My rather inarticulate ejaculation below managed to arouse a brief exchange over at Mr. Rich's Craven Lounge. I'd like to take the liberty of quoting a line from one the comments, as it encapsulates my wayward thoughts with a delightfully unapolegetic thrust. Thank you, JamieR:
"Part of me is looking forward to being in a league where perhaps football is seen more for what, 90% of the time, it is: shit. Shit, but fun to go and watch. And when it’s not shit, that makes those moments all the better."
Monday, 31 March 2008
Sunday, 30 March 2008
A Park To Be Proud Of?
An off-the-shelf corrugated shortbread tin, with a building society and a Starbucks coffee outlet embedded.
It could have been Middlesbrough; could have been Middlesbrough’s stewards. It could have been Leicester. It could have been...
A Subway and a Frankie & Benny’s on one side, a Kwik-Fit on the other. All encircled by identical shoebox offices with smoked-glass windows - home to endless ‘data’ companies.
Pre-match exhortations to get oneself to the megastore and pick up a dressing gown so as to receive a pair of slippers FREE!
Breezeblock ‘conveniences’ with stainless steel troughs and chipboard doors.
Every announcement delivered “in proud association with...” someone. Maybe that’s why it’s called ‘Pride Park’?
Constant surveillance.
A retail park by a dual carriageway.
Opposite a Harvester and a Travelodge.
One day, all football stadiums will be made this way.
It could have been Middlesbrough; could have been Middlesbrough’s stewards. It could have been Leicester. It could have been...
A Subway and a Frankie & Benny’s on one side, a Kwik-Fit on the other. All encircled by identical shoebox offices with smoked-glass windows - home to endless ‘data’ companies.
Pre-match exhortations to get oneself to the megastore and pick up a dressing gown so as to receive a pair of slippers FREE!
Breezeblock ‘conveniences’ with stainless steel troughs and chipboard doors.
Every announcement delivered “in proud association with...” someone. Maybe that’s why it’s called ‘Pride Park’?
Constant surveillance.
A retail park by a dual carriageway.
Opposite a Harvester and a Travelodge.
One day, all football stadiums will be made this way.
Saturday, 15 March 2008
The Language of Football: Part 6
Converted
As in, “Berbatov stepped up and coolly converted the penalty.”
A term wilfully appropriated from rugby (as opposed to, presumably, american football), and transplanted with the subtlety of the proverbial ear upon a mouse’s back, onto a footballing incident.
Many other sports-based phrases have swum their way, salmon-like, upstream against the tide of good style to seed themselves within either the football lexicon, or everyday parlance: assist (from basketball), step up to the plate (baseball), throw in the towel (boxing), or under par (golf).
I suppose people know what it means and that it therefore serves its purpose, but where will this cross-pollination end…
Potential future developments:
“The goalkeeper was completely deceived by Beckham’s curveball free-kick.”
“That’s a delightful lob from Defoe – Advantage Pompey!”
“And here we see Cristiano Ronaldo, on the oche, about to take this penalty kick.”
As in, “Berbatov stepped up and coolly converted the penalty.”
A term wilfully appropriated from rugby (as opposed to, presumably, american football), and transplanted with the subtlety of the proverbial ear upon a mouse’s back, onto a footballing incident.
Many other sports-based phrases have swum their way, salmon-like, upstream against the tide of good style to seed themselves within either the football lexicon, or everyday parlance: assist (from basketball), step up to the plate (baseball), throw in the towel (boxing), or under par (golf).
I suppose people know what it means and that it therefore serves its purpose, but where will this cross-pollination end…
Potential future developments:
“The goalkeeper was completely deceived by Beckham’s curveball free-kick.”
“That’s a delightful lob from Defoe – Advantage Pompey!”
“And here we see Cristiano Ronaldo, on the oche, about to take this penalty kick.”
Thursday, 13 March 2008
Chance. A Fine Thing?
Over at the esteemed House of Craven t’other day, Mr. Rich was tickling the underbelly of the role of randomness in football.
Without sidestepping into an oblique treatise on Brownian Motion, I thought I’d give the screw cap a slight twist and allow a few aerated bubbles of my own to make their bid for freedom. Please consider the impending hiss of escaping gas as an affectionate addendum rather than a challenge.
My fledgling consideration of the influence of chance, or randomness, in football would be founded on the fact that for a player participating in a game, there are things he can control and things he can’t control. A far-from-exhaustive list:
Can’t Control
~the weather (North of Watford/South of Watford)
~the time of day (evening kick-off? I’ll miss “Pimp My Crib”!)
~the pitch (bowls lawn/turnip field)
~the ball (design or inflation)
~the referee (myopic, bewildered, spiteful)
~the venue (home/away)
~the opponents’ play
~his team mates (although he should have some notion of how they might respond through training and experience, and he
could (should) influence them via communication)
Can Control
~the decisions he makes when he has the ball
~the decisions he makes when he doesn’t have the ball
The above suggests that whilst much is indeed governed by chance, each player still has a choice about how he responds at any given moment throughout a game, coupled with a varying degree of understanding about the potential behaviour of the players around him. As we know, the right choice at the right time can win a game. These choices are clearly prey to a number of factors: experience, “natural” ability, mood (“the red mist”), fatigue, will to win, and I’m sure many others.
I would also propose that where teams are dominant within a league, and chance is apparently playing less of a role, that it is this concept of inter-player understanding that is in the ascendancy (greater individual player ability being a given in the more successful teams): players having a better understanding of what their team mates are going to do in any given situation. Doesn’t some of Arsenal’s play appear almost telepathic at times? Less wasted runs, less misplaced balls. Percentages, percentages.
A final comment about Rich’s reference to tactics – another elusive, will-o'-the-wisp, aspect to the game that refuses to be quantified or pinned down. Tactics are the manager’s concept, but the player’s duty to execute. Clearly, many things can interfere with and distort the message on its pathway from whiteboard to pitch: a kind of footballing Chinese Whispers:
~Did the manager express himself correctly?
~Did the players understand it correctly?
~Does the player have the ability/energy/desire to implement it?
~Will the player’s opponent allow him to implement it?
~Were the tactics the correct ones in the first place?
Ay, there’s the rub.
Without sidestepping into an oblique treatise on Brownian Motion, I thought I’d give the screw cap a slight twist and allow a few aerated bubbles of my own to make their bid for freedom. Please consider the impending hiss of escaping gas as an affectionate addendum rather than a challenge.
My fledgling consideration of the influence of chance, or randomness, in football would be founded on the fact that for a player participating in a game, there are things he can control and things he can’t control. A far-from-exhaustive list:
Can’t Control
~the weather (North of Watford/South of Watford)
~the time of day (evening kick-off? I’ll miss “Pimp My Crib”!)
~the pitch (bowls lawn/turnip field)
~the ball (design or inflation)
~the referee (myopic, bewildered, spiteful)
~the venue (home/away)
~the opponents’ play
~his team mates (although he should have some notion of how they might respond through training and experience, and he
could (should) influence them via communication)
Can Control
~the decisions he makes when he has the ball
~the decisions he makes when he doesn’t have the ball
The above suggests that whilst much is indeed governed by chance, each player still has a choice about how he responds at any given moment throughout a game, coupled with a varying degree of understanding about the potential behaviour of the players around him. As we know, the right choice at the right time can win a game. These choices are clearly prey to a number of factors: experience, “natural” ability, mood (“the red mist”), fatigue, will to win, and I’m sure many others.
I would also propose that where teams are dominant within a league, and chance is apparently playing less of a role, that it is this concept of inter-player understanding that is in the ascendancy (greater individual player ability being a given in the more successful teams): players having a better understanding of what their team mates are going to do in any given situation. Doesn’t some of Arsenal’s play appear almost telepathic at times? Less wasted runs, less misplaced balls. Percentages, percentages.
A final comment about Rich’s reference to tactics – another elusive, will-o'-the-wisp, aspect to the game that refuses to be quantified or pinned down. Tactics are the manager’s concept, but the player’s duty to execute. Clearly, many things can interfere with and distort the message on its pathway from whiteboard to pitch: a kind of footballing Chinese Whispers:
~Did the manager express himself correctly?
~Did the players understand it correctly?
~Does the player have the ability/energy/desire to implement it?
~Will the player’s opponent allow him to implement it?
~Were the tactics the correct ones in the first place?
Ay, there’s the rub.
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
The Language of Football: Part 5
Dispossessed
As in, “Titus Bramble has been dispossessed on the edge of his own area.”
I always thought that the word dispossessed referred to a class, typically human beings, that were no longer owned, nor taken responsibility for, by the system in question’s patriarchs; for example, a society’s homeless population. Martin Luther King’s reference to “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses...” always came to mind. Indeed, the OED says that the dispossessed are people who have been deprived of land or property, which is consistent with this idea: without land or property, society has effectively disowned you.
Rather more prosaically, football commentators routinely employ it to mean someone who’s had the ball taken off them. It is not difficult to imagine the rather ungainly path of reasoning that might lead to this conceit:
1. you possess something
2. me take it away
3. you dispossessed!
I found that the OED does actually dignify this usage with an entry these days. However, I think that it’s more the weight of relentless, bloody-minded, usage than literary merit that has forced the dictionary compilers’ hands here.
So, you decide which implementation of dispossessed to champion: Martin Luther King’s, or Martin Tyler’s.
Potential future developments:
“This game is suffering from a poverty of entertainment.”
“Chelsea can’t buy a goal; three points are going begging here.”
“Peter Kenyon needs to remind them that charity begins at home.”
“Wright-Phillips has been sent off – he’s been effectively disenfranchised.”
As in, “Titus Bramble has been dispossessed on the edge of his own area.”
I always thought that the word dispossessed referred to a class, typically human beings, that were no longer owned, nor taken responsibility for, by the system in question’s patriarchs; for example, a society’s homeless population. Martin Luther King’s reference to “the tired, the poor, the huddled masses...” always came to mind. Indeed, the OED says that the dispossessed are people who have been deprived of land or property, which is consistent with this idea: without land or property, society has effectively disowned you.
Rather more prosaically, football commentators routinely employ it to mean someone who’s had the ball taken off them. It is not difficult to imagine the rather ungainly path of reasoning that might lead to this conceit:
1. you possess something
2. me take it away
3. you dispossessed!
I found that the OED does actually dignify this usage with an entry these days. However, I think that it’s more the weight of relentless, bloody-minded, usage than literary merit that has forced the dictionary compilers’ hands here.
So, you decide which implementation of dispossessed to champion: Martin Luther King’s, or Martin Tyler’s.
Potential future developments:
“This game is suffering from a poverty of entertainment.”
“Chelsea can’t buy a goal; three points are going begging here.”
“Peter Kenyon needs to remind them that charity begins at home.”
“Wright-Phillips has been sent off – he’s been effectively disenfranchised.”
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