The Hand of Henry

The Hand of Henry

Think of all those brand names that players pick up as endorsements. And make bags of money in the process. And the team strips emblazoned with corporate logos. But maybe it’s time for a new logo to be branded across the chests of our favorite soccer stars, those ones who like to dive, or use their hand to earn a goal. Welcome to soccer’s growing, dynamic brand: CHEAT.

Branding a player a cheat is a tough and ugly call. Some argue that unfair advantage is a natural part of the game. Yet, French star Tierry Henry deliberately used his palm to knock Ireland out of the World Cup Finals. Shouting and cursing will follow him like the smell of rotting escargot but it will come to nothing. The hubris of star players demonstrates their supremacy over the game. Henry will shrug his shoulders and be happy that his World Cup appearance bonus is secure.

But back to that CHEAT endorsement. FIFA will no doubt be happy that its marketing department has all the big teams in its World Cup 2010 tent while gearing up its message of liberty, equality and fraternity for all the soccer-loving nations. But maybe it’s time to add a new positive campaign like FIFA’s No to Racism effort. We need a Kick Cheats Out of Football crusade. A yellow card for simulation needs to become a three-month ban. A Hand of Henry goal needs to be a year ban.

A ruthless manufacturer in China could make three million fake Henry tops with his new endorsement and sell them to every man, woman and child in Ireland. They will not forget the Hand of Henry. The Irish memory is long.

Cheating – Should Players Get Away With It?

The Liverpool player N’gog is a cheat and an actor worthy of nomination for this year’s Oscar for Best Simulation on A Soccer Field. His dive extraordinaire, earning his team a converted penalty in Liverpool’s Monday night Premier League match up against Birmingham City, will stick in the memory of opposing fans like superglue on a toilet seat. Like celebrities heading for liposuction, many are calling for soccer to suck out the simulation that is killing the heart of the game.

Why do people like N’gog play soccer when he would have been better off around a diving board or taking acting lessons at the local dramatic society? OK, he wants his team to win but like that? It’s not going to do Liverpool any favors. Watch the next legitimate penalty claim from Liverpool being turned down by a nervous referee keen to avoid the humiliation inflicted upon their colleague by the phony N’gog. Cheating comes at a price.

Diving practice has always had a following in soccer but today it is reaching religious levels as the hubris of some players run amok. Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, blessed by God as his divine soccer son, is nailed to the flopper’s cross. With pout and glower on his immaculate face, he converts dives into penalties and free kicks, from whence he scores. Millions follow and worship him. As everyone knows, Maradona thanked God for his diabolical handball goal in the Mexico World Cup in 1986. He was supreme enough to blame the hapless English goalkeeper Shilton for coming off his line. Far from being crucified as a cheat, El Diego was carried to the Temple of the Gods.

So cheating –  is it OK to get away with it?

The End of the Daddies

Sir Alex Ferguson of Manchester United refers to his players as “boys” and calls them “son,” when speaking to them of matters most important. His “sons” grow up to call him “father.” Both Beckham and Ronaldo have described him as such. He is the last of the great British coaching daddies.

He ends a line that stretches through England from Herbert Chapman to Alf Ramsey, and Don Revie, in Scotland, it was Jock Stein, Ferguson’s own soccer “father.” These men grew up and played in an era when daddies and their sons were the only people inside soccer stadiums. Women were secretaries in the front office, and tea makers. It was an age when daddy lifted junior over the turnstile, a tradition now gone in the age of season tickets and seats. It was daddy who showed his son that losing control in moments of joy and loss was acceptable, and normal, during ninety minutes on a Saturday. Just don’t cry in the real world, son.

But the old-fashioned coach is rapidly going out of style. The internationalism of club soccer, and the supremacy of the star player, has diminished the need for parenting. Younger coaches treat their players as equals, hoping to bond as a team, instead of family. Servitude to one tribe is no longer for life. Recently, Chelsea’s coach Ancelotti, remarked that talking to the players in the changing room before the game was increasingly redundant as most of his stars were plugged into I-pods listening to hip hop. He listens to Elton John while at home.

There is much talk about the diminishing daddy figure in society. And futbol follows society. We can expect a future age of youthful player tyranny, and a purge of middle age wisdom. Maybe the players will pick the team themselves. And no more will the word “son” be heard in the changing rooms.

Video Refs – No Thanks

The World Cup Final, 1966: England’s Geoff Hurst strikes the ball off the underside of the bar. As fast as a bullet, it lands over the line if you are English, and on the line if you are German. The referee looks to the linesman. The linesman looks to the Queen of England sitting in the stands. Maybe he saw his head on a pike at the Tower of London. He indicates goal. On his deathbed, the Russian linesman confesses. He didn’t like Germans much. He remembered the Second World War.

Do we need video referees? It would eliminate this type of prejudice, herald an age of fairness, and soccer would be most boring. Let’s face it, when fifty thousand pairs of eyes inside the stadium see one thing and the referee fails to notice, the stands explode with debasing officialdom. What a loss to the choir if we can’t sing, “the referee’s a wanker” because he can correct his mistakes through television replay. Futbol is like burglary. “We were robbed” – every fan has said it. And you never recover the goods. The grievance morphs into a grudge against the benefactors and makes for bitter rivalries.

And where would TV correctness end? Was it a penalty? Or a free-kick? Did he use his hand to score a goal? Maradona would not be a Saint in Argentina if video ref had been around to sever the Hand of God at Mexico ‘86. Thousands of replays of the incident throughout the years would never have happened, TV pundits would have less to talk about, England and Argentina would be less angry at each other. Longevity of grievance is a rocket booster for match ups. Soccer needs tragedy.

So, putting the video ref debate on the scales of Justice, we rob futbol of its core. Mistakes, regret, and thievery, are all supreme in the beautiful game.

www.alanblack.info

Whatever happened to the handshake?

From Handshake to Pile-On - The Evolution of the Goal Celebration

Has anyone noticed the increasing use of lying down on the grass to have teammates jump on top of you as the chosen mode of goal celebration?  In a recent game, scorer Wayne Rooney flopped to the ground, and waited for the pile-on. The camera caught team mate Darren Fletcher with his legs apart, standing over Rooney. Wayne raised his head, his face disappearing in front of Fletcher’s shorts. Not that there is anything wrong with men on men rolling around on the grass.

In the really old days, before the hug culture helped spread coughs, a scorer would have his back slapped and his hand shook. Then came the invention of the individual. Blame the sixties and George Best. Soccer players became superhuman; they were photographed in magazines with their tops off, sexy ladies in fur dripping from their manly chests. The average bloke was confused. He had never looked at his own body, now he was looking at George Best’s hairy ribs. Touching and intimacy was not a trait held in high regard in working class England. Foreplay in sexual intercourse was best described as – Brace Your Self.  But the fancy touch on the field had moved off it.

The feel of the swinging sixties spread fast to other players, and to the stands. By the seventies, back slaps and handshakes were replaced with scorers running around the field, arm in air, like a victorious conqueror. Teammates followed; arms around the triumphant shoulder. Fans began to grab each other intimately, and strangers kissed in crowds numbering in the tens of thousands. The eighties came, and the wearing of tight shorts sewed the seeds of the modern hug. Mounting for a piggyback ride was most popular. But it took the arrival of the ecstatic nineties for the hug to be embraced by raving soccer players. Kisses, whispers, head-grabs, and bum slaps cascaded through the euphoria of scoring. Who needed drugs? Today’s grass orgy will likely fade but what will be next?

www.alanblack.info

THE SITTER – How Missed Chances Can Destroy a Nation

It’s called a sitter. The ball is right in front of the goal, it’s easier to score, harder to miss, but somehow the ball refuses to go home to the net. The player’s face is agape in disbelief. He has missed a sitter. And he will be remembered for it. It might be the only thing he is remembered for. He might wake up in the middle of the night screaming, his form might plunge, perhaps the opposing fans will compose a new song celebrating his disaster, maybe he’ll think he is cursed.  Or doomed.

It might not be damaging if it is a mid-season game but missing a sitter in a precious moment will haunt a player like a ghost in a Dickens novel. Best to look at an example. Billy Bremner was a tough, popular redheaded Scottish footballer. He shone in the seventies, played for his country, starred at his club, and enjoyed the party-boy lifestyle of the celebrity. But then he missed a sitter. It blackened his name forever. No one wanted to buy him a beer anymore. People turned their backs on him and whispered – There’s Bremner. He let us down.

Bremner’s doom came in the Scotland v Brazil match during the 1974 World Cup Finals. The ball was one yard from the goal line. The nearest Brazilian was five yards adrift, and the goalkeeper may have been on the beach in Rio. And there was Billy Bremner, alone with the ball, the moment that would have made him a national hero, a new Scottish Braveheart, beckoned. The nation rose from its seat in front of its television. The word goal was shaped on lips and roars dredged from throats, Scotland were about to beat Brazil. But Bremner blew it. Like a stumbling drunk, he fluffed, and puffed, and defying Newton’s laws of motion, put the ball past the post. The nation never recovered. The Bremner hangover has lasted three decades. His curse was last seen a week ago, when Scotland missed several sitters against Holland, and went out of the World Cup.

The media made sure he never forgot it. In 1998, with Scotland drawn against Brazil in the opening game of the France World Cup, the Bremner sitter was shown on TV, over and over again. Billy Bremner dropped dead from a heart attack, aged 54.

With the World Cup Finals now on the line, all countries still in with a shout, will be praying that Bremner’s ghost will not rattle his chains.

www.alanblack.info

AND THEY’RE OFF…

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it’s Arsenal first out the Premier League gate, followed by a lively Stoke, and the confident Fulham, and here comes the big horse Man City moving up on the rail, loaded with talent, can it break through, they’re heading to the first turn, Burnley and Wolves are falling behind already, and Aston Villa look like it might be lame, let’s hope they don’t have to put Villa down after the race. They’re coming to the first jump and Everton has fallen hard at the first fence, a disastrous jump, jockey David Moyes is flat on his back, it’s worry time at Goodison Park, here at the 3pm on opening day of the Premier League, with 38 jumps to go, who will make it over the next hurdle?
www.alanblack.info

The Death of Scottish Football

If you’re Scottish, your football is dead. Once, a thriving field of imaginative players lived in this football worshiping country; now a dead zone, populated by footballing zombies. Scotland’s latest humiliation against Wales ranks as the worst effort by a Scottish team, probably, ever. An abomination of capitulation.

So what has made this footballing country die? Is it the culture? So long enveloped in drink and bad habits. Throughout the years, so many Scottish players banned for alcohol inspired abuse. Is it the fact that Scotland is not a nation, but a region of the United Kingdom? You can only play for your country if you truly have one. Or maybe Scots can’t dance? Brazilian Samba, Argentine Tango, cool, and svelte; the Scottish Highland Fling, no use in football. A corrupt and provincial mindset at the top of the Scottish football establishment condemns it to the grave. Scotland is now a minor football planet, a Luxembourg, an Iceland. And once they talked of winning a World Cup. And still they sing that ironic dirge, I’ll Walk a Million Miles for One of Your Goals, Oh Scotland. Indeed, that is the distance the Tartan Army will have to travel to see their nation score big again. And all that they have left..Let’s hope the English lose. Ashes to ashes. Dust to Dust. The end of Scottish football.

www.alanblack.info

When Playing at Home is Playing Away

 

The USA played Mexico in the final of the Gold Cup last weekend, a home game at Giants Stadium, with a capacity of about 79,000. 78,000 were supporting Mexico. In world soccer, the USA is the only country where home means away. It’s an indictment on the shallow values of so-called American sporting patriotism. The US fans who did show are to be commended for their bravery. Unsurprisingly, Mexico won.

Blame the soccer hating morons in some portions of the media that spend their time fiddling with their goobers? These jingoists would rather sit around worshiping baseball teams filled with players from the Dominican Republic than support a team of eleven Americans fighting on a true world stage for the red, white and blue. They would rather clap together those annoying plastic sticks that basketball fans use to distract shooters than wave an American flag in a game against Mexico? Or hold up signs that say, Go Whoever, handed out by some corporation patriotically exporting American jobs overseas? These so-called soccer critics are are a disgrace to the country, they are not patriots, and come the soccer revolution, they will be fried at the steak at the tailgate in the parking lot.

So, let’s not have these un-American slobs get away with it any longer. Soccer is the patriots game. That’s where a true love of country comes from, getting behind the national squad in a duel with another country, not clapping along to an organ when a team from the East Coast plays a team from the West. Get out there and roar for the nation.

Hated…What did Becks expect?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(above: La Galaxy fans give Beckham the news…Go Away!)

Beckham’s return to Los Angeles was met by a galaxy of boos.  Expect to see Beckham playing for anyone in the Premier League within three months. It was an important moment for American soccer. Finally, there was enough pride to say, We don’t need no foreigner to make our soccer worthy. The moment will be looked back upon as the day American soccer grew up.

Beckham’s ego is so massive it can’t fit inside his haircut but the club has to take the blame for signing him. It was never a soccer decision. Branding should be left to boots and shirts, not players. The American game is maturing fast, fans follow the national team, and see victory. Understandably, the hostility from the American media forces the MLS to sell candy but those days are ending.