Gramsci's Kingdom: Football, Politics, The World

SERIOUSLY??????

2009-01-02T22:37:00.004-05:00

12 million pounds. For Wayne Bridge (pictured, left, in some bizarre alternative universe where he is considered to be of international calibre)

Jesus Wept. Someone actually managed to make Chelsea look canny in the transfer market.

Seriously?

2009-01-02T22:33:00.002-05:00

Remember the good old days of 2003? When the English FA refused to tolerate impropriety in its players, and Alan Smith (still a decent player at the time) was denied an FA call-up because of news that the police were investigating him on criminal charges after he responded to having a plastic bottle tossed at him by tossing it back into the crowd? Police never brought charges against Smith, as it happened: but no matter, even the hint of impropriety was enough for him to miss a call-up.

So what, then, are we to make of the FA’s recent declaration that under no circumstances would the England status of peace-loving Steven Gerrard’s (pictured, in a tender moment with Gary Naysmith) be affected by his recent fracas in a Southport bar.

That would be the incident in which Gerrard was arrested (not just “investigated” like Smith) and charged with assault and affray. Because he (allegedly) punched a DJ who wouldn’t play the Coldplay album he’d requested.

(A DJ who won’t play Coldplay? The man deserves a freakin' medal, not stitches in his face.)

Assault and Affray can land you with a five-year jail term, thought first time offenders if found guilty are more likely to receive community service.

The FA say they learned from the Smith case, and refuse to punish someone because they are under a police inquiry. This conveniently ignores the fact that the police are NOT making inquiries about Stevie G – they did that and decided the evidence warranted actual charges. This is something quite different.

But then again, this is Gerrard we are talking about. The self-proclaimed living personification of all those “English” footballing value; the ones that always believe 1966 is always around the corner, provided there is enough grit and determination and hard work. Without Gerrard, England would be robbed of one of its central clichés – ones which have regained importance now that a foreigner is once again in charge of the national team.

The Italian for the English term “having double standards”, by the way, is the far less pejorative “usare metri diversi”. Use it wisely – as Fabio would.

Man City - An Apotheosis of Sorts

2008-09-02T21:41:00.003-04:00

It's a good thing the emir of Abu Dhabi was born to inherit the wealth attached to one of the earth's richest pool of hydrocarbons. Because he is clearly intent on pissing away hundreds of millions of dollars at Man City.

Just so there's no mistaking my meaning: this is a disaster. There is literally no chance whatsoever that this project is going to work out.

OK, gazumping Chelsea for Robinho's signature was kind of funny. But 32.5M GBP? 160,000 GBP/week? For what amounts to Jermaine Defoe with better footwork? Don't get me wrong, Robinho's a good player. But since moving to Europe he's yet to put together a sustained run of good form for as long as even half a season. We have no idea how well he'll fare in the rough and tumble of the premiership. And, let's face it, chances are he's going to be bored shitless in Manchester and, like most young people in such situations, will end up to no good. Making him the world's best-paid player just seems guaranteed to send him down Ronaldinho Lane inside a few months.

But the Robinho business is small beans compared to the rest of the nonsense about to befall Man City. The Abu Dhabi United (a name which is going to cause all kinds of confusion, I can tell you) Group's frontman, Dr. Sulaiman Al-Fahim (pictured), says he has plans to offer Manchester United 135M GBP for Ronaldo come the winter transfer window. He also says he is interested in bringing Thierry Henry, David Villa, and - dear sweet, merciful God - Ronaldo (the larger one) to Eastlands to complement Robinho.

This is clearly a man whose knowledge of the game has been gleaned from an Xbox. There are no doubt people suffering from river blindness in the furhter reaches of Burkina Faso who might still think of Ronaldo as worthy of a punt as a top division striker, but surely to God no sighted person with an interest in football could say the same. Nor could football fans who have ever heard the words "Real Madrid" and "Barcelona" and have intellects surpassing that of cottage cheese actually think that an attack-heavy galactico strategy is likely to produce returns on the pitch.

And when Dr. al-Fahim casually stated that the team would be bringing in "18 players, minimum" next year, what effect did he think he would have on the morale of the squad for the next nine months? Will Joe Hart be extra-enthused to keep clean sheets so Gianluigi Buffon can play in the Champions League next year? Will Martin Petrov be banging in the goals so he can be replaced by Cristiano Ronaldo?

And for all his bizarre good fortune in escaping the giant financial suckhole that Thaksin Shinwatra came to represent, spare a thought for Mark Hughes. He's a decent manager but not the kind of brand name luxury good his new Arab bosses so clearly adore and is very clearly Tinker-Man Walking.

Now, to be fair, there are worse fates than that about to befall Man City. You could be part of the Toon Army, for instance. Or you could be a Liverpool fan, coming to grips with the fact that maybe, just maybe, Rafa's consistent shiteness might be (correctly) rewarded with something less than fourth place (this, it seems to me, is the principal silver lining for United fans tonight).

But my guess is that City fans secretly kind of liked being an underdog. Jimmy Grimble fit them well. Yes, that image was obviously cracked last year when Shinwatra with his vast fortune and Human Rights Watch charge sheet the length of your arm blew into town. But for the last couple of months the chaos surrounding Thaksin's financial and legal affairs still lent the team the necessary air of incompetence to appear a viable alternative to those who felt the Glazers and their Red Devils needed to be opposed.

No more. The new regime doesn't just have more money than sense; it's obscenely wealthy and agressively stupid. It will be globally hated with a ferocity unparalleled in the history of football. Supporting Man United will cease to be the act of a gloryhunter, and come to seem like an act of football patriotism. Which in turn will make City even more hated.

It's a sad, sad day all around.

TFC Asks Me for an Interest-Free Loan

2008-09-02T04:06:00.003-04:00

You'll remember, of course, the general contempt that TFC has shown for travelling fans. Well, now it's showing it to home fans as well.

My season ticket renewal form arrives in my inbox. Apparently included in this year's price is not just my 15 league games, but also an international friendly (I see they've learned their lesson and are now scheduling only one of these atrocities), two Canadian championship matches, and (drumroll please) a premliminary round CONCACAF game.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that would be the CONCACAF round we are not guaranteed to play in (and which, indeed, we did not play in this year due to Cunningham's complete inability to from a range of four feet with only air molecules to beat).

Now, the team is very nice about this. If we don't get to play in this game next August, they say they'll refund me the money.

Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Average ticket price: call it $45. Season ticket holders: 16,000. That's a $720,000 interest-free loan the MLSE boys are asking from us fans for the next eleven months. At prime, that works out to about $33,000, or enough to pay two and a half developmental players' salaries for a year.

I guess the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (owner of MLSE and its aggressively mediocre family of sports teams) didn't get to be the multi-billion dollar behemoth it is withour nickel-and-diming its customers along the way.

Competitveness is a Matter of Perspective

2008-08-10T14:08:00.004-04:00

A perennial topic of conversation among football fans is whether or not football has become "too predictable" and "too slanted towards the top teams", and often the blame for this is laid at the feet of greedy owners, Sky, globalization or what have you. Veteran denizens of the kingdom will likely know that I'm sceptical of such claims - I'm not sure football's playing field has ever been particularly flat.

So I read with interest Paul Wilson's recent article in the Guardian claiming that this year's odds on sorry little Hull City's winning the Premiership (10,000 to 1, since you ask) are so much worse than the odds of the weakest teams in Serie A and La Liga winning their leagues (1,000 to 1, he says) are proof that the Premiership is the least competitive league in Europe thanks to all this money.

Hmm. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Let's assume for the moment that the pre-season odds of winning are a reasonable method of gauging competitiveness. Is looking at the odds of the weakest team really the best way to look at the competitiveness of a league? That seems weak - when was the last time a promoted team won the championship? I can think of several others that might make more sense.

For instance, one could measure it by the odds given to the strongest team - that is, by asking the question: how certain is the eventual winner before the season even starts?By this measure, England is actually the most competitive major league in Europe. Man U is currently quoted (according to football-data.co.uk) at 1.8, Inter at 1.45, PSV at 1.375, Real Madrid at 1.2, Lyon at .72, Porto at .57 and Bayern at a mind-boggling low .5.

Alternatively, one could measure it by asking how likely is it that there will be as many as three teams in the hunt for the title? Here, too, England does reasonably well: Arsenal at 6-1 are not as good as Benfica at 4.5-1, Roma at 5-1, or Bordeaux at 5.5-1, but is better than Feyenoord at 7-1, Schalke at 10-1 or Atletico at an amazing 22-1 (so much for Spain being the continent's most competitve league...)

What about competitiveness for Champions League spots? How good are the odds for the team with the fifth-shorted odds in each country? Now the case for England as less competitive gets better: Villareal's 25-1 is the best of the bunch (oo! competitive again!) followed by St. Etienne at 33-1, Twente at 40-1, Fiorentina and Wolfsburg at 50-1, Spurs at 60-1 and Vit Guimares at 80-1.

But then again, there is more to football than the top five. Let's see the odds for the teams that are at or just above the median in each country; that is, the ninth-shortest odds in each league. Here again, the case against England gets stronger: France's Stade Rennais is shortest at 66-1, NEC is at 125-1, Vit. Setubal at 150-1, Hannover at 160-1, Racing Santander at 300-1 and Newcastle and Palermo at 500-1.

As for the odds of the weakest team: Portugal's Trofense gets 500-1, Heracles, Grenoble and Bologna get 1000-1, Gijon 1250, Cottbus 1500 and Hull 10,000 (though one can at least suspect that the odds on Hull have more to do with the gimmicky habits of English bookies than anything else).

So the English league is certainly unforgiving to teams in the bottom half and the top 4 so seem to be set almost in stone (of the big leagues, Spain's seems to have the most porous top 4). But by the same token, England is arguably the European league where the identity of the winner is least predictable.

Does that make them more competitive? You be the judge.

Wait, I just thought of two more

2008-08-03T19:13:00.002-04:00

After a little more thought, I’ve just come up with two more books that I want to write.

1) A History of Cheating. There are so many ways to cheat in football. Players can break the rules, players can simulate. Referees can be bought and matches can be thrown, either by teams themselves (see Italy’s recent calciopoli scandal, or the Marseille scandal of 1993) or by gambling syndicates (see innumerable scandals in China, Russia, Finland, etc.). In Africa, massive disputed have arisen over the unfair advantages brought by juju techniques, such as the burial of certain items beneath the pitch. How much of the game’s history is “real”, in the sense that it reflected the results of two teams playing on even terms, and how much has been the result of pre-arranged chicanery. Are there moral differences between different types of cheating? If, as is alleged, Juve players did not know that referees were being bought on their behalf, does that make them innocent of cheating? This book would examine all of these questions.

2) Religion and Football. Forget the clichés about football being a religion and stadia being churches; there is a serious story to tell about how religion has influenced the development of the sport around the world. In Europe and Latin America, the church’s views on the relationship between the body and the spirit had a serious influence on the development of the game. The Muslim world has had massively different reactions to football, ranging from the ecstatic to the horrified. The Buddhist world, never really one for team sports, has yet to produce a decent football squad: why? Hinduism seems to have little against football, yet the subcontinent has embraced another eleven-player game instead. The African animist sensibility (which also exists among descendents of African slaves in Brazil) has brought a whole unique culture of superstition and luck to the game – though the role of prayer and its modern equivalent of sports psychology has a long history in more developed countries, too. In a game where the outcome so often smacks of luck, the favour of a deity can in theory make all the difference; this book would show how varieties of religious belief around the world has contributed to the variation in football culture around the world.

Come on, book editors! Give me advances, dammit!

Three Books I'd Love to Write

2008-08-03T01:08:00.002-04:00

I’ve been reading a heck of a lot of footie lit recently (various reviews to follow). While doing so, it has occurred to me that there are whole forms of football literature which are rapidly approaching obsolescence. Football biographies have long ceased to be of much interest to anyone; in the past ten years, only those of Gazza and Tony Adams have provided much in the way of interest. Follow-the-money books a la David Conn are getting a bit tedious, too – pretty much everyone understands the new economics of sport. Books on football violence were never that interesting to begin with, but the explosion of hoolie lit has drained any possible remaining interest in the subject.

A few years ago, national histories of football were the most promising area of football literature. Deriving some inspiration from Simon Kuper’s cosmopolitanist manifesto Football Against the Enemy, in the past decade, this literature has given such great books as Brilliant Orange, Tor!, Morbo, and Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life. But then, two years ago that brilliant bastard David Goldblatt came out of nowhere and produced a definitive single volume global history of the game (The Ball is Round) that more or less rendered the entire field irrelevant. National histories on a couple of major footballing countries are still to be written; Argentina and Mexico are still without decent English-language histories, there’s probably room for one on France, and the definitive African history has yet to be written. But for the most part, books in this vein will inevitably either re-hash old ground or tell the stories of increasingly irrelevant nations (Charlie Connelly’s book Stamping Grounds, the story of Liechtenstein’s 2002 World Cup qualifying campaign, is ground zero for this line of books).

But this need not mean the end of books looking at football culture: it just means we need a different lens through which to examine football. Herewith, a number of books which I think are just dying to be written.

1) Football and Dictatorships. Football is often described as a democratic game because of its simplicity. But in many places for many years, football has been played under non-democratic conditions. Generally, totalitarian dictatorships such as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia preferred non-team sports; only fascist Italy gave the game a major pride of place: but even here, the glory brought to the nation by the 1934 and 1938 World Cups was offset by the increase in regional tensions brought about by the development of the club game. In Latin America, football has been accused of both weakening dictatorships (the 1982 Democracy movement at Corinthians) and of sustaining it (Argentina’s 1978 World cup victory). Even football stadia have a paradoxical relationship with dictatorships: large programs of stadium construction are often hallmarks of dictatorship as they can serve propaganda purposes, but they are also one of the few places where people can gather and talk freely in a dictatorship and often serve as nuclei for the creation of democratic opposition (the relationship between Barcelona FC and the Catalan nationalist movement is particularly tight as a result of this phenomenon). The people’s game has both resisted tyranny and been co-opted by it; this book would tell the tale of both.

2) The Latin Game. Fourteen of Eighteen world cups have been won by Latin countries. Though they did not invent the game, they have gradually come to be its masters; both on the field and in the corridors of football power. They more or less invented the concept of international tournaments both at the international and club levels. Reputed to be romantic peoples, latin countries are nonetheless often accused of cynicism and gamesmanship on the field. While English-speakers may think of football as their game because of its roots in the English public school system, the fact is that to all intents and purposes, modern football is a Latin game. This book would trace the history of the game across the Latin world and show that its superiority in many ways comes from Latin countries’ greater willingness to innovate in terms of tactics, personnel, politics and business.

3) Fans. Many trees have been destroyed talking about the development of game around the world (viz, for example, Jonathan Wilson’s latest oeuvre); but little has actually been written on how people watch the game around the world. And yet, the most striking national differences in football occur not on the field but in the stands. Singing as a form of support exists everywhere, but the styles can be very different – regimented in Italy and Japan; more spontaneous in England. Criminality among hardcore supporters is common, too, but ultras, barra bravas and hooligans have as many differences as they do similarities. Fans in some parts of the world support their teams no matter what; in other parts of the world, fans are known to physically assault their teams if results don’t go their way. In many countries, there is no particular stigma attached to supporting more than one team, and indeed where there is a “big two” or “big three” (e.g Olympiakos and Panathinaikos in Greece) everyone in the country is expected to support one or the other; in England, where there are no effectively an incredible five divisions of professional football, such behaviour is derided as “glory-hunting”. Football may be the people’s game, but the people relate to the game very differently in different parts of the world; this book would seek to explain the roots of these differences.

If there are any book publishers out there waiting with fat advances – or anyone who wants to add their own ideas, just hit the comment button.

Coming soon! The 3-6-1.

2008-07-10T09:58:00.004-04:00

So, I just finished Jonathan Wilson’s rather good new book Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics. I recommend a read to all real devotees of the sport (by some miracle, it has been released in North America at the same time as in the UK), though some of the press praise for the book is a little over the top in my opinion.

That said, Wilson ends the book with some intriguing speculation about the tactical developments of the last decade or so which I think are worth developing a bit.

Tactically speaking, the late 80s and early 90s were largely a battle between the 4-4-2 and the 3-5-2 (the latter occasionally morphing into a 5-3-2 if the wingers were deployed more deeply as wing backs. Yes, there were the odd romantics still playing 4-3-3 or even 3-4-3, but they were rare.

In a 4-4-2 vs. 3-5-2, the problem is basically that one of the centre-backs in the 3-5-2 is superfluous. What this does is open up a spot somewhere in the middle of the field for an opposing midfielder to exploit. You can make up for this if you have an exceptionally talented midfield with a couple of all-action players capable of going box-to-box and making late runs into the opposition area (as the Maradona-led Argentinan squads of the 80s, who did so much to popularize the formation, did), but if you don’t have that kind of quality, then the team using 3-5-2 is a significant disadvantage. Anyone doubting this is advised to examine last night’s TFC performance against the Whitecaps, which was embarrassing.

So, back to the story – by this decade, you could still occasionally see the 3-5-2 starting line-ups in the lower reaches of Serie A, in Croatia and in parts of Africa, but France 98 and Euro 2000 completely sealed the deal as far as the superiority of 4-4-2 was concerned. By 2002, teams playing 4-4-2 with a fast and attack-minded midfield were pretty much ruling the roost (Arsenal’s double-winning squad being perhaps the epitome of this).

But then teams started to get wise to this and realised that if the midfield could be packed a bit, it was possible to stop these free-flowing teams. Since the 4-4-2 often employed trailing strikers who played just behind the lead man (think of Bergkamp’s role vis-a-vis Henry, or Guevara’s to Dichio for that matter), it wasn’t an enormous shift to pull them back a couple of yards further and create a 4-5-1. If you were a limited side – Bolton, for instance – you could use this 4-5-1 in a fairly defensive way, with lits of long balls to a large, lone striker. If you were more fluid side with able wingers – Chelsea, for instance – the 4-5-1 could morph into a quite deadly 4-3-3 when in possession. It was flexible and it caused no end of problems for teams trying to play 4-4-2.

In the last couple of years, though, the more fluid attacking sides have come up with an even more devious solution: the 4-6-0 (which I outlined about a year ago back here). This only works if you have a lot of creative, fast, tactically aware midfielders who are capable of swapping positions and darting forwards. It’s tough to pull off because there’s literally no focus to the attack, but as both Roma and Man U showed last year, it is possible to win matches – quite a lot of them in fact – without anyone who could be described as a recognized striker.

The 4-6-0 works for the same reason that Hidegkuti and the Hungarians flummoxed England in 1953 – defenders have trouble figuring out what to do if the attacker withdraws a bit and starts with the ball from further out. Defenders who try to man-mark in a 4-6-0 are going to get pulled badly out of position and if the try to zone mark they are liable to get flooded. Its not all plain sailing for the attackers, of course – they have to learn how to play a good short-passing game in order to keep the ball moving through a more congested midfield. As long as they manage that, though, they can wreak havoc on defences.

So what’s the proper response? I would argue it is to go back to three at the back. Even against a 4-5-1, the second centre-back is somewhat superfluous. Against a 4-6-0 we’re into tits-on-a-bull territory. Get rid of the second centre back and move him into the midfield. 4-5-1s and 4-6-0s need to be smothered in midfield, not in the final third. Laying back and playing for the counter-attack is not a good move (even Arsenal have figured that one out) against a five or six-man midfield – the space simply won’t be there. A more pressing game, played further up the pitch, is necessary.

And so, I would suggest, that now that the 4-6-0 is opening up as an option, the next logical tactical counter is the 3-6-1 (or, probably more accurately, a 3-3-3-1). Against the ManUs and Romas, the key will be playing with three what amounts to three defensive midfielders and a single centre-back. Attack-minded full-backs will have to go, of course (but really, haven’t we all had enough of Ashley Cole anyway?), but some of that load can be spread to players like Daniel Alves playing in a more advanced role (indeed, one wonders if Barcelona might not start lining up this way soon, with Alves, Toure and Keita lining up right to left ahead of the defenders but behind Xavi – certainly, they are one of the few teams with the personnel to do it).

Sure, the 3-6-1 has a bad rep after the USMNT’s disastrous flirtation with it in France 98. But mark my words, you’ll see it again sooner than you think.

Book Review: Comrade Jim

2008-06-29T21:30:00.004-04:00

I'm finally getting into some summer reading, and that always means football books. So here's the first of what I'm assuming will be many book reviews, on a new book called Comrade Jim.

The subtitle of this book is The Spy who Played for Spartak. It's a lovely short book if you can get past two things: he was never really a spy and he barely played for Spartak.

As a tall, gangly child growing up in Portsmouth, he often played centre-half for his school teams. He was never of a calibre to play professionally, but he enjoyed it and continued playing into his army days when he was drafted into the national service. He had been a bright lad, and had managed to secure a place in a grammar school and stuck it out through his A-levels, to the disapproval of his working-class mum's friends who thought that all that studying would make him "one of them, not one of us".

In the army, he was considered bright enough to be sent for Russian lessons - 8 months of intensive language study which would enable him to monitor Soviet radio broadcasts. Subsequently sent to Berlin, he listened in on communications traffic at airbases in eastern germany. This, it turns out, was the sum total of his "spying".

Indeed, far from a career in spying against the communists, he became one himself. The actual circumstances in which this occurred in 1959 seem somewhat hazy. He had a love of Russia instilled in him by his admittedly non-ideological teachers in the army. His Soviet studies teachers at Birmingham University seem to have been predominantly of the view that Bolshevism was bad for Russia. And he implies that he was quite aware of Krushchev's Secret Speech and the invasion of Hungary in 1956. And yet, there he is, applying for a Party card in 1959 and little more than two years later being sent by the CPGB to attend an 18-month course of training at the Higher Party School in Moscow, where he lived with (among others) the future hero of the Prague Spring, Alexander Dubcek.

He was no pasing communist, either. Despite meetings in Moscow with many emigres who had spent years in gulags after false accusations, despite himself having been tossed out of Russia in disgrace following false allegations, despite having quite a clear view of the double standards of the nomenklatura, this is a man who held on to his party card until the CPGB itself finally collapsed in 1991 and who claims that the first time he rued having been a communist was in 2005, at the sight of the altar on which Isaac Babel was tortured to death during the Great Terror. Why it was Babel's death that made him rue this and not any of Stalin's victims - some of the 1,000 executions a day at the height of the terror in 1937-38, perhaps, or any of the seven million who died in the Ukranian forced famines - is not entirely clear.

During his time in Moscow, he played regular kickabouts with a number of people from various team's diplomatic corps. As he was gathering information for a planned PhD dissertation on Soviet sport and culture, he was often in contact with senior Moscow sports officials and football players, some of whom happened to see him at these kickabouts. Strangely under the impression that he could play at a top level (while in National Service he had played a few times with the British Army on the Rhine selects and the Russians appeared to believe that this was the equivalent to playing for the CSKA Red Amry squad), they asked him to come along to training with them whilst they were in the midst of an injury crisis. To his shock, they asked him to play two games in their colours at the massive Lenin stadium under the name Yakov Eeordahnov (foreigners still being highly suspect in 1962 Moscow). This was the extent of his Spartak career.

Doesn't sound like much of a book? Well, it has some padding, too. In one chapter he manages to toss off the entire Passovotchka story for no reason other than that he was in England at the time and later became a communist. In another he retells the Nikolai Starotsin story (although Jonathan Wilson more or less beat him to the punch on this two years ago in his book [i]Football Behind the Iron Curtain[/i]).

But mostly, it's just the curious tale of how one working class boy from Portsmouth managed to spend five years in Moscow rubbing shoulders with composers, gulag survivors, and ex-spies amidst the obvious insanities of post-Stalinist Russia. It's no less enjoyable and informative for the fact that the author seems not to question the rightness of supporting such a monstrous regime. And it has some nice little football stories thrown in - his excitement at the arrival of Alexei Smertin arriving in Pompey from Spartak is quite charming.

If you're ever wondering about the power of football to sell books, though, it's amazing to think how 180 minutes spent 45 years ago on a pitch 1500 miles from the UK can turn an old communist's memories from being unwanted and unprintable to being a reasonable publishing success. Amazing.

Culture Clash

2008-06-29T18:45:00.002-04:00

An intriguing story in today's Observer about Cristiano Ronaldo and his (alleged) seven-months-in-the-making transfer to Real Madrid.

According to journalist Duncan Castles, CR has been doing all the engineering of this move on his own, and his agent had been repeatedly counselling against a move. Even Real Madrid are apparently annoyed at how publicly he's been flaunting his desire to leave (this I find hard to believe, but I'm just relaying the story here).

Specifically, Ronaldo seems to be labouring under the impression (some might call it a delusion) that having more or less single-handedly delivered two trophies to Old Trafford this year, the Man United board would be happy to "reward" him by allowing him his dream move to Madrid.

This does sound a little wacky, but I think it's a piece of cultural misunderstanding.

In Iberian football, certainly, when either Barcelona or ManU come calling, you leave. End of story. Take Sergio Ramos (please) who literally bought out his own contract at Sevilla just hours before the transfer deadline in order to play for the merengues.

What was considered shameful about the Ramos transfer was not the fact that he went to Madrid, but rather the sneaky way he did it, just as the club was starting to develop into something of a powerhouse. He left, if you will, via the back door.

Contrast this with the Dany Alves saga of last summer. Alves felt that after helping Sevilla to five trophies in two years, he had earned the right to leave "by the front door", with his head held high. And so he was quite miffed when Sevilla failed to sell him to Chelsea; it took him about two months to get his head back in the game for the rojiblancos (although to be fair, the death of Antonio Puerta probably had an impact too) and by the time he was back to his best, Sevilla were too far behind the leaders to challenge for the title even in a year when no one seemed to want it. Ronaldo, being Iberian himself, seems to be taking the same position Alves took last year. I've earned this - you owe it to me.

The English, remarkably, don't see things the same way. Winning teams are kept together almost regardless of the cost. Patrick Vieira was mercilessly persued by Madrid after both Arsenal's 2002 and 2004 championship season. Wenger stuck to his guns and kept the midfielder only to sell him for much, much less the next season (2005).

It's partly the way the English view club loyalty. They are far more likely to view team failure as a valid excuse for departure ("oh well, he wants to go win some trophies, I guess") than they are team success ("but he's won everything with us - why does he want to go when everything is going so well?")

That's not to say that ManU won't sell, of course - the Glazers' holding company is holding far too much debt for them not to be seriously tempted by the 85 or 90 million euros his sale would bring. But letting him leave as a reward for success? Never. The fact that Ronaldo hasn't figured that out after five years in England suggests that he hasn't been paying attention during his stay there.

But then again, if he only ever thought that Manchester was a penitence to pay on the way to the Bernabeu, maybe he never felt the need to pay attention.

Watching Football in Saudi Arabia

2008-04-04T19:49:00.002-04:00

Liverpool v Arsenal three times in one week, so to avoid intra-family strife I have again fled the continent. And so to today's question: does anyone here know anything about Saudi football? Like what day they play matches here? Or what day they play in Qatar?

There's a hell of a lot of football on TV considering it's 2:30 in the morning. Right now, two channels are showing last weekend's matches from Europe (a French league roundup and Siena v. Sampdoria), one is showing Barcelona-Schalke, and one is showing a replay of what I take to be a Saudi match from earlier this week (although it's possible it;s an AFC Champions League match between two Arab teams...i really have no way of knowing). I have no idea who the teams are, though speaking to some guys on the plane, it seems that the Cup final was played earlier this week. It's a white team against a black team (possibly Al-Hilal against Al-Shabib) and it's 1-1 in the 85th minute.

There's almost no one in the stands, but the announcer is screaming as if it's the late stages of the World Cup final.

Goalkeeping styles appear to be quite interesting - let's just say that Barthez looks conservative compared to these guys. Also, some of the players' beards on display are really quite fearsome.

Well, it's just finished 1-1 and the white team seems very distraught, as if they;ve lost or something. Guess it wasn't the Cup final. I don't think I've ever seen a football match where I've understood so little about what's going on. The post match analysis looks much as I imagine Match of the Day would, if all the guests were wearing bright white thobes with headdresses and slouching a lot.

Now I've switched channels and the channel that was showing French highlights has now moved on to show Goals of the Week from the Indian league. Oh, and now they've cut to Beckham's goal yesterday in LA.

There really is far too much football in the world to keep up with.

On the Road

2008-03-29T05:56:00.002-04:00

I am upset with myself for not having worked on this blog enough. I have all sorts of half-written blog posts - on Buddhist football; Game 39; the new Canada Cup, the strange fact that George Gillett, tired of Liverpool, has decided that Montreal, of all godforsaken places, is the place to stake one's claim to football glory. All sorts of feelings of shame and guilt.

But I have decided to liberate myself of these feelings. Fuck it, life's too short for that kind of guilt. And, praise the Lord, the new MLS season starts today.

It's funny: a year ago, I would have described myself unabashedly as an Arsenal fan. TFC was new and interesting, but essentially a diversion from my relationship with Arsenal. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, that changed. There was no eureka moment, no time when I sat bolt upright in bed and said: damn, I now belong to TFC. But at some point during those 824 minutes without a goal, some afternoon at the stadium spent singing and cheering without any real prospect of recompense in the form of a win, I became completely and utterly theirs.

And so, today, L'Ecrivain and my son and I are among the2400 TFC fans making their way down to Ohio and invading that cowshed they use as a stadium in Columbus. A 14-hour car trip for the sake of an hour of tailgaiting, 90 minues of singing and some smaller period of actual football. The season begins.

I am firmly in the majority of people who think that TFC will reek this year, that the off-season was - draft apart - an unmitigated disaster. There will be long goalless spells. But I'm romantic enough to think that we'll win today and that the boyswill give us win on the road because we'll be there making it feel like home. I know this to be completely illogical on my part, but I don't care.

I am a fan. I belong to TFC. And today is going to be our day.

More when I get home.

The Abyss

2008-03-13T21:50:00.003-04:00

Remember when Gretna were a good news story?

Come on, it wasn't that long ago.

Elected to the Scottish league only in 2002, the team spent three season in Scotland's division three. From there, bankrolled by businessman Brooks Mileson, they went on a Roy of the Rovers run - two more promotions in succession plus a Cup Final against Hearts, a spot in Europe, and playing in Scotland's top division. Not bad for a club based in a town with a population of less than 3000.

But unlike, say, Chievo (another small-town team with whom they have been compared), this fairy tale has unravelled rather quickly. There is no Bentegodi nearby - home games this year have had to be played at Motherwell's Fir Park, a full 70 miles away, in order to meet SPL stadium standards. Crowds have fallen into the hundreds.

This wouldn't be fatal if Mileson hadn't fallen ill with a brain infection about a month ago. At this point, he ceased being able to sign checks for the club. Within a week, players found themselves without their paychecks. Press reports are unclear about the connection between these two events - did Mileson really leave no power of attorney so that others could discharge the club's fiscal obligations? or did his family, eager to get their hands on his millions, cut the team off as soon as possible? Either way, after just a month without his money, Gretna are not only into administration, but only a couple of hours away from being wound up entirely, with 30,000 pounds being due by Friday lunchtime being required to stave off a wind-up. even then, with no wages and no insurance, only ten players (and no keepers) have made themselves available for selection for Saturday's match against Aberdeen.

A lot of people have taken this with the usual schadenfreude. Gretna were financial dopers, they said, having bought their way up the pyramid. Conservative nonsense, I say. Unlike, say, Granada 74, Gretna played their way up the divisions. Yes, like Fulham they had a wealthy patron, but it was a wealthy patron who bought at the bottom and worked up (unlike, say, Roman Abramovich) and one who actually loved the game of football (unlike, say, the Glazers).

Unfortunately, the suddenness of his illness meant that Milseon couldn't pull a Jack Walker and try to create some kind of trust arrangement which might have given the club a more secure future after his departure. Maybe that would have been impossible in as small a community as Gretna, but at least the club might have been permitted a graceful decline instead of catastrophic extinction.

And so, after a brief and giddy run to the top, including a run in Europe (OK, it was only as far as Derry, but still), Gretna's fans are left with nothing but memories. You might not think their fans deserved all that success, but you'd be a mean bastard to think they deserve what they're getting right now.

The Premiership vs The Treaty of Westphalia

2008-03-11T17:49:00.006-04:00

So, another display of incompetence from a San Siro-based squad, and another Premiership side goes through to the quarter-finals. For the first time in the history of the tournament, four sides from one country will make it to the quarter-finals.

And let's be honest here: unless two of the English sides get drawn against each other (teams from the same country are kept apart at the round of 16, but it's an open draw from this point on), there's a damn good chance that all four sides could make it through to the semis. face it, of the four remaining non-English sides, how many would you fancy? Schalke played disastrously against Porto and were lucky to survive through to penalties. Barca are in terrible form and will be without Messi for the next round. Fenerbahce play with verve but their keeper makes David James look like Lev Yashin. Roma...well, maybe Roma on a good day could beat Chelsea, but that's about it.

(You want my opinion? For what it's worth - Arsenal and Man U will go through to the semis provided they don't face each other. Liverpool will go through provided they don't play Arsenal or ManU, in which case they will get hammered; Chelsea are through provided they face Schalke, Fener or Barca. Schalke have no chance against any of the other seven teams).

Lucky Albion? A bit, but more importantly it demonstrates that the concentration of money and talent in England is beginning to put some distance between the Premiership and the rest of Europe in terms of skill and talent. There are perhaps only a couple of teams in Europe that can hope to match England's "Big Four" for quality, depth and speed.

This gap isn't likely to be bridged soon, either. Lack of money is a hindrance in Italy. Inter have almost nowhere to go but down. Milan are at the start of a long rebuilding phase. In Spain, Barcelona probably have a year or two of rebuilding to do what with Messi's future uncertain, Henry clearly in decline and Ronaldinho almost certainly out the door. Real Madrid might have a better shot at it, but Sergio Ramos apart, their defence is deeply ordinary and Diarra still isn't the replacement for Makelele that they need. Bayern look very promising, but this year's success might not be sustainable given the extent to which it is built on the superb goal-a-game performance of Luca Toni, who is no spring chicken either.

Although rule changes have left it somewhat lacking in majesty, the Champions League is arguably the best football competition in the world - better even, some might say, the World Cup (would the '06 Italy squad have beaten the '06 Barca squad? hard to say...). This makes the Premiership's dominance all the more remarkable. It is the dominant grouping within the globe's dominant competition. It is therefore no surprise that so many people in so many countries - especially in Asia and Africa - follow the Premiership more closely than they follow their domestic leagues.

It is in this context, I think, that the Game 39 proposals need to be seen. The Premiership, more than any other league, has exlpoited modern capital and communications to make itself "the world's league". It's playing squads are more cosmopolitan and it's fan base more global than any other. These two things are closely entwined - it is the Premiership's ability to raise TV revenue in countries far and wide that allows them to attract the best players (more crudely, it's my damn cable fees that permit Spurs to spend 16M on Darren Bent, for all the good that's done them).

And so it's reasonable to ask - to whom does the Premiership belong? The English? Or to all of us? As the league and its clubs get better at monetizing foreign interest in the game, the answer is increasingly "all of us". And it's only a short step from that to saying that all of us should occasionally get a chance to see our heroes in the flesh.

The game 39 idea tried to reconcile two ideas: not taking any games away from domestic fans, while atthe same time not feeding the extra-territorial fans the pablum of friendlies. The problem is that this can't actually be reconciled within the framework of a balanced schedule. And so for that reason if no other, these games abroad were never likely to work.

More instructive than the English fans' reaction - which was both predictable and selfish, given the extent to which their teams' good fortune depends on the pockets of others - was FIFA's. Blatter seemed to imply that competitve matches on foreign soil were contrary to article 2 of the FIFA statutes (really, Sepp? how 'bout the Mexicans playing their CONMEBOL qualifying tourneys in the US? Or the Italians playing the Supercoppa in Giants Stadium?) .

What Blatter's really worried about is a league and it's clubs transcending FIFA's rigidly Westphalian system, which allows FA suits to act like dictators within their own spheres (a curious echo of the pre-Westphalian doctrine of cuius region eius religio). Once a league gets big enough to transcend this, then the moral basis for the current organziation of FIFA collapses.

Where sovereign interests are at stake, it makes sense that international organiations are organized along national lines. Where sovereign interests are not at stake - and in sport there's no real reason they should be, apart from the historical accident of Baron de Coubertin having started international sport at right about the time classic 19th century nationalism was at its height - then a FIFA-like organization is less obviously necessary. The Premiership's growing dominance is, in a very real sense, an existential challenge to FIFA - a constant reminder that the Westphalian organization of sports is not immutable.

For those of you wondering where this might lead, think about the relationship between the NHL and the International Ice Hockey Federation. Now, the Premiership isn't ever going to be as powerful as the NHL because the gap between it and other leagues is never likely to grow that wide. But it goes to show that there are other possible balances of power between popular multi-national leagues and international governing bodies.

As the (nearly) always-wise Arsene Wenger has said, Game 39 may be dead at the moment, but the idea of global expansion is very unlikely to go away because there are massive gains for clubs to reap by finding ways to go global. Traditionalists won't likely. But being the World's League means you have to go meet the world occasionally. This story has a very long way to run; and should we get a pair of all-England semis, the debate will merely intensify.

Messiah Done by Easter?

2008-03-10T07:40:00.002-04:00

Could it be that Newcastle are on their way down? All the amusing signs are there. The lethal combination of inability to score and inability to defend seems to be taking its toll, and the team have exactly no wins since the Geordie Messiah^TM took over in January.

Never thought you’d be nostalgic for Graeme Souness and Freddie Shepherd, did you?

The Magpies’ record under Keegan has certainly been fodder for amusement. 2 points in 7 league games, 3 goals for, 17 goals against, Michael Owen’s missed sitter-to-conversion ratio is, approaching infinity. Keegan skills – which by his own admission lie more in man-management than tactics - have been called into question by his own players. Prior to the first of Newcastle’s torrid back-to-back hammerings by Arsenal, he is reported to have given a very brief team-talk, which I reproduce in its entirety, below.

“Right, lads. Arsenal are one of the best passing sides in the world. So we’re just going to have to pass the ball better than them.”

So, with nine games to go and Newcastle hovering a mere two points above the drop zone, is there anything standing in Newcastle’s way on the road down to the Championship? Well, yes, actually. Three things:

1) There are a lot of bad teams in the Premiership.Derby and Fulham have almost certainly tied up the first two relegation spots. So everyone else – Reading, Wigan, Boro, Birmingham and Newcastle - are really only fighting over one spot. With this much mediocrity in the neighbourhood, the odds that one of these teams is more crap than Newcastle are reasonably high, and the safety threshold this year may be as low as 38 or even 37 points.

2) The run-in. Mercifully, Newcastle have seen the last of Arsenal, Liverpool and Man U.This isn’t to say that they won’t get hammered elsewhere: merely that these three dead-cert turnings-over are done and dusted.

3) Reversion to the mean. Newcastle have been terrible this season, especially since Allardyce left (bet that long-ball stuff doesn’t look so bad anymore on Tyneside). But they aren’t that bad, even if Alan Smith and Nicky Butt should have been cashiered ages ago. Blips happen. This is a long one but it has to end soon. Eventually, someone will remember how to pass a ball to Michael Owen and eventually he will remember how to put it in the net.

So don’t despair, folks. Other teams will still have Newcastle to kick around next year.

The Unbearable Lassitude of the Neutral Fan

2008-03-07T02:26:00.005-05:00

So I found myself stranded on the volatile Dutch-German border yesterday. But thanks to the Kicker match calendar, I found a match within a 2-hour train ride. So, I hopped on a Deutschebahn train to the frighteningly boring town of Leverkusen, home of a 100-foot high tab of aspirin.

A bit OTT? Maybe, but it's been over three months since I've last seen a match - and that a bloody awful one in Mexico. Which, now that I think of it, I've never written about. Short version: Apertura quarter-finals, Cruz Azul v. Atlante, Cruz Azul had no tactics other than hoofing the ball high to Jared Borgetti, which was a shame because Borgetti was so crap he was risking a health warning and Atlante won 1-0 on a goal in the 90th second. The only plus was getting to watch a game through barbed wire, which is a lovely if perverse pleasure. So I was desperate enough to travel to watch a UEFA cup match, Leverkusen v. Hamburg.

So, Leverkusen, then. First of all, the BayArena is tiny. Basically, it's BMO field if you filled in the corners. How a team from this dinky little place consistently challenges in the Budesliga and even made it to the Champions League finals one year is beyond me.

The match: to describe the first half as soporific would be to do a serious injustice to sleep medications. Of the 22 men on the field, only Leverkusen's Gonzalo Castro looked like he was awake. The most interesting stuff was actually the fans. Turns out, German fans really do sing "roll out the barrel". I have no idea what thea actual words were, of course - if you don't understand the language well, all songs sound like - lah da da da laaaah, la da, la da la daaaaah. Although, to be fair, a lot of English songs sound like that, too.

On paper, Hamburg are the better team, even with Juan Pablo Sorin out injured. Vincent Kompany, a couple of years ago the world's most sought-after 19 year-old defender, has now moved up to central midfield in a 4-1-4-1 system with Guerrero up front. This would be a decent formation if Guerrero were a decent front-man (he isn't) or if any of the midfielders ever got up in support (which, apart from van der Vaart, they didn't). And so, despite having more skilled players and on the whole a better set of chances in front of net, Hamburg couldn't find a way through.

That was OK for as long as Leverkusen kept the woeful Sergey Barbarez, who has the turning radius of an 18-wheeler truck, in the match. The team's speed of transition from defence to offence could be mesured in weeks, and they were congenitally unable to find the right pass when pressing forward until the young Chilean Arturo Vidal was introduced as a sub in the 74th minute. In the 77th, though, Theofanis Gekas was permitted to stroll into the area unopposed on a corner and he converted with ease. A dull nil-nil was thus - barely - avoided.

Anyways, as I'm watching all this spectacle - nice pitch, a very short Rudi Voller doing commentary by the field, good fans and loud singing, but crap football, I start thinking to myself. Do I really give a toss? I have no real interest in either team, and I've just travelled two hours and spent thirty euros on a ticket to watch a bad football match. Has my football fixation actually come to this? Spending a chilly night watching a boring game between two teams I don't really care about just so I can be in a crowd, watching 22 men pass a sphere around?

And then, when they played The Scientist by Coldplay over the tannoy after the game, I thought to myself: fuck this, I really hate German football.

But I'm still going to see Dortmund-Hertha tonight.

UPDATE: No I'm not. I'm tired, It's cold and windy, I have a 5 AM train to catch and last night sucked the joy out of football for me. For 24 hours at least. Maybe I'll watch it on TV.

TFC - Boot to the Head Time

2008-03-05T18:34:00.002-05:00

OK, I've been trying really, really hard to think positive thoughts about TFC lately.

I've seen us let Pozniak go in a waiver draft while protecting bovine striker Colin Samuel. And I have said nothing.

I've seen two us make two defensive draft picks, bringing the number of defenders on the roster to 8. And I have said nothing.

I've seen us get bring in goon extraordinaire Kevin Harmse, bringing our quotient of central midfielders to 4. And I have said nothing.

I have seen us trade Ronnie O'Brien, THE ONE FUCKING PLAYER WHO MADE US EVEN VAGUELY WATCHABLE LAST YEAR, for draft picks and money. And I have said nothing.

I have watched Mo FART AROUND FOR THE ENTIRE GODDAMN OFF-SEASON without signing anyone useful, not even Kiki Musampa (although allegedly he's still a possibility), even though we have precisely zero - and I mean zero - decent wide men. And I have said nothing.

And you know why? Because no matter how lousy the product on the field, BMO is a place worth going to. The Boys, the singing, and the general match atmosphere, which is made up not just of home fans, but - in an incredibly promising development for MLS as a whole - away fans as well.

So, what, what, what, in the name of Jesus Christ and Danny Dichio were the morons at MLSE thinking when they decided to restrict travelling Chicago fans to a mere 100 seats?

This, as my esteemed colleague Tom has pointed out, is horseshit. If MLS wants to make a better product, it will encourage friendly rivalries and travelling fans. Lord knows, a lot of the appeal of TFC is the brilliant way we're able to get people out to away games. How does TFC think the Red Patch Boys will react when Chicago retaliates and tells them there's only 100 tickets available for the away supporters?

Now I know I have a lot of readers who will agree with me that this is a seriously boneheaded move on TFCs part and that someone in the front office is in serious need of a Boot to the Head. And so, I would invite all of you to write to Cesar Velasco, Manager of Community Relations and Sales, at cvelasco@mapleleafsports.com to tell him exactly how stupid a decision this is.

Think of it as your community service for the day.

photo credit: el goldstone (I think)

Kosovan Football

2008-02-19T02:11:00.008-05:00

So, another new country. And with it, some expectation of international football.

My advice to anyone looking forward to Kosovo joining Montenegro in the ranks of European football: don't hold your breath.

Yes, it's true that some pretty dodgy FAs have made it into FIFA in recent years. But these for the most part have been concentrated in Oceania and CONCACAF, who have been keen to up their numbers in order to get a regular World Cup spot (in the former case) or to bolster Jack Warner's political position (in the latter). In Asia, there has only been one slightly dodgy addition (Palestine). In Africa, where they are fairly mindful of not screwing around with post-colonial territorial settlements, nothing of the sort has happened. In South Africa, political stability has meant the issue hasn't arisen.

In Europe's case, it's been a different story. The break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have created a number of new smaller states which have been eager to take up sporting nationalism. A number of legally legitimate if geographically ludicrous micro-states (Andorra, San Marino, Lichtenstein) which have also chosen to take up membership. None of these has been particularly contentious.

The exceptional case is the Faroe Islands, which was granted FIFA membership in 1988 and UEFA membership in 1990. The Faroes have a significant degree of autonomy, but they are legally part of Denmark. Their membership has led to all sorts of claims by other sovereignistically-also-rans to get a place in UEFA and FIFA.

Of the various suitors that subsequently claimed a desire to join, Gibraltar had the best case. But Gibraltar had one major drawback - namely, that its legal status was contested by the Spanish, who had no desire to see Gibraltar's international standing confirmed by any international sporting bodies. So they threatened UEFA: if Gibraltar plays, we don't - not in any UEFA competition. Since Big Cup would look a bit strange without Real Madrid and Barcelona, UEFA caved. Gibralta have twice successfully appealed this refusal to grant them status at the Court of Aribitration for Sport, but UEFA continues to stall.

The Gibraltar case rang alarm bells at both UEFA and FIFA, with both suddenly realizing: maybe this recognizing every two-bit organization with pretenstions to sovereignty just so we can say we have more members than the UN isn't the greatest idea since sliced bread after all! At which point, they changed the rules. And it's these new rules that Kosovo has to deal with.

Let's start with FIFA's rules, the relevant sections of which in Article 10 read:

(i)Any association which is responsible for organizing and supervising football in its country may become a member of FIFA. In this context, the expression "country" shall refer to an independent country recognized as such by the international community.

(ii) Membership shall only be granted if an Association has been a member of a Confederation for over two years.

Ok, then, over to UEFA, whose Article 5 reads:

(i) Membership of UEFA is open to national football associations Members situated in the continent of Europe, based in a country which is recognised by the United Nations as an independent state, and which are responsible for the organisation and implementation of football-related matters in the territory of their country.

Note the subtleties here. The wording does not require that only one FA per country is permitted - that's how the Faroes and the four home nations get to stay. But it does require that the state in which one is based must be not just "internationally recognized" (the FIFA standard), but a member of the UN.

This is where Kosovo will take it in the neck: UN membership requires Security Council approval, and the Russian Federation - which for obvious domestic reasons is not keen on legitimizing the rights of ethnically homogenous enclaves to unilaterally declare independence - seems set to veto Kosovo's membership application. No doubt in a decade or so, a compromise will be found to allow this new country to join, but until then: no UN membership. Which means no UEFA membership, which means no FIFA membership.

There is a possible escape loophole, though I suspect Kosovo would be unlikely to use it. There is nothing stopping Kosovo from joining another confederation with looser membership qualifications. Among the likely options: CONCACAF has no geographical restrictions on membership at all while the Asian and Oceanian confederations will take members from outside their areas provided, with the only stipulations being that members cannot be in two confederations simultaneously and that their membership be in accordance with FIFA statutes. Crucially, Kosovo passes the second test, since FIFA requires not UN membership but "recognition from the international community" - which Kosovo has, at least from the US and most of the EU.

OFC and CONCACAF are probably non-starters for financial reasons. The AFC is more proximate and hence more affordable. But for obvious political reasons, Kosovo has a pretty large incentive to portray itself as "European", and an AFC membership may clash with this.

Still, participation in international football is an important demonstration of sovereignty, and the Kosovans will want to start as soon as they can. How this story plays out is anyone's guess, but early entry to UEFA is probably the least likely scenario.

Updates

2008-02-01T09:34:00.000-05:00

Yeah, yeah, I know. Lame graphic. You try to illustrate the concept of an update.

1) Canadian Soccer Association in correct-move shock! CSA has confirmed a triangular TFC-Whitecaps-Impact championship to decide Canada's entrant in the CONCACAF Champions League. Hooray!

2) Contest Winners! You will recall my Kevin Keegan photo contest below, which four of my readers entered. After much soul searching, I feel unable to decide between the two entrants who gave me four entries apiece. So, to Ursus a copy of the Damned United and to Brian, (who I know for a fact already has a copy) I will send a copy of German Football: History, Culture, Society and the 2006 World Cup, of which, for some reason, Amazon sent me two copies instead of one. I'll be in touch for your addresses, gents. Honourable mention to Roswitha who seriously creeped me out.

3) Speaking of Brian and Roswitha, they both have awesome blogs which I have yet to hat-tip. Brian's Run of Play is quite truly awesome; I admire the posting stamina, which rivals even Tom's Pitch Invasion (which got a facelift recently which I think works very well), only with a more literary and even absurdist bent. Roswitha's Treasons, Strategems and Spoils is also a very well-written blog from India which mixes a little cricket with the football, which is a nice touch. I highly recommend both.

4) Kevin Keegan's Newcastle have scored no goals in his 270 minutes in charge. Another 3 or 4 games of this and he may be ready to coach TFC. (rimshot)

TFC kicks off in 57 days.

The Luckiest Man in Football

2008-02-01T09:05:00.000-05:00

It's hard, offhand, to think of another manager of a major European club who has; a) spent tens of millions in the transfer market to no apparent purpose b) vastly underperfomed expectations in the league for three years running; c) failed to win any of his last five games; d) just had the club's only decent defender admit that fourth place might be a stretch this year.

But it's even harder to imagine another club at which this self-same manager would not only avoid being the object of baying crowds, but actually be defended by the club's fans against owners who - not unreasonably - would actually like the team to win a match or two.

It is simply luck that Rafa's latest spell of Houllier-fication (he still insists on playing Dirk Kuyt, for Chrissakes) has coincided with the news that Liverpool's absentee landlords have - shock, horror, this was completely unforseen, etc. - foisted a lot of debt on the club. Scouser fans, whose logic escapes me somewhat, seem to have decided that thw way to get back at their vicious American overlords is a) to demand new, kinder Arab overlords and b) back their Spanish coach come what may, even though the team clearly can't play its way out of a paper bag right now.

In this situation, through no skill of his own, Rafa can literally do no wrong. Which is good, because he ain't doing much right at the moment.

Lucky Bastard.

TFC varia

2008-01-29T10:54:00.000-05:00

Ok, now I'm so totally psyched about the new season (a condition that will presumably last until the CSA decide to make some boneheaded announcement which will result in the Serbian White Eagles representing Canada in the CONCACAF Champions League) that I can barely do anything else. So, time to catch up on some TFC news.

First, cheers to the fans, who this year purchased 16,000 season tickets. With 2,500 or so seats going in mini-packages that leaves less than 2,000 tickets for walk-up crowds. Which means tickets will be scarce and scalpers will do well. An excellent boost for the economy all around.

Second, you may have noticed that there was something called the Superdraft a week or two ago. I chose to deliberately ignore this on the grounds that there was no point getting too attached to anyone we drafted because Mo would almost certainly trade them immediately. Now, trying to figure out Mo's motives in these things is a mug's game, but I am starting to think that he might - just might - actually not want to trade anybody.

Hear me out: Prior to the draft, we had five, maybe six defenders worthy of the name. Three of them (Wynne, Brennan and Dunivant) are at least theoretically capable of playing midfield as well, though Dunivant in midfield is technically something one should avoid. The arrival of Julius James and Pat Phelan (our two first-round picks) mean that at least two of these eight (including Phelan) would now be available for midfield duty.

Now, although much was made of TFC's offensive woes last year, the real problem was actually not in attack but in midfield. TFC have three genuinely good midfielders (Edu, Robbo, and O'Brien). When all three played, TFC were very tough to beat. When one or more of them were gone, they were god-awful. So to the extent that depth in defence is going to lead to more options in midfield, life has to be getting better.

And now add to this the East Country rumours that Mo is sniffing around yet another Norwich player - Darren Huckerby (pictured) to join former Canaries Jim Brennan and Carl Robinson. Unlike a lot of the other rumours out there about TFC-bound players (the Stefano Fiore rumour being the most ludicrous), this one seems to have a lot of traction, and frankly makes more sense given how close he is to the Dichio mold. If Huckerby plays on the left of midfield, that plugs the most serious gap on the squad.

Less promising are the Josh Wagenaar rumours. It's not obvious to me why he'd prefer being the reserve keeper at TFC to being the reserve keeper at Den Haag - unless he's being brought in to be the number one. This would suggest that Sutton is considered too brain-scrambled to play any more or he's trade-bait (though suspicions of brain-scrambledness obviously won't do much for his trade value).

59 days 'til kick off.

Absolutely Fabulous

2008-01-29T08:09:00.000-05:00

I have been dying for three months. No TFC. And still 2 months until we kick off in Columbus.

My body aches every time I drive down the Gardner or Lakeshore and see Our House"; the big bubble on the field, the snow on the bright red seats, the floodlights standing guard against the metallic grey skies. I want to drink beer in the summer sun and indulge in bitchy sarcasm about our porous defence. I want to huddle with my son in the cold wind and rain coming off the lake through another abject performance and then argue with my wife about why the team's crapness can't possibly affect the number of games I attend. I want to sing and cheer and celebrate with Michael and Sonny and the gang in Section 221. I want my TFC and I want it now.

But my life - no, everyone's life - just got a little bit better with the announcement of the new CONCACAF Champions League, which will replace the Champions Cup as of this year. 24 teams will begin the competition in late August with 16 teams playing home-and-away qualifiers from which the winner will join 8 seeded teams for a group stage lasting through to the end of October. Quarter-finals in February, Semis in March, Finals in April.

But all that's as maybe: the important thing here is that Canada's been given on of the 24 spots. This is somewhat problematic because alone among CONCACAF nations, we have no real national championships. Our three professional teams all play in American leagues,and as fans of Swansea and Cardiff know, international football has tended to look askance at teams playing in one country's league and representing another country internationally.

But what does that leave? The Canadian Soccer League is semi-pro at best, and it clubs are almost entirely from Ontario - and, hilariously, has two divisions: a "national" division of regionally-based teams (one of which - the Trois-Rivieres Attak - is the Montreal Impact's reserve squad) and an "international" division of ethnic Toronto teams - Toronto Croatia, Serbian White Eagles, Italian Shooters, Canadian Lions (I believe a Caribbean team) and Portuguese Supra. If any of these teams were to represent Canada, they would get creamed.

The Canadian Soccer Association, displaying its usual lightning-quick reflexes, put up the CONCACAF announcement on its website yesterday but failed to make any announcement about how Canada's representative would be chosen. A hopeful but poorly-sourced article in the Vancouver Sun suggests that a triangular championship featuring home-and-homes between the Whitecaps, Impact and FC is in the works.

God bless. At a minimum, that means road trips to Montreal and Vancouver this year, plus two more dates on my season ticket. And...miracle of miracles...the possibility of away games in Mexcio, Costa Rica and the Caribbean.

Absolutely fabulous!

This is Too Easy

2008-01-17T03:26:00.001-05:00

Surely no modern sports figure has been photgraphed in as many bizarre and humiliating poses as Kevin Keegan. As a result, any schmo with five minutes on his hands can put together a series of photos making this man look like a complete buffoon.

Is this fair? Of course not. He wasn't the worst manager England's ever had - unlike some people we could mention, he managed to get the Three Lions to qualify for a major tournament. As a player, he was not only one of England's all-time finest, but he also - unlike today's squad - took up the challenge of playing outside England and learning about foreign cultures and playing styles. And as a club manager, his record at Toon and City may not be stellar, but few if any of his successors can claim a better one.

And had he not played during the only decade in human history where mullets and perms were not only not cause for corporal punishment but actually fashionable, I'm quite sure he'd be considered among the sagest individuals ever to grace a football pitch. Or, at least, he wouldn't suffer in comparison to Bobby Robson.

However, as we blog-writers say, "never look a gift horse in the mouth". And oh my God what a horse this is. And so, forthwith, a photo caption contest. Provide the best captions (I am the judge, my decision final, etc.) to the following four photos of Kevin Keegan and win my copy of David Peace's Damned United, to be delivered just as soon as I finish reading it.

1.

2.

3.

4.

Do your worst.

Outcasts

2008-01-16T23:38:00.000-05:00

So, this book by Steve Menary seems to be all the rage among the blogeratti at the moment. A reasonably thorough review was justed posted over on Culture of Soccer, and there's been some chatter elsewhere, too.

Generally, the book has been pretty well received. However, I'm going to have to be the contrarian on this score. I desperately wanted to like this book. The premise is brilliant the material is great and the settings are exotic. The problem is that Menary simply doesn't deliver.

The opening chapter, which lays bare the many oddities of FIFA membership rules (the Faroe Islands are allwed in but Greenland is not, depsite having roughly similar legal relationships with their parent country, Denmark) is meant to set the stage for the book that follows by demonstrating that FIFA is "forgetting" various parts of the world. But while these forst thirty pages are by far the book's best, they fail to convince that current rules are in fact terribly unjust. Previous admission rules - such as the ones that allowed the Faroes and the Palestinians in in the first place may have been dumb-ass. But present ones?

The only country I can see that has a case here is Gibraltar (about which more later). Zanzibar? Part of Tanzania. Get over it. The channel islands? Part of the UK. Get over it. Greenland? Part of Denmark and there's only two pitches on the whole damn island. Get over it. The Kurds? The Sami? They may be people but they ain't countries. North Cyprus? Tibet? Tougher call, and one which sucks for Turkish Cypriots and Tibetans, but international recognition is kind of important if you're going to play international matches.

So what's the problem here? Not much, really, but that doesn't stop Menary from doing a little hopscotching around Europe trying to find whiny local FA people who want to achieve some kind of recognition for their plight. Their cases are almost uniformly unconvincing.

The exception is Gibraltar, which has basic self-rule and whose football is not part of the UK pyramid. They are best positioned on legal grounds to make the leap to international football, but for deep-rooted historical reasons, the Spanish have dug in and threatened to withdraw their teams (i.e. Real madrid and Barcelona) from UEFA competitions if Gibraltar is allowed in. And so UEFA prevaricates on Gibraltar's application, despite having lost the case at the Court for Arbitration in Sport. It is, in fact, the Gibraltar-Spain situation which has cause both FIFA and UEFA to become choosier about admitting micro-states, albeit only after letting in a lot of farily dubious candidates over the past twenty years, thus setting the stage for whiny books like this one.

This book screams "quickie". The research and editing are both sloppy. You can mostly overlook this because of the exotic locales, but it grates after a while. Less forgiveably, it underplays what is possibly the most interesting story of all here - namely, the shambles that is the NF Board. They are an eccentric bunch, these NF Board types, and the many chancers who seem to have glommed on to it. They seem to want to re-create a lot of the pageantry associated with FIFA, only to give it a "Springtime of Nations" gloss as they represent the oppressed nations of the world (oppressed? Padania were given provisional membership last month...). But their crtieria for membership is, shall we say, flexible - and seems to consist of a lot of internet searches. Who is the Masaai FA, anyway? They don't seem to exist in actual fact - yet they are listed as a member by the NF-Board.

And, indeed, as the book progresses, the NF-Board is put to shame by the happy-go-lucky types at St. Pauli FC who managed to organize the FIFI World Cup for "nations without countries" with no bureaucracy and minimal fuss in the summer of 2006. The NF-Board has yet to organize a serious tournament. That's the real story in this netherworld of International football, and while Menary dutifully reports some of it, he doesn't follow it to it's logical conclusion (i.e. "this non-FIFA stuff is quite insubstantial") for the obvious reasons that it undermines the rationale for the book in the first place.

There is room, of course, for non-FIFA international football. There are lots of peoples out there who do not form a nation-state but who still want to express their collective identities through sport. That's legitimate. But it's ludicrous to expect that FIFA or the IOC or any other international sporting body should be under any obligation to satisfy them. In sport, the Westphalian settlement still holds; were it to crumble, the result would be anarchy, not justice.

(And that's the last time in 2008 you'll hear me defend FIFA. I feel dirty.)

Anyways, if you're a devotee of footie lit, Outcasts is probably worth a gander, if only because the rest of the 2007 crop of books was so dismal. But scale down your expectations; like its subjects, this book isn't ready for the big leagues.

Back to the Future

2008-01-16T11:54:00.000-05:00

This just in (snicker).

The New Newcastle mana(snort!)...manager is...tee hee!

KEVIN "I'm not very good at this" KEEGAN! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This is priceless.

And yes, sorry for the gap in posting. A tough couple of months. It took something this absurd to get me going again.

HA!

Seriously, though, spare a thought for Sam Allardyce. How'd you like to be him today?