Yes They Can Can…If the Gaffer Reads the Writing on the Wall!!!

Well, having had his head handed to him twice last season, Sir Alex Ferguson still seems bound and determined to ignore the handwriting on the wall. The sheer depth of talent in his his squad, however, will always allow the Gaffer to peek into the abyss, throw out some appropriate barbs meant to psych out the immediate opposition and still find a way to pull a nineteenth trophy.

Nevertheless, slightly weakened, at least psychologically, by the departure of Ronaldo and Tevez and the shrill clang and rattle of coin resounding from the deep deep oil money-filled pockets of Manchester City, the grand old geezer of British football and his squad really do have their work cut out for them this season.

“You need a new leader!” the handwriting says.

And we do. Rio’s magazine is very nice (the bird on the front cover is nicer). I am impressed. He has also become, in partnership with Chelsea’s Ashley Cole–yes, the Cashley Grrrl and her bad left-footed self–a film producer. This is all splendid and wonderful. I’m sure Rio’s thinking ahead to retirement.

Still, the absolute howler Rio committed for England on Wednesday while making a simple back pass may be the sign of a return to old habits and vices, or even a flashback. Neither Rio nor Ryan Giggs owns either the moxy or personality to be the truly great captain United need. Sir Alex needs to step in now and force the responsibility on Wayne Rooney, Patrice Evra , Nemanja Vidic, or… someone new!!! Picking Wazza may sound daft, but I think it would help force him to grow up.

I was kind of disappointed to see a strong character like Lorik Cana sign for Sunderland on the cheap. Cana, a decent post-to-post midfielder and an inspiring gung-ho captain for Olympique Marseille, would have made a wonderful skipper and definitely would have made a more natural successor to Roy Keane than the Gaffer’s pet, Darren Fletcher.

Now don’t get me wrong, Fletcher is definitely what Ferguson calls a ‘trier.’ To be sure, Fergie was referring to Carlos ‘el traidor’ Tevez at the time, but , I say, if the shoe fits… Darren has been learning on the job for six seasons now and his diligence is to be applauded. As a sort of super substitute, I think Fletcher is fine and capable of being even more adaptable than Johnny O’Shea.

For some reason, however, Fletcher’s diligence and hard graft is mistaken for quality. I have never been enamored of the Scotsman, but have seen a steady incremental improvement. There are those who believe he was the missing link in the ECC final against Barcelona. This is absurd! Whether we’re up against Xabi Alonso, Stevie G and Javier Mascherano or the even better midfield of Xavi, Iniesta and Messi, the fact is that we just don’t have the horses in central midfield to take it to the next level.! In a nutshell: Anderson is still being forced to play out of position and Fletcher simply isn’t good enough. This is United’s single biggest problem.

“You need a truly great hard midfielder if you want to win everything,” the handwriting says.

Now that Xabi Alonso’s gone, I’m not really worried about Liverpool. His replacement, Alberto Aquilani, is a fine footballer; but , but beyond his constant ankle problems, it will take him a season for him to get acclimated to the speed of the EPL. Buying Glen Johnson will improve their right side a lot, but, ultimately, Liverpool are completely dependent upon Fernando Torres and Stevie Gerrard remaining fit.

I hear Rafa Benítez is a deeply religious man who prays every morning with his daughters. If Torres manages to stay fit throughout the season, I, too, may become a believer in miracles. I won’t make too much of ‘Pool’s 2-1 mugging by Spurs this weekend, except to make note of the fact that they only lost two Premiership games in all of last season.

As I write, I hear on Spanish language radio that Arsenal are trying to squeeze 45 million quid out of Barcelona before agreeing to fllog Cesc Fabregas next year. Even with Fabregas, even if there were to be a miraculous shopping binge before the window closes, I can’t see the Arse staying in the top four. Having massacred Everton 6-1 at Goodison in their first game, Gooner fans are already talking the talk. Yesterday I got eight e-mails from different Arse men. Promises and predictions! The usual! I say sssssh! Same old Arsenal: No testosterone!

Are Chelsea good? Sure Chelsea are good, but they’re getting really old. If Chelsea stay fit, particularly my darling Michael Essien, they have to stand a good chance. Anyone watching the Community Shield match clearly saw that this cynical group of mercenaries are going to grind out victories any which way they need to. Carvalho, Terry and Ballack are gristled, mean, dirty and past their pomp, but they will well and truly mount up for this their last serious season as a group and go for it. Clearly, this season Chelsea will be very physical, like Big Sam’s version of Bolton Wanderers, only with a touch of class.

Aston Villa and Everton will hang in there on the periphery, but just don’t have good enough squads. Both teams got badly beaten in their first match, and, although there shouldn’t be too much made of it, Joleon Lescott moping for a move to Manchester City for a whole season will poison the Toffees dressing room in much the same way Gareth Barry’s whinging to be a Scouser hurt Villa last season.

This leaves Manchester City. Despite their still being a little aenemic-looking at the back, I have to believe their depth of talent will tell on the opposition after January, especially if Robinho is happy. It is imperative that the old big four need to put them to the sword early in the season before they’ve gelled as a unit , or else they really may sneak into the top three.

This brings me back to United. As I said earlier, United’s only two major defeats of last season were very public, totally humiliating and telegraphed our weaknesses to all and sundry. We have three potentially brilliant attacking midfielders in the wingers Valencia, Nani and Tosic. Old man Giggsy should be able to make his mark as a substitute, although the energy machine, Park ji-Sung. may have already overstayed his welcome and is probably due for a move to a club where scoring isn’t important. by next season.

What I expect to happen in game after game is the Chelsea model from the Community Shield match. Everybody will try to beat United up in central midfield, and, even though the red devils will never be turned into the kind of passive, testosterone-free team Arsene Wenger has fashioned in his own image at Arsenal, I expect the squad will be battered and become tired early enough in the season to have to trot out Darron Gibson and Tom Cleverly regularly in the Spring. In United’s first game, a 1-0 win over Birmingham City, neither Ginger Scholes nor Darren Fletcher kept possession for long. This is worrisome.

“Berbatov is a load of rubbish!” the handwriting on the wall says.

In my heart of hearts, if United can just hold on until January, I think everybody around him will ultimately convince the Gaffer to swallow his pride and go out and spend big money on a midfield general. Ideally, I’d like Ferguson to splash big on Daniele De Rossi or Hernanes; but, more realistically, I’m sure he’d rather gamble on the youth of Javíer Martínez, Blaise Matuidi, Steven Dufour, Anthony Annan, Axel Witsel or Scott Brown. Out of the six, although he may not be as good a technician as the others, Dufour looks to have the best leadership skills.

We may mourn the exit of Ronnie and Carlitos, but I truly believe that Wazza, Macheda, Welbeck and little Mickey Owen can get the job done if Berbatov keeps out of everybody’s way. Dmitar Berbatov, like the League of Nations, America in South Vietnam, the Concorde, Massimo Taibi, Eric Djemba Djemba, Juan Sebastian Veron and Kleberson, exists to illustrate the folly of owning absolute power.

Sir Alex Ferguson, easily the most successful manager in British football history, and a fine motivator of young men, has been calling the shots at Old Trafford since the last old school club chairman, Martin Edwards, stepped down in 2002. To be fair to Ferguson, he has truly been a mostly benevolent dictator since Edwards walked away from the club. Despite his habit of teasing Jose Mourinho, Carlos Queiroz and the press about his ‘imminent retirement,’ most of us true believers think he will never quit, and end up being carried off the field of play on a stretcher, exactly like his mentor, Jock Stein.

Even if Taibi, Djembax2, Kleberson and the fitfully brilliant £28M Seba Veron could be written off as honest mistakes on the Gaffer’s part, the whole circus involving Berbatov has stunned many fans. Slow, lazy, selfish and beguiled by his hubris-driven ego to a point of ridiculousness, the shrugging Bulgarian is truly the Gaffer’s weakness.

The almost perfect diamond formation of the 2007-2008 season may have been the hardest working football team ever. They smothered a brilliant Barcelona team at the Nou Camp in 2008. The full-frontal battering ram effect of Tevez and Rooney up front allowed Cristiano the freedom to score 42 goals. Clearly, we can see now, this team was brilliant, but often rejected pretty football for the sake of practicality. The cliché is: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Unfortunately, Ferguson wanted a new kind of aesthetic perfection last season. Dimitar Berbatov, a big man who can dribble, flick and dish, can be a dazzling technician who, at his best, reminds you of Eric Cantona on Paxyl. Perfect for the slow, deliberate system at Tottenham Hotspur, like some big-ticket chatchke at Fortnum & Mason’s, Berbatov was truly the object of the Gaffer’s lust and desire.

Without ever fitting into the system, Berbatov was trotted out week after week. Well, £32M is a lot of money to spend and the Gaffer wanted to get his money’s-worth. Fortunately, United are such a good team that they kept winning anyway. The disenchantment of Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez was clear for everybody to see, yet Fergie’s righteous band of committed professionals still managed to hold onto the premiership crown by the skin of its collective teeth and can do it again.

As far as strikers go, I hope Ferguson stands easy until January. I really believe we have ample strikers. Come Christmas, if the Gaffer finally loses his faith in Berbatov, perhaps we can dump him on Athletic Madrid or Valencia in part-exchange for Sergio ‘el Kun’ Aguero or David Silva.

“We need a good goalkeeper NOW!” the handwriting on the wall says.

This is the least of our worries. EVDS will be back soon and our defence is still really solid. It’s very clear that, similar to Tim Howard before him, Ben Foster is turned into a nervous wreck by the pressure of big games. Howard has matured slowly at Everton and I expect Foster will improve somewhere else. Kucszak, although prone to mistakes in the air, looks to be a better choice as he gets far less flustered than Foster in pressure situations.

If Manuel Neuer is available, Ferguson has food for thought. Schalke will surely prefer to sell Neuer–who really does have all the tools in spades–to Manchester United rather than their permanent Bundesliga rivals Bayern Munchën. Is he worth £20M? I wish United would have bought Sergio Asenjo from Real Vellodidad before he went to Athletic Madrid for £3M a few weeks ago, because I think he has surpassed the aging Gianluigi Buffone as the second-best keeper in the world.

At 6’3”’ and around 17 Stone(238 lbs) Neuer is exactly what Ferguson has wanted for two seasons: A true successor to Schmeichel and Van Der Sar. Comparative theorems are a slippery slope, to be sure, but, if Diego Lopez is deemed to be worth £12M by his club, Villareal, then, yes, Neuer is worth £20M. Foster made four fine saves from Birmingham City this Sunday, which is cause for celebration. His footwork, however, was horrendous. Two weak passes fell short and United were extremely lucky that the hapless Brum forward line were too surprised to take advantage.

Clearly, Ferguson is committed to his two weakest starters, Darren Fletcher and Dmitar Berbatov. He is not the kind of man to cut his losses in the way Rafa Benítez did after the disastrous £20M purchase of Robbie Keane. As long as the lads win, he will keep trotting out Berbatov again and again. If the goals aren’t going in by January, however, stuck with a 29-year-old Jonah of steadily diminishing value, I would expect Ferguson to use him as swap bait for Agüero or to be sold back to Spurs for about 50% of the price he was purchased for.

“Manchester United will win again and Fergie will laugh as you swallow your humble pie!” (once again!)” says the handwriting on the wall.

As I said earlier, I can’t see anyone mounting a season-long challenge good enough to challenge United for the Premier League honours. United will not just survive without Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez, they will thrive. With Adam Ljajic arriving from Partizan Belgrade in January our attacking midfield options will improve even more. I don’t think we will make it to Madrid this year for the ECC final, but I do expect United will have found a new, inspiring holding central midfielder by this time next year.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

In football, as it’s played today, central midfielders have become the most important players on the pitch. Due to the growing importance of the transition game, the roving role of a post-to-post player demands competence in both defense and attack.

Finding the right player, however, is difficult. The position demands an innate intelligence. The ability to improvise and shift on the fly. Caught out of position, a central midfielder can leave the defense open and vulnerable to quick counterattacks. Marooned at the back, often in position to fill in holes left by marauding full backs or wingers charging into midfield, they may also leave the striker(s) isolated if they can’t move up the pitch in support.

Consequently, knowing how to utilize a central midfielder is absolutely the key tactical decision a manager has to make.

The phenomenon of our times is the notion of a deep–lying play maker. One who sits deep in a pocket in front of the defensive line, using a virtuoso’s quiver full of long and short-range arrows. Attacks and counterattacks are begun using a wide range of passes.

Historically, a deeper midfielder had been what, in the late 60s and early 70s, was known as a ‘sweeper,’ a hard man, an enforcer. Someone capable of thuggery, mayhem and gamesmanship, but also blessed with the ability to tackle like a ton of bricks. Beyond protecting the defense, and breaking up plays, his job usually stopped at passing the ball to more creative players around him. Theoretically, at least, this type of player needn’t be the best natural footballer. All that was necessary was a good sense of tactical discipline, brute strength and tackling ruthlessness.

A deep-lying play maker, however, has no particular need for brawn. Coaches who use a deep-lying play makers are generally absorbed in playing possession football. Atypically, instead of utilizing the long kick, the goalie rolls the ball to a defender, who, in turn, passes to the play maker sitting just in front and sets the attack in motion. Andrea Pirlo and Michael Carrick are the finest examples of deep-lying play makers currently in the game. No disrespect is meant toward Claude Makalele, once the absolute epitome of said job description; unfortunately, he is now three seasons past his best, although still strutting his stuff with Paris S.G.

Andrea Pirlo

Pirlo began with a small club, Brescia, before moving to Internatzionale Milano. At Inter he played a more attack-minded role. The ideal at the time was that Pirlo, as an attacking midfielder, be capable of both working on the wing and inside. He’d be fed by a sweeper, have a full panoramic take on the action in front of him, pass short and long balls and then run to slot in wherever a forward attacked, while, at the same time, he’d always be looking to make that single assassin’s pass, the one which rips apart the opposition defense.

Bought to connect with the defensive midfielder, Vladimir Jugovic, and enhance the attacking skills of Alvaro Recoba and Christian Vieri, Pirlo found himself at odds with the silky skills of the Uruguayan. Recoba has a lot of talent and a marvelous ability to hold on to the football. Unfortunately, his ‘ball hog’ style and an innate unwillingness to pass and share left Pirlo lost.

Sold to A.C. Milan, Pirlo found his dream coach in Carlo Ancelotti. A rapturous admirer of the little Congolese magpie, Claude Makalele, Ancelotti loved his minimalist, vanity-free style. Makalele won the ball with his quick feet, not savage tackling. He would hold the ball, assess a strategic situation and quickly fire off a killer pass.

Ancelotti saw that Pirlo’s extensive passing skills would be well suited to a similar, deeper role and moved to play him further back in midfield next to Gennaro ‘Rhino’ Gattuso, the archetypal midfield enforcer. Thus Gattuso become Pirlo’s hard-core right-hand man. Rhino was all over the pitch while Pirlo probed, winning the ball, allowing the slightly-built Pirlo the freedom to work his magic.

Since his move to Milan, Pirlo has won one Scudetto, two Champions League titles, and, along with Rhino and a second tough customer, Daniele De Rossi, was instrumental in Italy’s 2006 World Cup triumph. It’s not hard to make a case for him as the best player in the world in the deep-lying role and it’s not surprising that there are rumours that Ancelotti would like to take Pirlo to Stamford Bridge, no matter what the cost. If Ancelotti gets the go-ahead from Chelsea’s oil oligarch owner, Roman Abramowich, Pirlo is going to cost Chelsea at least £40M.

Michael Carrick

Michael Carrick came through the ranks of the old youth conveyor belt at West Ham United, alongside Joe Cole and Rio Ferdinand. He quickly gained a reputation for his long stride and accurate passing, earning himself a PFA Young Player of the Year nomination for the 2000/01 season.

However, once the Hammers were relegated from the Premier League, Carrick decided he wanted a new club. Consequently, the Geordie kid, sold to Tottenham Hotspur, went through a renaissance under the tutelage of Coach Martin Jol and his staff. His talent, overshadowed at the Hammers by Joe Cole’s flash bag of tricks, only needed a little nurturing to bloom. Very much instrumental in Spurs’ finishing in fifth place in the 2005/06 season, Carrick’s splendid passing displays caught the eye of Sir Alex Ferguson, who spent £18M on him in the summer of 2006.

Ferguson, having never properly replaced the divine passing skills of David Beckham, long since sold to Real Madrid, felt he had finally obtained the missing link for his team to once again win the European Champions Cup. Fully matured for the 2007/06 season, Carrick’s radar passing dissected the likes of A.S. Roma, Olympique Lyonnais, Villareal and Barcelona on the way to winning it all.

Unlike Pirlo, Michael Carrick has not made the most of his England chances. England, although deficient in other positions, have a wealth of players capable of shining in a central midfield role. An impressive performance in Berlin alongside Gareth Barry in England’s 2-1 win over Germany clearly showed that he could play the international game.

The problem for Carrick has been, however, that his main rivals, Frank Lampard and Stevie Gerrard are flair players, much more intent on scoring than being the kind on-field instigator that is Carrick. Tooled to suit the more spontaneous game of give-and-go utilized by Gerrard and Lampard, Fabio Capello’s England team just don’t seem to need Carrick’s game.

Still, there are many of us out there who believe that the opposite is true. Lampard and Gerrard will shine against ordinary and mediocre teams; but, that Carrick’s passing game will be exactly what England need to take their game to the next technical level if they want to defeat the likes of Brazil, Spain, Argentina, France and Italy at the 2010 World Cup.

Premier League Playmakers

In the recent 2008/09 English Premier League season, Xabí Alonso, Jermaine Jenas and Stilian Petrov played key roles in midfield for their clubs, but proved slightly less successful. At Liverpool, Gerrard and Torres relied on Alonso to begin attacks from a deep position, dexterously feeding the short ball to Gerrard and, longer, usually over the top passes for Torres. Opta Statistics clearly showed that Alonso was the first player in the league to complete 1,000 successful passes.

How weird that Alonso had a career season while his coach, Rafael ‘The Tinker Man’ Benitez was desperately trying to sell him in order to buy the crude talent of Gareth Barry. Alonso’s problems are less in his style of play, because he is capable of doing everything Pirlo and Carrick can do only with more physicality, than the odd tactics Benítez uses to support him. Possessed of probably the finest defencive midfielder in the world in Javíer Mascharano, Benítez prefers that he run interference for the second striker, Gerrard. rather than protect Alonso.

Coach Harry Redknapp of Spurs has also chosen to marginalize a player who has the talent to be a world-class deep-lying midfielder in Jermaine Jenas. Redknapp has preferred to defer to the physicality and speed of Wilson Palacios and Didier Zokora, even though neither one of them is much of a passer.

Although Zokora has been sold, Redknapp seems to prefer using the big bench-warmer, Tommy Huddlestone in his place, rather than using Jenas’ more sophisticated finesse style. Things will look up for Jenas, however, as Inter-Milan’s boss, Jose Mourinho, aims to buy the lad use to replace the ageing Patrick Veiera in partnership with his midfield enforcer, the wide-bodied Sulley Muntauri.

Stilian Petrov was the most consistent performer for a callow young Villa team which flirted regularly with the Premiership top four in the first half of the season. Petrov’s long range passing ability complemented Villa’s quick-on-the-break counterattacking style of play. Having mostly played on the wing in the Scottish Premier League at Glasgow Celtic, Petrov found himself competing with three young speedy wingers in Ashley Young, James Milner and Gabriel Agabonlahor.

Under the wise tutelage of coach Martin O’Nell, Petrov has found a brand new niche as a deep-lying midfielder. If Villa’s erratic defensive midfield pair, Nigel Reo-Coker or Steve Sidwell, manage to get it together, Petrov could yet take Villa to the next level.

Serie A Playmakers

Pirlo definitely rules in the deep-lying role in Italy’s Calcio, although two young pretenders, Udinese’s Gaetano D’Agostino and A.S. Roma’s Alberto Aquilani have stepped up the competition.

Like Pirlo, D’Agostino used to play in an advanced role just behind his strikers at his old club, A.S. Roma. Unable to make the grade at Roma, where Francesco Totti stood between him and the first-team football, D’Agostino eventually ended up playing for Messina before being sold to Udinese. In D’Agostino’s second season in Udine, Pasquale Marino was hired as coach. An Ancelotti acolyte, Marino took D’Agostino’s passing ability and moved him to deep in the midfield. The midfielder’s long range passing then caught the eye of the national coach, Marcelo Lippi, who, because Pirlo was suspended over a red card incident, called D’Agostino up to the full Italian squad for the first time in November 2008.

D’Agostino made his first appearance for the Azzurri against Northern Ireland in June 2009. His other rival for an Italian national team place, Alberto Aquilani, is much more physical than Pirlo or D’Agostino, but lacks that penchant for executing the perfect killer pass. No wonder he’s being chased by Italy’s big three, Chelsea and Liverpool.

Surprisingly, the role of the deep-lying play maker is still conceptually new. Pirlo, Petrov and D’Agostino have revived fairly ordinary careers. An apt conclusion is that there are a number of players out there with the ability to play in that position but don’t know it, and, more surprisingly, coaches don’t seem to know it, either.

The Petrov example, because he was such a clever ‘jinky’ winger, might lead you to imagine that any player with high-quality technique and ball-distribution skills, like, say, Kieran Richardson of Sunderland, Chris Eagles of Burnley or Simeo Sabrosa of Atletico Madrid, are naturals for the job. A certain kind of vision, an ability to relax and a unique gift of intellect are necessary for this kind of player to succeed, however. Accompanied by a hard man, a creative deep-lying midfielder has that bit of protection he needs in order to make a positive impact on game day. He is very much like a quarterback in American Football.

The role can clearly play a big part in the game everywhere. In Italy the pace of the game is slower and the gamesmanship of defenders allows any deep-lying midfielder constant access to the ball.

Interestingly, in England, where the game is often played at a frantic, frenetic pace, midfielders get little time on the ball; nevertheless, the role of the deep-lying play maker can be utilized to allow flair players an extra second to pick out a pass.

Only in Spain, where every player seems to want to hold onto the ball, will the concept probably not work.

Being converted in soccer terms is like being Born Again in the Real World. Revival=Survival!!!

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

One Summer night in Miami I got traumatized. I’m pretty much open to all things, I like to think, unless you mess with my religion. I got my head turned forever, though. You don’t know who you are until you’re tested.

My wife and I were on vacation in Miami. My daughter and her boyfriend are seriously into dancing, so we all got dolled up in our good clothes and went out to Blue, a famous gay dance club, because it was Meringue night. Once we’d polished off three pitchers of Daiquiris, I no longer felt distracted by the sight of men necking and dancing. Out on the floor we all went, tripping the light fantastic to a couple of loud Elio Rodrigue bachatas. At some point, Elsie, my wife, began whispering something I couldn’t quite hear clearly in my ear.

“Thazyou gwokipo,” she kept saying. “Thaz you gwokipo.”

“What ?” I kept saying back, the trebly bass turning every peripheral sound into a wobbly buzz. “Say what?”

“That’s that goalkeeper!” she finally managed to shout into my ear. “The goalkeeper for ************.”

And sure enough, as I stared at the back of a shaved head and then looked down to see muscular forearms and, connected to these forearms, two hands inside the bald guys trousers, holding onto his buttocks for dear life, the sheer horror of it all began doing neurological pool hustler tricks inside my id. As they jerked and twisted around to the beat, I somehow sussed it before I saw his face.

It really was ************’s goalkeeper. Someone I admired tremendously. A player who had, more or less, won everything there is to win, and, arguably the number one goalkeeper in the whole world of football: The beautiful game! I felt woozy. I had to sit down and anesthetize myself further with a couple of shots of Wild Turkey. I’m certain I stared at him for the rest of the night, but if he did notice me staring, he sure didn’t show it.

Now I mentioned religion already. Frankly, I’m not religious in a traditional sense. Organized religion does not particularly appeal. I worship at the altar of my family. My only other true love is football, and I worship in a diligent, orthodox fundamentalist way. I didn’t want gay footballers on my radar. I wished the issue away.

The next day, according to the celebrity gossip columns in the two local newspapers, there were pictures of him night clubbing with his also-famous model ‘girlfriend.’ Anyway, again, I wished the issue away. It was not a big deal in my head one way or another until his form went bad after he’d supposedly gone to war with ************’s legendary coach over his ‘night clubbing.’ What happened to him next–once the famous coach decided he feared the power of the media and the affect of a scandal on his team’s dressing-room-unity more than losing one of the best goalkeepers in the world–was brutal.

After letting him languish in the reserves, ************ let him go on the cheap and his career seemed to spiral even further downward after he was involved in a spitting incident during a friendly in a Middle East country when he was playing for a big French club. Soon he was let go by them to an even smaller club as he became an emotional basket case, both on and off the pitch, and the subject of much malicious gossip and ridicule throughout the incestuous world of football.

Was the famous coach in the wrong? Homosexuality in the workplace is still subject to a huge amount of stigma. Certain professions like politics will turn a blind eye to such personal foibles and a handful of others wallow in them. Prejudice and discrimination, stemming from negative social attitudes toward homosexual males in particular, have historically lead to a much higher prevalence of mental health disorders among gays compared to their heterosexual peers, according to psychologist IIan Meyer. Meyer also points out that the working world has been ‘loosening up’ a lot over the last decade. Professional sports, however, particularly team sports, offer no refuge for anyone who chooses to be openly ‘different.’ Athletes who might otherwise be reasonably laissez-faire about other forms of hedonism involving sexuality take on a sort of Fascist mob mentality when their group is challenged from without or within (“The Health of Sexual Minorities” by Ilan Meyer.New York: Springer, 2006. pp. 202-205).

Consequently, the coach then has to think of himself as both an alpha male leader and the facilitator of group harmony through his beta-male lieutenant, the team captain. The rejection of rebellious, individualistic behavior among athletes was described by the anthropologist Edward Bernays as the psychology of the subconscious and its byproduct, Convergence Theory, which holds that groups, in and of themselves, will not have a conditioned response to ‘different” individuals (Crowd Psychology, Wikipedia).

Coaches rule in team games and they are the ones who bring in statutes and regulations to help elicit a conditioned response from the team toward players like our goalkeeper. It’s not really important who this player is. It is important, however, to understand that he very much typifies a certain kind of lifestyle that team athletes are forced to work together anonymously for the sake of emotional and financial survival.

Amidst all this psycho babble the thing that shows itself most clearly is irony. In a sport where individual flashes of brilliance transcend the ordinary, the notion of the collective soul clashes with the will for individualism that all great players own. This is the genius of the game itself, what Sir Alex Ferguson refers to as “the peaks and valleys of the team and the game when you manage to achieve perfection.” (Interview w/Alex Fergoson, “The Treble,” Documentary. Paul Doherty Productions, 1999)

Depending upon which survey you read, homosexuals number between 5% and 13% of any society. This means that there are, for example, at least 14,000,000 homosexuals in the United States. Can we then state with some certainty that at least 5% of all professional football players in the world are queer? Not necessarily, say some sports psychologists like Kenneth Murphy. Research shows that a good athlete is always a good athlete, by which I mean that in England a good footballer is, more often than not, also rather good at cricket and rugby; in India, a good cricketer tends to also make a fine player of badminton, squash and tennis; in the U.S., because professional athletes tend to be drafted out of college systems, athletes tend to really excel at American football and baseball. The incidence in Indian sports of professional players excelling in both team and individual sports seems to be an Asian anomaly.

Team sports in the West at least, it is easy to posit, because of Convergence Theory, tend to reject anyone who isn’t a team player. Therefore, cultural forces push most gay athletes to become practitioners of sports which are more individualized like squash, tennis, diving, Greco-Roman wrestling and boxing (The Sports Psych Handbook by Kenneth Murphy: Boise, ID., Human Kinetics Publishers, 2004, pp 112-114). Therefore, it’s absolutely impossible to know how many gay footballers are out there because they are literally forced to live like terrorists in sleeper cells.

Why is this? After all, according to a Transatlantic survey of male and female sports fans carried out in 2005 by Sports Illustrated magazine, 86% of the people interviewed felt that it was okay for openly gay athletes to participate in individual and team sports, even if they were open about their sexuality. Yet 63% of the same corespondents strongly felt that it would hurt an athlete’s career if they were openly gay. At the same time, over 90% of the people interviewed felt “far more accepting of lesbians in sport than gay men.” Ambiguous answers from an ambivalent public.

What are you supposed to make of it if you are a gay male? The one English footballer known to have come out of the closet, Justin Fashanu, was so vilified by the cruel Brit press that he went into exile in the United States. Shortly thereafter, accused of rape by a gay teenager, Fashanu returned home to face a relentless tsunami of abuse. Nobody could possibly have been surprised when he hanged himself. (‘Justin Fashanu’s Final Days’ by Brian Deer). And again I ask: What are you supposed to make of it if you are a gay male professional footballer?

Additionally, there is the fact of celebrity. Footballers play as a team, but the most skillful and the best looking are now celebrity superstars. To be a skillful pretty boy, like David Beckham or Theo Walcott, means you get the keys to the kingdom of celebrity. Footballers in England, Spain and Italy exist in the pantheon of the publicly beloved. They are coequal to movie stars and pop singers.

Football may have once been a working class sport and is certainly still played by hungry youth whelped on council estates, but most working class people can no longer afford a seat at Old Trafford or the Emirates, and so scrimp and save to watch games on their satellite dishes. Football is just another entertainment now, up there on glass teat for your entertainment just like WWF wrestling, movies and soap operas. As such, footballers are now part of what is called a WAG culture. Footballers are expected to date actresses, models and rappers, and then appear as a guest on the Ali G Show.

Chelsea’s star left back Ashley Cole is a fine example of this madness. Everybody seems to waste a lot of time and energy discussing whether he’s gay, bisexual or what. Standup comedians and talk show hosts constantly, relentlessly harp on poor pretty Ashley’s private life and the true status of his relationship with his model wife, Cheryl. And at the end of the day, when the ultra-hypocritical reactionary press sticks its oar in, it’s to criticize footballers for not being ‘role models.’

Finally, to close, let’s talk about Sol Campbell. He’s past his best now, but in 2001, when he left the club he had grown up with,Tottenham Hotspur, for their North West London rivals, Arsenal, Sol Campbell was easily one of the best centre-backs in the world. Built like a Greek statue, Campbell was fast, brilliant and ruthless. There had long been rumors that Sol was gay and he had always vehemently denied them. Spurs fans who felt understandably angry and betrayed when he left them for their local rivals began to sing songs about Sol with some of the vilest, racist lyrics I’ve ever heard.

He’s big!
He’s black!
He takes it up the crack.
Sol Campbell!
Sol Campbell!

Fortunately, Arsenal fans were loud, too, and the message tended to get drowned out at Highbury unless you were seated close to the Spurs’ bloc. Years later, though, now that Sol plays for Portsmouth, whose fans are relatively docile and quiet, the racist homophobia is clearly there for everybody to hear. Consider this lovely little ditty, set to the melody of ‘Lord of the Dance (“Spurs in Dock Over Abuse of Spol Campbell ” by Jeremy Wilson. Daily Telegraph 4 Oct. 2008):

Sol, Sol, wherever you may be,
You’re on the verge of lunacy.
And we don’t give a fuck,
if you’re hanging from a tree,
You Judas cunt with HIV.

Sticks and stones, you may say. It’s a free country bla! bla! bla! But consider, if you please, Sol’s older brother, John. His story was that a young man who was taking the same class as him at the University of East London, a proud Spurs fan named Mark Goldstein, kept singing those songs in and out of class and asking him if he too was queer like his little brother.

One day something snapped in John Campbell. He attacked Mr. Goldstein, breaking his jaw, smashing most of his teeth and kicking him unconscious. The victim was so badly injured that he had to have two metal plates inserted into his head to hold the fractured jaw together and was forced to spend months drinking liquified food through a straw.

The judge was not sympathetic to John Campbell. He was jailed for one year. Campbell’s barrister, Patrick Moran, had this to say: “My client has brought shame on his family and most ironically to his younger brother whose reputation he fought to protect.” (“Sol Campbell’s Brother Jailed For A ttack Over Gay Rumour” Guardian , June 4, 2005).

Editor’s Note: Football is a homophobic sport, and when you have people like Luciano Moggi making statements such as “there’s no place in football for gays“, you know that gay footballers will be prosecuted by their own, let alone the press or the fans. When humourous gay football photos are the only release to football fans’ collective homophobia, you know there’s some issues that need to be resolved.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News