Spain.
You wouldn't want their economy. You wouldn't mind their food (gazpacho aside - cold soup is a contradiction in terms). You'd love to have their footballers. Indeed, a simple bit of redistribution of their wealth might go a long way to solving their financial problems.
But the iniquities of the tax system are not the first things that come to mind when you watch Andres Iniesta doing multiple dragbacks. There is something of the matador about the ghostly Iniesta. Uruguayan defenders are notorious bullish and yet he sidestepped them like a piss-taking toreador.
The first half of Spain v Uruguay was a demonstration of why the old tippy-tappy stuff is hard to disagree with. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, unless the thing that you possess is a class A drug and you're on a South London stop and search initiative. Uruguay, no mean technicians in their own right, swiped away like cows' tails at the remorseless swarming Spanish flies but to very little avail.
They are still the yardstick by which other countries are judged. Although it doesn't harm a team to have free-kick takers like Luis Suarez or Andrea Pirlo around. Both scored the free-kick I have dreamed of for all of my forty-summat years, but like a 1987 East German, just getting over the wall in the first place would be a start.
Of course the Confederations Cup - FIFA's answer to the question 'How the hell do we get by with no footy in June and July?' - has served up some beautiful moments. The sort of moments that you can guarantee will be gracing the Internet Knock-Off Sports Gear Arena next season now that Joe Kinnear is the new 'Director of Football'.
Now I'm a little old-fashioned, me, but I do kind of wonder what a director of football does that a football manager doesn't do. In Joe Kinnear's case, you can only imagine a football being directed either 'down the channels' or skywards.
It's not like Joe is going to bring a more sophisticated influence to Newcastle's playing style. The closest he's ever got to anything continental was the time his wife bought them funny quilts in the 70s. And Joe was quick to get her back on sheets and blankets, I can tell you!
Still, if you read Joe's interview you'll realise that this is an entirely mistaken point of view. Yes, he can't pronounce players' names properly but hellfire, who can? I mean I've heard his name pronounced as 'Jokin' 'Ere' - as in "You have to be Jokin' 'Ere".
Kinnear claims he can also 'open the door to any manager in the world' which might mean that the director of football is simply a glorified bouncer. He claimed to have signed Tim Krul (he didn't - Souness did which came as a shock to me), and to have won the manager of the month three times (he won it once). So his memory's shot and he can't count but - get this - he's way more intelligent than his critics.
Well I'm sorry, Lard Ashley, but this really is the final straw for your average Toonite. Geordie suspicions were held at bay the season before last when Pardew's team put together a really brilliant season. 2012-13 was less impressive but at least, you thought, perhaps too charitably, it's good to see a manager stay in place for the sake of a bit of stability. Plus the bloke's got an 8-year contract to see out. I don't know anyone who's got an 8-year contract. I bet the new Pope hasn't even been given that by God.
Now we have the apparent hiring of another geezer from down south into a role which serves no apparent purpose whatsoever. Director of football.. tsk! I mean the Chancellor of the Exchequer doesn't require the help of a director of finance, does he? (Okay, bad example).
The only hope the Gallowgate End has is that poor old Joe might not quite remember how to get there. Kinnear is right to point out that when a heart attack brought his previous tenure to an abrupt halt he got a great deal of support from the Geordie fans. But, sadly, here Joe is confusing human kindness and sympathy with respect for his work. I mean I hoped he'd get better too but I didn't want to come down the Riverside to become Pointer in Chief.
It's a bit of a bloody farce if you ask me and I think it takes Ashley's reputation and relationship with the Newcastle faithful back to square one. The only thing that I can say in Kinnear's favour is that he may know one or two players who aren't French.
Chelsea get Mourinho. United get Moyes. Everton get Martinez. Stoke get Mark. Newcastle get Muppet (a very intelligent one at that).
Robbo 10: W**kin Frankel - Click On My Face To Listen!
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Monday, 10 June 2013
Feats of Clay
There was a time when I found the French Open tennis tournament a really dull spectacle. Lots of Southern Europeans (or Swedes) pattering around through the dirt and looping enormously high shots back and forth at each other so that the net became an irrelevance. Points that lasted millennia. Whole days lost to it monotonous routines. Occasionally you'd almost believe that the volley had been outlawed from the game. What with that and French television's relentless search for an artsy-fartsy cut-away of a ball bouncing on a surface the colour of an Geordie lass's Saturday-night skin, or a sweat-band brushed across a lank-haired pate, and the whole thing made me yearn for the football season to hurtle back into view as soon as possible.
Of course nowadays a serve-and-volleyer on any surface is eyed with suspicion, as if the poor thing has been swept up in a trawler-net like one of them fishes we thought were extinct. But baseline rallies have also become much more compulsive - extraordinary slugfests punctuated by startling angles and brutal hitting.
There's no doubt that they wouldn't have managed this sort of stuff in the days of wooden racquets and no sitting down between points. With these new bats I swear you could hit a serve around a street corner with no great difficulty.
Nevertheless it's hard to believe that we have ever witnessed tennis of the sort of standard offered up by the likes of Nadal, Djokovic and, increasingly rarely, Federer. Of course clay is as natural a playground for Nadal as it was for Demi Moore in Ghost. There is something about that topspin forehand of his that makes you wonder whether it could remove your head with one swipe, like a grizzly bear's forepaw.
After outlasting Jockey-Itch in the latest chapter of a series of quite ludicrously long matches between the big four (yes, Murray does count), he then took on Ferrer in the final. Ferrer has lots of qualities to admire: speed, stamina, fitness. But not power. Like Dido's voice, the harder he pushed it, the weedier he looked. It began to look like Nadal was playing against a child-sized version of himself. Rafa Max v Rafa Lite.
Ferrer talked afterwards about how he needed to be more aggressive on court when he played the Majorcan marvel but frankly it wouldn't have made much of a difference had he secreted a Kalashnikov down his pants, Rara would still have been pleased to see him. This latest triumph, achieved after eight months out with a very nasty injury, is enough to officially crown Nadal as not so much the King of Clay as its Eternal Emperor.
There's a facile argument going round that Rafa can now claim to be better than Federer. On clay, yes. But not everywhere, and to be fair Federer is not the power he was. But he is utterly phenomenal - and a nice man too, bless 'im.
The day before, a woman who can fairly lay claim to be the finest sportswoman in the world right now won her second French Open title. Serena Williams is a curious cove, isn't she? No matter how complimentary and polite she is in post-match interviews there's a radiant arrogance to her that underpins everything.
I don't know about you but I don't consider that a bad thing. She's won 16 titles now and she too has overcome injury and personal sadness to get there. You might say there's a lack of subtlety to her game. There's often the insinuation that she lacks femininity - you know, like that lezza Navratilova did. Take Sharapova's comment on the Serena serve: "I think if I was built like Serena, I hope I'd be able to hit a big serve like that, too." Hard not to hear a 'miaow' in there, eh?
I'd simply respond by saying that if Maria could actually get here second serves in occasionally it might just even things up a little. (Nails in, girlfriend!)
The fact is that Serena Williams, like Navratilova before her, is an utterly fantastic tennis player. Really bloody wonderful. I'm aghast that she doesn't quite get the credit it deserves, except from John McEnroe who is relentlessly positive about her.
It all sets up Wimbledon rather nicely. No one's going to beat Serena there either, but in the men's... well you know the lad Muzza. Remember him? Well, he's got a chance this year. A big chance. Just hope and pray he's not in the same half as Nadal. Or Djokovic. Or both.
On a different note, Stuart Pearce has been lamenting the absentees from his labouring England Under-21 squad and you can't help but sympathise. England have always treated the under-21's as a stepping stone to the full squad. It's not the real thing. Never mind that you'll have young lads playing tournament football - probably against players that they'll be playing at senior level for years to come.
Pearce is right to be frustrated. He's wrong to persist with tired old methods of playing football that make Hodgson's Dark Ages look like a halcyon day of summer. But, just for once, it'd be nice if we tried to win one of these gongs. Like Germany did, when that Meszut Ozil ran the show. Mind you, look what happened to him, eh?
Of course nowadays a serve-and-volleyer on any surface is eyed with suspicion, as if the poor thing has been swept up in a trawler-net like one of them fishes we thought were extinct. But baseline rallies have also become much more compulsive - extraordinary slugfests punctuated by startling angles and brutal hitting.
There's no doubt that they wouldn't have managed this sort of stuff in the days of wooden racquets and no sitting down between points. With these new bats I swear you could hit a serve around a street corner with no great difficulty.
Nevertheless it's hard to believe that we have ever witnessed tennis of the sort of standard offered up by the likes of Nadal, Djokovic and, increasingly rarely, Federer. Of course clay is as natural a playground for Nadal as it was for Demi Moore in Ghost. There is something about that topspin forehand of his that makes you wonder whether it could remove your head with one swipe, like a grizzly bear's forepaw.
After outlasting Jockey-Itch in the latest chapter of a series of quite ludicrously long matches between the big four (yes, Murray does count), he then took on Ferrer in the final. Ferrer has lots of qualities to admire: speed, stamina, fitness. But not power. Like Dido's voice, the harder he pushed it, the weedier he looked. It began to look like Nadal was playing against a child-sized version of himself. Rafa Max v Rafa Lite.
Ferrer talked afterwards about how he needed to be more aggressive on court when he played the Majorcan marvel but frankly it wouldn't have made much of a difference had he secreted a Kalashnikov down his pants, Rara would still have been pleased to see him. This latest triumph, achieved after eight months out with a very nasty injury, is enough to officially crown Nadal as not so much the King of Clay as its Eternal Emperor.
There's a facile argument going round that Rafa can now claim to be better than Federer. On clay, yes. But not everywhere, and to be fair Federer is not the power he was. But he is utterly phenomenal - and a nice man too, bless 'im.
The day before, a woman who can fairly lay claim to be the finest sportswoman in the world right now won her second French Open title. Serena Williams is a curious cove, isn't she? No matter how complimentary and polite she is in post-match interviews there's a radiant arrogance to her that underpins everything.
I don't know about you but I don't consider that a bad thing. She's won 16 titles now and she too has overcome injury and personal sadness to get there. You might say there's a lack of subtlety to her game. There's often the insinuation that she lacks femininity - you know, like that lezza Navratilova did. Take Sharapova's comment on the Serena serve: "I think if I was built like Serena, I hope I'd be able to hit a big serve like that, too." Hard not to hear a 'miaow' in there, eh?
I'd simply respond by saying that if Maria could actually get here second serves in occasionally it might just even things up a little. (Nails in, girlfriend!)
The fact is that Serena Williams, like Navratilova before her, is an utterly fantastic tennis player. Really bloody wonderful. I'm aghast that she doesn't quite get the credit it deserves, except from John McEnroe who is relentlessly positive about her.
It all sets up Wimbledon rather nicely. No one's going to beat Serena there either, but in the men's... well you know the lad Muzza. Remember him? Well, he's got a chance this year. A big chance. Just hope and pray he's not in the same half as Nadal. Or Djokovic. Or both.
On a different note, Stuart Pearce has been lamenting the absentees from his labouring England Under-21 squad and you can't help but sympathise. England have always treated the under-21's as a stepping stone to the full squad. It's not the real thing. Never mind that you'll have young lads playing tournament football - probably against players that they'll be playing at senior level for years to come.
Pearce is right to be frustrated. He's wrong to persist with tired old methods of playing football that make Hodgson's Dark Ages look like a halcyon day of summer. But, just for once, it'd be nice if we tried to win one of these gongs. Like Germany did, when that Meszut Ozil ran the show. Mind you, look what happened to him, eh?
Thursday, 30 May 2013
The Dark and Very Bleak Ages.
Gary Lineker says England's football is going back to the Dark Ages. It's hard not to agree.
During training Wayne Rooney and Phil Jagielka cleaned out the hog's bladder by hand. Ashley Cole stitched it up before it was inflated by some hot air from a Roy Hodgson press conference.
Meanwhile, out in the woods, James Milner and Joe Hart lopped down an entire copse of silver birches and fashioned a set of goalposts from it. Woy led training with a hawkish eye, ensuring that the players didn't at any moment take their eyes of the bear they were bating. And after a hard shift, they all relaxed with a spit-roast stag and a glass of mead.
On the other hand, 1-1 against the Republic of Ireland in a fecking awful game is par for the course. I seem to remember St. Gary bundling in a goal at the start of Italia '90 that had all the precision and elegance of a drunk falling down the stairs. That was a pretty dark game too.
But this 4-4-2 nonsense that dogs England footballers has got to stop. The only thing to be said in its favour is that at least the players understand it. They've been playing it all their lives. From the moment they stepped on to a muddy windswept footy field as a seven-year-old - almost certainly a full-size pitch - they've had some old croak on the touchline bellowing at them about keeping their shape. (Ironically the man in question has very often entirely lost his own shape).
English footballers are treated like privates in a regimented platoon. Everyone has his job. Obey that and you'll be fine. If you're a centre-half don't start doing keepy-uppies. If you're a full-back, we might let you bomb on - but only very rarely.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an England team play in such horrible straight lines. Even Rooney, who does have a footballing brain even if that leaves very little cortex left over to include owt else, couldn't fashion anything like an inspirational moment. But then England have for far too long relied on a bloke who, like the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, needs to be renamed as On The Wane Rooney.
Certainly there is now officially nothing to be optimistic about when it comes to the England team. That is unless you see something hopeful in the fact that Sturridge was 'lively' in the first half. That's the sort of patronising description you hand out to a third tier team when they get a goal at Stamford Bridge in the third round of the FA Cup.
Sturridge won't be off to the Maracana with he rest of the England journeymen. Maybe that stadium will lift the team to new heights. Well I say heights. Just off the floor might be a start. It's hard to imagine anything other than Brazil absolutely ripping apart a team that seems shorn of anything resembling wit or spark.
It's worth saying that England are always shit at this time of the year. The players have been through a long season - although given the Champions League showings not as long as it might have been. Then again, when do the World Cups and Euros happen? At THIS time of year. It can't simply be fatigue. The other factor is... and whisper it because Roy won't admit it and even the FIFA rankings connive in it... England are not very good.
All right so there was no Gerrard or Wilshere but pretty much everyone else picked themselves. OK it was a friendly, and they're always a bit flat. Carrick was England's best player, just about. The holding midfielder. You think about England in recent years and very often the best player on the park is the one who plays there: Owen Hargreaves running his bony little knees off; Scotty Parker flinging himself like a rabid bodyguard in the way of strikes at goal.
These players stand out because, for too much more than half the time, England DON'T HAVE THE BALL. One chump or another has just plonked it back to the opposition. If that opposition is Ireland then don't worry too much, they'll be kicking it back to you very soon. If it's Italy, or Spain, or Brazil, you simply won't see the ball again for a good five minutes.
It doesn't really matter what Hodgson says. In fact the more he opens his mouth the less you believe that he believes what he's saying. Look at Dortmund. The game has moved on. The old English virtues of commitment, passion, physicality - well, everyone does that now, boys - look at Dortmund. And the difference with Dortmund is they include the other vital ingredient of PASSING THE BALL TO EACH OTHER!!!!
They also have flexible versatile footballers who don't worry too much about interchanging positions; who look for space to exploit rather than the place they should be.
Those of us that endure the Revie and post-Revie doldrums, well you should get ready for some more. England will not qualify for the next World Cup. They are simply not good enough. Not by a long, long chalk. Chalk being the writing implement of choice for a Dark Ages football coach.
During training Wayne Rooney and Phil Jagielka cleaned out the hog's bladder by hand. Ashley Cole stitched it up before it was inflated by some hot air from a Roy Hodgson press conference.
Meanwhile, out in the woods, James Milner and Joe Hart lopped down an entire copse of silver birches and fashioned a set of goalposts from it. Woy led training with a hawkish eye, ensuring that the players didn't at any moment take their eyes of the bear they were bating. And after a hard shift, they all relaxed with a spit-roast stag and a glass of mead.
On the other hand, 1-1 against the Republic of Ireland in a fecking awful game is par for the course. I seem to remember St. Gary bundling in a goal at the start of Italia '90 that had all the precision and elegance of a drunk falling down the stairs. That was a pretty dark game too.
But this 4-4-2 nonsense that dogs England footballers has got to stop. The only thing to be said in its favour is that at least the players understand it. They've been playing it all their lives. From the moment they stepped on to a muddy windswept footy field as a seven-year-old - almost certainly a full-size pitch - they've had some old croak on the touchline bellowing at them about keeping their shape. (Ironically the man in question has very often entirely lost his own shape).
English footballers are treated like privates in a regimented platoon. Everyone has his job. Obey that and you'll be fine. If you're a centre-half don't start doing keepy-uppies. If you're a full-back, we might let you bomb on - but only very rarely.
I'm not sure I've ever seen an England team play in such horrible straight lines. Even Rooney, who does have a footballing brain even if that leaves very little cortex left over to include owt else, couldn't fashion anything like an inspirational moment. But then England have for far too long relied on a bloke who, like the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, needs to be renamed as On The Wane Rooney.
Certainly there is now officially nothing to be optimistic about when it comes to the England team. That is unless you see something hopeful in the fact that Sturridge was 'lively' in the first half. That's the sort of patronising description you hand out to a third tier team when they get a goal at Stamford Bridge in the third round of the FA Cup.
Sturridge won't be off to the Maracana with he rest of the England journeymen. Maybe that stadium will lift the team to new heights. Well I say heights. Just off the floor might be a start. It's hard to imagine anything other than Brazil absolutely ripping apart a team that seems shorn of anything resembling wit or spark.
It's worth saying that England are always shit at this time of the year. The players have been through a long season - although given the Champions League showings not as long as it might have been. Then again, when do the World Cups and Euros happen? At THIS time of year. It can't simply be fatigue. The other factor is... and whisper it because Roy won't admit it and even the FIFA rankings connive in it... England are not very good.
All right so there was no Gerrard or Wilshere but pretty much everyone else picked themselves. OK it was a friendly, and they're always a bit flat. Carrick was England's best player, just about. The holding midfielder. You think about England in recent years and very often the best player on the park is the one who plays there: Owen Hargreaves running his bony little knees off; Scotty Parker flinging himself like a rabid bodyguard in the way of strikes at goal.
These players stand out because, for too much more than half the time, England DON'T HAVE THE BALL. One chump or another has just plonked it back to the opposition. If that opposition is Ireland then don't worry too much, they'll be kicking it back to you very soon. If it's Italy, or Spain, or Brazil, you simply won't see the ball again for a good five minutes.
It doesn't really matter what Hodgson says. In fact the more he opens his mouth the less you believe that he believes what he's saying. Look at Dortmund. The game has moved on. The old English virtues of commitment, passion, physicality - well, everyone does that now, boys - look at Dortmund. And the difference with Dortmund is they include the other vital ingredient of PASSING THE BALL TO EACH OTHER!!!!
They also have flexible versatile footballers who don't worry too much about interchanging positions; who look for space to exploit rather than the place they should be.
Those of us that endure the Revie and post-Revie doldrums, well you should get ready for some more. England will not qualify for the next World Cup. They are simply not good enough. Not by a long, long chalk. Chalk being the writing implement of choice for a Dark Ages football coach.
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