Post by Dave on Nov 14, 2008 21:54:39 GMT
What a treat it was last weekend, we had so many great match reports, so thanks to swangull, Jamie, nickgull and al and all the others who made great reports. Thanks to capitalgulls for his report on the game he went to. a very good read indeed.
Special thanks to crooky for sharing his great talent with us, magic pictures, fit for Tate's Gallery.
Sunday saw a great thread running Wining Anyway You Can
our winner, voted by you, made some really top posts on this thread. It has caused me a problem as our winner already has a custom title on the forum. So I think as he has won the Best Poster Of The Week Award, for one week only I will change his title.
The winner Is
Chris Hayes
Well done a treat to read your first class posts
Below two of Chris Hayes winning posts
Post 1
I like fast, attacking and open football being played by 22 players who are committed to playing the ball in an hard but fair way. I don't like negative football where "clever" players can't stay on their feet under the slightest buffeting from a defending player. I despaired at watching Deco during the World Cup in 2006. I wondered at the time how many of the 48 fouls he suffered actually involved physical contact or fouls being engineered in a sneaky way.
I remember watching Euro 2000 with a bunch of Italians and I can remember them complimenting players for what I would call blatant cheating and diving. "He was clever Chris" was the stock answer to me calling them a cheating bar steward.
Things have definitely changed in English football since I've been watching. I think that there's two main reasons why British players have had to become more clever over the last ten years or so. Firstly its the influence of the foreign players and secondly its the rule changes that have been enforced on referees because eventually Monsieur Magique Michel Platini wants tackles outlawed.
As for the influence of foreign players. I can remember Gary Lineker being interviewed on the BBC just after the Italia 90 quarter final V Cameroon in Naples. If you remember he'd won a couple of slightly iffy penalties during the game but he admitted that he'd learned during his time at Barcelona to leave his foot in to make sure he won the penalty (he picked up the FIFA fair play award after the tournament). It also interesting to note that at the same time Mark Hughes's slightly more robust and committed playing style never worked in Spain and they loaned him out to Bayern Munich before selling him back to Man United.
I think that there's a fine line in being clever and just being downright lazy to make up for a lack of commitment or ability or a lack of a decent first touch. I can't remember the last time I saw a genuine penalty won whereby a goalkeeper brings a forward down. The usual method seems to be booting the ball past the goalkeeper and making sure you collide with him in a moderately convincing way. To me this isn't being clever, its just a underhand way of rewarding those not being able to score one on one with the keeper.
The FIFA regulations have changed so much in the coming years. We have found ourselves praising a referee for letting games flow by letting possible yellow card incidents go. The net result being that its universally accepted as being a cracking match but then the FA suspends or demotes the referee in question because he or she isn't adhering to FIFA or FA guidelines. A couple incidents stick firmly in the mind to illustrate this point. Firstly was Leo Beenhakker's reaction to the penalty awarded against his Poland side during Euro 2008 by English ref Howard Webb. How mad have things become for a Dutch coach to criticise an English ref for giving a soft penalty? Technically it was the correct decision, but its disappointing how the slightest contact can now be determined as a foul.
The other incident was the Portugal V Holland match at the World Cup in 2006 when the ref applied the letter of the law and awarded 16 yellow and 4 red cards during the match. I don't think that the players covered themselves in glory but the ref set the tone that cards were gonna be issued pretty easily. For the rest of the game it was a story of players getting other players into trouble and the rest deciding that if they were going to get sent off it might as well be for something worthwhile.
The problem is that although its just as important to protect good attacking footballers from genuine foul play its also very necessary to make sure that by changing regulations and creating a culture of seemingly "untouchable" attacking players that we don't lose the art of good defending. The whole framework of football depends upon a very critical balance of attacking brilliance and defending expertise. I think that there was a need to stop thuggish defenders tackling from behind but now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Who'd be a defender in the modern game?
Post 2
I think your last paragraph sums it up very nicely. We have a completely unique situation in England where in addition to football being the major game (or more than a game), cricket, rugby union and rugby league are widely played and followed by traditional fan bases. All of these games have changed over the years in order to make them more attractive to new fans. With football its more to do with the infrastructure (new stadiums) and a more dynamic league structure to maximise its attractiveness to investment either by big business or to attract a load of new fans from a slightly higher socio economic group with a larger disposable income. The actual game format hasn't changed that much although when I first started watching it you could pass the ball back to the keeper and you only had one substitute, foreign players were mostly Dutch or Scandinavian and were few and far between. I always found it quaint that so many dutch players ended up at Ipswich. I had a theory that players like Arnold Muhren, Frans Thijssen and Romeo Zondervan only joined because they could always hop back on the ferry to Hoek Van Holland if they ran out of potatoes or chocolate sprinkles.
Rugby League have done something similar by modernising the league structure with moving the season to the summer and by copying the same structure as the Australian NRL. Rugby Union has become professional and gets more television exposure than it did before. Cricket has created several different formats in order to maximise its revenue from its wide fan base. I think its fair to say the the people who go to watch 20/20 matches aren't the same ones who sleep at Arundel during county championship matches.
The thing about football is that its the purest form of sport in the world. There are not many rules, there is no set way from getting from A to B and the game is supposed to flow. As you point out, its a very direct representation of national identity and the stereotypes that go with it. No other sport comes anywhere near this and this is football's unique selling point. The fact that it can get so embedded into everyday life can also be its Achilles heel. FIFA have gradually made small changes to the rules in order to make it more attractive to watch and cut out some of the negativity but I think that they've gone too far. Tune into a match of the day and see how much hysteria you hear during a game when an opposition player dares to tackle one of theirs. Whether its because of the rule changes or because that there are more new fans from a non traditional fan base is anybody's guess.
As I've said before on here I admire the German Bundesliga. The clubs are very well supported, the fans are from traditional fan bases and they are in turn treated very well by the clubs.I think that there's one or two isolated incidents over here where Premiership clubs have given something back to the fans. West Brom have made season ticket prices very low and I hear that Bolton Wanderers laid on all the coaches for away travel to Hull yesterday.
I guess these are isolated because over here its all about money and success. Whether or not its going to be sustainable in the long term is anyone's guess.
Special thanks to crooky for sharing his great talent with us, magic pictures, fit for Tate's Gallery.
Sunday saw a great thread running Wining Anyway You Can
our winner, voted by you, made some really top posts on this thread. It has caused me a problem as our winner already has a custom title on the forum. So I think as he has won the Best Poster Of The Week Award, for one week only I will change his title.
The winner Is
Chris Hayes
Well done a treat to read your first class posts
Below two of Chris Hayes winning posts
Post 1
I like fast, attacking and open football being played by 22 players who are committed to playing the ball in an hard but fair way. I don't like negative football where "clever" players can't stay on their feet under the slightest buffeting from a defending player. I despaired at watching Deco during the World Cup in 2006. I wondered at the time how many of the 48 fouls he suffered actually involved physical contact or fouls being engineered in a sneaky way.
I remember watching Euro 2000 with a bunch of Italians and I can remember them complimenting players for what I would call blatant cheating and diving. "He was clever Chris" was the stock answer to me calling them a cheating bar steward.
Things have definitely changed in English football since I've been watching. I think that there's two main reasons why British players have had to become more clever over the last ten years or so. Firstly its the influence of the foreign players and secondly its the rule changes that have been enforced on referees because eventually Monsieur Magique Michel Platini wants tackles outlawed.
As for the influence of foreign players. I can remember Gary Lineker being interviewed on the BBC just after the Italia 90 quarter final V Cameroon in Naples. If you remember he'd won a couple of slightly iffy penalties during the game but he admitted that he'd learned during his time at Barcelona to leave his foot in to make sure he won the penalty (he picked up the FIFA fair play award after the tournament). It also interesting to note that at the same time Mark Hughes's slightly more robust and committed playing style never worked in Spain and they loaned him out to Bayern Munich before selling him back to Man United.
I think that there's a fine line in being clever and just being downright lazy to make up for a lack of commitment or ability or a lack of a decent first touch. I can't remember the last time I saw a genuine penalty won whereby a goalkeeper brings a forward down. The usual method seems to be booting the ball past the goalkeeper and making sure you collide with him in a moderately convincing way. To me this isn't being clever, its just a underhand way of rewarding those not being able to score one on one with the keeper.
The FIFA regulations have changed so much in the coming years. We have found ourselves praising a referee for letting games flow by letting possible yellow card incidents go. The net result being that its universally accepted as being a cracking match but then the FA suspends or demotes the referee in question because he or she isn't adhering to FIFA or FA guidelines. A couple incidents stick firmly in the mind to illustrate this point. Firstly was Leo Beenhakker's reaction to the penalty awarded against his Poland side during Euro 2008 by English ref Howard Webb. How mad have things become for a Dutch coach to criticise an English ref for giving a soft penalty? Technically it was the correct decision, but its disappointing how the slightest contact can now be determined as a foul.
The other incident was the Portugal V Holland match at the World Cup in 2006 when the ref applied the letter of the law and awarded 16 yellow and 4 red cards during the match. I don't think that the players covered themselves in glory but the ref set the tone that cards were gonna be issued pretty easily. For the rest of the game it was a story of players getting other players into trouble and the rest deciding that if they were going to get sent off it might as well be for something worthwhile.
The problem is that although its just as important to protect good attacking footballers from genuine foul play its also very necessary to make sure that by changing regulations and creating a culture of seemingly "untouchable" attacking players that we don't lose the art of good defending. The whole framework of football depends upon a very critical balance of attacking brilliance and defending expertise. I think that there was a need to stop thuggish defenders tackling from behind but now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Who'd be a defender in the modern game?
Post 2
I think your last paragraph sums it up very nicely. We have a completely unique situation in England where in addition to football being the major game (or more than a game), cricket, rugby union and rugby league are widely played and followed by traditional fan bases. All of these games have changed over the years in order to make them more attractive to new fans. With football its more to do with the infrastructure (new stadiums) and a more dynamic league structure to maximise its attractiveness to investment either by big business or to attract a load of new fans from a slightly higher socio economic group with a larger disposable income. The actual game format hasn't changed that much although when I first started watching it you could pass the ball back to the keeper and you only had one substitute, foreign players were mostly Dutch or Scandinavian and were few and far between. I always found it quaint that so many dutch players ended up at Ipswich. I had a theory that players like Arnold Muhren, Frans Thijssen and Romeo Zondervan only joined because they could always hop back on the ferry to Hoek Van Holland if they ran out of potatoes or chocolate sprinkles.
Rugby League have done something similar by modernising the league structure with moving the season to the summer and by copying the same structure as the Australian NRL. Rugby Union has become professional and gets more television exposure than it did before. Cricket has created several different formats in order to maximise its revenue from its wide fan base. I think its fair to say the the people who go to watch 20/20 matches aren't the same ones who sleep at Arundel during county championship matches.
The thing about football is that its the purest form of sport in the world. There are not many rules, there is no set way from getting from A to B and the game is supposed to flow. As you point out, its a very direct representation of national identity and the stereotypes that go with it. No other sport comes anywhere near this and this is football's unique selling point. The fact that it can get so embedded into everyday life can also be its Achilles heel. FIFA have gradually made small changes to the rules in order to make it more attractive to watch and cut out some of the negativity but I think that they've gone too far. Tune into a match of the day and see how much hysteria you hear during a game when an opposition player dares to tackle one of theirs. Whether its because of the rule changes or because that there are more new fans from a non traditional fan base is anybody's guess.
As I've said before on here I admire the German Bundesliga. The clubs are very well supported, the fans are from traditional fan bases and they are in turn treated very well by the clubs.I think that there's one or two isolated incidents over here where Premiership clubs have given something back to the fans. West Brom have made season ticket prices very low and I hear that Bolton Wanderers laid on all the coaches for away travel to Hull yesterday.
I guess these are isolated because over here its all about money and success. Whether or not its going to be sustainable in the long term is anyone's guess.