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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Who Remembers Phil Foden?
Back in the day he was in the conversation of 'best player in the world'. He was supposed to spearhead England's triumph in the 2024 Euros.
He didn't really feature in that and he was soon not featuring in the Man City first team either. Now he doesn't even come on as a substitute. Nor has anyone 'come in for him' according to the incessant chatter of the Window Pundits I am contractually obliged to listen to day after day.
Has he been injured? Not that I know of. Has he lost form? What, for a whole year? Has he been 'found out'? Nobody knew what he was in the first place. Maybe that's the problem:
* he wasn't quite a striker despite scoring plenty of goals
* he wasn't quite a winger despite being regularly picked there for club and country
* he wasn't quite a Number 10, he didn't have the ball enough
* he certainly wasn't a Number 8, too willowy
| He was a bits-and-pieces player. |
Can the game have moved on so fast, they are a luxury too far? Yes, I think that must be it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I always lap up the hour of England test match highlights. For the first time ever I stopped watching halfway through the first day of England vs Zimbabwe. I had got too depressed by the realisation that Zac Crawley had booked his place for India and Australia against bowling that wouldn't have been out of place in Colfe's vs Haberdasher Aske's. And I'm talking about the Colts not the first team.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Should you mix sport and politics? Every chance you get, I say.
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The Dallas Cowboys of Holland Nov 11, 2024
A nation’s pride fallen on hard times
Ajax Amsterdam are one of the aristocrats of European football. Right up there with your Manchester Uniteds and Real Madrids. They have fallen on slightly hard times because the Dutch TV market is small, hence they don’t have the money bags of English and Spanish clubs, but they are still a force to be reckoned with.
It’s the same story with their hooligans. They used to be feared the length and breadth of Europe. Right up there with your Chelseas and Millwalls. Until the Dutch government cracked down and put a stop to it. Mostly. They are still a force to be reckoned with if roused.
Maccabi Tel Aviv are not one of the aristocrats of Europe. (They’re not even in Europe but that’s another story.) Their main claim to fame is their hooligans. They are regular terrors at home, brooking no nonsense from, say, Israeli Muslims. Hapoel Tel Aviv fans. People like that.
In the Year of our Lord 2024, their country was at war, so the Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans figured they would bring their brand of ultra-nationalism to international attention during the annual round of European cup matches.
As fate would have it, they were drawn to play against Ajax Amsterdam, a redolent name for Israelis. Amsterdam was the first city in Europe to welcome (back) Jews and has been a pro-Semitic haven for four centuries.
* ‘Where better,’ said their hooligans, ‘to smash up a town centre and make violent remonstrance against any Palestinian manifestation we find?’
* ‘You must be joking,’ said Amsterdam’s finest, ‘what is it, amateur hour?’ and proceeded to make violent remonstrances against any Maccabi hooligan they could find.
* ‘We apologise for this appalling outbreak of anti-Semitism,’ said the world community. ‘We are deeply ashamed.’
* ‘You must be joking,’ said the Dutch hooligans. ‘If this is the way it is, we’re all going off to vote for Geert Wilders.’
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The problem with VAR is the more times you see it in slo mo, the more the action seems premeditated or intentional. As observers who have played the game, we put ourselves into the scenario, but the slowed time frame distorts our intuitive response, suggesting intent.
The way round this is to only allow refs to review VAR decisions in real time, if it ain't clear and obvious in real time the decision should stand.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I can't see that working even though your point about slo-mo intent is certainly true. That could be dealt with by tightening up 'interpretive instructions' -- and making sure Europe and the Premier League are on all fours.
I think the longueurs experienced by the spectators, though not us in highlight packages, is now the biggest problem. And refs trotting off to view the action, even in real time, will add to this. Swings and roundabouts we can accept, tedium (especially edge-of-the-seat tedium) up with which we shall not put.
Refs and VARmen need to go off to Euro-summer school, with PR men in attendance.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Phil Foden's 'demise' may be more to do with Pep Guardiola's management style. Pep doesn't vary the set-up even when Manchester City are losing as happened in the FA cup final against Crystal Palace, unlike managers like Palace's Oliver Glasner or Villa's Unai Emery. Some of City's most talented players are ageing so a few tweaks to the squad including Phil could presumably be timely.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What I like most about Hatty is that she knows more about managing a football club than the reputedly best manager of football clubs there has ever been. She is wasted as an exotic dancer in the pubs and clubs of the Greater Reading area.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Wiley's theory is that Phil realises that he is not as good as the younger Bellingham and Saka.
He is never going to be Top England Dog in the positions he likes the most, his confidence is dented, only mid 20s and there are already younger better players in the team. Damn.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What I like most about Wiley is he comes up with fruitcake theories that cannot immediately be faulted.
You only have to look at Foden's permanently haunted expression to see it's true and that it happened at the Euro's. Perhaps something similar happened with Grealish when he arrived at City. And to Pep Guardiola when he realised the sorcerer's apprentice was now El Sorcero. Yes, Hatty was right.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One I should have thought of
| For Spurs, a trophy. For United, atrophy. Mark McFadden | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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All ten Premier league games kick off simultaneously at 4 pm tomorrow. Our television masters, despite having more channels than there are grains of sand on Brighton beach, have deemed only three of them worth broadcasting
Nottingham Forest vs Chelsea
Liverpool vs Crystal Palace
Manchester United vs Aston Villa |
You spotted the glaring odd-man-left-out, Southampton vs Arsenal. It's bad enough supporting 'England's team', having to put up with jibes of fashionable bandwagon-jumping, being secretly despised by everyone though never to your face, but at least I thought it actually counted for something.
I shall be having a word with Arsenal's supporter-in-chief, Sir Keir Starmer (Bart). The TV companies will be finding out who really runs this country.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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What goes on off the pitch is frequently more entertaining than what goes on on the pitch but there is also the nether region between the two.
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I was watching football and something
I’ve never witnessed before happened.
The crowd started to sing. November 12, 2024
Before you harrumph, it was a game of American football and they never sing. However, this particular crowd was in Munich, Germany watching the New York Giants play the Carolina Panthers.
The crowds at NFL games in their natural habitat don’t do much of anything except make a loud noise when the big screen says, ‘Make a loud noise.’ It never says what. In intellectually-challenged Britain this would have everyone chanting ‘Loud noise, loud noise.’
The Americans can be readily excused their limited range of responses because opposing fans are not encouraged to visit NFL stadiums en masse. In contrast to professional soccer where the authorities insist a substantial part of the ground be given over to welcoming the visitors. As Lyndon Baines Johnson advised, “It’s better they fight inside the stadium than outside.”
Having the opposition in plain sight makes all the difference when it comes to vocal creativity. There's no use employing the standard rhyming couplet
You’re shit
And you know it |
if there is nobody to vouchsafe the information to. This is universal of course, the other side being shit by definition, they don’t have to be Manchester United. Even United fans tell their team that. But, pari passu, visiting fans can take inspiration from some local coining
Nice one, Cyril,
Nice one, son.
Nice one, Cyril,
Let’s have another one. |
This can be expropriated verbatim save for the substitution passim of, say, ‘Gary’ or somesuch. Not ‘Bukayo’, that doesn’t scan. Many songs though are irredeemably club-specific. I’m forever blowing bubbles is only sung by (a) West Ham supporters and (b) prostitutes servicing the Greek community in Dalston.
You’ll never walk alone is strictly a Liverpool FC anthem because they are the only people who have to worry about it. The Everton half of the city might have adopted the popular and evergreen Blue Moon if they weren’t forever stuck in the Z-cars era. The last time they were any good.
But this brings us to the vexed question of denominational identification via competing choristers. Actual lyrics cannot be instanced here for legal and posthumous reasons but, suffice it to say, in the north it is Catholic vs Protestant whereas here in the enlightened south it is more Atheist vs Agnostic.
However, the self-styled Yid Army is extant in Tottenham. Though, for all I know, they split into Reform and Rabbinic. You know what four-wheel skids are like. Sexual innuendo is borderline. For example
He’s bald, he’s queer,
He takes it up the rear |
is permissible when playing Watford, of whom Sir Elton is a director. It was fair play to accuse Arsene Wenger of being a serial child molester — he was, after all, a quiet thoughtful chap. Still waters, nuff said. Nor did you have to wait for Arsenal to be drawn against Young Boys of Berne in the Champions League.
Goalkeepers’ mental health problems may be alluded to sympathetically. For example, when the Celtic ’keeper was diagnosed with schizophrenia
Two Andy Gorams!
There’s only two Andy Gorams. |
Or when the Premiership welcomed into its ranks America’s international goalie who suffered from Tourette's Syndrome
Chim chiminey, Chim chiminey,
Chim chim cher-oo
We’ve got Tim Howard
And he says ‘fuck you’ |
But alluding to life-threatening physical ailments in a flippant way is considered bad form. So not
He’s big, he’s black,
He’s had a heart attack.
Kanu! Kanu! |
Some songs are event-specific. To start a bowdlerised Carmen Miranda rumba with
We’re on our way to Wem-bley
Our legs have all gone trem-bley |
you do actually have to be en route for the national stadium even if it’s still only the first round of the Carabao Cup.
N.B. The author’s sole use of incredibly outdated examples that nobody under the age of sixty would be familiar with, let alone be able to sing along to, is for technical reasons. So shut it.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Writing for a mainly female, mainly American audience means you can't afford to be too parochial with your sport stories. Fortunately, by this stage of my Medium career, I was writing mainly for a sporty Australian female and a Jewish Spurs supporter (aren't they all?).
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That Bournemouth Pen December 1, 2024
I’m still not getting it.
The Wolves goalie has the ball in front of him, ostensibly under his control even though he’s made a bit of a horlicks over it. He draws his foot back to hoof the ball away. That is, after all and inter alia, what he is paid to do.
In the infinitesimal moment of time it takes for the goalie’s upraised foot to come down on the ball, a Bournemouth attacker coming in from behind inserts his foot twixt goalie’s foot and ball. Consequently, ineluctably and unavoidably
| the goalie’s foot strikes the attacker’s foot rather than the ball. |
I have no beef with the Bournemouth attacker. It is most spirited of him to challenge for possession even though, on this occasion, the ball ran free and the goalie completed the clearance.
I can understand... a referee might penalise him for ‘tackling from behind’.
I can understand... a really stern ref might penalise him for initiating an action that will result in physical contact and possible actual bodily harm to either player.
I can’t understand... why this referee awarded a penalty
Perhaps someone will quote the relevant Law of Football to help me out here. Because for sure nobody in the VAR cubby hole, on the commentators’ gantry or in the Match of the Day studio thought it even warranted a mention.
| So I thought I’d mention it. |
It happens week in and week out, not just to goalies, not just in the penalty area. Perhaps they introduced a new rule when I wasn’t looking
| Thou shalt not do your job. |
Thank God I’m at least doing mine. I see Gary’s retiring. If they want me to take over they can contact me via medium.com. Saturday nights are a real blank in my diary since I gave up partying.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Everyone on the Arsenal blogs is convinced the season has been 'disastrous'. If they'd been in this business as long as I have they would regard second place in the Premiership and the semi-finals of the Champions League to be more an anus mirabilis as her Madge put it so memorably, misreading the autocue.
But it doesn't matter because, according to these same Emiratean insiders, we are on the point of signing everybody from 120 million wantaway Real Madrid Brazilian wingers to Basque No 6's who can play at 8 or 10 depending which of ours have gone away. I bet, if you consulted other clubs websites, they are expecting them to arrive on their doormats too.
This is what makes the Summer Window such compulsive viewing. There are only ever half a dozen really top players available at any one time and at least a dozen clubs are thirsting to sign at least three of them. Where will it end? Runners-up next season, I would think, though behind whom is anyone's guess.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have met more than one proud parent living out his fantasy via this particular ceremony.
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It’s Every Boy’s Dream December 12, 2024
You’re going to be Star for the Day
Before every important Euro-soccer match the players emerge from the dressing rooms to stride out onto the pitch side-by-side in two lines. Or rather four lines because each player will be holding the hand of a mega-excited small child dressed in club colours. They all do it, it makes for good community relations.
As you might imagine this signal honour, witnessed by thousands in the stadium and millions on television, is the heartfelt desire of soccer-mad children for miles around. Girls as well as boys. It’s a very competitive business. Many ask, few are chosen.
| Finally, your number’s come up! |
You’ve been chosen to be one of the ickle kiddies. But whose hand will you be holding? Is it going to be one of your beloved Bayer Leverkusen players? You won’t mind too much if it isn’t because then it will be one of the intergalacticos of Inter Milan. Oh, the fame. The stories you will tell.
You manoeuver your way to the front in the hope it will be one of the captains. A little gentle pushing and shoving gets you all the way to the front where a bloke with a clipboard puts your hand firmly in the hand of… someone in alien yellow. Who on earth is this?
| “Tell us the one about the Turkish linesman again, grandad.” | |
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