Recently updated with a few thoughts on the opening weekend of the season.
I’m going to try to write a bit more frequently there this season, so as not to clog up my main blog with loads of football-related nonsense. If you’ve any football questions, ask me!
Craig Bellamy in June 2006, on signing for Liverpool: “The fact that it was Liverpool made it impossible for me to turn them down. As I’m a fan, it doesn’t matter what club I was at. I could never turn Liverpool down.”
Craig Bellamy in August 2010, on signing for Cardiff: “I’m thrilled to be coming back home to Cardiff and am excited at the prospect of wearing the shirt and playing for the club I’ve supported since I was a boy.”
And they say that footballers are mercenaries who will play for anybody that’s prepared to pay them stupid amounts of money…
The Football Association today proudly unveiled Total, fcuk and UPS as the new sponsors of the England football team. ‘The combination of these three corporate giants perfectly captures the ethos of the England side,’ said an FA spokesman.
The new shirts come in a range of bright ‘easy to spot’ colours after claims from England players that the old kit was painted in ‘magic invisible ink’ which made it impossible to pick out an easy and obvious pass to a team mate. The new shirts are also made of a super lightweight material, unlike the old tops which were apparently made of extra-heavy chain mail which left the Premiership stars lumbering around looking exhausted and unfit.
However, one criticism has been made of the design of the new England kit with claims that the neck hole was inexplicably too small for the big heads of the Premiership stars. Players say this will also make it very hard to pull the shirt off during an over-exuberant goal celebration, but a spokesman for the manufacturers said ’we don’t envisage this being a problem.’
The NY Times comes through again with another stunning infographic, this time charting the popularity of various players across the whole of Facebook during each day of the World Cup. The presentation is simply superb, and it’s interesting to see how certain events were reacted to.
Note to self: Don’t audibly go “Oooooh!” as a shot goes narrowly wide of the post if the boss is in hearing distance whilst you’re watching the football on your computer at work.
Well that was a shambles. All the talk is going to be about the disallowed goal over the line, but that’s to detract from the poor performances all round by the England players. We should’ve been 4 goals down by that stage, and we were lucky that Germany only scored another two goals in the second half.
One statistic that’s worth pointing out: Emile Heskey has scored more goals in World Cups than Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard put together.
40 Minute. Wembley is back!! Nur umgekehrt wie 1966. Lampard haut den Ball unter die Latte, es geht klar hinter die Torlinie. Der Schiedsrichter hat es nicht gesehen. Man moechte sich nicht ausmalen, was jetzt in der Redaktion der “Sun” los ist.
From Der Spiegel’s minute-by-minute commentary of the England - Germany game. A rough translation:
40th minute. Wembley is back!! Only vice-versa from 1966. Lampard struck the ball against the bar, and it clearly bounced behind the goal-line. The referee didn’t see it. You don’t want to imagine what’s happening in the newsroom of The Sun now.
I love it, that’s gloriously German humour.
Oh, and it was a goal by an absolute mile. This might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back in terms of introducing goal-line technology sooner rather than later.
Is anyone else bored by the relentless xenophobia from the British tabloid newspapers ahead of tomorrow’s game? Can we not just get on with it without harking back to the wars? It’s boring now, and utterly pointless.
About
Londoner, thinking and writing far too much about far too many random things. Wannabe photo-/videographer of my life. More likely to be found propping up a bar somewhere.
