G14 press flack James Thellusson whines over “… a campaign to attack the G14.”
All because a UEFA official observed,
“There’s no need for such a group. It is a negative force in football.”
Pretty much.
Paul Canniff
A couple of items that will bring a smile today:
Both are in Flash Video format; if your browser lacks the proper Flash player, it should auto-install at the page.
The FA has chosen the indie group Embrace to record England’s official song for World Cup 2006. The history of English footie anthems has seen its ups and downs. For many it may come down to Skinner’s “Three Lions” or “World in Motion” by New Order.
My sentimental top pick is a recording I purchased in London just before Euro 2004. “Born in England”, the brainchild of X FM breakfast show host Christian O’Connell, was considered the best unofficial football anthem that year. Judge for yourself.
Paul Canniff
Another fine resource, particularly for non-League football, is Tony Kempster’s website. Through up to 7 steps of Conference football, with fixtures, tables, grids, map/miles displays, match attendance, and some info on promotion/relegation through the steps. A very thorough and useful site.
My wife and I spent a lovely few days in Winchester, Hampton, a couple of years ago. We loved England, but felt that we could both move to Winchester *tomorrow*. It’s great to see Winchester City, in 1st place in the first division of the Sydenham Wessex League with about 6 games to go. Here’s a side who is lucky to get 200 people to show up for a match and its cool to see them about to move up (to step 4 - the Southern Western Division, perhaps?); it seems that promotion can be a bit dodgy the lower you are, with several ducks having to line up before things change. It’s nice to be able to take a look at how a little club in a place like Winchester is doing, ya know?
Mike Campbell
The FA has not yet made a decision on whether to charge Didier Drogba over his handball goal against Manchester City. They ought to do so, especially after Drogba’s bizarre self-incriminating interview with the Beeb, a performance richly deserving of the assessment Bobby Moore once made of Alf Ramsey, “As a PR man, he would have made a splendid concentration camp commandant.”
That being said, the Usual Suspects™ should take note of Stuart Pearce’s own observations on Sylvain Distin’s red card-winning moment:
“Why speak to the referee? Referees are under enough pressure as it is without me knocking on his door and barking in his face. He gave an honest decision.
“I’ve played in teams who have scored goals that have been maybe free kicks, handballs or whatever and you just get on with it. But I’m not going to moan about decisions because I know next week we might get a handball decision the referee doesn’t see and we get a goal from it.”
Paul Canniff
Didier Drogba, perhaps figuring Chelsea isn’t hated enough these days, is unrepentant about handling the ball against Manchester City:
Chelsea striker Didier Drogba admits his second goal against Manchester City was indepted to a handball, but was largely unrepentant post-match.
In the absence of manager Jose Mourinho, who refused to speak to the press after the 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge, Drogba spoke of the crucial role he played in proceedings.
[…]
Drogba, who was also criticised for two pieces of theatrics when ‘fouled’, was largely unapologetic.
“Yes, it was handball but sometimes this is the game,” he said.
“I don’t know how to explain. The ball comes to me and I can’t do nothing but this.
“Okay, so take off the goal I scored.”
Needless to say, this was the dominant topic of discussion on yesterday’s 606 broadcast, available here as a podcast.
Damian P.
The BBC’s Stuart Roach has a nice piece about the highs and lows of being a Reading supporter, from the days when they were in the Fourth Division and couldn’t draw 2,000 fans, to clinching promotion to the Premiership yesterday.
At least he has something to be happy about…
Newcastle slumped to their fourth successive defeat as an unfortunate Lee Bowyer own goal assisted Charlton to victory at The Valley.
Damian P.
A Jihadist wannabe planned to poison the beer in an English football stadium, according to a report in The Times:
An Islamist terrorist sold poisoned burgers from a street-corner van and planned to contaminate beer at a football stadium, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.
The alleged extremist, one of seven on trial for plotting to blow up British targets, was also said to have suggested poisoning takeaway food and sabotaging BT.
[…]
Fired up for jihad (holy war), the men were said to be keen to fight in Afghanistan but were told by Mr Mahmood that this was not possible — the country was closed to foreigners.
Mr Mahmood, who worked for Transco National Grid, then allegedly gave examples of possible British targets to his accomplices. Some were intended to cause maximum financial damage by hitting utilities or telecommunication plants.
The court was told that other suggestions included taking a job as a beer-seller at a football stadium, smuggling in poison in a syringe. Babar said Mr Mahmood claimed that he had already sold toxic burgers from a mobile van.
That would explain the burgers I had outside Stamford Bridge a few years ago. As for the beer, the story doesn’t say which stadium was targeted, but if he wanted to get his 72 virgins really quickly, it was probably The Den.
Damian P.
Any thoughts/comments on footy video games? I’m interested in hearing what others might be playing and getting some reviews.
For me, the main one has been EA’s FIFA’04 for PS2. The gameplay is pretty solid. You get a massive amount of players/leagues (with basically only the stars having their faces rendered, although I’d expect an improvement here in subsequent versions). You can move players around from team to team to match real-world movements. I’ve enjoyed the ‘Manager’ feature, where you pick a team and manage them for 5 seasons — you get a budget to spend on training and you can identify the aspects of different players’ games that you want developed; after your first season, you can qualify for the Champions League, and that adds some fun; there’s also other domestic cup play, as well; get into the transfer market, with your budget increasing as you achieve success in the various competitions and meet certain managerial contract requirements. It’s a pretty full offering of video footy (and looks damn good on my 54″ screen); the different stadiums, and there’s even some club-specific fan chants/songs. I guess a feature that kind of leaves it dated is how the players’ individual skills are rated - a player with a 70 rating who has a breakout year will have to keep that game rating (at least, I don’t think you can change that), so it can be a bit dated. I can see picking up the FIFA’07 version when it comes out in the fall; I can imagine some gameplay improvements and the updated player files would be nice.
The other one for me has been FIFA for PSP (w Viera on the box cover). Enjoyable, too. The ‘Season’ management stuff only gives you one season to work with at a time. They have some fun ‘Challenge’ features, where you’re given a scenario from a real-life game and challenged to repeat it (scoring 3 goals in 20 minutes versus so-and-so) — I’ve gone through all of them now and it was pretty tough to get a few of them. There are some aspects of the gameplay that I find are an improvement over the FIFA’04 — the main one is that you can actually make a move and get past a defender (maybe I’m not doing it correctly, but I find this basically impossible with the FIFA’04 version).
I find a weakness for both of them is on corners (and other set pieces) - whatever option you choose, the ball is more likely than not to go right to the keeper. For FIFA’04, I found that if I kept the highlighted player from entering the box, then the ball was more likely to stay in play and you have a chance to get possession and try a shot on goal. As well, the top difficulty levels are a bit silly - particularly for the PSP version - you just can’t get anything going; for me, it’s almost like they need another difficulty level in there - though challenged, I pretty much clean up on the middle ones (draws are possible, losses rare), but the top level seems to be a bit much and not much fun.
Can anyone comment or give any info on other games you’ve been playing? Konami’s “Winning Eleven” or Sony’s “World Tour”? Like any of the sports games, if you like the sport, it’s the best bang-for-buck video buy that you can make, because it can always be renewed; you don’t go through 10 levels and then that’s it, you can always see something new.
Mike Campbell
Today BBC Sportsweek interviewed Man U chief exec David Gill. Other guests were Rick Parry of Liverpool and Keith Wyness of Everton.
Listen for yourself, of course, but let me venture two observations from the interviews:
Paul Canniff
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