Very little Azzurri things happening at the moment, with the Champions League and domestic proceedings taking precedent, but we can find something, right?
Anyway, here's couple of Azzurri musing's I've pondering from around the peninsula, and essentially things I can relate to this wonderful blog.
Osvaldo and Matri looking excellent while Pazzini..is well, not.
In light of the Azzurri's recent offensive ailments concerning our two of our usual starting strikers, it's very comforting to see the usual "fringe players" for Gli Azzurri making the most of the chance to lay a claim for a starting spot. Pablo Osvaldo arrived at Trigoria in the
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Sports News: Gatland rings Wales changes
Wales coach Warren Gatland has made six changes to his team for Saturday's World Cup bronze medal re-match against Australia in Cardiff.
Sports News: Gatland rings Wales changes
Wales coach Warren Gatland has made six changes to his team for Saturday's World Cup bronze medal re-match against Australia in Cardiff.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
OM : Labrune mise sur un "mercato intelligent"
Le pr�sident de l'Olympique de Marseille, Vincent Labrune, a fait savoir pendant un entretien relay� par L'Equipe qu'il pourrait envisager
Sports News: Hamilton happy at McLaren
Lewis Hamilton has indicated he will almost certainly sign a new deal with McLaren next year to continue what Martin Whitmarsh has described as his "love affair" with the team.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Deschamps, Anigo, Gignac, mercato : Labrune fixe la ligne de conduite
Au lendemain de la victoire sur le PSG, le pr�sident d�l�gu� de l'OM, Vincent Labrune, a �voqu� les nombreux dossiers chauds du club et le futur mercato hivernal. Battre le plus grand rival et se replacer dans la course � la Ligue des Champions. En terrassant le PSG, l'Olympique de Marseille a fait d'une pierre deux coups et a d�finitivement lanc� sa saison. Le club phoc�en a les moyens d'effacer son terrible d�but de saison en r�alisant une belle s�rie de r�sultats. � Quand on a 9 points en 10 matches, (...) Lire la suite.
Manchester United vs. Manchester City: In the Ultimate Test, Who's Better?
Ever since the Premier League came into existence, newspaper columnists and fans of other sports teams (read Liverpool) have—usually around Christmas time—claimed that Manchester United and Sir Alex Ferguson have finally halted.
And, come May, it is usually (12 times out of 19 Premier League seasons) Manchester United that prevail. Be it against Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United for the 1995-96 title, against Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal (well, almost every season), against Chelsea (many coaches!) and always against Liverpool.
If you've watched the Premier League for some time now, you might remember the (famous then and infamous now) “COME BACK WHEN YOU'VE WON 18” banner raised by the Liverpool fans against Manchester United and Eric Cantona. The tally then in 1994 was Liverpool 18, Manchester United 9. Now in late 2011 it is Liverpool 18, Manchester United 19, and if it were to change any time soon, there is more chances of it being 18-20 rather than 19-19.
This season, Manchester City are the biggest threats to United’s stronghold. It cannot be said at this point whether United will retain their title or not, but it sure seems headed for one of the two big clubs in Manchester. Let us see which team is better!
Sports News: Hamilton happy at McLaren
Lewis Hamilton has indicated he will almost certainly sign a new deal with McLaren next year to continue what Martin Whitmarsh has described as his "love affair" with the team.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Sports News: Wenger admits European hangover
Arsene Wenger admitted Arsenal suffered a Champions League hangover after being held to a frustrating 1-1 draw by a battling Fulham at Emirates Stadium.
Napoli president De Laurentiis tells Lavezzi girlfriend: Don't wear a Rolex during a recession
Milan Napoli Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis has moved to assure Ezequiel Lavezzi of his family's safety.
Video: Roma?s Osvaldo does a Rooney (nearly)
Flag FAIL Roma forward Osvaldo smacked a crisp bicycle kick into the net against Lecce last week. Cop a load of this. While Osvaldo was doing a Rooney, the assistant referee was doing a disservice to fans of the game everywhere. He flagged for offside and the goal was disallowed. If you pause the video [...]
Barca will fight to the end for Fabregas - Guardiola
Barca will fight to the end for Fabregas - Guardiola
BARCELONA, July 19 (Reuters) - Barcelona are ready to fight to bring Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas back to the club right up until the transfer deadline on Aug. 31, coach Pep Guardiola said on Tuesday.
Barca are in talks with Arsenal to buy the Spain midfielder, a long-term target for the Spanish and European champions, Guardiola, flanked by sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta, told a news conference.
"This year Arsenal has agreed to negotiate and we are working on it," Guardiola said.
"Barcelona has made an offer, Arsenal another and we have time until Aug. 31 and we'll try to reach an agreement," added the 40-year-old.
"There is a sum of money in the strong box set aside for this signing but if it doesn't work out it will be kept in the box for something else.
"We will fight to the end to try to get Cesc because we believe he will improve the team and the squad."
Fabregas, 24, came through Barcelona's youth academy at the same time as World Player of the Year Lionel Messi before joining Arsenal in 2003 at the age of 16.
He discussed his situation with Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger when he returned for pre-season training this month and did not join his team mates on a tour of Asia due to injury.
Wenger is trying to convince Fabregas there would be no greater achievement for him than to lead Arsenal to success and that it is not the right time for him to leave England.
Guardiola said that despite the push to land Fabregas, his priority was to sign a forward and Zubizarreta said the club were close to completing the purchase of Chile striker Alexis Sanchez from Serie A side Udinese.
Barca were also on the verge of selling striker Bojan Krkic to AS Roma, who have hired former Barca B coach Luis Enrique to lead them for the coming season, Zubizarreta added.
"As we understand it we are in the final stages of the negotiations [to sign Sanchez] and an agreement will happen very soon," former Barca and Spain goalkeeper Zubizarreta said.
"But I would have said the same thing this time last week. As in a good film, it seems sometimes the end takes a little longer," he added.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Blogathon: Craig Levein
The back of this blogathon is broken now, right. Has to be? Surely tae goodness.
We're moving through the night with a run of guest debaters. So welcome, please, Ross McCafferty known to the Twitter world as @holyroodpatter
Given the somewhat combative nature of this very good cause, I thought that I would change the rules ever so slightly and disagree with a former post of Tom's (in the knowledge he is mandated to come back and disagree again!). This is the offending post. Firstly, Tom must be commended for keeping such a cool head on the day of our inevitable defeat. Given our tortuous propensity for glorious defeat, the match against Spain seemed destined to be something akin to the home match, with a late heartbreak. In Alicante, however, it was simply not to be. The almost breathtaking majesty of Spain was a small comfort, as was the confidence bordering on arrogance of Goodwillie as he coolly stroked home a goal that for our efforts we did deserve.
But this tournament was not lost in Alicante, it was lost in Lithuania, in Czech Republic, even more tellingly, at Hampden. Robbed we may have been by a heinous dive, but up until that point we were uninspiring, and it served to underline our over reliance on Kenny Miller, an incredible servant for the cause (and whose commitment deserves a place at a major finals) but who won't be along for ever. Craig Levein's catch all ancestral policy to internationalists may have yielded Craig Mackail Smith, but it is those whom he doesn't select that tells us the most about his ill fated reign. Ross McCormack must have done something wrong not to merit a place, given his goal scoring form. Stephen Fletcher seems the only person who could conceivably link well with Kenny Miller should we ever deign to play more than one person up front. I don't for a minute suggest that Fletcher is in the right. But a footballer throwing his toys out the pram? It's hardly a breaking news story, that Levein's toys shortly joined Fletcher on the floor shows the character of a man for whom cutting off his nose to spite his face is almost second nature. Had he been the bigger man, we would have the benefit of someone who shows he can score goals in poor teams. Couldn't Fletcher have been the bigger man, you ask? Of course he could, and he should have, but a millionaire premier league footballer showing humility would require a societal sea change that Craig Levein isn't going to instigate.
It is perhaps more a matter of timing that I advocate a departure of Craig. I don't doubt his passion, indeed he is somewhat grown into the role, going from a seeming half baked ?well I might as well? to a genuine, if misguided believer that Scotland can beat anyone on their day. I went to our last major finals. It was an incredible experience. Call me arrogant, but I firmly believe that such events are always enhanced by the presence of Scotland fans. Loud we may be, but always well behaved, the right side of raucous and engage with all other fans around us. Partying with Moroccan and Brazilian fans in the shade of the Stade de la Beaujoire is a memory I cherish. And yet, it is edging frighteningly close to 20 years since our last major appearance. We need a one strike and you're out policy. In the nineties, mucking about with a formation and going down to an unedifying defeat against a declining Czech side would not have been a sacking offence. But in this century, we have paid the price for being over generous with our managers (whether that be letting them go without a fight, or not sacking them early enough). I want us to be in Brazil, and I don't think Craig Levein has the temperament to take us there. I can't even bring myself to type that we might not make France 2016, an expanded tournament that we must be part of. Returning to a country we last visited in a tournament shows just how long our decline has been. We cannot allow it to be terminal. We need a change. A foreign manager, perhaps? Should we break the bank for an established foreign name a la the FAI? Who knows, a Moyes, a Ferguson, a Coyle, is ludicrous wishful thinking, but we need something new. The time were we commend managers for blooding a few new players and making a decent fist of qualifying is over. We need a ruthless streak, on and off the pitch, and a new culture of death or glory might help us realise that it is success or nothing. Do or Die. Whatever clich� you prefer we need to start winning, and stop bottling the big occasions. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser, said Vince Lombardi, and while he has done some good, Levein remains, to all intents and purposes, a loser.
Bloody hell, we all find a role in life. Seems mine is choreographer of the Craig Levein cheerleaders troupe:
Dearie me.
Poor Craig Levein.
Bad enough that he doesn't have someone around to tell him to lose the beard.
He's also got to suffer the brickbats of a hurting Scottish nation.
Levein is a stubborn man, he's prickly in the face of criticism and he seems to have scant regard for the Scottish football media.
None of those things are necessarily bad things in a manager.
But they seem to exacerbate the impact of his mistakes.
The qualifying campaign he presided over was often uninspired.
The 4-6-0 was a move that always looked like being a disaster. Worse than that it gave the impression that he didn't trust his players.
You know why?
Because he didn't trust his players.
In the away game against Lithuania our hosts paid us the most unusual compliment of looking scared of us.
Did our brave boys push on from there, asset their dominance? No, they saw fear in the eyes of their opponents and they matched it with fear of their own. They retreated into their shells and the game could just about have been lost at the end.
We saw that again at Hampden more than once.
This Scotland team is scared of its own shadow.
The manager's fault? To an extent, yes. But he needs to build them up.
Could he widen his selection policy? I don't think it would make much difference. Levein and the SFA are searching all over the place for new talent.
So I'd say that Levein reckons the players people keep thrusting into his face aren't going to bring much to what he likes to call the "group."
The group. That's another thing. The players seem to enjoy the experience of international football under Levein. Yes, Fletcher remains an outcast but the manager has shown a willingness to build bridges with others who fell out with previous regimes.
What's so bad about a manager expecting a player whose behaviour threatened to destabilise the group apologising to him rather than the other way round?
But say we accept the idea that Levein is a numpty.
Who is the next manager we'll turn to? I can't see many Scots finding favour with a support that seems trapped in the mindset that we should be at major championships by default.
A big name? Who would take this job that could be said to have the stature of a big name?
It would be a brave SFA that repeated the foreigner experiment. Might be a brave foreigner who would take the job if they were to believe Bert Vogts' claim that a Scotland supporter spat on him.
So what do we have?
An inexperienced international manager with the loyalty of a developing group of players and the lessons of a disappointing qualifying campaign behind him.
We have an averagely talented group of players who seem to buy into Levein's methods but are too often hamstrung by their own timidity and fear.
The trick Levein needs to pull off is to convince them that they are good enough to compete, good enough to control games. Because we lack players playing at the very highest level too many of them find that unfamiliar in international matches.
Like the manager they need to learn.
I'm not convinced that either Fletcher or McCormack would be suited to the role that Miller plays. Mackail-Smith has shown he can do a passable imitation.
That's not snubbing, that's searching for a sensible continuity.
Here's what it boils down to. Our decline started long before Craig Levein took over. It started long before we stopped qualifying for tournaments - and that, essentially, is all we could do, we've never been a serious international team at these tournaments - and we've done hee-haw about it for too long.
If Levein, who is absolutely not leaving this job for the foreseeable incidentally, takes us to Rio, he'll be a hero.
If he doesn't he won't be the architect of our failure, he'll be another victim of the complacency and inaction of a nation that spent 24 years thinking all was well because they could spend a week or two at an international tournament and the come hame.
We should have sympathy for him. Because we're all victims of the same thing.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
This hour of the blogathon was brought to you by the Hibs Club.
We're moving through the night with a run of guest debaters. So welcome, please, Ross McCafferty known to the Twitter world as @holyroodpatter
Given the somewhat combative nature of this very good cause, I thought that I would change the rules ever so slightly and disagree with a former post of Tom's (in the knowledge he is mandated to come back and disagree again!). This is the offending post. Firstly, Tom must be commended for keeping such a cool head on the day of our inevitable defeat. Given our tortuous propensity for glorious defeat, the match against Spain seemed destined to be something akin to the home match, with a late heartbreak. In Alicante, however, it was simply not to be. The almost breathtaking majesty of Spain was a small comfort, as was the confidence bordering on arrogance of Goodwillie as he coolly stroked home a goal that for our efforts we did deserve.
But this tournament was not lost in Alicante, it was lost in Lithuania, in Czech Republic, even more tellingly, at Hampden. Robbed we may have been by a heinous dive, but up until that point we were uninspiring, and it served to underline our over reliance on Kenny Miller, an incredible servant for the cause (and whose commitment deserves a place at a major finals) but who won't be along for ever. Craig Levein's catch all ancestral policy to internationalists may have yielded Craig Mackail Smith, but it is those whom he doesn't select that tells us the most about his ill fated reign. Ross McCormack must have done something wrong not to merit a place, given his goal scoring form. Stephen Fletcher seems the only person who could conceivably link well with Kenny Miller should we ever deign to play more than one person up front. I don't for a minute suggest that Fletcher is in the right. But a footballer throwing his toys out the pram? It's hardly a breaking news story, that Levein's toys shortly joined Fletcher on the floor shows the character of a man for whom cutting off his nose to spite his face is almost second nature. Had he been the bigger man, we would have the benefit of someone who shows he can score goals in poor teams. Couldn't Fletcher have been the bigger man, you ask? Of course he could, and he should have, but a millionaire premier league footballer showing humility would require a societal sea change that Craig Levein isn't going to instigate.
It is perhaps more a matter of timing that I advocate a departure of Craig. I don't doubt his passion, indeed he is somewhat grown into the role, going from a seeming half baked ?well I might as well? to a genuine, if misguided believer that Scotland can beat anyone on their day. I went to our last major finals. It was an incredible experience. Call me arrogant, but I firmly believe that such events are always enhanced by the presence of Scotland fans. Loud we may be, but always well behaved, the right side of raucous and engage with all other fans around us. Partying with Moroccan and Brazilian fans in the shade of the Stade de la Beaujoire is a memory I cherish. And yet, it is edging frighteningly close to 20 years since our last major appearance. We need a one strike and you're out policy. In the nineties, mucking about with a formation and going down to an unedifying defeat against a declining Czech side would not have been a sacking offence. But in this century, we have paid the price for being over generous with our managers (whether that be letting them go without a fight, or not sacking them early enough). I want us to be in Brazil, and I don't think Craig Levein has the temperament to take us there. I can't even bring myself to type that we might not make France 2016, an expanded tournament that we must be part of. Returning to a country we last visited in a tournament shows just how long our decline has been. We cannot allow it to be terminal. We need a change. A foreign manager, perhaps? Should we break the bank for an established foreign name a la the FAI? Who knows, a Moyes, a Ferguson, a Coyle, is ludicrous wishful thinking, but we need something new. The time were we commend managers for blooding a few new players and making a decent fist of qualifying is over. We need a ruthless streak, on and off the pitch, and a new culture of death or glory might help us realise that it is success or nothing. Do or Die. Whatever clich� you prefer we need to start winning, and stop bottling the big occasions. Show me a good loser and I'll show you a loser, said Vince Lombardi, and while he has done some good, Levein remains, to all intents and purposes, a loser.
Bloody hell, we all find a role in life. Seems mine is choreographer of the Craig Levein cheerleaders troupe:
Dearie me.
Poor Craig Levein.
Bad enough that he doesn't have someone around to tell him to lose the beard.
He's also got to suffer the brickbats of a hurting Scottish nation.
Levein is a stubborn man, he's prickly in the face of criticism and he seems to have scant regard for the Scottish football media.
None of those things are necessarily bad things in a manager.
But they seem to exacerbate the impact of his mistakes.
The qualifying campaign he presided over was often uninspired.
The 4-6-0 was a move that always looked like being a disaster. Worse than that it gave the impression that he didn't trust his players.
You know why?
Because he didn't trust his players.
In the away game against Lithuania our hosts paid us the most unusual compliment of looking scared of us.
Did our brave boys push on from there, asset their dominance? No, they saw fear in the eyes of their opponents and they matched it with fear of their own. They retreated into their shells and the game could just about have been lost at the end.
We saw that again at Hampden more than once.
This Scotland team is scared of its own shadow.
The manager's fault? To an extent, yes. But he needs to build them up.
Could he widen his selection policy? I don't think it would make much difference. Levein and the SFA are searching all over the place for new talent.
So I'd say that Levein reckons the players people keep thrusting into his face aren't going to bring much to what he likes to call the "group."
The group. That's another thing. The players seem to enjoy the experience of international football under Levein. Yes, Fletcher remains an outcast but the manager has shown a willingness to build bridges with others who fell out with previous regimes.
What's so bad about a manager expecting a player whose behaviour threatened to destabilise the group apologising to him rather than the other way round?
But say we accept the idea that Levein is a numpty.
Who is the next manager we'll turn to? I can't see many Scots finding favour with a support that seems trapped in the mindset that we should be at major championships by default.
A big name? Who would take this job that could be said to have the stature of a big name?
It would be a brave SFA that repeated the foreigner experiment. Might be a brave foreigner who would take the job if they were to believe Bert Vogts' claim that a Scotland supporter spat on him.
So what do we have?
An inexperienced international manager with the loyalty of a developing group of players and the lessons of a disappointing qualifying campaign behind him.
We have an averagely talented group of players who seem to buy into Levein's methods but are too often hamstrung by their own timidity and fear.
The trick Levein needs to pull off is to convince them that they are good enough to compete, good enough to control games. Because we lack players playing at the very highest level too many of them find that unfamiliar in international matches.
Like the manager they need to learn.
I'm not convinced that either Fletcher or McCormack would be suited to the role that Miller plays. Mackail-Smith has shown he can do a passable imitation.
That's not snubbing, that's searching for a sensible continuity.
Here's what it boils down to. Our decline started long before Craig Levein took over. It started long before we stopped qualifying for tournaments - and that, essentially, is all we could do, we've never been a serious international team at these tournaments - and we've done hee-haw about it for too long.
If Levein, who is absolutely not leaving this job for the foreseeable incidentally, takes us to Rio, he'll be a hero.
If he doesn't he won't be the architect of our failure, he'll be another victim of the complacency and inaction of a nation that spent 24 years thinking all was well because they could spend a week or two at an international tournament and the come hame.
We should have sympathy for him. Because we're all victims of the same thing.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
This hour of the blogathon was brought to you by the Hibs Club.
michigan football roster michigan football schedule michigan state football
MLS Announces Schedule Format For 2012
Changes were bound to happen when Major League Soccer added a 19th club for the 2012 season. With an odd number of teams and a desire to reduce some of the travel for some clubs, the balanced schedule was going to go out the window for a while and changes were going to have to?[continue reading]
michigan football roster michigan football schedule michigan state football
Friday, November 25, 2011
Gervinho / Arsenal boss Wenger has no concerns over Gervinho lack of goals
Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has no problem with Gervinho's lack of goals.
Gervinho has bagged just two since arriving at the Emirates from Lille in the summer.
Read more Gervinho news
Gervinho has bagged just two since arriving at the Emirates from Lille in the summer.
Read more Gervinho news
euro soccer results euro soccer schedule euro soccer standings
Real Madrid, Mourinho : "J?ai les deux meilleurs attaquants au monde"
Jos� Mourinho est un homme combl�. Le technicien du Real Madrid poss�de actuellement une doublette, voire une triplette si l'on compte Cristiano Ro
Tim Cahill / Moyes backing Cahill to break Everton goal drought
Everton manager David Moyes expects Tim Cahill to soon break his 11-month Premier League goal drought.
Read more Tim Cahill news
Read more Tim Cahill news
Stoke City - Blackburn Rovers Preview: Tony Pulis' men aiming to avoid fifth consecutive Premier League defeat
Steve Kean's side go into this game having not been able to register a single victory away from home, while the Potters try to put an end to their four-match losing streak
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Thursday, November 24, 2011
FA Cup likes this - live game to be shown on Facebook
FA Cup likes this - live game to be shown on Facebook
LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) - An FA Cup qualifying round tie that would normally attract a crowd of about 90 people could boast a potential global audience of 700 million after an agreement was reached to broadcast Friday's match on the social networking site Facebook.
The extra-preliminary round fixture between Ascot United and Wembley will become the first match ever to be broadcast live on the site after a deal was struck between the Football Association and the competition's new main sponsors Budweiser.
Budweiser's marketing director Iain Newell said the company, who earlier this year signed a three-year sponsorship deal with the FA worth 24 million pounds ($39.4 million), were intent on taking soccer's oldest competition back to global pre-eminence, and at the same time, take it back to the fans.
"The FA Cup started 140 years ago this year and what better way to do demonstrate our commitment than by broadcasting the very first kick to a global audience via Facebook," Newell told Reuters.
"This is the first time any match has been broadcast live on the social network which is great news for fans and clubs alike."
The clubs, who play in suburban leagues at the lower end of the English soccer pyramid, will both be paid nominal broadcast fees for the match at the ground situated within the boundaries of the Ascot Racecourse and has a capacity of around 1,500.
Ascot chairman Mike Harrison told Reuters: "Naturally this is the biggest thing that has ever happened to the club.
"People talk of the FA Cup losing its gloss and that's true if Manchester City or Bolton Wanderers put out their reserve team to play a match.
"But the whole town is absolutely buzzing. We run 67 teams in all age groups and have 800 players on our books and are one of the biggest grass roots clubs in the country.
"We had 88 people for a league match last night, but might get 500 or even 800 for Friday's game. The fact millions more might well be watching on Facebook is astonishing. The whole place has gone bananas.
"The FA Cup has lost none of its magic as far as we are concerned. Not only that but the wife of our manager Jeff Lamb is expecting their first child on Friday. It promises to be quite a day."
An FA spokesman said other matches in the qualifying competition could also be shown on Facebook, but added: "There are no plans to do so yet, but it could happen up until the first round stage when the broadcasting contract between the FA, ITV and ESPN comes into operation."
($1 = 0.609 pounds)
England women defeat Serbia in Euro 2013 qualifier
England are back in second place in their Women's Euro 2013 qualifying group with a comfortable 2-0 win against Serbia at Doncaster.
michigan state football nfl football history nike football gear
Report: Carlos Tevez's agent meets AC Milan chiefs over January loan move (Goal.com)
A loan deal could see the Argentine striker head to San Siro once the transfer window opens in January as the Italians spark contact with his representative.
Birmingham winger Jean Beausejour will reject Wigan - again
Wigan Athletic
Birmingham City
Birmingham City winger Jean Beausejour is ready to reject Wigan Athletic.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Blogathon: Referee!
7am. Get up, grab Sunday and don't let it go.
And spare a quid or two for the Homeless World Cup and Alzheimer Scotland.
You ask for suggestions for blogathon topics on Twitter you get inundated with chat about referees. So, for y'all, here goes.
Referees. What a shower of crooked bastards.
A fact: everyone thinks referees are out to disadvantage his or her team.
I've been reading a book about a couple of decades in the history of Hibs. It seems we went 20 years without committing a foul in Glasgow yet being penalised for almost every fair tackle.
That seems a blinkered nonsense.
I've seen bad decisions given against my team. And I've seen bad decisions given for my team.
I think last year certain episodes gave the issue of refereeing in Scotland an unhelpful camouflage.
Because talking about corruption, bias, a lack of neutrality - although it's massively tempting - obscures what are probably far more real and insidious problems with the standard of refereeing.
And that needs to be sorted out.
A few suggestions that I think are worth exploring.
Referees should be full time. I know it's expensive and some people might not be attracted to it as a full time job.
But football's a very different game now. It shouldn't be officiated by gentleman amateurs.
What would they do all day?
Well, they'd get better at refereeing for a start and they'd also be involved, seguing perfectly into my next point, with outreach programmes.
Every school should have a qualified referee. And every school and every youth football club should get regular visits from referees.
This has probably, I hope, changed now but I don't ever remember actually being taught the rules of the game.
It was as if we were expected to learn them by a process of osmosis or simply by learning not to do something after being penalised for doing it the first time.
That creates a knowledge gap that is the filled by peer groups, parents or television pundits.
There is no way that's a good thing. Because if we think referees often have a shaky grasp of the rules they look masterminds compared to Joe Public.
The number of times I hear at half time or full time:
"Player A did that and nothing happened, but then our Player B did that and he got booked. The ref's a f*cking nightmare, man."
No. He's not. Because invariably what's just been described are two similar but actually quite different things that the referee has called absolutely spot on.
Meeting referees from a young age would also help convince people that refs are normal blokes.
That means it's not nice to scream and shout at them when they've done something you don't like. And screaming and shouting at people, although a recognised footballing performance enhancement technique, doesn't always help people perform at their best.
So get the Respect agenda or the Football not Fiasco agenda or whatever the hell it is on track.
On track in this instance would mean zero tolerance and heavy, consistent punishments. Not a press release, a marketing slogan and an advertising board.
Ask referees what they want. What would make their job easier?
We might not be able to provide it through our own authorities but we might be able to lead the debate on things like TV replays or whatever the consensus of the refereeing fraternity suggests.
Finally, we should all simmer down. Football's an imperfect game and referees are not superhuman. Mistakes should be kept to a minimum but they will happen.
Let's try meeting them with a stiff upper lip not a hysterical rant. It would be healthier.
And one last thing. Start coming down hard, extremely hard, on cheats.
Too often when a player cheats, it's not diving or play acting it's cheating with the intent of gaining an unfair advantage, it's the referee who is painted as the villain of the piece.
Stop that. It's like treating the victim of a confidence trickster and the guilty party not the victim.
It's a hard enough job with conniving footballer muddying the waters.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
And spare a quid or two for the Homeless World Cup and Alzheimer Scotland.
You ask for suggestions for blogathon topics on Twitter you get inundated with chat about referees. So, for y'all, here goes.
Referees. What a shower of crooked bastards.
A fact: everyone thinks referees are out to disadvantage his or her team.
I've been reading a book about a couple of decades in the history of Hibs. It seems we went 20 years without committing a foul in Glasgow yet being penalised for almost every fair tackle.
That seems a blinkered nonsense.
I've seen bad decisions given against my team. And I've seen bad decisions given for my team.
I think last year certain episodes gave the issue of refereeing in Scotland an unhelpful camouflage.
Because talking about corruption, bias, a lack of neutrality - although it's massively tempting - obscures what are probably far more real and insidious problems with the standard of refereeing.
And that needs to be sorted out.
A few suggestions that I think are worth exploring.
Referees should be full time. I know it's expensive and some people might not be attracted to it as a full time job.
But football's a very different game now. It shouldn't be officiated by gentleman amateurs.
What would they do all day?
Well, they'd get better at refereeing for a start and they'd also be involved, seguing perfectly into my next point, with outreach programmes.
Every school should have a qualified referee. And every school and every youth football club should get regular visits from referees.
This has probably, I hope, changed now but I don't ever remember actually being taught the rules of the game.
It was as if we were expected to learn them by a process of osmosis or simply by learning not to do something after being penalised for doing it the first time.
That creates a knowledge gap that is the filled by peer groups, parents or television pundits.
There is no way that's a good thing. Because if we think referees often have a shaky grasp of the rules they look masterminds compared to Joe Public.
The number of times I hear at half time or full time:
"Player A did that and nothing happened, but then our Player B did that and he got booked. The ref's a f*cking nightmare, man."
No. He's not. Because invariably what's just been described are two similar but actually quite different things that the referee has called absolutely spot on.
Meeting referees from a young age would also help convince people that refs are normal blokes.
That means it's not nice to scream and shout at them when they've done something you don't like. And screaming and shouting at people, although a recognised footballing performance enhancement technique, doesn't always help people perform at their best.
So get the Respect agenda or the Football not Fiasco agenda or whatever the hell it is on track.
On track in this instance would mean zero tolerance and heavy, consistent punishments. Not a press release, a marketing slogan and an advertising board.
Ask referees what they want. What would make their job easier?
We might not be able to provide it through our own authorities but we might be able to lead the debate on things like TV replays or whatever the consensus of the refereeing fraternity suggests.
Finally, we should all simmer down. Football's an imperfect game and referees are not superhuman. Mistakes should be kept to a minimum but they will happen.
Let's try meeting them with a stiff upper lip not a hysterical rant. It would be healthier.
And one last thing. Start coming down hard, extremely hard, on cheats.
Too often when a player cheats, it's not diving or play acting it's cheating with the intent of gaining an unfair advantage, it's the referee who is painted as the villain of the piece.
Stop that. It's like treating the victim of a confidence trickster and the guilty party not the victim.
It's a hard enough job with conniving footballer muddying the waters.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
Blogathon: Where's Vlad Going?
The Homeless World Cup and Alzheimer Scotland. Two charities doing fantastic work. You know the donation drill.
Penultimate post time.
A suggestion from @theftblproject just minutes ago planted the seed for this post.
His Tweet read:
"In your very first post you wrote "Maybe Mr Romanov knows where this is going" - Five years on, does he?"
That was five years ago tomorrow.
I honestly didn't think Vladimir Romanov would still own Hearts in November 2011.
But he does.
In the interim he's spent vast sums of money, indulged in a footrace with Hibs to see which Edinburgh club could get through the most managers and assembled a huge squad.
Back in 2006 Hearts were coming off the back of a season where they'd won the Scottish Cup - and already this morning I've been forced to write glowingly of a certain semi final victory - and split the Old Firm in the SPL.
Yet by that November I was forced to wonder if Romanov knew where it was going.
It was a quick descent from a heady beginning.
Hearts, it must be said, have not been chumps these past five years.
Far from it.
But the promise of the early months quickly dissipated. As I said in my post with Laurie Dunsire, when I was tasked with "selling" Hearts to a new owner, Romanov had the right dreams, he might even just about have invested enough money. But his strategy has lacked too much direction.
He spent most of his money on over priced foreign imports. The rest he just squandered.
That's not the fault of any particular mafia, it's probably not even the fault - much as I like to pin everything on him - of Rupert Murdoch.
Has Vladimir Romanov being treated in a way that a Scottish owner wouldn't be?
Perhaps. But then I've never heard of a Scottish owner leaving out nuts for the "media monkeys." The dysfunctional aspect of the relationship has been reciprocal.
Time yet, though, to appraise the reign of Romanov.
For now we appear to have reached something like the end. Or the beginning of the end.
As @theftblproject asks, does Romanov now know where this is going?
To which the honest response is: can anyone genuinely begin to guess whether he does or he doesn't?
What is he trying to sell?
A great football club. That's clear. And a club with potential within the limits of Scottish club football.
A stadium that has a saleable value but, as yet, not an easily or cheaply available suitable alternative location.
A gargantuan squad that requires major pruning but also contains some fine young assets.
A colossal debt that is owed to the bank controlled by Vladimir Romanov.
To further muddy the waters there also seems to be certain issues besetting the Lithuanian banking sector. That might have no impact at all. Or it might have a major impact.
Finally there is an owner who wants away and is eyeing up a transfer into the theatre world.
What do Hearts need?
An interested party.
And an indication of what exactly Romanov's exit strategy actually is.
An indication that you want to sell and sharing your love of the theatre is grand. Saying you're not putting any more money in is fine.
But when you control that level of debt in a company potential buyers need to know more.
Until that information is forthcoming we can't know how this will play out.
We could be in this state of flux for a while: Hearts developing a strategy to live within their means while Romanov lets them get on with it.
Or it could be quicker. I can't see someone coming in willing to take on the debt but a deal that wouldn't destroy the new owner's bank balance nor hurt Romanov's pride would be in the best interests of everyone.
And a stable Hearts, a Hearts sure of their financial footing, is also in the best interests of Scottish football.
But only time will tell.
So, there we are.
5 years and 1020 articles later, I can say it again:
"Maybe Mr Romanov knows where this is going."
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
Penultimate post time.
A suggestion from @theftblproject just minutes ago planted the seed for this post.
His Tweet read:
"In your very first post you wrote "Maybe Mr Romanov knows where this is going" - Five years on, does he?"
That was five years ago tomorrow.
I honestly didn't think Vladimir Romanov would still own Hearts in November 2011.
But he does.
In the interim he's spent vast sums of money, indulged in a footrace with Hibs to see which Edinburgh club could get through the most managers and assembled a huge squad.
Back in 2006 Hearts were coming off the back of a season where they'd won the Scottish Cup - and already this morning I've been forced to write glowingly of a certain semi final victory - and split the Old Firm in the SPL.
Yet by that November I was forced to wonder if Romanov knew where it was going.
It was a quick descent from a heady beginning.
Hearts, it must be said, have not been chumps these past five years.
Far from it.
But the promise of the early months quickly dissipated. As I said in my post with Laurie Dunsire, when I was tasked with "selling" Hearts to a new owner, Romanov had the right dreams, he might even just about have invested enough money. But his strategy has lacked too much direction.
He spent most of his money on over priced foreign imports. The rest he just squandered.
That's not the fault of any particular mafia, it's probably not even the fault - much as I like to pin everything on him - of Rupert Murdoch.
Has Vladimir Romanov being treated in a way that a Scottish owner wouldn't be?
Perhaps. But then I've never heard of a Scottish owner leaving out nuts for the "media monkeys." The dysfunctional aspect of the relationship has been reciprocal.
Time yet, though, to appraise the reign of Romanov.
For now we appear to have reached something like the end. Or the beginning of the end.
As @theftblproject asks, does Romanov now know where this is going?
To which the honest response is: can anyone genuinely begin to guess whether he does or he doesn't?
What is he trying to sell?
A great football club. That's clear. And a club with potential within the limits of Scottish club football.
A stadium that has a saleable value but, as yet, not an easily or cheaply available suitable alternative location.
A gargantuan squad that requires major pruning but also contains some fine young assets.
A colossal debt that is owed to the bank controlled by Vladimir Romanov.
To further muddy the waters there also seems to be certain issues besetting the Lithuanian banking sector. That might have no impact at all. Or it might have a major impact.
Finally there is an owner who wants away and is eyeing up a transfer into the theatre world.
What do Hearts need?
An interested party.
And an indication of what exactly Romanov's exit strategy actually is.
An indication that you want to sell and sharing your love of the theatre is grand. Saying you're not putting any more money in is fine.
But when you control that level of debt in a company potential buyers need to know more.
Until that information is forthcoming we can't know how this will play out.
We could be in this state of flux for a while: Hearts developing a strategy to live within their means while Romanov lets them get on with it.
Or it could be quicker. I can't see someone coming in willing to take on the debt but a deal that wouldn't destroy the new owner's bank balance nor hurt Romanov's pride would be in the best interests of everyone.
And a stable Hearts, a Hearts sure of their financial footing, is also in the best interests of Scottish football.
But only time will tell.
So, there we are.
5 years and 1020 articles later, I can say it again:
"Maybe Mr Romanov knows where this is going."
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
football visors highest scoring college football game history of soccer
Rhys Williams / Williams intent on juggling Australia and Middlesbrough duties
Rhys Williams says the decision for him to come off before the final whistle for the first time this season was not because of an injury sustained on Australian national team duty recently.
Read more Rhys Williams news
Read more Rhys Williams news
Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger criticizes Manchester City’s record financial losses
League leaders announced a deficit of 197 million pounds, with their wage bill higher than turnover, leaving the Frenchman worried that UEFA cannot regulate the biggest clubs
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Spurs 2 Aston Villa 0: Will McLeish ever learn or is this as good as it gets?
I don't know where to start. Honestly, there are so many things but to top it all off, I'm proper pissed off. It was just so predictable and knowing what is going to happen and that we have no real chance is horrible. This isn't what Aston Villa is about.
Let me start with what is fresh. The manager once spoke about dropping defenders that couldn't defend. Not long after saying that James Collins failed to defend a set piece and the shortest player on the pitch scored. Tonight, he failed with the basics. Does that mean he is going to get dropped now?
Simon Grayson under pressure at Leeds as Ken Bates sets sights on top | Tom Stevens
The Leeds chairman says his seventh-placed side are too low in the Championship table. His manager has defensive work to do
Whether all football fans welcome them or not, international breaks usually manage to silence the upper echelons of domestic league football for a fortnight every so often. But it takes more than an England friendly against the current world champions to keep the outspoken Leeds United chairman, Ken Bates, quiet.
Forty-eight hours prior to England facing Spain last Saturday, Bates made it clear that Leeds United's position of seventh in the Championship was not good enough 16 games into the season. This was followed up with all too familiar soundbites ? the club "giving away points rather than them being earned by the opposition" and "losing games rather than being beaten". Such comments only serve to strengthen Leeds fans' feelings of deja vu. More worrying was perhaps Bates's further claim that "heart-searching" discussions among the Leeds United staff had taken place all week. The Leeds United faithful will be hoping such behind the scenes discussions have proven constructive rather than turning into blame-shifting contests.
Inconsistency has yet again proved to be the main problem for the west Yorkshire club this season. A disastrous 5-0 home defeat to a Blackpool side quietly creeping up the table was followed by an impressive 1-0 win at Leicester City who, despite their apparent financial muscle, are sitting a disappointing 12th. And with a lunchtime kick-off at Burnley awaiting this Saturday, Simon Grayson will be desperate to build on the gritty display that proved so efficient at the King Power Stadium. The question is whether Bates's comments will risk destabilising what Grayson insists is a tightly knit group of players. The manager is adamant that a top-two finish is not out of reach this season. Such optimism is perhaps not completely blind, but definitely not universally shared among those following the club.
There are already several factors that have contributed to the topsy-turvy season Leeds have had so far. The arguments about limited on-field investment won't go away, but big-spending underachievers like Leicester have given Bates the ammunition to keep the dissidents at bay for the time being.
Having said that, the decision to cash in on the goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel for a substantial sum, while bringing in more experienced but significantly cheaper options as the last line of defence has backfired spectacularly. Paul Rachubka, who played under Grayson at Blackpool, made errors against both Coventry and Peterborough then suffered a first-half horror against the Seasiders in the recent 5-0 home debacle.
A swift move in the loan market for Reading's Alex McCarthy looks likely to spell the end for Rachubka at Leeds, and fans are hoping McCarthy proves a decidedly safer deputy until the first-choice Andy Lonergan returns from his injury. Defender Andy O'Brien also boasts experience but looked completely off the pace early in the season. He seems to have found some form on retuning to the first XI at Leicester, when he replaced the unfortunate youngster Tom Lees, who was serving a suspension after being sent off for a deliberate goal-preventing handball in the Blackpool game.
Like last season Leeds United have more than enough firepower up front, and outscoring the opposition has papered over defensive frailties several times in the last 15 months. If Grayson fails to meet the play-off expectations that seem to be the absolute minimum Bates will accept this time around it seems likely to be Leeds United's continuing defensive shortcomings that will prove to be his downfall. With his recent comments Bates has decided to turn up the heat.
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
My Appearance on Around The League
Well, starting this week I am now the new FC Dallas correspondent on CSRN’s Around the League. Here is my review of the FCD season on this week’s episode. (I come in around the 38 minute mark)
high school soccer rules history of football history of soccer
Re-Entry Draft To Make MLS Offseason Even More Fun | WVHooligan - Soccer Blog [Digg]
Part of the title is serious and the other part is�sarcasm. You take your pick. No really the new MLS Re-Entry Draft will soon be under way. Loads of
Monday, November 21, 2011
2011 MLS Cup Preview: Five Points And Predictions
Well, here we are, the final game of the 2011 season. MLS Cup 2011 or 2011 MLS Cup…whatever way you look at it we are at the final game of the year. I’ve been sitting quiet all week on this game, mostly due to the work load I’ve had at my day job but also?[continue reading]
Football League: your thoughts | Scott Anthony
Southampton, Charlton and Southend march on, while El Hadji Diouf made the first steps towards becoming a Donny legend
? All of Saturday's results and scores
? Championship leaders Southampton beat Coventry 2-4 to record their best start to the season since Peter Sallis was born, Piet Mondrain painted Composition with Red, and Yellow and Blue and car tax discs were introduced 90 years ago. Richard Chaplow and the excellent Adam Lallana put Southampton ahead, but two goals early in the second half pulled Coventry level before Guly Do Prado and Steve De Ridder scored late on to turn the Sky Blues a gloomier shade. Extraordinary to think that just over a decade ago struggling City were seemingly permanent members of the top-flight club.
? Elsewhere at the top, West Ham beat Hull 0-2 to move second and claim their first victory over a top-six side this season. Cardiff beat fellow high-flyers Crystal Palace 2-0 to stay on the Hammers' shoulder. Blackpool beat in-form Millwall 1-0 at Bloomfield Road thanks to a goal from the veteran's veteran Kevin Phillips.
? Doncaster pulled off the win of the day as they bested Paul Jewell's inconsistent Ipswich side 2-3. Billy Sharp, a reputed transfer target for the Tractor Boys, scored for the second time in a traumatic week after losing his son, while the former Liverpool striker El Hadji Diouf also made a star turn. The lovable Senegalese striker netted twice as Dean Saunders's side moved level on points with Coventry at the bottom of the Championship table. You just can't keep a good-player-with-a-questionable-temperament down. Fellow strugglers Bristol City also had reason to cheer as they beat Burnley 3-1 while Steve Cotterill made an unsuccessful return to Fratton Park (only 22 days after he quit the south coast) as his Nottingham Forest team went down 3-0 to Portsmouth.
? League One leaders Charlton Athletic made short work of Preston North End, thrashing the out-of-form Lancashire side 5-2 at The Valley after PNE manager and master man-motivator Phil Brown had prepared his side for the match by making them clean the Deepdale terraces after last week's home loss to Bournemouth. Bradley Wright-Phillips and Johnnie Jackson were among the goals for Chris Powell's side who increased their lead at the top as title-rivals Huddersfield and Sheffield Wednesday were held to draws.
? After seeing off Sheffield Wednesday and Charlton, Stevenage Borough completed an impressive trio of victories over League One's big clubs by beating Sheffield United 2-1. Scott Laird got the winner for Graham Westley's (perhaps a John Beck for the new millennium?) supposedly sledge-happy side. No one likes New Town football clubs, they don't care.
? Disappointment for Dario Gradi in League Two as the Sir Alex Ferguson of the lower league's youthful Crewe side went down 3-0 at home to improving Torquay. The defeat followed a typically entertaining LWLWLWL run of form for the Railwaymen ? quite possibly every attack-minded neutral's second favourite team.
? Southend's fine season under Paul Sturrock continued as the Shrimpers beat promotion rivals Oxford United 2-1 while, with equal predictability, bottom club Plymouth Argyle suffered another kick in the whatsits as Morecambe's Nick Fenton scored an 94th-minute equaliser that denied the Devon club their first win in five.
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Man City : Tevez pourra partir? mais pas � bas prix
Le manager de Manchester City, Roberto Mancini, ne changera plus son fusil d'�paule pour Carlos Tevez (27 ans, 3 matches de Premier League en 2011/
Jones says he's the man to snap Stoke losing streak
Queens Park Rangers
Stoke City
Peter Crouch
Kenwyne Jones says he's the man to snap Stoke City's form slump.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Blogathon: Time for Old Firm goodbyes
Another welcome for a guest blogger in the mood for some debate. My good friend Scott Johnston of the thefootyblog.net
Always a pleasure. And massive thanks for the help he's provided in this whole blogathon enterprise. Follow him @thefootyblognet
Check out Scott's site to find out why he thinks Rangers and Celtic should stay in Scottish football.
Here's why I think they should go:
The Old Firm.
Wha's like them?
They hate each other. They hate everyone else. Sometimes it seems they even hate themselves.
Time to open the cage and let them taste the freedom of the big, wide world that they've so long craved.
"What about the money they bring to the game?"
Well, let's be honest, this blogathon could read like an extended - if oddly critical - eulogy for the Scottish game.
His club's knackered. My club's knackered. Your club's knackered.
Rangers and Celtic think riches lie elsewhere. Scottish football needs a revolution.
It's a perfect collision of circumstances.
Negotiate their secession from Scotland. And negotiate hard.
"You want away Pedro? You had enough Craigie-boy? Well, show us the colour of your money."
Share that cash out - we'll call it a going-away bonus - equally between every Scottish club.
And then start all over again.
League reconstruction. We need it and it will be easier to negotiate our way around it without the big two breathing fire and holding hands under the boardroom table.
A wage cap that allows our clubs to function in possibly reduced but far more manageable conditions? Sorted. And with it the premium placed on youth development that we need.
A competitive league? Certainly more competitive, you might expect certain clubs to rise to the top but none - and this would be a refreshing change to all that's gone before - would think they had a divine right to dominate.
If you take an axe to the two-headed dragon you can have the run of a footballing utopia.
It's a no-brainer. They are constrained by Scotland and they are big clubs. There's much to admire about both of them.
The choice they have is to live within their means - normally a step ahead of the chasing pack - or live above their means. And that has ramifications.
So we constrain them.
But they smother us with their size and their money and their whinging and their bullying.
So go. And go now.
The clubs left behind would be able to start again. It would be, I'm told, little more than a jumped up League of Ireland.
I'd disagree. There is an infrastructure in place in Scotland, there is a stronger footballing tradition.
And there is a constituency of the lost and disenfranchised, of supporters ground into submission by the dross of our footballing product and the endless trophy shoot out between the big two.
Why couldn't we entice those fans back. Why couldn't the clubs left behind - fitting nicely into their new league structure complete with it's own pyramid - reach out and say "join us on a new footballing adventure."
We've had too long submitting to the inevitable dominance of the Old Firm to imagine such things. They've cast their shadow over our footballing landscape for so long - with such fierce protection of their own well-being above the general health of the game - that we've lost the ability to dream, to think big, to open our imaginations and let the sunlight burst in.
Deliver Rangers and Celtic to the bigger stage they need. And deliver Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, the whole city of Dundee, Inverness and every other community that holds football dear from the darkness.
Even the way we frame this debate is wrong. I've done it in this article. "Set the Old Firm free."
No. Turn that upside down.
Set the rest of us free.
Me and you. And him from Paisley and her from Inverness and them from Dingwall and that chap from Falkirk.
Let's rise up and reinvent this game. Learn from the past, admit that the Old Firm experiment has been a 123 year mistake, ask not what we can gain from living in their shadow but what we can gain from jettisoning them.
They would still be among us. But we live with the EPL and the Champion's League being among us. Television companies have long broken down football's barriers.
A polite, respectful, merry co-existence is possible.
Thanks both of you, with all sincerity, for the memories. But a new day is beckoning us all.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
Always a pleasure. And massive thanks for the help he's provided in this whole blogathon enterprise. Follow him @thefootyblognet
Check out Scott's site to find out why he thinks Rangers and Celtic should stay in Scottish football.
Here's why I think they should go:
The Old Firm.
Wha's like them?
They hate each other. They hate everyone else. Sometimes it seems they even hate themselves.
Time to open the cage and let them taste the freedom of the big, wide world that they've so long craved.
"What about the money they bring to the game?"
Well, let's be honest, this blogathon could read like an extended - if oddly critical - eulogy for the Scottish game.
His club's knackered. My club's knackered. Your club's knackered.
Rangers and Celtic think riches lie elsewhere. Scottish football needs a revolution.
It's a perfect collision of circumstances.
Negotiate their secession from Scotland. And negotiate hard.
"You want away Pedro? You had enough Craigie-boy? Well, show us the colour of your money."
Share that cash out - we'll call it a going-away bonus - equally between every Scottish club.
And then start all over again.
League reconstruction. We need it and it will be easier to negotiate our way around it without the big two breathing fire and holding hands under the boardroom table.
A wage cap that allows our clubs to function in possibly reduced but far more manageable conditions? Sorted. And with it the premium placed on youth development that we need.
A competitive league? Certainly more competitive, you might expect certain clubs to rise to the top but none - and this would be a refreshing change to all that's gone before - would think they had a divine right to dominate.
If you take an axe to the two-headed dragon you can have the run of a footballing utopia.
It's a no-brainer. They are constrained by Scotland and they are big clubs. There's much to admire about both of them.
The choice they have is to live within their means - normally a step ahead of the chasing pack - or live above their means. And that has ramifications.
So we constrain them.
But they smother us with their size and their money and their whinging and their bullying.
So go. And go now.
The clubs left behind would be able to start again. It would be, I'm told, little more than a jumped up League of Ireland.
I'd disagree. There is an infrastructure in place in Scotland, there is a stronger footballing tradition.
And there is a constituency of the lost and disenfranchised, of supporters ground into submission by the dross of our footballing product and the endless trophy shoot out between the big two.
Why couldn't we entice those fans back. Why couldn't the clubs left behind - fitting nicely into their new league structure complete with it's own pyramid - reach out and say "join us on a new footballing adventure."
We've had too long submitting to the inevitable dominance of the Old Firm to imagine such things. They've cast their shadow over our footballing landscape for so long - with such fierce protection of their own well-being above the general health of the game - that we've lost the ability to dream, to think big, to open our imaginations and let the sunlight burst in.
Deliver Rangers and Celtic to the bigger stage they need. And deliver Hibs, Hearts, Aberdeen, the whole city of Dundee, Inverness and every other community that holds football dear from the darkness.
Even the way we frame this debate is wrong. I've done it in this article. "Set the Old Firm free."
No. Turn that upside down.
Set the rest of us free.
Me and you. And him from Paisley and her from Inverness and them from Dingwall and that chap from Falkirk.
Let's rise up and reinvent this game. Learn from the past, admit that the Old Firm experiment has been a 123 year mistake, ask not what we can gain from living in their shadow but what we can gain from jettisoning them.
They would still be among us. But we live with the EPL and the Champion's League being among us. Television companies have long broken down football's barriers.
A polite, respectful, merry co-existence is possible.
Thanks both of you, with all sincerity, for the memories. But a new day is beckoning us all.
Click here to make a donation to Homeless World Cup or Alzheimer Scotland - your help is really appreciated
Donate to the blogathon's Homeless World Cup fund by text: just text DXVR87 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Donate to the blogathon's Alzheimer Scotland fund by text: just text APJB49 and the amount you want to donate to 70070
Join the blogathon on Twitter: #fitbablether
football shoulder pads football visors highest scoring college football game
Aguero steals show in stunning City debut
Aguero steals show in stunning City debut
LONDON, Aug 16 (Reuters) - Sergio Aguero captured the headlines on Tuesday after coming off the bench to score twice and set up another goal in an outstanding debut for Manchester City as the side eased to a 4-0 victory over Swansea City.
The Argentine forward, a club record 38 million pounds ($64 million) signing from Atletico Madrid, took just eight minutes to score after coming on as a 60th minute substitute, before blasting in City's fourth from long range in the final minute.
Three minutes after opening his account, he engineered a goal for David Silva when he hooked the ball back from the goalline and was delighted with his performance after one of the most memorable Premier League debuts in recent times.
While his international team mate Carlos Tevez, who did not play on Monday, has been alienating the club's fans by demanding a move away Manchester, Aguero instantly played his way into their hearts.
He told the club's television channel he had enjoyed himself and the headline writers gushed over his performance, with The Times declaring "Aguero makes instant impact" and The Daily Mail saying "Instant Hit - Aguero lights up City with wonder goal."
"I am happy. The start was really good and I want to keep playing like this. It was nice. I had a chance to play a little bit and I enjoyed it," Aguero said.
"I helped the team and I want to keep doing the same in the future."
Aguero only came on for the last 30 minutes because manager Roberto Mancini realises the player is not yet fully match fit, beginning pre-season training late after competing in the Copa America last month.
However, Aguero added: "He knows how I am and it was okay for me to play 30-35 minutes."
Applauded off at the end by City's delighted supporters he added: "The only way for me to thank them is on the pitch and keep doing what I do best."
The victory over promoted Swansea, back in the top flight for the first time since 1983, put City joint-top of the table after only one game, alongside Bolton Wanderers, who beat another promoted side, Queens Park Rangers, 4-0 on Saturday.
Bolton face City on Sunday with Mancini hinting afterwards that Tevez could return for the game but the Italian knows that with Aguero, he has a special talent in his squad.
"He is a fantastic striker," he said, "He needs another two or three weeks to be 100 percent fit but he is going to be a fantastic player for us and I am delighted with the whole team's performance."
Rams place OT Saffold on IR with torn pectoral
St. Louis Rams offensive tackle Rodger Saffold has been placed on injured reserve with a torn pectoral muscle.
michigan football michigan football blog michigan football recruiting
Football News: Dougie Freedman's kids have turned Crystal Palace into the unlikeliest of promotion contenders
Dougie FREEDMAN has one fear for his new generation of golden Eagles at Crystal Palace.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Stoke boss Pulis upset with performance for QPR defeat
Manchester United vs. Benfica: Preview, Live Stream, Start Time and Schedule
Manchester United will put their UEFA Champions League troubles fully behind them with a convincing victory over Portuguese side Benfica on Tuesday.
A win for either team would put them in first place with 11 points atop Group C. Both teams are 2-2-0 thus far, and United have played poorly in several of their group games.
The clubs opened the 2011-12 Champions League campaign at the Estadio da Luz and played to a 1-1 draw.
United then played FC Basel in their next group match at Old Trafford and drew 3-3 but would have lost that match if not for a late Ashley Young goal.
This is a massively important game for both clubs, so let's look at everything you need to know about this exciting matchup.
Where: Old Trafford, Manchester, England
Watch: Fox Soccer Channel in America, Sky Sports HD4 in England
When: Tuesday, Nov. 22 at 2:45 ET
Player To Watch for Manchester United: Wayne Rooney
United superstar forward Wayne Rooney has scored 12 goals this season in all competitions, but hasn't scored a goal since an October 18 match against Otelul Galati when he scored two penalties in a 2-0 Group C win.
Rooney must play well for the Red Devils to beat Benfica on Tuesday and take control of Group C. He is not a big-game player, but he must come through for his club versus a talented Portuguese club.
Player To Watch for Benfica: Oscar Cardozo
Oscar Cardozo has scored a club-leading eight goals in all competitions for Benfica this season, who are currently tied with FC Porto atop the Liga table.
Cardozo needs to bring energy to the Benfica attack on Tuesday because an early goal could really demoralize Manchester United and silence their fans.
Key Matchup: Cardozo vs. United back four
With the absence of world-class center-back Nemanja Vidic due to a red card suspension, Cardozo and the Benfica attack will have a much easier time creating scoring chances against the Red Devils defense.
Benfica should be relaxed going into this game because United has allowed a lot of goals this season to good attacking teams (including 6-1 defeat to Manchester City on October 23).
What They're Saying
United star Nemanja Vidic is banned from Tuesday's match against Benfica due to a red card he received against Otelul Galati on October 18.
His manager Sir Alex Ferguson said the following about the red card decision given by German referee Wolfgang Stark, via the Daily Mirror:
"I can understand the referee’s interpretation because German football is different to England."
Prediction: Manchester United wins 3-1
Benfica are a quality squad but Manchester United have too much attacking power not to score at least two goals.
Benfica have scored just five goals in four Champions League matches this season, and won't be able to score more than one against United at Old Trafford, where they are almost unbeatable.
Read more Manchester United news on BleacherReport.com
Liverpool management delighted with Jordan Lussey progress
Liverpool
Liverpool academy chief Frank McParland is delighted with the progress being made by Jordan Lussey.
 |  |
Friday, November 18, 2011
Bent fancies top eight finish for Villa this term
Aston Villa
Aston Villa striker Darren Bent feels they're capable of a top eight finish this season.
Qualifying for a European place through the league already looks unlikely for Alex McLeish's men.
Man City : 227 millions d?euros de pertes !
En d�pit d'une premi�re place au classement de la Premier League, Manchester City accuse le coup financi�rement, la faute � un trou b�ant de 227 mi
Swansea City vs. Manchester United: Predicting the Starting XI for the Champions
It feels ages since the last league match, as club football returns following the International break. This weekend sees a number of big ties that could change the look amongst the top five, but whatever happens after Sunday, Manchester City will remain at the top.
Arsenal will face Norwich City who have proven to be one of the more tough competitors edging fellow new boys Swansea on goal difference. Nonetheless a victory for the Gunners could see them move into fourth depending on other results.
Saturday's big clash is no doubt the two unbeaten teams. Manchester City will host Newcastle United—a rejuvenated Newcastle I should add, currently in third, one point behind Manchester United.
But ultimately the focus will be on Sunday when Liverpool travel to the Bridge to face Chelsea, both teams having difficult starts to the season, although it should be understood that Liverpool has seen an improvement following last season's disaster.
Shifting the focus to United's match when they visit Liberty Stadium in Swansea:
The break could have been the best possible opportunity for players to regain their strength mentally at least after a shaky few weeks.
The side that could line up will be a strong one no doubt, although a few key players could be benched with the Champions League fixture in mind.
GK: David de Gea
RB: Phil Jones
LB: Patrice Evra
CD: Rio Ferdinand
CD: Nemanja Vidic
RM: Antonio Valencia
LM: Luis Nani
CM: Michael Carrick
AM: Anderson
CF: Wayne Rooney
ST: Dimitar Berbatov
This is one of the strongest lineups although there is room for much more. Personally I feel Hernandez will be left on the bench. With the possibility of Young, Clever and Giggs not being available, Ferguson will want some kind of impact player in the event he needs to make a change during the match.
Nani will be a likely starter following his performance for Portugal, it also gives an opportunity to Carrick to regain match fitness.
I have a slight feeling Phil Jones could make a midfield appearance with maybe Fabio at right back, this after his games with England. He seems so much more confident going forward, driving through the middle.
Berbatov is a wild bet, depending on the fitness of Danny Welbeck, I would like to see the Bulgarian make a starting appearance giving him all the time he needs to find his form.
Accepting that Swansea is a team with lesser experience and quality compared to most of the Premier League, United need to use these next two months to the best of their abilities.
Read more Manchester United news on BleacherReport.com
football visors highest scoring college football game history of soccer
Euro 2012 Lineup Done And Dusted
Nothin’ left but the friendlies. Playoffs have ended, sadly for some – tragically, really, since none of the aggregates were even close – and the lineup is set with a couple of surprises, like Ireland and…no, just Ireland. The list of those who failed to RSVP is devoid of titanic names, leaving us with a [...]
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Wenger criticism seems 'absurd', says Xavi
Wenger criticism seems 'absurd', says Xavi
BARCELONA, July 20 (Reuters) - Barcelona midfielder Xavi has defended himself against criticism from Arsene Wenger after the Arsenal manager accused him of disrespect over comments he made about Cesc Fabregas.
Wenger said last week Xavi had been "very disrespectful" for suggesting his Spain team mate Fabregas was suffering as he waits to find out whether the clubs can agree a deal for him to return to Barca.
"It seems absurd to me," Xavi told a news conference at Barca's training ground outside the Catalan capital on Wednesday.
"I was only acting in the interest of Cesc and of Barca," the 31-year-old World Cup winner added.
"But that's that and I really don't want to get into a war of words with Wenger. I didn't want to offend anyone."
Barca coach Pep Guardiola confirmed on Tuesday that the European champions were in talks to buy Fabregas and said the club were ready to fight right up until the transfer deadline on Aug. 31 to get their man.
The 24-year-old came through Barca's youth academy at the same time as World Player of the Year Lionel Messi before joining Arsenal in September 2003 at the age of 16.
Wenger has said he wants to keep his captain and is trying to convince Fabregas that it is not the right time for him to leave England.
"I don't really know the situation but it seems they are more disposed to sell this year than last year," Xavi said.
"Maybe we can be a bit more optimistic [this year] but it depends on reaching an agreement with Arsenal."
Former Birmingham keeper Taylor interesting Leeds
Chelsea
Leeds boss Simon Grayson is considering a move to add veteran stopper Maik Taylor to his Championship squad.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Football League: your thoughts | Scott Anthony
Southampton, Charlton and Southend march on, while El Hadji Diouf made the first steps towards becoming a Donny legend
? All of Saturday's results and scores
? Championship leaders Southampton beat Coventry 2-4 to record their best start to the season since Peter Sallis was born, Piet Mondrain painted Composition with Red, and Yellow and Blue and car tax discs were introduced 90 years ago. Richard Chaplow and the excellent Adam Lallana put Southampton ahead, but two goals early in the second half pulled Coventry level before Guly Do Prado and Steve De Ridder scored late on to turn the Sky Blues a gloomier shade. Extraordinary to think that just over a decade ago struggling City were seemingly permanent members of the top-flight club.
? Elsewhere at the top, West Ham beat Hull 0-2 to move second and claim their first victory over a top-six side this season. Cardiff beat fellow high-flyers Crystal Palace 2-0 to stay on the Hammers' shoulder. Blackpool beat in-form Millwall 1-0 at Bloomfield Road thanks to a goal from the veteran's veteran Kevin Phillips.
? Doncaster pulled off the win of the day as they bested Paul Jewell's inconsistent Ipswich side 2-3. Billy Sharp, a reputed transfer target for the Tractor Boys, scored for the second time in a traumatic week after losing his son, while the former Liverpool striker El Hadji Diouf also made a star turn. The lovable Senegalese striker netted twice as Dean Saunders's side moved level on points with Coventry at the bottom of the Championship table. You just can't keep a good-player-with-a-questionable-temperament down. Fellow strugglers Bristol City also had reason to cheer as they beat Burnley 3-1 while Steve Cotterill made an unsuccessful return to Fratton Park (only 22 days after he quit the south coast) as his Nottingham Forest team went down 3-0 to Portsmouth.
? League One leaders Charlton Athletic made short work of Preston North End, thrashing the out-of-form Lancashire side 5-2 at The Valley after PNE manager and master man-motivator Phil Brown had prepared his side for the match by making them clean the Deepdale terraces after last week's home loss to Bournemouth. Bradley Wright-Phillips and Johnnie Jackson were among the goals for Chris Powell's side who increased their lead at the top as title-rivals Huddersfield and Sheffield Wednesday were held to draws.
? After seeing off Sheffield Wednesday and Charlton, Stevenage Borough completed an impressive trio of victories over League One's big clubs by beating Sheffield United 2-1. Scott Laird got the winner for Graham Westley's (perhaps a John Beck for the new millennium?) supposedly sledge-happy side. No one likes New Town football clubs, they don't care.
? Disappointment for Dario Gradi in League Two as the Sir Alex Ferguson of the lower league's youthful Crewe side went down 3-0 at home to improving Torquay. The defeat followed a typically entertaining LWLWLWL run of form for the Railwaymen ? quite possibly every attack-minded neutral's second favourite team.
? Southend's fine season under Paul Sturrock continued as the Shrimpers beat promotion rivals Oxford United 2-1 while, with equal predictability, bottom club Plymouth Argyle suffered another kick in the whatsits as Morecambe's Nick Fenton scored an 94th-minute equaliser that denied the Devon club their first win in five.
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Inter Milan, Zanetti : "pas une �quipe de vieux"
Le d�fenseur polyvalent de l'Inter Milan, Javier Zanetti (38 ans, 9 matches de Serie A en 2011/2012), semble inoxydable. On se demande vraiment si
Thiago / Barcelona brothers to stay together
Barcelona midfielder Thiago Alcantara expects his brother Rafinha to resist joining Real Madrid.
Read more Thiago news
Read more Thiago news
Union Aim to Split Season Series with Galaxy | WVHooligan - Soccer Blog [Digg]
By Kevin Kinkead Los Angeles. New York. Columbus. Three remaining games for the Philadelphia Union, against three of the top five squads in MLS.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Czech Republic's Michal Bilek after defeating Montenegro: We deserve to advance to the Euro 2012 finals
The 46 year-old has declared his men are good value for their place at Euro 2012 after beating Branko Brnovic's side over the two-legged play-off
Book Review - There's Only One Sauzee: When Le God Graced Easter Road
It?s almost ten years since Franck Sauz�e left Easter Road, a turbulent 69 days of management bringing a passionate Leith love affair to an end.
Yet he?s still revered by the green and white hordes (not all, but a hefty number). Gone but ever more cherished.
Why?
Over the course of Ted Brack?s account of the Sauz�e era many observers ? teammates, his former manager, Hibs legends and ordinary fans ? try to get the bottom of what it was in the relationship between the veteran and the faithful that convinced so many supporters that there was indeed only ?one Sauz�e.?
A quote from Jonathan Swift, born in Hibernia if not a Hibee, is tucked away on page 53. It seems apt:
?Whoever excels in what we prize appears a hero in our eyes.?
I consider myself a pragmatic realist as a supporter. But even I can never quite shrug off a certain romanticism.
Sauz�e embodied what Hibs would like to be and what they once might have been. For supporters of my age, raised in the utilitarian Alex Miller era, he was unlike anyone we?d seen before, playing the game the way we were told Hibs were supposed to play the game.
For older generations he was a throwback, the skillful maestro they thought they?d never see again.
So the fans embraced him and he embraced the fans and that, of course, only made the fans love him even more.
That Sauz�e would come to Hibs in the First Division shocked many. I?m not sure it should have. He was winding down and was out of favour at Montpelier. Edinburgh, if you have a certain affluence, is a nice place to live and Hibs were then in a position to pay a more than comfortable wage.
Even a celebrated European Cup winner might have been easily persuaded that there are worse ways to prepare for retirement.
The bigger coup was capturing Russell Latapy at around the same time. Latapy was then aged 29, in theory approaching his peak, and was coveted in England.
?The boy Latapy? Aye, a good little player,? was Bobby Robson?s response to McLeish?s inquiry about the midfielder's calibre. That signing, eventually based on a trial match at Brechin, was remarkable, a genuine moment of McLeish audacity.
Yet as much as Latapy was appreciated and often thrilled the supporters, it was Sauz�e the fans were drawn to.
It was Sauz�e, more often than not strolling through games, who seemed to embody Hibs as they stormed back to the SPL, consolidated their position in the top flight, finished third in the league, reached a Scottish Cup final and came close to knocking AEK Athens out of the UEFA Cup in one of Easter Road?s great European nights.
It was Sauz�e who ran the length of the pitch towards the away fans after scoring at Tynecastle, who lost his teeth scoring in an Easter Road derby, who danced a jig of delight when Hibs touched the heights in hammering Hearts 6-2. It was Sauz�e who Hearts couldn?t beat.
If you were explaining to a footballer how to become a legend at Easter Road you?d give them a copy of Brack?s book - which fairly jogs along in recounting the highs and even highers of Sauz�e's playing career - and tell them to follow the Sauz�e masterplan.
His importance and influence was huge. Alex McLeish built a good team at Hibs. But his reliance on Sauz�e was almost total.
Jonathan Swift might provide a theme: Sauz�e was Gulliver in Lilliput, his teammates often looked more than the sum of their parts when this giant walked among them and were left diminished when he wasn?t there.
He was even adept at putting out fires when the Lilliputians around him made the occasional mistake or when the manager made the odd tactical error.
McLeish hovers over this book. He was the visionary who, we?re told, had an encyclopeadic knowledge of the European game and a subscription to World Soccer magazine. The man with the contacts and gumption to gift Scottish football Sauz�e and Latapy.
The author accepts that at face value - McLeish provides a foreword paying tribute to both Sauz�e and Hibs - but I?m not so sure.
Bryan Gunn, Justin Skinner, Grant Brebner, Paul Holsgrove, Klaus Dietrich, Peter Guggi, Barry Prenderville, Derek Anderson, Derek Collin, Tom Smith, Alex Marinkov, Nick Colgan, Ian Westwater, Dirk Lehman, Matthias Jack, Paul Lovering, Stuart Lovell, Martin McIntosh, Earl Jean, John O?Neil, Paul Fenwick. Gary Smith, Didier Agathe, Ulrik Laursen, David Zitelli, Lyndon Andrews, Freddy Arpinon, Marc Libbra, Tony Caig, Derek Townsley, Alen Orman, Allan Smart, Ulises de la Cruz, Eduardo Hurtado, Mixu Paatelainen, Craig Brewster, Paco Luna.
Those are just some of the players that McLeish welcomed to Easter Road. You?ll recognise a few of the names, you might have forgotten many of the others. This was a manager enjoying a Bosman rule orgy.
Even the capture of Sauz�e seems might have been borne more from a desire to land a marquee name than an immediate recognition of what this ageing midfielder could offer a team that had already enjoyed 11 straight wins in the First Division.
Philippe Albert and Emil Kostadinov were also apparently pursued in the hunt to sign the big reputation that would put the seal on what was, by the time Sauz�e arrived, already looking like a comfortable return to the top flight. By that reckoning we could argue that McLeish got lucky that it was Sauz�e he ended up with.
Why does that matter? Is all this not just the bitter ramblings of a Hibs fan still smarting at Mcleish?s departure for Rangers?
Not entirely. It?s important because reading this book is an inexorable journey to those horrible 69 days, to the misery of a league cup semi final against Ayr United and the pain of seeing Sauz�e sacked.
Reading Brack's account of the McLeish years it?s easy to see how Hibs peaked around the time of that 6-2 win over Hearts, how Sauz�e?s absences became more frequent and more detrimental as age caught up with him.
And how Alex McLeish struggled to cope. A club record on de la Cruz? The Ecuadorian companion piece that was Hurtado? Derek Townsley?
McLeish had mislaid his mojo before he travelled along the M8.
That left Sauz�e to take over a diminished team that had lost, in Sauz�e himself, its most important asset. The team that had shone, for a few almost perfect months, as brightly as any Hibs side of recent vintage had been dismantled and McLeish couldn?t recapture the magic.
That was the legacy Sauz�e had to wrestle with in those 69 days. The board could have insisted he recruit a more experienced assistant than Donald Park. They didn?t. They could have insisted he retained the option of playing himself. They didn?t.
There were financial constraints that Alex McLeish wouldn?t have recognised.
When McLeish confided to the board that he doubted he had the players to win the First Division they countenanced him turning that season into a Cecil B DeMille production, complete with a cast of thousands.
Sauz�e's role was as the tortured foreigner in a kitchen sink drama. A club newly worried about the housekeeping budget wasn?t going to give this novice the chance to buy himself out of a disaster.
Not that he wasn?t well rewarded for his three years as player and manager. His sole demand was apparently that no player at the club be paid more than him. He had an awareness of his own value that hints at a thoroughly modern footballer lurking below the gentlemanly, elder statesman surface. The board, which has evolved somewhat since then, acquiesced.
Brack argues that the eventual sacking of Sauz�e, this modern day Easter Road hero, could even be seen as a brave move.
I didn?t think that at the time and I don?t think it now. St Johnstone were relegated that season with 21 points. It?s unlikely they would have been able to catch a Sauz�e led Hibs even given the trauma of his first two months in charge.
That he was replaced by Bobby Williamson was an act of cowardice, the final victory of the earnestly dull Roundheads. It's true that Williamson gave a talented group of Hibs youngster their chance, sowing the seeds for Tony Mowbray's success.
But the board denied the chance to prove that he could do the same, do it with more inspiration and flair than Williamson was capable of.
From Sauz�e to Williamson. It wasn?t the most subtle way to end an era.
Given much of what?s followed for Hibs, the days when Sauz�e was in his pomp have taken on an almost dreamlike quality.
And at times he was so good, so nonchalant, so intelligent (?gymnastics of the mind? he told Simon Pia), so unusually Continental and yet so obviously at home that it could be breathtaking. There were moments when he almost seemed to be turning Chick Young?s radio reports into the awestruck ramblings of a smitten Hibs fan.
Those memories make it seem masochistic to linger on how it ended rather than how it once was.
Sadly the book?s missing ingredient makes the parting of the ways impossible to ignore. There is no Franck Sauz�e in these pages, he dominates the book by his absence.
His exile from the People?s Republic of Leith now seems complete and permanent. He didn?t object to the publication of this book but nor did he did he give it his blessing. He simply ignored it, as he has done with many requests from the Hibs community in recent years.
Hibs imported an ageing, handsomely rewarded star and bucked the trend of such signings. They got a player who lived, breathed and bled for the cause.
Then they lost him. Apparently forever.
That causes the book to list, if not aimlessly, then a bit uncomfortably. The adulation from the fans inspired Sauz�e and, at a time of his career when he was good enough and old enough to coast, gave him the impetus to become a star all over again. He reciprocated with what seemed, unless we can add damn fine acting skills to his list of accomplishments, like a genuine love for the fans and an appreciation of what he found at Easter Road.
It was a brief but perfect circle that gave Hibs the vigour to bounce out of a tumultous decade and grasp a new millennium with both hands.
There's a fine tale to tell here, but it becomes slightly anaemic without both sides of the story, an enjoyable scrapbook but not the book that a passionate love affair or even an aristocratic French marvel deserves.
A reminder, perhaps, that you should always be careful how you treat your heroes.
There's Only One Sauzee: When Le God Graced Easter Road by Ted Brack, Black and White Publishing.
Donate to the Scottish Football Blog Blogathon, 19 November 2011
Yet he?s still revered by the green and white hordes (not all, but a hefty number). Gone but ever more cherished.
Why?
A quote from Jonathan Swift, born in Hibernia if not a Hibee, is tucked away on page 53. It seems apt:
?Whoever excels in what we prize appears a hero in our eyes.?
I consider myself a pragmatic realist as a supporter. But even I can never quite shrug off a certain romanticism.
Sauz�e embodied what Hibs would like to be and what they once might have been. For supporters of my age, raised in the utilitarian Alex Miller era, he was unlike anyone we?d seen before, playing the game the way we were told Hibs were supposed to play the game.
For older generations he was a throwback, the skillful maestro they thought they?d never see again.
So the fans embraced him and he embraced the fans and that, of course, only made the fans love him even more.
That Sauz�e would come to Hibs in the First Division shocked many. I?m not sure it should have. He was winding down and was out of favour at Montpelier. Edinburgh, if you have a certain affluence, is a nice place to live and Hibs were then in a position to pay a more than comfortable wage.
Even a celebrated European Cup winner might have been easily persuaded that there are worse ways to prepare for retirement.
The bigger coup was capturing Russell Latapy at around the same time. Latapy was then aged 29, in theory approaching his peak, and was coveted in England.
?The boy Latapy? Aye, a good little player,? was Bobby Robson?s response to McLeish?s inquiry about the midfielder's calibre. That signing, eventually based on a trial match at Brechin, was remarkable, a genuine moment of McLeish audacity.
Yet as much as Latapy was appreciated and often thrilled the supporters, it was Sauz�e the fans were drawn to.
It was Sauz�e, more often than not strolling through games, who seemed to embody Hibs as they stormed back to the SPL, consolidated their position in the top flight, finished third in the league, reached a Scottish Cup final and came close to knocking AEK Athens out of the UEFA Cup in one of Easter Road?s great European nights.
It was Sauz�e who ran the length of the pitch towards the away fans after scoring at Tynecastle, who lost his teeth scoring in an Easter Road derby, who danced a jig of delight when Hibs touched the heights in hammering Hearts 6-2. It was Sauz�e who Hearts couldn?t beat.
If you were explaining to a footballer how to become a legend at Easter Road you?d give them a copy of Brack?s book - which fairly jogs along in recounting the highs and even highers of Sauz�e's playing career - and tell them to follow the Sauz�e masterplan.
His importance and influence was huge. Alex McLeish built a good team at Hibs. But his reliance on Sauz�e was almost total.
Jonathan Swift might provide a theme: Sauz�e was Gulliver in Lilliput, his teammates often looked more than the sum of their parts when this giant walked among them and were left diminished when he wasn?t there.
He was even adept at putting out fires when the Lilliputians around him made the occasional mistake or when the manager made the odd tactical error.
McLeish hovers over this book. He was the visionary who, we?re told, had an encyclopeadic knowledge of the European game and a subscription to World Soccer magazine. The man with the contacts and gumption to gift Scottish football Sauz�e and Latapy.
The author accepts that at face value - McLeish provides a foreword paying tribute to both Sauz�e and Hibs - but I?m not so sure.
Bryan Gunn, Justin Skinner, Grant Brebner, Paul Holsgrove, Klaus Dietrich, Peter Guggi, Barry Prenderville, Derek Anderson, Derek Collin, Tom Smith, Alex Marinkov, Nick Colgan, Ian Westwater, Dirk Lehman, Matthias Jack, Paul Lovering, Stuart Lovell, Martin McIntosh, Earl Jean, John O?Neil, Paul Fenwick. Gary Smith, Didier Agathe, Ulrik Laursen, David Zitelli, Lyndon Andrews, Freddy Arpinon, Marc Libbra, Tony Caig, Derek Townsley, Alen Orman, Allan Smart, Ulises de la Cruz, Eduardo Hurtado, Mixu Paatelainen, Craig Brewster, Paco Luna.
Those are just some of the players that McLeish welcomed to Easter Road. You?ll recognise a few of the names, you might have forgotten many of the others. This was a manager enjoying a Bosman rule orgy.
Even the capture of Sauz�e seems might have been borne more from a desire to land a marquee name than an immediate recognition of what this ageing midfielder could offer a team that had already enjoyed 11 straight wins in the First Division.
Philippe Albert and Emil Kostadinov were also apparently pursued in the hunt to sign the big reputation that would put the seal on what was, by the time Sauz�e arrived, already looking like a comfortable return to the top flight. By that reckoning we could argue that McLeish got lucky that it was Sauz�e he ended up with.
Why does that matter? Is all this not just the bitter ramblings of a Hibs fan still smarting at Mcleish?s departure for Rangers?
Not entirely. It?s important because reading this book is an inexorable journey to those horrible 69 days, to the misery of a league cup semi final against Ayr United and the pain of seeing Sauz�e sacked.
Reading Brack's account of the McLeish years it?s easy to see how Hibs peaked around the time of that 6-2 win over Hearts, how Sauz�e?s absences became more frequent and more detrimental as age caught up with him.
And how Alex McLeish struggled to cope. A club record on de la Cruz? The Ecuadorian companion piece that was Hurtado? Derek Townsley?
McLeish had mislaid his mojo before he travelled along the M8.
That left Sauz�e to take over a diminished team that had lost, in Sauz�e himself, its most important asset. The team that had shone, for a few almost perfect months, as brightly as any Hibs side of recent vintage had been dismantled and McLeish couldn?t recapture the magic.
That was the legacy Sauz�e had to wrestle with in those 69 days. The board could have insisted he recruit a more experienced assistant than Donald Park. They didn?t. They could have insisted he retained the option of playing himself. They didn?t.
There were financial constraints that Alex McLeish wouldn?t have recognised.
When McLeish confided to the board that he doubted he had the players to win the First Division they countenanced him turning that season into a Cecil B DeMille production, complete with a cast of thousands.
Sauz�e's role was as the tortured foreigner in a kitchen sink drama. A club newly worried about the housekeeping budget wasn?t going to give this novice the chance to buy himself out of a disaster.
Not that he wasn?t well rewarded for his three years as player and manager. His sole demand was apparently that no player at the club be paid more than him. He had an awareness of his own value that hints at a thoroughly modern footballer lurking below the gentlemanly, elder statesman surface. The board, which has evolved somewhat since then, acquiesced.
Brack argues that the eventual sacking of Sauz�e, this modern day Easter Road hero, could even be seen as a brave move.
I didn?t think that at the time and I don?t think it now. St Johnstone were relegated that season with 21 points. It?s unlikely they would have been able to catch a Sauz�e led Hibs even given the trauma of his first two months in charge.
That he was replaced by Bobby Williamson was an act of cowardice, the final victory of the earnestly dull Roundheads. It's true that Williamson gave a talented group of Hibs youngster their chance, sowing the seeds for Tony Mowbray's success.
But the board denied the chance to prove that he could do the same, do it with more inspiration and flair than Williamson was capable of.
From Sauz�e to Williamson. It wasn?t the most subtle way to end an era.
Given much of what?s followed for Hibs, the days when Sauz�e was in his pomp have taken on an almost dreamlike quality.
And at times he was so good, so nonchalant, so intelligent (?gymnastics of the mind? he told Simon Pia), so unusually Continental and yet so obviously at home that it could be breathtaking. There were moments when he almost seemed to be turning Chick Young?s radio reports into the awestruck ramblings of a smitten Hibs fan.
Those memories make it seem masochistic to linger on how it ended rather than how it once was.
Sadly the book?s missing ingredient makes the parting of the ways impossible to ignore. There is no Franck Sauz�e in these pages, he dominates the book by his absence.
His exile from the People?s Republic of Leith now seems complete and permanent. He didn?t object to the publication of this book but nor did he did he give it his blessing. He simply ignored it, as he has done with many requests from the Hibs community in recent years.
Hibs imported an ageing, handsomely rewarded star and bucked the trend of such signings. They got a player who lived, breathed and bled for the cause.
Then they lost him. Apparently forever.
That causes the book to list, if not aimlessly, then a bit uncomfortably. The adulation from the fans inspired Sauz�e and, at a time of his career when he was good enough and old enough to coast, gave him the impetus to become a star all over again. He reciprocated with what seemed, unless we can add damn fine acting skills to his list of accomplishments, like a genuine love for the fans and an appreciation of what he found at Easter Road.
It was a brief but perfect circle that gave Hibs the vigour to bounce out of a tumultous decade and grasp a new millennium with both hands.
There's a fine tale to tell here, but it becomes slightly anaemic without both sides of the story, an enjoyable scrapbook but not the book that a passionate love affair or even an aristocratic French marvel deserves.
A reminder, perhaps, that you should always be careful how you treat your heroes.
There's Only One Sauzee: When Le God Graced Easter Road by Ted Brack, Black and White Publishing.
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