Quick Thoughts on World Cup 2010

It’s been a shamefully long time since I posted anything here – sorry, been busy – but I hope to be more regular  in future (as the bishop said to the proctologist). Meanwhile, here are two quick thoughts on the Wold Cup, in the run up to what promises to be a fascinating final:

1) I hope the German and Uruguayan players pick themselves up and go home pleased with what they’ve achieved. Unlike some people I could mention, they’ve done themselves proud and can hold their heads high (indeed, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Germany lifting the European Championship trophy in two years time, given how good and how young this team is).

2) Oh, FIFA. Do the two defeated semi-finalists really have to play off for third place? Apart from your grasping money-men, who really cares who finishes third? They did their best but they lost in the semi-finals; can’t they just go home with their dignity intact rather than playing out a meaningless farce for the Sepp Blatter retirement fund?

Roll on the Final! And may the best team win – as long as they do it by playing good, entertaining football!

Only at the Cricket . . .

. . . could you find a headline like this.

Fantastic.

Half-time Update

Oh dear. Talk about poor officiating. Manchester United can’t complain about the refereeing in this match! Steve Bennett managed to ignore a pretty clear Rio Ferdinand handball and then a cast-iron second yellow card offence from Paul Scholes, who should have been sent off for his blatant body check on Marcus Bent. Under a competent referee, the score would be Wigan Athletic 1-0 Manchester United (because, yes, it was a penalty on Rooney).

There’ll be some talking points at the end of the day . . .

Could We Play the Matches On the Pitch, Please?

3 o’clock can’t come quickly enough. First Michael Ballack sees fit to question the integrity of Wigan Athletic, then Sir Alex Ferguson decides to do the same to Bolton Wanderers. If you support Chelsea, Ballack has a point (because didn’t Steve Bruce used to play for Manchester United?) but Ferguson is going too far; if you support United, Ferguson has every right to question why Bolton’s players are already ‘celebrating’, but Ballack is impugning the character of an honest manager. And now Ricardo Carvalho has added fortune teller to his repertoire of skills. Please make it stop.

To cap it all off (for the moment at least – god knows what sort of revisionist takes on the season we’ll be getting come 5 o’clock!), Avram Grant has proposed that if two teams finish the season level on points, there should be a winner-take-all play-off to decide the champions, rather than it coming down to goal difference. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Does Mr Grant, I wonder, think that should apply everywhere? Because if Everton lose and Aston Villa win, this afternoon, then Villa will qualify for Europe on goal difference despite Everton having been in the top five for most of the season. So: a play-off? And if Bolton lose at Stamford Bridge (where they’ll be either having a day out in London or fighting as if the very devil himself is at their back, depending on whether you wear red or blue at the football), and Fulham and Reading both win, they’ll all be tied on 36 points and one of them will be going down. Three play-offs?

No, the thing of it is, Avram, old chum, that being held hostage to goal difference is what your club gets for charging fans up to £60 a ticket to watch over £250 million worth of players grind out results with ‘efficient’ football, while Manchester United and Arsenal were busy fulfilling their duties as entertainers. Sorry.

I leave you now, with a plea to both Manchester United and Chelsea to remember that, when all is said and done, this is actually just a game. And also just to note that Paddy Power have odds of 11/4 that Chelsea will score from a penalty this afternoon. And Bolton? 18-1. I’m just saying . . .

Who’s the W*nker in the Black . . . ?

More typical ABU ranting from the online equivalent of the fish-and-chip wrapper.

While I’m perfectly willing to concede that (a) the sight of a manager berating referees to cover his team’s failings is at best unedifying, and that (b) Alan Wiley was probably right to blow for a penalty against Michael Carrick (the fact that the ball was going straight to Ferdinand is irrelevant – more pertinent is whether or not the intervention was deliberate; I don’t think it was but the referee clearly disagreed), this characteristically MU-phobic article chooses to gloss over a few issues.

Poor Refereeing is Costing United
Within minutes of Cristiano Ronaldo coming on at Stamford Bridge, Michael Ballack (already on a yellow card) decided it was footballing best practice to attempt to wrestle him to the ground in the area. This should have been a penalty. Nailed on. Even the habitual avoider of controversy, Andy Gray, recognised the point during his commentary. Go back three days (three days!) to Barcelona and note that the referee that night allowed Ronaldo to be fouled in the area twice without awarding what should have been straightforward penalties. He also contrived to miss a blatant penalty against Manchester United, when a Barcelona player was scythed to the floor by, I think, Wes Brown. The official in that match was dreadful – dreadful to both teams, but it was United who walked away with two legitimate penalties turned down (whether or not they would have scored them is another matter . . . ).

I can’t speak to the matches against Blackburn and Middlesborough as I didn’t see them, but Ferguson clearly believes his team was hard done by. If I were to believe Nick Miller, I’d have to say it was gamesmanship coupled with paranoia; if I choose to believe the evidence of my own two eyes over the last couple of games, I’d say Ferguson may well have a point.

Fixture Congestion Informs Team Selection
Playing Barcelona twice and Chelsea away within a week is actually rather difficult. There is a very good chance that United may have come away from Stamford Bridgeski without a win no matter what team Alex Ferguson sent out. If they then compounded that by losing to Barcelona at Old Trafford three days later (three days!) because the players were fatigued from having to travel to Barcelona then to London then back to Manchester and play three games against top opposition inside a week, then idiots commentators like Nick Miller would be sagely nodding what passed for their heads and noting Ferguson’s tactical naivety in not making full use of his squad. The fact of the matter is that Chelsea had an extra day’s rest before playing United and knew that they also had an extra day’s rest before playing Liverpool.

A couple of responses to Mr Millers wisdom:

“Ferguson defended his selection by claiming fatigue on the part of his top men, but in doing so he threw away their best chance of beating Barcelona next week.”

Huh. He can’t have thrown it too far.

“Ferguson and Queiroz sought to extend the conspiracy to the failure of the referee in Spain to bow to their wishes. Again, their lack of success there was not down to suspect refereeing, but due to a craven and cowardly team selection against a Barcelona side that was there for the taking.”

Again, rubbish. For years, we’ve been lamenting the fact that English teams have played attacking, expansive football in Europe but come undone against the wily continental clubs who know how to stifle a game and eke out a win or a draw very much against the run of play. The fact of the matter is that Ferguson did exactly that against Barcelona and came away from the Nou Camp with a valuable away draw. Were it not for the inability of the referee to spot more than one penalty in a match, United could easily have won that game 3-1 with less than 40% of the possession (provided all of the penalties were dispatched successfully).

I’ll leave it there, as this post was begun over a week ago and I want to get another one out before the season climaxes in a few hours. Suffice it to say: by all means level criticism at Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson if it’s warranted – neither they nor he should be treated differently from any other team or manager – but it’s surely not too much to ask that people think before spraying these accusations around, is it?

Oh, Yes.

Awesome performance. Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

I am now, officially, over the moon, and firmly of the belief that the momentum from this win will carry Manchester United to their 10th Premier League title and on to victory in the Champions League Final (unless, of course, Chelsea prevail tonight, in which case I expect Mr Abramovich to arrange for things in Moscow to go mysteriously wrong for United – you know the drill: fire alarms in the team hotel at 4:00 am the morning of the match, food poisoning, team coaches taking the players to the stadium via Kiev, substandard training facilities, that sort of thing).

In other words: come on, Liverpool!

Death, Taxes and . . .

. . . Chelsea getting a penalty just when they need one. Who could have predicted that? I’m not bitter, though; I genuinely hope the linesman gets a favourable exchange rate when he goes to turn all those rubles into sterling.

There will no doubt be huge celebrations amongst the long-time Chelsea support* at the result that opens up the title race but, for my part, I’d like to know why the scores were still level when Michael Ballack walked up to take the spot kick, when the same player was so badly manhandling Ronaldo at a United corner that he should have conceded a penalty, and possibly received a yellow card. Perhaps the officials were too busy trying to work out how many rubles to the pound to do anything about that. You might think so, I couldn’t possibly comment.

All I’d say is that it would be a shame if Chelski’s negative tactics were to triumph when week-in, week-out Manchester United and Arsenal have played football the way it’s meant to be played. Actually, I will add one more thing: go Newcastle and Bolton!

* you know: the ones who’ve supported Chelsea ever since Mourinho was manager.

Running Scared?

Let’s hope so. The mind games have begun ahead of tomight’s battle of the giants: Barcelona midfielder, Xavi, thinks Cristiano Ronaldo would be an even better player in Spain. I hope he proves that tonight . . .

The only thing I’m sure of, when two of the games most attractive football-playing teams meet is that the spectacle will be much easier on the eye than anything the other semi-final will provide.  Both teams have huge worldwide reputations and both can be said to have drastically underperformed in the European Cup/Champions League.  Both teams have credible candidates for the title of best player in the world, and the outcome of these next two meetings rests very much on who can rise to the challenge and play to a level that justifies their exalted reputations. I have no idea who’s going to win, but I can’t wait for the games.

When in Rome . . .

. . . moan like the Romans do. AS Roma midfielder, David Pizarro, thinks it’s OK for a grown man to complain that somebody’s making fun of him.

Seriously, David, what are you? Eight? Plying your wares in Serie A, it’s forgivable if you don’t know this, but football is a form of entertainment. What’s more, it’s a form of entertainment that costs a lot of money to go and see. If fans are going to spend that kind of money they deserve to be entertained – and one of the pre-eminent entertainers in today’s game is Cristiano Ronaldo. Does he showboat? Sure. Sometimes. But mostly his outrageous talents are put to proper use, trying to score goals and win games for Manchester United and Portugal. And if he can do that with amazing tricks and turns of skill rather than, say, soaking up loads of pressure, scoring a single goal on the break and then defending with ten men for the rest of the match, more power to him.

This is exactly the same line of rubbish Arsene Wenger recently tried to use to deflect attention from the fact that his team had just been thoroughly outclassed in the FA Cup. ‘Disrespect’ he said, as did Pizarro, although Wenger was referring to Ronaldo’s compatriot, Nani. Disrespect. What rubbish. Here’s the thing, Arsene (I hope you’re listening, too, Dave): if a world class footballer ponces about the field against a lower league team, playing keepy-uppy, performing circus tricks, or just generally taking the piss, then, yes, you can feel free to accuse him of being an arrogant twat with no respect for his opponents. However, if a game is being played by two teams who are very much in the same fighting class, then why shouldn’t players go through their full repertoires? That’s what we pay to watch.

I’m appalled that professional footballers (and this idiot from South Africa, who purports to be a sports journalist) can seriously suggest that a) for a player to go through his full range of talents is tantamount to humiliating an opponent, and b) that the appropriate response is to kick him into submission. So, where do we stop? Do we demand that quick players like Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, et al not run as fast as they can because it’s disrespectful to slower opponents? Sachin Tendulkar has been known to bat with such sublime skill that he has made some of the world’s finest bowlers look like amateurs – do we demand that he bats left-handed?

If Ronaldo is ever involved in a pre-season warm-up match against a pub team from Prague and starts ball-juggling then fine, he deserves a slap upside the head and a bollocking for humiliating vastly inferior opponents; but if he’s enjoying himself, entertaining the crowd and playing beautiful and effective football against fellow World Class professionals, then I suggest the likes of Pizarro stop moaning and get on with the game. Because just being better than someone isn’t disrespect; this is disrespect:

Football is the Winner

It’s been a while since I’ve posted – pressures of work haven’t allowed the time, lately – but I felt this was worth the effort. For the first time since 1995, the FA Cup won’t be won by one if the so-called Big Four. Both Manchester United and Chelsea were put out of the cup today on one of the more remarkable afternoons the august competition has seen in recent times. While I must admit that the United fan in me isn’t overjoyed with the result from Old Trafford earlier this afternoon, the football fan is ecstatic.

Before their teams went out onto the pitch today, executives at both of the remaining superclubs (and let’s face it, that’s what the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona, AC Milan, etc have become) would have been largely concerned with hoping they avoided each other in the semi-final draw. Now, after extraordinary performances from Portsmouth and Barnsley, they’re out. This is a good thing.

In the last 20 years, the only time the FA Cup hasn’t featured one of Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester United was 1991. And since Wimbledon’s remarkable triumph in 1988 it’s been a procession of victories for one or other of the current top four. Such has been the dominance of the elite, moneyed few, that only Tottenham Hotspur in 1991 and Everton in 1995 have broken their dominance – and neither Spurs nor Everton are small clubs. Now, at last, somebody else will get a chance. Fantastic.

The only thing better than the fact that the magic of the cup is alive and well, is the certain knowledge that the money men at the FA will be tearing their hair out at the thought of all the “glamour” clubs being eliminated. Good. I hope it hurts. After the ridiculous business of the Premier League’s 39th Round madness, a good hard kick to the financial bollocks is just what the doctor – and the entirety of the football-loving public – ordered.

My team just got knocked out of the FA Cup. And I couldn’t be happier.