Posts Tagged ‘Premier League’

Why I Haven’t Blogged In A While

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

As I said in my previous post, an extremely busy stretch at work kept me from posting things. There were about two weeks at Revlon that I was practically twiddling my thumbs, then the dam burst with projects. On top of that, I picked up three REALLY big freelance projects, keeping my busy not only nights but weekends, which kept me from watching matches.

Thing is, my weekends were not THAT busy. I could have stepped away for bit and watched some footie. I’ve also got a DVR which allows me to time-shift a boatload of games…I just never seemed to do that. For a minute, I though that my time as a soccer fanatic was over.

Then I started to recap the last few weeks in my head. While it may have seemed that I wasn’t watching recorded games, it turns out that I was wrong there. I watched a TON of games, particularly in La Liga. I watched a seemingly beaten-down Real Madrid go through a phenomenal rebirth of winds while simultaneously watching a fatigued Barcelona club go on a ridiculous string of draws and losses. Real Madrid may not win the league this year, but they DEFINITELY have a chance to take three points from Barcelona at the May 3rd superclassico.

I witnessed Liverpool’s annihilation of Manchester United in the best match of the year. Many believed that Liverpool manager, Rafa Benitez, couldn’t pick his best team of eleven players but it seems that team is gelling right now. Doubt that they’ll win the EPL trophy this year though.

Of course, there was the Champions League, where the round of 16 has come and gone. Inter Milan’s out. Real Madrid’s REALLY out. And we’re all hoping for a Barcelona – Man United match in the final, which seems possible.

Palmeiras
But best of all, GolTV is now carrying Brazilian club level football from the Sao Paulo state…and I LOVE it!!! Jumping back to rebirths for a second, I have been born-again thanks to Sao Paulo football, especially since I have access to Corinthian club games, which I can watch the great Ronaldo. But while Corinthians are great, I’ve decided to support the the Palmeiras club after watching them play. These games, I’m not missing.

So I watched a decent amount of football, just not a lot of English Premier League football. And this brings up an interesting point.

See, the EPL promotes itself on a scale much grander than any other football league in the world. Said promotion has created a strong customer demand for access to as many televised games as possible, particularly in America. The American cable and satellite operators know all this so they try to sell as many sports packages with EPL access as they can to customers. All of this means that whenever an American begins to get into football, they are most likely to be exposed to EPL football first.

This happened to me. When I first got in to footie, all I knew was the Premier League. Thanks to the Fox Soccer Channel and GolTV, I watched at least two EPL games over the weekend along with the Barcelona and Real Madrid matches in Spain. Then we brought a condo and got satellite subscription with Setanta, meaning that I now had access to all games played by the EPL’s big four teams every weekend. And since the condo increased our monthly expenses, we had no problem substituting football for our weeklong entertainment in lieu of going out as much.

Now after two years of being a football nut, I’ve realized the the English game is just not that exciting as the game in Spain and Brazil and Italy and France and many other regions. Don’t get me wrong, I love Chelsea and am curious about how Man U, Arsenal, Liverpool and Hull are doing, but not enough to give all five of these teams all of my weekend time. And now that I’m getting into the Brazilian game, the Italian game and (sorta kinda) the French game, I just cannot get into the EPL as much as I did in the past. As a result, I will budget my time around the really good games from ALL leagues, while using the internet to keep up with standings and fixtures of others. This means that whenever Man U plays Arsenal, I’ll be in front of my TV. But I’ll be somewhere else when Man U play Stoke City.

Don’t misunderstand me here. I absolutely do NOT hate the British game. It’s just that with the three soccer channels that I have, I have access to so much more football now. And when you watch all types of football from all types of leagues you start to notice the difference in styles of play, and the British style football is just not as exciting right now. It’s as if I’d been listing to my parents record collection all my life and have now discovered punk rock and rap music.

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Posted in Personal | 1 Comment »

A Good Fan Post On Chelsea’s Problems

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

Roman Abramovich
I just discovered a REALLY cool fan-powered site called FanIQ which, like Bleacher Report, allows sports fans of all stripes to post their own their own sports stories for all the world to see. As Bleacher Report has partnerships with both Fox Sports and CBS Sports, its visibility is a little higher than FanIQ’s (Bleacher Report is pop music and FanIQ is punk rock). But not only do I designate FanIQ as a Coolsite, I also listed it on my Blogroll.

I discovered FanIQ when I came across one its recent posts, “The Fall of Chelsea – The Roman Empire.” The phrase “Roman Empire” directly refers to Chelsea’s current owner, Roman Abramovich. It’s a little long but an excellent read.

The gist of the article is this: the once can’t-miss Chelsea Football Club is currently misfiring on all engines. They’ve yet to beat one of the other top three clubs in the English Premier League (and you can’t win the league title if you do that) and are currently in fourth place, making them no shoe-ins for entrance into next year’s Champions League competition. The writer, jumbovonolyphant, places the blame squarely on Roman Abramovich’s shoulders, pointing to his well-documented micromanaging that’s led to good managers getting axed, short-sightedness, and creating an atmosphere that prevents Chelsea from bringing in young talent (as an FYI, I think that the last things is a big part of Chelsea’s problems). He does give him his well-deserved credit for raising the profile of the EPL.

The only part of the story that I’m not 100% on board with is jumbovonolyphant’s statement that Chelsea’s one the teams “affected by the credit crunch.” While the team may have spent too much too fast, they’re technically not having a credit problem. The teams that are (Manchester United for example) borrowed a whole bunch of money at a respectable interest rate to fund their businesses, whereas Chelsea got their cash straight from Abramovich’s deep pockets. Leverage is certainly part of his business and I’m sure that he’s feeling the pinch in some places, but I have a hunch that he’ll survive it. This is splitting hairs but it’s an important characteristic that’s getting loss in credit crunch discussions, that the less you borrow, the more prepared you are to ride out the storm. But this is just part of the story and not its basis.

I attempted to post my opinion about this statement on FanIQ but had to register as a site member to do so. I tried to join but the process took waaaaaaaay too long. I have to point this out because I’m not telling the author my opinion straight on-although not for lack of trying-and don’t want anyone to think that I’m hiding my statements from him.

Regardless of my feelings about the credit crunch statement, I still think that the story is well-written and makes valid points. Please read the story, and form your own opinion.

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Posted in Chelsea FC | No Comments »

The January Transfer Window May End…I’ll Explain

Friday, January 30th, 2009

These two stories from the Daily Mail UK make me happy.

English Premier League officials will soon be meeting to discuss ending the customary January transfer window in the EPL and instead, letting clubs transfer players throughout the entire season. This change will not sit well with either UEFA (Europe’s governing football body) or FIFA (the entire world’s governing football body). In fact, UEFA prez Michel Platini wants to end transfers window everywhere and not just at the EPL. He would keep the summer one, but slightly adjust it’s timeframe.

Let me quickly explain: the soccer season at the club league level runs from around August to around May. While the various leagues, such as the English Premier League and Spain’s La Liga, have different start and end points, the beginning of January is the overall halfway mark. For that entire month, teams are allowed to swap players for players from others teams. This is not restricted to inter-league either and can done with teams from other leagues as well. So a player in the EPL can be swapped for another player in the EPL, but he can also be swapped for a player in La Liga if that’s what all the involved parties want.

The January and summer transfer windows kick off a ridiculous feeding frenzy among the press and bloggers, most of whom react to every rumor that comes down the pike. I paid close attention to this past summer’s window and watched everyone predict which player would go to which club…maybe 5% of the predictions were right. This absurdity reached peak levels when Real Madrid attempted to woo Cristiano Ronaldo away from Manchester United, and there were 20 articles for every half-truth that came out about this.

I’ve always been of the opinion that the transfer windows take attention away from the beautiful game as well as distract players from doing their job, and Platini says the same thing as far as that last point goes. This is why I very rarely post transfer rumors and why these two stories make me happy. I don’t always agree with Platini, but he and I are pretty much simpatico on this.

One of the underlying themes of both articles is that the transfer windows benefit only those clubs with the biggest bank accounts, which is true since the act of swapping players can incur huge costs. How huge? Well, don’t let the word “swap” put images of slavery in your mind because Ronaldo would’ve received a ridiculous salary had the Man United/Real Madrid deal gone through, a salary that was rumored to be £1 million a week at one point.

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Posted in Soccer Business | No Comments »

Stoke City Boss: Foreign Ownership Of Football Clubs Sucks

Thursday, January 29th, 2009

Stoke City boss Tony Pulis tells the BBC that foreign ownership of English Premier League clubs is wrong, taking direct aim at Roman Abramovich and the Abu Dhabi United group, owners of Chelsea and Manchester City, respectively. He feels that the current crop of foreign owners don’t understand the history club footie and that he would much happier if EPL clubs were owned by those from within their respective communities.

I’m in no way coming to his defense here but while he may be acting protectionist, I see no evidence of racism in his statement. Some of his potshots are directed at Abramovich, who just happens to have white skin.

Also, and quite curiously, he didn’t mention either Manchester United owner Malcom Glazer or Liverpool co-owners Tom Hicks & George N. Gillett Jr., all whom are American and have received a boatload of criticism for not being English. Hicks and Gillett especially.

Pulis is expressing a common sentiment held by many traditional football fans, particularly English ones. I’ve said this before but in my footie learning process, I’ve found that old school fans have HUGE issues with Non-British ownership. It’s a direct result of football’s gentrification, and the gentrification as a whole ticks off the old timers to no end. And in reviewing some past instances, Pulis may have a point. An example of an instance is Roman Abramovich’s constant bumping of heads with then-Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho over team signings and playing styles. The conflict got to be so big (and in all fairness, Jose needs to take the blame for some of the conflict), that Roman eventually had to give Jose the axe.

All of this been said, it cannot be denied that the money brought in by these foreign owners (particularly Abramovich) has helped all of these clubs. And while we’ve yet to see this money yield many results at both Stoke and Man City, all the others have done well with the cash.

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This Post Got Me Thinking About “The Business End Of The Season”

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008


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.

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Posted in Football Knowledge | No Comments »