INDUSTRIAL FOOTBALL
Posted by: Alan Black on: May 4, 2009
French painters, or Spanish architects, have produced delicate works of art but does art really work on the football pitch? Arsenal and Liverpool like the flair and lightness of their inventive squads but it does not compare to the industrial blend forged by Comrade Ferguson in Manchester. Alex Ferguson hails from Govan in Glasgow, known for shipbuilding, rivets, bolts, and headbutting. Fergie’s products, Darren Fletcher, Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick pack a midfield industry into 90 minutes, and the results are solid. Manchester United’s midfield is the reason they will be champions this year. They are Clyde built.
Players like Arsenal’s Fabregas are like salads. They might be good for the body of the game but they go off mighty fast. Players like Fletcher and O’Shea will keep working like pumps in an engine, year after year. They might not have the flair of a matador but they can screw a game shut. Manchester United’s quality central defense, Ferdinand and Vidic, don’t really do that much but sweep up the factory floor.
The sad fact is, much like heavy industry, footballers like Fletcher and Scholes are becoming rarer. The industrial age of football is winding down. The lighter model has arrived. One fears that the glory years of the game are behind us, when toughness and hard work secured perennial success.
Trails
Posted by: Alan Black on: April 9, 2009
Soccer is really a game of magic mushrooms. There are trails everywhere. The rampant ball, the running players, the long outstetched hands on a save. A riot of colors, flying boots, combustible explosions of happiness. Terrible comedowns, fear of the clock, time running out. The dark sinister man in yellow blowing a loud whistle, the lonely raver, ranting at players, pulling superbright cards from his pockets, like big warning signs on the mushroom ride.
Well, none of that worked. Football’s just a game.
Glory, Glory Man United
Posted by: Alan Black on: April 6, 2009
The 17-year old, Federico Macheda, has touched the glory. His master strike to keep Manchester United’s dream of a five trophy season alive will be remembered for many halves to come. At 17, he possesses a face much older in years, and a haircut resembling the turrets of an Italian town perched on top of a Tuscan hill. Brought into the soccer world by the grandfather of wisdom, Alex Ferguson, the boy is likely to thrive. Another major discovery by a Scotsman. Too bad Ferguson cannot discover a Scottish hero, a kid good enough to raise the sinking ship of Scottish football. While the Italian is eating pasta and tomatoes, the Scottish boy is devouring french fries, learning the language of cheap drink, and the smoke signals of tobacco. Help.
THE PRICE OF DRINK
Posted by: Alan Black on: April 3, 2009
Drink is expensive. Just ask former Scotland captain Barry Ferguson and fellow teamate at Glasgow Rangers, Allan McGregor. After last week’s humiliating defeat by the Orange Dutch in the World Cup qualifier, the two Scottish players went on a drinking binge at the Scotland team’s hotel. You might think orange crush would have been their choice of beverage, them being Rangers players but no. Lager, whisky and rum and cokes led the way. Kick off was 4am. The last drop was swallowed at midday, as the rest of the team was preparing for lunch. Now the Scottish Football Association and Glasgow Rangers have banned the two from ever playing again. Expect to see Ferguson in your local bar harping on about the days when he was once the Scotland captain. A more fitting end to his pathetic career would have been to play him as center forward for Scotland, a real Siberia if ever there was one.
World Cup Round-Up- Why are some teams better than others?
Posted by: Alan Black on: March 28, 2009
Scotland and Holland, two similarly small countries, one is flat, one full of mountains. The Dutch have pretty flowers, the Scottish have sharp spiky things called thistles. The Romans conquered Holland, they left Scotland out of the Empire. Flushing toilets came to Scotland last year.
In footballing terms, Holland are far superior. Why? They have a player pool from former colonies in the sunshine, Scotland has hunchbacks from local caves. The Dutch eat vegetables, the Scottish players are vegetables. The Dutch smoke reefer and imagine impressionist football, with flair, and lightness; in Scotland it’s kegs of dark beer, and frequent blackouts. Scotland is wee men, they are big men. Scotland’s national anthem sounds like a dirge at a sheep’s funeral, Holland’s swings.
So what options do a team like Scotland have? The traditional approach is to break opponent’s legs, set fire to their villages after the game and use the word fuck more often that a rapper with Tourette’s Syndrome. But a more realistic choice is required – abandon ship, withdraw from FIFA and never set foot on a football field again.
In football it is this simple – We are Good or We are Rubbish.
Holland 3 – Scotland 0
The Death of My Team
Posted by: Alan Black on: March 25, 2009
Clyde FC are my team. The Bully Wee is their nickname. We play in the First Division in Scotland. We’re 132 years old, one of the oldest clubs in the world. Our glory days were in the 1950’s. In the eighties, we lost our home, Shawfield Stadium in Rutherglen, Glasgow. We moved to a barren stadium in Central Scotland. The results have been disastrous. Now we are facing extinction, possibly heading to the boneyard of Scottish football. We’re almost as old as Noah in the Bible. And we need an ark, and we need it now.
Clyde are the latest victims of the monsters in Scottish football – Rangers and Celtic. Content to throttle dissent and keep up their sectarian derived profits, they continue to rake in new generations of fans with their febrile animosity. They never share, except amongst themselves. People think Rangers and Celtic hate each other but they are really lovers sharing the same bed, for over a century. Rangers and Celtic are one. It’s time to change the sheets.
Here’s the pathetic ad I posted to Craigslist in California, asking for an ark…
Are you a soccer fan billionaire looking to invest in European soccer? Perhaps you are Scottish American? Do you wish to become part of the European soccer elites?
Clyde Football Club are a professional Scottish soccer club facing economic extinction. Founded in 1877, Clyde are one of the oldest clubs in the world. The team moved from its home, Shawfield Stadium in Glasgow, in the 1980’s and it proved disastrous. Clyde needs to return to its home. The investor should buy Shawfield (it’s still there!), rebuild it and buy a team that will attract new fans and change the face of Scottish soccer for decades to come. Scottish soccer is in the dark ages, throttled by the sectarian monsters of Rangers and Celtic. Are you our Beowulf? This is a chance to sweep them away. It’s a ten year plan. You can change Scottish society. Change a country!
Clyde needs you!
Please contact
Americans to Boo Beckham
Posted by: Alan Black on: March 11, 2009
USA soccer boss, Alexi Lalas, announced that David Beckham will be booed on his return to LA Galaxy. This is an important moment of maturation for American soccer. It proves the fans at the Galaxy believe that their club is bigger than “the man.” Many Galaxy fans don’t want Becks back. His slow play is much more suited for the snail’s pace of Italian football. Not that American soccer is fast but it is played in a more open style than the fossilised Calcio. Like most people his age, Beckham is slowing down. It’s little surprise that he wants to lounge around on the field in fashionable Milan. The freeway lane changes of Los Angeles are too much for old Becks. Galaxy fans: boo him until he goes away. American soccer no longer needs a slow giant to shake it awake.
Beware the Flying Donut Brigades
Posted by: Alan Black on: March 4, 2009
While watching a kids game of soccer at the weekend, I witnessed an act of pastry murder. An irate mom threw a missile on to the field. For a split second, I thought an asteroid was about to hit planet earth but it turned out to be a cream stuffed donut. It made a mighty splodge. The referee arrived at the impact site and yelled, who threw that? WHO THREW THAT! He was met with a wall of smiling mothers, nary a trace of cream filled donut on their rosy red lips. A dog wandered on to the field and ate the shattered pastry, destroying any evidence the ref may have wished to collect for the league’s investigators.
Support the Rich, Be Seated…
Posted by: Alan Black on: March 1, 2009
Whatever happened to cheap football in England? It ended the day the terraces closed. That’s a generation ago now, many kids find it odd that fans once stood in hail, rain and urine, swaying forwards and backwards in waves of reaction to goals, to bad refereeing, and to taunts from the waves at the other end of the stadium. The seat replaced the breakers, the hills were once alive with the sounds of fans, now they are dulled by the seated drudgery of bloated modern stadia. They still stand at football in Argentina. Their game rocks. Destroy the seats. Bring back standing. And lose some weight.
WORLD CUPS – HOW MANY IN A LIFETIME?
Posted by: Alan Black on: February 25, 2009
How many World Cup’s can you fit into a lifetime?
20, if you ate your veggies, avoided the drink and spent your spare time deciphering crossword puzzles.
15, assuming you sometimes ate a carrot, kept the drinks for the weekend and maybe watched too much TV but occasionally read a book.
10, if you smoked twenty cigs a day, ate fried take-away every night, and hated walking to the kitchen from the sofa unless it was to the refrigerator for full fat ice-cream.
5, if you got a horrible disease or died like James Dean
Being Andorran, or a Faero Islander, or Fijian, it won’t matter how many World Cups you can fit into a lifetime. You’ll never see your team play in it. Sadly, being Scottish, I fear my bones are heading for the same oblivion.
