Laughing at the present/Thinking about the future
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GOALS
Where soccer's heading
For those of you who are interested, the English soccer world is, at the moment, agog about Sven Goran Eriksson's huge success in his first few weeks as Manchester City's manager. At the time of writing, they are but a sliver behind Arsenal at the top of the Premiership, they have already beaten old rivals Manchester United, and until recently hadn't conceded a single goal at home.
This is still early days of course, but we would all do well to remember that - prior to his disastrous time with England - Eriksson had managed two top Italian sides with almost unbroken success. Why did he fail with the national side, one may wonder. I think there are two factors at play.
The first is the FA, an organisation crammed with mediocre bureaucrats, politics, dull conservatism and a desire for the answer to be 'Yes sir' to every question. The organisation has always been like this, a bizarre hangover from sixty years ago when players knew their place and a committee picked the team. Sadly, with the arrival of the Premiership and the Australian billionaire some years ago went the last chance of clearing them all out - or, even better, creating a new organisation. For Merdeschlock chose to negotiate with the pinheads at Lancaster Gate (from his viewpoint, a very good call, as they were a pushover) and once they had lucked in to Every Day is Christmas Day, the Paddington Bears were not about to be put back in their nursery boxes.
Since then, practically every decision they have taken has been weak, misguided and self-perpetuating. At club manager and player level, the most outrageous and infantile behaviour has been tolerated, the fat folks at the FA running scared from anything that might upset the money men and thus persuade some (perhaps all) of their members to start all over again somewhere else. Having starved the game of youth investment, and chosen the clearly inadequate Steve McLaren as England coach, the people who 'run' soccer surpassed themselves last year by, effectively, relegating the wrong side from their money-spinning Premiership.
No England manager in history has ever really been given his own way. Although some see the legendary Alf Ramsey as an exception, in fact Sir Alf simply ignored the goons - and managed to win the World Cup. But having lost one semi-final in 1970, Ramsey was soon despatched. The man to hire then was Brian Clough, but of course Cloughie would've wanted total control, so he was passed over. The man to hire after Eriksson was Martin O'Neill, but he is also too smart to accept anything less than independence.
Of course, Eriksson did himself no favours by bonking half the staff at the FA and then Ulrika Johnssonn, following which he got a public bollocking from his tigress of an Italian partner - and thus became something of a figure of fun. But by the start of the 2006 World Cup, Sven was tired of the knives and interference. It showed in his demeanour at every game: he was clearly scared of losing.
The other factor may, however, be more telling. More than ever in 2007, the national manager's main problem is in dealing with the largely uncontrolled egos of twenty-two blokes, very few of whom are what you'd call bright enough to grasp the importance of playing for their country - and in the current team, none of whom (with the possible exception of Rooney and Richards) could be termed world class. Further, the baggage they bring with them - aka The Wags*, and various agents - is a perpetual distraction. In Germany during the 2006 finals, for example, it was obvious from early on that Peter Crouch's 'companion' was a considerable pain, and Mrs Beckham's influence over David is legendary. Mrs Lampard's ability to wind Frankie up (and demand jewellery when he cheats on her) is also a running gag in professional soccer circles.
By the quarter finals in 2006, at least five England regulars thought they knew better than Eriksson - and were on more than one occasion indiscreet with the Press about it. In Ramsey's day of course - in Bobby Robson's day for that matter - anyone caught doing that would've been on the next plane home. Sven knew exactly who the leakers were, but did nothing: when you're in charge of children, that's the wrong sort of signal to give. Eriksson's manner (by his own admission) is quiet anyway - he doesn't yell, or throw boots at people or swear like a trooper. A great many managers do - and actually, a lot of the time they're right to do so: spoiled infants given too much money respond better to a judicious combination of shrewd persuasion and harsh discipline. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Speak softly, but carry a big stick".
Where the likes of Eriksson, O'Neill, Coppell, Curbishley, Redknapp (plus Ferguson in his early career, and the late Brian Clough) have done well is at clubs with quite good players who need self-belief to make them seem - and play - a lot better. These are often young, uncertain players, or those who have slipped a Division and fear that obscurity beckons. Egos are thus thin on the ground, being replaced by a willingness to listen. Also, these managers buy shrewdly - and get rid of trouble. Ferguson is the man who sold Beckham at the 'peak' of his career, and bought Vidic when nobody had heard of him; both were excellent decisions.
At City, Eriksson has excelled with smart buys, and given the youngsters not just a chance, but also genuine confidence. While I will always have doubts about his integrity as an individual, given the right raw material and backing, he seems to have what it takes. During his England tenure, very few were more critical of him than I. But now I must accept that, at the very least, Sven is an exceptionally talented club manager.
The broader perspective on this brief history is nevertheless entirely in line with nby's diagnosis of society's problems as a whole. Neglect by stupid parents (the FA), giving in to the childish demands of brats (Wenger, Ferguson, Mourinho,Terry, Rooney, Cobbley and all), chucking money at the problem (the clubs) cheating on the 'win at all costs' principle (the players) and selling one's soul to carpetbaggers or the City (Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, West Ham, Arsenal - in fact, almost every Premiership club) breeds a culture where money can buy instant success, as opposed to patience and talent producing success followed by just financial returns.
A dream? Not at all: Busby at United, Cullis at Wolves, Nicholson at Spurs and Ramsey at Ipswich - all these greats did it the right way, and played attractive football. With today's fitness levels, and more investment in English youth, there are only two obstacles remaining in the way of a different but better future: the FA, and the Antipodean madman. The latter can't live forever, and the former can be shot the minute Rupe the Dupe goes down to his inevitable fate in the bowels below.
As they say in the dressing room, "So'ted".
* Wags = Wives and Girlfriends - or much less kindly, Bags - Braindead Airhead Groupies.
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Sir Oswald Mosley (a keen Gooner) taunts Spurs fans after the 1935 Cup Final
As long as I live, I will never comprehend the osmosis by which England soccer teams and their coaches leap to the heights of Greek odyssey, and then down to the depths of Sun back pages, on which they become crude cartoons - nearly always, vegetables of some form or another.
Having said that, I sort of do - in the sense that Murdochian tabloids care for nothing beyond (a) money and (b) destroying our culture....be that soccer, royalty, values, education or ethics. If I could get hold of the silly buggers who insulted Rupe all those years ago at Cambridge, I'd shake some sense into them and then write a book about the poor damaged little child the Antipodean is as a result of their childish Aussieist insults.
The part of it I can't understand (given that Merdeschlock is still some way from owning all the media in our country) is why this optimism - pessimism - cynicism axis takes place over and over again without anyone becoming bored with it.
Optimism first: why? McClaren is a dork. He takes notes. He gives peevish, mediocre interviews. He talks footybollocks. He is second-rate.
Pessimism: why? (See above)
Cynicism: why? It's self-indulgent. Militance would be much better. Let us now throw away our culottes, storm the FA and then - having taken them all to the guillotine in a tumbril - give the job to O'Neill. If AstonVilla object, raze their ground to the, er, ground.
Listen, to make omelettes one must break eggs.
Setting all this aside, more realistically we must ask ourselves why we cannot as a nation accept that in terms of youth training, passion, desire to entertain, and excellence, we have lost the plot so carefully laid out by the likes of Busby, Winterbotham, Nicholson and Stein fifty years ago.
Earlier this week I was asked by a Kiwi rugger-bugger what it would take to make soccer players behave like the England XV when faced with an inpenetrable decision - at a crucial moment - in the World Cup Final of their sport. I replied as follows:
'Kill Murdoch, bring back a maximum wage of £50 a week for players, open up the coal mines, rip all the seats out, starve the working classes, introduce instant sending-off for even pulling a face at the ref, eighty years hard labour for arguing with him, and capital punishment for touching him; round up all the current players and put them in concentration camps, shoot McClaren, blow up the FA, deport all the foreign players, water the pitches for ten hours before each game, ban shin-pads, put fibreglass laces back in the ball, kill any coach who makes notes, ban television cameras from all the games, refuse admission to anyone either wearing a suit or sporting tattoos, hang anyone caught swearing, bring back legal tackles from behind, wooden studs, uncovered terraces and fish ‘n’chips before a game; throw away the yellow/red card system (far too soft- see earlier), insist on players being serfs to their clubs and needing permission to get married, fix the maximum ground entry price at 3/6d, clone Alf Ramsey’s DNA, blow up the Channel Tunnel, deport Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, take every penny of Lottery profits and put it into training, sports centres, daily ball-control classes, cross-country army-style obstacle courses, racks, birches, and terror classes. Finally - and above all else – kidnap the wives, children, parents and siblings of anyone selected to play for England, with the proviso that only goals, off-the-line clearances and losing eight pounds in sweat over the ninety minutes will gain their eventual release.'
Who said we liberals have no new ideas? (29.10.07)
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Two soccer nations with nothing in common
At the weekend, English football fans who still care about such things as spirit, grit, flair and pride watched on telly as Scotland unfairly lost to Italy 2-1, and thus exited from the finals of the European Championship.
To call Scotland unlucky in this match would be an understatement of inestimable proportions: they had one certain (and another wobbly) penalty decision disallowed, and fell victim to an Italian goal at the death entirely against the run of play.
However, Scotish manager Alex McLeish's job is not in question - and quite right too. For a tiny nation like Scotland to outplay the World Champions to such an extent is something for which McLeish should be given the freedom of any Scottish city that takes his fancy. Not only did his players give 120% from start to finish, they showed skill and imagination of a kind that at times left the Italian side bamboozled.
Compare and contrast (as they used to say in the days of clear exam language) this performance with that of England against Croatia on Wednesday night.
The portents were not good. The game was to be played at a stadium that went five times over budget, and the team chosen by a man who has form as a plucker of mediocrity from the jaws of entertainment. Further, the rain was coming down 'like bloody stair-rods' as my Grandad used to say. Bizarrely, although the Magnificent New Wembley has a roof to keep the rain out, it leaks: and lest we forget, ours is the nation that will host the Olympic Games five years from now. Anyway, somebody with an IQ lower than a limbo dancer's buttock decided to leave it open. This was a pity as the pitch - upon which the game was to be played - has a tendency to become the Lake District at the first sign of player sweat.
Incompetence such as this is the toxic stuff of which contemporary England is made, and pretty much from the start the England team lived up to this heritage. In an inexplicable selection decision, McClaren (the manager already halfway along the plank, and in many ways indistinguishable from it) decided to switch to a new goalkeeper Scott Carson. He had also left out the only England player capable of taking a useful free kick. Just on seven minutes Mr Carson chose to justify the manager's decision by missing the ball, and letting in a goal that my sixteen year-old terrier Daisy could've stopped. England's Gerrard, meanwhile, wasted two free kicks.
Determined to reduce the deficit, England striker Peter Crouch headed goalwards and narrowly missed the corner flag. Play shifted to the opposite end, and a simple one-two-three by languid Croatian forwards resulted in a second goal to the nation that didn't exist twenty years ago.
With hopelessly late predictability, McClaren brought on Beckham for the second half. A few seconds after kick-off, the old warhorse delivered an inch-perfect cross to Crouch, who chested the ball down to nobody in particular except a Croatian defender who immediately booted the ball far upfield. But back it came, and as another England forward stumbled over his pay packet, the referee decided to make a name for himself by awarding a penalty. Lampard converted easily, and the recovery was on.
Within a minute, the Croats hit the bar at the other end (just to remind us how much better they were) but then another immaculate pass from Becks reached Crouch about two inches out, and as it seemed churlish to miss, he didn't. 2-2.
End to end stuff followed, but with ten minutes to go, Croatian substitute Petric picked up the ball thirty yards out and did what no current England international can do: he made space for himself and then hit an absolute belter that screamed into the net past the now crushed Carson.
John Motson clung on patriotically, explaining that if Andorra scored against Russia we'd still be in with a shout. They didn't, and we weren't.
What are English soccer fans to make of all this?
First, we have a side that is technically ordinary in almost every department. There is a useful (and, I think, good future leader) in the shape of Manchester City's Robinson. Gerrard is, on his day, a class player with gritty tackling ability - but he's brittle bone-wise, and inconsistent. And of course, missing through injury was the only world-class player we have, Rooney - but he is mad and stupid.
Even supreme class will not, however, guarantee success without pride. England's players have pride, but it's the wrong sort - the type that comes before a fall. The type built on Digger money. Money that has infected Scotland far less, and thus allowed them to develop players with the other sort of pride that says "This is my country, and we shall not lose".
Second, we have had a manager who all experienced commentators on the game recognised, the day he was appointed, was doomed to failure. In the build-up to this game, we were told that the players backed him. But then, soccer players are on the whole a very dim bunch indeed.
Last and most important, we have in the FA perhaps the most inept, short-sighted and greedy bunglers ever to 'run' a national game. As a result of this we have, again and again, chosen the wrong managers, the wrong carpet-baggers, the wrong punishments of illegal behaviour and totally the wrong direction for the game. Under their tutelage, England has slipped from being still a major competitor to a level below tiny Balkan countries. If ever there was a case for a useful Al Qeida bomb, then the FA Headquarters is it.
Their inability to even start a news conference on time and without leaks is indicative: disorganisation, lack of awareness and grim, impenetrable frowns were everywhere in evidence as they gathered to face the press. But their sadness was merely that of clowns - and it was time for them to face the custard pies. They did at least apologise for letting the fans down; but what they do not recognise is how much they have let the English game down by selling out to Murdoch money and greedy players - especially greedy foreign players.
Asked whether a Premier League dominated by foreigners and sucking money out of the grass roots was bad for England's international future, the five monkeys stared nervously at each other until eventually the camera settled on a grubby little bloke. "Whether there are or are not enough quality English players is a matter of conjecture" he said, a view not shared by anyone in the press corps - and very few in the football community as a whole. (These were the same men who thought Steve McClaren could do the job when nobody else did). Somebody in the FA should get on a plane to Scotland and learn how they do it there. Mainly, somebody needs to tell this shower to appoint somebody with talent, belief, and a determination to do it his way, not theirs.
As of this morning, we are once again in search of an England manager. But really, we are looking for much bigger things than this. We are in search of excellence - and a goal for our national game that is way higher than technocrats, money, coaching-school drones who take notes, and players whose self-belief is based solely on their salaries. (28.11.07)
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O, what a lovely search
The hunt for a new England manager continues, but with some odd rules
Now that the FA have grovelled, frowned and self-flagellated all over our screens (and a very messy business it was too) one might be forgiven for thinking they've learned their lesson when it comes to choosing England managers. I suspect the answer is that they've had some kind of mental breakthrough, but the early signs are that it might involve a rather eccentric interpretation of where they were going wrong before. Could be a breakthrough, could be a breakdown - for the moment, the jury's out.
There is something about the FA executive committee that has 'ee by 'eck' written all over it. Professional soccer was - for at least the first fifty years - very much a working class, northern-biased sport in which most of the players were escapees from the coal mines of Scotland and Northern England. Once the Scots wisely broke away and formed the far superior SFA, this left little talent beyond my lot in Lancashire, and the real enemy on the other side of the Pennines.
Not counting a brief Highbury dominance during the 1930s, before 1960, Cup Finals and League title races were dominated with almost monotonous regularity by the likes of Preston North End, Blackpool, Bolton, Burnley, Man United, Man City, Blackburn Rovers, Newcastle, Leeds and Sunderland. Between 1950 and 1960, for example, just one Cup Final appearance (the Arsenal, and they won) came from the South - most of the winners were from the Red Rose county, and the other three finalists - Wolves, Birmingham and AstonVilla - from the Midlands. I mean come on London, how crap is that?
Yet as if moulded from some kind of bizarre Time-Concrete, the FA Executive still seem to be from that same Lancastrian tradition of papermill, butchery and cotton king club owners. They have shiney bald heads, sweaty upper lips and they wear seedy suits. Bob Lord at Burnley was the last of the loud-mouthed, dodgey characters in real life; yet in the strange nether-world of the FA, his mucky genes have survived unchanged from half a century ago. Who on earth, I ask, still has a name like Barwick south of Stoke? If the FA elected a Chairman called Grimthorpe tomorrow, nobody would be in the least bit surprised.
Be all this as it may (and trust me, it is) those in charge at the Football Association appear to have started with just the one criterion as an executive search guideline: nobody English and trained here. I'm up for that, but it's where things have gone from there that has me just a little worried.
The first port of call was to revisit the yawning open goal they missed last time - Martin O'Neill, the Ulster genius who has lifted every team he's managed to date out of the doldrums and into the big-time. Because O'Neill is (1) wise (2) intelligent and (3) a man who gives his word and means it, he told the FA succinctly that his contract was with Aston Villa, so hard luck: you had your chance, and you blew it.
But there was an important sign in that approach, and every soccer commentator but me has missed it: Martin had the magic letter 'O' at the start of his name.
My deduction as of now is that the FA have made this their deciding factor: hardly anyone has a name beginning or ending in O, so that's what we'll aim for.
Thus, Wenger, Ferguson, Benitez, MacLeish, Redknapp and Bruce were cast aside as also-rans in favour of an approach to the Special One who had the magic ingredient: his name was MourinhO. I have to say that Jose's self-assigned title doesn't cut it with me. I think he's an appalling role model and while he knows who is any great shakes in the European game, the lad has not the first clue how to fashion a silk codpiece from a cow's rear. (Let's get real here - this is a major talent the new England coach will have to have in spades).
But the O in Special One was enough to have the FA chaps scrambling towards the Portuguese self-publicist (clearly out to up the price either Real or Barca will have to pay) and oddly enough, despite saying "Look, I don't want the job", Mourinho got the Nation all excited for about twelve hours and then said no, look, I don't want the job.
However, t'Committee hit pay dirt on hearing of the existence of an Italian with enough O signs to suggest he might be the Dalai Lhama they'd been after. For Fabio Capello, the runes seem to have fallen into just the right flat back four combination to ensure that his bank balance will, from now on, be forever full. What's more, he allegedly wants to bring Gianfranco Zola with him, who also has two O's in his name although only one of them is at the end. And to top it all off, Capello looks just like a mill-owner from Accrington.
'Tha's nowt so queer as la bella Italia, va bene e shaddapoyourface'
There is even talk of Alan Shearo joining the team, and although I have it on good authority that Keano has rejected any chance of his involvement, it all looks set fair for the O-boys to carry the day.
Fantastico. Or, perhaps not. I don't have the foggiest idea any more, if only because the England job carries a variation of the Groucho Marx maxim with it. It might run like this: "I wouldn't want any England manager prepared to take the job as England manager".
Ciao for now.
(12.12.07)
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It's all going to be Fabio
We English are a funny old nation. Having shunned patriotism for the last forty years in pursuit of selfish gain - and ridiculed all those who haven't - we now flounder about looking bemused about the fact that our national soccer team thinks breaking a sweat is giving one's all....but secretly believes a fat wallet is more impo'ant, knowwhatamean?
Over the same period, we have naively embraced all the 'let's not offend anyone' pc mantra, and - almost as bad - a huge proportion of consultancy-cum-MBA gibberish. This delivered us of soccer managers far too gentle on chicken-hearted players, but saying impenetrable stuff like "we need to use the channels and keep it wide", while sitting on the touchline taking notes. Great managers do not take notes.
On Football Focus last Saturday (BBC1, 12.10 pm) Sir Trevor Brooking - a gentleman, and an elegant player in his day - for once expressed himself frankly by saying he was determined we should never go looking for a foreign manager again. Like most Brits, perhaps, dear old Trev is rather muddled about why foreigners manage better than we do. He does spend most of his waking hours bashing his head against the brick wall of FA inability to understand the concept of long-term investment in player development....because as a former player, that's his area: he knows that dedication needs national help at the crucial 13-16 stage. (This is after all how the French did it in 1998 - and how Wenger does it now).
But Brooking needs to grasp that democracy (while the best form of government) is a nonsense when applied to football management. To be fair, the old Hammer made it clear he admires Fabio Capello, but I suspect what the Italian will bring to the party is a degree of ruthlessness, harsh discipline and dictatorial rules of behaviour with which Sir Trev would feel uneasy.
The truth is that Capello is both focused and hugely ambitious - these are features hammered into him by his Dad at an early age: Signor Capello senior was an anti-fascist imprisoned by the Nazis, and once released he passed on the lust for life to his son. Fabio has always wanted the England job; he's been learning English for four years, and wants to retire on the ultimate high of bringing the World Cup back to England.
With that ambition in mind (and there isn't a true England fan who doesn't have it in his mind every day) this has to be the right appointment. But in the longer term, Brooking has hit the nail on the head: we must watch Capello and his team, see how they do it - and then adapt that to the English way of football.
The danger of giving Fabio carta bianco is that he will try and get English footballers to play like Italians. I suspect that both Brooking and most other intelligent people in the game may be in for a shock when the truth finally dawns on them: that the new England coach is (in reality) putting a cultural problem to rights, not a soccer problem.
As long ago as 1958, Sir Stanley Matthews - perhaps the most disciplined and talented footballer England has ever produced - grasped the need to learn from Brazil's approach of being skilled enough to feel relaxed on the ball. By 1962, this wise Midlander declared that desire is born out of love for the game and desperation to escape poverty; and he correctly discerned that this combination had given the Brazilians their world leadership. For skill comes as much from practise, practise, practise as it does from innate ability - and the will to win arises as much from a need to rise above humble beginnings as from managerial psychology.
In short - as always - great exam results usually come from devoted teachers and willing raw material.
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When are these bloody foreigners going to learn English?Football is a simple game.There are two sides with eleven men each. Only the goalkeeper can handle the ball, a spherical formerly leather object which the other twenty players may only kick or head. The object of the sport is to use these to insert the ball over the goal-line of the opposing side, behind which usually sits a net in order to aid the referee's decision as to whether the ball went between the goal 'posts', thus scoring a goal. The audience - known as spectators or occasionally (among vulgar prpofessional players) 'the crowd' - shout encouragement to their favoured team, for example 'Play up, Rovers' or 'Control the bloody thing you useless lummox'. There are two halves of forty five minutes each, and the team having scored the most goals is deemed to have won the game. There now, did you spot a single foreign word in there? Of course not. But no player, official, coach or pundit involved in the sport today seems capable of talking about it in English. As for Johnny foreigner, he at least has an excuse, for his mother tongue is that of other places not called England, where people know little of finer things such as Shakespeare, queueing and getting pissed out of one's mind. It is a shame that post-match interviews now seem to consist of little beyond shrugs, thick accents, misused vocabulary, dropped aitches and silly questions, but that's contemporary interviewers for you: on the whole, the foreign players seem to cope with such Estuary twerps rather well. No, my problem is not with the Drogbas and Ronaldhos of the world, although even they are starting to say things like "the boss" and "s'in the net". My grump here is that I'm fed up of yet another profession inventing complex jargon as a means of hiding their utter paucity of ideas. I can just about live with going wide, but when some pillock tells me that we need more channels going forward, I want to show him the touchline and then explain how easy it would be to kick him onto the cinder path beyond. And what, pray, is involved in 'getting men into the midfield'? I mean, the midfield is the bit between our and their field, right? If we don't get men into the midfield, we'll be in our field: and in that scenario, the best we can hope for is a draw. |
GOALS
Where the beautiful game is heading
Forward not Back The men who take notes on the touchline, of course, have an answer to this: they say it's then about getting men into the box. Well blimey, this is quantum stuff is it not? After we've been in the midfield, we need to be in the box. Presumably because we've found new channels going forward. Right, we'll do that then. Let me explain something here: I have O-level maths. I can tell you without fear of a yellow card that one Rooney = a pad full of notes, and one goal = a million pre-match tactical talks. There is a need to embrace reality on this one. We have to ask ourselves whether any footballer apart from Steve Coppell has ever uttered anything of any interest whatsoever to those who exist beyond the smell of dubbin - to which the answer has to be 'no'. Eric Cantona tried hard with the trawler/seagull thing, but not even the French existentialist movement had the faintest fucking idea what he was on about. |
No, we must accept that your average hundred grand a week man will absorb little more than simple instructions and the odd line of coke - always assuming someone can demonstrate the correct insertive orifice, and the correct exit door should a dope tester appear. Why then are we forced to listen to piffle about coming forward from a flat back four in order to show more penetration on the edge of the box? Does Arsene Wenger understand any of this shit? Does Fabio Capello? Does Franz Beckenbauer? Did Matt Busby? Football (let's drop this 'soccer' stuff - it's only for the American audience when all's said and done) is about the following things: 1. Blokes who can dribble 2. Two blokes who can perform a quick one-two in order to bamboozle the defence 3. Defenders who can read where the attacker's going to pass 4. Speed 5. Pele, Best, Eusebio, Cruyff, Matthews, Lofthouse, Swift, Banks, Edwards, Moore, Greaves, Maradona, Ronaldo, Yashin, Di Stefano, Gento, Trautmann, Beckenbauer, Dean, Bergkamp, Osgood, Henry, Blanchflower 6. Defensive errors 7. Timing 8. Great saves The playing surface is not a backfield, midfield, sideways bloody field or farmer's field - it's a pitch. On the pitch, tactics become about as relevant as a pep talk prior to Gallipolli. Crowds come to watch mercurial genius. They come to marvel at little strikers on muddy pitches running rings round great big full-backs. Football is about players. It's play. It's a game: a beautiful game, and oh so easily destroyed. |
(10.2.08)
I wonder how many readers will be clamouring to get tickets for the Football Association Cup Final Tie between plucky Cardiff City and Proud Pompey?
If we're all being honest here, 2008 is going to be a crap year for the touts. Our fine new 10,000 seats less than we had before at seven times the original estimate national footy stadium will almost certainly be only 70% full on the Big Day in May.
Of these spectators, three sevenths will be dickheads who don't know the first thing about either club, and a further quarter will be celebrity fat floating briefly on the unstill waters of English soccer before moving swiftly on to the next must-be-at venue.
I have not the sightest doubt that, on the day, Cardiff supporters will make far more noise than those who follow Portsmouth. They will cheer their briefly recognised heroes on long after the final whistle, even though by that time they will have been defeated by a combination of better players and the serendipity that usually smiles upon the Favourites in FA Cup Finals.
While all this unromantic stuff is fine and dandy - and the nostalgia of 1927 and 1939 is haunting - it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the FA Cup is at the tipping point. As the entry point to a second-rate European trophy, the greatest knock-out competition in the world is being increasingly ignored by those who pay loud lip-service to it, but little else.
Let's revisit the 1939 final for a minute or two. On that day, Portsmouth were very much the underdogs, their opponents Wolves having had an excellent season. But Pompey scored three times in the first half an hour, and went on to win 4-1 .
Portsmouth captain Jimmy Guthrie gets the victor treatment in 1939
Twelve years earlier, the mighty Arsenal were also much-fancied to beat Cardiff City. The Welsh side rose to the occasion, and scored midway
through the second half, thoroughly deserving to take the Cup out of England for the only time.
But things were very different seventy or eighty years ago. Back then, the FA Cup was about tradition, glory and medals. Today, like everything else, football's about money - oh, and also the glamour thing.
Mad as it may seem, top Premiership sides aren't really interested in an entry ticket to the Cup Winners' Cup. Snot quali'ee izzit, knarwotahmean? While managers continue to claim that they want to win at Wembley, they only want to if it's their only way into Europe. It is a daft system indeed that values coming coming fourth in the Premiership more highly than Cup Final victory.
The Champions' League is surely about winners. The first half of the modern competition is league-based, but the second is still knockout. It would be better for the fans and the sport if those teams who have proved their worth in the knockout game went into Europe's top competition ahead of the also-rans in fifth position.
But in soccer today, the game and the fans come a very poor second and third to the suits.
I'm sure Aston Villa fans enjoyed their side's 6-0 away win at already relegated Derby County. I doubt if anyone else did. Derby are not a Premiership side. Neither (I think) are Fulham or Bolton. I'm not talking about ability here - rather, affordability. We should remember Leeds United's grisly fall: and how much better the health of the club as it battles to get out of the lower divisions.
(17.4.08)
What kind of soccer website is it that, when you type in 'remaining fixtures', comes back with 'no results'?
Smithington Albion's site? A site created by the four soccer fans in Alberta? The official site of the Wellington Rugby Union?
Sadly, none of these. It is the Barclays Premiership Site. The site to which English soccer fans are invited to go in search of what's going on in Association Football.
One has come to expect this sort of incompetence from banks. They're very similar in many ways to software manuals spending a hundred pages telling you how to edit and then send two-hour documentaries to Indonesia, while on page 109 (hidden in a piece about running a website off your bicycle) is a tiny paragraph headed 'How to load your site in two easy moves'.
All the same, there could be no better sponsor for the Premiership which, like all retail banks, is run by folks who care only for money, who think it solves everything, and who roll about all over the floor in tears every time a decision doesn't go their way.
I was reminded of just how dumb soccer's owners are last week
when I heard on the radio that Manchester City's owner (former Thailand PM Thaksin Shinawatra) was 'very unhappy that City had slipped to 8th' and would be looking 'very seriously at the management situation' in the Close Season.
Thak the sack....clown
Well Thaksin, my dear old Thai curry, let me enlighten you about something: Man City haven't finished 8th in the Premiership ever. In fact, until White Sven Man turned up to drag your club out of deep poo at the start of the season, City hadn't won the top League Championship - or finished in the Top Six - since before you were born, chummy. Every City fan in Manchester would've have undergone multiple amputation in return for a promise of 8th, you very corrupt little Asian pillock. Soon afterwards, incredibly, Eriksson was dumped.
The same insanity emanates from Stamford Bridge, where Russian lunatic billionaire mafiosa Aboramovitch decides to pile some more pressure on the luckless Avram Grant by casually mentioning to the press from a Dayglo barrage balloon over Fleet Street that Avro's job 'is in doubt'.
Pray tell us, Tovaritch Aboramovitch, how does being one match away from the European Cup Final and two matches away from a Premiership triumph count as failure?
Well of course, the Russian doesn't have an answer - partly because the thick bastard can't speak English, but mainly because the Bear's degree of infantile egomania controls his every thought and action.
The same is true of his players, two of whom fell out big-time at the weekend over who should take a free-kick against Manchester United. It's hard to beat Drogba and Ballack for petulant playground stuff, but United's players did their level best so to do. Rio Ferdinand and Owen Hargreaves (England internationals both) behaved disgracefully before, during and after the game. But here again, if the manager never criticises his
players' conduct, what can we expect? (Ferguson himself, as so often on the big occasions, made a complete tit of himself).
Over at Anfield, two brainless American owners uncertain about the shape of ball being used are busy arguing with each other, while at the same time trying to oust a manager who brought home the European Cup, and finds himself just one match away from another Final.
Yet none of these obscenely rich idiots has considered one irrefutable reality: since the Premiership was formed, two teams have dominated it - Arsenal and Manchester United. What they have in common is managers whose position is never in doubt, because they have the confidence of the Board.
When Liverpool too was a family club, they chose managers from within of the same character as Bill Shankly. No team in history has ever enjoyed such a record of European and League success in modern times.
It is a symptom of the childish world in which we live that foot-stamping and shouts of "But I want it now!" rule life in professional English soccer. As a result of which fine policy, the national team can't beat the Henshaw's Blind School Tiddlywinks Third Eleven, so criminally neglected is the grass-roots game.
And as if to top off this appalling farce, we are reduced to being taught the value of discipline and self-control by an Italian.
We are a culture in decline. But far more important, our soccer game is become a game for male adults being played by teenage girls.
Grrrrr.
(6.5.08)
An American friend of mine is fond of saying 'the whole world hates a wiseass'. So I have to fess up now and say that I got it wrong six weeks ago. On writing of the Cardiff v Portsmouth Cup Final, I said they'd struggle to fill the Stadium, and nobody would really want to watch the game.
There was a vital thing I forgot in that prediction: that the success-starved supporters of Pompey and City would kill to watch the game.
Further, I'd mislaid the importance of an occasion like this for such fans. Whereas those who follow The Big Four turn up each year with the attitude of 'Well, it's May so we're 'ere again', the folks from Portsmouth and Cardiff were 'Up For t'Cup' like teams used to be every other decade or so before the 1980s.
This wasn't the warm-up to something bigger in the Champions' League: this was a Cup Final. Abide with me. Land of my Fathers. God Save the Queen. An atmosphere of real expectancy. And fans dressed up in the most ridiculous manner imaginable.
There was build-up: interviews with the hopefuls, How they Got There, celebrity fans - and (the only dark cloud on the day) Cardiff's Chairman, the appalling Peter Ridsdale, being interviewed before the game. Did he enjoy the games, he was asked. No, he replied, I enjoy the final whistle going. If ever there was a mystery as to how money stuck to someone, it's Peter Risdale. He has gone from Young Turk to Old Berk with no stage inbetween.
Ridsdale....lost
A bit of Pompey and circumstance
There too was good old Tony Adams, a man who had gone to Portsmouth as assistant manager without me (and, I suspect, lots of others) noticing. I admire Adams: I think he came from the Donkey era of England's national side, but he won lots of silverware with Arsenal, and overcame alcoholism with enormous courage. He then went on a long tour, advising younger players about the problem. Top bloke.
And loud. I doubt if there's a foghorn off the coast of England this morning with a more startling effect than Adams in the full flight of enthusiasm. Those who remember four of the Pythons with hankies on head bellowing 'AND NOW, THE ARCHITECTS SKETC
As Enkelmann nods off, Kanu pokes in the winner H' will have felt a strong sense of nostalgia as Tony answered prematch interview questions. His aim seemed to be to shatter the glass in the Executive Boxes, and I have little doubt that if it was, he succeeded. He certainly flattened Ray Stubbs, which is no bad thing. What advice, Ray asked him, was he giving to the younger Pompey players? 'STAY FOCUSED' bellowed Adams. Ray's eardrum shot out of his head and off-camera at full tilt.
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The game itself was far from being a classic, but it was exciting for much of the time. Mistakes! Deflections! Missed open goals! Unmarked players from free kicks! Corners! Hit posts!
Remember these? Well there was more of it in the first quarter-hour of the 2008 Cup Final than there had been during the whole of the over-hyped slowly drying paint that passed for a game in 2007.
For me, Cardiff easily took this spell on points: they were hungry, sharp and well-organised.....until it came to the opposition penalty area, at which point they seemed to have no ideas at all. They were (as 'arry Rednapp had predicted before the game) largely about good 'set-pieces'. Both teams then settled into end to end stuff, with Portsmouth's slick first-time touches and dangerous final touches oozing class.
Easily the biggest disappointment for Cardiff fans and neutrals was Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank, a man who now looks painfully slow and - on the whole - not that interested. His import of Premiership dilletante attitude looked starkly out of place in a match where enthusiasm was everywhere to be seen.
So despite a wonderfully worked free-kick chance which Cardiff created and then fluffed, there was an inevitability about Kanu's winner in the 37th minute, cashing in on the Cardiff keeper Enkelmann's fumble of a goodish cross. The former Arsenal star then proceeded to do a little victory dance so surreal that it looked like an appeal to the linesman, sorry, assistant referee. Thus for a few seconds, the stadium was eerily silent as most people assumed handball had been given. The referee (who had already given the goal) ignored this and walked purposefully back to the centre
As Kanu hits the post, Redknapp wishes his deodorant was stronger
Motty was perplexed.
"And Kanu and Portshmouth sheem to think they've Shcored" he said.
"They have" said Marky.
Undeterred, Cardiff continued to play the more attacking football, minus only the end bit about sticking pill in onion bag. But Motty was already intoning their doom.
"Now thish ish very intereshting" he lied, "Becaushe on the twenty-one occasshuns Portshmouth have shcored first thish sheason, they've won."
Someone most have told John Motson at half-time to ease off the 'it's all over' pedal and rekindle some interest in what was - as Pompey dealt easily with most Cardiff attacks - turning into a predictable game. Because no sooner had the second half begun than he picked up on Marky's point that Cardiff were still playing the more entertaining soccer.
"Yesh Mark" said JM, "It looksh like Cardiff Shitty might shtill have a shay in the result".
Lawrenson ignored the observation.
"Portsmouth have decided to defend the goal" he observed, "And when you're 1-0 up in a Cup Final, that's a good call". The man is an idiot.
But Cardiff had also spotted Pompey's desire to sit on their lead, and thus (true to the script) a barnstorming finish ensued.
This was largely set off by Cardiff's Ramsey. Billed as the new Rooney (and bearing no resemblance at all to a potato) the teenager had an immediate impact and, with a tad more composure, might have made more of two chance in the final quarter. For the last five minutes, the Portsmouth goal was under siege, but then the final whistle blew and that was that. Favourites score, Underdogs fight back and give of their best, Cup goes to classier side.
Maybe it was predictable in the end: but it produced the right result, a watchable game, and a great day out which the young supporters on both sides will never forget.
The difference between the two sides wasn't hard to discern. The game was won by safe goalkeeping and a striker's quick reactions. It was lost by uncertain goalkeeping and a striker's half-hearted lack of speed.
There were some heartwarming stories in the outcome: Sol Campbell looked astonished by being a Cup-winner again, David James finally broke his Wembley hoodoo, and of course 'arry crowned his career with an trophy he surely never expected to get.
And best of all, Peter Ridsdale's side lost.
After the game, the man they call The Gaffer reminded us all that this was soccer we were dealing with here: 'Dere wuz presha...Dey wuz puttin' balls in de box annat...but the lads've pulled froo.' Quite.
(11.5.08)
I am of course very pleased that my team are Champions of Europe again. But I am especially pleased at the result because it allows me to write this article without being accused of sour grapes.
Deciding a match of this importance on the basis of penalty kicks is an insult to the clubs, the players, the sport - and all of the supporters who should be allowed to expect something of much greater excitement and subtlety. The penalty 'shoot-out' (which appeals to the American ideal of 'exciting' sports) is little more than an idiotic lottery based on the taker's nerves and the goalkeeper's guesswork.
There are two considerations above all others against such a method of obtaining a 'result'.
The first is that soccer is not about saves. Football is about the creative production of goals based on superior skill. Whether this might involve 'bending' a free-kick, chipping the keeper, heading superbly in from a cross or using reflexes to poach a half-chance, the excitement for the crowd is watching great players' endeavour to achieve these ends.
There is nothing remotely creative about an unequal contest in which the penalty taker is offered the chance to take his time and score from close range. Indeed, this is why penalties are given in the ordinary run of a game: to award the illegally frustrated team an almost certain goal.
Secondly, although some feel that the contest is made exciting by the pressure 'getting to' the penalty-taker, it is illogical to assert that the tie-breaker between two locked teams should be based on temperament - and doubly illogical to call these 'penalties', when the taker is being lumbered with a greater penalty than the keeper. If a keeper so much as touches two penalties (but lets them all in) supporters will say afterwards, 'Well, he did well'. If the poor devil taking it misses just once, his life is a misery ever afterwards. The goalkeeper needs to save but one shot, and he is a hero for eternity.
The result is not justice or excitement, but tragedy: for supporters who have travelled thousands of miles expensively, for managers who have worked hard and worn their nerves to shreds during a long season, and for the unlucky one who misses.
Whose penalty is it anyway?
Watch those penalties in Moscow again, and ask yourself this: how many of them were legal? I've done this - and I can tell you that in almost every case, the keeper moved before the kick was taken.
Look again at Terry's missed penalty. The bloke slipped on a pitch made virtually unplayable by muddled (or bribed) Russian groundsmen. It is fair to say that in open play this is the same for both teams: but in a penalty shoot-out, this can only harm the kicker.
After the final whistle, Sir Alex Ferguson - arguably the most successful manager of the modern age in English soccer - admitted that in thirty-five years of management this was the first penalty shoot-out he had ever won. Doesn't that suggest that a tie-breaker method so divorced from the normal business of achievement is, just possibly, daft?
Over the years, a great many alternatives to the shoot-out have been suggested. My own view is that every one of them - the golden goal, the replay, and even an arcane South American idea once tried about 'attack and defence' - would be a better solution than the one we have now.
But more to the point, I would like to suggest that we make one change to the laws immediately at the top level: that no knockout-stage Cup Final anywhere should be decided on penalties.
My solution in these cases is simple to the point of having always been obvious: keep on having replays and extra time until there is a result.
Consider: no FA Cup Final in 127 years has ever gone to a second replay. Before the penalty shoot-out was introduced, no European Cup Final ever even went to a replay at all - ditto for the World Cup. While this smacks of inventing a solution to a non-existent problem, that's not really my point. It just seems to me that - apart from some administrators and ticket printers - nobody at all would be inconvenienced by going back to where we were for the truly Big Occasions, before all this 'I want a result now' obsession got going.
I will close by making one obvious but (I think) telling point. Every fan who has ever been to a Cup Final remembers one thing above all: the winning goal.
The 'winning penalty' can never be the winning goal - even if it happens during then normal 90-120 minutes. There is not a real soccer fan anywhere on the planet who wants his or her club to be national, continental or world champions based on penalties.
Already I note that that media are beginning to refer to the Champions' League Final as 'a classic'. Clearly they have a serious case of insomnia in relation to the first twenty-five minutes.
During this period, there was not one goalmouth incident, powerful shot on target, dazzling move or great save. Clive Tyldesley on ITV described this period at the time as 'an absorbing encounter'. Imagine being married to Clive Tyldesley. Imagine going to Tesco with him of a Saturday morning and being told on the way back that his conversation with an employee about the salmon fillets had been an absorbing encounter. Imagine strangling Clive Tyldesley, driving the body to a secluded spot, burying him and getting away with it. Wouldn't that be just wonderful?
The reality is that for the fifteen minutes or so after Ronaldo scored the opening goal, United tore Chelsea apart - and should've gone in at half-time 3-0 up. But it is part of the skill of Lampard that when there is a pinball-machine of ball movement going on, his reflexes are usually up to the task of making his shot pay. And so the teams went in level.
Chelsea looked the more hungry and dangerous side in the second half, but what this team lacks in its current incarnation is focus. While their opponents were just as willing to surround the referee, Chelsea allowed this sort of nonsense to get to them. Ballack in particular needs surgery to stop his mouth from flapping, and of course Drogba believes everyone else on the planet has but one mission: to foul him. He is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To their credit, both teams decided to go for it in extra time, but cramp took its toll - as indeed did the rain. As penalties approached, Avrom Grant's lack of real influence at Stamford Bridge was demonstrated by the club's failure to give him any rainwear. His suit absolutely soaking and his eyes blinking in the downpour, poor Grant looked for all the world like perfect casting for Mr Toad, should there ever be a remake of The Wind in the Willows.
It's pointless asking me if the best team won: I think the right team won - first, because United's tradition, style and ambition is something that can never be matched by a club in the hands of a Russian megalomaniac; and second, because on his home turf, Aboramovitch was humiliated.
There's not much about the current Chelsea set-up I l like. Lampard is - like all idiots savants - a self-absorbed twit. The Boys in Blue argue with referees too much. Ballack is just a journeyman kraut with a big mouth. And Grant - while a far better manager than most people realise - is dull.
But Chelsea should've lost to a great goal, not a goalkeeper's save.
(16.5.08)
Watching the Euros (and I haven't been much to be honest) one hardly gets the feeling that anyone's 'missing' Eng-er-land - except for the spectators out there, who have as yet seen very little boring crap delivered by donkeys and must therefore be enjoying the rest.
Although the margin of victory over France flattered the Dutch, they will surely get every neutral's vote as The Team We'd All Like to Win.
I hope they do, but something in my water says they won't. I can't analyse the water exactly on this issue, it's just that the Dutch have (on their day) played the best football in Europe at international level over the last thirty years. Despite dissension in the camp more recently, they have always played with flair, and in a way that excites the crowd. As in this regard they remind me of Man United and Everton in the mid to late 1960s, I'd love to see them take the trophy in style.
Yet somehow, at five to midnight it always seems to go wrong for them. In the 1970s World Cup Final against Germany, they should've won easily - but somehow got ground down by the Wehrmacht's non-stop blitzkrieg during the second half. At that time they had Cruyff in the side (he scored a penalty in the first five minutes) and for much of the first half they outclassed the Herrenvolk.
It didn't come off for them against Argentina either, although to be fair nothing short of sinking a Belgrano or six was going to stop the blue-striped boys that night.
For a tiny country (most of which was under the sea before they got going with the dyke idea) the Netherlands have produced an astonishing list of outstanding players. Johann Cruyff remains for me the best player the European mainland has ever produced (strong, dazzling footwork, brilliant finisher, clean-living, intelligent and nice) but there are others who are up there as Greats - Marco van Basten, Johann Neeskens, and more recently van Nistelrooy - plus the best goal-poacher since Jimmy Greaves, Kuyt. In turn, the veteran stopper Edwin van de Saar is, I think, the only goalkeeper to have won European Cup medals in two different decades.
What stands against the Dutch (as always) is their lingering and admirable commitment to Total Football. Critics say this leaves them open 'at the back', a charge I've never understood. The point of association football is to score more goals than the other lot, and while the Italian reverse-geared tank approach has had much success over time, it's tedious to watch - and (just as a trivia question) name the last war against white folks in which Italy didn't surrender within three days to one diminutive corporal from Aldershot.
The Dutch still have the plot firmly nailed on the dressing room wall: 'Entertain the crowd and demotivate the opposition'. For both of these you need top-drawer skills and talent plus the right 'enjoy yourself' approach to the game. If you want to know why England haven't won anything for forty or more years, the answer lies in that sentence: not counting the disgusting convict Murdoch, of course.
Sneijder's goal was a delight, a cracker, majestic, historic. If I may air my natural immodesty here for a few lines, I scored one just like it against Bury Grammar in 1961. The goal (which our coach called 'a fluke' afterwards) earned me a trial with Bury. Full of hope, I turned up at Gigg Lane to face about 3,000 other kids, and the reality that 2,983 of them were better than me. (And bear in mind, Bury were in the old Third Division at the time).
Although that goes to show you how - even then - what a huge pool of talent clubs could choose from, it also demonstrates just how brilliant you have to be to make it in professional soccer. In a bizarre series of events during 1964, I wound up playing a game for Wigan Athletic - quite illegally I might add. At the time, they were in what would be something like Division 23 today, but the pace and skill were so electric, not only was I completely knackered after sixty minutes or so, I barely got a kick at the ball throughout.
Now pride forces me to point out that I was no slouch at the beautiful game; Prestwich United's manager once compared me to the legendary Brazilian midfielder Rivelino (the bloke was off his face in The Eagle & Child at the time) and I remain one of the few Goys ever to play regularly in the Maccabi league when teams were short. But the Wigan guys were on a different plane of celestial talent and fitness to me.
All of which goes to confirm what I've always said - that the overwhelming majority of pro soccer players are truly autistic idiots savants, able to read a game and do things with a ball none of we ordinary plebs could begin to understand, yet unable themselves to work out why bonking party-girls and licking ice-cream off the mammory glands of pole-dancers is unlikely - ever - to be a discreet activity.
It must be a nightmare managing this shower, but equally it must be hell living next door to them. Apart from all the flying crockery, ratfaced pool-parties and lines of vulgar cars constantly parked in the road, actually going round for coffee with them would be excruciating for most normal citizens. Can you imagine going for drinks with Mr & Mrs Lampard, and being informed thirty-two times by Frankie that 's'all abart respeck innit?' Or having afternoon tea with the Rooneys and watching the wedding videos for two hours.
Wayne....approaching marriage with an open mouth
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While the average English pro tends to be High in Naughtiness and Low in IQ, this is less true of your foreign players. However, in many ways the Blighty version is infinitely more naive - and oddly enough, more honest.
Xenophobic as this may seem, it is obvious that the level of rolling about and falling over in the game has zoomed upwards since foreign players and managers began queueing up to be part of the Sky-driven goldrush in the Premiership. Although generally doltish off the field, until recently English players tended to do little more wicked than chop strikers down when they were clear through, or shout 'Our ball!' every time it went out of play - regardless of who had last touched the thing.
But now they join in the constant oaths, non-stop moaning and ref-pushing with gusto. And the other day a Welsh rugger-bugger took me to task about this behaviour: why, he wanted to know, didn't FIFA just come down rock-hard on it?
I couldn't give him an answer, because there isn't one beyond 'money'. But just leaving it at the one word is simplistic.
The difference between football and Rugby Union is (at heart) a simple one: although capable of oafishness and silly jokes about wanting wee-wees, chaps who follow the oval ball know how to behave, whereas those who cleave to the spherical leather don't. Coming from a very ordinary background myself (one in which Union was a game for Toffs) it irks me to admit this, but it's true.
Signor Scolari disciplines young Manchester City players engaged in pre-season skylarking
Further, soccer grew largely (after a posh beginning) from the working classes; whereas (except in Wales) the Union game was one 'for hooligans played by gentlemen'.
There is thus no tradition at Twickenham, the Millennium Stadium, Murrayfield or the Stade de France of grabbing away fans and kicking them to death; while at Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge and The Emirates, by the same token one is unlikely to hear the phrase, "I say, well played there the Visitors".
This is the aspect of money referred to among we of the social science calling as 'class and breeding'. The other aspect of money involves Australians.
Australians are to blame for a great deal that is wrong with the world, chiefly because Rupert Murdoch and the late Kerry Packer were among their number. (RM is American for the foreseeable future, and married to a Chinese. It's what they call covering the options).
Together these two men ruined soccer and cricket respectively. Not just with sponsorship, floodlights and silly outfits (cricket), but also via whole oceans of filthy lucre handed out to the authorities. With these beads used to amuse the natives, they could thus be ignored while real businessmen got on with making money from the game.
The net result of this in English soccer was to attract prize money, marketing and bean-counters to the clubs. Youth policies were maintained, but took second place to big-money star transfer signings to get bums on seats. Big money signings meant more hard-headed (often crooked) and somewhat unpleasant managers.
All the real power now resting with clubs and managers, the 'authorities' have none, as such: clubs listen politely to the FA and then tell them what's going to happen, while players scream at referees and the managers back them up.
In short, free-market Mammon has fucked up the Beautiful Game royally - the way it fucks everything up in the end.
So if you've ever wondered why there is a soccer column at nby, now you know: it's not just a lifelong passion of mine - it's also a social microcosm of what's wrong with our culture.
As to the way to solve soccer's discipline problem, with the will it couldn't be simpler. For players think of but two things: adulation and spondulicks.
So the first time in any game a player other than the captain queries a decision (or indeed speaks to the referee without being first addressed by him) he gets a yellow card and a fine.The fine would be 20% of that week's salary, with the total pot after the season has finished going towards developing younger players in the amateur game.
The second time he does so, it's a red card, confiscation of 100% of the pay packet, and an automatic six-game FIFA ban from all competitions.
Any player assaulting or in any way harrassing a referee would immediately be sent off, and banned for a season - with 50% of his salary awarded to the aforementioned pot. I had originally intended to employ the death penalty for this offence, but fans smarter than I pointed out that, as a result of our Health & Safety culture, most players would be unfamiliar with death as a concept.
Not only would player indiscipline immediately disappear, their clubs would simply not buy any player likely to miss whole seasons at a time.
Thanks to the Mammon effect, it won't happen. But one can dream.