Glantraeth FC
“So world club football comes to a sudden halt as we enter the international break. As the weekend’s Premier League football comes to a close, people begin moaning about the return of international football and begrudging the loss of the ‘real’ football (and I’m sure it’s the same in many parts of the world). I for one love international football, partly because I’m a very proud Welshman who loves watching his beloved home nation play football; if I can enjoy watching Wales (attempt to) play football, then I feel no-one else has any excuses. However, I’m not here to talk about international football or my love of Wales (we’d be here a while), but instead another perk that arises from international football weeks: that perk is National Non-League Day.” Outside of the Boot

“Ever since he was five years old, Steve Davies dreamed of playing for West Ham United. He grew up in the rain-thrashed English working-class town of Rushden, where by birthright he should have supported Rushden Town, or Northampton, or even Coventry City. But after watching West Ham triumph over Fulham in the 1975 FA Cup final, he became a long-distance fan, pledging his allegiance to the claret and blue of the Hammers.” Guardian

“Last weekend, on August 17, NBC launched its new coverage of the English Premier League, after paying $250 million for the television rights to every soccer match played in the EPL over the next three years. Fox had been paying a third of that price to air a much smaller slate of games than NBC will. NBC’s execs seemed to have made a big gamble, betting that flooding the American market with English soccer would draw casual viewers in, boost NBC’s ratings, and increase the sport’s exposure in the U.S. The reward was the highest overnight rating in U.S. history for a Premier League season opener.” The Atlantic

“Let’s be honest, most of us have at some point been worryingly addicted to Football Manager games. The chance to take control of a football club and replicate the beautiful game in a virtual interface has been a hobby of millions. The sole chance us below average footballers (yet passionate footy fans) have to experience the ‘real’ thing. But it’s one thing to take lowly Southend United to Europe’s holy grail and take ‘Old Big Ears’ back to Roots Hall while playing against managers controlled by computer generated algorithms, and another whole scenario to do it against actual managerial enthusiasts like yourself. SoccerManager.com takes this highly addictive passion and puts it onto the online world, implementing all the necessary features for you arm-chair pundits, and gives you the opportunity to compete.” Outside of the Boot

SoccerManager.com

“When the Premier League started in 1992, it included just one footballer known to be Muslim, Tottenham’s Spanish midfielder Nayim. England’s top division now features 40 Muslim players and they are having a significant effect on the culture of the game.” BBC

“As Albert Einstein once said ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. England’s performances based on this quote and on the opinions of football fans across the country would merit the term ‘insanity’. Over the last few decades England fans have had to become accustomed to mediocrity, in every sense of the word. Performances have not been fitting of a country which claims to be the father of the beautiful game. The current U21 European Championships have epitomised the England of the last decade, they lack imagination, identity and worst of all progress.” Outside of the Boot

“Michael Carrick is a player who often doesn’t get the recognition he deserves for the role he plays at Manchester United. This season he has received more praise from critics and also from the England manager, Roy Hodgson. Fabio Capello didn’t appear to fancy the Manchester United midfielder and often omitted him for his squads and the starting line-up in favour for the most industrious Gareth Barry or Scott Parker. Hodgson though, has identified Carrick as a key player and as such he has featured much more prominently since the former Liverpool manager took over from Fabio Capello.” Think Football

“What a strange, and indeed disturbing, occasion this was. Wigan are in the FA Cup final for the first time in their history after beating Millwall 2-0, but this Wembley semi-final will be remembered instead for the extreme, concentrated outbreak of violence among spectators at the end behind Millwall’s goal – the Millwall end – during the final 10 minutes of the match, apparently a continuation of two smaller second-half flare-ups in the same area.” Guardian

“Probably the last thing English football wanted was another racism scandal, but it’s got one regardless. With Football Against Racism in Europe raising an official complaint about England fans for the abusive chanting directed towards him during the San Marino game, we’re set for yet another round of accusation, counter allegation and all-round ugliness. We have of course been here before – in a situation such as this, there are no winners.” 2nd Yellow

English football is racist, and the FA looks the other way
“Reporting from the Mall during the Queen’s jubilee celebrations last summer, I remember an impromptu rendition of God Save the Queen and feeling quite surprised that its fourth line wasn’t “No surrender”. If you’re used to hearing the national anthem at England football matches, you get so conditioned to those words being bellowed over the four notes between ‘God save the Queen’ and ‘Send her victorious’ that their absence is practically the twitch of a phantom limb.” Guardian

“Flags in hand, a group of wheezing scribes of questionable fitness are ‘crabbing’ their way left and right along the sideline of an indoor football pitch at St George’s Park, opulent home to the National Football Centre in Burton-on-Trent. As the verb suggests, the exercise involves shuttling sideways at speed in order to keep up with and constantly monitor play, while simultaneously providing a moving target for any projectiles that might be raining down from the crowd behind. The ability to ‘crab’ is an essential skill for any match official and one this reporter has since adopted to maximise efficiency while shopping in supermarkets that are long of aisle.” Guardian (Video)

Sunderland
“In the latest part of our weekly series we bring you the work of American artist Paine Proffitt. Since moving to England 10 years ago, Proffitt has focused on portraying working man’s life. ‘Football is central to who we are and where we come from,’ he said. Proffitt’s paintings are inspired in part by surrealism and cubism, and are created using layers of acrylic on canvas. The colour and texture is steadily built up over a period of several days before the details, collage elements and lettering are added. Proffitt was commissioned last season to produce the cover artwork for West Bromwich Albion’s programmes and is this season working with Port Vale and Aberdeen.” Guardian

“In a number of areas, British comics are enjoying something of a resurgence at the moment. There are a slew of intelligent and inventive indie comics creators, particularly working in the autobiographical field, in print and online. British writers and artists are again among the foremost talents pushing the envelope in the mainstream superhero field. And even 2000 AD is going through a fresh purple patch of critical acclaim and publicity for both the weekly comic, and the cult hit Dredd movie adaptation.” New Statesman

“Somebody’s got to say it. The Champions League is, for all the quality of football on show, a bit ‘same old, same old.’ Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Bayern Munich, blah, blah… Oh, and Chelsea… usually. The Europa League, for all empty seats on show until its very latest stages, has more of the unpredictability of a genuine cup competition, even if the Iberian Peninsula is beginning to dominate those later stages.” twohundredpercent

“It is probably impossible to regret winning the FA Cup, but if anybody has come close, it’s former Everton manager Joe Royle. When his side lifted the trophy in 1995, it was just a couple of weeks after it survived relegation from the top flight, and just six months from what was until now (apologies, fans of winless Queens Park Rangers) the worst start to a Premier League season.” SI

“Iain Dowie, Les Reed and Alan Pardew: The three managerial stooges that brought nothing but doom and gloom to Charlton Athletic. .. Footballing horror stories often involve one depressing afternoon where a team ships goals left, right and centre leaving the fan alone amongst empty seats, miserable and forlorn about a dismal home performance. But Charlton Athletic fans witnessed a horror show that ran for the best part of three years. The capitulation of the team during its slide towards League One was undoubtedly a dismal thing to sit through.” Sabotage Times

“The year of the blog? Very possibly, especially with the current batch of outstanding sites out there which have grown, improved, developed and cross-pollinated in recent time. Aided by social media, an increasingly specialised selection is out there, waiting for you to wade through and bolster your knowledge of the game, and I thoroughly recommend losing yourself in as many of the following as possible.” Guardian

“Have England fans ever been this overjoyed about a draw? It doesn’t matter that England, if it is as good as it wants to believe it is, should do far better than a 1-1 home draw with Ukraine. It also doesn’t matter that the generally sleepy and perfunctory opening salvos in a long and largely uninteresting qualification tournament provided plenty of talking points — namely, Steven Gerrard’s late red card, Tom Cleverley’s hat trick of wasted empty-netters and Frank Lampard converting a penalty for the second straight England game.” ESPN

Lampard’s late penalty salvages draw
“England’s soccer team found a way to quickly dissipate the nation’s summer of sporting success and bring back the gloom. After the Olympics and Paralympics created a feel-good atmosphere in London, the national team returned to Wembley on Tuesday night to play Ukraine and narrowly avoided what would have been its first competitive home loss in five years.” ESPN (Video)

Ukraine pay the penalty as Frank Lampard saves England a point
“Apparently this England side are now officially the third best international team in the world. Or, at least, that is what Fifa would like us to believe through its increasingly perplexing ranking system. The whole process is flawed, to say the least, and certainly on nights like these Roy Hodgson’s players remind everyone that their shortcomings are not merely a matter of fine-tuning.” Guardian (Video)

“One game, a lifelong obsession, and an IBWM exclusive piece for you to understand a little more about the book. Stalking is such an ugly word, full of needlessly negative connotations. I prefer to see myself as a sort of digital detective – a dedicated disciple of those who secured immortality through the Championship/Football Manager series. It was my job – if I can call what was a hugely enjoyable pursuit a ‘job’ – to track down and extract anecdotal gems from 26 of these unlikely superstars for Football Manager Stole My Life. So six months ago – armed with little more than a notepad, pen, phone and the reckless optimism possessed by battle-hardened Scotland supporters – I set off on my quest.” In Bed With Maradona

amazon: Football Manager Stole My Life

“Hi, my name is Ben and I’m a recovering Football Manager addict. In the past, I’ve spent weekends holed up in my room playing the game as the world passes me by. I’ve openly discussed tactics my friends and my brother, talking about potential signings, youth-team products, training schedules; anything you can think of, it has been conversed.” Sabotage Times

“Goal-Post is a new anthology collecting the very best Victorian football writing, covering the birth and development of the world’s greatest game, and written by those who were there to witness it. It’s a collection of contemporary articles and extracts featuring some of the players, officials, clubs and matches that helped shape and define the game. In making these valuable, informative and entertaining pieces of writing accessible and available to the modern reader, Goal-Post aims to provide a flavour of what it must have been like to have enjoyed football in the latter part of the nineteenth century.” Victorian Football

Sol Campbell
“It is 30 years since Paul Canoville became the first black footballer to play for Chelsea. When the team-sheet was announced, with his name as substitute, the National Front held a meeting in a local pub to discuss the outrage. As Canoville warmed up, Chelsea supporters screamed, ‘Sit down, you black cunt’, ‘You fucking wog’. Then they started to chant: ‘We don’t want the nigger, we don’t want the nigger, la la la la.’ The abuse continued unabated for the next two years. That was when Herman Ouseley, then running the Ethnic Minorities Unit at the Greater London Council, decided something had to be done. In 1984, Ouseley, now Lord Ouseley, went to see Chelsea chairman Ken Bates, who couldn’t see there was an issue.” Guardian

“Now that Euro 2012 has ended there is a lack of games to hold fans interest until most domestic seasons begin in August. During this downtime I personally dig into some books, because a person can only read so many transfer rumors. The following lists my favorite soccer related books to read. I would love to hear other suggestions, as I have a limited library to base my choices on. So turn off he replay on Fox Soccer of Wigan vs. Stoke and pick up one of these to get your soccer fill until your team begins playing meaningful matches again.” Bleacher Report

“So after seven weeks we have re-presented our updated manifesto for change. You can read all of the articles again from the links below. We have also sent a link to the FA, The Conference, Northern, Southern and Isthmian Leagues to ask for their comment. But we wont be holding our breath for any feedback. We all know that sense and football administration are unlikely bedfellows. Hope you have enjoyed them, and if you think of anything else we have missed, please get in touch. Same time, same place next year?” The Ball is Round