Where have all the stars gone?

Every era is known by it’s stars . For example , the 50’s are known as the decade of  Matthews ,  Fontaine , Greaves ,  Finney , Seeler , Ghiggia , Rahn , Kopa , Hidekguti , Pushkas , Kocsis , Grosics ….what the hell …all the Mighty Magyars . No one remembers the fifties for Derek Temple or Ronnie Allen . Its not that they were bad players . They were in fact considered to be some of the better players of the world at the time. Why is it then that no one associates the 50s with them. Simple . They were good , they weren’t Great. When I look at the current football scenario and think how many of these players will be remembered 50 years from now , I get barely any names . The thing is there are a lot of good players today. There are no stars . Even someone like Ronaldo . He is among the top 2-3 best players in the world today. But how many people would put him in a list of all-time greats ? Not too many. Same with Kaka. Eto’o is probably the best striker in the world. He would not be in my list of 100 greatest players of all time. It’s sad that this generation will be remembered for its lack of great players and not by the stars it produced. It’s not like this is a very bad thing of course and I can’t really blame anyone for this situation. All I can do is observe (and complain . And Crib. A lot. ).

So going deeper into the situation. How many players would make the cut ? In my opinion , as of now , only Zidane and Figo. I am of the opinion that Messi will be one of the all time greats but he isn’t quite there yet. The only solace our unfortunate generation of football fans has is that this has happened before. The 80’s were equally bad. They had Maradona , but then I rate Maradona as the most over-rated player ever. Even for the sake of argument if we consider that Maradona was the best player ever , who else was there from the 80’s? We could go upto Baresi , maybe Rummenigge but that’s it. Some of the best strikers of the generation were Lineker and Rossi , which really says a lot . I seriously would say that even the 2000’s are better.

Now that I’ve taken up the topic I might as well clarify that this is why I think Maradona was overrated . sure , he won the World Cup single handedly but then what competition did he have. How many great players did he have to match up against him? No-one. Compare this to Pele . He had Eusebio , Charlton, Di Stefano, Garrincha , Beckenbauer , Cruijff to contend with and he came out on top. Note however that Maradona was an amazing player. He just isn’t worthy of the hype he gets. Top 10 of all time . Nothing more.

Cribbing about the ack of greats in my generation is depressing . I would just like to point out that I’ve been very lucky to have watched sports in the  90’s. Tendulkar , Schumacher , Sampras , Zidane , Maldini , Baggio ,  Woods  , Graf . Can’t really ask for more. The 2000’s and more importantly the coming few years will be boring in comparison. But then the transfers make up for the lack of entertainment.

PS: Don’t try to look for a point in this post. I just felt like writing.

This one as well the previous post  Cross posted on the football blog.

 

Summer Madness

It’s a mad mad summer so far. And no, I am not referring to the ridiculous heat in Jamshedpur. Compared to last years insipid transfer scene somewhat salvaged by the dramatic Robinho to City move , this year has been crazy. Not the transfer market in general of course , but the actions of Real Madrid. I heard about Kaka’s transfer and i thought WTF . I heard about Ronaldo’s transfer and thought “WTF !  WTF! WTF! ” initially but then calmed down and  thought ” Okay , this was always going to happen . It was only a matter of time” . Then I heard about Karim Benzema’s transfer and that’s when I had to blog about it. Karim Benzema is a good player no doubt. But he isn’t worth 30 million. 30 frickin Million!! Are you kidding me? With that Madrid have spent 148 million this summer. Lets put things into perspective here. Newcastle United , one of the biggest clubs in England , fifth on the revenue standings is probably going to bought for a 100 million. Real Madrid have spent more on three players than someone would on an entire club. To add to this , Frack Ribery has also said he wants to join Madrid.  I’m pretty sure Bayern woudn’t let him go for anything less than 50 million (they would be extremely stupid if they did).   But spending money alone is not the madness I am referring to .(In fact an article that spoke about how the Ronaldo transfer proves that he wasn’t bigger than the club which is a good thing, and I quite agree with this.) What really pisses me off is that the decision to buy these players has been made by Fiorentino Perez  and not Pellegrini and has been made for purely financial reasons. Seriously , how the hell are they going to play Kaka and Ronaldo in the same team? They already have a good midfield . What about those players. When is Benzema going to play?  They will not only self destruct but also kill a generation of great footballers (Which are anyway sparse in this time. More on that in a separate blog post) . Ribery said he want to join ‘ the new generation of galacticos’ . The belief that stars win matches is a fallacy. The only reason the Galacticos of Madrid won all the stuff they did in the late 90’s and early 2000’s is that while they had the brilliance of Figo , Zidane et al they also had extremely hard working players like Cambiaso , Conceiciao and Makelele . Notice that Madrid’s downfall came after these three left the club. The fact is simply ball skills or great vision is not enough to win matches . You need hard workers to run around , do the donkey work , close down opposition , hinder their game . Without this all the skill in the world would be useless. What Madrid are doing now is living in the delusion that simply buying extremely skilled players will get them results. And sadly the great players are also in the same delusion. I may come off as a pissed out United fan , but seriously think about the impact on football as a whole. Great players go to Madrid  for god knows what reason . They all obviously cannot  play. Some have to sit on the bench , Even one season on the bench will kill a player (Shevchenko , Tevez) . So we stand the risk of loosing some of the greatest footballing talent in the world. The bigger worry is about the other players. Robben . Sneijder , Gutti , Nistelrooy , Higuan , Gago , Marcelo are all good players. With the three big signings , someone is going to miss out and is going to put his career back a couple of steps. Madrid have the money and have the right to buy anyone they want , but they really should think of their own good and the good of the players in general. As a huge football club , as an icon of the game , Madrid have a responsibility to the game of football. And ruining careers just for the tag of Galacticos or Shirt sales is really not done. Madness I tell you , Madness.

 

XLRI

Its been about two weeks now that I’ve been at XLRI , Jamshedpur . So far it seems to be a great place . Beautiful campus (amazing cleanliness) , excellent  facilities and of course very nice people . I can hardly say the same about the city of Jamshedpur though. The city basically consists of two roads . There are a few good restaurants but very limited possibilities. I guess its something we’ll learn to live with. There are two things really worth seeing in Jamshedpur : Dimna lake and Jubilee park . I’ve sadly shown remarkable lack of foresight and seen both in the first week itself. Both the experiences were great though. Dimna lake is beautiful especially in the evenings. The fact that it rained that day added to the experience. Jubilee park itself isn’t all that great . But we did go for the Laser show. The pre-show music noise was the choicest of Dhinchak sidey Hindi numbers which may have prompted me to act in a slightly inappropriate way . The show seemed to be pretty good. The extremely low expectations that I had  in the first place may have contributed to this perception. But seriously , the show was actually pretty decent. Nothing compared to the Shaniwarwada show but c’mon , this is Jamshedpur.

The one thing that I really have to bitch about is the weather. It’s sweltering hot here and to add to the misery the humidity seldom goes below 80-90% which means we risk death by dehydration everyday. The rains have also been delayed this year (experts blame the awesomely named ‘Cyclone Aila’). Lets hope the rains come soon and bring some solace.

That’s all for now. I don’t how much I’ll get to blog given all that I’ve heard about the B-school lifestyle , but I’ve try to post at least twice a week .

 

BCQC May Open Quizzes

The Boat Club Quiz Club presents two open quizzes in May. Here are the details:

Date: 17th May (Sunday)
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
Contact: Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Aditya (98811 01291), Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org

Upto two members per team;    no prior registration needed;    no entry fees

Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team, the Best School Team, and the Best Newbie Team.
Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune), Blaft Publications (Chennai), and the BCQC.

Morning Quiz – The Tyson Gibran Quiz
Quizmasters : Suraj Menon, Yash Tamaskar
Timings: 9:45 am to 12:45 pm (report by 9:30 am)
Flavour: General

Afternoon Quiz – Amnesia
Quizmaster: Niranjan Pedanekar
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: General

Tip for those who have never attended a BC open : Niranjan’s Quizzes are typically brilliant and you really should not miss them . Missing Amnesia would be the worst thing you’ve done in a long time.

 

Two great concerts and three hours of horrible horrible noise

Thursday: I went to Shisha to see the Blues band  Smokestack perform. They put on a great show. Played mostly originals . The bassist took over on vocals for a few songs in avery BB King -esque voice with the typical BB style “Oh Lordy Lord!” wails in the middle. They also broke into ‘Whipping post’ all of a sudden in the middle of their original. They were joined by Koko from the awesome rock band Agni (and sadly also from the horrible sell out indi-pop band Agnee) and the gig got even more brilliant.

Friday : Went to Mazda hall in Sardar Dastur primary school to watch the Auer Quartet (named for renowned violinist Leopold Auer) from Hungary perform. The concert was organised by the Poona Music society in association with the Hungarian Informaion and Cultural centre. The String quartet  played three compositions:  one by Joseph Haydn , one by Laszlo Lajtha and one by Felix Mendelsohn. The show was brilliant. There were no mikes so it was all natural sound. And the acoustics at Mazda hall are excellent. Had a great time . Also the concert costs only 20 bucks . So if your free next Friday do drop by . It’s totally worth it.

Saturday: My friends convinced me to go to Flags (which is now a lounge) with them on Saturday night. And as soon as I entered , I got the ‘what the hell was I thinking??’  feeling. Three hours of trance and rap and other ridiculous crap people like to  call music.  Three of the worst hours of my life. Never ever again.

 

Feverpitch

I read a book called ‘Feverpitch’ by Nick Hornby a few weeks ago. It describes his love bordering on obsession for football and the impact it has on his life. The book is very well written and tries to examine why people love football so much . One of the questions it raises at the very beginning of the book is : What motivates a middle aged man to travel a hundred kilometres in the pouring rain on a cold Wednesday night to watch a reserves match between Wimbledon and Plymouth Argyle ?

Through the book he tries to explain how football becomes a part of your life as you get into it and it gets to the point that it hurts you to stay away from the game.

At this point I’m reminded of Bill Shankly’s interview in the early 80’s when he was asked for his thoughts on the fact that he treats football like a matter of life and death. The reply :  I can assure you its a lot more than that !

 There is a section of the book where Hornby describes how at a match his girlfriend fainted and he couldn’t bring himself to help her for he considered the last seconds of the match more important .

I particularly liked the book because of the many parallels I see in my life. The parallel I can draw here is the fact that I didn’t convert a call I had from a very high profile B-school in Delhi and I still felt more depressed about Man United’s back to back losses to Liverpool and Fulham.

I am often accused of supporting United because they win . And some friends often sneer and tell me how its all going to be over once Fergusson leaves. Some even suggest that United may drop to lower leagues. Some point to the fact that the american owners may simply go bankrupt and United may eventually drop to the lower leagues. Some go further and ask me what i’ll do then.  Coming to think of it , in the unlikely eventuality that United go down , I guess I’ll be the person travelling a hundred kilometres  going to second division matches in the rain on a cold wednesday night .

 

The Academy has lost it!

Thats it!  Now I’ve officially lost all faith in the oscars. Slumdog won the best picture oscar where it should definitely have gone to either frost/Nixon or Curious Case.  Danny Boyle getting the best Director Oscar was ridiculous especially when a genius like David Fincher was nominated for an absolutely brilliant film.

I have no issues with AR Rehman winning the Oscar for best , but i feel Jai Ho most surely didn’t deserve the award. I learnt in a recent quiz  that Subhash Ghai had rejected the song for use in Yuvvraj. Imagine . An idiot like Ghai an figure out that the song has nothing in it , and the academy cant. O saaya was a much better song and  definitely should have got the award.

I do have issues with AR Rehman winning thr award for Best Score. Slumdog? Best Score? Are you kidding me? It was horrible!Yuck!

Slumdog winning the best Adapted screenplay over Curious case? <Insert large collection of expletives here>

I’m also kinda pissed about Wall.E getting the award for best animated feature. I hated it . Couldn’t get past the first half hour! Kung Fu Panda deserved the award.

Sheh! The academy has gone the Film fare way. Most popular film wins.

 

Bravo David Attenborough

This article is not really that big a deal . But considering how paasionately i feel about the the fiction that is creationism , I really had to post it.

 

Lets get a few things straight

Slumdog Millionaire is NOT that great a movie. Danny Boyle is NOT a good director. Anil Kapoor is NOT a good actor. Dev Patel is NOT even an actor. Jai Ho is NOT a good song.

I cannot believe that movie won 4 Golden Globes. There is really othing that would merit such accolades. Considering that history shows that the Oscars and the Globes generally reward the same movies , I’m appaled that Slumdog has actually got a good chance to win the Oscar. Imagine.  Citizen Kane didn’t get the Best Picture Oscar , and Slumdog may just win. Sheh!

 

BCQC Open Quiz day

The BCQC will be organising two open quizzes on this Sunday. Check out this link for all details .