could go reasonably far in this tournament though; he always bags a few at five-a-side, NEVER overcommits and judging by his speed out the door at 4.15 on a Friday he’s fairly fleet of foot and all. GO ON DAVE. TAKE HIM ON! SKIN HIM DAVE! DAVE FOR TOP GOALSCORER.<br />
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However, the idea of the albeit fictional Dave successfully taking on all comers has struck something of a chord since the tournament began though - it’s not been a tournament, so far, that’s been high on supposed goalscorers scoring actual goals. Until Graziano Pelle lashed one in for Italy the other night, in fact, barely a number 9 had got remotely close, as evidenced more instructively by Romelu Lukaku’s travails against an unforgiving Italy. And his first touch like a trampoline.<br />
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Strikers have been suffering alright. Even Olivier Giroud, who actually scored, did so having warmed up by missing a hatful. The Welsh and Polish performed to type(ish) and even then it’s not really Hal Robson-Kanu’s style to shin in the winner with a few minutes to go - though Poland’s Arkadiusz Milik, almost an exception, is a striker and did bang in 21 goals in Holland, finishing third in the overall charts. Alvaro Morata struggled for Spain, Croatia got by courtesy of Luka Modric, the great Zlatan created a(n own) goal but was constantly dispossessed by a centre-back pairing of Ciaran Clark and John O’Shea. There have been no goals for Lewandowski or Muller in two games thus far. Harry Kane was on corners and then off the pitch (and off corners, incidentally).<br />
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Obviously the tournament’s barely got started a week in and it’s quite early to be sounding off on this becoming a full-blown trend. And it’d probably still be slightly foolish to write off this being a striker’s tournament before Cristiano Ronaldo finally gets going against Austria tomorrow night, but that is after being comprehensively nullified by Iceland. But so far, of the 35 goals, only nine (IRONY) have been scored by self-confessed strikers (Giroud, Stancu, Milik, Robson-Kanu, Pelle, Szalai, Griezemann and Eder… ten if you include Bale. Which we don’t).<br />
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But games have generally been tight and the tournament generally quite defensive – the ‘below 2.5 goals in the game’ option has kept one Sponger in Strongbows and pork scratchings so far. Only 10 goals have been scored in the first halves of the matches played so far, with 25 arriving in the second half (and interestingly six in stoppage time when games are stretched) and the competition countering along quite conservatively at under two goals a game.<br />
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As Italy memorably showed us against Belgium on Monday, this is a reliable and fairly effective means of tournament football success. Expansive? Nah, give us some gnarled old defensive shithousery and a stoppage-time goal to make everything seem worthwhile.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-21234948310134732012016-06-08T17:41:00.000+01:002016-06-08T17:42:26.046+01:00 Football rentre à la maison<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Fabien Barthez, Laurent Blanc and Zinedine Zidane </i><br />
<i>pose for the cameras in 1998</i></div>
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If England 96 was when football came home, France 98 was when it got a radical new haircut, swaggered into the living room having not been seen for a couple of months, nailed the cat to the TV, threw all the family photos out of a top-floor window and then left straight through the wall, joyfully, ferociously, shrugging as it went. Or so your faulty memory would have you believe. Or would it?<br />
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Much has been made of the breaking down of barriers achieved by that French side – a side fundamentally different from any that had gone before and not only because one of them was willing to kiss a short bald bloke on the head before every match for luck. ‘Le Rainbow Warriors’, they’ve been called, which is apparently French for ‘The Rainbow Warriors’; a team that for the first time embodied and then united a multicultural France. <i>Génération black, blanc, beur</i>.<br />
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It was so remarkable that Lillian Thuram scored twice in a World Cup semi-final – his only international goals in 142 appearances. It was so remarkable that Zinedine Zidane could easily have been elected President after the final. It was so remarkable that Scotland were actually there.<br />
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There were, of course, some other reasons for history’s fondness. France 98 was a World Cup of firsts. It was the first time the tournament was beefed up to 32 teams – these days a source of frustration, but back then a real shot in the arm to minnows the world over, like Iran, or England. It was the first World Cup to feature the Golden Goal. It was the first (and last) time Michael Owen was actually interesting.<br />
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It was also France’s first World Cup for a while, qualifying automatically as hosts while failing to do so by more traditional methods in 1990 and 1994. They had an England-equalling run at Euro 96 though, beating the Dutch on penalties in the quarter final and then departing at the hands of the Czech Republic, in a parallel so eerie that Reynald Petros, who missed the first penalty of sudden death in the semi-final a la Gareth Southgate, hardly ever played top-level football ever again. Southgate, of course, never really did in the first place. Oooooh.<br />
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Returning to France in 2016 holds up such an interesting mirror on the past two decades of football. In the same way that Euro 96 was subject to a very recent (albeit excellent) rose-tinted spectacles documentary on the BBC, France 98 is held up as a similarly unifying experience for a nation that, before the tournament, was under a cloud of Jean-Marie Le Pen-inflamed racial tension.<br />
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Can a football tournament really have such an effect on France again? There are certainly numerous issues afoot, some familiar but some very much more recent developments. The old tensions certainly still abound. Eric Cantona has been stirring the pot like an enthusiastic witch, claiming that former-World-Cup-winning-captain-and-now-coach Didier Deschamps had racial motivations for leaving out Hatem ben Arfa and Karim Benzema, two of the best French players in Europe this year. But Benzema was suspended from the squad last year for an altogether more new age scandal, attempting to blackmail Mathieu Valbuena over a sex tape. I don’t know about you but I can’t really imagine Christophe Dugarry attempting to blackmail Bixente Lizarazu.<br />
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Anyone?<br />
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The behaviour of players has, then, been an additional but heavily reported differential over time. Let’s do a little analysis on the changing face of the professional game since 1996, when France’s 22-man squad, was, remarkably, made up of 18 players plying their trade in France, with a further four kicking the old air bag around Italy for money.<br />
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The Spain squad in 1996 was to a man employed in Spain, while England boasted only Ince and Gascoigne, playing in Italy and Scotland respectively. For Italy, only the 32-year-old Roberto Donadoni was playing on foreign soil (in the USA) and even the other tournament finalists, the Czech Republic, boasted 15 players from sides in the Czech leagues.<br />
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While this isn’t particularly instructive in terms of the likelihood of success – given the numbers of France-based players representing France had dropped to just 10 players in 1998 and 7 in the successful Euro 2000 campaign, it is indicative of the change in movement of elite footballers and lines up with the real foot-on-the-accelerator period of beefed-up tournaments and generally beefed-up wallets across the game from the turn of the century.<br />
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European football has taken the opportunity to move into the silly-money stratosphere, resulting in ever-more ludicrous behaviour. The evidence is compelling though, and it certainly came to a head for France in 2010.<br />
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Exhibit A: Nicolas Anelka’s Spongers-esque rant* at Raymond Domenech, leading to him being sent straight home. Exhibit B: five players disciplined by the French Football Federation at the same tournament, with feelings as sour as Adam Bushby’s face after he’s been asked to write a blog post. Exhibit C (still 2010): French supporters losing patience and vociferously supporting South Africa as the hosts beat France 2-1, a game made even more frustratingly futile as both teams ended up out of the tournament anyway. Exhibit D (STILL 2010 THOUGH): There’s even time for Franck Ribery to refuse to pass to Yoann Gourcuff for being ‘too posh’.<br />
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The national team has been no stranger to dressing room chaos and headlines of this nature are what separates this team from that covered in the build up to France 1998, when most of the discussion was about the make-up of the squad, rather than the actions of its individuals. So – is this level of unrest and historical infighting a bridge too far? Or is it that France just can’t really ever go into a tournament with any sense of serenity?<br />
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Hope for the same outcome as 1998 remains, and despite high-profile absentees through injury or sex-tapery, France are favourites. And if ever there was a time for unity, given other events in France that we can’t even go into here, it is now.<br />
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Moving from behind the scenes on to the pitch, this is a very good France squad indeed. A central midfield comprising Paul Pogba, N’golo Kante and Blaise Matuidi is the envy of every other side, with the possible exception of the Spanish. There are goals in this side in the form of Antoine Greizmann, Anthony Martial and Olivier Giroud. And there is that <i>je ne sais quoi</i> too – see Dmitri Payet’s free kicks.<br />
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And should the same outcome as 1998 be achieved? Victory could have the same redemptive power, uniting a country reeling from internal divisions and external threats, as it did 18 years ago against the backdrop of Jean-Marie Le Pen and violence in the <i>banlieues</i>. The star player in 1998 was an Algerian, while 2016’s star was born in Lagny-sur-Marne to Guinean parents. The time is ripe for another rainbow team to emerge from the storm.<br />
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So perhaps the tournament has come at the ideal time for the French. This is a diverse squad, perhaps less-than-completely-united under Deschamps but more than completely capable of competing with Europe’s other leading lights. We’ve long held up football’s capacity for redemption (a result or otherwise of its short memory, depending on your level of cynicism) on these pages, and there’s nothing like an intoxicating summer of football to get the camaraderie flowing through a squad, and by extension, a country. It’ll be fascinating to see how high the barriers have to be built before this romanticism is unable to overcome them.<br />
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*<i>Some say he’d also had four pints, which is generally enough to get us going, but that’s not been verified as yet
</i>Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-62796580164148842732016-01-05T17:25:00.000+00:002016-01-05T17:26:04.364+00:00When is the FA Cup not the FA Cup?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Apparently much more important than you'd previously thought</i> </div>
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It’s been much maligned over the course of the past few years as an inferior relation to the other, more popular, more rewarding versions on which it’s modelled, and for once we’re not talking about our Tinder accounts. 2016’s never-ending festival of football hoves into view this week with the League Cup semi-finals, which see Liverpool travel to Stoke and Manchester City to Everton.<br />
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Arsene Wenger once dismissed the competition, saying that winning it wouldn’t constitute the end of his trophy drought. But it’s an increasingly attractive competition to players coaches and fans alike, mainly because it’s bloody sympathetic to European involvement (clubs involved in European competition tend to get byes to the third round), youth development (no one ever got fined for playing the kids in the league cup — it used to be sponsored by MILK for crying out loud) and, above all, it gives you a second chance at a semi-final if you lose the first time out.<br />
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There’s no easy competition to win, obviously, but you can win the league cup having only played six matches, which doesn’t feel like that many given the whole thing’s over and done with by the end of February — the lack of distraction at the business end of the league season being another positive.
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Remarkably for something viewed as the country’s third competition, the league cup is essentially the same as the FA Cup, and luckily for you, we're about to explain why. If you’re a Premier League team, you enter at the third round, playing potentially six matches to get to the final (though lower Premier League teams may play seven to get to the league cup final). Arguably, the league cup is an even more attractive route to the final - the odds of meeting teams from lower leagues are higher right through to the latter stages, given the regularity with which weakened top-flight teams are knocked out.<br />
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There are other reasons to be cheerful as well. The same prestigious Wembley final, which, if you win, rewards you with that equivalent of an XXXL jumper from a relative at Christmas with no gift receipt — a Europa League place. And although in previous years the runner-up would get this place if the winner went on to qualify elsewhere, that won’t happen this year (perhaps even more attractive). Beyond the (albeit rich) history and the fact the whittling down of minnows starts much earlier, there really isn’t much to choose between the two*.<br />
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But you really can’t imagine such a major furore in 1999-00 - nor now, for that matter - were Manchester United boycotting the Capital One Cup, instead of the FA Cup, and that’s not just because they don’t have a prayer of getting near Club World Cup territory any time soon. The prize money might be significantly less in the league cup (£100,000 to the winner), but that’s the only major difference and really, it’s as little as makes no difference to teams in the Championship or Premier League.<br />
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And the league cup is starting to take on a particular significance of its own (not before time). Let’s take Liverpool. For Jurgen Klopp, a Premier League title challenge looks unlikely and Friday’s FA Cup tie at Exeter City could be tricky if his side take another chastening beating at the hands of Stoke tonight. Which is entirely possible, given the state of THAT defence, up against one of the league’s most entertaining attacks. A win in a semi-final though, could be a significant lift. A final, and a trophy would alter the appraisal of his first season in charge, not least because it’d largely be achieved without three of his four main striking options and this part of it won’t involve losing 2-0 at West Ham.<br />
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But it also gives fans and board members the success to cling to that buys Klopp more time. Winning a trophy is considered pretty difficult in your first couple of years at a club, unless you’re Jose Mourinho, but if you do happen to snag one, a lot more of the sorts of thing Klopp’s Liverpool are struggling with are forgiven much more readily. And that’s why it’s strange that more isn’t made of this competition, just because its importance to the big four or five, whoever they might be now, is minimal.<br />
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Stoke's approach constitutes the other side of this particular coin - a team from the middle rungs of the Premier League (albeit only a point and two places below Liverpool) for whom a title challenge is out of reach, targeting the one-offs of ‘cup competitions’ as their chance to mix it among the medals. Indeed, the league cup is Stoke’s only major trophy, won in 1972, and it would be considered an unbelievably successful season under Mark Hughes for them to maintain their position in the league and actually win a trophy again.<br />
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On reflection then, it seems that the one main difference between the FA and league cups is that you’ll never hear anyone speak of the ‘magic’ of the latter, but that certainly won’t matter to the winner of this season’s competition. The lower league clubs will still love securing that most shiny of apples from the second or third round draws, while the top brass will continue to rest their regulars until the latter stages — nothing new to the FA Cup (magic or none) when considering Big Sam’s recent comments ahead of Sunderland’s third round tie with Arsenal: “If the Premier League decides to put a stupid fixture midweek when they don’t bloody need to then I haven’t got much choice (about making changes at Arsenal). That’s diabolical.”<br />
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Fielding weakened teams until it matters? Moaning about the distraction of a cup competition when there is the far more urgent matter of avoiding relegation/finishing fifth to qualify for a European cup competition that no one seemingly wants to be in? The chance to give Premier League managers a few extra months’ breathing space via a hallowed piece of silverware? Yes, it seems the league cup really is the new FA Cup. Now all we need is a song from the finalists.<br />
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*Beyond the obvious fact that the league cup doesn't include non-league, before you all write in. We are aware of that.Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6071830395576896110.post-56483632762248288512015-12-23T12:45:00.002+00:002015-12-23T12:56:19.003+00:00Is it a Man City? Is it a Man U? No, it’s LEICESTER CITY<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"40 points? Hahahahaha."</div>
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A situation that takes place during the course of a season always refers you to something else that has happened or is about to happen, and it is this something else that explains why we all keep coming back to football, no matter our distaste. When a certain someone talks of ‘betrayal’ – a word Shakespearean in its intent – we are reminded that this sport is at once ludicrous in the loftiness we attach to it, and absolutely worthy of the attachment.<br />
<a name='more'></a>Watching this season unfold as 32 year-olds reminds these two writers of things that have happened and things that are about to happen. While we hope Leicester defy logic and win the Premier League, just for the sheer audacity of it, we fear that the bubble will (inevitably?) burst as our thoughts fall on Kevin Keegan’s Entertainers and John Gregory’s Villa. Or Arsenal. We look back to inform the future.<br />
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No season ever exists in isolation, which is why this one is so exciting. Halfway through, we have Leicester looking down on everyone else, lighting up the league with their counter attacks, and the elegance of Riyad Mahrez complemented by the frenetic, bulldozing Jamie Vardy. Palace, Watford and West Ham are 6th to 8th. Chelsea are three points off the relegation spots. No game has been a forgone conclusion all season and it’s a marvellous thing to behold.<br />
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So can Leicester do it? Just like Newcastle of 95-97, they have become everyone’s second team and, as we all know, everyone’s second team wins absolutely nothing. That is the way of things. Natural orders don’t ordinarily topple. Four months of an onion masquerading in a fruit bowl does not an apple make.<br />
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The way that Leicester have achieved their position in the league though would suggest that natural orders COULD topple. However, only West Brom have had less of the ball than Leicester this season. And the trick to that is surely twofold – firstly, Leicester are still going into games, especially away from home, as underdogs so the home team feels bound to boss possession, which plays right into the hands of a team who are electric on the break (it also helped Norwich win at Old Trafford, and can reasonably explain brilliant results for West Ham and Palace away from home - not least the fact that West Ham won 3-1 AT Palace, as well as winning at Arsenal, Liverpool and City). Secondly, the Foxes have no superstars and so egos are not getting in the way of playing a high pressing game whereas elsewhere it has been known to happen.<br />
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And to give the season a ‘throwback’ feel that has perked up the most jaded of older fans, 4-4-2 is reaping rich rewards at Leicester and Watford. As no less an authority than Roy Hodgson once remarked: "By playing 4-4-2, you've got 'twos' all over the field. I would always be looking to find a team that can play with a back four." This probably adds to why Leicester are winning hearts and minds by the week – they speak of a time when Brian Clough was wringing every ounce of effort and talent from a Derby County or Nottingham Forest.<br />
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While the short-term stories continue to astound though, there is still a long-term arc that looks highly likely to produce the usual predictable Premier League conclusions. Arsenal and City are very much in the hunt, and winter, as they say, is coming. While it’s open at the top for the moment, this period brings with it a congested schedule (how much energy do you need for high-energy counter-attacks against City and Liverpool in the space of four days, for example? Leicester’s next two games are MASSIVE) and, as Sir Alex Ferguson always knew, a true test of squad strength. It also, famously, brings a January transfer window - a tricky time to know whether to stick or twist.<br />
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Nevertheless, the optimists in us want to believe there is no reason Leicester cannot win this non sequitur of a season and produce the biggest shock in top flight English football since Ipswich won the title back in 1962, 12 months after securing promotion. It is the entire fabric of the Premier League this season that seems to underpin this feeling of flux so far, with Leicester at the centre of the maelstrom. Aston Villa might have won one game all season. But that was at the Emirates. Long may it continue.
Magic Spongershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13034336171009075074noreply@blogger.com3