Money, like air and sex, can never really be appreciated until it’s gone. Likewise a cash injection after a long dry spell (not unlike its counterparts) can bring a smile and an optimism about the road ahead. Football teams are affected by this phenomenon as we all are. Manchester City’s cash infusion has brought a trophy, European competition, and resulted in the best football any team has played over the first two weeks – seven goals and six out of six points. Cash-strapped and overmatched Blackburn and West Brom toil at the bottom already pitted in a relegation battle that will surely last through May.
football
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It’s been just over three months since Manchester United secured their 19th Premier League title by drawing 1-1 at Blackburn, but for soccer fans in England and abroad the EPL off-season seems as long and gray as a London winter. American football’s off-season is over twice as long, but at least we have basketball, hockey, and baseball to keep us company.
The Premier League is like the NBA, NHL, MLB, and Real Housewives of Manchester all rolled up into an annual nine-month long soap opera. It has drama, skill, heartbreak and triumph all acted out by highly skilled and impeccably trained practitioners of the beautiful game. So stakes were high when the first balls were kicked on Saturday to uphold the long, proud tradition of 120+ years of professional English football. Continue reading
This NFL off-season is only five days old and it’s already been crazier than an Al Davis press conference/embalming. There have been about a billion trades and free agent signings.
One player that won’t be re-signed is Randy Moss. Moss retired today as one of the greatest wide receivers to ever play the game. He’s also known for pretending to moon the Green Bay fans during a game, spraying a referee in the face with a water bottle, referring to himself in the third-person singular and selectively deciding to take plays (and entire games) off.
But despite the mercurial behavior, Moss was one of the most talented athletes in NFL history and whether you were rooting for him or against him, he made Sundays a lot more fun.
Our (not so) long national nightmare is over. The world will continue to spin on fall Sundays – bars and stadiums will still be full, yards will still be left undone, and non-football fans will still need to find something to do with other non-football fans. Owners and the union formerly known as the NFL Players Association have tentatively reached an agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, ending the four and a half month lockout.
Continue reading
One of the most storied soccer clubs in South America, River Plate of Argentina, a club which has won the Argentinian league 33 times in its 110 year history, was yesterday relegated to the 2nd division for the first time ever.
River Plate fans did not take this well. Their final match was stopped a minute before the appropriately-named injury time as irate fans, obviously not believing in their team mounting a comeback from 2 goals down, began to charge the ground and throw objects at the players and referees. Opposition fans were forced to stay for hours in a closed off section of the stadium surrounded by police, while River Plate fans set things on fire, smashed shops, threw rocks at the police, and generally behaved like soccer hooligans. Continue reading
If there’s any question about the dominant sport in America, consider this: On the day the NBA Finals begin and the eve of Stanley Cup Finals game 1, sports pages are consumed with a college football head coaching position. On June 1. Almost three months before the 2011 season begins. Such is life in big-time college football, and Ohio State is about as big-time as it gets. Continue reading
Many reasons have been given for why we like sport so much. Tribalism. Throwbacks to our fight-or-flight reflexes. Vicariously living through the talents of others. Freudian reactions to balls and big bats and sticks. Beer.
But what causes some sporting moments to become not merely great, but forever etched in our memories? Continue reading
When he’s not releasing his birth certificate to you racist bastards, or personally flying Blackhawk helicopters into Pakistani airspace to kill Bin Laden with his bare hands, Barry H. Obama is taking on the important shit that’s affecting our world, like college football’s playoff system:
(CNN) — In a letter to the NCAA disclosed Wednesday, the Justice Department said it has received several requests for an antitrust investigation into the current Bowl Championship Series system…
“Serious questions continue to arise suggesting that the current BCS system may not be conducted consistent with the competition principles expressed in federal antitrust laws,” Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney told NCAA President Mark Emmert.
If President Barry kills Osama and delivers us a PROPER GODDAMN COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYOFF SYSTEM in a single week, it will go down as the greatest achievement since Bristol Palin’s son Trig singlehandedly destroyed Wonkette out of pure vengeance and wrath.
I will start with the cheap grab for the attention of my straight female and gay male audience:
I will continue with the cheap grab for the attention of the straight males and lesbians:
(She’s married to a footballer, so the picture is relevant)
Finally, I will start with a short video encapsulating modern Australian Rules Football (or “AFL” as it is usually called now after the main league, imaginatively titled the Australian Football League).
AFL is a game played by two teams with an oval ball (like rugby and American football) on a field with a goal at either end (like rugby and American football). It is generally believed to have arisen out of Gaelic Football (like an Irish cross between rugby and soccer) and the Aboriginal game Marn Grook. The earliest games were played on fields a mile long and teams of hundreds, as a way to keep fit in winter, but these days the field is normal stadium-sized and the teams are 18 a side (plus 3 on the interchange bench, who can substitute on and off for other players as often as they like).
Teams score by kicking the ball through the two central posts of the goal (6 points), or by kicking the ball between a central post and a side post (1 point) or putting the ball through the goals by a means other than kicking (1 point).
Unlike most modern sports, AFL has no rules limiting where people can run or move the ball within the field of play. No offside, no rule against forward passes or backpasses, no icing, no time limit on standing in the paint, nothing. This can lead to extremely free-flowing high-scoring games or to highly defensive games where teams emphasise retaining possession over advancing the ball.
Players may run with the ball, kick the ball or “handball” the ball. A handball is holding the ball in one hand and punching it away with the other. You’ll have seen a few of them in the video at the top of the article.
AFL is a contact sport and tackling is the main way to stop someone. A player who is tackled and can’t get rid of the ball, having had “prior opportunity” to get rid of the ball (you can just put the ball in someone’s hands and pin it to them!) gives away a free kick. It is this free kick, imaginatively titled “holding the ball”, which leads to AFL crowds yelling “BAAAAAAALLLLLLLL” for every tackle, no matter how good.
The signature skill of AFL is the “mark”. A “mark” is a clean catch of the ball from a kick travelling over 10 meters, and the player who does it gets a free kick. A mark within range of goal is one of the few moments an AFL game will stop, as everyone waits for the guy who took the mark to catch his breath and line up the free shot. A pack attempting to mark the ball will inevitably form under any high ball, leading to amazing acrobatics and also moments of indomitable courage.
Don’t hit people and don’t tackle players who don’t have the ball. Any other rule, your guess is probably as good as the umpire’s anyway.
AFL is currently on ESPN3 three times a week in the USA, and I understand on TSN in Canada once a week. Check your local guides etc etc. If one of the games involves the Gold Coast Suns, be warned—they are a new team this year, full of rookie players, and they are being mercilessly flogged by everyone who plays them. Not the best example of the game, sadly.
When I first started following (or trying to follow) international football back in the 90s, there was no Fox Soccer Channel or Gol TV or ESPN Champions League coverage or Wayne Rooney highlights on Sportscenter. Those were the dark days, when identifying as an American soccer fan got you labeled a communist or a faggot…. or a communist faggot.
Those days are long gone now. You can wear your fancy Shaktar Donetsk shirt to spring break in some sunburned hick town like Myrtle Beach and (mostly) be left alone, if not downright embraced by your fellow like-minded football junkies. But that still leaves one glaring question:
Who the fuck do I root for?
We’re working off a few basic assumptions here:
1. You’re an American who wasn’t born/raised in some obviously inferior third-world soccer-mad country like Turkey or Colombia or the United Kingdom. So you don’t have a geographic reason to support, say, the local club from the third-largest city in Belarus.
2. You’re already at least willing to casually support your own country’s national team. Because, really people, don’t be a cunt. Support your own national team. I know Italy always has nifty bright blue Puma jerseys, but that team is a bunch of raging assholes. Your ancestors probably left their homeland for a perfectly good reason (earthquake, famine, terrible pop music, Nazis).
So now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s find you a team based on our fancy proprietary process of elimination!
Rule 1: No front-runners
Who this rules out:
Manchester United
Man United is basically the New York Yankees/Dallas Cowboys/Duke University of soccer. Their fans people who show up to home matches are usually described as “prawn sandwich eaters” by all other fans. Does that sound like a delicious sandwich that should be involved with sports in any way? FUCK AND NO. Lame yuppie-ish front-runner fans are the worst, and Man U already has a huge American fanbase full of these cunty assholes. Steer clear.
FC Barcelona
There’s a lot to love about Barcelona. They’re almost militantly devoted to playing an attacking style of soccer that emphasizes goal scoring and beautiful passing. They’re also the liberal, globalized and open-minded nemesis of Real Madrid. The only problem is that they’re too good. They’re stocked with too much talent and money and managers who wear $3,000 designer suits. They’re for people who like shiny things and they make winning look a little too easy.
Bayern Munich
They seem to be the one German club that spends money like the big Spanish, Italian and English teams, so they inevitably dominate. They currently have a great squad, but I dunno. Munich…. Germany…… hmmmm. I really enjoyed Inglorious Basterds and feel like this team might have some sort of “Natzy” connections, which brings us to…
Rule 2: No connections to 20th-century fascist dictators and/or war criminals
Who this rules out:
Real Madrid
Not only does Real have the whole front-runner problem in Spain, but becoming a Real fan means you to learn the entire post-war history of Spain. See, Spain’s approach to football is to basically live out the past 70 years of political and ideological conflict. It turns out Real Madrid was for many years the unofficial team of the Franco supporters. So unless you’re a fascist, this might not be too appealing.
Lazio
This Rome-based club was the favorite club of the fascist elite during the rule of Il Duce. European soccer is fucking crazy sometimes.
Just about any team from Eastern Europe or the Balkans
I hate to generalize, but do you really want to try to figure out which team from Belgrade was connected to the genocidal paramilitary leaders and which one wasn’t? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Rule 3: The team’s owner should be at least somewhat non-creepy
Who this rules out:
Chelsea
This is perhaps one of the most unlikeable soccer teams of all time. It starts at the top with an owner straight out of Bond villain central casting. Their best players, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard, are more or less impossible to cheer for. Maybe you can swing being a Chelsea fan if you’re the kind of guy who drives around in your BMW M3 and cuts off old ladies. For the rest of us… pass!
AC Milan
Bunga bunga. Yep, that perverted old man you keep reading about in the tabloids… he’s the owner.
Rule 4: The team must not make you want to jump off a bridge every season
Who this rules out:
Newcastle United
Normally I like an underdog, but being a Newcastle fan is not something I’d wish on my worst enemy. First of all, they basically crush your will to live each and every season. They seem to have turned disappointment into an art form. Plus their fans are probably the most insane and provincial supporters in England. You and your nice straight, white teeth won’t ever fit in.
So who should I root for?
The beautiful thing about soccer is that even if you’re a mid-table team (that’s Limey-speak for “contender”), there’s always a lot to play for: The Champions League, the UEFA Europa League (which used to be called the UEFA Cup), domestic cups and the chance to send your arch-rival down to the second division next year with a late-season victory.
For our purposes today, let’s assume that while we love underdogs, we’re not going to bother cheering for the absolute dregs. (Sorry Swindon Town!) Let’s narrow down our potential teams to those clubs that have a legitimate shot at playing in the Champions League most seasons and can generally have a chance to pick up a win against the Barcelonas and Man Uniteds of the world.
Everton
Everton is the oldest club in England and they have lots of great history. They’re the second team of Liverpool, so they have lots of local fans and are known for having a very knowledgeable and passionate fan base. Plus they have an American goalkeeper (Tim Howard) , Australian midfielder (Tim Cahill) and the player with the greatest hairdo in the world right now. They’re a generally lovable bunch of underdogs.
AS Roma
They score a metric shit-ton of goals. Their fans are known for turning their stadium into a giant, Burning Man-esque bonfire party. Their rival is Lazio, which has one of the most right-wing fanbases in Europe. Their team crest prominently features wolf nipples.
Manchester City
Are you a fan of the Mets? Or the White Sox? Or any Philadelphia team? Is your shoulder mostly made up of one giant, permanent chip? If so, this is the team for you! Man City is the perennial step-sister to the hot, popular sister that is Manchester United. Poor Man City, all they really have going for them is their reputation for getting most of their support from Manchester itself, unlike United’s globalized, corporate fanbase. Of course, even Man City is now owned by a group of fatcats from Abu Dhabi who are putting their money into buying up all sorts of talent. Get on board now before they turn into the next Chelsea!
Olympique Lyonnais
Lyon has been a mainstay of the Champions League for much of the last decade. They’re usually very fun to watch and have produced a lot of great players (especially African-born players from former French colonies) over the last few years. Plus Lyon is the home of French gastronomy. If you’re a coq au vin-loving foodie geek, this is the team for you.
Werder Bremen
Werder Bremen is always a team to watch out for in the Champions League. Even though they no longer have Miroslav Klose, they’re usually pretty tough to beat. And German fans are known for bringing a great atmosphere to the games. I love this description on the team’s Wikipedia page: “Werder Bremen is also known for its level-headed environment. In contrast to many other cities, where the local sides are often subject to intense media attention, players and trainers here are usually left in relative peace. Bremen’s reputation is that of a sensible, respected and financially healthy club.” So if you’re turned on by respectful disagreement and balancing your checkbook, this is the team for you!
Ajax
It’s pronounced “I-yax” not like the stuff you use to clean your toilet bowl. Also they’re from Amsterdam, so like…. WEED DUDE. YEAHHHHHH. Ajax is one of the most successful clubs in the sport’s history (though has struggled a bit in recent years) and has produced a metric fuck-ton of legendary players. Their fans do seem to have a Jew-fetish that could possibly be much more creepy than it is endearing… I’ll let you decide! (Gawd Europeans get into some weird shit. I mean, really.)
Arsenal
A London-based team coached by a stern, brilliant Frenchman, and stocked with a mix of awesome French-African players and Euro prodigies. This team plays very exciting football that’s sometimes a bit too fucking cute for its own good. But they have a cool name and are the favorite team of Nick Hornby. They have legit shot at winning the Premiership in any given year and yet somehow manage not be complete fuckos like Man U and Chelsea.
Villarreal
I fucking love these guys even though the only Spanish words I know are “tacos al pastor.” They’re nicknamed “El Submarino Amarillo,” which even my stupid ass can figure out means “The Yellow Submarine,” which is just a fantastic sports nickname. WE WILL SINK YOUR BATTLESHIP, FUCKFACE. I love it. They come from the tiny city of Vila-Real and yet regularly compete with the much bigger Spanish clubs like Real and Barca. They always play a very attacking style, too. Bonus: They currently own the rights to American Jozy Altidore (though he’s out on loan to a Turkish team this season).
Olympique Marseille
Marseille is not your typical baguette-munching French pussy-ville. Marseille is a true shit-kicker town. It’s the Oakland or Philadelphia of France. It’s where they shot “The French Connection.” Marseille’s former team president is Bernard Tapie, a lovable rogue improbably described by Wikipedia as “a French businessman, politician and occasional actor, singer, and TV host.” Tapie was forced to resign after being indicted for tax evasion. When I was a student in France, he was appearing in rap videos as a mafia don. Anyway, OM has one of the most passionate local fanbases in the sport and Stade Velodrome is supposed to be one of the best places on Earth to watch a home match. Plus I love their club’s motto, which is sewn right into their jerseys: “Droit au but.” Straight to the goal.