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.'