We’ve all experienced it.

You’re watching a Premier League game, taking in the glorious spectacle. Perhaps you’re supporting one of the teams, or perhaps your betting slip is. You’re in it to see the greatest players on the planet strut their stuff, and you’re starting to really enjoy it when BAM! Up steps the referee to make the mind-squishingly insane decision to send a player off for practically nothing.

Instantly, the ref has ensured that the attention of the thousands in attendance and the millions watching at home is turned away from the players and onto his preening self. It happens at least once a week, and it’s infuriating.

One person who agrees with me is Tony Cascarino, discussing the Tottenham-Arsenal match:

Perhaps Emmanuel Eboué’s two yellow cards were warranted, but I hate it when referees make decisions that destroy the spectacle.

Damn straight, Cas. There is a serious problem that all referees share: they’re referees. They simply do not understand football. These people have a responsibility to the game: to ensure that “the spectacle” takes precedence over all.

They can drone on all they like about how there is a set of rules to which the participants must adhere in order for the contest to proceed in a fair and safe manner. This just shows how little they know or care about the sport they are meant to be serving. They are paid to do a job, and as anyone knows, once you receive money to do something, it behooves you to do it infallibly. Refs fail on this score repeatedly — yet they demand respect!

Cascarino, on the other hand, knows. He is one of the select few who have successfully made the journey from ex-professional footballer to professional ex-footballer. Thus, he can sense the truth from his observations of the game in a preternaturally instinctive way, like a shaman turning his face to the wind and divining the thoughts of the spirits. His conclusions may appear counter-intuitive, but that’s probably because you have not been made privy to the ancient wisdom that resides in those who have been on the inside.

He recognises that Eboué’s offences deserved — according to the “Laws of the Game” — bookings. But that is to ignore the greater truth. We don’t want to see the referees stepping in and grabbing the glory. We don’t want to see the post-match analysis and the newspaper headlines dominated by a policeman from Pudsey or a civil servant from Stourport-on-Severn. Remember, it’s about “the spectacle”, and the referee has no part in it. It should be up to the players and the manager to determine it. If they want to turn it into a swear-off or a martial arts exhibition, what business has the ref interfering?

The real issue is this: what can we do to improve the dire standard of officiating in the Prem? One suggestion is to publish each ref’s score as awarded each game by an assessor in the stand. This is initially tempting: it would be nice to have some kind of empirical basis for our diseased, frothing, gut-twisting abuse of the man in the middle. But there is a flaw: the assessors are former referees themselves. One must ask oneself how reliable such a system can be. It’s like cops investigating cops. Masonic cops.

The best idea so far put forward is that refs should be given the opportunity to explain their most controversial decisions at a post-match press conference. I agree with the spirit of this, but it needs to go further. What’s required is a method by which officials can be held properly accountable for their errors, presented in such as way that it would grip football supporters as well as attracting new people to the game. After much profound, Cascarino-esque meditation, I give you: The People’s Jury.

The concept is simple, and when I say simple I mean simple. Every Monday evening, the referee of each of the weekend’s Premier League matches would be brought forward and made explain their most contentious calls. The Jury would be made up of players (because they are the people who really matter), managers (because they are the people who really matter) and fans (because they are the people who really matter). If a ref’s testimony is deemed unworthy, he would be condemned to punishment. This could be the publishing of his home address and telephone number, the compulsory wearing of gimp suit and mask during his next game, being forced to address any England international as “sir” (actually, I think that’s already a rule) or, if he offends any of the Big Four, the ultimate punishment: being made to ref a crunch, end-of-season, top-of-the-table under-10s’ match, replete with baying parents.

The whole thing would double as one of those reality shows that children and women always go on about. Interest would be immense, and would add another few million to the Premier League’s television income, thus ensuring the clubs will be able to afford to pay still more lawyers to extract money from minor football federations for the use of their assets players. Everybody Wins!â„¢ (Everybody Winsâ„¢ is a trademark owned by the Football Association Premier League, Ltd.)

I don’t know if this is the best solution to the plague of atrocious refereeing. Scratch that: of course it is. But it may take more than this idea alone, however majestic it is, to turn things around. If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Better yet, contact your local legislator and demand that they act. Email them, call to their house, ring them every ten minutes until they agree. After all, whenever a referee makes a bad call; whenever he “sticks to the rules”; whenever he “destroys the spectacle” — it’s your dignity he’s killing; it’s your sensitivities he’s offending; it’s the souls of your dead relatives he’s playing hackysack with. Let’s do something, people.

Fredorrarci will be leading a march culminating in a protest rally in Soho Square this Friday. Proceedings get under way at noon sharp. Bring packed lunch. The revolution will be blogged at Sport Is A TV Show.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

So, that was the mid-season transfer window that was. How was it for you?

Frankly, it bored the arse off me. Time was when my first port of call on firing up the ol’ interwebs machine would be the transfer gossip columns, ever eager to GASP! at whatever some hapless hack had scraped off the sole of a superagent’s shoe. My love affair with baseless conjecture, once a dizzying whirl of whispered promises and better tomorrows, dwindled over the years before a resurgence last summer.

This ended, however, when an August 31st spent repeatedly pressing F5 on more than one liveblog yielded little in the way of the type of deal which a close-season of hype would have one believe was guaranteed. The madness at Eastlands was something, of course, but the itch had become too big even for that to scratch it. It was like discovering your lover had run off with your valuables while you were watching a Party of Five marathon.

So come January, I didn’t care. This, despite being an Arsenal fan and one of the major threads of the window being Andrei Arshavin’s…

Hey…HEY! Wake up! Yeah, you kind of drifted off there, round about the time I typed ‘Andrei Arshavin’. Hey, I understand. Even I became distracted while typing it. I had to resist the urge to gouge out my own eyes with a cattle prod rather than see that name again. When it became apparent that Arsenal were seriously interested in signing him, one knew how it was going to go: forever, tediously. Even the Arsenal blogs got fed up with it; the word “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz” began to appear in short order.

The only time I did think of the most boring saga since Garth Crooks last said something was when prompted by recent events.

I had a dream where the Arshavin who played so sublimely against Sweden and Holland at last year’s Euros was in fact a sophisticated new robot warrior being tested by the Russian military in conjunction with the Russian FA and Zenit St. Petersburg. This had the dual benefit of trying out a futuristic fighting machine and convincing dozens of gullible football clubs in western Europe that their woes could be solved by this mysterious talent.

One of these clubs would inevitably enter into negotiations, which would be strung out by Zenit for maximum effect, and would end in the triumphant parading of AR2-D2. However, instead of a footballer walking out onto the Emirates turf, Prime Minister Putin himself would enter, gleefully proclaiming to Arsene Wenger, “You just been punk’d, dude!” The embarrassment inflicted upon the entire western hemisphere would more than make up for not reaching the moon first.

But now that the transfer has finally been ratified — redefining the word ‘deadline’ in the process — the apathy and the paranoia have largely dispersed. From the dust and the rubble has emerged potential, and with potential comes hope. This is why the transfer market holds such fascination, and why — however much one may grumble about January’s insanity — one can’t help but be drawn into it, even if only occasionally. It’s impossible not to project some glorious future as a result of your team signing someone of real ability. It’s easy (all too easy) to imagine skipping arm-in-arm into the sunset rather than being weighed down by a mortgage you won’t be able to afford and reality’s suffocating embrace.

With Arshavin, there is an additional veneer of mystery. Most of us know him only from the write-ups, the European Championships and (the latter stages of) Zenit’s triumphant UEFA Cup run. Almost all of what we’ve seen of him has been great, and only goes to strengthen the fantasy of happy-ever-after.

Of course, he may turn out to be the flop of all flops, another example of what an utterly horrible little bastard hope can be. But you have to take that leap. You’re a football fan — you ain’t got no choice.

Fredorrarci will be cursing the day Arsenal ever heard of Andrei Arshavin in several months’ time at Sport Is A TV Show.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

On Monday, The Times published a list of ‘Football’s 50 rising stars’. Tucked away in the rundown was this:

30. Masal Bugduv (Olimpia Balti)

Moldova’s finest, the 16-year-old attacker has been strongly linked with a move to Arsenal, work permit permitting. And he’s been linked with plenty of other top clubs as well.

This sounded vaguely familiar. Sure enough, Bugduv was mentioned in an article in the January 2009 issue of When Saturday Comes magazine. A piece by Mark Gilbey on the effects of the Transdniestria separatist movement on the Moldovan football scene concludes:

Amid nationalist strife in Moldovan football there is one bright spot on the horizon, in 16-year-old midfield prodigy Masal Bugduv, whom many predict will soon be playing his football in a major European league. Best of all, he has no connection to any breakaway regions.

The Offside linked to the Times‘ list in their Daily Dose. Underneath was a comment by a reader called makki, who said that there was a mistake in the Times‘ feature:

30. Masal Bugduv (Olimpia Balti)…

Such player doesnt exist, it is fake

Hmmm.

The squad list in the Wikipedia entry for Olimpia Bălţi certainly shows no such player:

So, to Google, which threw up a blog comment by someone called gheno, dated August 22nd 2008, seemingly a reprinting of a wire story:

BUGDUV COULD GO STRAIGHT INTO ARSENAL TEAM SAYS AGENT

TIROL, MOLDOVA (AP) THE player described as the finest young player to come out of Eastern European football since Gheorge Hagi is good enough to go straight in to the Arsenal first team, according to his agent.
Massi Bugduv, the 16-year-old hotshot of Moldovan football has been linked with a host of top clubs around Europe for most of the summer.
Bugduv was left out of his country’s friendly with Lithuania this week because of his complicated transfer negotiations that have seen him based in London since Monday with conflicting news reports having him signing for Arsenal, Chelsea, Zenit St Petersburg, and bizarrely, a move to Reading that involved a loan stint in Ireland in order to secure a work permit.
Last night in London, his agent Sergei Yulikov said that he is sure that the demands of the Premiership will not phase his protege.
“I have no doubt that he has the ability of Fabregas and Nasri, but he needs a stage to perform and prove this. He can be as strong as Obi Mikel of Chelsea, but remember that he is still just a 16 year old boy.
“I cannot talk about the talks with Arsenal, but Masal is happy that he is even being linked with this great football club.
“It plays football the beautiful way, always moving, always passing, always running. It is like the football he played as a child, which is not too long ago, so he cannot believe that this type of football can be played at the top level in Europe,” he said.
Mr Yulikov was seen leaving Highbury House yesterday, the offices of Arsenal near the Emirates Stadium where twenty four hours previously, the club revealed Man Utd player Mikhael Silvestre as their latest summer signing.
Masal Bugduv has been described as one of the most exciting young footballers to come out of Moldocan football.
Born on April 14, 1992, he shot to fame playing for his native FC Olimpia B?l?i for whom he scored a hattrick on his competitive debut in an Adzi Cup match in December 2007.
Bagduv became the youngest player capped at that level by his country and he went on to make his senior international debut aged just 16 years and 44 days when he came on for the national team in their 2-2 draw with Armenia in a friendly international in Tiraspol on May 28.
Trailing 2-1 with just ten minutes left, Moldova seemed set to lose until Bagduv lost his marker on the left wing, shimmied inside two defenders and fired in a shot that could only be parried by Armenian keeper Racif into the path of onrushing Igor Bugaev who equalised. (AP)

Arsenal interested in a 16-year-old wunderkind no-one else has heard of? Sounds plausible. And what an impressive international debut!

Oddly, however, the Wikipedia entry for the Moldovan national team fails to list him. An oversight, surely. Though if that’s the case, it’s an oversight also made by the Moldovan FA. Their report on the match doesn’t even mention Bugduv.

Below the AP story was another comment, left four days later, this time by one Tommy Kelly. Yet again, the AP were on the case:

BUDGUV MOVE TO ARSENAL HELD UP BY RED TAPE

PARIS (AP) Top-rated Moldovan teenager Masal Bugduv has said that diplomatic issues are holding up his drawn out transfer to Arsenal as the clock ticks down to the end of the transfer window.
THE player described as the finest young player to come out of Eastern European football since Gheorge Hagi has given his first full interview which will appear in this week’s Stars of Tomorrow feature in L’Equipe.
Speaking through an interpreter, the 16-year-old said that his move has been held up by the Foreign Office and concerns regarding his international clearance.
“For many month I have dreamt of coming to play for an English football club and the interest has been shown from Arsenal…

And so it continues.

Two days later 606 user igorpetrov delivers a twist in the tale:

BENITEZ TO STEAL WONDERKID BUGDUV FROM UNDER ARSENAL’S NOSE

TIROL, MOLDOVA (AP) Liverpool manager Rafa Benitez is said to be close to signing Moldovan wonderkid Masal Bugduv for a cut-price fee of £5million.

The player described as the finest young player to come out of Eastern European football since Gheorge Hagi has been on the radar of the top European clubs all summer, although his preferred club of choice was Arsenal.

However, following Liverpool’s flirtation with elimination from the Champions League, Rafa Benitez has instructed the club to snap up the Moldovan hotshot who made his international debut last May aged just 16…

The more eagle-eyed and geographically-aware reader will have spotted something amiss in two of these stories:

TIROL, MOLDOVA (AP)

Mm-hmm. Thing is, there is no such place as Tirol in Moldova. This error has infected the Bugduv-to-Liverpool story further down the page:

“It just is a matter of making what is the best deal for him and for his club Olimpia Tirol who have nurtured him from eight years of age to what he is now, a full international.

So now, Olimpia Bălţi have become Olimpia Tirol.

By the way, a search for “Bugduv” on the AP‘s website comes up with nothing.

Mind you, goal.com did mention him in their preview of a World Cup qualifier in September.

Time to dig into Wikipedia’s history bins. The entry for the Moldovan national team used to contain this–

The great hope of Moldovan football is the teenage sensation Masal Bugduv who has been watched by a host of top clubs around Europe. At just 16 years of age, he has already been named in the country’s provisional squad for the forthcoming World Cup campaign.

–added on July 19th 2008 by a user called…Masalbugduv.

I emailed the author of the comment on The Offside which originally sparked my curiosity. He turns out to be a man called Ivan Makarov, and he’s the sports editor for the Russian newspaper SovietSport. His contacts in Moldova had never heard of a Masal Bugduv. In fact, neither his forename nor surname are typically Moldovan.

Ivan put me in touch with Lavrentii Aniscenco. Lavrentii is the editor-in-chief of moldfootball.com, and he said (email quoted with permission):

This person doesn’t exist…He never played agaist Armenia (I was at this match)…I learned about him today, and discovered a lot of fake information about him in the Net…

Indeed, many blogs and message boards have had supposed stories about this Moldovan hotshot posted in their comments sections, under a variety of usernames: here, here, here and here are some examples. A recent incidence on the Independent‘s site had our Masal lashing out at Harry Redknapp for his apparently dismissive attitude towards Moldovan football.

Lavrentii pointed out another blog post which mentions a report in a Moldovan newspaper called Diario Mo Thon. Such a publication, Lavrentii said, does not exist.

And it’s here that we may have hit the nub of the issue. It seems certain that “Masal Bugduv” is the invention of a prankster, likely from Ireland. Mo Thón, you see, is the Irish for “my arse”.

As practical jokes go, this one has been quite successful, taking in goal.com and When Saturday Comes, and now, the biggest scalp yet, The Times.

So, if you see an article linking your team with Masal Bugduv this month, don’t get too excited, okay?

Many thanks to Ivan Makarov and Lavrentii Aniscenco for their assistance.

Fredorrarci attended an Irish-language school for eight years and now writes a blog called Sport Is A TV Show.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Dear reader,

It has been brought to my attention that you support a football club which is different to that which I support.

The regrettable but necessary responsibility therefore falls upon me to inform you that your team sucks.

Your team sucks so much that the area surrounding it is subject to many devastating hurricanes with stupid names like Mabel and Alphonse.

Your team sucks so much that the jellified alcohol product it attempted to consume was projected through the back of its neck and proceeded to strike a patron who was sitting at the adjacent table, thus causing a “scene”.

Your team sucks so much that an act of fellatio it once performed rendered the hapless recipient most uncomfortable in the latter’s private regions. (Note how I have implied a connection between your club and homosexuality, which is, as we all know, a synonym for the quality of having negative worth of the most extreme sort. This was quite deliberate.)

You, I have reason to believe, are of the opinion that your team is of such greatness as to be above my team in that particular category. You are very much mistaken. The multi-billionaire’s toybox to which I have affiliated myself is of a far higher standard than the multi-billionaire’s toybox to which you have affiliated yourself. (I’ll wager that my father would triumph in a pugilsitic duel against yours, too, though I doubt you even know the latter rum-soaked cur’s name.)

We are first in the first class. In point of fact, we are the sole occupants in a special class distinct from and superior to all others. Evidence for this can be heard fortnightly at the customer-processing centre at which the employees of the parent company to which we have loyally subscribed dance their heroic dance. “We’re by far the greatest football-based subsidiary of a large energy/entertainment/media concern the world has ever seen,” we chant in unison, with much more gusto than the squalid and ignorant rabble of which you are part could muster, even were your lives to depend on it (and this being football, they do).

Without knowing you, reader, or indeed having met you or engaged you in conversation, I can deduce, simply from the knowledge of your football team, that you are given to partaking in an array of perverted sexual practices with members of your own family and various domestic and farmyard animals. Please do not attempt to counter this assertion with an accusation of a similar nature; I will merely reply in kind, and you will seem quite foolish.

Despite the fact you may regard your star player and see a lithe, athletic figure with nary a trace of corporeal fat, I can reveal to you that he is actually morbidly obese. Furthermore, his wife’s preferred position for the conjugal act is after the fashion of the wretched citizens of Sodom. We know this because her spouse plays for your team.

The player who was previously at your club and is now at ours, whom we habitually accused of bestiality while he was at his former post, does not engage in this activity, nor have we ever said that he did.

Reader, you quite often make disparaging remarks about my team. I may encounter you – or another of your cursed ilk – who, on realising that I am inhabited by the soul of the world’s foremost assortment of mercenary ball-players, will say: “Your assortment of mercenary ball-players is inferior in relation to mine!” This is something to which I am accustomed, and I am also accustomed to using it as a device with which to bore through the thin crust which divides my mind and the profound well of righteous anger that resides below.

Our fans are renowned the world over for our ironic wit and self-deprecating banter. We are also blessed with the ability to swiftly and effectively put down any attempt to denigrate the good (nay, great) name of our team, like white blood cells rallying to fight a cancer. Some would call it “paranoia”; some, “psychosis”; others, even “pathetic fumbling towards a strange version of adulthood by people with actual blancmange for brains rather than normal brains with merely the consistency of said dessert”.

What rubbish! I say it’s another P-word – PASSION. Passion is the most important quality in any fan – not well-thought opinion, not a somewhat-biased-but-generally-pretty-balanced outlook, but pure PASSION. We have more passion than any other group of club superstore patrons and message board dwellers, and that is a FACT, my friend.

You are understandably jealous of our wonderful club. We have something you don’t, and that’s history. Were one of the heroes of our club’s past to saunter to the top of Mount Olympus, Apollo himself would vacate his throne and offer it to the man, as well as promising to give many sexual favours (which would be declined, because our players are not sexual deviants, unlike those at your club, the bath in the home changing room of which could tell some incredible tales, I have heard it said). I am reasonably certain that I could name some of these heroes, too. Just give me a few hours.

Everyone else is jealous, too. Every referee in the league clearly resents us. And one cannot peruse a journal or take in a televisual presentation without stumbling across some half-wit trying to drag my team through the swill. Only last week, an article which purported to discuss a recent fixture of ours in fact contained a stinging message of rebuke. If one took the first letter of each paragraph and re-arranged them, one could spell the word “LUZERS”. I think it is quite clear what the author was endeavouring to convey! Rest assured than an explosive device was dispatched to the address of the publication in question with utmost haste.

One may wonder whether it is worth the time and energy of a sentient, adult human being to invest such energy into such rabid protection of a sporting entity. But you obviously do not know what it is like to be so devoted to this great, great institution. We are mighty, mightier than all foes – including you, reader – and we will vanquish them all by devising amusing nicknames for them and getting very, very cross whenever the opportunity presents itself.

But the ultimate proof that my team is above all others is that I support them. I say this not from a position of subjectivity, but merely to point out that I have the great fortune to have been born as me, whereas you, damned soul, are you. I hope, reader, that settles the issue.

Yours in superiority,

Fredorrarci.

Fredorrarci is Luxembourg’s chargé d’affaires in Tashkent and writes a blog called Sport Is A TV Show.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

Tonight, Diego Maradona makes his bow as Argentina manager as his new charges take on Scotland at Hampden Park. This momentous occasion gives us a wonderful chance to tackle one of football’s greatest debates, to wit: Who is the greatest footballer of all time – Maradona or Pelé? Since I’ve already definitively dealt with the club versus country question, I’ve decided to have a go at this one too.

So here goes: the answer is “Pelé”. Duh.

However, I realise that, even though the answer is obvious to all but those so slack-jawed that were the rivulets of saliva which trickle from their mouths to converge, the resulting torrent would wipe out a small-to-medium port town on the Chinese coast, it is the custom to back up such an assertion with some evidence. Frankly, one could write volumes on this matter, but I shall pare down my argument (if you could call such an evidently open-and-shut case as this an “argument”) to a few paragraphs.

The litany of Maradona’s egregiousness is startling: the diving, the failed dope test at the 1994 World Cup, the cocaine addiction, the sheer greed which saw him eat his way through the entire 1990s, etc., et-bloody-cetera. But top of the list is what the man himself outrageously referred to as the “Hand of God”, when he punched the ball past England ‘keeper Peter Shilton and into the net in the 1986 World Cup quarter-final. Plenty has been said about this in the two-and-a-bit decades since. Suffice to add, when you consider that the English gave the great game of footie to the nation of the ungrateful little arseboil, and that England is, was and ever shall be synonymous with Fair Play, is it any wonder England fans bear a grudge?

The “H*nd of God” could be entered not just as Exhibit A in the case against Maradona, but as Exhibit every-other-letter-of-the-alphabet, so heinous was it. But let’s apply some rigour to this. Let’s look at the things for which he is most famous. On the one hand, there is his second goal against England, which – to be fair – was very good. On the other, there is the “H*nd of G*d”, the Crazy-Eyes-Killa routine at USA ’94, the cocaine, the morbid obesity and the massive heart attack. In summary, that’s one positive and five negatives, which makes a Class Rating of -4. That’s not my opinion – that’s Statistics.

Some may complain that it is unfair to hold someone up to an impossible moral standard just because they are gifted. To which I reply: no-one made Maradona play football. If he didn’t want the scrutiny, he should have become a shoeshine boy or a drug dealer like his squalid friends doubtless did.

Pelé had no problem dealing with the burden of talent. In fact, he thrived. Here was a footballer who was a genuine joy to behold. He gladdened the heart of everyone who saw him, whether scoring a goal, fooling a defender with a shimmy or just standing there being Pelé. He never cheated and was probably never sent off. It’s no co-incidence that the words “Pelé” and “perfection” both begin with the same two letters.

His style of play was infused with beauty. It was akin to an angelic orgy, with God having sex with Himself in the corner.

Even in the 1962 World Cup, when Pelé was injured in the group phase, his mere presence in Chile was enough to inspire Brazil to ultimate triumph. Put it this way: whoever remembers the name of any other player in that Brazil squad? Exactly.

And even when telling us that there are ways for all of us to make our winkies hard in a message sponsored by a corporation which manufactures pills to make your winkie hard, he did it with grace and elegance.

Pelé and Maradona are emblems for their respective football cultures, which dominate the South American game. Brazilian football is played to a samba beat, their players having learned to play on the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. The national league is home to free-flowing attacking football, where even the defenders are better footballers than the most skillful players in most countries. There is a flair and a sway to games in Brazil which is irresistible to the hundreds of thousands of ecstatic fans in the Maracaná. As a bonus, the goalkeepers are universally awful, which ensures non-stop goal action in almost every match.

Argentine football is Brazil’s stunted twin brother. The national team’s greatest successes have come through nefarious means. In 1978, Peru’s goalkeeper – an Argentine! – practically stood back and waved in six goals as Argentina scandalously reached the final. In 1986, of course, poor England suffered at the hands – or should that be hand – of Maradona. When things go against them, they do little but whinge. When Antonio Rattín was sent off against England in 1966, he petulantly refused to leave. Not accepting the decision of a referee is a sure sign of an inherent lack of morality. In what other country would it be done with such intensity?

Maradona’s warped ideas have even been passed on to the next generation of Argentinian players like a defective gene. Lionel Messi irredeemably marked himself out as a footballing lowlife when he re-enacted the “H**d of **d” for Barcelona. (Don’t you think players who do this should have to wear a bell around their neck or have their forehead tattooed with a “H” or something?)

The most pithy way I can think of to describe the difference between Maradona and Pelé, and their respective countries, is to present their contributions to the footballing lexicon. Maradona gave us “H*** ** **d”, which is a byword for corruption, egotism and greed. Pelé gave us “The Beautiful Game”, glorious shorthand for our wonderful sport – the sport which Maradona took and dragged through the filth.

In closing, let us bring up the great Terry Butcher. Butcher is now Scotland’s assistant manager, but was a key part of the England team which was deprived of the 1986 World Cup by…you know what. Here is what he said this week:

I was selected for the drugs test with Gary Stevens and Kenny Sansom and ended up in the room with Maradona and two of his pals. Our World Cup was over and they were celebrating.

It could have been a war-zone in there but it wasn’t. I wasn’t next to him, if I was I might have done something.

Butcher would have been quite entitled to physically display his displeasure, but instead showed the admirable restraint which made him a true hero. One thing’s for sure: if God is up there picking His all-time World XI, Butcher and Pelé would be the first names on the team-sheet. Maradona wouldn’t even be trusted with the water bottles.

Fredorrarci is Chief Guard of the Ark of the Covenant, a/k/a Sport Is A TV Show.

Also See: Maradona v Pele – Who Was Better?

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

As we sports fans know, the best drama is unscripted. (Of course, a lot of the worst drama is unscripted too, but bear with me.) The finale to the Formula One season proved this as Lewis Hamilton lost the World Championship on the penultimate lap and then won it again on the penultimate corner at Interlagos.

As Hamilton crossed the line, the Ferrari garage celebrated what they thought was the triumph of their man, Felipe Massa, unaware that Hamilton had grabbed the all-important fifth position. Their joy was checked by one of their own engineers informing them of their error, live in front of millions of viewers worldwide. It was ridiculously entertaining TV.

But as much as I delighted in it, it was coloured by some envy towards the dedicated Formula One fan who has followed the entire season with intent.

I was aware of the significance of the moment: I had vaguely followed events throughout the year; I’d had a good look at the standings going into the race; I knew something about Massa and some more about Hamilton; I had a good idea about how it all fit into the history of the sport. But that’s just it – I knew all these things; the dedicated fan felt them.

I could sense how special the moment was, and it would take an insensate fool not to have been moved by the drama. But switching on the movie as the final scene begins means that your appreciation is superficial compared to one who has been watching from the start, for whom the denouement has the cumulative weight of what has gone before.

This can also apply to football. I’ve noticed it ever more since one of broadband’s tentacles finally slithered its way to my particular outpost. The internet’s main purpose – ripping life into tiny squares which catch the draft and fly out through the open window – is served well by football. It isn’t difficult to find yourself having been on YouTube for rather longer than you’d thought, watching stupendous goal after stupendous goal.

This was, in fact, how I spent my first hour on broadband, starting with Dennis Bergkamp’s goal against Argentina in 1998 and working my way from there through my memory and the Related Videos links. Some helpful souls save us the bother of all that clicking by lovingly compiling some great strikes, almost invariably accompanied by the strains of Linkin Park, or a band that sounds a lot like Linkin Park. Once you’ve turned the sound off, it can be addictive.

There is much beautiful in a great goal, or other display of skill, that is obvious to anyone watching it. It is a triumph of the game that it is so instantly accessible (aesthetically, to go along with the modern technological accessibility). But this type of appreciation, of something presented as if it were a discrete occurrence, can only ever go so deep. A lot of the beauty gets lost when a goal is taken out of its context.

Its full meaning in only apparent to someone who has seen it as it happened, who has seen what went before it. Not knowing when the next goal is going to happen gives it a certain oomph when it does. Goals happen rarely enough in soccer for this to remain strong, yet often enough that we don’t get too restless waiting for the next one to come along. The same is true on a larger scale for particularly great goals. It is hard to be surprised after a TV presenter’s introductory “How about this for a goal?” or by a YouTube video with ‘GOLAZO’ in the title. There is some anticipation in wondering exactly which of the infinite variety of possible goals you are about to see, but that is minor compared to not knowing whether you are going to see a goal at all.

In feeling the significance of a goal, it helps to know what impact it had on the game. If you’re just watching a clip, you might know what the score was, when the goal was scored and perhaps the flow of the game until that point. Even if you don’t know all this, any kind of experience watching football will tell you that it probably means something.

But all you can do from this is piece together a replica. It is only an approximation of what the goal would have meant if you had seen everything leading up to it. The beauty comes not only from the simple fact, from the particular geometry of player movement and the flight of the ball, but from when, as a better writer than this one put it, “a clear intention emerges to triumph over the arbitrary swirl opposing it“. There is no short-cut towards earning this: it only comes from watching the entire game.

Bergkamp’s goal was beautiful not only for Frank de Boer’s pass or Bergkamp’s first touch, or Bergkamp’s second or third touches, come to that. It was because of when it happened, because of the game in which it happened, because of the particular round of the particular tournament in which it happened, because of the history of the teams and players involved, because nobody could have foreseen it. If you saw it for the first time on the evening news, you didn’t get the half of it.

I’m more than glad that sites like 101 Great Goals exist. I’m glad that the latest wonderstrike from an African Cup of Nations qualifier or a Copa Sudamericana prelim is but a URL away. I’m glad that if I want to – and I will – while away some dead time indulging my sweet tooth, I can. It’s still just a half-truth, though.

Fredorrarci is the lord of all he surveys at Sport Is A TV Show.

From Soccerlens.com - Football News

• Eliminating qualifying will cut out 99% of the club vs. country antagonism at a stroke. It would also free up dates for more club games – perhaps even a re-introduction of the second group phase of the Champions League.
• It means we wouldn’t have to sit through the turgid early weeks of the World Cup in its present format. We would no longer be confronted with the appalling one-sided encounters which so characterise the first round. It would also wipe out the risk of any of the major nations being knocked out early on and depriving the world of the chance to see the planet’s greatest players at the business end of the competition.
• It would spare the major teams the tricky task of negotiating a qualifying group in the first place. Thus would we avoid the type of inequitable situation faced by England in trying to make Euro 2008. Why should a team which was a mere penalty lottery away from the last four in the World Cup have to suffer the cruel fate which befell them?

In addition:

• The World Cup should be played in Europe whenever possible. After all, this is where the vast majority of the TV money comes from, so it is only fair. The occasional tournament could be played elsewhere, such as one of the Gulf states or the United States, but only if the games are played in European prime time.

Written by Fredorrarci, who also maintains a blog called Sport is a TV show.

This article is a submission for the Soccerlens 2008 Writing Competition; to participate, please read the details here. The competition is sponsored by Subside Sports (premier online store for football shirts) and Icons (official signed football jerseys).

From Soccerlens.com - Football News