Euro 2008; A Few Observations

Posted on June 15th, 2008 in International by The Mac

A few things have caught my eye in the first week or so.

1) Free kicks - how many from outside the box have been on target? Not many! I hate to say it, but I think the ball plays a part in this. It looks like the one I bought in 1982 from a newsagent.
2) Diving - Jesus, how many times are people going to get away with this? Refs were told to clamp down on it, as with the shirt pulling, yet it just goes on and on.
3) Defending - I think the team that wins this tournament will be the one with the best defence; so far, I reckon that’s Holland. My initial prediction has gone out the window, with the French back four looking like they met in the tunnel just before the game.
4) Coverage - ITV’s is crap. Radio Five’s has been crap on occasion too. Steve McLaren for fuck’s sake.
5) Best player - Wesley Sneijder for me.
6) Worst player - apart from Thuram has to be Wasilewski for Poland who gave away the penalty in the Austria game. He’s terrible.
7) The hosts - if it hadn’t been held in those two countries, I can’t see how they would have qualified.
8) The holders - glad they’re out, they were pants too.
9) It’s not over yet - despite Spain’s outstanding display in the first game, they struggled to break down a well-organised if not very creative Sweden team. Germany look good going forward but suspect in the middle of the back four. Italy are spawny bastards and could still get out of the group; the game against France could be a cracker. Luca Toni is a handful and against ropey Thuram and shouty Gallas so he could cause big problems.

So, just a couple of things, and I think the tournament is fairly open with the Dutch looking as early favourites over Spain. Van Nistelrooy looks a more rounded and better player than he was at United and Sneijder is class - even Ooijer, who I thought was bobbins has looked capable!

An Article That Doesn’t Mention Ronaldo…

Posted on June 6th, 2008 in International by The Mac

Right, work have stopped me using this site (I know, everyone’s gutted).

I got Spain in the sweep so I’m pretty chuffed; but I still think France are going to win Euro 2008. Ribery has had a great season, Henry’s fit, if Vieira doesn’t play there’s Flamini… Several pundits say they’re too old, but I say there’s experience - plus they’re not THAT old! Jesus, Henry is only 31 and still more than capable.

I don’t think Germany are going to do it, and Italy will miss Cannavaro. Portugal… oops, nearly did it. Nah. Not good enough.

So, France for me but Spain will be close behind; the quality in midfield and up front that Spain have in Fabregas, Xavi and Torres will see them through to the latter stages but experience will show through.

I think so, anyway. Your thoughts?

John Terry is a hilarious stand-up king

Posted on May 29th, 2008 in Idiots, International, fun by Left back

Speaking after scoring a goal in last night’s game against the mighty USA, John Terry said:

I’ve shown that I’m a big man. I take full responsibility for what happened in Moscow but I’m a man for the big games and I’ve shown that.

Firstly, anyone who says ‘I am a big man’ is opening himself up for the kind of ridicule and scorn normally reserved for men who thump their chests and say ‘Come on then! Come on then!’ in a pub fight and then get knocked out with one punch.

And let’s be clear, scoring in a meaningless friendly against relatively poor opposition like the USA does not make you a ‘big man’, nor is it a big game. Had he saved this kind of empty rhetoric for next season when he scored the winner against United or Arsenal or Liverpool in a crucial league game then you might say he has a point, but to do it after last night’s goal was just plain daft.

This was the best bit though:

That goal was for the fans and in particular the Chelsea fans who have been great to me and really helped me through it. That was for them.

Wow, I’m sure they’re grateful for an England goal.

‘Forget the Champions League, at least JT scored against England and he dedicated it to us! I feel so much better now!!’

Give this man his own TV show.

Just what is Don Givens suggesting about Giovanni Trapattoni?

Posted on February 13th, 2008 in International, Managers, funny by Left back

Have a listen to the first 5 or 6 seconds of this. The word, Don, is ‘interest’.

 Don Givens talks about Trapattoni

Trapattoni’s appointment could be bad news for Arsenal

Posted on February 13th, 2008 in International, Premiership by Left back

If, as expected, the FAI announce later today that Giovanni Trapattoni is to be the successor to Steve Staunton then Arsenal might find themselves looking for a new head of their youth academy.

It’s widely believed that Liam Brady will become his number 2 in the Republic of Ireland set-up. Having played under the Italian during his spell at Juventus Brady has been instrumental in selling the Ireland job to his former boss, assuring him that it could be a ‘beautiful thing’.

1987bradybulgaria

Brady has been in charge of the youth set-up at Arsenal for over ten years, after failed forays into management at Celtic and Brighton and Hove Albion. He has worked with closely with Arsene Wenger in turning around the Arsenal academy. When Wenger took over the players being produced were nowhere near good enough, now the Arsenal academy is widely accepted as one of the very best in Europe. Even if a player doesn’t make the grade at Arsenal he’s been given the kind of footballing education that would allow to him forge a decent career elsewhere.

Steve Sidwell, Moritz Volz, James Harper, Jermaine Pennant, Stuart Taylor, Ashley Cole, Jeremie Aliadiere and David Bentley are all products of the Arsenal youth system and all make their living at Premier League clubs.

There is talk that Arsene Wenger has given him the green light to combine both roles but the Arsenal job involves a lot of travelling and is full-time work. Many speculate that Brady could be the successor to Trapattoni when the Italian steps down from the Ireland role. At 69 years of age he doesn’t have too many years left in management and Brady made it clear he would like to return to management one day.

So the end of an era at Arsenal? Brady, an Arsenal icon, will be sorely missed if he is to leave. We’ll then have to wait and see if the man who successfully replaced the likes of Vieira and Henry on the pitch can do the same with Liam Brady off it.

——

Trapattoni previously on Left Back

Trappatoni for Ireland

Posted on February 3rd, 2008 in International, Managers, funny by Left back

Could Giovanni Trappatoni be Ireland’s new manager? Frankly, I couldn’t care less, but if he can provide the same kind of entertainment in his English speaking press conferences as he did in his German ones when manager of Bayern Munich I’ll be quite happy.

No Room For Emotion

Posted on January 31st, 2008 in International, Managers by The Mac

The news of Beckham’s exclusion from the Engerland squad (not a shock to many) for a friendly shows Capello is serious about the job; it would have been easy to bow down to the media and the populace. The biggest problem has to be his fitness; his Engerland performances have not been outstanding, but then again he’s not alone in that. SWP has been playing consistently for Chelsea this season and deserves his chance. Lennon is more likely to be picked for the U21s, but is another option.

Capello wants to stamp his authority on the team from the off and this is a bold move, especially for a friendly - good luck to him. Will he do the unthinkable and drop BFF too? His record at Real showed he was not afraid to make big decisions and change his mind when he had to; recalling Beckham after he said he wouldn’t play for them again.

Much as I am more bothered about Burley at Scotland, the Engerland soap opera is compelling.

(I heard Beckham’s situation at LA Galaxy likened to Albert Einstein in a pub team; perhaps a tad harsh, but not a bad analogy!)

A nation sighs, and wonders if there’s anything else on worth watching…

Posted on November 24th, 2007 in International, Managers by Chris

As conversation topic starters go, ‘Who do you reckon should get the England job then?’ scores impressively highly on the soon- to- be- in- a- coma- due- to- mind numbing- boredom factor, competing doggedly for Champions League placings with ‘Who’s on Jonathon Ross tonight?’, ‘Guess what Joan at work said about me today’, ‘Did you see that thing last night with whatisname?’ and ‘Has the £250,000 gone yet?’.

Every time I’ve sat with football fans since Wednesday night, I’ve been on edge, monitoring conversations, interrupting rudely anybody who takes a loaded sigh and troops off down the path marked: ‘see that match the other night? Fucking hell, of course I never wanted him in the first place…’.

Put enough like minded individuals around the same table though and the vacant England job isn’t so much an elephant in the room as a particularly dull elephant sized shadow foreign secretary eager to tell you all about the dream he had last night, it is the ultimate in hum-dum, it is Ewan McGregor motorcycling around the world and chatting to Parkinson about it, it is a dull enough conversation to have even the most vigilant non smokers hurling themselves out of the pub and into the sweet scented pollution of the smoking areas, and of course “everybody has an opinion”.

Except me. I do not have an opinion about who should get the England job simply because you can’t make me and life’s too short. So people tell me they think Martin O’ Neil would be perfect and instead of countering that Martin O’ Neil’s brand of sub Wimbledon, five men in midfield, Matt Elliot as emergency striker football is probably the absolute last thing that England need and where the hell are Villa in the league and yes he won championships with Celtic but, for Christ’s sake, the hysterical maid out of Tom & Jerry could have won championships with Celtic, especially with Rangers in one of their silly little moods they appear to get themselves in every couple of years, I nod my head, mumble words that even I don’t quite catch, sip my drink tentatively and eye up the salivation of the South Park quiz machine.

By the time the resident wit has cracked the obligatory ‘Maybe we should give Sven another shot!’ rib-tickler, it is fourteen hours since I last verbally communicated with the group, my mummers have evolved into an odd brand of strained tics and elongated vowels, like I’m Gollum and I’m paired with a particularly slow witted Pictionary partner, and I bitterly wonder why we stopped talking about the new series of ‘The Wire’ and what I would do to every member of the Dragon’s Den panel, given an empty room, a blow torch and a judge’s immunity and reflect that George Costanza was right and conversations must “resolve of their own momentum” and not simply be changed on the whim of a cretin who read something vaguely interesting about the F.A’s interviewing policy that apparently merits parroting.

For a brief shining moment I thought I might have something remotely interesting to say about the situation, along the lines of ‘how ironic that Gus Hiddink-who would be a perfect candidate for the job- is the one person who benefited most from McClaren’s ineptitude’, but, as any fan of tedious stand up comedy routines would point out, that’s not actually all that ironic and, anyway, everybody else seems to have made the same connection and, arf, arf, did you see that dozy umbrella he was hiding under the other night and of course I would never have gave him the job in the first place and at this point we’re right back where we bloody started and I’m not so much losing the will to live, more giving up on it completely and resolving to order a new one off Amazon as soon as I get a minute.

The underlying problem is, of course, that I don’t care. To me and, I suspect, most football fans the England manager is little more than an irritant, Les Dawson’s interfering mother-in-law, if the national coach were a writing device, he would be a clunky piece of exposition crowbarred in to an already lazily plotted costume drama.

The England manager’s only reason for existing appears to be to sit smugly next to your chairmen, munching biscuits and plotting to bring on your promising creative midfielder the Wednesday before the derby match at the weekend in the spiteful hope he does his leg in, at which point he can be all indignant and stress to the plebs the importance of international friendlies. They can be condescending with it like Sven, or brash with it like Venables or slightly unhinged and insane with it like Keegan but their primary function remains the same. England managers live to fuck with you and your team.

People are talking about Fabio Capello, and he seems to want it, which is a fine idea, but not as fine an idea as just scrapping the national team altogether, getting rid of its phone number, avoiding eye contact at work and clumsily attempting to chat up its best mate when we’re pissed in Yates’s wine lodge.

This won’t happen, of course, so whatever, balls to it, give it to Capello, if you must. Or bring back Kevin Keegan. Or give Cerys Matthews a shot at it, or Paulie Walnuts, or the bloke that plays Harold Bishop in Neighbors.

If you absolutely have to, get a copy of the sex offenders register, a blindfold and a biro and pick a name at random, do whatever the hell you want to do, just don’t expect me to participate in the selection, because I am incapable of expressing how little I care about the whole sodding issue.

chrismackin.wordpress.com

What the Irish media think of Steve Staunton

Posted on October 18th, 2007 in International, Media, TV, funny by Left back

Forward to about 4 minutes in, listen to RTE presenter Bill O’Herlihy *nearly* say the word most Irish football fans associate with manager Steve Staunton.

It’s not the pitch

Posted on October 17th, 2007 in Idiots, Injuries, International by Left back

I love the way this morning’s tabloids have blamed the artificial pitch in Russia for John Terry’s injury. You’d swear these pitches were cement painted to look like grass or something.

I play on one every week and they’re brilliant. You can slide and not rip all your skin off, they’re bouncy and not hard on the legs at all and the surface is true which means no holes, divots, slopes or anything else.

Might it just be that Terry is increasingly injury prone? Might it be that Mourinho was right when he tried to get the Chelsea medical team to investigate the underlying problems, much to Terry’s dislike?

A ‘locked knee’ would have happened on a normal pitch too. As for the match, there’s no disadvantage in playing on this artificial pitch but you can be quite sure it will be used an excuse if England don’t get the right result tonight.

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