Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

As Manchester United’s three-goal cushion from a first half where everything went their way continued to deflate, Sir Alex Ferguson sent Paul Scholes into competitive action for the first time in nearly eight months. As a footballing decision, particularly in the context of a match that had suddenly become close, it was completely unnecessary, but with that 6-1 trouncing at the hands of Manchester City still fresh in memory you could understand the United manager’s desire to embarrass his cross-town rivals, to extinguish the nightmares of the Old Trafford debacle once and for all.

Understand, but not explain; at least not logically. There was absolutely no reason to introduce Scholes—who’s retirement was put on hold in time to register for the FA Cup third round contest at Eastlands—other than to embarrass the opposition, to demonstrate that United’s first-half performance had already won the match, and now they were going to rub it in by deploying a 37-year-old ex-midfielder who was last seen watching from the stands like every other fan.

It was a decision laced with arrogance and, fittingly, it very nearly backfired. Sergio Aguero found the back of the net in the 65^th minute to pull the hosts to within a goal—and set up a grandstand finale—and it was Scholes who conceded possession in the buildup.

As it happened, despite their best attempts to blow a three-goal lead against a side that played a man short for 78 minutes plus stoppages, United scraped their way into the fourth round draw. It wasn’t pretty, and Ferguson’s post match remark that “we made them look better than they were” wasn’t only inaccurate, it would have been more appropriate coming from Roberto Mancini.

The City boss has every right to be proud of his players and satisfied with Sunday’s result, even if it means their defense of the FA Cup has come to an early end. City never gave up, even when demoralised by Vincent Kompany’s early, controversial ejection, and Mancini’s second-half substitutes and tactical adjustments nearly overturned the deficit. They leave the tournament with their heads held high.

Not so United, who made hard work of a match where everything seemed to go their way. In fact, you could make a case that the Scholes introduction represents everything that’s wrong with United’s midfield at the moment, and if taking him out of retirement is Ferguson’s only plan to address his problems in the centre of the park it’s going to be a long, frustrating second half of the season—much like the second half at Eastlands.

Now, in all fairness, Scholes did show flashes of the immaculate passing ability that made him such a valuable player to United in the latter stages of his career. His ball distribution in the final minutes against City was, at the very least, more than United fans will have come to expect from the likes of Anderson and Ji-Sung Park. It’s really not surprising, then, that Scholes was asked to come on before either of his younger, never-retired teammates. And that speaks volumes. Anderson, frankly, has yet to put together a consistent string of meaningful performances in five years at Old Trafford; Park, meanwhile, is nearly 31-years-old, already retired from international football and was never really a top player at this level, anyway.

Then there are the youngsters. Aside from Tom Cleverley, who is irresponsibly heralded as United’s midfield saviour despite having made only seven appearances for the club, there just isn’t the sort of up-and-coming talent in the pipeline that the Red Devils are used to. Paul Pogba is largely regarded as a can’t-miss prospect, but he’s been stalling on a contract extension and wasn’t even among the substitutes on Sunday. Ferguson doesn’t seem to trust him, at least not yet. We know for a fact he doesn’t trust Ravel Morrison, the midfield whiz-kid with a reputation for erratic behaviour and cryptic Tweets. And don’t even mention Darron Gibson.

Scholes’ comeback indicates a limitation in the transfer market as well, although this is hardly breaking news. Since Cristiano Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid in 2009, Manchester United have operated at a profit when it comes to player acquisitions (an £80 million sale would keep most clubs in the black, but it’s a troubling sign if a club as big as United can’t even spend the proceeds of the transaction). In the five transfer windows since—this is the sixth—United have spent, on average, -£1.51 million. They’ve saved money. The quick, £53 million outlay for Phil Jones, Ashley Young and David de Gea last summer only veiled that reality.

Over the same period Manchester City have spent a net £282.5 on incoming players, and even Fulham, perennially mid-table, have parted with £14.1 million. Packaged another way, for every pound Fulham have spent on player acquisitions since 2009 United have saved 54p. It’s hard to bolster a squad when you operate on that sort of equation, but as long as the Glazer family maintains control of the club things are unlikely to improve with respect to finances.

The return of Paul Scholes doesn’t make any of this worse. Both the dearth of young talent and financial limitations were quite apparent several years ago. And Scholes, being the professional he is, wouldn’t have come out of retirement if he hadn’t believed he’d be able to make an honest contribution. Who knows? He may even produce one or two memorable moments—such as a one-touch blast from a United corner—before all is said and done.

But the fissures are evident, both in the United squad and at the bank. And it’s hard to see Scholes’ return as anything other than a Band-Aid solution, a single piece of paper spread out in a desperate attempt to cover the cracks.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

One of the wonderful things about football is that it’s always being played. On any day of the calendar, at any given time, there are matches being contested that count for points, whether A-League playoff ties in March, Major League Soccer games in August or UEFA Champions League group stage matches in November. There’s a universality about football that simply doesn’t exist in other, less organic sports.

For those of us who delight in the flavours of football the world over, this is an ideal reality. The football calendar is a never-ending smorgasbord of games, goals and atmosphere—a palette for our senses, a soundtrack to our lives. It’s impossible not to gorge.

The coming year, like every year, promises no shortage of football feasting. There are several international tournaments on tap that will award regional and world titles; there are shifting power balances that will make the European club game even more fascinating; there are issue-driven debates that divide opinion within the sport, even though everyone involved will have its best interests at heart.

Following are a handful of dates and events I’ve circled on my calendar for 2012. No doubt you’ll be anticipating some others I’ve failed to highlight, but that’s the beauty of football in a nutshell. There’s something for everyone in this game of ours. It doesn’t matter where you live or what time-zone you’ve set your watch to, football is here and now and anywhere and everywhere. Bring on the New Year.

January 8: Manchester Derby. For the second year in a row Manchester rivals United and City will meet in the FA Cup. They played a semifinal in 2011 at Wembley—won by City—and will be at one another’s throats at the first hurdle this time around. City, of course, trounced United 6-1 at Old Trafford in the league at the end of October so their next encounter at Eastlands should have even more spice than usual.

The big money. Which brings me to one of the developments I’ll be keeping an eye on over the next 12 months, and likely well after that: big-money takeovers. Manchester City are the latest poster boys of the phenomenon, and it will be interesting to see if the substantial investment of their owners pays off in titles, continental success and, last but not least, branding. It wasn’t that long ago that Chelsea were winning trophies with their chequebook, and just two years on from their last championship they’re barely part of the title discussion. This, then, is the question City will have to answer going forward: can they sustain the quick success that fast money brings? Are they in this for the long haul?

January 21-February 12: Africa Cup of Nations. This is one of my favourite international competitions, and the fact that perennial heavyweights Nigeria, Egypt and Cameroon failed to qualify only makes the 2012 instalment that much more compelling. Ghana and Ivory Coast are the favourites going in, and you just get the feeling that if Ivory Coast can’t lift the trophy in Libreville their aging, golden generation of players will retire without having won a major piece of international silverware.

January 25-July 4: Copa Libertadores. Santos won’t begin their defense of the 2011 Copa Libertadores until visiting Peruvian side Juan Aurich on March 13, but the play-in round to finalise the tournament’s group stage roster will begin at the end of January. Brazilian giants Flamengo and Internacional will enter the competition at this stage, facing Real Potosi of Bolivia and Colombia’s Once Caldas, respectively.

March 6: Vancouver Whitecaps v Montreal Impact. Major League Soccer welcomes its third Canadian team in 2012, and the expansion Montreal Impact will make their preseason debut against Vancouver Whitecaps at the refurbished BC Place in early March. But it will be Montreal’s rivalry with Toronto FC that will be particularly compelling. MLS can only benefit from strong, regional rivalries and the presence of the Montreal franchise will only help in that regard.

June 8-July 1: Euro 2012. This tournament promises to be one of the most competitive international competitions in my lifetime, and it’s also the last European Championship before the format is altered to accommodate 24 teams instead of the current 16. Holland-Germany on June 13 promises to be a cracker, and Spain-Italy on June 10 and France-England on June 11 look to be fascinating contests as well. I’m tipping Germany to win it all, and I have an inkling that tells me it won’t be Spain they meet in the final.

July 25-August 11: Olympic Games. The men’s Olympic tournament has never been revered in Europe the way it has in South America and Africa—of the 12 medals available since the 1996 Games in Atlanta only two have been claimed by a European side (Spain won silver in 2000; Italy won bronze in 2004). Nevertheless, there are two storylines I’ll be following during the competition: the progress of the unified Great Britain team and that of Brazil, who have never won Olympic gold.

South America: the reverse migration. Speaking of Brazil, the continued repatriation of that country’s football stars will surely make headlines once again in 2012, particularly after the European campaign has come to a close and the Brasileiro transfer window opens. Previous seasons have seen the likes of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Liedson, Luis Fabiano, Gilberto Silva, Juninho and Deco return to the nation of their birth, and here’s guessing there will be at least one or two big names agreeing contracts with Brazilian clubs between now and August.

September 7: European qualification for 2014 World Cup begins. Europe will be the final continent to kick off its World Cup qualification campaign when Wales host Belgium, Armenia visit Malta, Andorra welcome Hungary, Albania face Cyprus, Israel travel to Azerbaijan, Liechtenstein meet Bosnia-Herzegovina, England battle Moldova and Georga play Belarus on September 7. From there it’s a 14-month grind to book a place in the 2014 finals in Brazil.

October: FIFA’s goal-line technology prototype deadline. Several companies will be presenting goal-line technology prototypes to FIFA in October 2012 as the governing body contemplates implementation ahead of the 2014 World Cup. Or so they claim. Sepp Blatter’s regime has been reluctant to go down this road in the past, knowing that once they digitize the goal-line it’s only a few steps further to that existential evil: video replay. In other words, don’t expect much from this deadline. It’s likely just another FIFA stall tactic to preserve the status quo.

November: MLS Cup Final. Major League Soccer came on in leaps and bounds in 2011, expanding into football-mad markets Vancouver and Portland and adding Thierry Henry to its growing list of high-profile recruits. More players of that calibre will surely make the move to North America in the next few months, and the high quality of competition that was so evident a season ago will only be enhanced. It will all come to a head in late November with a championship match hosted by the finalist with the most regular season points. The MLS Cup Final had previously been held at a neutral site.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

A first snow. Not much of one but when the sky cleared yesterday you could feel it getting colder and this morning there was frost on the ground. Then at sundown it started to snow. We’ve had so much rain a bit of snow is almost welcome. All month it’s been mild and damp and the wafting stench of bloated corpses has clung to your garments. Now in the cold the smell of war has been frozen somewhat although the staccato of gunfire seems louder than it did a few days ago and the whole notes of heavy artillery echo longer through the river valley. Sensitivity to one sense exchanged for another, perhaps. I’ll gladly make the trade.

But it’s quiet now except for the singing. Soon after dark we started to hear them, quiet at first, and then emboldened by booze or the fact we hadn’t shot at them, or both. When they got a little braver they stuck branches and small trees atop their trenches and hung lanterns from them. Then we noticed the occasional glow rise up from the earth and go back down again. The beam of their fags, like orange fireflies hovering just above the ground. A man with a fag in his mouth who sticks his head up is as good as dead, but most of our boys don’t feel much like shooting tonight. We’re thinking about home, the home-fires of Chester or Northwich and a better helping of Christmas pudding than we’re sure to get from behind the line in the morning. Besides, I know quite a few of the carols. The tunes, at least. Some of the others are humming along.

Then, at first light, the battlefield is changed. We notice a head poking out from their trenches and a bare hand waving high and slowly. A drunk from last night, no doubt. One of our fellows yells out to him.

“Fritz! Good morning Fritz!”

No answer, but for more waving.

“Good morning Fritz! All sung out, Fritz?”

“Good morning.” A reply.

“We’ve Christmas pudding, Fritz. Come over and get some.”

“If I come you shoot.”

“No we won’t. No fear, Fritz. Come over and get some fags and Christmas pudding.”

“I come part way. You come part way and I meet you.”

“Alright, Fritz.”

Our boy bounds over the top, his pockets stuffed with fags. He shakes the Saxon’s hand and slaps him on the back and exchanges the pudding and the fags for the sausages Fritz has brought. Then a few from their end lift a barrel over the edge and get out and start rolling it toward us. They stop where Fritz and our boy are having a laugh about something and dig a cup of beer from the barrel for each of them.

“Come over, fellas,” says our boy, holding his cup of beer for us to see and taking a long, hearty drink from it. A few go over. Then some more. And then I climb over with some others and we mosey into no man’s land. More from their side are making their way to the barrel as well until there must be a hundred or more, shaking hands and sharing a puff and slapping backs. When the barrel is spent they roll out another one and we send back for more Christmas pudding. We must make quite the sight.

By now I’m properly softened up and in the middle of everything. I hover over a German newspaper with a Saxon and then someone gets one of our Cheshire papers. My Saxon doesn’t speak English and we point at photos in the papers and make gestures with our hands. Ypes. He knows it, too. Was probably there, too.

Around midday someone produces a football. How a football was in a trench along the front I’ll never know but suddenly there is a football and I find myself chasing it. Instinct, really, to chase down a football. When I finally get it I find it soaked and heavy and I cross high and well to a Saxon running cross-field from me. Then the barrels have become uprights and a second goal is made between two piles of topcoats.

By the time everyone joins in we’ve got a right kickabout going and while you hear a “Hurrah!” when the barrels are split or topcoats breached I don’t think anyone is actually tracking the score. I have a few more runs with the ball and manage to do quite well despite the awkward boots and there is a Saxon who likes to keep quite close to me when I have possession. On one occasion I stop with the ball and try to pass it to myself by stabbing it through his legs. Clever, I think, until I slip on the slick surface and land squarely on my ass, the ball having gone nowhere. Laughter all ‘round, and my Saxon takes my arm and lifts me to my feet.

I’m not sure how long we’ve played before the game starts to break up, but you can tell spirits are starting to sink with the sun and by late afternoon many of the men have gone back into the ground. Those of us who remain glance awkwardly at each other, as if only now realizing what we’ve been doing, what’s taken place here today. Our boys form a line and one-by-one shake the Germans’ hands. I’ve come to recognize several of their faces from the match and I slap those ones on the back. Then the quiet really sets in and thoughts of tomorrow, too, and we begin to saunter back to our trenches.

“Frank,” I begin to one my mates, “wasn’t a game of football just the thing? I thought of nothing else the whole time we were playing.”

“Precisely the thing,” he replies. “You work up a sweat like that and after a time forget all about your boots.”

“But wasn’t it funny, too? I mean, in this place?”

“It’s funny now, I suppose. Although when we were playing I didn’t find anything funny at all. I felt restored, like my soul was healed.”

“You’re right,” I add. “It didn’t seem funny at the time.”

Someone calls that there’s hot coffee a ways down the line. Coffee would be wonderful. You can feel the cold again, and it looks as though it might snow. But I want to just rest in the quiet a moment. I peak above the trench and look across the ground we tore up today in pursuit of a football. We’ll tear it up again tomorrow, but much differently.

But that’s tomorrow. Today is Christmas and today is still today. Today we took off our coats and forgot everything and played a bit of football. Tomorrow will come, but today we played upon ground we wish to destroy and had a game with good men who tomorrow will be bad men. Amid death and destruction, a bit of soul restoration. A measure of salvation through song, through Christmas pudding, through football.

Exactly what happened on the Western Front, 97 years ago today, remains unclear. But various accounts, provided by both sides, point to a game of football being played during the Christmas Truce just west of the Belgian town of Wolverghem, near the River Douve. It’s also important to note that the Truce was not followed at every point along the front. I’d like to thank Operation Christmas Pudding for compiling letters and articles related to the Christmas Truce and making them available for public use. One such letter, written by Sergeant-Major Frank Naden of the 6^th Cheshires and published in the Stockport Advertiser was particularly leaned upon in writing this story.

Happy Christmas!

-Jerrad Peters

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

Some quick hits late in the day.

Blatter: Committed to fight against racism (via FIFA.com)

First, whichever sub-editor and cousin of Sepp Blatter that FIFA pays €1.4 million a year who wrote this awkward headline might want to rethink it. Second, if this is Sepp Blatter’s and FIFA’s idea of damage control—explaining yourself by essentially repeating what you said in two separate interviews—then he’ll want to fire his PR manager, which we can only assume is his cousin and earns €2.3 million a year.

Brian Glanville on England’s shock victory over Spain (via WorldSoccer.com)

The man who inspired me to try (and fail, often) to write about football lays into England’s performance against Spain last Friday. A taste: “England you might say began with an inferiority complex, a dismal defeatism, which condemned them to a siege mentality. That they eventually scored emphasised the fact that football is not so much a funny game but a sublimely irrational one.” Booyah.

The Texas lower division shuffle: And you will know us by the trail of debt (via Twohundredpercent.net)

Blogger and sometime Footy Blog correspondent Futfanatico looks at the wacky world of lower division soccer in the US. Which looks an awful lot like Canadian professional soccer up until 2007, full stop.

The Interview: Just Football meets Kader Mangane (via Just Football)

Ace interview with the Rennes centreback and Senegal international from Jonathan over at the excellent JF. His remarks on his club are particularly interesting: “Rennes is a very good club. Ok, perhaps we are not one of the three big clubs in France but Rennes have a philosophy of faith in youth and giving young players the opportunity to develop. In order to grow, our objective in years to come is to finish at the top of Ligue 1, but for now the goal is to maintain a position around 4^th or 5^th place.”

Samuel Eto’o: Anzhi Makhachkala are striving to be like Barcelona (via the Guardian)

David Hytner’s is diplomatic but it’s hard to read Samuel Eto’o's remarks on the club’s ambition “to be like Barcelona” without smirking. You be the judge (washes hands, goes to sleep).

This is the MLS goal of the year (plus the one that surprisingly isn’t) (via Dirty Tackle)

Nagbe’s was nice but Hassli should have won. I mean my god.

Fluminense and Santos played one of the best matches of the weekend on Saturday; Vasco remain top of the Brasileiro after an entertaining draw with Corinthians; Dinamo Moscow took advance of slip-ups from Zenit St. Petersburg and CSKA Moscow in Russia. Here’s how it happened.

Brazil

It’s squeaky bum time in the Brasileiro, where the campaign entered its final third this weekend with a handful of important fixtures. Aside from a top-of-the-table clash between Vasco da Gama and Corinthians, Sao Paulo hosted Flamengo and reigning champions Fluminense welcomed Copa Libertadores winners Santos.

Let’s start there. Having kickstarted their quest to retain the title with a late-summer streak that saw them lose just once in seven outings, Fluminense won a topsy-turvy match against Santos that featured spectacular goals, imaginative playmaking and careless tackles—in other words, everything Brazilian football has to offer.

Neymar (Who else?) opened the scoring after 32 minutes when he cut in from the left, slipped in between two Fluminense defenders and arrowed a low, hard drive just inside Diego’s near post. He also turned playmaker for Santos’ second goal, two minutes from time, when he teed up Renteria’s equalizer. (Over the balance of the match it became more and more evident that with Ganso missing due to injury, Neymar’s playmaking skills have flourished. He might even be a better prospect than we might have first thought.)

Fluminense controlled much of the proceedings between the two Santos goals, however, and Marquinhos equalized just seven minutes after Neymar’s goal when he was put in the clear by a cultured pass from Fred. His first attempt was stopped by Rafael—who was brilliant on the day—but he made no mistake with the second to send the two sides level into the break.

With both sides trading chances, and Rafael continuing to keep Santos in the game, the deadlock was never going to remain for long. Fluminense striker Rafael Sobis—on loan from Al Jazeera—was introduced in the 64^th minute and tallied his fifth goal of the season just seven minutes later. But if the hosts had thought they could cruise to the three points, their intentions were dashed in the 81^st minute when Digao was ejected for a nasty foul on Renteria. And when Renteria made it 2-2 in the 88^th minute, a draw seemed the eventual, and fair, result.

But the dramatics weren’t over just yet. Deep into the fifth minute of stoppage time Rafael Sobis again repaid manager Abel Braga for his substitution when his ball played into the box was headed into goal by Marcio Rosario. It was the final act of the match, and with the three points Fluminense kept pace with local rivals Flamengo for a Libertadores berth.

Flamengo, themselves, were involved in a compelling match on Sunday at the Morumbi. Both they and Sao Paolo had a player sent off over the 90 minutes, and after Dagoberto’s equalizer for the hosts cancelled Thiago Neves’ opener just after the hour-mark it was left to Renato to win the match for Flamengo seven minutes from time.

Back in Rio, Vasco remained atop the standings for at least another week by virtue of a 2-2 draw at home to second-place Corinthians. Dede opened the scoring for the hosts in the 14^th minute, and the two sides trading chances from there—Alex and Danilo scoring for Corinthians and Fagner adding a second for Vasco.

Russia

Unlike many of the major leagues in Europe, the Russian Premier League campaign is split into two phases. All 16 teams in the top division play home and way in the first section of the schedule before splitting into two groups of eight. The top-half group goes on to play home and away to determine the title and European places; the bottom-half group settles the relegation question. Fans of Scottish and Belgian soccer will be familiar with this system, but it’s worth explaining as only four rounds remain before the split.

At the moment Zenit St. Petersburg remain slight favourites to retain the championship. But the big winners this weekend were Dinamo Moscow, who closed to within three points of Zenit after coming from behind to beat Krasnodar 3-2 at Khimki Arena, courtesy of two goals from Liverpool flop Andriy Voronin. Dinamo have now won four of their last five matches and will next travel to St. Petersburg for a showdown with the league leaders.

In addition to Voronin, Dinamo have several players fans of Western European football will recognize. Former Schalke striker Kevin Kuranyi partners Voronin in attack and Luke Wilkshire, who represented both Middlesbrough and Bristol City, is the club’s right-back. Ex-Wolfsburg winger Zvjezdan Misimovic is also in the side, although he started on the bench against Krasnodar.

Dinamo now have 50 points from 26 matches while Zenit have 53. CSKA Moscow remain between them with 51 points. Neither of the top two were able to win this weekend, however, as Zenit drew 2-2 at Spartak Moscow and CSKA were held to a goalless draw at Kuban.

Follow Jerrad Peters on Twitter @peterssoccer

James Sharman goes 1 on 1 with Canadian Midfielder Dwayne De Rosario.

I know some of you don’t like the “philosophy football” stuff, but Brian Phillips, author of the excellent Run of Play blog, wrote a thought-provoking post on the problem of ‘hyperpartisanship.’ It’s a post that demands the attention of any soccer fan, or indeed anyone with an interest in professional sports. Phillips describes a modern form of team bias so pervasive and all-encompassing it bends objective fact itself to its own will to win. Hyperpartisans consider red cards, penalties—hell throw-ins—just or unjust based only on which team is on the business end of the decision.

Phillps argues that while this kind of deliberate blindness has existed for years, the multiplicity of perspectives, opinions and revisions now available online via the 24 hour soccer media machine now make hyperpartisanship all the more attractive:

But it seems persuasive to me that the insane digital-age fragmentation of the experience of being a soccer fan—endless replication, endless mediation, endless interpretation—has meant that fans are no longer in a position to define the meaning of what they see: there’s always another angle, another opinion, another giant voice from the media echoing in your head. Something is always slightly wrong with your perceptions. And when meanings come unmoored in that way, hyperpartisanship becomes extremely attractive. Hyperpartisanship promises to give everything a clear meaning, because it gives you a single, simple principle to test all meanings against.

In other words, when even the Thierry Handball incident for France against Ireland in 2010 World Cup qualification is a matter of a thousand different points of perspective and debate on news sites and forums, it’s easy to seek solace in unquestioning support of your club, to accept wild conspiracy theories about UEFA and bent refs or believe a certain Scotch manager always gets a few extra minutes of time. If you’re going to pick one truth out of many, better to show off your fan credentials and pick the truth which vindicates your club and villifies all the rest.

This totalizing world view makes sense in a European context, where football tribalism is rooted in ancient football history and intense regionalism. But Phillips leaves out an important detail (and I may be releasing the hounds with bees in their mouths here): hyperpartisanship seems to be a worldview more prevalent among supporters of what are generally referred to as the “Big Clubs.” This includes your Manchester Uniteds, your Chelseas, your Real Madrids and Bayern Munichs and AC Milans and Juves.

It could be because these clubs hog the headlines, and have large fan bases who make a lot of collective noise. Yet even so, it’s hard for example to imagine Stoke fans accusing English newspapers of having a London bias, even as Liverpool fans do so on an hourly basis. I’ve been a Villa fan for most my adult life, but I don’t recall rival Bluenoses detailing conspiracy theories about how refs always favour the claret and blue. And any charge from “small” clubs of referee bias in favour of the big four is usually tempered by a healthy sense of being the underdog, a perspective gained from witnessing loss, after loss, after horrible loss.

The thing is, a trip to Wembley for most football clubs is a treat, not an expectation, along with qualification for the Champions League, or the Europa League, or the Premier League. It’s a lot harder for a Rochdale or Bari supporter to be a hyperpartisan than it is for a supporter of a team that wins vastly more games than it loses, that regularly progresses to the quarter and semifinals of every cup competition, that measures trophy wins in years, not decades, for whom a league loss is an aberration, a crime against nature. It’s a lot easier for a club that has won 25 games and lost 4 to paint a single loss as a conspiracy than it is for a club languishing mid-table. It’s a lot harder to believe the world is against your team when your team is obviously mediocre, or worse.

I don’t mean to start any trash talk about glory hunters—I am in no doubt that Manchester United fans love their club as much if not more than I love Aston Villa, or Dobby loves Sheffield United. But that might be part of the issue. Back in 1993, when the Toronto Blue Jays won their second World Series title, I remember feeling this would simply happen every year from then on. After the baseball strike of 1994, I distinctly remember assuming we would simply resume our upward ascent. It took a good few years for my brain to adjust to the fact we would never be that team again, at least not in the near future. It’s that taste of dominance which makes supporting a “Big Club” almost harder than supporting with a side that can’t even get out of League One, let alone the third round of the FA Cup. The feeling of what it means to win is always fresh on the mind for supporters of the European giants, and losses in finals are always more dreadful than group stage collapses.

Yet fans of the smaller, struggling clubs have one advantage over their big club counterparts: a healthy sense of humour. It’s hard to feel quiet rage toward the universe after a bad result when you’re used to watching dreadful football at home, singing “I just can’t get enough” at the top of your lungs while everyone else packs the kids in the minivan to beat the traffic. While many fans would jump at the chance to switch their club with a Manchester United or Chelsea (and often do), as Phillips details, the cost of all those win-streaks and trophies is often laughter. It’s what the game needs more of, and fast.

I have avoided writing this post for a while, mostly because a) you almost need a flow chart to map out the criss-crossing latices of cause and effect and b) by spending the time and effort to get the facts right, you unwittingly pay into the illusion that this story is anything more than high-stakes office politics. Those stakes unfortunately now include Canada’s future participation in international football, so this story probably deserves some attention.

I’m speaking of course about the brouhaha over a dispute over who is rightfully president of the Alberta Soccer Association. Intrepid Canadian Soccer News writer Ben Knight (full disclosure, I moonlight at CSN on weekends) has documented over the past few months how a power struggle over leadership of the ASA last year devolved into a giant mess involving the Alberta Court of Appeal, the Canadian Soccer Association, and now FIFA.

The latest instalment in this dubious saga is the circulation of a letter indicating that FIFA might suspend Canada if ousted ASA president Chris Billings is permitted to pursue legal action over what some consider a questionable suspension by the ASA board last year. Basically it appears Mr. Billings may have got the shaft by a pretender to the ASA presidency, Mario Charpentier, for being “reform-minded,” i.e. in support of changing the current, out-moded governance structure both within Alberta and the Canadian Soccer Association, which currently put the interests of provincial amateur groups over national player development. Billings, unable to resolve the matter with the CSA, is now taking the ASA to the Alberta Appeals court.

The problem is FIFA doesn’t like domestic courts getting involved in “internal soccer matters”; they’ve threatened the CSA with sanction and even expulsion if they don’t provide a means for resolution outside of “ordinary court,” even though domestic courts have handed FIFA their ass back to them in several high-profile instances before (the famous Bosman transfer ruling is a good example). FIFA of course presumes they are some sort of Medieval organized religion able to supersede the rule of law because they hold the keys to the soccer kingdom. Therefore one man’s right as a Canadian citizen to take legal action where no other recourse exists means Canada could be banned from international football.

Dazed and confused? I don’t blame you. This whole matter manages to both bore and appall at the same time. It’s a dry Punch and Judy show, with pantomime villains and haloed heroes. Of course what any of this has to do with improving soccer in Canada is anyone’s guess.  While commenters often give this situation an air of gravitas and intrigue, trading acronyms and various tidbits of legalese, it’s really just office politics writ large. And it’s an embarrassing waste of time.

The problem, at least as it appears from the outside (antagonists in these disputes always claim your perspective would be different if you knew ‘all the details,’ which also provides them a convenient cover), is at each step in this dispute each party opted for brinksmanship over simple negotiation. Rather than use words to oppose Chris Billings’s soccer ideology, his opponents acted in a draconian manner to unseat him as president. Rather provide a meants to mediate the dispute, the Canadian Soccer Association intervened in, shall we say, a less official manner, prompting accusations of conspiracy. Rather than provide a reasonable framwork for the CSA to move forward on this, FIFA sent a letter threatening sanction and/or expulsion of Canada unless they they suspend the ASA. And finally, rather than make reasoned arguments for moving forward on this matter, critics of all organizations involved have called for mass rejection of FIFA and for the establishment of some sort of spin-off national association.

That this whole incident is a farce goes without saying. For FIFA to be threatening to expel Canada over a dispute within the ASA in the same year we were awarded the Womens World Cup is an unacceptable shame. It also shows a fundamental lack of maturity, both in Canada’s soccer administrators and their critics. We have to move past this kind self-serving political theatre and back on tract to focus on what matters: providing a stable, national player development model, and insuring that both the provincial and national soccer associations work together toward this common end. I realize that’s easier to write than to do, but endangering Canada’s place in world football over an internal dispute within the ASA isn’t just threatening soccer’s future—it could potentially return us to Canada’s soccer dark ages.

This column is a sequel of sorts.

Last week I wrote about a burgeoning push-back against the discussion of tactics in English language media, whether digital or print. In recent days, this resistance surfaced in a few noteworthy articles in the Guardian and When Saturday Come featuring prominent football writers identifying what they describe as a joyless, esoteric “blogger” movement that wishes to explain the inexplicable in football via tactics or some other means, historical, cultural, political, whatever. One writer, the Guardian’s Rob Smyth, even off-handedly gave this tactical renaissance a name which resembles some trendy, post-structuralist sub-genre from the eighties: The New Seriousness.

It isn’t difficult to get a sense of from these writers what this New Seriousness is all about. For Smyth, it’s an “insidious, joyless and sterile blogosphere movement,” which cannot tolerate footballing moments without a causal explanation, such as a freak, cross-field pass by 1970 Brazil’s Carlos Alberto. Barney Ronay describes it as “a cod science of stat filtering” in which “‘pass completion’ ratios and ‘assist’ tallies are trumpeted.” Ronay also lumps in a “more freewheeling approach that seeks wider cultural signifiers, the entire world revealed through football.” A short op-ed in When Saturday Comes on how “regular” fans analyze football in opposition to the “statisticians”, declares, as if noteworthy, that “while statistics can be intriguing, they rarely tell the story of a game.”

You can see the pattern here.

Again, it’s worth asking is whether a New Seriousness movement in fact exists. I mentioned last week that Zonal Marking‘s Michael Cox, the writer who bears an unfair weight of responsibility for reintroducing tactics into mainstream English-language football writing, is not the robotic bogeyman his opponents make him out to be. So if not Cox, who are New Seriousness’ chief intellectual backers?

If the above writers are to be believed, they must hold that a) the ref is at fault for everything (Ronay), b) football is incapable of moments of freakish beauty (Smyth), and c) that faith in the importance of tactics distinguishes the movement’s followers from regular fans who hold to superstition (Campbell). They also are apparently interested in using football as a means of explaining the world (an especially odd claim too considering they purportedly believe football is nothing more than ‘tactics and stats’—which is it?).

In other words, the chief intellectual backer of the New Seriousness movement is yet another Straw Man, a convenient trope for writers who need to shirk a perceived status quo (in this case, a growing acknowledgement of the importance of discussing football tactics) to curry favour with readers. In the old days, that Straw Man resembled a knuckle-dragging caricature of Alan Hansen or Andy Gray, a footballing know-nothing for whom the game is nothing more than a series of emotions, some that have to be checked, others which should be directed toward the “passion” centre of the brain. Today however the Straw Man no longer spouts xenophobic one-liners about “furreners” in the Premier League, but waxes eloquent on the importance of false nines in a 4-3-3 formation. Not only that, but apparently he wants to ascribe “deeper meaning” to soccer too, the bastard.

This isn’t some conspiratorial frame job by these seasoned football writers. It is instead what always happens when the football media pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, in this case from “pace, power and passion” to “tactics, formations and statistics.”  Talented writers, among whom there is always an inherent urge to resist following the crowd, find it much easier to take aim at a “joyless blogosphere” (a term that evokes hordes of faceless bloggers spouting Opta Stats in tandem from their parents’ basements) than a modest, diffuse group of fans and readers who rather sensibly might want a bit of 4-4-2 chalkboard action with their injury time drama.

As someone who reads their fair share of football blogs, I have yet to encounter the tactics advocate for whom football isn’t also a sport of fluke events, unfairly maligned referees, and folk superstition. I have yet to encounter the unfeeling stats monster described by Ronay and Smyth. It’s likely there are writers who over-rely on tactical hermeneutics to get them out of a tight spot, but they are as probably as great in numbers as those who think discussion of tactics is a total waste of time. In other words, they exist somewhere on the web where you can either take or leave them. It would flatter to deceive to give them a proper name, let alone one with the word “Seriousness.”