Sócrates R.I.P.

Paul the Octopus R.I.P.

We All Hate Portland!

I went to Seattle last weekend. I saw the Pogues and the Seahawks. I like both of those things. Something in Seattle I dislike?

The Seattle Sounders. Thankfully the fine folks at Qwest field put the Sounders logo on the beer cups alongside the Seahawks logo so I was reminded throughout the game how much I dislike the Sounders. Upon leaving the stadium I saw a gentleman in a Sounders jersey and thanks to the constant reminders from my multiple beer cups I felt the urge to let him know what I thought of his team. In a friendly way, of course. And while we didn't necessarily see eye to eye on the matter we were able to agree on one thing...

We all hate the Portland Timbers! They suck.

Sir Bobby Robson, R.I.P.

Guinness Floats!

At the last Whitecaps game I attended, Sparky and J-Mac and I were talking about Guinness Floats. Lately, at the Whitecap's matches, they have been serving Guinness in waxed paper cups that make me think I am drinking a milkshake. Or a float. And because I'm drinking Guinness, it makes me wonder what a Guinness Float would taste like. So, I decided to find out.



I really thought it might be good. I thought the sweetness of the icecream would balance out with the bitterness of the stout in a flavourful way. I thought wrong. It wasn't very good. Oh well, now I know.

On Supporting A Sports Team...

"It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift."

~Roger Angell

The Ball is Round!

Today, I finally finished reading David Goldblatt's excellent book The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football. At 907 pages, no small feat. Though not my favourite football book, that honour is shared amongst Eduardo Galeano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow and Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, this book is, as I said, excellent. Massive in scope, it is exactly what the title says, a history of the game on a world scale. But more than covering the spread and development of football, it gives the social and historical context in which football was and is played. The strongest chapters are the later ones, I'm guessing because there are more records available. These chapters detail the corruption and commercialization endemic in the world game. However, he ends with this:

Living with profound risk and uncertainty is now the destiny of humanity. We are lucky then that the game we have chosen as our collective metaphor, the avatar of our social dilemmas, should so closely parallel our predicament. To place the world under the sign of play is to expose ourselves to the caprice of the ball. We must be bold enough to think that we have the guile, the heart and the wit to bring it under control.

An over-intellectualisation perhaps, something I may have been guilty of once or twice, but apt nonetheless. All in all, an excellent, thoroughly researched work, and a worthwhile read.*


*When the hell did I become a book reviewer?

Are You Ready?

It was officially announced today that the 2008 USL Champion Vancouver Whitecaps will be the 17th team in Major League Soccer (I've always hated that name) starting in 2011. Truthfully, I have mixed feelings about this. I'm definitely excited to see the team playing in the highest level of soccer available to them, and excited to see what will happen club-wise, supporter-wise etc. But on the other hand, I think in the move from Swangard stadium to BC Place we're going to lose something. I really like the atmosphere at Swangard; the cool air on those spring nights, the mountain view from the south side, the proximity to the field, even the drizzle on the rainy long weekends. There's something special there that I fear won't translate to the mammoth stadium that is BC Place, even transformed to be soccer specific with the roof open. I hope I'm wrong of course, that what we lose in quaintness we make up for in atmosphere, that we have 15 000 chanting and singing supporters at every game. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I also assume that ticket prices and beer prices will go up. I give two resounding thumbs down to that. But my feelings aside, the train has left the station, we're going to MLSville and I'm glad to be on the train. So let me make this official: this is the beginning of the "Bring Thierry Henry to Vancouver" campaign. You read it here first! Come on Whitecaps!

Football Shirts!

I'm a big fan of football shirts. I own a number of them. The ones I own are mostly tasteful deals, red body, white sleeves, or white and blue, that kind of thing. The polar opposite of tasteful jerseys can be found here:

The Football Shirt Hall of Shame.

These are some of the ugliest shirts to ever grace the fields of the beautiful game. And for the record (someone is keeping records, aren't they?) I do not own the Arsenal jersey pictured above. Also, for the record, if I did own it, I would most definitely wear it.

Shrovetide!

Today is Shrove Tuesday. I have no idea what a shrove* is, so I'm just going to say it's Pancake Tuesday. I will be having pancakes for dinner. But back to Shrove Tuesday, it is the time in England for the traditional Shrovetide football matches. For those of you who don't know, which is, I'm assuming, most of you, considering the readership here, the Shrovetide football games are massive games between towns or villages that involve, potentially, hundreds of players. These games date back to the 12th century. The ball will, typically, begin at a centre point and players will attempt to move the ball to their own goal, which could be kilometres away, kicking or hitting it, though more likely passing it man to man, like a rugby scrum. Anything goes, so long as it doesn't lead to manslaughter or murder. The game resembles more a mob or riot than a modern football match, but these games are one of the precursors to what we now know as football. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to eat my pancakes. Down wi' it!

*I actually do know, I'm just not telling you.

1970's Football Fashion

I found this on With Leather. Just watch. No questions. I couldn't answer them anyway.

Santa Maradona priez pour moi!

Diego Armando Maradona, arguably the greatest to ever play the beautiful game, scorer of two of the most famous goals in football history, has taken the reins of the Argentinian national team. Tomorrow is his managerial debut, albeit in a friendly against Scotland.

I normally have very little interest in international friendlies though I would be curious to see how this one goes, only because of the new manager. With Diego, you just don't know what you're going to get. It could go so well, or all so horribly wrong. I'm hoping for it to go well, but I won't deny a certain joy to be had in watching the other. Of course, one friendly match against Scotland will be much to soon to tell, but tomorrow is when it begins.

As a minor sub-plot to tomorrow's proceedings, the assistant manager for Scotland, ex-England defender, Terry Butcher, who was playing in the 1986 World Cup quarter final against Argentina, has said he is unable to forgive Maradona for the first of the two aforementioned goals, the "Hand of God," though I suspect his anger probably has more to do with being made to look a fool in the second.

Goal!!!!!!!

That was the first goal scored by the Palestinian football team on Palestinian soil. First recognized by Fifa in 1998, they didn't play their first match on home soil until 26 October 2008. The match, with Jordan, ended in a 1-1 draw.

The Ball is Round

I'm currently reading David Goldblatt's thus far excellent The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football.* In the section about the game's spread to South America there is this report from a Brazilian journalist watching one of the first organized games in Rio de Janeiro:

"In Bom Retiro, a group of Englishmen, a bunch of maniacs as they all are, get together, from time to time, to kick around something that looks like a bull's bladder. It gives them great satisfaction or fills them with sorrow when this kind of yellowish bladder enters a rectangle formed by wooden posts."

Not really too far off, was he?


*In North America it's published as The Ball is Round: A Global History of Soccer. That said, the publishers did not change the text to read soccer in lieu of football each time.

Champions!

The Vancouver Whitecaps are your 2008 USL champions!

They beat the Puerto Rico Islanders (we hate them!) 2-1 on Sunday, thanks to two second half goals by Charles Gbeke, in what was, by all accounts (well, by my account) a thrilling encounter.

Some photos from the day:

We all dream of a team of Justin Moose!


There's only one Eddy Sebrango!


And finally...the trophy. And the Moose! (And Me!)!


Bring on the MLS!

Crowd Control

All of the hard work I put into bringing out my inner hooligan, and now this:

The End is Nigh? Part Deux...

Well, we're still here. At least I am, I can't vouch for you. And according to news reports, turning on the LHC was a success. What those reports don't tell you, but what I'm here to tell you, is that a black hole did appear and it swallowed up the earth. So, let me be the first to welcome you to bizarro alternate reality world on the inside of a black hole. How do I know this, you ask? Easy...England beat Croatia 4-1 in World Cup qualifying today.

There's Only One...

Tomorrow evening, in what is one of the more anticipated fixtures of the season, the Whitecaps play the Portland Timbers. (They know what they can do with their timbers.) As an extra bonus, the Whitecaps will pay tribute to David Morris. David, a long time player and fan favourite, is the inspiration behind such songs as "There's Only One David Morris," and "We All dream of a Team of David Morris." I'm hoping that if he isn't going to be playing in every position then at least he'll be the referee.

A Football Fan's Delight

I just finished watching Arsenal's resumption in the Champion's League after it's too long winter break in a not very good bar on O'Connell Street in Dublin. There were hundreds of people crammed in there watching a number of television screens that had all four of today's matches. In a word: awesome. There being so many people in there insured that each of the eight clubs playing had a good vocal following. I, of course, was watching the Arsenal vs. AC Milan match which included the long awaited Dudu vs. Kaka match up. That match produced no goals so there was little more than Italians yelling at the screen and one irate Arsenal fan to whom everyone that wasn't an Arsenal player was a wanker. Fenerbhace vs. Sevilla ended 2-2 so there were chances for the assembled Spaniards and Turks to yell and sing, as with the Lyon-Manchester United match that ended 1-1, though with French and English/Irish respectively. The best match however was Celtic vs. Barcelona which ended 2-3. Celtic seems to be the adopted club of many Irishmen so when Celtic went ahead twice, a large portion of the bar erupted into singing, all in unison. Also there seemed to be a large Catalan contingent as Barcelona's 3 goals where each met with a chorus. All in all, a good evening for some football. Shame Adebayor didn't put that header away rather than put it off the bar.

Blowout!

In CONCACAF World Cup qualifying today, apparently El Salvador beat Antiguilla 12-0. I say apparently because though I've been to El Salvador and can vouch for its existence, I'm not sure I've heard of Antiguilla before. Generally, I'm pretty good with geography, so if I've not heard of some place it is probably fictional. Which means that as far as I'm concerned, El Salvador was playing a game of football against a team that doesn't really exist. Which means that in 90 minutes against an empty field and, more particularly, against an empty net they could only score twelve goals. You know what that means? El Salvador sucks. I'm pretty sure that in 90 minutes I could score at least 90 goals against an empty net. That even includes time for me to get bored, leave, go drink some beer or coffee, go to the bathroom, eat a sandwich, make a prank call about your refrigerator running, hit on your sister, and then score a bunch more goals. I'm that good.