“Rivals. Every nation has one; some have two. Which is the best rivalry in international soccer? Our contributors weigh in … and let’s be honest: It would be fun to see some of these games materialize during the World Cup.” (ESPN)
“So with the World Cup coming up, many of you will be looking for a team to follow either as a second team when your team inevitably gets knocked out in the Quarter Finals on Penalties (perhaps that one is just me) or because your team didn’t make it to South Africa. Either way, at some point you are going to need someone to follow. Often this is irrational and you just like a team. Sometimes you need a reason, sometimes you just inexplicably hate someone, or maybe they have a player you like from the club you follow.” (World Cup Blog)
Cesc Fàbregas, football icon
“When we began researching what would become our book Why England Lose & Other Curious Football Phenomena Explained, we decided not to believe a word that anyone said about the game. Instead we would test its shibboleths against data. It was about time, too. For decades, football had escaped the Enlightenment. Clubs are mostly run by people who ignore data and do what they do because they have always done it that way. These people used to ‘know’ that black players ‘lacked bottle’, and they would therefore overpay for mediocre white players. Today, they discriminate against black managers, buy the wrong players and then let those players take penalties the wrong way.” (FI – Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski)
Emmanuel Adebayor
“How easy it is to forget that athletes at their peak are, by the very nature of their tasks, young but expected to be wise in their event, world-traveled but isolated and vulnerable. This week, Emmanuel Adebayor, the goal scorer for Manchester City, gave up the captaincy and, he said, the calling to ever play again for his country, Togo. He is 26 and a millionaire, and he said he just cannot get out of his head the day in January when Angolan separatists fired on the Togo team bus, killing three people in it.” (NYT)
“Nothing in football is so traduced as the offside law. Most seem to regard it as a piece of killjoy legislation, designed almost to prevent football producing too many goals and being too much fun, while for the punditocracy it has become the universal scapegoat, the thing that “nobody understands”. Just because Garth Crooks doesn’t get something, though, doesn’t make it a bad thing. The modern offside law may be the best thing that’s ever happened to football, and it is almost certainly the reason Barcelona have been so successful with a fleet of players whose obvious asset is their technique rather than their physique.” (Guardian)
“It rather seems as if every time there is a refereeing decision that costs a team a point or two, the usual suspects in the media start stating the case for all manner of whizzy gizmos to make sure that such a travesty of justice never occurs again. FIFA, however, are against the introduction of such technology and Rob Freeman has similar reservations.” (twohundredpercent)
“Last summer, CSKA Sofia, the winningest soccer club in the history of Bulgaria, invited an intriguing prospect to train with the team. The player, a Frenchman named Greg Akcelrod, had been climbing the ranks of European soccer, signing with a top-flight Paris club and training with a team in Argentina. He had an agent and a Web site that showed him scoring a goal for the English club Swindon Town. He’d even been chosen as an ambassador for Lance Armstrong’s charity.” (WSJ)
“As the 32 national team managers evaluate players consider injuries and plot strategy ahead of the 2010 World Cup, millions of soccer fans around the world are completing their own plans for the qaudrennial tournament. Most will watch on TV (some in 3-D). Still, organizers expect as many as 450,000 fans to travel to South Africa and join almost a million vuvuzelas-blowing local fans attending the tournament.” (NYT)
“If there is one area of the England team that has divided opinion in recent years, it is the midfield. The perennial problem for the England manager used to be who would play down the left. The main bone of contention then became whether Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Liverpool skipper Steven Gerrard could play together in the middle, but, thanks to Gareth Barry’s success as a holding midfielder, that is no longer an issue either.” (BBC)
“Before every international football match, the national anthems of the two competing teams are played. It’s all about tradition and patriotism, and it’s one of my favourite ceremonial things about the World Cup. We’re writing about the national anthems of the 32 team at World Cup 2010 four at a time, group by group. Last week we did Group B. So this week it’s Group C: England, USA, Algeria and Slovenia.” (World Cup Blog)
“Can Lionel Messi reproduce his Barcelona form for Argentina? Will Wayne Rooney be able to sustain his current level of performance into June and July? Might Cristiano Ronaldo, or even Kaka, be fresher at the end of the club season because Real Madrid are out of the Champions League? The World Cup is where reputations are confirmed and football fans across the planet are hoping the stars to be firing on all cylinders in South Africa.” (BBC – Tim Vickery)
“This week’s ‘Video Of The Week’ is from the ‘More Than A Game’ Series, and focusses on the history of football in France, as seen through the prism of immigration. As Jean-Marie Le Pen seemed singularly unable to grasp, much of the success that the French national football team has had has been at least partly due to to immigrant players. This documentary, which was screened in Britain as part of the ‘World Cup Stories’ series during the run up to the 2006 World Cup finals documents the history of a national team which gave the World Cup to the game and then took almost seven decades to win the competition.” (twohundredpercent)
“I’ve just been groping through piles of statistics and have come across a thoroughly melancholy fact, namely that there are no survivors of England’s pre-War internationals. The earliest international match for which we have a living English representative is Northern Ireland v England on 28th September 1946: Sir Tom Finney (b. 5th April 1922) scored on his war-delayed debut.” (More Than Mind Games)
“Wall charts are a World Cup tradition. I’ve had one either pinned, Blu-Tacked or taped to a wall (and one time attached to a fridge with magnets) for every tournament I can remember. They’re useful for two things…” (World Cup Blog)
“A World Cup campaign is usually a four-year process that starts when a national team engages in torturous self-examination immediately after its ouster from the last championship. Coaches are fired (or their contracts are not renewed) and aging players retire from the international scene. Even the winner is often in need of a new manager to enliven the roster and refresh tactics for the interspersed continental championship and next phase of World Cup qualifying.” (NYT)
“In theory there are no tactics when you play Sunday league football, or five-a-side, or any type of football that involves normal men for whom the basic nuts and bolts of being able to run and kick and occasionally even head a football are usually enough. This is because of the nature of tactics. Tactics are something you do when you have already achieved physical and technical parity. They presuppose a certain level of reliability; patterns of play that can be predicted and rearranged.” (FourFourTwo)
“Eighty days before the World Cup finals and not more than a year after he took the job in the first place, Ian Watmore has quit as the Chief Executive of the Football Association. When Watmore spoke at the Supporters Direct annual conference in Birmingham last October, he didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence. His with the Premier League’s Richard Scudamore’s comment that, ‘You can’t bar people because you don’t like the cut of their jib’ seemed ill-placed, considering the audience that he was addressing that he may even have already been in the pocket of the Premier League to some extent. That the rumours are that he is leaving because he has been unable to bridge the implacable gap in values between the FA and the Premier League comes both as something of a surprise and no surprise at all.” (twohundredpercent)
Geoff Hurst, 1966
“Can you imagine if both YouTube and blogs had existed in sixties? The events of the 1966 World Cup final would have caused internet meltdown. For those unfamiliar, here’s what happened: It was hosts England vs West Germany in the final. West Germany had equalized to make it 2-2 late in the match and take it to extra time.” (World Cup Blog)
“Spain’s last game before they name their final squad in June could be summed up in a single word. The same word that could also be used to sum up their qualifying campaign for the 2010 World Cup. The same word could be used again for their Euro 2008 campaign.” (World Soccer)
“It’s elementary sports psychology: To produce their best in the biggest moments, athletes are advised to recall peak performances from the past. But as Bordeaux prepares to face Olympiakos for a place in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals tonight, Laurent Blanc, coach of the French club that’s been the surprise of this year’s tournament, will focus his team’s attention not on the six European matches it’s won this season, but the only one it didn’t.” (WSJ)
Mid-Week Review Show: EPL Talk Podcast
“Looking back on the mid-week action for Premier League sides in Champions League, Europa, and within the Premiership, analysts Laurence McKenna and Kartik Krishnaiyer join host Richard Farley on this version of the EPL Talk podcast.” (EPL Talk)
Match Of The Midweek: Chelsea 0-1 Internazionale
“How would you feel if you were Roman Abramovich after this evening’s Champions League match between Chelsea and Inter? When he disposed of Jose Mourinho just over three years ago, it was reportedly a show of player power the likes of which the English game had seldom seen before.” (twohundredpercent)
Different Routes Yield Same Result
“One of the joys of sports is that they confound just about any theory that attempts to explain them. When Real Madrid was eliminated from the Champions League last week, and Manchester United produced one of the biggest victories in its history, it was reasonable to conclude that stability counted for something.” (NYT)
Italian press celebrate Inter’s victory over Chelsea
“Having held a grim-faced silenzio stampa (press silence) for the past week, Jose Mourinho’s relationship with the Italian media had reached a new low on the eve of Inter’s Champions League return leg against Chelsea. A touchline ban, a pitiful display against Catania and ongoing grief with Mario Balotelli had formed a simmering backdrop to the game, with the Nerazzurri lumbered with the added burden of being Italy’s sole survivors in the competition.” (WSC)
Chelsea vs. Inter Milan
(footytube)
“When discussing the history of any sport, any talk of the “greatness” is bound to be met with a quick hop in a time machine, going back into the annuls annals where myth and storytelling often displace fact and reality to the back seat. And this was necessary in a time when most could only follow sport through the words of others; words which were often embellished, contorted, polished, creating an aura which far superseded the event. Similar to the children’s game which starts with a simple sentence at one end of the room and morphs into something entirely different by the time the exercise ends.” (World Cup Blog)
“Following the international friendlies, I wrote last time that the week’s big winner was Argentina coach Diego Maradona. Seven days later, perhaps his Brazilian counterpart can crack the biggest smile. As Andre Kfouri wrote in the sports daily Lance!: ‘Dunga must have loved the elimination of Real Madrid and Milan from the Champions League. The Spanish giant, because Kaka will have a lighter fixture list in the build up to the World Cup. And the Italian giant because the pressure to recall Ronaldinho will diminish. And the national team coach will be cheering for Chelsea to knock out Internazionale – a rest for Julio Cesar, Lucio and Maicon, more work for Drogba’.” (BBC – Tim Vickery)
“The timing could hardly have been more acute for the release by UEFA of a report into the financial excesses of Europe’s top clubs, just as Portsmouth were placed, insolvent, into the knacker’s yard of administration. UEFA’s report, ‘The European Club Footballing Landscape,’ a mammoth comparison of 654 clubs in the top divisions across Europe, showed that more money is coming in than ever before, but almost half of clubs overall, 47 per cent, still made losses in 2008. European football, the richest club sport in the world, lost €578million (£513m) in total.” (World Soccer)
“David Beckham checked into a hospital Monday for surgery on his torn left Achilles’ tendon, hoping for a ‘swift and full recovery’ from an injury that will keep him out of the World Cup. Beckham left a private jet on crutches at Turku airport and was whisked away in an SUV. Minutes later, he arrived at the Mehilainen hospital surrounded by security guards amid cheers from hundreds of fans who had gathered outside the entrance. Surgery is set for later Monday or Tuesday.” (ESPN)
David Beckham Ruptures Achilles Tendon
“Video of David Beckham suffering a ruptured achilles tendon while playing for AC Milan in their 1-0 win over Chievo Verona in the Italian Serie A on Sunday, March 14, 2010.” (Free Soccer Highlights)
“Italian coaches will be everywhere at the Bridge. The Impossible Job has become the Italian Job. Marcello Lippi has won the World Cup while Giovanni Trapattoni wins friends with the Republic of Ireland. Zola, though, is under pressure. Widely considered one of the nicest men in an often heartless profession, the Sardinian who made the ball smile as an elegant maestro with Napoli, Parma and Chelsea, among others, now battles to keep West Ham United in the Premier League.” (Telegraph – Henry Winter)
“Barney Ronay is a senior sports writer for the Guardian and a regular contributor to When Saturday Comes. In this edition of the EPL Talk podcast, I pick up when we left off the last time Barney was on the program, talking about the state of the manager in the English game. Barney, who wrote The Manager, talks about the increased use of the continental model and reflects on Mark Hughes’ time at Manchester City.” (EPL Talk)
“Because today is David Beckham’s much talked about return to Old Trafford, it seems the perfect time to relive one of the key moments in Beckham’s career. At World Cup 1998 the man not yet known as Goldenballs was just 23 years old and competing with Darren Anderton to play right wing back for England. After scoring a trademark free kick vs Colombia in the group stage, Beckham was given the start for the Second Round knockout game vs Argentina. But then it all went a bit wrong.” (World Cup Blog)
“The news that Michael Owen will miss the rest of the season with a damaged hamstring prompted strange paroxysms of grief from those pundits who felt the injury had crushed the 30-year-old’s dreams of playing at a fourth World Cup with England this summer. In reality, his hopes have been dashed for some time.” (Football Further)
“To anyone that has been following the modus operandi of the British gutter press for the last few years or so, the news that the England hotel at The Grove Hotel at Chandler’s Cross, near Watford in Hertfordshire was bugged prior to their friendly match against Egypt will come as little surprise. In 2007, the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed after they were caught – and admitted – tapping the telephones of members of the royal staff. A cross-party parliamentary committee investigating it accused the staff of News International of ‘collective amnesia’ over the matter and stated that it was ‘inconceivable’ that no-one other than those imprisoned knew of what was going on and accused the management of the newpaper of “deliberate obfuscation” over the matter.” (twohundredpercent)
“The England manager will call a team meeting of all 30 players in his provisional World Cup squad after the May 30 friendly with Japan to announce which seven players will miss out on the trip to South Africa. Rather than tell each of the seven dropped players on an individual basis, Capello will read out his 23-man squad list to the group either at the team hotel after the game or possibly even on the flight back to London that evening.” (Telegraph)
“Nigeria has appointed Swede Lars Lagerback as their new national team coach on a five-month contract. I’m still trying to figure out why. I wrote an earlier piece about African nations’ perpetual need to hire foreigners to lead African teams. With the firing of Nigerian Shaibu Amodu, there’s only one remaining African coach poised to lead a side at Africa’s first World Cup, Algeria’s Rabah Saadane.” (Nutmeg Radio)
“It’s been a week of bizarre contrasts in preparing for World Cup commentaries without forgetting the pressing need to keep on top of the Premier league scene. Michael Owen’s latest injury nightmare took me back to a hot evening in St Etienne 12 years ago. England’s penalty shoot-out defeat by Argentina remains one of the most dramatic games I have ever covered. Owen’s scintillating goal had the tournament gasping in awe – he had the world at his feet.” (BBC)
“The halcyon days of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s were apparently a boom time in England’s glorious history of great goalkeepers. From the benchmark that was the great Gordon Banks and his understudy, Peter Springett, to the rotation of Ray Clemence and Peter Shilton in the 70’s and early 1980’s, England always had a top class goalkeeper.” (EPL Talk)
“Roll up, roll up. It’s the biggest circus in town. This year, without a single ball having been kicked, hasn’t been a terribly successfully one for England so far. On the one hand, there were the varying discretions of members of the England team – John Terry offering his own special brand of comfort to Wayne Bridge’s recently separated former partner and Ashley Cole reportedly sending pictures of “Little Ashley” to some poor girl – which led to national hand-wringing in the press, followed by Ashley fracturing a bone (no, not that one) and Wayne deciding that he couldn’t bear to be in the same England team as John.” (twohundredpercent)
“England played Egypt as a way of warming up for their World Cup clash with Algeria on 18 June, so one wonders what exactly coach Fabio Capello learnt about North African opposition after his side’s 3-1 win. For his players, the experience would have been invaluable because England haven’t faced such opposition since beating Morocco 1-0 in 1998 – a game only Michael Owen is likely to remember from among the current squad.” (BBC)
“Fabio Capello urgently needs the supporters to back all the players against Egypt, resisting any temptation to boo John Terry. Welcome to the 90 minutes that will define the mood surrounding England going into the World Cup. Judging by the critical disposition of certain sections of England’s support, there is a desire to voice, however briefly, some disapproval of Terry’s conduct.” (Telegraph – Henry Winter)
“I know I’m not the only one who isn’t really looking forward to the World Cup. But your reasons will be different from mine. I don’t enjoy tournaments which feature home nations – too tense, too much hoopla. And I enjoy ones with only England in even less – the loneliness leaves them even more exposed than they already were. Oh, to be in 1998, in the summertime, with a beer.” (More Than Mind Games)
“For a long time, the only place you’d hear about supporters’ trusts in the national English media would be in the pages of When Saturday Comes. Yet now, it seems we hear more from spokespersons of supporters’ trusts — democratic non-profit fans’ organisations aiming to influence how their clubs are run — than we do from clubs themselves, at all levels of the game.” (Pitch Invasion)
“Fabio Capello (born 18 June 1946) is an Italian football manager and former professional player. He is the current manager of the England national team, having started the role in January 2008 after the dismissal of Steve McClaren, who was sacked after England failed to qualify for Euro 2008. He is the second foreigner to have managed the England side, the other being McClaren’s predecessor, the Swede Sven-Göran Eriksson.” Wikipedia, Guardian
“… Where else to start but Manchester United’s impressive 3-2 win over AC Milan at the San Siro, which hands them a desirable advantage heading into the 2nd leg of their Champions League round of 16 knockout clash. United have become a truly masterful European outfit over the last three seasons, winning the tournament once and reaching two finals, and on the evidence of Tuesday’s game they look capable of making it all the way to Madrid for round three.” (Just Football)
“The subject was Wayne Rooney. ‘Please, rest him sometimes,’ the England manager said to his Manchester United counterpart. ‘He plays every game. I need him more fresh to play in the World Cup.’ Capello’s request carried heightened poignancy after the depressing bulletin from Chelsea earlier on Thursday about Ashley Cole’s injury.” (Telegraph – Henry Winter)
“Professional footballers have refused to appear in a campaign video against homophobia because they fear being ridiculed for taking a stand against one of the sport’s most stubborn taboos, The Independent has learnt. Both players and agents declined a request by the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) to take part in a video which was to use high- profile players as figureheads in the association’s drive against anti-gay prejudice.” (Independent)
“This week’s Video of The Week continues the World Cup theme of the last few weeks, with all the goals from the 1998 World Cup, which was, of course, held in France. The optimism that may have existed after England’s decent performance at the 1996 European Championships evaporated over the weeks of the tournament. Tabloid exclusives about the behaviour of the players, rioting in Marseille and a defeat at the hands of Romania were just the build up to a penalty shoot-out defeat at the hands of Argentina. Meanwhile, France and Brazil made the final of a tournament that was the first to feature thirty-two nations. Iran beat the United States of America in the first round but both teams went out,but Jamaica and Japan, who were both arguably beneficiaries of the expansion, brought colour to the tournament off the pitch but offered little resistance on it.” (twohundredpercent)
“We’ve done it, at last, haven’t we: taken the silent and unanimous decision that Brian Clough matters… Brian Clough has made the step up: he’s cultural now, gone from the close, sweaty barracks of football because he stands for England like Elgar and Dickens. The news about Clough isn’t in the tabloids anymore. It’s strictly broadsheet, review and monthly: it’s been to the London Film Festival and must by now be under Granta’s walls, in strength. All that whilst never being out of place: all that, whilst never abandoning Derby, all that without losing the common touch. Clough, more than Ramsey, or Revie, more even than Shankly, his only possible rival, is a cornerstone and comment upon the zeitgeist, and post War Britain is impossible without him.” (More Than Mind Games)
“James Richardson invites Barry Glendenning, Kevin McCarra and John Ashdown to round up all the big football stories, some of which don’t involve takeovers, administration and bedroom shenanigans. FA Cup replays are on the agenda, after Spurs ended Leeds’s spirited run and Palace knocked out Wolves with a perfect hat-trick from Danny Butterfield, of all people.” (Guardian – James Richardson)
“Continuing our series of World Cup compilation videos, this week we have every goal from the 1990 World Cup, which was, of course, held in Italy. Time has a tendency to soften our viewpoint of previous World Cup tournaments – particularly when, as with this one, England surpass everyone’s expectations and scramble as far as the semi-finals – but the truth of the matter is that the 1990 World Cup finals were probably the worst that have been held in recent years.” (twohundredpercent)
Scissors Kick 