Real Madrid are the club of thuggery and whining
Reak Madrid are often touted as the real champions of Europe. They exude class, we are told. They know how to win, we are told.
Well, there are certain ways of winning a football match. Outright thuggery and whining, wheeling and yelling at the ref, who’d already decided he was going to help them out, is certainly one of the ways of winning….but it’s not the way that I believe any football fan in England would choose, is it? I just don’t understand, they have the players to win it the right way, they just don’t bother. How many bookings did they have? Should be double…at minimum. Flavoured with at least one red card, too.
It’s obviously a Madrid ‘thing’.
Obviously, I want to dump them on their arses. I know many contributors to this mailbox would love to see City dumped on our arses (obviously, it’s the nature of partisan support) but I’d hope that you then wouldn’t want that club to win it again.
After all, complete domination of a footballing competition? Nobody wants to see that, do they?
Do they?
Helpfully trying.Levenshulme Blue, Manchester 19
This is what happens when you are surrounded by Real fansAs is often the case in England , I was miles away from the team on the screen , had no family affiliation or tenuous connection with the team playing . This is turning into a rant ….
Things are well different from the 70’s .
The 70’s was when Franco died and the oppressive fascist government eventually loosened their grip after 40 bloody decades. Seeds being sewn for the Moss side riots.
Yet during that time I cannot find a more ’ successful ‘ dictatorship distraction than this Real Madrid phenomena .
I looked into Salazar’s Benfica, but the job done by Franco’s PR department would be akin to 70 per cent of all English football fans being mad about Aston Villa ( where ) Birmingham is the central capital , and in every town and city any Villa match would be supported by thousands in say Lincoln , Salisbury , York , Exeter , ad infinitum. And on top of that , all the major other footballing towns having a 1-1 ratio with their local team and Villa followers . Apart from Glasgow where they detest anything Birmingham i. e. centralisation.
Anyway. Rudiger , after his ‘job’ on Kevin in the final , deserves an award for a good attempt on knobbling the City playmaker Gundogan.Only Ramos’s concussion on the Liverpool keeper plus press-ganging Salah is above Rudiger now .
Curious…
No parallels are available to me across Europe on how many provinces’ boys feel. ‘Burnished by victory’ when Madrid , a city they’ve rarely visited, plays and wins.
In that ‘pure white ‘ where Wright- Philips suffered so many monkey chants , where , if they were losing , all the black players would be first to be criticised . They do not lose though. As the monarchy in Britain – are not allowed to fail- , this shit works , look at Berlusconi’s Milan , Italy’s world cups . pre Second World War , Argentina 78 .
Blair’s pimping of London just has a different hand up the puppet’s arse . The CFC money is now out of favour , London has other masters to whore . Still , Carletto will play the same rope a dope in post riot Moss Side . And Status Quo sing on .Peter (loved Villareal last semi final etc ), Andalucia. ( a bastion of Madrid supporters)
Have Man City ‘solved’ football?All this talk about Manchester City being a boring, soulless team is (in my opinion) alluding to the fact that they have essentially “solved” football. They have enough financial resources (legitimate or illegitimate) to employ 18ish top players which fit the optimal system of today’s football. A 4-3-3 with a single deep lying midfielder, two “8s”, strategic pressing, etc. etc.
Even if there exists a strategy to counter it, the other teams they compete against do not have the resources to implement such a strategy, and moreover have to also compete against a variety of other strategies so cannot put all their eggs in one basket to merely beat City. When the current City players age, Pep and Txiki will go out and find new ones to slot in. Now it’s possible that their way of playing is reliant on Pep orchestrating, and it may fall apart when he pursues his next challenge or retirement, but frankly I don’t want to wait.
I think the rules need to be changed, just like they have done in the NBA or myriad other sports when a team or player is too advantaged. I suspect modifying the offside rule might be the answer but who knows.
Back to “solved” football though. Part of the romance of the games in the late noughties and early aughts was that teams were all vulnerable at points. The vitriol reserved for Sir Alex’s United was based on the notion that they were favored by the refs and were dirty bastards at times, not because the title seemed like a foregone conclusion. There was more chaos and unpredictability. Teams relied much more on individual skill because the game hadn’t been solved yet. Shots outside the box were allowed and there were long shot specialists, because xG hadn’t been invented yet. How can we rediscover this romance?Noah, Chicago Gooner
Could VAR decide the title?As you pointed out in your article looking at the remaining fixtures for Man City and Arsenal, it could be an incredibly close finish…or it could all be over in the next couple of matches.
If Arsenal are to fall short (and I believe they will), it is probably better for all that the gap ends up being several points. If Man City beat Arsenal by only a point, it will be hard to ignore the travesty of the VAR official failing to do their job in the Arsenal vs Brentford match earlier this season. Not a matter of opinion, not a difference of interpretation….an absolutely glaring mistake in failing to draw the lines which would have ruled Brentford’s equalizer offside.
Now, I believe the poor Arsenal results against Everton and West Ham were ultimately what will make the difference for them…but it’s not a good look for PGMOL if something they themselves described as “a significant error in the VAR process” ends up deciding the title.Pete, Norfolk
Ole’s almost momentSeeing the Planet Football “6 alternatives to Bruno Man Utd Chased in 2020”, reminded me of some thoughts I had over the weekend.
Namely, that in January of 2020, things could have turned out a whole lot different in different circumstances. I recall fondly the news and attempts that United made that month, and how it ended: With Bruno & Ighalo.
Would Bruno have been signed had the other transfers had worked out? Probably not. Would we have cared? You decide.
Here are the players United were after that were clsoe, but ultimately lost out on in January 2020:
Haaland – 20M – DortmundBellingham – 30M – DortmundCaicedo – 4.5M – Brighton
You win some and you lose some, but how things could have been if United had been competent enough to get them.Calvino
Let’s end tragedy chantingSo I was at a bit of a loose-end on bank holiday Monday, licking my wounds after we dropped 3 points against West Ham, and there was a documentary on BT Sports entitled “Two Tribes”. Brief synopsis – it covers football, social and newsworthy issues involving Liverpool and Everton in the 1980s.
Naturally, given the decade in question, this culminated in the Hillsborough disaster in April 1989, when 97 football fans tragically lost their lives while doing what most of us have done for years and will do in future – attend a football match to support our teams.
I was young when the disaster happened, although I do remember seeing the news reports at the time and appreciating the universal level of shock and sadness surrounding the disaster. I had an older mate at the time who supported Liverpool, we had a bit of a kick-about in his garden before the match but ended up watching updates on TV (don’t think the match was televised but Grandstand etc provided updates). Watching the BT documentary brought back the sadness of the event but was also a reminder of how Liverpool and Everton fans were united in grief, and football in general came together to pay respects to those families who had lost loved ones.
This brings me to the topic of chanting about tragedies or using them as a way to get under the skin of other supporters. I can only think those who do this were too young to have lived through or remember the incident, too brainless to recognise the hurt it may cause or too callous to care. I have no love for Liverpool FC, as you probably could have guessed from previous mails, but I would never stoop so low as to chant about Hillsborough or Heysel. In the same way I would be disgusted if other fans were chanting about Munich. There’s a guttersnipe in the comments section, for instance, who loves bringing the crash up but I don’t view them as a real football fan or decent human being.
Teams could and should be doing more. Identifying and banning is likely to be the most effective course of action but there’s probably more that can be done to educate and encourage people to think before they chant. How about a collaborative advertising campaign about tragedy chanting, with clips and reports from the time? All ticket holders receive a must-watch digital video before their tickets become valid? I’m sure there are better ideas others can come up with.
Sometimes people just need reminding that the lives lost transcend tribal squabbles and football in general. Respect each other, focus on football, stop trying to point-score using the deaths or distress of other human beings. Life is hard enough at times.Garey (JFT 97) Vance, MUFC
Investment cornerThe stupidest signing and transfer gossip article in particular got me thinking, why don’t hedge and pension fund managers start financing transfer deals (maybe they do,)? There could be a list of players available, perhaps called the footie100.
Take Ryan Gravenberch, according to the article he was signed for 17 million, he’s been unable to play his way into Bayern’s starting XI but is now expected to be sold for 50 million, a 200% return (less his wages ) in only 12 months! Can’t get that on the stock market.Howard (should I buy a domain name?) Jones
Samwise Gammerdyce and moreI’d just like to thank John Nicholson for being the wonderful fella he is. Especially when there’s electronic letters about how puerile it is to boo some group of deviant horse fondlers who exist on the basis that they are somehow better than everyone else despite ever mounting evidence to the contrary. To not boo such gilded leeches prancing in their nightmare raiments is performative, to fall in line as a subject, it is to be ruled over and to accept another group of humans as being genetically and in all other ways superior. Anyone with any self respect would oppose this vociferously. I mean, who in their right minds would clap and cheer as some shallow pool eugenics experiment robbed you and everyone you know every day forever while saying it’s your fault for not being a f**king king.
Vinicius Junior is really quite good. Real Madrid with added Bellingham is quite frightening.
I’ve been daydreaming about Sam Allardyce doing his best top level manager impression dressed as a hobbit and trying to convince Leeds that they can do it by giving this speech:
“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Forshaw. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Firpo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.”
However, nothing so fanciful looks like happening and sadly 19th is looking comfortable.
