The Footie Thread

By the way, if you want any evidence at how absolutely stunning Barcelona can be this season, have a look at their [color=red]6-0 dismantling of Malaga last weekend.[/color] It could double as a goals of the season compilation!

BTW, Ferguson and MacGregor, while being benched against Iceland, made obscene 'V-gestures' to the cameras before the match. Ferguson has since been stripped of captaincy of both Rangers and Scotland, and told he will never play for either team again. Likewise for MacGregor, the Rangers number one who played a grand total of one game for Scotland before disgracing himself. Ouch.

In the EPL, Liverpool indeed won yesterday with a last gasp winner against Fulham putting them top, albeit with one less game to go. Man U had a tough game against Aston Villa today, a must-win, despite having about eight players out through injury and suspension, including both first-choice centre backs, Nemanja Vidic and Rio Ferdinand. After Villa came from behind to lead 2-1, Alex Ferguson put on 19-year-old Danny Wallbeck and 17-year-old Roman debutante Federico Macheda up front, whose combined age is just slightly more than 35-year-old Ryan Giggs. While behind. In the middle of a title race. Cristiano Ronaldo, as he does, tied the game up with a nifty turn and shot. Then this happened.

Last week's Champion's league matches both saw one team produce wonderful, attacking football while the other defended with all its might. Man U were disappointed only to head into tomorrow's matchup at the Emirates with a 1-0 lead--indeed, 2-0 would have still disappointed considering their chances, but the Arse's keeper Pedro Almunia was spectacular. So too was Petr Cech last Tuesday as Chelsea held an almost overwhelming Barcelona 0-0 at the Nou Camp, the first time this season Barcelona haven't scored at home. In case Chelsea's 0-0 result doesn't seem that impressive, consider that in the 158th el clásico between Real Madrid and Barcelona this weekend, Barcelona embarrassed the hosts at the Bernebeu 2-6, the worst result for Real at home in almost 60 years. The match ended speculation over who would finish top of La Liga, despite the fact that Real had crawled back to within 4 points.

Unfortunately for Scouser fans, the Premier League is also looking to be wrapped up, but it ain't over yet.

The story right now in England is the fall of Newcastle United, who are looking more and more likely to be relegated at the end of the season, after losing 3-0 to Liverpool in a listless performance. A team that tellingly still wears the name of bankrupt bank Northern Rock on their shirts as their sponsor, Newcastle's demise mirrors the decline of the old steel and shipobuilding town of Newcastle, and the north in general.

How the Heart was torn from Newcastle

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"Newcastle has changed," he reflects. "My uncles worked in the shipyards, my grandfather worked down the pits and as kids we'd go to watch ships being launched at Wallsend. There was romance there, which you don't get now working in call centres. It might sound cheesy, and the rest of the country doesn't get it, but I believe the club filled a vacuum in the identity of Newcastle."

Hall had conjured a vision of the club as a standard bearer for a new Newcastle but a generation of fans like Martin, 45, the sons of sheet-metal workers, shipbuilders and miners, have swarmed to the rebuilt St James' as much for its tradition and links to the past.

The brute truth, anyway, is that marketing, and making a city centre more attractive, can take a city only so far. In July 2006 the Paris-based OECD, a partnership of 30 governments including our own, reviewed Newcastle's efforts to reinvent itself. The report punched hard, finding that, although there were success stories, the North-East economy, employment and incomes lagged behind other regions. The area had the country's worst unemployment among people aged 55-64 - many of them former miners and shipbuilders thrown on the scrap heap while Sir John Hall was building his shopping centre. Too few businesses were starting up compared with elsewhere in the UK. Two companies hailed as beacons were Northern Rock, which afterwards became the landmark first victim of the credit crunch, and Nissan, which in January laid off 1,200 workers.

Yes, sadly, the Hibs did lose 2-1. I was at the game. Stephen Fletcher equalized only for the Cabbage to go behind again. Damn United. They do have a nice strip though. Here's Rangers manager Walter Smith back when he played for Dundee United in the 1960s:

Bad luck TFC!

I'm thinking about going to the Edinburgh Derby this Thursday evening at Jam Tarts on Gorgie Road, but I also think I have seen enough middle-aged men urinating in sinks in my lifetime and may just opt out this week.

Star Spangled Canadian wrote:

Say this about soccer fans: they are fucking nuts.

What an ignorant statement. Sadly, it is typical of Canadians and Americans to demonize the supporters of a sport loved by the entire world. It is indeed fairly common to play games in empty stadiums, or to dock points from clubs, to censure misbehaving supporters. I wonder if the Cleveland Indians, the Washington Redskins or the Atlanta Braves ever had to suffer such penalties? I wonder, SSC, if you see the same connection between Don Cherry's Afghan warmongering and CAF cheerleading and hockey as you do with football and sectarianism?

Moreover, to associate football fans with such racist behaviour is nothing short of classist. As if Israeli football supporters are the only Israelis who have ever chanted 'Death to Arabs'. As if that dangerous, fascist streak does not surface elsewhere in Israel. The Spanish national team almost had to play in front of an empty stadium after fans launched monkey chants at England's black players during a friendly, but the penalty was reduced, disgracefully, to a paltry fine. On the other hand, not even a wrist slap was delivered to the Spanish F1 association after F1 spectators showed up in blackface and minstrel costumes to mock then-leader Lewis Hamilton.

It is not surprising that racist and sexist abuse surfaces in the favourite sport of racist and sexist nations. Football might give rise to empty stadiums, fascist chants and sectarian violence, but it has also given rise to brave players like Thierry Henry and Samuel Eto'o who have stood up to such despicable behaviour.

Your juxtaposition, SSC, of fascist behaviour of some football supporters, with the generalizing conclusion that football fans are 'nuts' seemed to me to fit in with the typical North American attitude towards football as a hooligan's sport. Football is largely the sport of the worldwide working classes. In Britain, for example, the interviews with soccer players are lpacked with cliches and trusims if not argely incoherent--usually in a telling working class accent: David Beckham and Steven Gerrard spring to mind, but it is virtually true of all British footballers. Rugby players, on the other hand, speak with posh accents and can generally give informative interviews because they all went to public schools (what we would call private schools in NA). Cricket, the third most popular team sport in Britain, is, obviously, a whole other dimension. There's a reason why cricket spectators at Lord's can drink Pimms and champagne at a test match while Tennents and John Smith's are forbidden in view of a football pitch. Not to mention you don't need any expensive equipment or facilities to play football. You can play it with a ball made of tape and rags and muddy patch of dirt. I suppose it's easy to miss this distinction if you don't live in a footballing country.

Indeed, I kind of indulged this bias myself when I remarked about the bathroom sanitation habits of Away Hibee supporters (my team, the Edinburgh Hibernian). For me, this whole mindset i part and parcel of the criminalizing or cultural censure of working-class leisure, pleasure and behaviour. It's the same reason the fascist British National Party is managed by London High Street suits, but voted for and recruited in white working-class neighbourhoods like Liverpool and Manchester whose industry have ben ravaged. Racism is common to all classes and geography, but football fans haven't learned the 'right' ways to hide theirs, so they earn the criticism of the liberal gentility. This doesn't excuse racism in football, of course, but it should expose the hypocrisy of those who see motes and specks while ignoring beams.

Pundits Andy Gray and Jamie Redknapp revealed British football's xenophobic understrip by expressing disbelief that UEFA had selected someone from a small footballing nation like Norway to referee a Champion's league final. Apparently they forgot Graham Poll's performance in the last World Cup when he gave three yellow cards and one red to the same player in a single game.

0-1 Hibernian at Tynecastle! Come on you Hibs! Get it right up ye, jambos!

Sadly, a win for the forces of darkness. Will Scotland recover? Will the world?

In other news, Manchester United need just four points in three games (Wigan Athletic, Arsenal and Hull City), to clinch the EPL title. But all eyes are on the dream match-up in the Champions League Final: Manchester United vs Barcelona, Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Lionel Messi, Henry & Eto'o vs Ferdinand & Vidic, Alex Ferguson vs. Pep Guardiola, football vs. football.

Come. On. You. Reds.

A Wolves fan outside of Britain? Amazing! Yes, well done to the Wolves. Although I was hoping Cardiff would get promoted as well, bringing Wales back into the English top flight. Sadly, they crashed at the end of the season (including a 6-0 loss to Preston!) and finished out of the playoffs on goal difference. Also promoted are ex-Scotland coach Alex McLeish's Birmingham City, but McLeish is so unpopular there he might be moving on despite achieving promotion. The last spot is between Sheffield United (who beat Preston North End last week) and either Burnley or Reading.

omg Caissa, it's Hibs v Rangers at Easter Road tomorrow night. I work at a pub where the Chief Sports Writer of the Scotsman...um, socializes...every night and he's a Hearts supporter, which is practically the same as a Gerry. I'm thinking about placing a bet with him, but for crying out loud, we're going to get massacred. I can only hope that the forces of justice, human rights and democracy hold out for one more night against the brutal onslaught of totalitarian imperialsim that is the Ibrox faithful.

We hate Glasgow Rangers, we hate Celtc too (they're shite!). We hate Heart of Midlothian but the Hibees we love you (altogether now).

Oh, if only that were true...

This season (home team listed first): Hibernian 2-3 Rangers, Rangers 1-0 Hibernian and (ouch) Hibernian 0-3 Rangers.

Justice, happiness, democracy, dreams of children: 1
Darkness, bile, evil, country music: 1

Pleased? We almost beat the bastards! Late winner by Nacho Novo wrecked the dream (What do you call somebody else's Novo? Nacho...nevermind).

Why it is time to nationalize the Premier League

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Right now, given the utter collapse and total failure of the Friedmanite free market model, the nationalisation of the Premier League (and the stupidly named leagues below it) would face almost no serious ideological opposition, and would probably prove massively popular with the vast majority of football fans, particularly those who are fans of clubs that - under the present system - have no realistic chance of ever again winning anything meaningful. Even Andy Burnham, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, admits it's time to reassess the Premier League's relationship with money.

Of course, realistically any such nationalisation would have to be Europe-wide, but given the EU's much vaunted cultural remit, would that really be a problem?

Football is integral to European culture. Easily as important as food or art. Leaving it in the hands of unregulated capital makes no more sense than letting entirely profit-motivated private companies run the environment, the arts, transport, broadcasting, banking, the mortgage industry or architecture. They will strip-mine it, pollute it, dilute it, debase it, rape its corpse and then sell its bones for cigar money. That's what they do. Hell, that's what they're doing.

Drawing on Europe's social democratic traditions (and German and Spanish football's experiences with collective ownership), we should seize the moment and nationalise all of Europe's top leagues, with or without shareholder and/or ownership compensation. By which, of course, I mean without.