What I want to talk about are the observations that I've made lately that are things that I feel didn't exist say five years ago and are very much common place in football in the year 2013.
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| "Cocaine is a hell of a drug" |
"Cocaine Injuries"
I spoke about Tomas Rosicky's ongoing injury problems a few blog posts ago and alluded to the fact that I've been told by a few people who have a mate that's in the know (I'm sure you all know someone like this, their best mate is next door neighbours with Nani or their brother's girlfriend's sister is going out with Junior Hoilett *sigh*) that Rosicky was absent from the Arsenal starting lineup not because of a muscle, bone, joint or ligament injury but because of a cocaine addiction. I've since heard that Jack Wilshere and Andy Carroll have both spent time off due to addictions to the white stuff (apparently Andy Carroll is still off as a result); the whole thing makes me think of the spate of metatarsal injuries that we had around 10 years ago. Let's hope we're not all going have to pray and rub our noses around April/May of next year in the hope that Jack can be fit for the World Cup squad.
Swapping shirts at half time
What?!? When did we start doing this? I can understand when people do it in meaningless friendlies between Brazil and Nigeria at Loftus Road; when they're probably going to make 11 substitutions each at half time. I'd want to nab Neymar's shirt. But when you're 3-0 down in a La Liga game at the Bernabeau at Ronaldo has already dicked all over you don't make his head bigger by running over and being like, "Oh Christiano you're so amazing, can I have your shirt por favour (I know the lingo in La Liga)?" Especially when you've got another 45 minutes of trying to catch him and give him a kicking without he or any of his team mates having enough evidence to wave the imaginary card at the ref. You've got a job to do! I wouldn't go up to my boss at lunchtime and ask if we can swap ties (I probably wouldn't do it at 5pm either though, he'd think I'd lost it)!! Stop it!
4-6-0 and the false nine
Right, I've got loads of ammo for this one as I've just watched us (West Ham) lose to
Beating up Joe Hart
Joe Hart is a great goalkeeper, OK maybe not a great goalkeeper, he's a very good goalkeeper. Can we stop trying to crucify him for every mistake he makes (and goals where her couldn't have done anything better). Maybe it's because I'm a goalkeeper, I can't stand it when people pick on goalkeepers, we can't afford to make mistakes like you outfielders do and most of the time we'll go game after game not putting a foot wrong, but do you remember that? No! People need to start pointing fingers at Nastasic and Javi Garcia and not relishing the fact that City are now playing Pantymillion over our England's true number 1.
Roma
Roma are pretty awesome at the moment. Well I say that but I fear they may have peaked a few weeks ago and aren't as good as they were when Totti and Gervinho were fit. For those of you that don't follow the Italian league (what the hell are you doing with your lives) Roma are basically doing an Arsenal; every week they win and everyone says, "No they can't win the league, it's too early, they haven't played anyone decent yet..." I suppose Inter, Napoli, Tottenham and Liverpool aren't decent then no? For those of you that don't follow Serie A you also need to be made aware that Gervinho has actually been good. I kid you not, not only does he sound like he should be Brazilian, he now looks like it too.
BT Sport and the Sunday Night Football Show
Today I had a little rant on Twitter. I actually had two if you count the swearing that preceded the conclusion West Ham v Norwich game. The first of my rants was with regard to the fact the BT Sport have now bought the rights to the Champions League from 2015 onwards, meaning that there will be no more Champions League on terrestrial TV. I'm not going to go into the rights and wrongs of it all and spout off about the continual movement of football away from the fans in the interests on big corporations who claim that they are doing it all with the aim of providing an amazing service at a great price but are actually just trying to make MORE money.
Anyway this isn't what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to say, quite positively for BT Sport, is that as much as Michael Owen has got to be one of the most boring sounding Co-Commentators EVER, up there with Mick McCarthy, they have got something right in the form of the Sunday Night Football Show presented by James Richardson. The program is brilliant and provides me with not only an alternative to the X-Factor Results Show but also decent coverage from Italy, France and Germany, a bit of educated football related "banter" (I hate that phrase) and a live game from one of the afore mentioned countries. Give it a watch.
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| Get one of these on at HT |
Real Eagles
I'm not quite sure when we started doing this? I didn't get the memo. But I've noticed that Crystal Palace, in an aim to look even more like one of those Eastern European teams whose fans you'd never want to bump into after the game, have decided to copy Lazio and get a REAL EAGLE in as their mascot?!? What the hell?!? An Eagle? It's bad enough that they already have "Ultras" and that teams all over England have started bringing those stupid pyro/smoke bomb things to games. It's Wigan v Barnsley, not Locomotive Moscow v Anzi Makachakalaka!! Back on the subject of the Eagle, what next? Are Hull going to bring a real Tiger down? Will Leicester maybe round up some of the local Foxes to go through the opposition team's bins and leave old rotten vegetables strewn across the away changing rooms? What the hell has the footballing world come to?
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| That isn't debris in the background... |
40 Team World Cup
We already have a 24 team European Championship in 2016 and a road show scheduled for 2020 and Platini goes and wades in with this idea of a 40 team World Cup. Now don't get me wrong, I probably love the World Cup more than 99.999999% of people with wives/girlfriends on this planet, so I'd love it to last a bit longer, but at the same time he's not really given it any thought. Firstly if you have groups made up of uneven amounts meaning that in some of the final group games other teams will have already played and will know what result they need in order to go through (see Austria v West Germany 1982). Secondly, I keep saying this over and over and over, there are 9/10 teams that are members of CONMEBOL (the South American equivalent of UEFA) and they can potentially get 5 spaces at a World Cup. Conversely there 46 and 56 members of the AFC and CAF respectively and each of those federations get around 4 spaces each. And then people wonder why Asian and African teams haven't done that well in the past at the World Cup?? Surely we need to redistribute World cup spaces (including ones for UEFA, OFC and CONCACAF), if not in the interests of being fair, let's do it off the back of the randomness that teams from Africa bring to major international tournaments. In fact let's have a World Cup in Africa again soon (that'll p*ss off the racists), I feel like the last one we had wasn't crazy enough, by African Cup of Nations standards, I want to see a World Cup semi final where the grass on the pitch is so bad that they've (freshly) painted it green; and where there are so many flying insects on the field it looks like a story out of the bible. If you think I've gone off on a random tangent (which I slightly have) then check out the pictures from the Semis of the last African Cup of Nations, the above mentioned things actually happened. Anyway, to cut a long story short, leave it alone Platini!
Kaka
Kaka's back!! I'm assuming he still belongs to Jesus, none the less Jesus has let Milan have him for a while. And boy do they need him! For all of you that didn't know that Roma are currently the form team in Italy I have another bombshell for you. Milan are awful. The novelty of playing in Italy again has worn off for Balotelli and he's back to spending most of the games he plays walking around, occasionally diving and smashing penalties in. Robinho isn't doing much better, I kid you not, I can think of THREE instances this season where he's scuffed a ball that has been squared to him and missed an open goal. I mean who does that?? I'd have backed Carlton Cole to score the chances he's missed. As for the rest of the team, as much as I like Andrea Poli, Stephan El Shaarawy (or SES as I keep hearing him reffered to) and Riccardo Montolivo, in general the Milan squad is above average at best; and then there's Kaka. He scored a good goal against Lazio a couple of weeks ago, I've seen him come on and change games and dare I say it, I've even seen the "Kaka glide". The "Kaka glide" being the moment that he picks the ball up just inside the opposition half and gradually accelerates with it at his feet, effortlessly going past scrambling defenders (oooh it makes me feel like I'm 25/26 again), then when he gets to the box he plays a beautiful ball through...
...and Robinho scuffs it wide! Not quite 2007, but nice to see him doing what he does best.
...And finally, Podcasts
Just wanted to mention this because then it makes this a "Ten things". I'm really into football podcasts at the moment my week is pretty much dominated by them. If you take anything from this blog post make it what I'm about to tell you! If you like football and you can see past Match of the Day and the rest of the crap that the BBC and Sky Sports have to offer get involved in the following:-
- The Guardian Football Weekly & Football Weekly Extra (presented by James Richardson of channel 4 Football Italia fame)
- The Game - Times football podcast presented by Gabriele Marcotti (tied with James Richardson as my favourite pundit)
- The Football Ramble - One of the funniest football related things I've ever come across (after this blog obviously)
- Forza Italian Football - A very informative look into the worlds of Serie A & B
- Serie A Live Radio - Serie A from a North American perspective. Full of weird sound clips and Italian commentary (my Italian is getting better every day BTW); I'm not sure if it's intentional but they make me laugh every week, without fail
- Revista De La Liga - I know I slagged off Sky Sports at the top of this section, but this is actually quite good
- French Football Weekly - a decent podcast about the goings on in Ligue 1, all I have to say on it really
And that's it from me, it's all very Winter 2013. I'll try and get another post up soon and who knows, the next time I look at the state of football we might be travelling to games on hover-boards; by that point BT Sport and Sky Sports will be the only channels that show sports (even kids playing in the park) and the subscription fee will just be taken out of our pay packets without our say just like student loan repayments and national insurance. Money grabbing ****s!
Oh and BTW, I haven't said that any of the above mentioned players are on coke so don't sue me! This is just the word on the street...
