Liverpool jokes

The Telegraph has an article about the shambles Liverpool are in . Some of the better jokes:

1. Alberto Aquilani is like having a ‘Z’ in Scrabble. You wait forever for your chance to cash in, by which point everyone else is miles ahead.

2. Given the entertainment on offer, you can see why Liverpool fans now take toys to games.

3. David Ngog is not fit to wear the shirt. Or, in fact, sell the shirt in the club shop.

4. Rafa Benitez plans all subs in advance of kick-off, rather than analysing and utilising his bench options to change its course. Why else would he take off Yossi Benayoun?

5. Steven Gerrard pulls his groin so often because his team-mates aren’t good enough to pass the bloody thing to his feet.

6. Andriy Voronin’s one meaningful role is to make Lucas’ hairstyle look less awful.

7. That gives Voronin one meaningful role more than Ryan Babel.

 

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.

 

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 centenary community shield

Manchester United have beaten Portsmouth on penalties to win the Centenary Community shield. The match was decent. Man Utd played a rather curious line up with Carrick on the bench and O’ Shea in midfield. Fletcher screwed up numerous chances of varying difficulty levels . Teves was awesome. Giggs played well . Gary too put in a good 65 minutes. However we just couldn’t find the back of the net despite complete domination for all the 90 minutes and the match ended with the scores ties 0-0 at the end of regulation time.

Penalties were never going to be a problem for United and we brushed aside Portsmouth 3-1 .

In somewhat related news: This is probably the most ludicrous demand ever!

 

A gem from Football 365

Football 365 reports :

“Inevitably, after Alex Ferguson said on Friday that he wanted to sign a striker before the start of the new season, the paps have gone into overdrive in speculating on who that forward might be.

And most rags seem to think – presumably in the absence of any imagination/fact – that Dimitar Berbatov is the man in question.

In summary, here’s what The Sun and The Daily Mirror have to say on the subject:

‘Alex Ferguson aims to land Dimitar Berbatov…blah blah blah…£25million deal…yadda yadda yadda…will be enough to secure the unsettled striker…rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb…’

Seriously. That’s what it says. Check if you don’t believe us.”

 

oops!

All I’ve read for the last two months in the sports sections of various newspapers tabloids are stories about Cristiano Ronaldo’s imminent departure from the club all supposedly validated by his ‘close friends’ ,’ sources close to Man United’ , ‘his agent’ , ‘his mother’ , ‘advisors’ .

What have you got to say now , Suckers?

Pune Mirror reported recently :

“‘Cristiano Ronaldo has refused to come back and face Sir Alex Ferguson – in a last desperate bid to force Manchester United to sell him to Real Madrid’

“Cristiano is not going back today, tomorrow, or any time soon. Everyone knows what he wants.”

Sad , isn’t it? Two months of effort down the drain. Tch Tch.

 

United bids farewell to it’s favourite son :20LEgend

I remembered how shocked I was last August when I heard the bad news that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had retired from football. I also remember being super-depressed when it hit me that I had heard the rapturous ‘Ole Ole Ole Ole ‘ from the Old Trafford for the last time , that the last minute goal against Blackburn was the last of the customary late heroics that Ole kept pulling out time after time. The two best memories I have of Ole is those goals against Nottingham and of course the greatest moment in sports history.

Today’s testimonial was Ole’s last appearance on the football field as a player. He didn’t start but came on as a late sub , like he has done over a 150 times for Man United. Man Utd won the match 1-0 with Frazier Campbell scoring in the 81st minute.

Goodbye, Ole. We’ll miss you.

 

Eto’o to Tashkent?

Uzbekistan league side Kuruvchi  have supposedly signed Samuel Eto’o on a six month deal. They say it wasn’t the money , but the awesome relations between Bahtier Babayev and Joan Laporta. Barca have denied al knowledge of this . I doubt if they even know that Uzbekistan has a football league. Easily the best football story I’ve heard this summer.

 

Grumpy old men

No, I’m not talking about the Jack Lemmon starrer . I’m referring to these two idiots who really seem to have nothing better to do.

UEFA boss Platini talks of banning clubs with debts , like Man United and Chelsea , from the Champions league next year. Why? He says these teams are cheaters. Now i fail to understand  the relation between being in debt and cheating. In fact being in debt puts us at a disadvantage and doesn’t allow us to compete with other teams with no such problems. He says Madrid are a bigger club than both United and Chelsea and are not cheaters , thus Ronaldo should go there. While acknowledging the fact that Madrid has won a lot of stuff in the past , I would like to point out that they lost in the pre-quarters of the champions league this year. Also they are hardly what one might call a ‘great club’ outside the pitch. They don’t have a youth program . They steal players from Athletico (prime example :Raul). They gave their training facilities on rent to finance the purchase of Luis Figo. The sold 15 players to finance the purchase of Beckham. On the other hand , Man Utd have a thriving youth program , Sir Alex is arguably the best manager in the world when it comes to taking care of and nurturing youth and we never go to ridiculous lengths and screw with the whole club for one player. Most importantly , we win after all that.

And Mr Blatter has the nerve to compare Man United’s refusal to sell Ronaldo to ‘modern day slavery’ .  Now we never forced Ronaldo to do anything. He read the contract and he signed of his own accord. It is his duty to honour the contract and Man United are doing absolutely nothing wrong by asking him to stay.

Come to think of it , even Ronaldo has agreed with Blatter’s comments about him being a slave. I wonder what his arguments is : Oh ,  Look at how badly they treat me. I get just a measly 6 million pounds a year. How am I supposed to survive on that?

Pah! As George Thomas would say ‘ Slavery my fundament!’