The Debatable Land

Iran-Iraq War Replayed in Glasgow

Anyone whose had to spend much time in the company of Scottish football journalists and members of the Scottish Parliament could only hope that a "charity" football match between the two groups could end in serious injury, fiasco and with both sides losing. In that last sense, then, it's just like the Iran-Iraq war. Happily, in a story I missed earlier this week, this seems to have been the case. More or less.

A football match between politicians and journalists was called off after tempers boiled over, it has emerged.

The match was stopped after 55 minutes following a number of contentious challenges between the MSPs and the sports journalists they were facing.

BBC Scotland broadcaster Chick Young was taken out of the game by what he called an "evil" tackle, after which the MSP John Park was sent off.

John Park, sir, along with the rest of a grateful nation, I salute you.

Taxpayers' Fantasy Football

Small guest-posting at The Plank on taxpayers' football. We have Newcastle United and Northern Rock, the Americans get AIG and Manchester United. Sums up the "Special Relationship", you might say...

[Link corrected. Thanks NDM]

Capello's Common Sense

More evidence emerges that England selected the right man when they asked Fabio Capello to rescue their football team. From the Times today:

On another issue - Wayne Rooney's smoking habit - Capello was curiously indifferent, a stance that brought out sweat beads on the foreheads of his FA employers, fearful of their manager unwittingly being cast as the spokesman for a generation of English butt-heads. Capello later returned to clarify his position and the moral guardians were headed off at the pass...

Capello's lack of interest in making a judgment revealed that the difference between football people in Europe and Britain is not merely a matter of tactics or technique.

The fact is, smoking is not seen as the great taboo for a sportsman abroad that it is here. Johan Cruyff smoked heavily, so did Socrates, of Brazil, and Slaven Bilic, the Croatia coach, has been known to spark one up on the touchline. Last year, Bilic admitted being amused during his days with West Ham United and Everton that English players would react in horror when he lit up during social gatherings. “Then they would drink so much that they could not stand up,” he said. “Where I came from, no player would do that, but I know quite a few that liked a cigarette.”

So did Capello's team-mates during his playing days. “Many of my friends among the players smoked,” the Italian revealed. “It's a part of life and, with Rooney, a part of his private life, too."

Hurrah for Capello's common sense and how typical that the FA should make the manager return to make it clear that he did not "endorse" smoking. But what event was he speaking at anyway? Why, a Football Festival sponsored by, yes, McDonald's...

FBK Kaunas 2 Rangers 1

There's no need for the Scottish football league to kick-off on Saturday. Cancel it. The season can't* get better or more more amusing than this.

*OK, it can. It would be too perfect, even too much to hope for, if Celtic were also turfed out of europe in their first match. Ah, sweet, sweet schadenfreude how I love you so...

The stars were bright, Fernando...

Memo to the Associated Press and the New York Times: describing Fernando Torres as a "slumping striker" and claiming that he had "been invisible in this tournament" makes you look like a bunch of chumps. Better, you know, to say nothing than expose yourselves in this fashion*.

Anyway, having written this genially mean-spirited blast against the Germans, I'm obviously delighted that Spain triumphed. For once the best team won and now, of all the "major" european powers it's England that have gone the longest without hauling in a significant trophy...

*This sort of ignorance, of course, infuriates American soccer fans who do know their stuff, appreciating, like, that goals aren't the only fruit...

Footballing Question of the Day

James Hamilton from the superb (if infuriatingly-often-on-hiatus) football blog More than Mind Games has a question that merits pondering:

If you had to name one player who, in your opinion, epitomised the history of English football (not necessarily its ethos or its greatest moment or its values), who would that be? He doesn’t have to be English, but he does have to exemplify the way the game has developed in England.

Good question! One that will take time to answer. In the same vein, then, using the same rules, which player could most reasonably be considered the epitomy of Scottish football? Or Italian?

Always the Germans...

The New Republic, America's most football-friendly political magazine, asked me to write something mean about the Germans:

Today's question then, is: Does Germany's record in international soccer confirm: (a) the absence of God, (b) the capriciousness of justice, or (c) the futility of romance? Or: (d) all of the above?

Full piece here.

Prieviously, in a more generous mood, I defended David Beckham for TNR here.

Annals of Punditry

Euro 2008 starts today and happily we're spared the agony of watching Scotland play. The BBC are doing their best to persuade us that even a tournament "without England" might be worth watching even though most sentient people appreciate that England's failure to qualify actually enhances the tournament, especially for the TV viewer who might have an increased chance of intelligent, astute, imaginative, perceptive TV coverage.

Not so fast my friends! Here's the BBC's Gary Lineker explaining why he thinks Spain can win the tournament:

It is open, but I am going for those perennial underachievers in Spain...the feeling is that [the] team chokes, but they have done well in sports like golf and motor racing where they have shown they have the bottle.

So: Sergio Garcia winning a golf tournament or two and Fernando Alonso's success in F1 enhance Spain's prospects of winning Euro 2008? Amazing. Lineker's other reason for supposing Spain can do well?

Spain also have this experience of players going abroad - their national team has never had that before.

By abroad, of course, Lineker means England. Well, maybe, but let's just say that having lots of chaps playing in the Premier League didn't exactly enhance England's prospects for winning the tournament, did it?

Gary Lineker is paid £1.5m a year. By you.

Bring Me the Head of...Michael Ballack

Even I, a fan of robust tabloid journalism, have to wonder if this might be going just a little bit far...

The Guardian reports:

Poland's national football coach apologised yesterday after a tabloid newspaper ran a gruesome depiction of him holding the severed heads of Germany's national trainer and team captain and demanded he slaughter them at the forthcoming Euro 2008 championships.

The photomontage in Super Express of Poland's Dutch coach, Leo Beenhakker, clutching the bloodied heads of Michael Ballack and Joachim Löw provoked outrage in Germany and threatened to overshadow the match between the two group B teams on Sunday.

The picture ran alongside the caption: "Leo, Give us their heads," arguing that Poland, which has never beaten Germany, had waited too long for a victory over its neighbour. The image followed another tabloid's take on the rivalry, which showed Ballack wearing a Prussian helmet and recalled a 15th-century battle in which Teutonic knights were defeated by the Poles.

Great stuff, obviously.

The worst team in Europe?

Are Paris Saint-Germain the worst football team in Europe? This obviously depends upon how one measures or defines "worst". PSG, despite another appalling season, would (thankfully) still be expected to defeat, say, Shamrock Rovers. But in a pound-for-pound sense is there a more pathetic club in europe?

I's not just that they only narrowly avoided relegation this season, it's that they continue to squander resources. Even when they were owned by Canal Plus, PSG under-performed. Indeed, since the club was formed in 1970 they've only won the French championship twice (in 1986 and 1994), despite being one of the richest clubs in France and the only major club in Paris. Their 1996 UEFA Cup triumph offers just a partial compensation while also rather demonstrating the overall gap between PSG's theoretical potential and it's actual haplessness.

So, pound-for-pound are PSG the worst* club in europe? Ad if they're not, who is?

*NB: I mean in a footballing sense; times become tougher still for PSG when you factor their fans into the equation.

The Most Preposterous Thing I've Read All Week...

And amazingly, it has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton. No, it's Rangers' Christian Dailly who, having seen the referee keep the Ibrox club's SPL title ambitions alive yesterday had the effrontery, the gall, the unmitigated audacity to claim:

that since arriving at Ibrox in January he has formed the impression that Rangers are more often on the wrong end of decisions. "There have been lots of decisions not given that should have been given in our favour," he said. "It looks like a couple went our way today, but that is not the norm."

Words fail me. American readers may consider that this is akin to Michael Jordan complaining that the refereeing authorities never gave him the benefit of the doubt.

UPDATE: Audio of Dundee United manager Craig Levein's splendid rant complaining about the refereeing is here.

UPDATE 2: A reader writes, "I fear that this reinforces the notion that many Englishmen have about Scotland and Glasgow in particular, as it pertains to both sport and politics: that it is populated by slightly sinister, corrupt and small minded people who do anything inside and outside of the law to preserve the feudal order of things be it Rangers and Celtic football or old style thuggish stalinist Labour politics."

A Tartan Army Polka

Ah, apparently we're supporting Poland this summer. Good to get that decided early.

AFTER 10 years of being unable to cheer on their favourites at the finals of a big football tournament, the Tartan Army is switching sides to back Poland at this summer's European championships.

The supporters' organisation - with 1,500 members and dozens of branches in the country - has thrown its weight behind the eastern European side after all the home nations were knocked out of the competition.

Since 2004, more than 40,000 Poles have come to Scotland and the Tartan Army foot soldiers have vowed to show solidarity with their new neighbours. Pubs and restaurants in towns and cities with large Polish communities are preparing special events to coincide with Poland games.

Sports stores in Scotland are stocking replica Polish shirts in the run-up to the tournament and are expecting to cash in on demand from Poles and Scots supporters alike.

Hamish Husband, spokesman for the West of Scotland Tartan Army, said that Scots were used to being the underdog in big competitions and should support Poland who face Germany, Croatia and Austria in the group stage of the tournament, next month, which is co-hosted by Austria and Switzerland.

“We know what it feels like to be the underdogs. We got behind Latvia* at the last World Cup after their football association put out an appeal for all Scotsmen to support them,” he said. “It's been a difficult one because we are not given the option of supporting whoever is playing England so we have had to open our minds up a bit.”

Via Holyrood Chronicles.

(Actually, as is customary, I'll be supporting Italy, but you get the point...)

*Update: As commenter Ewan Watt points out, Latvia weren't at the last World Cup. I think Mr Husband meant to say Trinidad & Tobago.

Those Unemotional Italians...

Milan beat Inter 2-1* and, well, just watch the rest of it yourself. Great stuff. Thank you to Tiziano Crudeli...

Milan 2-1 Inter commentaire Italien
by t_m

Hat-tip: Andrew and Rizzo Sports.

*An important result, in fairness, since it puts the Rossoneri in line for a Champions' League place next season. Tough week for Fiorentina...

Sir Walter's Gorgie Boys

John J Miller at The Corner:

I've always had some fondness for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens because their team name is a literary reference. Last weekend, while visiting the in-laws in South Carolina, I went to an NCAA baseball game featuring the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers. Literary references in team names don't get much better than that.

Up to a point Lord Copper. Turns out the Chanticleers have only been so-nicknamed since the 1960s when the University tired of being just one more bunch of Trojans. Still, not bad but not nearly as good, obviously, as Heart of Midlothian FC, Edinburgh's finest. Now if only the club favoured a more literate, cultured style of football...

Maximum Wage? Not so much these days.

Which footballer offers his club the best value-for-money? Easy. It's Lionel Messi. Why? According to this Portuguese calculation he's not one of the 50 best-paid footballers in the world. Lucky Barcelona.

Here's the top five (the first figure is their monthly salary in euros, the second their annual remuneration). You'll notice that two of these players are not like the other three.

1.     Ricardo Kaka                 AC Milan            750.000 €     9.000.000 €
2.     Ronaldinho                    FC Barcelona     710.000 €     8.520.000 €
3.     Frank Lampard              Chelsea FC         680.000 €     8.160.000 €
4.     John Terry                      Chelsea FC         680.000 €     8.160.000 €
5.     Fernando Torres            Liverpool FC     660.000 €     7.920.000 €

No fewer than eight Chelsea players make the list. The most ridiculous names? Sol Campbell, Darren Bent and Harry Kewell.