After worrying that I’d get bored with both football and blogging, it seems that the worry was all for nothing. I’m proud to have hit the milestone that is my 100th post, and I’m not even close to boredom. I love this!!! To me, every aspect of footie is exciting and new and dynamic and I’m learning something new every day! So with this post, it’s time to look at the sum result of all those days and recap what I’ve learned on both the football side and the blogging side.
Starting with the football side, I learned that…
I Need To Give Managers More Respect I gave it to them, just not enough of it. From the club league level, I always assumed that footie managers organized a few plays and whichever manager was the better organizer would win the game. Not true. A good manager is a combination of organizer, cheerleader, drill sergeant and psychologist that knows when and where to apply each role. A good manager consistently gets his team to international competitions like the Champions League and Asia Cup. A good manager faces the variety of playing styles that these competitions attract and may not always win the prize, but always gets a good showing. And since most managers (not all but most) focus on the game and not the gossip mags, the TV rights debates, the women and all the other stuff created as a result of football’s gentrification, managers as a whole may be the last pure characteristic of the game. While there are many good managers in all corners of the world, Sir Alex Ferguson is best of breed. It gives me no joy to write this as a Chelsea man, but it’s a fact.
I Need To Brush Up On My Footie Fundamentals I came to this conclusion after a comment back-and-forth with the Brain over at Arsenal Column, a blog that focuses on tactical football from a Gunner’s point of view. I embarrassed myself during the back-and-forth, implying that center backs (the two defenders in the middle) are the same as fullbacks (the two defenders at either end). He politely pointed out my mistake and I had to plead me ignorance. The fundamentals are something that I’ve glanced at from the periphery and that needs to stop. I’ll probably start my research on Wikipedia and work my way up to a book or two.
I Need To Focus On Italian, German, & American Soccer My fear of getting bored of football came from my narrow view as all I watched was English Premier League and Spanish La Liga games. It got to the point that I had the game on in the background, barely paying attention to it while doing my laundry. But I’ve begun to focus on Germany’s Bundesliga and the Italian Serie A League and feel reinvigorated. I’ve discovered new players, new teams, new playing styles and the game is brand new to me once again. While these two leagues are great in their own right, I need to focus on the soccer in my backyard and divert some attention to Major League Soccer. There’s a lot of homegrown soccer talent in the US, much of it in the MLS. I need to educate myself on this.
And on the blogging side, I learned that…
I LOOOOOVE Writing I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was 12 but never really acted it, save for a few small things every now and then. This blog has allowed me to write on a regular basis.
I’ve Become An Organized Blogger But There’s Room For Improvement In my first “What I’ve Learned” post, I commented on what tough work blogging was, and it remains that way. Part of the reason it was tough was because I was posting anything that came to mind at any time of the day. The end result was certain posts that seemed rushed in terms of content and contained sloppy mistakes like misspellings and improper punctuation. I fixed this by spending some quality time playing with Wordpress and realized that, when used properly, it’s a fabulous organizer. I also started using simple things like a pen and paper. All of this made me a much more structured blogger and I started to take my time writing posts…maybe too much time. I’m spending up to an hour on each post to make sure that it’s as close to perfect as possible, which is good but not if it eats into my lunch hour at work or makes me late to the dinner table. Now that I’ve organized my blogging process, I need organize my time.
I’ve Have An Audience That May Be Small, But I Need To Cater To It I’ve started to use Twitter and Facebook to promote my blog. Most of my Twitter follows are knowledgeable about either football or all sports in general, but it’s not like this on Facebook. And according to Google Analytics, Facebook is where the majority of my traffic comes from. In order to keep these FB readers that I’m VERY thankful for, I need to make sure that they can relate to my posts as much as possible. This means that the inside footie jokes and references will be kept to a minimum and that any complicated soccer terms will be succinctly described. I’ll also try to inject more humor. This will be a challenge since I want to start researching football’s tactical side, but I can do it.
Taking all this into consideration, the future of this blog is to continue to track my footie learning process by writing about it. Expect more Bundesliga and Serie A related posts, particularly Serie A as I now have a team to support there, which is AC Milan. I will be researching football fundamentals but will be posting about in a way that attracts a non-football fan.
This is what I’ve learned. Anyone out there think that this learning process was fruitful or that I should be taking a different approach with this blog? Please let me know as I encourage your comments.