An excellent article courtesy of Martin Banks at Soccer Lens. Retaining the knowledge spewing from this article is an absolute must if you want to understand how the game works.
It is brilliant posts like these are why I continually read Soccer Lens, a Coolsite.
Dear Nicolas:
After closely watching your game this season, I felt the need to review past posts where I mentioned your name. I found one here where I wasn’t really nice to you and another one here where I attempted to apologize. But it was a weak, half-hearted attempt, especially since you’re the leading scorer in the English Premier League right now. Because of this, I’m using this post to give you a proper mea culpa:
You play for Chelsea, of whom I am a die-hard fan. No matter how much I still have to learn about football, I know what it takes to wear a title like that. It takes staunch loyalty, season-long commitment and most all, patience. But patience is a virtue that American sports fans don’t abundantly possess.
We used to though: we knew that teams and individual players would have good years and bad years. We also knew that really good teams would have championship seasons one year while barely squeaking by the next. And while we would have loved it if our fave teams and players won every prize every season, we knew that they would sometimes lose. And we accepted it.
Michael Jordan changed all that. After getting picked third overall by the Chicago Bulls in the 1984 NBA draft, MJ changed basketball as soon as he finished his first preseason Bulls game…and looked real pretty doing it. He created dunks from 20 feet out. He made all-net jump shots look quaint. Most of all, he was a leader. While Jordan didn’t take Chicago to the championship that first season, his on-court performance carried a promise that he would. A promise that he delivered on in 1991 as he led the Bulls to their first of six NBA titles.
Since then, American sports fans are looking for the next Michael Jordan. Or the next Wayne Gretzky. Or Joe Montana. Maybe not carbon copies of them, but we’re looking for those that get the results as soon as they sign the contract. The Jets expected it from Brett Farve. The Yankees have expected it from a seemingly endless parade of pitchers. This type of mindset, I believe, will always exist in American sport fandom on some level.
So when I started watching footie, I came in with this American mindset. And if my above theory is true, then the absolute worst thing that could’ve happen to me happened…I got instant results the day I started watching the game.
The results were delivered courtesy of your current teammate, Didier Drogba. It was during that 2007 FA Cup Final when he spanked that goal past the Manchester United keeper, giving Chelsea the win. They say that you shouldn’t look for a club to support, the club will find you. Chelsea found me the second Didier’s ball found the back of the net that day.
With Didier’s win and the instant gratification I received, I just assumed that Chelsea would always be winning and DD would be the reason why….like it eventually was with Jordan. This built up such a bias in my head, that I felt threatened by you when you came to my beloved Blues during the January transfer window of the 2007/08 season. Drogba was hurt so you came in to pick up the slack and I thought you were being primed to take his place. So I subconsciously said to myself, “He’d better get results immediately and lead this team to victory.” In short, I demanded that you be better than Michael Jordan.
You weren’t. To be fair, you sucked that first season with Chelsea and that’s why I started to write you off has a has-been. But as I said yesterday in my observation of the rumored-Thierry Henry move out of Barcelona, I’ve learned that all players must be given proper time to acclimate themselves to their new football club. And in your case, I’ve watched you acclimate yourself to Chelsea brilliantly and have therefore, learned and this lesson too late. I put harsh words on you and you’ve made me eat every one of ‘em.
And you know what? you’ve looked real pretty doing it. Despite Chelsea’s current cold spell, you’ve scored 14 goals for my club, more than anyone in the league right now. You’ve to taken the role of center forward and commanded the position quite nicely. The Blues are currently in fourth place…they have you to thank for not being in sixth place.
But now your club manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari, isn’t starting you up front. Instead, he’s starting Drogba, who’s been a lazy-a**. Neither his teammates, his coach nor his club’s owner know whether or not this fool wants to stay with Chelsea or split. Oh, he said he wanted to stay last week, but he likes to change his mind. And while he’s doing that, you’re all ready to go.
You’ve got my respect, but Mr. Scolari needs to give you his after all you’ve done for Chelsea this season. And he needs to do it now. Otherwise, he may be forced to deliver a late apology for his mistakes…like I had to.
So Sorry Nick,
kaidez
It’s brutal but funny in some parts. Yesterday, the London Times laid out “The 50 worst things about modern football”.
I clicked towards this story expecting to read about nothing but how TV rights, overpaid players and big money owners have ruined the game. While capitalism’s effect on football is certainly mentioned on this list, it certainly doesn’t dominate it. Also discussed are the altering of old rules, the additions of new rules, the internet’s sometime negative effect on the game, and how the media’s role has expand in footie may be too large.
I’m out to learn as much as I can about footie and started this blog to track the learning process, but I’ve only been at it for less than two years. It’s because of this that I’m veeeeeeeeeeeeeery hesitant to either side with or criticize this list. Still…
On one hand, I’ve watched enough football to know that I don’t want it to deviate too much from its current structure. For example, I don’t want instant replays and challenges to come to game…Sunday’s Super Bowl drove that one home. I also don’t want Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation to have anymore control over the game than it does now. On the other hand, change is big part of how life works and there’s not much that can do about it. And there are times when change is good: I may not like Sky Sports’ control of the game but they put the Fox Soccer Channel in my house. I can’t have it both ways.
In general, this list is very critical of change. With my limited knowledge of the game’s history, I have no frame of reference to say that the criticism is correct. But I do know that things need to progress and mature and adapt to its surroundings so change is needed. I personally, have no problem with that. Now go and read the list.
When you’re blogger, it’s a must that you carefully consider how to categorize each post. I put this one under ‘Football Knowledge’ but I swear that for a nanosecond, I considered creating a category called “What Are You Smoking” in reference to this story. Tottenham Hotspur Chairman Daniel Levy insists that his team is the fifth best in the Premier League right now. He goes on to say that it’s still early in the season and that the Spurs have the potential to turn things around.
Now as most footie fans know, the timing of this comment makes the comment all the more humorous. A few months before the start of the season, many (including myself) hailed Tottenham Hotspur as “The Chosen One”. A decent finish during the 07/08 season and some key additions to the roster like Giovanni Dos Santos made the team look primed to finish at least fifth in the EPL. That they lost Jermain Defoe to Portsmouth was something that they could work around.
But the loss of both Defoe AND Dimatar Berbatov to Manchester United was simply too much for them to work around. One thing I’ve learned about footie is that all the top tier teams either have at least one marquee player for scoring or have a whole team of hard working guys that play their positions well and develop into a cohesive unit that can get the ball to the back of the net. Once Berbatov was gone, the Spurs had neither. The end result: top-tier and mid level teams pimp-slapped them all over the pitch and they lost games…a lot of games. Hull City was now hailed as “The Chosen One”. The Spurs wound up in the relegation zone. Manager Juande Ramos was served his walking papers.
While many are now writing them off and mentally sewing Championship League patches onto Spurs jerseys, I’m gonna hold off. Because there is such a thing as the “Business End of the Season,” when teams who know that they have to win games, go out and win games! Look at Fulham last season . They were kissing the relegation zone but won enough games towards the end to avoid it. Real Madrid were written off as finishing in second place in La Liga in 06/07 and 07/08 and ended up capturing the League title for both seasons. Both of these teams acheived their goals towards the close of the season.
My point is that one of the qualifications of good team is one of the simplest: get all three points when you need to. For many teams this qualification manifests itself during the last weeks of the season. I don’t know if it will manifest itself for Tottenham, but their past performance is good enough for me to say that it’s possible.
I saw the commercial for this documentary on GOLTV two or three weeks ago and I’m glad that I saw its press release this AM to remind me it was coming. Hosted by John Cleese, The Art Of Football is a 2-hour documentary (Part I airing tonight, Part II airing the same day and time on 10/8) that focuses on “the humorous and creative side of international soccer to demonstrate how the sport transcends borders, politics and race.” It’s also got quite an array of interview subjects: Bono, Arsene Wenger, Dennis Hopper, and Ruud van Nistelrooy; just to name a few. Looks like I’ll be doing some learning this evening.
I thought this doc was brand spanking new when the commercial aired, but I Google’d it and in turns out it was released in 2006 (got that piece of info from The Art Of Football’s IMDB page). And from what I see, it was a very limited release, at least stateside. Some more digging indicated that it was directed by Hermann Vaske out of Germany, so I then hit his site and found a ton of information on the doc as well as on Vaske himself. Here’s a more detailed page on the documentary, but also read this guy’s bio because it sounds like he’s got a lot of creative bones in his body. I plan to check out some his other works as well.
I ended my digging by checking to see if Netflix had TAOF available for rent and as they’re known for their deep doc selection, I was shocked to find that the didn’t. Now to be fair, my search yielded exactly 27,233 results and I didn’t scroll through all of them so they might have it, but I doubt it. That being said, if you’re based in the US and want to see this, tuning into GolTV tonight and next week may be your only chance to do so. GolTV or some other channel may re-air TAOF in the future, but it’s no guarantee.
I’m gonna try and review this tomorrow unless I don’t finish watching all the Champions League games I have stored on DVR.
Update: the version airing tonight and next week contains footage on the 2008 Euro Cup competition, so it’s definetly worth watching if you haven’t seem it.