A Tentative Answer

In the previous piece, I outlined my own dilemma regarding the issue of PEDs in sport, and asked what it is that we, as fans, seek in sport. There is no easy answer to this. While working the idea over in my head, I was reminded of one occasion where I was a spectator at a sporting event when forty-two thousand people knew that the hero of the piece was a cheat, but cheered nonetheless.

It was June 27th, 2007, in San Francisco. AT+T Park is one of the most picturesque sports venues in the world. Overlooking the Bay, there is nowhere else you'd rather be on a sunny day in Frisco. So, while 42,527 people came along for a matinee game to enjoy the bluest of skies, the meeting of the Giants and Padres had a greater interest. Barry Bonds.

***

Barry Bonds had taken the single season home run record in 2001 when he launched 73 chemically enhanced shots at the age of 36 for the Giants. Bonds' late career home run surge was highly improbable. His career was easily Hall of Fame worthy before he began taking PEDs in 1999, but what happened thereafter was the stuff of computer games. Bonds' guilt was widely known by 2007. The exposé, Game of Shadows, was published in 2006 and told the story of the BALCO scandal with overwhelming evidence suggesting that he had taken PEDs. He had told a Federal Grand Jury in 2003 that he had never knowingly taken such drugs, a stance which would see him indicted for perjury in late 2007.

Bonds was known to be a cheat. By the summer of 2007 he was closing in on one of the few remaining hallowed records in baseball's history, being Hank Aaron's all time home run record of 755 career shots.

***

Bonds came into the June 27th game against the Padres with 749 career home runs. Every one of his at-bats became a national event. Whenever he came to the plate, the national sports broadcaster ESPN cut to the Giants game, hoping to catch a little piece of history.

Bonds did not start the game against the Padres. He was given a routine day off. This led to huge disappointment amongst the majority of fans present. It was clear that, despite the charms of AT+T Park, the overwhelming bulk of spectators were there to see Bonds edge closer to a place in history. An illegitimate place in history.

The game was a good one. Future Hall of Famer Greg Maddux (who one would like to think will never be implicated in any PED scandal) rolled back the years for the Padres and pitched like it was 1996. He was opposed by Matt Cain, a promising young fireballer, pitched well for the Giants. It was a classic pitchers duel, played out in the glare of the early afternoon sun in the Bay. It was perfect. But something did not seem quite right. People still longed to see Barry Bonds.

With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Giants were down by two runs, and very much on their last legs. Manager Bruce Bochy rolled the dice and brought up two pinch hitters. The first, Mark Sweeney, would have to try to get on base to enable the second, Barry Lamar Bonds, to come to the dish at all.

The crowd went nuts. Everybody stood on their feet. Not to cheer Sweeney on, but to catch a glimpse of Bonds in the on deck circle taking his practice swings. People began cheering for him, almost oblivious to the fact that Sweeney had to do something first before Bonds could even enter the game. As the crowd reached a crescendo, Sweeney grounded out meekly to second base, and the game was over.

***

While Major League Baseball, and most baseball fans, found Bonds' pursuit of the all time home run record to be an irritant at best, fans in San Francisco still flocked to the park to cheer on the man who had been their hero for many years. They knew he was a cheat, they knew his 'record' was not done on the level in the same way as Hank Aaron or Babe Ruth, and they cheered all the same. So to the question: what do fans seek in sport?

Is it escapism? Is the sense of history in sport - and especially in American sports - so pronounced that people are desperate to say that they were part of a 'historic' event, even when deep down they know that it was not a 'legitimate' piece of history (in the sense that the record was chemically enhanced)? Or do people simply want to see the freakshow?

I think that, in this case at least, the sense of 'history' that came with Bonds' pursuit of the record was enough for people to block out the bad stuff which had been reported in Game of Shadows. Is that what spectators seek in watching sport then - a sense of occasion or importance, no matter how false it may be? In this case, I think that was true.

Disillusionment

I recently read Jeremy Whittle's excellent Bad Blood, the story of the author's disillusionment with the world of professional cycling and the contagion of doping which pervades the péloton. Whittle was not only a sports journalist, but describes himself as a cycling obsessive, who lapped up the the romance of the Tour de France and its great competitors such as Bernard Hinault and Greg LeMond in his younger days before taking to writing about cycling in a professional capacity. Unlike other exposés published in recent years, Whittle's book contains no smoking gun; rather, it is a story of betrayal and shattered dreams, as the cumulative and relentless weight of cycling's drug scandals leaves the author not knowing who or what to believe in anymore.

Anyone who has followed professional cycling remotely closely over the past decade can relate to Whittle's quandary. I first caught the Tour de France bug watching Marco Pantani's epic victory in 1998. The Italian's daredevil style, which seemed almost counter-intuitive to the point of suicidal, won him a huge following. His victory was the antithesis to those of metronomic riders like Miguel Indurain and Jan Ullrich before him, and Lance Armstrong thereafter. By the time Pantani died of a drug overdose in 2004, it was well known that he had been doped in 1998, but he was one of many. Pantani's tragic demise was an extreme case, but the point remains that, as Whittle and Paul Kimmage before him pointed out, the majority of professional cyclists over the past fifteen or so years have been doped. Pantani's outing as a cheat began my own disillusionment with the sport and I have struggled to take much interest in it since.

On my travels through America in the summer of 2007 I recall meeting a Dane who was cycling from coast to coast. By chance, we were staying at a hostel in Memphis which was run by a huge cycling buff from South Carolina, and as the Tour de France was on at the time, cycling naturally dominated the conversation. At that point, every Tour winner since 1996 had either been exposed as a drug cheat, or had a deal of circumstantial evidence amassed against them (Lance Armstrong being subject to huge scrutiny and many accusations, but no positive test to this point). The 2006 winner, Floyd Landis, had been stripped of his crown. Cycling needed, yet again, some positive publicity.

During my week in Memphis, the Tour was being led comfortably by the Dane, Michael Rasmussen, who seemed poised to win, and hopefully restore some pride to the battered classic. My new Danish friend, Henrik, went to great lengths telling us how we really could trust Rasmussen, how he was definitely clean, and we all wanted to believe this was true. Such was his enthusiasm that another hostel visitor posted a sign - purely as a practical joke - stating that Rasmussen had been disqualified from the Tour. Mortified at first, Henrik laughed at it afterwards, only for the joke to become reality the following day, as Rasmussen was dropped by his team for a number of testing violations (he never tested positive, however).

I have seen sports fans crushed after particularly painful defeats. I have been in the doldrums following certain games (Ireland-Spain 2002 being a particular low point). Henrik's reaction was beyond anything I had witnessed before. It was beyond defeat - it was a betrayal. Before my eyes I witnessed his own disillusionment with the sport hit him like an ACME anvil hitting the Wiley Coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon.

If you're a cycling fan, it seems that these things will come to you. As Whittle's book demonstrates, in cycling's recent history, nobody is above suspicion.

***

It seems to me that there is a great parallel between cycling's current predicament and that of baseball. The past few months have seen more scandalous revelations pertaining to the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in the sport. First the sport's brightest star, Alex Rodriguez, was revealed to have failed a test in 2003, and subsequently admitted to juicing. In the past week Manny Ramirez was suspended for fifty games for a positive test for a women's fertility drug often used at the end of a steroid cycle. With new revelations emerging about his alleged use, the pitcher Roger Clemens broke his public silence on ESPN radio to continue his denials of any wrongdoing in the face of a good deal of circumstantial evidence. As one commentator put it yesterday, Clemens was like Seinfeld's George Costanza, who once remarked that 'it's not a lie if you believe it.' The shadow of Barry Bonds' home run records still looms over the sport.

Everyone is a suspect. We know from Senator George Mitchell's (very limited) report that there was no profile for baseball's drug user - it could be the skinny utility infielder or the bullpen specialist as much as the musclebound slugger. A huge number of players were using and not just to set records, but to break the major leagues in the first place and make a decent living. This is not dissimilar to Paul Kimmage's description of systematic abuse amongst the lowly domestiques of the péloton - they simply wanted to hang on. Before last week, most fans thought that Ramirez was too lackadaisical to stick to a drugs programme. But apparently he did.

Everyone is a suspect and increasingly it is a case of guilty until proven innocent. This was hammered home in a recent column by ESPN's Howard Bryant, himself an author of an exposé on steroid use in baseball a couple of years ago. Just before the Manny Ramirez story broke, Bryant had interviewed David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox, a feared home run hitter as recently as two years ago, who inexplicably (or explicably, depending on how cynical you are) has yet to hit a home run this year. In Bryant's article, he discussed many reasons for Ortiz's struggles with the hitter, but never even broached the topic of PEDs. This was spite of the fact that Ortiz and Ramirez were teammates for the former's most productive years.

Bryant wrote a follow-up article describing how he had received 109 emails from readers regarding the piece, only one of which did NOT take him to task for neglecting to mention PEDs. Ortiz has no connection (as far as is known at present) to shady gyms, personal trainers, dealers, supplements, or the like, but still many fans assume his guilt.

Is a collective disillusionment taking over baseball?

***

The point of this article is to ask quite simply: what is it that we, as fans, seek in sport? It cannot, simply, be escapism. It has to be a certain type of escapism. Until the respective drug stories emerged both cycling and especially baseball were enjoying huge popularity (the epic, and steroid fuelled Home Run Chase of 1998 essentially saved baseball in the aftermath of the players' strike of 1994 and brought the fans back). Would fans rather be left willfully ignorant?


I am not sure there is an easy answer. I was captivated by Pantani in 1998. Would I feel differently if he had never been caught? The fact remains that there are many prominent sportsmen who use, or have used in the past, that we are unaware of. Certainly we know this to be true in baseball (seeing as A-Rod's name was one of 104 positive tests taken in 2003 which were supposed to be kept anonymous). The rewriting of sports history - especially a history which we have lived and loved - leads to confusion above all, certainly in my case. If we accept that anyone is potentially guilty, then the feats of the past must be glossed over. The only positive is that, in theory, stricter drug testing should clean up sport in the future.

I have a lot of respect for Usain Bolt

Yes, his world records in the 100m and 200m sprints are very impressive. And yes, it might be argued that I admire anyone who reinforces cultural stereotypes in comedy fashion ("In Jamaica, you learn as a child how to roll a joint.") But the real reason is this:

Bild said one of its reporters met Bolt at a disco in Kingston, Jamaica, and that the sprinter drank Guinness mixed with Red Bull. The paper added that Bolt has been assigned two bodyguards by the Jamaican government.

Who the hell mixes Guinness and Red Bull?! That is possibly the most unappealing drinks combination I have ever heard of - and I'm open to most things. It's not quite Paul McGrath locked in a hotel drinking poitín for the weekend, but for sheer creativity, I give him much kudos.

Eoin Ryan Loves Political Capital

An advertisement has appeared on a number of facebook pages recently. I'd imagine that it is tailored to appeal to the hitherto non-political footballing yoof of Ireland. Placed by Eoin Ryan, a Member of the European Parliament for Fianna Fail, it promises us that: 'Eoin Ryan loves football, MOST of the time! Click here to find out why!'

Like a dutiful old dog I clicked on the link. It takes you to this, a letter written by Ryan to (I presume, as this isn't clear) the President of the European Parliament, outlining Ryan's disgust at Scottish born players who represent Ireland at international level receiving racist abuse. I have no problem with this, in theory, although it presupposes that Irish fans are saintly in their terrace comportment, when this is plainly not the case (does anyone remember when Ireland played Denmark in a friendly a few years back and the PA mistakenly informed the crowd that Peter Lovenkrands, then of Rangers, had come on as a sub? The player who actually came on was booed for the remainder of the game, on the grounds that he [Lovenkrands] played for Rangers).

Wouldn't it read better as 'Eoin Ryan Loves Political Capital!'?

Bring a Hard Hat

Yes! For only €175 you can watch Ireland play 'an outstanding match' against Bulgaria on March 28th. Screw Croke Park: 'For those seasoned football fans among us: the Landsdowne Road in Ireland is the perfect venue to see Ireland - Bulgaria!' I'm not sure which is more fanciful, the idea of it being an outstanding match or Lansdowne Road being the perfect venue.

I suppose there's an obvious joke about a building site suiting our style of play, but I am not going to make it. Lets just see how Worldticketshop.com survives the recession.

Holding out for a Hero

Alex Rodriguez's admission on Monday that he had used steroids has left baseball writers in something of a bind. Aside from all the moral outrage at what has come to be known as the 'steroid era' - encompassing the players, the owners, Major League Baseball, and the players union - it has led to a fundamental problem regarding the interpretation of the game's history.

Baseball is a sport which prides itself on history. More so than any other sport, it is a game of numbers. Numbers are hugely important even to those who are not statistically inclined. It's a game of twenty-seven outs organised into nine innings. Three strikes and you're out, four balls and you get a walk. It may be a cliché, but most Americans can tell you that Babe Ruth wore number 3, or that Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs, that Joe DiMaggio had a 56 game hitting streak, or that Ted Williams was the last player to have a batting average of .400. The great players have their uniform numbers retired. The truly great can hope to acquire a sufficient number of votes to gain entry to the Hall of Fame. It's a game of numbers, numbers, numbers.

The BALCO scandal began a process which is still playing out and may have a long distance left to run. Being integral to it, Barry Bonds' achievements (breaking both the single season and all time home run record) have been invalidated, even though the history books will show that he hit 73 home runs in 2001 and 762 for his career. He is due to stand trial for perjury on March 3rd for lying to a federal grand jury about intentional drug use.


Bonds was never very popular and although he trampled all over the history books, the proximity of a number of less bulky, and less obviously 'roided players to Bonds in the all time home run list meant that his record was not expected to endure. Alex Rodriguez, the prodigy who made the major leagues at the age of eighteen and who did not seem to physically change much throughout his career would break it. While A-Rod was never a popular figure - he was seen as vain and preening and a big-time choker - he was at least assumed to be clean. Hell, he didn't need steroids, or so they said (nevermind that this applied equally to Bonds. Also, lets ignore the fact that baseball's history is littered with cheats who bent the rules in a myriad of ways).

It turns out that Alex Rodriguez is another drug cheat.

People always gasped and gawked at the sudden emergence of Sammy Sosa to become a perennial 60 home run threat in the late nineties, or at the size of Mark McGwire's arms when he and Sosa went head to head for the single season home run record which had stood for 37 years in 1998. Bonds' late career power spike drew similar amazement. A-Rod never experienced this. He was a natural from the get-go, one who hit 36 home runs in his first full season in 1996 at the age of 20.

A-Rod was the saviour of baseball, the redeemer, who although lacking in charisma and public relations savvy, would at least wrench back one of the sports' most hallowed records for the good guys. That won't happen now.

A revisionist movement is suddenly under way. Nobody from the previous twenty years is above suspicion. Players who had been somewhat overlooked are now being rehabilitated on the fly.

Take Frank Thomas for example. Thomas was similar to Bonds in his career - surly, seen as a bad team-mate, and not particularly kind to the press. He won two MVPs in the early 1990s and topped 500 home runs for his career last year. He was always viewed as a borderline Hall of Fame candidate at best due to his 'character issues' and the fact that he didn't 'play' a position for large chunks of his career (being a designated hitter). Thomas was the only player who consistently spoke out against performance enhancing drugs, advocated the introduction of testing, and more importantly, was the only player in all of Major League Baseball who agreed to cooperate in full with Senator Mitchell's report into the issue. Could he be the hero?

People are looking once more to Ken Griffey Jr., the original 'natural', a lithe and athletic guy with a sweet swing who was sure to break both the single season and career home run records in the mid 90s without all that muscle. Injuries derailed his career somewhat in the late 90s and especially into the 2000s and he missed out on baseball's steroid fuelled home run binge. He has still topped 600 career home runs. Larry Stone of the Seattle Times wrote on Monday that 'Griffey will rightly emerge as the most celebrated player of his era.'

Some writers are advocating the abolition of all records set in the 'steroids era'. It is a measure of the distrust that has gripped baseball over the past five years. Nobody is above suspicion. Numbers have become meaningless. The players of the steroids era etched themselves into history and now the process of rewriting this history is beginning. The dust has yet to settle. Baseball needs to decide who its hero is going to be.

ClapTrap

The official FAI website recently ran a feature called 'Ask Trap'. This allowed readers to submit questions for the great Trapattoni with the promise that the six 'most popular' questions would be answered by the lovable but indecipherable Italian. One wonders why they would choose to run with the six 'most popular' when it's clear that, in my opinion at the very least, the six most popular questions amongst Irish fans would be the following:

1) Whither Andy Reid?

2) Whither Stephen Ireland?

3) Why are you so bloody conservative?

4) What do you make of the Robbie Keane drama?

5) What's Marco Tardelli's favourite nightspot?

6) Is 'mentality' the only English word you've learned since you've been in charge of Ireland?

Ok, so the last two aside, I think that the other four, perhaps in slightly different forms, would be the most popular questions. And although we have heard plenty in the press about both Stephen Ireland and Andy Reid, it doesn't make these any less pressing issues for Irish fans, especially given the former's scintillating club form.

The questions published on the FAI website were predictably censored. Most popular? Lets see...

Question 1: Do you think Robbie Keane going back to Spurs is a good move?

That's one of the six, fine.

Question 2: When we were 1-0 up on Cyprus we had them for the taking and if we had pushed on we would have easily scored and killed the game but instead we played out the 1-0 win but came very close to conceding at the end which would have been a very bad result, we were lucky I feel. Do you not think that when a team is there to be beaten more than one goal that we should be more attack minded?

That's also one of the six, but seriously, don't they have an editor at the FAI? Ultimately, I have no problem with this one as it elicited the wonderful response from Trap that 'If you give [Cyprus] space they will skewer you like a chicken.' I'm not sure if he means they will skewer you in the manner that a psycopathic chicken might skewer its quarry, or in the manner in which a kebab shop employee (lets say Fatih Terim) might prepare his produce. Either way, I'm with Trap on this one.

Question 3: How important do you feel it is having 'B' internationals and should we be putting more impetus on our u21 side?

This is a reasonably important issue but ultimately tangential, in my opinion. Bigger fish to be fried. Yes, the food analogies will continue.

Question 4: Who was the best player that ever played for you and how does Robbie compare?

This is clearly a joke entry that slipped through the net.

Question 5: Mr. Trapattoni. Your opinion about Georgia national team? About Héctor Cúper? What is your prognosis about the recent match between Ireland and Georgia?

Eh? Seriously? This was one of the top six most popular questions submitted? And this was the best phrased example? Just who are we trying to kid here? It's so badly phrased that you'd be forgiven for thinking that Giovanni had written the thing himself.

Question 6: Why not go with a 4-3-3- formation and go for it from here on out?

Yawn.

The media people at the FAI could have claimed that they would print the best six questions (a little more plausible, but still way off the mark) instead of the most popular ones. Are they trying to pretend that Irish fans simply do not care about the Ireland and Reid situations? They may be exasperated by the former's inexplicable moodswings, but he's still a huge source of comment, for better or worse, amongst Irish fans. Andy Reid too. Hell, he's even broached the subject a couple of months ago. While we never would expect that Trap would give away all the inside information in such a format, it is ridiculous of the FAI braintrust to claim that it's not an issue.

[Also: they never answered my question about Mick Wallace. Bastards].

Ireland's Midfield Dynamo

I'm not sure which is worse - a misleading headline/photo combination which insinuates that Keith Andrews is an exotic dancer, or one which insinuates that he's a racehorse. Neither will be of much use in the Irish XI against Georgia (we already have one Kevin Kilbane, thank you very much).

Bad Analogies

Lost in the hoopla over the Michael Phelps bongathon-extravaganza-scandal-shame story was one of the most ridiculous analogies in recent history, even by the standards of tabloid sports reporting.

The News of the World's source claimed that: 'He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits.' Nice.

If there was like, a competition for bong smoking, and if, like, Michael Phelps was one of the competitors, y'know, like he is in swimming, and if there were gold medals awarded for the best smokers, he totally would've won like at least one gold medal.

Tortured.

Mindless Pedantry

I am, I must admit, somewhat perturbed by this. I had always assumed that when football commentators told us that 'away goals count double' they were simply being ill informed and inarticulate - as usual. No! No! No! I would think: they say that away goals in home-and-away games count double in the event of a tie, but what they really mean to say is that the team with the most away goals wins the tiebreaker.

That is why the result would be reported as (and these are all real examples, the first four results of a google search for "win on away goals rule"):

- Shelbourne 0 KR Reykjavik 0 (2-2 agg, Shebourne win on away goals).

- Arsenal 2 Wigan Athletic 1 (aet; 2-2 on aggregate; Wigan win on away goals rule).

- 02-04/05/08: Mauritania 2-2 Guinea 16-18/05/08: Guinea 1-1 Mauritania (3-3 on aggregate, Guinea win on away goals rule).

- Bayern Munich bt Real Madrid 2-1 (4-4 on aggregate, Bayern Munich win on away goals rule).

If away goals 'counted double', Bayern Munich would have beaten Real Madrid 6-4, seeing as they had scored more away goals, which count double, and thus decide the tie for them. And this would be ridiculous. No, what commentators mean to say is that the team with the most away goals wins in the event of a tie. Simple as, right?

Apparently not. My apologies to John Motson, George Hamilton, Barry Davies, Jonathan Pearce, Clive Tyldesley, and fuck it, Tony Gubba too. Apparently our esteemed cliché-merchants are, in this case, correct. That being admitted, there seems to be huge confusion as to what this actually means.

(For those of you who are still reading, I'll freely plead guilty to the charge of pedantry.)

If you peruse the Official FIFA Laws of the Game, you will find the following paragraph (p.50):

Away Goals
Competition rules may provide that where teams play each other home and away, if the aggregated scores are equal after the second match, any goals scored at the ground of the opposing team will count double.

As you may have guessed, I find this very surprising. Seriously, away goals do count double? Really? First of all, lets consider just how arbitrary this is - away goals count double? Why not triple? Why didn't FIFA go all out and declare that away goals count ten times an ordinary goal? Fuck it, why not go big? Perhaps for Champions League semi finals they could count as one hundred times more valuable than a regular goal.

The odd thing about the wording of this rule is that it does not specifically apply to the team with the quantitative advantage in terms of away goals. It refers to all away goals scored, by both sides, in both legs of the tie. So, to return to an example from earlier, the Real Madrid-Bayern Munich game did not actually finish 4-4 on aggregate; officially, the score was 6-5 to Bayern. Or, in the case of the Guinea-Mauritania game, the aggregate score was actually 5-4 to Guinea.

This being the case, why don't players get credited with two goals for strikes in these games? Unlike penalty shootouts, which are outside the realm of a regular game and purely there as a means of breaking a tie, the rule quoted above is quite clear on the matter: away goals 'count double'.

If nothing else, the reporting of these games seems to be ridiculously confused. Almost as confused as I am. Being so attuned to cynicism, it was my natural reaction to assume that our beloved football commentators were merely living up to my worst expectations of them; mangling words and concepts, peddling hackneyed guff to fill air. Apparently not.

Yikes. Pedantry doesn't pay, kids.

Soul Searching

The Kaka to Manchester City deal appears to be dead in the water. Thank Christ. I do not say this because I have any great moral outrage about the whole process. I don't (I'll get into this a little later). I am just glad this deal fell apart because I'm sick and tired of reading articles like this. And this. And this.

When will journalists stop bleating on about how this time, it really will mean the 'death of football', or something closely approximating it? The sky is falling in! The dream is over! Quick, jump off the nearest tall building! It's the apocalypse! Manchester City are trying to sign Kaka for £100 million: run for your lives! Football will never be the same again! It will lose its soul!

While I do acknowledge that this deal is in a sense unprecedented (simply because of the figures involved), in substance it really isn't anything that we have not seen before. Is money spoiling the game? In some ways, yes, in some ways, no. Is this something newfangled? No. Lazy hacks need to stop telling us that it is. Football would not have lost its soul if Kaka had signed for Man City. If we want to use this terminology, I would argue that football 'lost its soul' a long time ago.

In fact, perhaps the question we should be asking is when did football actually have a soul? Think about that. People argue that money has ruined the game. The fact of the matter is that money has always been there, and that people with money have always endeavoured to acquire the best players, regardless of their own prestige or current standing.

In 1947, England's leading centre-forward, Tommy Lawton, left Chelsea for a British record transfer fee of £20,000. Who did he sign for? Notts County, a team playing in the Third Division of English football at that point. Hugely different in one way, very similar in another.

A couple of years later, there was an exodus of some of Europe and South America's leading players - to Colombia. The national league there had broken away from FIFA and thus teams was not required to pay transfer fees. Thus, they could offer vast amounts of money to international players like Argentina's Alfredo di Stefano or England's Neil Franklin. Charlie Mitten, a prominent member of the Manchester United team which won the FA Cup in 1948 (Matt Busby's first great team) also followed. The league was predictably short lived, but this really is not a far cry from the modern phenomenon of the footballer moving to the UAE or Saudi Arabia (or even the Premiership) for his payday. And this happened sixty years ago.

After the institution of the European Cup, Real Madrid began a process of acquiring all the best talent in Europe. In came Ferenc Puskas, Raymond Kopa, and di Stefano. While nowadays Real can claim to be the most prestigious club in Europe when wooing potential transfer targets, this period in the late fifties was where this reputation was born. Success in the first five European cups forged a reputation, not the other way around (a benevolent dictatorship also helped).

How did Diego Maradona end up at Napoli in the mid 1980s?* Maradona was the best player in the world and had commanded a world record fee to sign for his (then) club Barcelona (a vastly successful club with a rich heritage both domestically and internationally). He proceeded to sign for a team who had never won Serie A before for another world record fee (of £6.9 million). Man City may wear the same kit as Napoli, but that is where the comparison falls down - at least City had won their domestic league in the past (1968, to be precise).

Teams have always had money, and teams have always used money to buy the best players. This is a fact. The question of football 'losing its soul' is a murkier business. We have heard this trotted out many times in the past fifteen years: when the Glazers bought Man Utd., when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, when Rio Ferdinand held out for a bumper contract at Man Utd, when matches went pay-per-view, and so on. I'm sure someone made the argument when a foreigner took charge of the England football team. Football writers are like the boy who cried wolf.

Certainly, it seems obvious that there has been an intensification of this 'money culture' in professional football since the advent of the Premier League. TV money revolutionised the game in Britain. More foreign players came in, wages skyrocketed, and teams began to refer to themselves as businesses. Does this constitute a loss of the soul? Football is now played at a higher standard than ever before. Teams across the football league boast modern all seater facilities where fans can enjoy a game (although they may bemoan the demise of the terrace). Hooliganism is not a thing of the past, but is being dealt with effectively compared to the dark days of the 1980s.

Football has changed. Does this constitute a loss of soul? Can we point to a time when football really and truly had a soul without reference to jumpers for goalposts?

I found the following in a report in The Times of October 10th, 1928 (Association Football, p.7). These are the words of the head of the Football Association in response to criticisms of various evils in the game, specifically relating to the negative impact of money. Sir Charles Clegg remarked that he was skeptical of transfers for amounts such as £10,000, because in his opinion, no player in the world was worth that much money. However, "If a club is sufficiently foolish to give £10,000 for a player, it deserves to be 'let in', and I should not be sorry if it were." (Interestingly, one of the criticisms also bemoaned the continued practice of players arguing with referees, despite the institution of a rule outlawing this at the beginning of the 1923-24 season. Sound familiar? Association Football, The Times, October 3rd 1928, p.6). The point is that these are not new debates.

While the fees involved in the proposed Kaka transfer may be new, that is all. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

* There may have been a horse's head involved.

Mind Games

In light of Rafa Benitez's recent comments about Alex Ferguson and Manchester United, the papers have gone to town talking about how the Scot is 'master of mind games', how the pressure is clearly getting to Benitez, and how this is all part of some grand scheme to break Liverpool psychologically. A quick persual of google news (one of my favourite pastimes) reveals that currently, 569 online newspapers are running stories containing "ferguson+mind-games."

The top result came from The Times, and strikes me as one of the most ridiculous and lazy things I have ever read. And to think that people actually read this stuff:

Sir Alex Ferguson: master of the mind games

Sir Alex Ferguson’s psychological warfare against his rivals has become a hallmark of his reign as Manchester United manager. Here The Times takes a look at some of the exploits from the master of the mind games down the years.

Before we even get started, whenever I hear a description of Ferguson as being 'master of mind games' I always picture him casting spells in a cave somewhere in the highlands, dressed in a wizard's robes and laughing demonically as he puts a hex on another title bid by Liverpool.

Question: aside from the Keegan incident in 1996, which was very much a case of a man under huge pressure cracking at the climactic moment of the season (with Fergie's comments serving as catalyst), can anyone think of just one other vaguely similar example? Sure, Ferguson has spoken out in the press about other managers, in the way that tends to happen in the Premiership. How is Ferguson having a go at someone construed as 'mind-games', whereas when Phil Brown or Steve Bruce does it, it's described as an 'astonishing rant' or the like? Anyway, back to the Times article.

May 1996: The sight of Kevin Keegan, then in charge of Newcastle United, finally succumbing to Ferguson’s mind games with his infamous, “I’d love it if we beat them — love it!” rant live on Sky Sports ranked No 17 in Channel 4’s list of the 100 Greatest British Sporting Moments.

I cannot disagree with this example. I do find it somewhat disconcerting that The Times are using Channel 4's list of 100 Greatest British Sporting Moments as a barometer for its importance. It finished at number 17?! Is that good for managerial rants or not?

April 1997: After Wenger had claimed that the fixture programme was extended so “Man United can rest and win everything”, Ferguson responded with the putdown: “He’s a novice and should keep his opinions to Japanese football,” referring to the Arsenal manager’s arrival from Grampus Eight, of the J-League, six months earlier. United went on to win the title by seven points.

This is a nicely acerbic putdown. It doesn't constitute mindgames in my book. Is there really a causal link between Fergie describing Wenger as a novice and United winning the league by seven points? Did it have anything to do with the fact that Wenger took charge of Arsenal in midseason and had a squad in transition, adding the likes of Vieira to Bergkamp, Wright, Seaman and Adams, but still weighed down by too many players like Ian Selley, Glenn Helder and Chris Kiwomya? Are we forgetting that Newcastle came second that year?

April 2003: Ferguson scoffed at Arsène Wenger’s suggestion at the start of the season that Arsenal could go through the campaign unbeaten. “I’m sure they’d love to turn the clock back — it might come back to haunt them,” the United manager said. Cue an Arsenal collapse during the final month of the season that handed the title to United.

Again, what is the causality here? Are we really supposed to believe that a manager as good as Wenger and players as good as Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira, Ljungberg, and Pires would bottle it based on one line? If that's the case, football management sounds like an easy business. Any idiot could have pointed out that suggesting your team might go throughout the season unbeaten is a lofty claim to say the very least. Fergie was just stating the obvious with a little added needle.

July 2006: Andriy Shevchenko had joined Chelsea from AC Milan a month earlier for £30.4 million, which prompted Ferguson to ask: “If you look at us signing Eric Cantona for £1 million and how much you’re seeing centre forwards like Shevchenko going for, you have to ask yourself: is Shevchenko 35 times better than Cantona?” The Ukraine striker subsequently flopped at Chelsea.

Are we really supposed to believe that Shevchenko flopped at Chelsea because Ferguson compared him to Cantona? Should we totally ignore the fact that he was a formerly great player, well past his prime, who had been foisted on an unwilling manager for a vastly inflated fee by his clueless oligarch owner so he'd have another Russian speaker on the staff? The latter is much closer to the truth. Ferguson was merely stating the obvious, and I'm reasonably confident that Mourinho would have done the same thing if he were in a position to.

July 2008: Ferguson sought to pile the pressure on Luiz Felipe Scolari shortly after the Brazilian took charge at Stamford Bridge by claiming that Chelsea’s present squad of players was getting old and that Scolari would struggle to exorcise the ghost of José Mourinho.
“I’m not concerned about Chelsea,” he said. “Mourinho won the title two years in a row and beat us in the FA Cup Final [in 2007], so there’s no one who can improve on Mourinho’s record really. I don’t know how far that team has got to go. Maybe [they've] plateaued in a way. How can they accelerate beyond what they’ve done.” [Sic]
Scolari has hardly set the world alight at Chelsea since and his team will lead United by only a point, having played two games more, if they lose at Old Trafford tomorrow.

This incident was the most recent. The quotes presented here are something of a misrepresentation. What Ferguson was saying was that he felt his squad, being younger, had more potential compared to that of Chelsea, as it had more players in their early 20s. Ferguson added : When you see the ages they've got, apart from Salomon Kalou [who is 22] and Mikel John Obi [21], they are an experienced side. I'm not saying necessarily that they're old because, with the modern-day training methods, you should be playing in your thirties. What I am saying is that I don't see outstanding progress in a team that's in their thirties.

Has Scolari had a slow start at Chelsea because of these comments? In terms of results, Chelsea are just as well placed right now as Man Utd in Europe and in the league. Neither team has been that impressive to date. Fergie's comments here were nothing more than a somewhat accurate assessment of one of his rivals. In the same piece he praised Arsenal and Liverpool...

I'm sick of hearing that Ferguson is a 'master of mind games'. He isn't. He got under Kevin Keegan's skin once, and we have not heard the end of it since. Is Ferguson snarky? Yes. Does he rant? Yes. Does he make disparaging comments about his rivals from time to time? Yes. Is this any different from what other managers do? Not really.

More fun with Google News

It's F.A Cup third round day, and that can mean only one thing: clichés! Lets do a quick perusal of Google News and see just how lazy the online and print newspapers are.

The term "F.A. Cup run" occurs 147 times in online editions.

"Magic of the Cup" occurs 20 times.

"Romance of the Cup" gives 63 hits.

"anything can happen" + "F.A. Cup" : 31 hits.

"Banana skin" : 114 hits.

"Potential banana skin" : 48 hits.

"Cup upset" : 73 hits.

"Sloping pitch" :7 hits.

"Great day out" + "F.A. Cup" : 7 hits.

"Cup scalp" : 8 hits.

"Greatest cup competition in the world": 3 hits.

My New Favourite Manager

Marcus Gayle is the manager of AFC Wimbledon reserves. He is utilising rather unusual motivational methods to connect with the modern footballer:

We were losing this cup tie 1-0 the other day, and all the players seemed to be thinking 'we're big players'. At half-time, I told them: 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and find 10 lines about you on Wikipedia – and pictures. So get the graft in, and then maybe you'll be on Google.

I love this idea. Find something the players can relate to and challenge them on it. The beauty of this method is that Gayle can continue to up the ante as his climbs the managerial ranks. For example:

- 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and find 20 lines about you on Wikipedia - and pictures. And a sex video.'

- 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and find 30 lines about you on Wikipedia - and Wikipedia vandalism.'

- 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and find out about how posted your desire to leave the club as a Facebook status update.'

- 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and find a story in Marca talking of your dream to play for Real Madrid.'

- 'You ain't nothing until I can Google you and read about your roasting exploits with the third choice goalkeeper, groundsman, and a glamour model.'