Auckland City are the current champions of the New Zealand National League. Football is the third most popular sport after rugby union and cricket in that country. By winning the league the club, who play in a stadium with a capacity of just over 3,000, qualified to compete in the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) Champions League against clubs from Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. In April this year they actually won it. In fact they have won it for the last four years in a row and in 11 of the last 13 years.
They’re not even the best team in Auckland. Auckland FC play in the Go Media Stadium which has a capacity of 25,000. But they can’t play in the OFC Champions League because they play in the Australian A League and Australia is in the Asian Football Confederation. They actually finished top of the A League in 2024 but were denied the opportunity to play in the Asian Champions League because they are based in New Zealand which, as we know, is in the Oceania Football Federation. In fact, although they finished 1st in the league phase they didn’t win it because 1st through 6th compete in a series of playoffs to decide who wins the title and they were beaten by Melbourne Victory.
I hope you’re keeping up.
Anyway a couple of weeks ago Auckland City flew 8,270 miles to Cincinnati to take part in the FIFA Club World Cup.
And got beaten 10-0 by Bayern Munich.
Why bother?
The answer: $6.25 million. Just for turning up. Theoretically they could get an extra $2.5 million if they win a match. In a couple of weeks' time they will take the 8,270 return journey home. Maybe they could buy a new stadium.
Ipswich Town got relegated, the team which finished 17th in the Premier League won a trophy, Arsenal finished 2nd in the league, got to the semi finals of the Champions League and won nothing, there is no more football until the 8th of August. Awful.
Except. It's not all awful.
Arsenal Women won their Champions League final against hot favourites Barcelona:
Whitstable Town, home town of my younger son, won the FA Vase:
Charlton Athletic, home town of my co-grandparent Trevor, who doesn't like football but panders to my interests by pretending to support them, won the League One playoff final (no trophy) and got promoted to the Championship, where they (on the way up) will meet the afore-mentioned Ipswich Town (on the way down) and Trevor will no doubt refuse to take me to their match at The Valley.
Then there's the Women's European Championships, where England (the holders) are one of the favourites. In Switzerland from 2nd July. No-one has yet volunteered to take me.
So summer perhaps won't be universally awful. The sun has just come out.
Have you ever wondered whether organisations get value for money out of their advertising?
That wasn't the question.
On 16th April 2025, Arsenal played Real Madrid in the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid, in front of 77,073 fanatical football fans. The Arsenal players were wearing shirts with "Visit Rwanda" on the sleeves.
Here's the question.
How many of the 77,073 ended up thinking "Wow, Rwanda. Sounds like a cool place. I wonder what its beaches are like. Can I get a cheap flight tomorrow?"
If you guessed more than 0, you're deluded.
Apparently the Rwandan Tourist Board pays Arsenal £10 million a year for the sponsorship deal. It has been rumoured that the football club is reconsidering whether to continue after the current deal ends this year, because of "reputational damage". I think they should carry on; it's money for old rope. And £10 million would get you a backup goalie.
******************
By The Way #1: Rwanda is a landlocked country, However, it (says ChatGPT) "boasts beautiful inland beaches along the shores of Lake Kivu, one of Africa's Great Lakes, situated on the western border with the Democratic Republic of Congo". That's the DRC they are at war with (it's not technically a war but they are fighting each other).
By The Way #2: Arsenal won the match 2-1, with a beautiful winning strike from Gabriel Martinelli. I knew you'd want to know. Here it is.
A weird thing is happening in football. The teams currently in 16th and 17th in the Premier League, with two matches to go until the end of the season, have given up. The bottom three teams (of 20) in the table are so far behind these two that they are in no danger of relegation, so they have not played their strongest sides in their recent matches. Technically, they have to play their remaining games but they don't want to.
Why? Because of this:
It's the Europa League trophy. Although it's only made of silver, for these two teams it is gold dust. Winning the Europa League doesn't just win you a trophy, it guarantees entry into next season's Champions League, worth upwards of £100 million in prize money. You could probably get a half decent goalkeeper for that - these two certainly need one.
A week tomorrow these two will battle it out in Bilbao in the Europa League final. One of them will win the lottery, the other - languishing in 16th or 17th place in the Premier League table - will suffer shame and humiliation. The winning manager will be able to splash out on a new goalie, the loser will probably lose his job.
The team finishing second in the Premier League, with probably upwards of 70 points, will win nothing. These two have only about that between them. In any normal season this would have been relegation form; only the abysmal performances from Southampton, Leicester City and (sadly) Ipswich Town, all of them promoted to the Premier League just a year ago, saved them from even greater ignominy.
Something's wrong here.
The Football Governance Bill is currently going through its Committee stage in the House of Commons, having already passed the House of Lords. It has 136 pages but we need concern ourselves with just one.
Yep, it's the Football Regulator.
It's probably a bit late but I'm sending these proposals for amendments:
No newly promoted teams are allowed to be relegated; that honour would go to the next in line (Hello, 17th!)
(according to 2(e) above) No team which makes no effort to win their remaining matches (that's you, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur!) should receive any prize money for that season [prize money, dependent on final league position, in the Premier League is upwards of £100 million]
And to UEFA, governing body of the Europa League:
Should a participating team in the Europa League finish lower than halfway in their current domestic league they shall not be rewarded with a trophy or entry to the following season's Champions League, even if they win the Final
That way, these two teams wouldn't bother with the Final, like they (shamefully) haven't bothered with Premier League all season. Karma.
Let's face it, Match Of The Day is one of the dullest TV programmes.
Aired at a time when sensible people are in bed, it shows brief highlights of the Premier League matches of the day. It's so predictable that, if your team was involved in in a drab 0-0 draw (that's you, Chelsea!), you'll know that you're for the ten minutes to midnight slot. Clips are so short that they inevitably give a distorted view of the match.
Then there's the presenter and so-called pundits. Ex footballers who tell us what we already know and can see (if the highlights haven't missed it) - that Spurs don't score in the first half of games, Chelsea need a number 9 (they actually have one but he's on loan in Italy), that James Ward Prowse is the best free kick taker in the world, that Bruno Fernandes is a whinger, etc.
To fill in the time - it's a 90 minute programme with approximately 50 minutes of football - the ex footballer buddies joke with and about each other on sofas, reminiscing about their days on the sacred green turf ("we would never have allowed that behaviour in our day") and generally having nothing new to say.
What would be a better idea would be to show extended highlights of the football, without presenter or pundits ruining it. It's TV, we can use our eyes.
Wait! That's happening tonight? Terrific. I'll be there.
There are some ideas that are so obviously stupid that it's not worth the effort setting out the arguments. Like sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. And Government-appointed football regulators.
The Government's White Paper is driven by a "fan led review". Have you ever seen a football fan, Mr Sunak**? These are morons who, bare chested in the middle of winter, stand up - blocking the view of those seated behind them - and yell obscenities at the opposition (and sometimes their own) players and the officials*. Obviously they should regulate football.
Governments wouldn't dream of interfering in other private businesses. Football isn't special. It's not a cultural icon that needs protection, like the Royal Opera House (don't get me onto that). Go and regulate an industry that's out of control, like electricity providers.
There may be an upside, though. When Kier Starmer, an Arsenal season ticket holder, becomes PM, he might appoint Jeremy Corbyn - another - to be Sports Minister, thus enabling a Golden Age of Gunners success. Let's do it!
* This pretty much accurately describes me in front of the TV watching football. Without the bare chest, obviously. Many years ago I stopped taking my young sons to football matches, because of the foul language and obnoxious behaviour. That of the fans too.
The Swiss system. I'm trying to understand it. Invented by Julius Müller for a chess tournament in Zürich in 1895, it provides a (perhaps optimal) solution to the problem of having a number of competitors too large for them to all to play each other in the time available. I'm interested because UEFA's Champions League format from 2024-25 will use it.
There will be 36 teams competing in the Champions League and they will all be within one league table. Clearly it's not possible for all to play all, particularly as the tradition is to play home and away ties. Hence the Swiss system. In round 1 there is a completely random draw. In the second round, each team will play another team with a similar record. Thus if Real Madrid wins their first match, they will then play another of the first round winners in the second round. If they win again, they play another team that has two wins and so on. You can see how eventually all the teams get sorted by their results, the cream rising to the top and Tottenham Hotspur trending to last place. Just kidding, Spurs fans! You won't even be in it.
For 36 competitors, a number of matches around 10-12 will be deemed mathematically to be optimal: at that point the Champions League system will move the top 8, plus 8 more from playoff games, into the traditional knockout phases. It feels like a system designed to please everyone - traditionalists and radicals - although it's arguably also a solution in search of a problem.
I seem to remember playing something like this system in croquet tournaments. I'm told it is widely used in Scrabble. Wikipedia tells me the system is used for the selection of the English national pool team. [Who knew that even existed?] Also Pokémon championships. And the World Universities Debating Championship. And ... you get the gist; it's widespread. I'm not aware of any blogger tournaments though.
If you're playing in a chess tournament, where all players are gathered in the same venue at the same time, waiting to find out who your next opponent is is not a problem. For football teams, playing their matches in different countries, hundreds or thousands of miles apart, I think it's a major disadvantage for logistics such as travel for clubs and fans, interacting with domestic match schedules and so on. I guess there may will be a sense of "let's see how this works" in the first year.
I'll get back to you around Christmas time in 2024.
The football World Cup will be held in Qatar in November and December this year. England are in a group with Iran, the USA and the winner of the European play off between Wales, Scotland and Ukraine - delayed, for obvious reasons, until at least June.
England play Iran on the opening day, 21 November. The last time that we played on the opening day was in 1966. And we all know who won the World Cup that year, don't we?
France however have their own omen. In the two World Cups that France have won (1998 and 2018), they were drawn into the same group as Denmark, whom they will meet in Group D. And three of the past six World Cup champions came out of Group C: France in 2018, Brazil in 2002 and France in 1998. That's good for Argentina, Mexico, Poland and Saudi Arabia.
At the draw the Iranians were proudly announced as "The Islamic Republic of Iran". The Americans, also in our (England's) group and the opponents in our second group match, were rather less proudly announced as "the USA". You'd have thought that, given the possibility of meeting Iran, they would have stated "we are the Democratic Republic of the United States of America". Although that might be stretching it if Donald Trump returns to the White House in 2024.
England, of course, is not exactly a country, just a constituent nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. We don't enter a UK team because for grandiose historical reasons the four football federations of the UK nations comprise 50% of the The International Football Association Board (IFAB). Which makes the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scots feel more important in the football world than they actually are. We may well be reminded of this when England play their final group game against Wales, Scotland or Ukraine, who are competing in those delayed matches in June. Ukraine are the lowest ranking of these so, unless the UK government insists on giving the Ukrainians a three goal advantage in these matches (a cute variation on 'taking the knee' as 'giving the war-support goal'), we should end up playing one of the Home Nations. Letting Ukraine beat us might stop a war, playing Scotland may well start one.
Lest you feel like mocking the chances of any of these teams beating England, the USA are ranked 15th in the world, ahead of such luminaries as Croatia - who beat us in the semi finals of the last World Cup - and Sweden.They are also unbeaten in their two previous World Cup matches against England. So not mugs. Fortunately we won't be playing their women's team, who are World Champions. Iran are 21st, ahead of Japan, Poland and the Czechs. We are 5th.
It's a long time until November but something to look forward to. If we turn out to be the only team taking the knee, and win the tournament, then inevitable conclusions will be drawn by the hysterical British media. Don't worry, the tournament only lasts 4 weeks and then we - winners, plucky/unlucky losers and agnostics - can enjoy Christmas.
Those of my readers who hate football probably don't know what an Arsenal is. Apart from: a repository for weapons or even a collection of those weapons. As in Woolwich Arsenal. A recent definition of an Arsenal would be along the lines of "a collection of over-paid, under-performing old actors chasing a ball". Current definitions, however, include "a well-rehearsed collection of hungry young men with a common goal". This is the Arsenal we fans have come to know in recent months.
I'm struggling here to keep the non-footy readers engaged.
I want to comment on some under-mentioned aspects of Arsenal's victory over Aston Villa yesterday. The Gunners got their goal in the first half and looked pretty comfortable, although without creating too many chances for a second, until the 70th minute. At that point Arteta decided - entirely reasonably - that his young charges were looking tired and brought on Nicolas Pepe and, ten minutes later, Eddie Nketiah. Now, you two guys, you have just one job: hold on to the ball and keep it as far away from your own goal as possible. Preferably around the opposition's corner flag. These two were completely unable, even unwilling, to do this simple thing. To the extent that, in the final minute of added time, Pepe gave away the ball, and committed a rash foul, just outside his own penalty area, giving Philippe Coutinho, an excellent free kick taker, the opportunity to get an undeserved draw for Aston Villa. Only the alert Bernd Leno in the Arsenal goal prevented this happening.
Frankly guys, that was unacceptable. And for me you have forfeited the right to come on as a sub for the rest of the season. And beyond.
I get that Arteta maybe thought a second goal was the best way to confirm the victory, but Pepe's record in 75 Premier League appearances for Arsenal is just 16 goals. So the probability of his scoring in 90 minutes would be 16/75 = 0.21. In 15 minutes that would be 0.035, i.e. almost in miracle territory. If you want to guarantee keeping your one goal lead, get one of your young summer recruits on - Sambi Lokonga or Nuno Tavares. They will (a) put in the effort and (b) do what their manager says.
Which leads me to summer recruitment. Obviously this is heavily dependent on which - if any - European competition Arsenal qualify for but let's put that to one side. Nicolas Pepe has only one attribute to act as an able deputy for Bukayo Saka as the right sided attacker: he plays in that position. No-one is going to give Arsenal anything like the £70 million they paid for Pepe but they should move him on. And bring in a young live-wire wide player such as Olise or Eze from Crystal Palace or Trincão from Barcelona.
As for Nketiah, he's out of contract and off. As is Lacazette. There has been talk of offering Laca a one or two year deal but that ignores two key points: (1) he will want to play every game in order to maximise his (admittedly minimal) chance of being in the French squad for the World Cup (2) he doesn't score goals. Yes he works hard, is a good example as captain and links play, but that lack of goals (4 this Premier League season) could easily cost Arsenal that precious 4th place in this season's Premier League. Arsenal need to bring in two strikers. Because strikers are generally the most expensive players to buy - and pay - one should be an established goalscorer in a top European league (i.e. not France) and the other a 22/23 year old with huge promise. More in future blog posts of who they could be. Talk of Calvert-Lewin has me aghast. I just don't think he fits either category.
Finally, a midfield partner for Thomas Partey. We can't continue with Grant Xhaka. There are better midfielders around. It looks like 4-3-3 is here to stay so a creative midfielder who doesn't have a frequent flier plan for yellow cards, early to mid 20s, would fit the bill. The top two in this season's Premier League midfielders yellow card list are Ruben Neves (9) and Yves Bissouma (8). Surprisingly Xhaka has only 6! We want someone less ill-disciplined than Granit, not more. Douglas Luiz and Youri Tielemans are worth a look. Tielemans has 10 through balls this season - Odegaard has 18 (!) and Partey 9. But the player I would like to see in that position is James Ward Prowse. If Arsenal need more goals, he's your guy, I reckon.
Let me know, in the comments below, what your thoughts are.
When playing Championship Manager - the classic 01/02 version obviously - when your team gets promoted the target for the first season at the higher level is, in my experience, to make sure you have at least the number of points equal to the number of games you've played. If you end up like that at the end of the season you'll generally avoid relegation. In the Premier League, with 20 teams each playing 38 games, you'll mostly be safe when you get to 38 points.
As with all the best simulation games, this reflects real life. In only 4 of the last 18 seasons has that not been enough. In 2002/2003 West Ham were relegated with 42 points so you need to be cautious about applying this 'rule'. Maybe they eased off when they got to 38, or perhaps they were playing too much Championship Manager. Anyway, I thought I'd check out how this revelation affects teams in the top 4 English divisions at the moment.
In the Premier League there are actually seven teams - all the way up to Brentford in 14th place - with fewer points than games played. Seven struggling teams; I know because I watched some of them this weekend. This should definitely give encouragement to those in the bottom three places.
In the Championship, four teams seem to be battling it out on this basis. It's affected by the fact that Derby County were deducted 21 points, and Reading 6 points, for various breaches of financial rules, meaning their positions are probably not true reflections of their performances. You'd guess this means the bottom two, Peterborough and Barnsley, are near certainties for relegation, even at this stage.
League One (I know, for those of you baffled by almost everything about the noble sport of Association Football, these are prime examples of the weirdness of our national game) has four clubs within the points < games rule but plenty of teams immediately above them who could get sucked into the relegation battle. This league also features four relegation places so maybe this means you need points > games, I'm not sure about that.
League Two has only two clubs relegated at the end of the season (often a relief to CM 0102 players) so I'd guess you could be safe with fewer points than games. There are currently three within the recommended margin but another four very much in the mix. Although this seems like the easiest league in which to avoid relegation - and heart attacks when playing the game - there is going to be a rare old battle in real life this year.
Good luck to all these teams - I'll be following your progress.
You will be pleased to know that Ipswich Town are gradually creeping up the League One table.
Since getting relegated from the Premier League in 2002, the team meandered up and down the Championship table with finishing positions ranging from 3rd to 15th - including two unsuccessful play off campaigns - before a further relegation to League One in 2019. Going through nine permanent (sic) managers and six caretakers, as well as financial administration, during that period.
I have no knowledge of the financial constraints within which managers worked under the ownership of Marcus Evans after he purchased the club in 2007 but there were clear indications with tiny transfer budgets and a number of different loan players coming in each season. Not exactly conducive to long term development. In April last year Evans sold the club to an American consortium Gamechangers 2020, who own Phoenix Rising FC, a second tier soccer club in the US. They claim they will "invest heavily" and "are committed to restoring ITFC to its former glory ".
What this means remains to be seen but on the face of it a return to the glory days of winning the First Division (1962), the FA Cup (1978) and UEFA Cup (1981) for this small town club is completely impossible. There are, and have been, small town clubs in the Premier League (Bournemouth, Burnley, Norwich, Swansea and others) but their stay has often been short term and characterised by permanent relegation battles. Still, we fans would take that, at the same time knowing that, without a wholesale restructuring of English football, it is not possible for a club with a stadium capacity of 30,000 to compete financially with clubs with 60,000+ stadium capacity, worldwide marketing presence and owned by sovereign wealth funds and hugely rich Russians, Americans and the like.
Manager Paul Cook was recruited on 2 March 2021. A month later the club was under new ownership; they finished 9th at the end of the season and in the summer there was a huge overhaul of the playing staff. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the difficulty of effectively building a new team, the new season started very badly, with no wins after six games and the club in the relegation places. By early December we were in 11th place and the owners decided a further managerial change was necessary. Cook was sacked and replaced by Kieran McKenna, who had been a first team coach at Manchester United but has no experience as a manager. Improvements were slow in coming but the Tractor Boys are now 8th in League One and only 5 points off the play off places, with 4 wins from the last 5 matches.
I may be delusional in detecting hopes of a revival and my new found hope may prove short lived. We've tried all sorts of managers from Roy Keane to Mick McCarthy to ex Town captain Jim Magilton and none have brought the hoped for revival of fortunes, so maybe going for an unknown manager isn't any more of a gamble than they were. Ultimately though, all the managers were working under severe financial constraints. Even so, there have been plenty of clubs that have managed to achieve spectacular success by successive promotions without large amounts of money - Wigan and Bournemouth come to mind. I'm afraid Ipswich Town has not been a well-run club for years. I'm just hoping the Gamechangers will live up to their name.
I'm sad that the club rarely appears on TV and I live 360 miles from Ipswich so am unable to visually assess their performances. But I live in hope of doing so in the future, if they can just kick start a return to ... well, not glory days but at least as competitive a position as this historic club should be.
I've written before about the esoteric names of football clubs - the Go Ahead Eagles and the Stuttgarter Kickers. But today is about nicknames. I don't know how or by whom these names came into being but Arsenal (originally Woolwich Arsenal) are the Gunners, Wycombe (home of the Windsor chair) Wanderers are the Chair Boys, Ipswich (home of Ransomes) Town the Tractor Boys.
I'm not sure whether their womens' teams are the Chair Girls and the Tractor Girls [Ed: actually the latter: Yes]; sounds like a good name for a movie. According to CNN, a 20-year-old woman nicknamed "Chair Girl" was filmed hurling a chair onto a freeway from the balcony of a high-rise building in downtown Toronto. Someone called Patrick Walsh has an album called Tractor Girls. In the interests of rigour, I got my researcher to listen to track 2 Girls With Tractors; he said it sounds like every other country and western song that's ever been written.
Moving on, my interest in nicknames has been re-stimulated by watching the (mens) African Cup of Nations. Today was Nigeria (the Super Eagles) vs Egypt (the Pharaohs). Yesterday I watched Morocco (the Lions de l'Atlas - Atlas Lions) vs Ghana (the Black Stars).
By and large the names of animals predominate. I challenge my readers to guess which countries are represented by (NO CHEATING):
the Desert Foxes
the Eagles of Carthage
the Lions of Teranga
the Falcons of Jediane
the Elephants
the Lions of Chinguetti
the Scorpions
the Blue Sharks
That morphed into a Geography quiz I think. Answers in two days' time. I'm expecting a plethora of 100% correct answers from my erudite audience.
I'm looking forward to the commentators' attempts when Comoros (wherever that is) play: they are The Coelacanths.
Frankly these are all deeply unoriginal, if authentic. Much better, the Ethiopian team is known as the Walias, which are "on the sweeter side of Ethiopian beers with tones of fruits and honey. It’s very light and golden in colour and retains its head much better than some of its competitors" according to youngpioneertours.com I'll have one of those please!
I know, it's a brand name. But so are Red Bull Salzburg and Bayer Leverkusen.
I watch football matches in which I have "skin in the game", as they say. "They" being I don't know who but let's move on. My interest might be in supporting one of the teams, wanting one of the teams to lose because it would benefit a team I support, maybe just expecting lots of goals. No dreary goalless draws please, let's have action!
The England womens' football team has been providing plenty of action recently. On Tuesday they beat Latvia 20-0 in a World Cup Qualifying match. Twenty! They have so far won all six of their games in group D, scoring 53 goals and conceding none. I wasn't watching because it coincided with another match in which I had that skin stuff. But would I have continued to watch such a one-sided match, once the score reached say 10-0? I'm not sure; I have no previous experience to go on.
In the mens' World Cup qualifying competition we are used to "minnows" like San Marino, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein conceding 6 or 7 and some people complain that "this is embarrassing; there should be a pre-qualifying competition to weed out the weakest nations" and others respond by asserting that these teams will learn, and eventually get better, by playing the top teams.
Overall I think the situation in that case is just about OK and I can see both sides of the argument. But twenty? What can Latvia learn by losing 20-0 to England? They already know they aren't very good, presumably, having conceded 46 goals in their five matches, but this must be horrendously demoralising. And there is a sense in which serious mis-matches undermine the integrity of sport. Had I been watching, I would almost certainly have switched off at half time with the score 8-0. No fun.
By the way, football commentators often use the "this could be a cricket score" phrase when faced with a team scoring five or six in the first half of a game, but this displays a certain ignorance of the game of cricket, where scores of two, three and four hundred are typical. Just saying.
Regular readers will know I am fascinated by football club names. See my earlier post about the Stuttgarter Kickers. The Go Ahead Eagles are a club in the Eredivisie - the Netherlands First Division. They gained promotion last season by finishing second in the Eerste Divisie (First Division, which is what the second tier competition is called - don't ask). They last won the Eredivisie in 1933, so it's time to Go Ahead again.
Proper football fans, i.e. all our readers, will be interested to know that the Go Ahead Eagles were the first club of renowned player Marc Overmars, winner of 86 caps for the Netherlands. Marc came out of a 'retirement' in 2008, after leaving Barcelona in 2004, to give some glamour to his home town club for a year at the age of 35, making 24 appearances for them in the Eerste Divisie. I always find it heartwarming that there is still romance in football.
The club is from the city of Deventer, population 100,000; the eagle is in the coat of arms of Deventer
Hence Eagles in the club's name. The club was founded as Be Quick in 1902 but had to change its name because the players were not quick enough there was already a Go Ahead club. As for the name, dutch.news.nl tells us "The Dutch, as we know, are a sensible folk. But not when it comes to naming their football clubs. In most countries football clubs have really boring names like Manchester United, Barcelona or Paris Saint Germain. But not so in the Netherlands. Here, names are descriptive."
I guess that's some kind of answer and at least it give the fans - average attendance 6,500 - a reasonable chant. And ... I have a song for them:
1, 2, 3, GO!
Go ahead now! See the mail order
Go ahead now! Cooling off the paper
Fall in, fall out, Fall in, Fall out
Go ahead now! Check your speedmeter
Go ahead now! Refrigerator
Fall in, fall out, Fall in, Fall out
Take a big mess, take a little rest
Take your reflex, spoil your test
We're pinheads! Here we go now!
Go for it! Let'em make a phone call
Go for it! Let'em get a own goal
Fall in, Fall out Fall in, fall out
Go for it! Let'em dig a big hole
Go for it! Let the good times roll
Fall in, Fall out Fall in, fall out
Let's go!
Take a big mess, Take a little rest
Take your reflex, Spoil your test
We're pinheads! Here we go now!
Let'em scoot, Let'em go!
Go ahead now! Go for it!
Go ahead now! Go for it!
Fall in, Fall out
Here we go ahead now now now now!
Take a big mess, Take a little rest
Take your reflex, Spoil your test
We're pinheads! Here we go now!
Take a big mess, Take a little rest
Take your reflex, Spoil your test
We're pinheads! Here we go now!
The song is by Polysics, a Japanese new wave and rock band from Tokyo, who dubs its unique style as "technicolor pogo punk". It was named after a brand of synthesizer, the Korg Polysix. [according to Wikipedia]. This is it:
Obviously a bit tricky for the fans to sing, but a great "entering the field" booster.
You'll be pleased to know they are Going Ahead reasonably well so far this season. And - at the time of writing - they have just gone ahead in their latest match.
Footballers are five times more likely to suffer from dementia than the general population. Because they head the ball. This revealed by a Glasgow University study. Already, the English football authorities have issued guidance for mens' and womens' professional and amateur clubs that recommends "a maximum of ten higher force headers are carried out in any training week." [thefa.com] High force headers are "typically headers following a long pass (more than 35m) or from crosses, corners and free kicks."
This represents a huge challenge for the sport of football. The present stance of the authorities can be summarised in one word: prevarication. Tony Cascarino was a striker who played for Ireland in two World Cups. Writing in the Times, Cascarino is scathing about the guidance:
The new guidance on heading in training, issued by the leading bodies in English football, makes no sense. The thinking appears to be that doing less heading in training means fewer impacts and therefore less risk.
First, if there is an issue with heading, why allow it to continue at all? Second, heading is a skill and it requires practice and plenty of repetition. Reducing how much a player can practise reduces their technical ability and means they might suffer more damage because they head the ball poorly in matches.
The issue is damage to the brain which is a sponge in the skeleton that takes impact regularly.
I'm not a medical expert but the evidence of this and other studies appears irrefutable. There is only one question to be answered: is heading so fundamental to football that we are prepared to see footballers suffer brain damage? The answer surely is: no. I frequently get carried away when watching football and my frustration at a team's inability to create scoring opportunities; I will shout something like "get the ball in the box for him to head it". You can hear fans at matches encouraging their teams to do the same, so we definitely need educating.
If you watch teams such as Barcelona and Manchester City playing the beautiful game, they do so without the traditional big, brawny strikers who can score headed goals. Last season's Champions League winners and Premier League winners did so without such players. I remember the late Brian Clough, winner of two European Cups with unfashionable Nottingham Forest, saying "If God had wanted us to play football in the clouds, he'd have put grass up there". The clue is in the name: football is meant to be played with the feet. I remember a sickening heading collision last season between players of Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers and that made me think seriously about my attitude towards this issue for the first time.
UEFA - the governing body for European football - has guidance for young people playing football. It includes recommendations and advice on specific aspects such as ball size and pressure, the need for neck-strengthening exercises, and detection of potential concussion symptoms. FIFA - the world governing body - is, as far as I can discover, silent on the issue.
I believe that it is inevitable that, within ten to twenty years, heading will be banned in the laws of the game, exactly as handling the ball is. The authorities would do well to take the kind of initiatives used by climate change activists, by setting a fixed end date to achieve the change and establishing realistic waypoints. Something like the following:
by 2040, the laws of football will be amended to ban heading the ball, punishable in the same way as handling the ball already is
by 2035, headed 'goals' will not count as goals scored
by 2030, free kicks and corners in a football match must be played along the ground
by 2025, all football goal-scoring statistics and honours (such as 'Golden Boots') will exclude headed goals
by 2023 the laws of the game will include a definition of 'head' in the laws, as there are currently of hands and arms
1966 World Cup hero Nobby Stiles died last year after suffering from dementia. His son John, a former footballer himself, is campaigning with the Head for Change charity who helped organise a match at Spennymoor Town a week ago, in which heading was banned. A noble cause and well intended, but high level influence is needed to effect change.
There will be those that believe that this will destroy football as we know it - which it will and, in my opinion, for the better - and others who believe such a timetable is too long. The debate should be started and it should not be left to charities to do so.
Amazon have announced the latest in their All or Nothing sports documentary series. These series follow a sports team through a season, with substantial behind the scenes access. They began with a number of NFL teams in the US - Arizona Cardinals, Dallas Cowboys, Carolina Panthers, Philadelphia Eagles, Los Angeles Rams - from 2015 through 2019. The New Zealand rugby union team - the All Blacks - followed in 2018 then they switched to football (soccer). I watched the series on Manchester City and, most recently, Tottenham Hotspur; today Amazon announced that Tottenham's North London rivals, Arsenal, will be the next subject. Filming will begin shortly, continue through the 2021-22 Premier League season and launch probably in late August 2022.
I don't know whether flies sit on walls and ceilings watching human behaviour but the phrase 'fly on the wall' is ubiquitous. phrases.org.uk tells me "This is an American phrase that originated there in the 1920s. The first citation of it that I can find is from The Oakland Tribune, February 1921: 'I'd just love to be a fly on the wall when the Right Man comes along.'" I do remember Eye in the Sky, an excellent movie starring Helen Mirren in which an insectothopter drone (disguised as a dragonfly) is used for surveillance. Now, a dragonfly is not technically a fly but note the following from Clegg's Termite and Pest Control:
In old Romanian folklore, the dragonfly was actually a horse ridden by Saint George. St. George rid the mythical town of Silence of the dragon that lived in the town’s pond and poisoned the town. After wounding the dragon, he leashed the dragon and gave it to the town’s princess. Saint George’s horse became a giant flying insect when cursed by the devil. In the Romanian language, the word for dragonfly translates into Devil’s Horse or Devil’s fly. The Romanian word for devil is drac, which can also indicate dragon. In English, it translated to dragonfly.
When I worked at the Royal Ballet School, many years ago, we were once approached by a TV company (I don't recall which one) with a request to do one of these documentaries. Once we realised that we would have zero editorial control, it was an easy No Thanks. The classic "stern ballet teacher bullies pupils" meme could be too much of a temptation for a producer to manipulate. It was pitched as "this will help your recruitment of young dancers". Our reply "we don't have any problem recruiting dancers and it's possible [not necessarily likely] that whatever you come up with would make that worse rather than better" made our case. Why take a risk when you don't need to?
And that's the dilemma for these football clubs - what exactly do they gain and what might they lose? Manchester City's Abu Dhabi owners probably thought it was a perfect fit for their reason for owning a football club - image burnishing to counteract the poor human rights image of the emirate. Tottenham's Chairman, Daniel Levy, never shies away from an opportunity for publicity - and, indeed, is a major actor in the drama [in his contract?]. The Spurs manager at the time, Mauricio Pochettino was apparently not particularly enamoured with the idea - and got himself sacked in episode 1.
I couldn't find any viewing/streaming figures for any of these but critical response to the Tottenham series was generally uncomplimentary: "show ends in a no score bore" (Financial Times), "boringly sanitised" (The Guardian"), "almost a glorified puff piece" (The Daily Telegraph). I do remember enjoying watching it although that was very much as an Arsenal fan watching a car crash.
So to Arsenal. As with Spurs, it's unclear whether rookie manager Mikel Arteta had an input into the decision. Probably not; it's hard to imagine any manager being happy for all his decisions and conversations to be scrutinised and preserved for posterity, and this coming season will almost certainly be 'make or break' for Arteta as manager as he rebuilds the squad and attempts to reverse recent decline; his future career may well be influenced by it. Money? Tottenham were apparently paid £10 million, so for post-pandemic cash-strapped clubs that might be a reason to go ahead but Arsenal's search for a new right back is unlikely to be influenced by such a trivial sum.
One of the questions is whether the presence of cameras (many of them remote controlled, so perhaps the players are supposed to forget they are there), influences behaviour. The "performances" of Pep Guardiola, manager of Manchester City, and Jose Mourinho, the new manager [at the time - since sacked] of Tottenham Hotspur, were certainly characterised by almost continuous foul-mouthed tirades. I don't think we'll be getting such behaviour from Arteta but you never know. As an Arsenal fan, I hate the idea but the current demand for "reality TV" is huge and, who knows, it could be a great success if the Gunners win the Premier League. And I'll be watching it in a year's time.
The next time I see a fly on my wall, I'll chase it away before it reports back to base.
On 5 May I blogged about who might become Tottenham's new manager after sacking Jose Mourinho. I thought it would have been sorted by now but a dizzying succession of aspirants through Daniel Levy's revolving office door has yet to produce a winner.
On 19 May, in his programme notes for the last home match of the Premier League season, Levy said "We shall focus on the recruitment of a new Head Coach. We are acutely aware of the need to select someone whose values reflect those of our great Club and return to playing football with the style for which we are known – free-flowing, attacking and entertaining". So, no mention of winning.
In that earlier post I mentioned as possible choices for Spurs manager (or is it Head Coach? That's an interesting distinction) Rafa Benitez, Max Allegri, Maurizio Sarri, Brendan Rodgers, Roberto Martinez, Julien Lopetegui, Eddie Howe, Gareth Southgate, Ralf Rangnick and Jurgen Klinsmann. One coach I didn't consider - for pretty obvious reasons - was Mauricio Pochettino. But after Rodgers gave a firm pre-emptive "no thanks", it was the previous coach (or was he the manager?), sacked by Levy in 2019 in favour of Jose Mourinho (who could not be further from the notion of free-flowing, attacking and entertaining football), who came back into the frame and who, apparently, was for some reason down for it. However it was Pochettino's current employers, Paris Saint Germain, who closed that door pretty quickly.
Since then Spurs have been linked with maybe a dozen possible candidates. Some, as RB Leipzig's Julian Nagelsmann, quickly got themselves top jobs elsewhere - at Bayern Munich in Nagelsmann's case. Antonio Conte left Inter Milan in a huff after winning Serie A and popped into Levy's office for a chat, which ended in not exactly acrimony, more like frustration: "Conte’s demands proved unrealistic and he was ultimately deemed a poor fit [really? duh!] for the club" according to a Spurs source. Next in the office was Paulo Fonseca, sacked by Roma a few weeks earlier to be replaced by ... Jose Mourinho! A few days later, Gennaro Gattuso was sacked by Fiorentina after being in post for 22 days. Spurs dropped Fonseca in the bin, talked to Gattuso, the Spurs fans revolted on social media about his frequently expressed racist, homophobic and mysogynist views (not to mention the combative former midfielder famously headbutted Tottenham’s then first-team coach Joe Jordan after playing for Milan in a Champions League tie at the San Siro in February 2011), and Spurs gave Gattuso a quick shove out of the door.
Which leaves Spurs where? It's not easy to see any consistency in approach; Levy seems to be torn between appointing a young, energetic manager with a growing reputation for developing young talent and playing attractive football and an experienced but traditional style title winner (which is definitely where Conte fits). There are two further problems: (1) the club recently appointed a Director of Football, Fabio Paratici, which suggests the Head Coach role rather than a traditional Manager, although that pretty much puts Spurs in line with everyone else; Paratici was responsible for bringing Fonseca in (2) they have very little money, the lack of match day income during the pandemic hitting hardest at a club paying for the construction of the new stadium. So no huge transfer budget.
I was gently mocked, after that earlier post, for including Gareth Southgate and Roberto Martinez in the frame. But I think these two - especially perhaps Martinez - would tick boxes for the club. I don't know what their international contracts are but you'd think that relatively young coaches don't want to spend the rest of their careers managing international teams. Martinez has always played attractive football and has no baggage; he's an engaging personality. He has proved with Belgium that he can work effectively with world class players - if Spurs can afford any of those in the near future. Levy needs to sort his mind out and make a bold, innovative choice.
Finally Jurgen Klinsmann, who claimed live on TV 2 days ago
that he would be interested. Daniel, give him a call!
And please don't be misled by the title of this post; it's definitely not ME that's a Spurs fan! Many years ago my elder son, responding perhaps to misguided liberal parenting, decided to support Tottenham Hotspur. For a father - me - who himself rejected his father's Arsenal roots in favour of glamorous Chelsea, and now back again as a Gooner Forever (or at least for the moment), I live in hope that my son will eventually recant. Meanwhile, I write this to honour his (injudicious) choice.
I read about Juanma Lillo, assistant manager at Manchester City, who has apparently managed 17 football clubs in his career. Googling "which manager has managed the most clubs?" gives you Roy Hodgson, who has managed 16. I if were Juanma I'd be a bit cheesed off about that.
In 1981 Lillo, a Spaniard, took his first managerial position at Amaroz KE, a small club in a small town called Tolosa in northern Spain. I could find no mention of this club in any of my usual reference material so it's possible it doesn't exist any more. Probably not Lillo's fault. His most recent managerial dalliance was in China at Qingdao Huanghai, who play in the Chinese Super League.
Hodgson's managerial career began in 1976 in Norway and subsequently encompassed clubs in England, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and Italy as well as coaching the national teams of Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and Finland.
In comparison with these two giants of peripatetic football, Alex Ferguson was manager of Manchester United for 26 consecutive years. Not quite a one club manager - he managed three Scottish clubs before United. Arsene Wenger managed Arsenal for 22 consecutive years and these two stand side by side as the longest successful managerial reigns in modern football.
But they pale in comparison with the records of Fred Everiss, who managed West Bromwich Albion from 1902 to 1948, and Guy Roux, who managed Auxerre in three separate reigns totalling more than 40 years.
What is it about these two distinct types - Lillo and Hodgson restlessly seeking new challenges and Ferguson and Wenger (in the same era) challenging themselves to drive their clubs to new heights? If you Google career restlessness, you get items characterising it as a negative, requiring remedial coaching:
"Agitation and restlessness: what causes it?"
"Feeling unhappy and restless at work?"
According to that, Lillo and Hodgson are suffering from some kind of illness, or least a syndrome that needs remedies but it seems to me more likely that's a misunderstanding of lifestyle choices: I've taken this team as far as I can, now I (and they) need a new challenge. A search for improvement rather than a Ferguson/Wenger search for perfection. Indeed a recognition that there is no perfection and that the pursuit of it is doomed to failure.
Of course, it could be that Lillo and Hodgson were not very good at their jobs and kept getting sacked; you'd have to be prepared to do more research to establish that. You might also have to be of an uncharitable nature.
I'm glad there are different kinds of people in the world and we should appreciate difference as a positive. Hooray for them all.
Not what you think, people. If you're not interested in football - I believe there are such people hiding away somewhere in the world - you'd be forgiven for thinking that the commercial ethic of a football club is simple: get a sponsor to give you some cash, buy some players, win the league.
Manchester United have 23 sponsors. Last time they won the league: 2013. Actually they are called partners not sponsors.
Mlily is United's "Official Global Mattress and Pillow Partner". Based in China, they claim to have the biggest foam production base in Asia which produces close to 2 million moulded pillows every month. Obviously very relevant to a football club. Although how is beyond me. They have a vision partner (polarised lenses), a coffee partner, an electrical styling partner, an online financial trading partner, an official betting partner and a global partner Visit Malta (which seems - nothing against Malta, I've been there - a little underwhelming). I'm not naming these people 'cos I'm not giving them free air time. Nothing comes free, chaps.
I feel this blog is missing out on these cheap and easy commercial opportunities. If there's rampant capitalism going around, I should get my share of it. I can see Boots as my vision partner, Lidl instant coffee, Asda disposable razors, Santander banking, Charlie Cloggs the bookie in my local and Visit Charlestown Harbour. I could certainly do with a new mattress. Probably not a mattress partner though, so to speak. You don't have to give me cash, just goods and services. Or bitcoin.
What I could really do with are: a bionic eye partner, an anti-ageing partner, a gardening partner, a decorating my lounge partner, a jigsaw partner - now there's something Manchester United are missing out on; maybe I could get a finder's fee for introducing them to Vincent Van Gogh.
[What's that you say - he's dead? All the better, I don't need to give him a cut]
Even the once-mighty, now rather less so, Ipswich Town, have nine "partners". Much good is it doing them.
I'm on the phone to Sid Meier to see if he wants to be my gaming partner.....
[Brr brr]
"Hello Sid Meier here, inventor of the Civilization series of computer games and official gaming partner of Manchester ... [enough, I put the phone down, too late to the party]"
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