cardboardshinguards

Meaning In Ritual: The Suarez and Evra Handshake Debacle

2012-02-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

The Suarez-Evra situation escalated to a point of no return due to a desperate need for symbolism, according to Lee Daly.

In their book on nationalism and symbolism, The Invention of Tradition, academics Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger state that:

“Traditions are…normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with.... a suitable historic past, where possible”

Traditions and rituals are an important part of politics, commerce and other aspects of everyday life. They give us meaning, continuity and certainty in how we should behave and act. And one of the most common rituals in an increasingly globalised world is the handshake. It is beating out the bow, crushing the curtsy and even killing off the kiss on the cheek. A handshake allows us to begin and end encounters in a cordial way. It is how we conclude job interviews, business meetings and even meet-ups with friends. It implies equality and respect.

So it’s no surprise the handshake has been key to the footballing authorities public relations offensive against the stories of foul play and discrimination which blight the very top of the game. There was outrage when Sepp Blatter suggested a handshake could settle an incident of racist abuse, but the Premier League’s insistence on the ritual going ahead in the United and Liverpool game shows just important the symbolism is to the image which they want to project.

And this is where the problems begin, as symbols and rituals can only imply a message which isn't true, in this case that players have a fundamental respect for one another, for so long. Whilst you can set the stage for a performance, you can’t force all the actors to play their part. The relationship between action (“I respect you”) and meaning (“I will shake your hand”) breaks down if the meaning isn't something which a person wishes to convey, as seemed to be the case from Suarez’s perspective.

As pointed out by John Barnes , a handshake without any meaning on the part of Suarez may well have been insincere and it was wrong for the FA and the media to put him in that position. But insincerity is not something picked up by TV cameras, whereas an image of supposed reconciliation is. Suarez and Evra shaking hands would have written many headlines and, just like is a ritual is supposed to, communicated a message, namely that the Premier League will continue it’s week on week carnival.

Suarez’s apology has now provided a basis upon which to build a narrative of reconciliation, or at least of moving on for Monday’s papers, although it is worth bearing in mind it is an apology over the refusal to shake hands, not for racial abusing Evra in the first place.

In contrast, other sports have rituals and norms which are observed at all levels such as clapping off another team in rugby or calling your own fouls in snooker. Football’s problem is it has allowed players to reach the elite level with few if any moral norms being inoculated. This would be fine in and of itself if that was the standard by which football wished to be judged, but given the almost universally furious reaction which greeted Liverpool’s actions in supporting Suarez and which intensified after Saturday’s events, it clearly isn't good enough for players, managers, fans and casual viewers of the game.

If the game does want to get rid of racism, homophobia, foul language, violent behavior or anything else which society deems to be unacceptable, it needs to understand that rituals and symbols which say everything is ok won’t do the job. They can even be the undoing of all their efforts when they go wrong.

Lee Daly is the Editor of Cardboardshinguards. You can follow him on twitter here.

Answering the Call: Niger at the African Cup of Nations

2012-01-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

With the 2012 African Cup of Nations just about to kick off, Niall Farrell reveals the desperate lengths the Nigerien authorities have gone to to get their team to the tournament.

David and Goliath are two characters often bandied about in football coverage in the English-language world. A small, plucky team faces a confident, rich one.

Sometimes there are upsets and the 'small' team wins, but generally the David v Goliath image isn't really warranted. After all, the 'small' club are still relatively well off. Generally, the players' families are fed, their homes paid for and they don't have to cope with the threat of war.

This Sunday, though, sees a true David v Goliath match. Niger, appearing for the first time in an African Cup of Nations, face tournament favourites Cote d'Ivoire. A Cote d'Ivoire side which features, amongst others, Didier Drogba, Gerviniho and the Toure brothers. To put the on-the-pitch clash into perspective, the annual salary of Yaya Toure alone ($13.5 million) is almost 18 thousand times the average wage in Niger ($755).

Niger is the second-lowest ranked country in the world on the United Nations human development index- which takes into account GDP along with social metrics like literacy rates and the enrolment ratio in primary schools. Drought and famine regularly dog Niger, and the current government is a military junta in place since a 2010 coup. The person who the coup overthrew- Tandja Mamadou- had blocked elections. Although the junta had promised to restore democracy, there are no plans as of yet for elections in Niger.

In order to send the national team to the Cup of Nations, the government had to subject Nigerien citizens to an extra tax on mobile phone networks. Every outgoing phone call from January to the end of the competition has a €0.15 levy on it, in order to foot the €3 million bill facing the Nigerien government for sending the national team to the tournament. €3 million is a lot of money in a country which has stumbled from one food crisis to the next over the past ten years. Still, there was considerable dissent in Niger about the tax: “the financial responsibilities,” one fan told South African network SuperSport, “should not be on the shoulders of the locals who themselves are suffering more from the food crisis... I can’t believe that this government doesn’t have the means [to send Niger to the Cup of Nations].”

Their opponents this Sunday, Cote d'Ivoire, are themselves not a particularly rich country. The average annual wage is only about $300 more than in Niger, and Cote d'Ivoire is in the bottom quarter of the UN HDI ranking. But its not the poverty in Cote d'Ivoire that counts, in footballing terms. Ivorian players, like those already mentioned, play in big European leagues for big clubs. In contrast, a substantial amount of Niger's squad (seven) are domestically-based. Those who do play abroad play for clubs like FC Phuket of Thailand, Limhalmn Bunkeflo of the Swedish third tier and Platinum Stars of South Africa.

One thing that may work in Niger's favour at the Cup of Nations is confidence. The manner of their qualification for the finals was nothing short of sensational-qualifying from a group ahead of holders Egypt and the heavily fancied South Africa and Sierra Leone. The top scorer in qualification, Moussa Maazou, scored the winner against Egypt and again against South Africa. Maazou, contracted to CSKA Moscow, is the closest thing to a star player in the Nigerien team. Since 2009, CSKA have loaned him out to clubs across Europe including Monaco and Bordeaux. Currently playing with Belgian side Zulte Waregem, Maazou has yet to play this season but will shoulder much of the expectations for his national team.

They may not go far in the African Cup of Nations, but Niger will simply aim to show the world that there is something beyond poverty in the West African nation.

Niall Farrell is an Irish Football journalist and a student in the MA in Development programme in DCU. You can find his website at niallf.net. He also has a Facebook page.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions; the bizarre life choices of well paid sportspeople.

2012-01-16T05:49:00.000-08:00

Lee Daly examines why highly paid sportspeople make bizarre and reckless life choices.

When NFL quarterback Brett Favre was accused of sending naked pictures of himself to a female co-worker, he stood before his Minnesota Vikings teammates and tearfully apologised for “being a distraction”. Ryan Longwell, a teammate of Favre’s at the Viking’s as well as former team Green Bay, described the emotional outpouring as similar to that which Favre had just before he led his team to victory the day after his father had died…….

Its incidents like this, as well as the almost weekly arrests for unsavoury behaviour that emphasis the gap between the lives of most people in society and those of elite athletes. At various points their actions seem breathtakingly stupid (Wayne Rooney signing an autograph to a prostitute he slept with), cruel (Michael Vick’s dog fights) or reckless (Joey Barton’s litany of offences before his eventual jailing).

But consider what consequences would flow from these actions for the majority of us; unemployment perhaps, losing our friends, maybe even being shunned by family members. The demands of keeping a roof over our heads and just generally getting on with our lives usually keeps us on the straight and narrow.

But there are two things which differentiate sports people from ordinary people.

Rare talent
Firstly they are really rare. Like super rare. Think about your job (if you don’t have a job think about the job you’d like to have). Now think about how many other people can do your job. Now think about how much you get paid. There should be some relationship there between how many people can do your job and how much you are paid; if a lot of people can do it, you get paid less and vice versa. Now think of how many people can do Michael Vick’s job or Wayne Rooney’s job or Joey Barton’s job (you can exclude misanthropic tweets from the latter’s job description).

Given there are probably less than a million people around the world earning their full time living from sports (that’s a guesstimate), which is less than 0.01% of the world’s population, there is no surprise they are paid ridiculously large amounts. Not only that but so long as they retain their abilities through whatever they do, including time in prison, they can keep on earning those amounts.

When Saturday/Sunday Comes
But sportspeople aren’t just shielded from the financial consequences of crimes or poor life choices; they can escape the mental ones too. Longwell said of Favre that the emotion state he experienced was similar to that which he had when his father died. Interesting there was no recognition of the wildly different nature of the two incidents; your father dying compared to being caught sending pictures of your meat and two veg to somebody.

Why? Because along with the publicity over whether Favre was even going to play that year, they were all distractions from the business of winning on the field and to be dealt with by dedicating his efforts to preparing for and playing the game.

The sheer mechanics of playing high level sport require 100% mental concentration, leaving no room to reflect or brood on mistakes made elsewhere. For instance we often hear about how Rooney wants to play every game he can, even when under intense media scrutiny. It was probably not a coincidence that his needless lashing out at Miodrag Dzudovic during October’s Euro 2012 qualifier against Montenegro came after his father had been arrested as part of an investigation into a betting scandal.

An empty house, a jail cell or even just a quiet stroll in the park would give most of us the space to think about our failings but who needs that when you can have 80,000 people adore you and have the unwavering “support” of your teammates? Serious jail time which actually interferes with a career and earnings seems to have an effect, see Messrs Vick and Barton, but apart from that, is it little surprise we find it hard to identify with the decisions of elite athletes?

Lee Daly is the editor of Cardboardshinguards. You can find him on twitter here.

Counting the Cost: The Economic Legacy of the 2012 Olympics

2012-01-11T16:14:00.000-08:00

As London gears up for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics, Greg Bowler is skeptical about the long term economic benefits from the games.

Sport is a young man's game, and at a metaphorical level, so is the hosting of sports tournaments. Developed countries rarely derive much benefit from hosting a World Cup or Olympics. Consider the fact that London already boasts lots of large stadia. Is there any real reason to say that it needs an 80,000 seater athletics facility? With the exception of the Olympics (which we can assume London won't host again for many years, and indeed if they do so again it may require a new built facility), there is no athletics event that draws remotely that amount.

As the scale of the Big Two sports events has grown, so too has the cost of hosting them. Beijing 2008 cost anything up to forty billion dollars. While London won't clock in anywhere near this amount (it will probably top out around ten billion), the figures mask the fact that Beijing gained a lot of much-needed infrastructure from that figure. Facilities such as Beijing Capital Airport's Terminal 3 were necessary before the Olympics anyway, to deal with exploding air travel. In a similar vein, the massive investments in road and rail for Beijing were working up from a very low base, and will pay dividends in the future. London's infrastructure (with the exception of a new terminal in Heathrow, which probably won't be completed on time anyway) hasn't been built specifically for the Games. Almost all of London's money will go on the event or the stadia.

More ominously, the Olympics may actually harm grassroots sport in Britain, which is in a poor enough state as it is. In order to defuse concerns about the rising costs, the previous government suggested that money may be diverted to the Olympics from the general sports budget. That money was earmarked for other projects, all of which will now suffer so as to built what is essentially a one use complex. With austerity the order of the day, and the Games money ringfenced, it leaves other sporting investments even more vulnerable to trimming.

Across the world, the spiralling costs of hosting a sports tournament are becoming a problem, particularly as the growing number of attendees require facilities to be designed for far more spectators than they will ever see again. For the 2010 World Cup, South Africa constructed stadia with copious amounts of temporary seating, which made for easy downsizing when the events are over. Only a handful of countries have the existing infrastructure to host a World Cup, and those who build for it are increasingly finding they have a lot of white elephants on their hands afterwards. Qatar's promise to dismantle their facilities and ship them to the Third World after 2022 may be extremely difficult to put into practice (and may indeed have been a bribe for poor countries to vote for them) but it was at least an innovative attempt to deal with the legacy of a sports tournament.

Very few countries have managed to capitalise on the legacy of an Olympics. Athletics simply isn't a big enough draw, and the things that are (football, NFL, rugby, etc) generally find playing on a pitch with a running track around it to be a bit of a nuisance, and the backroom facilities aren't easily interchangeable. Hence Tottenham Hotspur's plan, to level the Olympic Stadium and rebuild it as a football stadium after the Games, and make a token investment in athletics elsewhere.

Should one find themselves in Seoul or Munich, a tour of the Olympic villages is a worthy endeavour. Except that there are no organised tours. The main stadia lie semi-derelict and are technically not open to the public (though easy enough to access). One would think that Munich, given both its notoriety and the fact that Germans rarely waste anything, might merit at least a museum, but this is sadly not the case.

As of my last visit there, the stadium was a construction site, former tenants Bayen Munich having abandoned it for the newer Allianz stadium on the other side of the city. Seoul, despite being barely two decades old, is little better than a shell. The state of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the only stadium to have hosted the Games twice, is often cited as the primary reason LA lacks an NFL team, despite being the second-biggest market in the USA. During the summer, the city government decided to build a new stadium at Farmer's Field, with the intention of luring an NFL team there. The Coliseum will be relegated to the occasional concert.

What, then, of the less tangible benefits? Surely the influx of tourists, sponsors and the increased profile of the host city count for something. The problem with this argument is that it works better for developing countries. Prior to the Olympics, Beijing was probably not top of anyone's list for travel destinations, and the Games undoubtedly gave it a much better profile in the tourist industry. The problem is that London already draws more tourists than any other city on the planet. Alongside New York, it is the world's leading financial centre, and with New York and Tokyo would be considered the three Tier One cities on the planet. Already home to five Premiership clubs and two of the world's most famous cricket grounds, London doesn't exactly need to increase its global profile in sport. Nor is it going to attract a lot of additional tourists, beyond the direct fillip of the Games.

Conversely, had England actually managed to get the 2018 World Cup, it could have been done on a relative shoestring. All the stadia, bar one in Bristol, would have been in place, and only minor expansion work would have been necessary to a few venues. As a compact enough country with excellent infrastructure, the whole operation would probably have been cheaper than the Olympics.

Compare this with Russia, which will have to invest vast amounts on stadia, to say nothing of the improvements needed for crumbling Soviet infrastructure, or Brazil, which nearly has to start from the beginning. The difference is that the facilities built for the World Cups in 2014 and 2018 and the 2016 would have been necessary anyway, as both the economies and football leagues in Brazil and Russia continue to expand.

The sad reality is that London's Olympic bid was essentially a costly product of vanity and hubris. In 2005, the growth that the property bubble brought was assumed to be a fact of life, and there was money for all manner of nonsensical products. The problem is that, like the growth, the money was an illusion, and now the British government is committed to a very expensive project for which they have no plans of using as a long term asset.

Oddly enough, one country that is both a cautionary tale and a good example of what to do right is Greece. Few things encapsulated the hubris of the Greeks in the past two decades more than bidding to host the 2004 Games. The cost was beyond what the country could afford, though the advent of cheap euro interest rates and cooking the books masked this.

Now, the Greek government, on the verge of default, is still legally obliged to shell out half a billion euro a year on maintaining the facilities. The spectacularly luxurious airport built for the Games operates on less than half capacity, and the municipal light rail service has become a black hole into which money disappears. As vanity projects go, the Olympics can be rather costly, and future hosts should take note.

Greg Bowler is a regular contributor to Cardboardshinguards.

Game (Gab)on: The African Cup of Nations and China's Growing Influence

2012-01-09T03:48:00.000-08:00

Niall Farrell on how Gabon's co-hosting of the African Cup of Nations will highlight the increasing importance of Chinese economic support to the continent.

In just over a month's time, Africa's two finest teams will step out onto the pitch at the Stade d'Angondjé in Libreville, the capital of Gabon. It will be the crowning moment of the 2012 African Cup of Nations- two African teams playing for African football's greatest prize. The new 40,000-seater purpose built Stade d'Angondjé is also symbol of something else entirely African at the moment- Chinese investment.

The stadium, which will also host a number of group stage and knockout matches, was built by the Shanghai Construction Group at the behest of Beijing. In 2010 Gabon's autocratic president Ali Bongo received Chinese officials including Vice Minister Fu Ziying- who put down the foundation stone.

CAF- the African governing body- had threatened to take the competition away from Gabon because of a delay in the construction process. So Gabon invited the Chinese in and they duly completed the stadium in 20 months, instead of the planned 26.

And as if that wasn't enough, China paid for the entire stadium project and also announced a €2 million 'aid' package to fund Gabonese health and educational facilities. This 'aid' is, of course, free money, as opposed to the conditional loans often given by Western donors to African states.

The investment in the Stade d'Angondjé (or, to give it its official title in French, “Stade d'amitié sino-gabonaise”) is just one of a number of stadiums China has agreed to build in Africa- a 50,000 seater stadium (a €38 million project) in the Guinean capital Conakry is another example.

Football stadiums are among the most visible manifestations of Chinese investment in Africa, but Chinese forays into the continent go far beyond the pitch. African roads, schools, hospitals and colleges are all being funded by China.

But why? The most popular answer lies in China's attempts to displace the USA as the world's dominant superpower. The kind of 'soft power' friendship that Chinese money buys in Africa is an invaluable public relations device for the booming nation. Where America's reputation is on the slide due to financial turmoil and the ongoing war on terror, China has astutely built up its reputation as a benevolent and stable force.

It's quite easy to view their investment as part of China's plan for world domination. But is it fair? Africans seem quite happy with all this investment- a recent Afrobarometer survey (see the full paper here) shows that most Africans view Chinese investment as very positive and see China as one of the countries which help them the most.

The Sierra Leonean ambassador to Beijing summed up the feelings toward Africa well when he said “The Chinese are doing more than the G8 in making poverty history. If a G8 country had wanted to rebuild the stadium, we’d still be here holding meetings. The Chinese just come and do it.”

Niall Farrell is an Irish Football journalist and a student in the MA in Development programme in DCU. You can find his website at niallf.net. He also has a Facebook page.

Errors and Exploitation: A Tactical Analysis of Why the Republic of Ireland Won 4-0

2011-11-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

Sean Butler analyses the Republic of Ireland's 4-0 win over Estonia.

Ireland don't win 4-0. Especially away from home. Especially against supposedly decent opposition. Especially in the Trap era. Ireland lack the creative talent, sophisticated tactics and attacking attitude necessary to unlock decent defences with the required regularity to make being on the better side of a trashing anything more than a bizarre rarity. So, why did it happen on Friday, in a game that ought to have been much closer? Dismissing it as a fluke result or simply "Estonia blew up" (as was my initial reaction) doesn't tell the whole story: while the result was mostly due to some poor tactical decisions and horrible defensive play from the Estonians, how Ireland exploited (and induced) these failings is quite interesting.

Estonia began in a 4-2-3-1 consisting of Pareiko; Jaager, Stepanov, Piiroja, Klavan; Dmitrijev, Vunk; Kruglov, Vassiljev, Kink; Ahjupera. Ireland, predictably, were 4-4-2: Given; Kelly, Dunne, St Ledger, Ward; Duff, Andrews, Whelan, McGeady; Keane, Walters. The only point of interest in the ROI team was the selection of target-man Jon Walters over the smaller and faster Simon Cox, which, given they were away from home and reliant on a midfield pairing suffering from a dearth of creativity, was probably the superior stylistic choice: Cox would probably have needed Keith Fahey in the middle of the park to be properly effective (a good scouting of Estonia's pair of 32-year-old centre-backs might have suggested the need to concentrate on speed, however). From a theoretical perspective, 4-2-3-1 ought to beat 4-4-2, given that it creates a 3 v 2 situation in the centre of the park, thus creating a better platform for attack than the other side, whose spare man sits in the centre of defence. This 3 v 2 asymmetry is what, for example, allowed Russia (playing a 4-3-3) to completely dominate both games played in the group against Ireland.

As a result, it was very suprising to see Estonia happy to join Ireland in playing long balls in the early phase of the game. By minimising the impact of the midfield on the match, this played right into Ireland's hands, especially since their target man Walters was fulfilling his role far better than his Estonian counterpart (Ahjupera). The long ball to Walters was Ireland's only outlet early on, since they lacked the talent to pass through the middle, and the flanks were ineffective for different reasons. Estonia had marked Aidan McGeady out for special attention, with Dmitrijev assisting Jaager in closing him down early, a situation not helped by Stephen Ward's reluctance to assist his left winger in the attacking phases (more on that later). On the right, Damien Duff, long past the ability to beat people, focused on cutting inside and helping out his midfield pairing with their numbers problem when the issue arose, and with Stephen Kelly playing a defensive game at right-back, little was happening down that flank. Estonia's brief early forays into utilising ground passing in the centre of the park centred around Vassiljev in the trequartista role, drifting across the park, and gaining the first shot on target at around the ten-minute mark.

Ireland, though, struck first, through what was always the most likely route. A long ball to Walters found its way out to McGeady on the left. While he is to be commended for the quality of his cross, especially under pressure, and Keith Andrews' header was very good, the fact that he was allowed an effectively uncontested header despite no fewer than eight outfield Estonians being in the box speaks volumes about the awfulness of their defending. 1-0 Ireland.

The goal created two predictable responses: 1) Ireland sat back and defended, and 2) Estonia woke up. Realising that passing through the middle was the key to their success, the Estonians gained the upper hand quickly, and produced two half-chances on the left in quick succession. The failings of Kelly both times were covered by Kruglov's inability to do anything with the opportunities, but the threat was evident. A few moments later, Kink exposed Ward's naivete on the other flank, and Ireland's weak points had been realised. Estonia, though, chose to focus their attacks through the centre and were consequently restricted to long-range efforts (Vassiljev coming closest from about 25 yards). An interesting constrast to note at this point was the sheer space afforded the Estonian attackers in the area between the box and the centre circle, compared to how congested that area was when Ireland attacked. This was due to Estonia's four-band approach leaving two holding midfielders in front of their back four when defending while a breach of Ireland's midfield left only their deep-lying backline to defeat. But Ahjupera remained ineffective, and Estonia had no way through the middle.

The game settled into a pattern of Estonia controlling possession and Ireland relying on long balls to Walters feeding the flanks and the occasional fast counter-attack. The Estonian defence had no pace, and Stepanov in particular seemed to have no idea how to deal with runners, drawing a yellow for a foul on McGeady. It's difficult to understand why the Estonian centre-back pairing was as poor as they were: Stepanov did little but foul when called upon, and Piiroja fluffed a number of crosses, gifting Walters a shot at one point. This is baffling when one notices how experienced they are (Piiroja has 107 caps, Stepanov 88), so basic defensive duties ought not to be beyond them. Regardless, the two stood out as major liabilities, one that could not be exposed as much as would be liked by Ireland due to the lack of a defence-splitting passer in the midfield.

Thankfully from an Irish perspective, Estonia went out of their way to accommodate for this shortcoming. On 35 minutes, Dmitrijev's horrendous pass left Stepanov little option but to clatter Robbie Keane to prevent a clear goal-scoring chance, and he was dismissed for a second bookable offence. Given how much of a liability he was, it's not that surprising that this ended up improving Estonia as a team, at least initially. In what was the most interesting tactical move of the game, Klavan slotted across into centre-back, and Kruglov was pulled back to left-back. No other re-shuffling was done, so for the remainder of the first half, Estonia played a lopsided 4-2-2-1 with no left-wing presence. To make this work, Estonia made a few modifications: 1) in a move reminiscent of how Chelsea played against QPR with nine men recently, Estonia attempted to compress the play, but laterally (attempting to remove their left flank from play as much as possible) instead of medially; 2) good movement from Vassiljev and Vunk covered the spatial deficiency well when needed; and 3) Kruglov seemed comfortable covering the entire flank himself (albeit deeper than before). Given how little the Irish were utilising this flank in an attacking sense, it seemed a smart move, and solidified Estonia defensively (Klavan played much better at centre-back than his predecessor). A number of problems resulted from this change, though: 1) given the extra movement it required, it wasn't clear how sustainable this strategy would be as the game progressed and legs tired; and 2) it was no longer clear how Estonia were going to score, other than maybe from a set-piece. Kruglov's dropping back meant that Ireland's weakest player (Kelly) was no longer exposed, and by compressing the play, Estonia removed all the free space from which they had been profiting. Ireland seemed uninterested in adjusting to expose Estonia's new frailties (McGeady could have switched flanks, for instance), and were happy to reach the break 1-0 up.

The Republic's re-adjustment after the break created a cascade reaction that ultimately swung the game decisively in their favour. Nothing nuanced was required, merely that Ireland stretched the play laterally, utilising both flanks. Duff looked dangerous (for a few minutes), and the full-backs were pushing up more than ever. This move forced Estonia's hand: Vassiljev moved from trequartista to left-winger, and as a result, Estonia's tiered midfield flattened, going into more of a 4-4-1 shape. Estonian manager Tarmo Ruutli attempted to compensate by replacing Ahjupera with Voskoboinikov, but the damage at the other end of the park was irreparable. Ireland were now enjoying the space in the final third that Estonia had in the first half, and Ireland's advanced full-backs were reaping rewards. This was especially evident on the left, where McGeady utilised movement by Ward to consistently create space for himself, and so became a major influence in the game, supplying some decent crosses. Estonia were not a spent force quite yet, though, and had their best chances of the game through winning a free-kick on the edge of the area, and from the resulting corner where Voskoboinikov shot wide.

It was here that Ruutli made a gamble whose failure obliterated Estonia's chances. Replacing holding midfielder Vunk with attacking midfielder Lindpere, Ruutli pulled Vassiljev deeper into a deep lying role in an attempt to spark life into his attack. This not only failed in an attacking sense, as Vassiljev was much poorer at this role than the more advanced one, but it also created massive defensive fissures. Estonia's defensive solidity was contingent on having two holding midfielders, specifically because it allowed one to help the right-back double-team McGeady without creating a vulnerability elsewhere. Vassiljev was not as reliable defensively as Vunk, however, and so McGeady could now enjoy more space, as Dmitrijev became less willing to drift across to held Jaager. Ireland exploited both the failings of this new midfield partnership and their new-found space 30 yards from goal to contribute to a second goal: Walters, Keane and McGeady linked to spread the ball from right flank to left, McGeady's shot was parried, and from the rebound, Keane found the head of Walters at the far post. 2-0 Ireland.

Ruutli re-shuffled again, replacing Kink with Purje, who played as second striker in a 4-2-1-2 (Lindpere now in the trequartista role). It was Estonia's defensive frailties where he ought to have concentrated his efforts, though, and a third goal was not long in coming. Andrews galloped through the central space to be fouled by Piiroja, doing his best Stepanov impersonation. While the free was clear, Piiroja's booking was quite soft. Estonian keeper Pareiko misjudged the curl of Andrews' free-kick, and could only knock the ball into the path of Keane. 3-0 Ireland.

The Irish players seemed content with three, but it was not to be. Piiroja was sent off for a second bookable handball, a decision farcical in its ludicrousness. The defence was re-constituted with Jaager at centre-back and Purje at right-back, resulting in a 4-2-1-1 shape. Estonia's defence now consisted of two full-backs playing as centre-backs, and a winger and a striker/winger playing as full-backs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with both of Estonia's woeful first-choice centre-backs off the pitch, the defence seemed at its most comfortable in this configuration. Trap made three surprisingly attack-minded changes to continue forcing the issue: Hunt on for Duff, Fahey for Whelan, and Cox for Walters. As discussed earlier, Fahey/Cox needed to be changed in tandem for maximum effectiveness, and while Hunt's replacement of Duff was injury-related, he did bring extra energy to the Irish attack. The game petered out as both sides seemed happy to play out the clock, but not before the makeshift nature of the Estonian backline contributed to another goal: Purje made a clumsy challenge on Hunt in the box, and Keane slotted the resulting penalty home. 4-0 Ireland.

What lessons are to be learned from this game? The discipline and solidity Trap has instilled in the Irish team may induce comas frequently and screams of agony when better teams pass around them, but it has proven very effective at tearing mediocre teams apart (see the Republic of Ireland's 5-0 win over Northern Ireland and 3-0 over Wales in the Carling Nations Cup), simply by allowing them to blunder their way to self-destruction. Ireland made only one tactical change all night (spreading the play wider at the start of the second half), but it proved effective at provoking a raft of counter-measures from Ruutli, each making Estonia more vulnerable than the last. It might seem easy to declare Ireland's role in this self-destruction a secondary effect at best, but the point remains that these results are happening with greater frequency than before and, more importantly, Ireland retained the style and desire to continue pushing to expose these errors. This 'new' Ireland is very refreshing when it works.

Sean Butler is a Liverpool and Athlone Town fan, who once shared cans at a house party with Philip Auclair and Jonathan Wilson.

Pitchside Stories: the Use and Abuse of Nationalism and Rhetoric in TV Football Analysis

2011-11-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

Lee Daly on how pundits analyse games during TV coverage.

The unique atmosphere, lets call it “relaxed and informal, within the RTE studio panels has probably been a mixed blessing for Graham Souness. On the one hand the lack of editorial constraint which Brady, Dunphy, Giles and their guests enjoy may have helped the notoriously clean shaven Glaswegian to practice actually having an opinion, meaning he easily stand outs in Sky TV’s Champions League coverage. On the other hand it also lead to his inexcusable use of the term “raped” when describing Fernando Torres’ performance against Nemanja Vidic in the 2010 World Cup.

His pronouncement on Uruguay v Ghana was just as boneheaded but it passed with little comment (and no damn youtube clip), probably because it was in line with much of what passes for analysis on international football. As part of the RTE panel for the Brazil v Netherlands quarter final he was asked how he felt the game between Uruguay and Ghana would pan out. He hesitated, clearly looking for a coherent thought before resorting to “Uruguay have a sufficient footballing culture to beat Ghana” or words to that effect.

Similarly in the build up to the first leg of the Republic of Ireland’s playoff with Estonia on Friday, across the coverage of three separate radio stations, pundits and analysts expressed fear at being considered favorites given Ireland “always perform best as underdogs”. Of course as Matt Holland pointed out on Today FM, Ireland won the only playoff for which they were considered the favorites, against Iran on the road to the 2002 World Cup.

Why is it that people who should be well informed about football resort to these ideas?

The primary reason cited is in many cases they actually don’t know that much about football, or at least about the unfamiliar teams and players they are talking about. The attitude of the football blogosphere, myself included, can occasionally be a bit patronising when it comes to former pros and their lack of knowledge. Alan Shearer’s statement that “we don’t know that much about (French international) Hartem Ben Arfa” is probably the case in point.

At the same time, there is some standard of knowledge which it is reasonable to expect to hear but this willful ignorance on the part of analysts doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Sweeping generalizations and broad stereotypes are used to tell stories, which is one of the roles of TV analysis. Of course stories of tactical or personal battles between teams, managers and players are common enough in many print publications and online, but TV prefers wider stories to appeal to a broad audience and set the action in context.

These tropes persist over time as they must reference not only football but wider historical and cultural stereotypes. People interested in football will probably watch the matches anyway, so there is a need to bring in more casual fans, particularly for international friendlies. People don’t tend to watch TV coverage of matches to experience a dissonance between their expectations and reality so the lowest common dominator is strived for. Hence the Germans will always be organised and disciplined, even if the current team also plays with verve and imagination. England by contrast must be brave, committed and passionate, and where they fail it is due to an absence of those qualities.

This isn’t uniquely confined to international matches of course and the interaction between the knowledge of analysts and the stories they tell is perhaps clearest in Sky Sports coverage of the Premier League. Andy Gray’s comment about Messi not being able to do it against Stoke on wet Tuesday and having a poor record against English teams was part of the story he was telling along with Richard Keyes of a strong and competitive league.

Looking back at the clip now Gray is actually cleverer about his denigration of La Liga then he gets credit for. He frame his comments with the phrase “I don’t know…” before proceeding “….if Barcelona have ever gone to a place like the Britannia stadium and suffered the kind of onslaught Tony Pulis’ players would put them under from long throws and free kicks..”.

Just like “Some people say…” or “I heard…” the use of “I don’t know..” allowed Gray to make a specific point whilst using general language. Knowledge and facts were incidental or even inconvenient to the main goal of promoting the core Sky Sports product during this exchange, and as Sid Lowe pointed out in an episode of Football Weekly, Barcelona frequently face inclement weather conditions and physical teams in Spain. To Gray's credit he is also pretty upfront about what he felt his role was;

"What I need to show the world is that the Premier League is the best league in the world, with the best players in the world and the best teams in the world. That's my job – to promote our league the best way I can".

Television coverage will probably continue to remain this simplistic, shallow or even outright xenophobic at times due to commercial realities and the aesthetics of television. If there is one thing to be said in favour of coverage of international games, there is at the very least not much of a pretense towards neutrality. Whether this necessitates such an embarrassingly narrow approach is another matter.

Lee Daly is the editor of Cardboardshinguards.

Wherever I lay my hat: the location of the Dublin football clubs.

2011-11-05T05:14:00.000-07:00

Location was paramount to the dreams of most of the big four Dublin clubs during the Celtic Tiger. Only Shamrock Rovers really pulled it off, argues Lee Daly.

For years it was all you would hear about. Growing up as a teenager/young adult during the Celtic Tiger years I couldn’t escape it, even as I discussed Ryanair flights and binge drinking with my peers.

The grown ups could talk about little else; location, location, location. How long was your commute? How large was your house? How much space did the kids have to play in? How much did you spend on renovating the place?

The national obsession with property was to prove our economic and (some argue, moral) downfall with the ghost estates and empty DIY stores now standing as monuments to this obsession. Within the League of Ireland there is another legacy, one which threatens institutions with a far greater longevity than the local Woodies.

Going into the end of the season with a Premier Division club on the brink of collapse is a depressingly regular occurrence. If the precarious financial situation of Bohemians leads to relegation to the first division through a removal of their license or even a windup and reformation, they will join the ranks of clubs to have been both champions in the 21st century and then been wound up or relegated at some point after winning. It is a fate only Shamrock Rovers have managed to avoid.

Things could have been very different of course. If Shels, Drogheda and Bohs had had their planned stadium relocations come off, they might have been in a position to challenge Shamrock Rovers financially. The booming hinterlands of North and West County Dublin, where Shels and Bohs respectively were looking to relocate to, would have provided an opportunity to tap into a growing fan base, as Shamrock Rovers are now doing.

A look at a map of latest census figures tells the tale perfectly well, with the population continuing to decline in the inner city, where the big four Dublin clubs were founded and traditionally drew their fan base from. I have excluded UCD and St Patrick’s Athletic from the map just because both clubs haven’t had any consistent relocation plans over the past decade, or at least not ones pursued as vigorously as those by Rovers, Shels and Bohs.

The new locations (marked in by the red and black striped dots. Rovers’ location in Tallaght is the green and white dot) would have given Bohs and Shels access to the growing hinterlands of North and West Dublin. Furthermore modern stadia and a family atmosphere have been the bedrock of rugby and GAA’s success and Dalymount and Tolka are unable to provide this without serious redevelopment.

It is perhaps fitting that Rovers are now the ones reaping the benefits of a fit for purpose home surrounded by a supportive community, given their nomadic struggles for so long. For Shelbourne and Bohemians, both clubs whose leveraging of the boomtime value of their homes came back to haunt them, similar spells in the wilderness may yet be in the pipeline.

Lee Daly is editor of Cardboardshinguards. For the purpose of transparency, you should also know he is a Shelbourne FC fan.

Minnows that know no limits: international football the break-up of Yugoslavia.

2011-10-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly argues the rise of Montenegro is unsurprising given the success of it's neighbors from the former Yugoslavia.

It is not difficult to find interesting stories from Friday’s 2-2 draw between Montenegro and England. The result ensured the latter’s qualification for next year’s European Championships, going some way to erase the horrors of the night four years ago when Croatia turned up at the new Wembley to deliver a football lesson almost as devastating as that delivered by Puskas’ Hungrary on the old ground in 1953.

Questions over Wayne Rooney’s temperament seem almost as old as Ferenc himself by this stage and were raised after an innocuous lose of possession led to a needless and vicious kick which in turn led to his dismissal. Rooney’s willingness to play is never in doubt but the wisdom of Capello letting him certainly was here. As the old cliché goes the cauldron of Podgorica is not one for the faint at heart or those without cool heads due to their father’s arrest on suspicion of involvement in a massive betting scandal. Or something like that anyway.

Yes, it would be easy to focus on how England continue to be stuck in perceived purgatory between being potential world beaters and tragic under achievers (fun too) but that would do a disservice to their opponents. With Wales doing Montenegro a favour against Switzerland, the Brave Falcons are now seemingly assured of a playoff place, less than two years after they finished fifth in their World Cup qualifying group and four and a half years after they played their first game, a 2-1 victory over Hungary in a friendly.

They are likely to be joined in the playoff stages by other former Yugoslav countries Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Serbia also joining them if they prevail against Slovenia. Of the former constituent republics of Yugoslavia, only Macedonia could be said to be truly in the doldrums of international football. At the same time, Skojpe retains a reputation as being a difficult place to travel to thanks to credible results for the home side against the Republic of Ireland (twice) and the Netherlands.

The achievements of the rest of the teams are respectable by any standards; since 1998 Croatia (pop: 4.2 million) have qualified for all but two major tournaments, Serbia (pop: 7 million) have reached a European championship quarter final whilst Slovenia (pop: 2 million) have qualified for two World Cups. Bosnia-Herzegovina (pop: 3.8 million) are defying off pitch divisions and are now in a position to reach their second consecutive qualification play off.

There is little question these teams are all punching above their weight on the international stage, Montenegro (pop: 600,000 odd) especially so, but why? In their book “Why England Lose” (also known as Soccernomics) Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski argue persuasively that international success is a function of a country’s income, population and experience.

This is a beguiling explanation for the Balkans, given Croatia and Serbia’s comparatively large populations and Slovenia’s high income level (the highest in the region at $28,000 per capita) compensating for its smaller population. By contrast Bosnia-Herezegovina and Macedonia have lower income levels ($8,000 and $9,000 per capita respectively) due to a failure to recover from the effects of the 1990’s, when Bosnia was ravaged by civil war and Macedonia was fraught with instability arising from the conflict in neighboring Kosovo.

Kuper and Szymanski also argue that coaching knowledge matters and it is in this respect that the real story of Balkan football’s performance. It took almost twenty years for the political landscape of the region to take the shape it now has, and with the final status of Kosovo yet to be resolved, it is a process which may not be over yet. With each political division has come a fragmentation in the considerable ability and expertise within the region’s players and coaches, each time establishing a competitive side in the international agenda.

It is difficult to think of a country the size of Montenegro which possesses two forwards of the quality of Stefan Jovetic and Mirko Vucinic. That is no accident and as pointed out by Jonathan Wilson, they are following in the footsteps of Montenegrin players who tasted success at the highest level. As Jovetic himself put it in a recent article by Wilson “"Montenegrins are talented at football and at sport in general. However, the most important thing was that I, as well as Mirko (Vucinic), had good training conditions, high-class trainers, and of course the will for success. Without these things our talent wouldn't be enough for Serie A."

At the same time Montenegro’s rapid rise from joint 199th in the world to 26th in four years takes place in the current context of international football outlined here by Miguel Delaney. Apart from a very select number of teams such as Spain and Germany at the top and the genuine minnows such as San Marino or Lichtenstein at the bottom, international football is now far more competitive and unpredictable, due to the difficulty managers have in establishing effective attacking patterns against well organized defenses, which are easier to set up in the correct way. Republic of Ireland fans might tear their hair out at Giovanni Trapattoni’s negative tactics but he is not alone in prioritizing frustrating the opposition over creativity.

Even still there is no questioning that Montenegro reaching the European Championships would be an incredible achievement. They are clearly a team in a hurry and it is perhaps fitting that this will be their most challenging Euros campaign, with the tournament set to expand from 16 to 24 teams in 2016. Extra games in the calendar for the top sides may not be what clubs want but as European political realities have emerged into football, there is a need for the competition to reflect the competitiveness and diversity of the continent.
Lee Daly is the editor of cardboardshinguards.

Putting Ireland's Call on Hold: Pre-match anthems and the Irish Rugby team

2011-10-05T03:45:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly on the politics of singing your heart out before the rugby match.

(When I started this blog I didn’t intend for it to be a mouthpiece for my views on sectarianism and Irish sports, but given the most interesting posts come from things the writer is familiar with it has come to pass that most of my blog posts have ended up being on those topics. Having said that, it might be an idea to give it a rest for a while after this one).

Before the Irish rugby team departed for New Zealand, a motion came before Dublin City Council that called on the IRFU to play Amhran na Bhfiann, the anthem of the Republic of Ireland, during the tournament. For those unaware at present, the anthem is only played at home games alongside Ireland’s Call, with the latter being played as the only song before away matches.

The motion was brought by independent councillor Nial Ring who said “"I don't see why the IRFU are still refusing to play it at away grounds. It gives the impression that Ireland's Call is our national anthem”. Interestingly it was Ring’s grand uncle who translated Amhran na Bhfiann into Irish for the Dáil record, as the song was originally written in English.

As I mentioned in a previous post about northern-born players declaring for the Republic of Ireland in soccer, rugby is organized on an all-island basis and draws its players and supporters from north and south. Ireland’s Call was commissioned by the IRFU in 1995 for use at games.

Of course the operative phrase in Ring’s statement is “our”. Who is he talking about? The primary flash points when discussing nations and nationalism lie in the terms used. The word “Ireland” is the primary example, given it can refer to the whole of the island itself as a geographic entity, the whole island as a political entity or the state which is also known as the Republic of Ireland (amongst other things).

When it comes to the rugby team, there should be a little less ambiguity as to what Ireland refers to, given its players are drawn from all communities on the island. To play Amhrann na Bhfiann at away games would be a significant poke in the eye to the supporters and players from the unionist community. For one thing it would be a reassertion of the idea that “Ireland” is one unit politically as well as geographically.

The simple logic applied by Ring is that Ireland are playing therefore Ireland’s national anthem should be played. Whilst the team is called Ireland, it contains players who (and I am only assuming here) do not hold Irish passports or take any other step to define themselves as Irish. The team therefore represents people from the island of Ireland, regardless of how they self define, unlike the soccer teams, where players need to hold an Irish passport before they can line out for the Republic of Ireland.

Of course there is a pretty obvious problem with objecting just to the idea of Amhran na Bhfiann being played at away games, given it is played at home games on the basis that the match is taking place within the Republic of Ireland. The IRFU ran into trouble before a 2007 Rugby World Cup warm up game in Belfast by stating God Save the Queen could not be played as the team were playing outside of the Republic and the game was thus an “away” game.

This lead to calls by unionist politicians to end the playing of Amhrann na Bfhiann altogether, with Ulster Unionist peer Lord Laird stating “This equality problem must be solved and the sooner the better. Politics has no place in sport and to use it as a weapon of domination is simply outrageous”. By comparison Ring’s recent comments have not made too much of a splash but so long as the status quo prevails it seems politicians on both sides will continue to raise it as an issue. Indeed reverting to simply playing Ireland’s call home and away would probably raise nationalist hackles to a similar degree as playing Amhrann na Bfhiann away from home would for unionists.

On the plus side, the fundamentals of participation and enjoyment of the game are strong, with fans and players able to move north and south with little problem, certainly compared to soccer and GAA, where sectarian incidents are more common. It is the juxtaposition of the reality of rugby in Ireland with the rhetoric of public representatives that is the greatest cause of concern.

Lee Daly is editor of cardboardshinguards

The Issue: Protesting in the Premier League

2011-09-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

In a new weekly series, Lee Daly examines political issues within sports. This week, he talks about the politics of protesting in the Premier League and beyond.

As Jonathan Wilson said on our podcast a few weeks ago, football, given it is a mass entertainment form, will always reflect ongoing political concerns. As Russia once had the power struggle between the different arms and regions of the Soviet state replicated in football, it now has its regional sides such as Anzhi Makhachkala and Terik Grozny pitched against the nationalism of the fan bases of Zenit St Petersburg and the like.

In the wake of the financial crisis, one of the main political concerns is the interaction between people and institutions, the latter of which everyone seems to agree are important yet also seem to have failed to uphold citizens interests.

In football this mistrust is mirrored in the tensions between fans on the one side and the ownership and governance structures of football clubs on the other. A financial arms race between clubs means fans are feeling the pinch of higher ticket prices and stricter policies within stadia. Even the poster boy club of the left, Hamburg’s FC St Pauli, is finding that it must raise prices and give over space to corporate hospitality packages.

But what can citizens do in response to these developments? The politics of protesting and boycotting are tricky in any situation, as questions of efficacy and morality need to be faced when deciding on a course of action.

Simply taking to the streets is a classic response but unless there is discipline and an even handed response from the authorities, there is a risk of violence. Media coverage of these events can also be at worst biased and at best uninspiring.

As a result protesters in the “Arab Spring” and “los indignados” movements have had to get imaginative about their methods as well as realistic about their goals. Expression of frustration at the political system seemed to be the primary aim of the latter and events such as the silent protest in Madrid’s Puerta de Sol achieved that aim in a unique and captivating way.

It was not difficult to see parallels with the “indignados” during last week’s Stockholm derby between AIK and Djurgårdens, where fans from both teams simply stayed silent for the first ten minutes, making their voices heard by well…… not using their voices.

This is not a new idea but it was admirable how the silence was maintained by both sets of supporters. Hooliganism is a major problem in Sweden with attendances declining as a result. Harsh criticism of fans from the Swedish Football Federation (SvFF) for the violence led to the protest and a banner was unfurled saying “This is what it sounds like with no fans”. At the ten minute mark, the fans exploded into life and at half time set off flares, which eventually led to a delay as visibility deteriorated.

Swedish football is arguably now at a similar crossroads to that faced in English football in the late 1980s and early 1990s, where the violence and deaths of Heysel, Bradford and Hillsbourgh cast a long shadow on the game. That shame was parlayed by the media and footballing authorities into overwhelming political support for the Premier League project, which has lead to astronomical rises in ticket prices, bankrupted many clubs and delivered an often sterile experience for fans.

It is only now that the tide is turning somewhat in England, with the House of Common’s report on football governance recognizing there is something deeply wrong with how football is governed. The relative success of supporters’ trust run clubs such as Exeter, FC United and Wimbledon AFC has underlined the possibility of fan involvement being important to the game. Organisations like Supporters Direct have also contributed hugely to the debate but it seems very often that a club needs to come to the brink of crisis before fans are willing to take action.

Direct action to counter developments in Premier League clubs like rising ticket prices is less common. Protests are often utilized in a manner which ignores wider governance issues and instead complains about the lack of investment in players or the performance of managers.

Avenues to voice discontent are few and far between due to the fact that owners have control over the commodity of football, which is what a fan wants to have at the end of the day. It seems fans' appetite for football, or at the very least for the elite level leagues, is insatiable and means they will tolerate whatever treatment is meted out to them.

There is a difficult balance to achieve between a fan experience which is inclusive for all yet allows for passions to be expressed. England is not alone in getting it wrong as away support in Spain’s La Liga is non-existent and Serie A continues to suffer from poor attendances and egomaniacal owners. By contrast the Bundasliga’s high attendances and vibrant stadia are often credited to their passionate and involved fans.

If competing on the field is the issue which is exercising the passions of fans then they are of course entitled to voice their opinions. After all the fundamental ingredient of successful mass protest and political organization is the existence of people willing to sacrifice time and energy to achieve aims which everyone is committed to.

Until fans of clubs at the highest level demand more than just Champions League football or preservation of their Premier League status, the debt-driven circus that is English professional football will likely continue.

Lee Daly is editor of cardboardshinguards.

Weekly Columnists Wanted on Economics/Finance and Cultural issues

2011-09-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

So after a few months of the site being up, the response has been great. I've gotten lots of emails from people complimenting the content as well as a respectable number of hits. I am extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed thus far and the diversity of our contributors has been a great strength of the blog and podcast.

However there has been two main weaknesses that I want to address; the first being how irregular the posts are, the second being the scattered nature of the themes the blog and podcast has addressed.

To that end I would like to hear from you if you would be interested in writing a weekly post on one of the following areas:

1. The economics and finances of sports.

2. Cultural issues within the media, fans and teams

I will also be writing a weekly column on politics and identity issues. The podcast will continue to be produced on a weekly basis.

If you are interested please email me at cardboardshinguards@gmail.com.

CBSG Podcast #10: Oo Ahh Paul McGrath; Singing Sports Stars

2011-09-18T09:55:00.001-07:00

This week we go to some of the darkest corners of the internet to retrieve sonic artifacts that should never see the light of day.

John Moriarty (author of the Sparky Taxee blog and narrator of the audio adaption of same) joins Lee Daly in a quest to dissect the horrors of John Barnes' rapping, Paul McGrath's singing and whatever it is that Gazza does in Fog on the Tyne. You can find videos for the songs they discuss after the jump, as well as the podcast itself.

Right click and select "save as...." to download Or subscribe in itunes.

Podcast Powered By Podbean

Song 1: Goin' Back by Paul McGrath

Song 2 (theme):"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle Records.

Song 3: Fog on the Tyne by Lindisfarne and Paul Gascoigne.

Song 4: Diamond Lights by Glenn and Chris.

Song 5: Anfield Rap by Craig Johnston, Derek B and Liverpool FC.

Song 6: Pass and Move by Liverpool FC and the Boot Room Boyz

Song 7: World in Motion by New Order

Song 8: Snooker Loopy by Chas n Dave

Song 9: Sunday Morning Coming Down by Johnny Cash from the Johnny Cash Show Album.

Song 10: Search:Party: Animal by And So I Watch You From Afar from the Gangs album on Richter Collective.

Realising Potential: Interview with Dublin Senior Hurling manager Anthony Daly

2011-09-17T01:03:00.000-07:00

John Moriarty speaks to Dublin Senior Hurling Manager, Anthony Daly, about the project of making underage stars players at the top table

Revolution is the only just war. But that doesn’t make it beautiful or simple.

An eye-catching feature of the Dublin hurlers’ rollicking Summer tour through the championship

were the “Ché Dalo” t-shirts, in which the Clare-man’s intense stare is topped by the familiar starred black beret from the Jim Fitzpatrick sketch, against a deep blue background. You had the sense all this year, from the floodlit double-headers at HQ in the spring to the packed trains to Tullamore and Thurles, that Dublin had arrived. But Daly will pull you down to earth fairly fast with that kind of talk.

“Listen it’s just a National League we’ve won. Liam McCarthy is always going to be everyone’s

bottom line.”

Strategic General seems to be where he’s going with this, pragmatism over ideology. A man with his sense of humour will have gotten a chuckle out of the shirt, and probably a signed one off his devout panel of players, but he’ll quickly acknowledge that he’s only one component in a story much bigger than figureheads.

“I’d have been aware from being a Sunday Game analyst that this was a young team that had a

lot of talent, that they’d won things at underage, but were capable already of making the step up

to senior. I covered a game they drew in Wexford Park in ’08 and was very impressed at how they competed for young lads. Then when the county board called me to talk about the manager job they showed me the system they had in place so I was fairly well informed when I took the job.”

So where does this underage story begin? The key dates are all odd: 5, 7, 9, 11. The Dublin minors of 2005 become the first to win a Leinster title at that grade since 1983. This cohort then merges with the beaten finalists of the 2004 Minor for the Under-21 grade, gaining, among others, an ace free- taker in Alan McCrabbe. After two Leinster final defeats at the U21 grade, the team ascends to that title in 2007, bridging an even longer gap back to 1972. By this point, the class of ’07 has repeated the feat in the Minors. In a quickfire Q&A for the programme of the U21 final, Alan McCrabbe states his main ambition- “To win a Senior Hurling All-Ireland”. The team takes the field that day in Croke Park (for a hiding by a goal-mad Galway) will immediately form the core of the senior team around old hands O’Callaghan and Lambert to make up the inexperienced team that lets Wexford away with a draw after leading by 10 in the game Daly refers to.

“Winning at underage guarantees nothing, it’s about the quality of the characters you can bring

on to senior level.” Daly can ream off a list of names from the ’05-’07 generation, Tomás Brady,

Johnny McCafferey, Joey Boland, Shane Durkin, McCrabbe, all of whom would be there or there

abouts in any team you’d try and name for Dublin. But the next generation figure just as highly in his reckoning. “It’s funny, the Under 21s lost a Leinster final in ’09, but guys from that team like Liam Rushe, Peter Kelly, Paul Schutte, Oisín Gough, David Treacy, all were able to cut it at the next level.”

It’s a painful comparison to have to make but he brings it up himself. “Clare won the U21s the same year, but some of those lads have found the senior grade a lot tougher, so it’s not automatic.”

It’s interesting he goes for that comparison, when the one that’s more often made is with the

Galway U21 team that blew them away in ’07, which, aside from the great Joe Canning, has largely dissipated at senior panel level. “See, there you have a longer tradition of success.”

And there it is, the key point. That ’07 U21 team were the perfect storm: Pioneers in bringing

silverware and the knowhow for winning tight games; a senior set-up crying out to have them;

arriving at the dawn of an era of intense, professional-style, sports science-informed training

regimes which would mark the Kilkenny 4-in-a-row (and their eventual disposal); and being

shadowed all the way up by a second group keen not to be left behind.

In their wake, yet another cyclone has been stirred up. It took this year’s Minors 6 goals and 19

points to get past Waterford and to do what their now senior counterparts had failed to do, make

it into the programme for the first Sunday of September. An hour later they were up in the stands, as the same now fully-formed and battle-hardened seniors whose own minor feats they’d just surpassed, were putting it up to the senior All-Ireland Champions in every position and making the possibility of raising the stakes one higher again just about believable. The same thought may have occurred to the foals in the stand, there’ll be no easy-won places on the team-sheet of Daly or any of his successors.

Add to that another U21 final. A wholly different affair from the previous, bar the same opponent and similar treatment on the scoreline. Whereas the colts of ’07 were on a triple-bill in Croke Park, sandwiched between junior and senior Camogie finals, 2011 was the ultimate pilgrimage after the Summer just gone, a late throw-in in Thurles. A disappointing finale, but given the downer of narrowly missing out on Mecca, a senior final against Kilkenny, could the injection of another few colts into the stable, a bit more competition for places, be what lifts things again? Daly is cautious.

“You’re after an extra 7, maybe 8 per cent, even if it doesn’t sound like much. To start with we’ve the three cruciates (of Stephen Hiney, Tomás Brady and Conal Keaney) to try and get right, plus a hamstring problem with David Treacy and the bone Oisín Gough broke in his hand, so there’s an extra few per cent to be got there for a start. And yeah, if there’s younger lads ready to step up, we can try bringing them in in twos and threes.”

Gentlemen, form your queue in twos and threes for the revolution will not be televised.

Like Pulp Fiction, you have to go back to the middle to properly understand the story. Driving to

Tullamore on the longest Saturday of the year. Three Galway All-Ireland winners are on the radio putting it up to the team of today. They say they themselves never had the talent these lads have but whatever they had, they gave, and that’s what the hurling people of Galway expect. They’ve written this in a spread in the Indo and they admit they hope management have it pinned up to the wall of the dressing room as a motivator.

The team end up scoring 2-6, one of the goals fired into the Dublin net as Brady lies holding the cruciate that will end his Summer. They give Paul Ryan 11 frees to stick over, he does, and Dublin find 8 more from play and win well. Galway look scared from the first wide by the great Joe Canning. Dublin just see maroon and go like hell for the day, hunt in packs, support each other’s runs, flick hand-passes like guys who used play on the street with one another, dip and shoulder like guys who’d fight to the death for each other. At times there are 7 or 8 guys around the ball, no breaks ceded. One Galway purist stands up in the stand and flails and says “’tis shaggin’ under-12’s we’re watching”. He doesn’t realise it but he’s half right. Short of blood

relations, you can’t beat having a shared memory of your youth, especially if it’s you in an arm with another guy, two county jerseys and a cup in between you.

But in another way, the three lads in the Indo were kind of right too. At some point you have to grow up, you’re not pucking about on your break before the bell rings, you’re a man and a senior hurler at that. Dublin are a team now, they have who they have and most of them have the greater part of their 20’s still to live out. They’ve had big wins together and big losses, but each loss one year gets recouped the next. Wexford, Galway, Limerick.

“You’re always going to take a few steps back and all we can do is look hard at it and see what we

could have done or could do differently.” In ’09, Daly’s first trip to Nolan Park, they scored 3-10 and pegged them the whole way before a late 1-2 sealed it for Kilkenny. And National Leagues may be national leagues, but surely taking Kilkenny by 12 in a final in Croker wins back at least one of the bad days. So what now, how to stay breaking even?

If rugby is about ball retention, GAA is about player retention. Players are lost to work, burnout,

women, emigration and, most clubmen would quietly tell you, drink. Those that choose none of the above choose a life less ordinary as elite sports players in an amateur game obsessed with all-or-nothing knock-out play. Long season after long season, wrestling the fear of a short Summer. And because there isn't cash on the line, it's jerseys and medals you're after. That Dublin Football, the county’s traditional medal winner, hasn't hoovered up more dual talents than Diarmuid Connolly and Rory O'Carroll, and that names like Shane Ryan and Conal Keaney have moved in the other direction, shows the belief in senior hurling success is not put-on. For now it’s friendly enough, but we may not be far from a Prost-Senna era for Dublin football and hurling, where the battle rages as hard within as without.

But beyond the names Daly can recite from underage finals, there are other almost subliminal

tones. Reading aloud the teams from the senior match with Galway in Tullamore in June and the

match with Galway in the U21 final in Thurles, you start to hear rhymes. Another McCaffery, another Gough, another Connolly, another O'Carroll. There are dinner tables, as well as clubs, where Dublin hurling tops the agenda. And that's where revolution starts.

But I need to be brought back to earth, don’t I. So I try asking Dalo if other counties might go

emulating Dublin’s Underage-Senior retention.

“Listen it’s just a National League we’ve won. Liam McCarthy is always going to be everyone’s

bottom line. Galway have won plenty National Leagues, but they wouldn’t be deeming that a reward for the work going in at underage, so you’ve to compare like with like aswell you know.”

Sorry if you wanted a great ending for the young protagonists and their wise master. War doesn’t do gushing endings, catharsis. Slow lurching movements. The conclusion is there is none. The last chapter can’t be written. If nobody remembers leagues and there’s no medal for losing narrowly in a semi, what are you left with? An auld curvy stick. The hope of another odd year. Well that’s it anyway, told you it wasn’t beautiful.

John is a regular contributor to the cardboardshinguards blog and podcast.

CBSG Podcast #9: Trapped in the Closet

2011-09-09T11:34:00.000-07:00

This week Lee is joined by Niall Farrell (Irish football journalist), Stuart Gilhooly (Lawyer for the PFAI), Juliet Jacques (freelance writer and activist) and Patrick Stokes (director of LGBT Diversity) to discuss the dearth of openly gay players in professional football and the homophobia often seen within the game.

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Theme:"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle Records.

Song 1: "Take Me Somewhere Nice" by Mogwai from the "Rock Action" album on Matador Records.

This could get Real ugly part 2: Reflections on the Barca and Real Madrid Rivalry

2011-08-31T03:58:00.000-07:00

The second part of Lee Daly's musings on the Barcelona-Real Madrid Rivalry

So due to various life events, my promise of a second part to last week's article on El Classico didn't happen. My apologies for that but here it is now in all it's glory.

Part one spoke in quite general terms about the rivalry and the norms and beliefs which inform it, particularly on the Barcelona side of the equation. To recap, it is not unusual for a broad sense of discrimination by the central Spanish government and media to be brought across by Catalans in discussions on politics or economics.

The players and management of Barcelona, who have a very high profile amongst people in the city, frequently express similar sentiments. For instance Xavi Hernandez speaking ahead of the two club’s meeting in the Champions League in 2004 said "Celtic, like Barcelona, are more than a football club. Our clubs are a symbol of a culture and community that has not always been made welcome in their respective countries."

This feeling of hostility towards an establishment conspiring against a club is not exclusive to Barcelona of course, with Mourininho ramping up the rhetoric during his time in charge of Madrid. “It’s disgusting to live in this world” was just one quote from the press conference after the first leg of last year’s champions league final, where he also said Pep Guardiola had yet to win his first “clean” Champions League trophy.

Mouriniho’s mind games are a consistent feature of his management style and despite managing such egos as Zlatan Ibarhimovic, John Terry and Cristiano Ronaldo, he has always managed to be the highest profile personality at any of the clubs he has been at. What sets his time at Madrid apart is the reaction from the Madrid press. Turning up at his first Inter press conference speaking fluent Italian and providing his usual good copy may have got the press at Inter on his side but their support surely never extended to the lengths the Madrid press have gone to.

Some of the highlights include Marca pasting Mouriniho into a Goya painting depicting a solitary man facing a firing squad with the headline “Everyone against Mou” and AS, another Madrid orientated paper, airbrushing a horror tackle by Pepe to make the incident look less serious.

El Mundo Deportivo, a paper more inclined to support Barca, hasn’t held back either, publishing a sneering article about how the votes of Swaziland representatives ensured Mouriniho won the coaching Balon D’or for 2010, a particular nonsense given he had just completed the treble with Inter Milan.

This division within the sports media mirrors the broader phenomenon of “las dos Españas” (literally “the two Spains”) of the right and left (the latter including, somewhat uncomfortably, Catalan nationalism) which runs through the media and politics within Spain.

Just as the media has heightened political tensions, the structure of the two clubs has mitigated against moderation. Both are not limited companies but rather associations of socios (members), who elect a club president to take care of the running of the club. The president is an important figure particularly for Barcelona, and it is not unusual to see Sandro Rosell or his predecessor Joan Laporta interviewed in Catalan about Barca’s half time performance on TV.

The president is inherently a political position complete with televised debates during elections and promises of lavish spending on players; a pledge by Joan Laporta to bring home Cesc Farbregas probably helped his election, a task only achieved by his former number two and now bitter rival Sandro Rosell. Perez’s pledge to bring Cristiano Ronaldo to the Berneabua may have given him a leg up too. Perez and Laporta have also run for electoral office with modest success, although Laporta currently serves as a deputy in the Catalan parliament.

With an electorate to satisfy, the president may often engage in posturing to shore up his support base. The most recent example involved an incident in the media, surprise suprise, with Rosell moved to write a formal letter of complaint to TVE, the Spanish national broadcaster, for omitting Jose Mouriniho’s gouge of Tito Villanova from its highlights of the Super Copa melee.

Things in Madrid are somewhat more complex with Perez seemingly under pressure to curb Mouriniho’s worse excesses, on the basis they are not in keeping with Madrid’s gentlemanly aesthetic. Mou’s behaviour in the Super Copa comes after a summer which saw the sacking of Jorge Valdano, Madrid’s Director General and critic of the outspoken Portuguese manager. As pointed out by Sid Lowe, this is part of a necessary process within Madrid, where power has been out of the hands of various managers for a long time. At the same time, it is not difficult to imagine Perez regretting giving he manager so much leeway.

I quoted Pep Guardiola at the start of part 1 saying that “We must be careful, because one day we will cause harm, not on the field but off, and we're all a little responsible for this”. This was a curious choice of words given players and management had just engaged in acts of violence which could well have led to serious harm (blindness for instance) on the pitch. If one of the major players in the Barca-Madrid circus is predicting doom, it is difficult to see where this might end.

Lee is the editor of cardboardshinguards. You can follow him on twitter @xrockridgex

CBSG Podcast #8: From Russia With Lucre w/ guest Jonathan Wilson

2011-08-29T07:08:00.001-07:00

This week on the podcast we are joined by Jonathan Wilson to discuss the changing power dynamics within Russian football, in the wake of Samuel Eto'o's big money move to Anzhi Makhachkala (apologies in advance for my butchering the pronounciation).

Jonathan is a football journalist who has authored several books, including Inverting the Pyramid and Behind The Curtain, all of which are as indepth and comprehensive as they are readable. You can check out the books he has written here.

He is also editor of the Blizzard, a quarterly collection of some of the best writing on football . If you aren't already a subscriber to that publication then you should get on it before their introductory offer ends.

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Theme: "Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle Records.
Song 1: "From Russia with Love" by the Skatilities from the "From Paris With Love" album on Wrasse records.

This could get Real ugly part 1: Reflections on the Barca and Real Madrid Rivalry

2011-08-21T12:40:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly riffs on the factors which make Barca v Madrid games so intense.

Unless you have been living in a rather well soundproofed cave lacking in even the most basic of satellite TV packages, the chances are you will have heard of last weekend’s melee towards the end of the Spanish Super Copa match between Real Madrid and Barcelona. The incident is covered in detail elsewhere but there was a particular remark which struck this writer during the post-match interviews. Pep Guardiola was quoted by the Press Association as saying "We must be careful, because one day we will cause harm, not on the field but off, and we're all a little responsible for this.".

A stark warning from one of the main protagonists that things could escalate even further than the bad tempers and at times outright violence of last Sunday should be cause enough for concern and for the Spanish football authorities to take serious action. There are several factors which mean this is unlikely at best and even strong action may do more to exacerbate the situation. This article will take a look at some of the broader political issues whilst I hope to go into some more detail about the influence of the media and the club's structures in another post on Wednesday.

The first thing to establish of course is that the light and heat generated by the current encounters between the clubs is not solely down to broader questions of nationalism or politics per se but is a function of the two managers ability to marshal all of the forces at their disposal, some of which involve the aforementioned politics. Both are extremely adept at playing “the game” off the field, ensuring their respective club, fans and media are behind them 100%, which conversely means they are against the other side 100% as well.

Pep Guardiola has arguably provided this control to Barca from the day he was appointed, partly due to who he is; the ball boy who rose to be captain and eventually manager of Barca, the physical embodiment of the club’s slogan “Més que un club” (more than a club). Mouriniho also came into the job at Real with credit, being one of the few managers who had learned how to “stop” this current golden generation of Barcelona’s and deprive them of the Champions League.

The Real v Barca rivalry is often seen as an expression of the tension which exists between Catalan and Spanish nationalism. Given I have never lived in the city I cannot speak to how accurate this is in relation to Madrid but having lived for a time in Barcelona, it is not difficult to notice what attitudes are like towards Madrid and the rest of Spain.

As with any national identity, there are radical believers, moderates and many other strands of belief but a predominant theme of discussion is how Catalonia is unfairly treated despite the contribution it makes economically to the rest of Spain, in effect subsidising more impoverished regions such as Andulucia. There is also a sense that any victories are hard fought and come despite an unfair system. Barca is seen as the torchbearer for the region and attitudes to the Spanish national team range from ambivalence to hostility.

In contrast to the general public’s attitudes, there seems to have been few problems within the national team but recent comments from senior players have worried some, such as Sid Lowe, that there will be serious fallout and divisions from the current bad feeling between the teams. Speaking about the Super Copa conflagration and the allegations of diving levelled at Barcelona, Gerard Pique was quoted as saying“There is talk about the Catalans, but the problem is with Madrid”, a quote you could easily find in the mouth of a Catalan politician about an issue of finance or policing.

There are several tropes those in the Madrid camp rely upon too as demonstrated by the sacking of Fabio Capello in 2007, where his dour brand of football was good enough to win the title but not stylish enough to please the ringleaders of the Madrid circus. As James Horncastle points out, club president Florentino Perez is currently under pressure over Mouriniho’s antics and how they jar with the club’s gentlemanly image.

It is this perfect storm of two firebrand managers, high stakes competitive football played by the best players in the world and a public discourse where there is little room for moderation which is driving the rivalry to new heights. As I tweeted last weekend maybe this is what we really want, as it isn’t just Jamie Redknapp who struggles to find superlatives to describe Messi. It’s far easier for the media and the blogsphere to report on the morality tale of Jose’s antics than to find new ways of describing this current Barca team or Madrid’s attempts to keep up with them.

Lee is the editor of cardboardshinguards. You can follow him on twitter @xrockridgex

CBSG Podcast #7 Hughes and Shinawatra: Caught in a Rad Bromance.

2011-08-19T09:05:00.000-07:00

It's here. Slightly later than usual, this week's podcast is a compilation of the Sparky Taxee letters.

For the uninitiated, friend of the blog John Moriarty found a folder of letters in the Thai Airways departure lounge at Heathrow Airport*. Upon closer inspection John found they were correspondence between Mark Hughes ("Sparky") and Thaksin Shinawatra ("Taxee") from the first half of the 2009/2010 season, when Shinawatra had been bought out as owner of City by Sheik Mansour.

Hughes remained on as manager and endured a tumultuous few months in charge until he was sacked and replaced with Roberto Mancini. The letters reveal that Hughes confided in Shinawatra during this time and was under immense emtional stress. For that reason we have decided to release them into the public domain.

The full archive of letters can be read at sparkytaxee.blogspot.com

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Music:
Song 1: "What Can I Do" by the Corrs from the Talk on Corners album on Atlantic Records.
Song 2: "Everybody's Talkin" by Harry Nilsson from the Aerial Ballet album on RCA records.
Song 3: "Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benatar from her Live From Earth album on Chrysalis Records.
Song 4: "Steady as She Goes" by Shellac from the Excellent Italian Greyhound album on Touch and Go Records.
Song 5: "Just Like Honey" by Jesus and Mary Chain from the Psychocandy album on Blanco y Negro.

*Not actually true.

Great team or Greatest team? England's Cricketers

2011-08-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

In the wake of another dominant England series win, Phil Goose asks how greatness might be defined and how this team measures up.

England have beaten India. Again. Under the guidance of Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower as captain and coach , England are the no. 1 Test side in the world for the first time since the ranking system began. But do they deserve to be considered the best Test side in the world today? Are they one of the best sides ever, or are they even the best English side ever?

There have been a few criticisms of this England side. One of them voiced by an Indian fan on test match special, and backed by Sourav Ganguly is to be considered the number one side you need to win in England and Australia. Obviously what this means is to be the best you need to beat the best sides in their back yard. For India this is obviously England and Australia, for England this is perhaps a choice between South Africa, India and Australia on current form. This takes into account the ability to play in different climactic conditions, swinging English pitches and turning Indian pitches as well as against unfriendly crowds. However England have already passed this test. Since Strauss and Flower took over, England have not lost a Test series. They have drawn a series in South Africa, won against Bangladesh in subcontinental conditions, and thrashed Australia in Australia. Over the same period of time no other side has had this level of overseas success.

This overseas success comes down to preparation and team spirit. This team travels well. If anyone watched Graeme Swann's video diaries and the enthusiastic performances of 'the sprinkler' dance, it is clear that the team enjoys each other’s company and copes with 'tour boredom' very easily. The team is full of individual characters and collective character. They are dedicated to top levels of physical fitness, the organisation of the board makes sure they have adequate warm up games of a high standard so they acclimatise to conditions and are sharp before they start the series. As we have seen with India, no.1 sides are not able to use the first test to acclimatise.

When comparing this side to previous great English sides, particularly the side of the 50's we come up against this criticism from former England captain Raymond Illingworth: playing just four bowlers, England have been very lucky. In this series we have seen what can happen when one of your main bowlers suffers a serious injury in a four man attack, when Zaheer Kahn did his hamstring just 13 overs into his series. England have only suffered this way in recent times when Broad suffered a side strain in the Ashes series, but this was right at the end of the Test. Does this mean England have been lucky? Surprisingly, no. If they have been lucky they have been lucky in the same way that every other international side has been. No major Test team plays five front line bowlers, so it is unfair to castigate England for not doing so. I believe they could though, especially with the strength of a lower order containing Prior, Broad, Bresnan and Swann. However the naturally cautious Strauss is unlikely to do so. It must be noted that while the Australians dominated world cricket throughout the 2000's they stuck to a four man attack led by Warne and McGrath, and no-one put their brilliance down to 'luck'.

There is a fair amount of this “luck” which comes down to brilliant organisation. Zaheer had hardly bowled in a competitive game in months before this series and was given one warm up game to prepare for this series. It was hardly surprising when he suffered an injury. England, learning mistakes from the 5-0 Ashes defeat in 2007 have learnt proper preparation is necessary as previously stated. Therefore their bowlers arrive better prepared for the conditions and in better shape, and are less likely to suffer injuries during games.

The quality of a side should also be measured by the quality of their backup. In each of the cases when England have add to change their pacemen because of form or injury, the replacements have been exceptional and performed admirably, notably Tremlett and Bresnan. Behind those England can also call on Finn, Onions, Dernbach and Shahzad. England have not been very lucky, they have been exceptionally well prepared.

Another criticism: this England side have never had to face a 'great side' like Bradman's Invincibles, the Aussies of the 2000's or the West Indies of the 80's. Well I ask this, did those great sides ever have to face any other great sides? Well, not really. When one side is on top and is a 'great side', everyone else starts to look distinctly average. This Indian side isn't actually rubbish, England are just playing so well that they are not allowing them to look good. Plus you can only play what's in front of you. And completely outclassing average sides probably equates to beating good sides.

One of the greatest qualities of this England side is the ability for individuals to perform when under pressure. Cook was seen as England's weak link heading to Australia after a poor Pakistan series in swinging conditions- he then absolutely dominated that series. Broad came back after having severe pressure put on his place at the start of this series by Bresnan to deliver two brilliant performances, including a man of the match performance in the second test. Pietersen struck back to hit a double ton when people had been doubting his commitment and resilience.

The batting back up is almost as good as the bowling back up. Players such as Bopara are handy players coming in, and the England Lions are developing decent young players like Taylor who already look like Test class, rather than previous England sides who just had to pick whoever had had a good week in county cricket.

All this said, England deserve to be the number one side. They have worked hard, performed well and deserve to be there. South Africa with Steyn and Morkel leading their attack could threaten them, but below that the Saffers are nothing special. What they need to do now is to maintain that standard for a long period of time, which will be a challenge but one that they seem up to owing to the consistency of performance that all the players have been putting in over the past year.

In the short term, Morgan is the only weak link. Despite scoring a ton here, he struggles against pace bowlers with the new ball. Against spinners with the old ball he can score quickly and take the game away from the opposition with his strong bottom hand which he holds unusually low down on the bat handle, as well as with his inventive array of strokes. Morgan struggles against pace because his crouching trigger movement means his head is always moving when he plays the ball, so he is never balanced properly when lining up his shot. Playing with such a low grip necessarily means that the shot is going to be played with more power than control, which against a hard swinging new ball is not going to end well. There are a few technical things that can be improved, but I am not convinced by his technique as a test match player. However that said, he continues to have that knack this side has of performing well, but I think this side can get better and Morgan may be the first casualty of that process.

How do they maintain this level, and how can they improve? Consistency of performance is obvious, the high standards of performance preparation and teamwork that Strauss and Flower demand needs to be maintained and adhered to. In Graham Swann, England have the world's best spin bowler in the world in their side at the moment, but if he was injured they would struggle to replace him. England need to work hard on the likes of Panesar, Borthwick and Rashid to ensure they are ready, especially on subcontinental pitches where two spinners may reap rewards. In time Strauss and future captains must also be willing to be more aggressive, in a series where the side has such dominance five bowlers would really rub their faces into the dirt. Five bowlers is more aggressive and will always make a positive result far more likely, and that is the kind of confidence which a number one side needs to play with.

This England side is one of the best England has ever had. To cement that position this side needs to go on and dominate for years like those Australian and West Indian sides. We can argue that they are in that bracket as they have the potential to go on and do that, but that means nothing unless they can do just that. However, England fans can look forward to the following years when arguably the best English side move on from the quest to become the no. 1 side in the world to one of the best sides ever.

Phil Goose is a regular contributor to Cardboardshinguards. You can follow him on twitter @goosewrites.

Write for Carboardshinguards

2011-08-11T02:21:00.000-07:00

So given there has been a modest enough upswing in the number of visitors to the site, I thought I would send a reminder that we are always looking for new writers.

We generally like submissions that concentrate on the culture, economics and politics of sport, on and off the pitch. Transfer rumors, tactical analysis and match reports are done way better by other sites anyway.

If you are interested, please email us at cardboardshinguards@gmail.com for our submission criteria.

CBSG Podcast #6: The NBA's Labour Pains

2011-08-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

This week in the podcast we talk to Emmet Ryan of action81.com about the NBA lockout and Donal Kitt about Joey Barton's united theory of philosophy.

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Theme: "Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "There is Power in a Union" by Billy Bragg from the Talking With The Taxman About Poetry album on Cooking Vinyl Records.

Song 2: "This Charming Man" by the Smiths from The Smiths album on WEA Record.

Divided hearts, singular minds: the question of identity in Irish international football

2011-08-10T06:11:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly on divided loyalties in Irish international football.

During the fiasco that was the Carling Nations Cup in May, a thread bare Northern Ireland team succumbed 5-0 to the Republic of Ireland in front of a modest crowd of around 15,000 an embarrassingly low number in a stadium which can hold 50,000 and for a fixture which should have captured the public’s imagination given this was the first game between the two neighbors in many years.

The low attendance was due in part to the miserable attendance from away fans, in turn due to a boycott by the Amalgamation of Northern Ireland Supporters’ Clubs. A statement on why they had chosen to boycott the game highlighted the expense of travelling to the game after the Irish Football Association (IFA), which governs football in Northern Ireland, had decreed that fans were only allowed to travel to the game on approved buses after trouble at a previous fixture against Scotland in Dublin. Threats of a lawsuit by the supporters clubs and a stern response from the IFA ensured another aspect of the statement was left under reported.

The statement pointed out that there was a pre-existing boycott of all games against the Republic due to the selection by their southern neighbours of Northern Ireland born or capped players, up to and including full international level. This week yet another player jumped ship, with Sunderland’s new signing James McClean withdrawing from the Northern Ireland squad to play the Faroe Islands in a Euro 2012 qualifier. He follows Darron Gibson, Shane Duffy, Marc Wilson, Daniel Kearns and Paul George in electing to play for the Republic after representing Northern Ireland at age grade level.

Footballers having a choice of which country to play for is not unheard of, with dual nationality often being held due to parental ties with another country. Eligibility can also be gained simply through residency and so long as a player has not been capped by another country at senior level in a competitive fixture, a newly minted passport can lead to a call up as in the case of Deco or Marcus Senna, both Brazilians by birth who played for Portugal and Spain respectively.

What makes the tug of war between the IFA and FAI particularly potent is the fact that these rules do not apply in the case of Northern Ireland born players. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the 30 year conflict which had raged on the island, any person born in Ireland, North or South, is entitled to claim an Irish passport i.e one from the Republic rather than the United Kingdom.

The passport provision was one attempt to solve what is referred to as the “double minority” problem on the island of Ireland whereby nationalists (predominantly catholic) feel marginalized within Northern Ireland and advocate a united Ireland, whilst unionists (predominantly protestants) fear marginalization within such a political context and instead want to continue the union with the United Kingdom. In terms of sports, this means that many nationalists follow the Republic of Ireland’s fortunes, whilst unionists support Northern Ireland.

But in attempting to address the effects of division the agreement may have just entrenched them even further within Irish football. The passport provision in the agreement allows any player within the Northern Irish set up who has not been capped at senior level to alert the FAI he wishes to be considered for selection and receive a call up, provided he holds an Irish passport.

There are a number of reasons as to why a player may wish to switch allegiance, not all of them to do with politics. For one thing, the Republic of Ireland probably stands a better chance of qualifying for a major tournament during a player’s career, despite not having qualified for one since the 2002 World Cup as well as some giant killing performances from Northern Ireland in recent years.

Politics and more particularly, political identity, does also undoubtedly play a role too, although it is difficult to state that it is conclusive, given that the likes of Duffy and McClean played for Northern Ireland at underage level whilst Darren Gibson has always played for Republic of Ireland teams.

However there is little doubt that players from a nationalist or catholic background who play for Northern Ireland have experienced discrimination, with Neil Lennon retiring from playing for the national team due to death threats. More recently, a package suspected to have originated in Northern Ireland for Celtic player Pat McCourt was intercepted and found to have contained bullets.

These are the actions of a tiny minority of course, and the NI supporters clubs have recognised that players should have the right to chose to play for the Republic, just not after wasting the IFA’s resources by coming up through the underage ranks and denying caps to players who really do want them.

Some of the parting comments by players also indicate that they feel more at home playing for the Republic. Upon making the switch in 2006, Marc Wilson said “I think everybody has their own personal reasons for wanting to play for the Republic or the North. I grew up supporting the Republic so it was a comfortable decision for me.".

McClean was more conspiratorial in his remarks this past week stating “It was a blow seeing Irish League (the league in Northern Ireland) players being called up before me to the Northern Ireland squad, but having got the call I was relieved”. At the same time he went on to say “However, it’s always been my dream to play for the Republic and hopefully that will become a reality now that I’m going to be a Sunderland player”.

Perhaps those latter remarks indicate that Northern Ireland is considered fine for players who wish to pursue careers in the respective Irish leagues or further down the leagues in England, for example McCourt was capped by Northern Ireland when playing for Rochdale. The reality however seems to be that an increasing number of Northern Catholics will opt for the Republic, whatever the reasons.

The IFA has taken cases against the FAI a number of times, arguing before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that only players with geographic ties to the Republic should be allowed play for them. This argument has been rejected by the CAS and it looks as though the Republic’s talent base will remain enriched by young players from north of the border, with even less Catholics electing to play for Northern Ireland, even as they are on the verge of making their full debuts, as in the case of McClean.

One reason why this division is significant is the organisation of national teams and associations in other sports in Ireland; rugby, cricket, hockey, boxing, athletics and golf are all administered by associations which cover the whole island and most have national teams which call on players from anywhere within the Republic and Northern Ireland. By and large this is a result of timing, with rugby golf and hockey’s governing bodies being organised before the partition of the island in the 1920’s, with soccer and motorsports coming afterwards. There are significant barriers to doing so now; given a divided fan base and the loss of UEFA Champions League slots should the domestic leagues also merge.

Of course further division and conflict within Irish football is not necessarily inevitable, as players may be just looking for a chance to get out on to the pitch at international level. Alex Bruce, the son of Sunderland manager Steve Bruce, recently declared his desire to play for Northern Ireland, despite having turned out for the Republic in two friendlies. The IFA is not giving players they have trained and brought through the ranks without a fight, and have appointed former international Gerry Armstrong as a player liaison to persuade youngsters to remain within the Northern Ireland set up.

More broadly, this whole affair dovetails with the trend towards clubs being assertive about the importance of their players not playing too many games and concentrating on their club careers. Players also seem to take this on board and the Republic has seen the high profile retirement of Stephen Ireland as well as confusion over the status of James McCarthy and Anthony Stokes due to suspicious squad withdrawals.

It is probably unfair, unrealistic and even dangerous to claim players should have a sense of patriotism about playing for a particular country, given the complex sense of identity in places such as Northern Ireland. What is perhaps more reasonable to ask is that players are at the very least respectful of their teammates and coaches who have given of their time to develop their talents. This seems to be increasingly rare in football, regardless of politics.

Edit: 12/08/11. I've just heard Derry City boss Stephen Kenny on the radio giving a different take on the whole matter. According to Kenny, McClean had not featured at any level for Northern Ireland until he was 19, when, upon Kenny's recommendation, he received a call up to the Northern Ireland U-21 squad and was capped. There was then no contact with McClean until the call up to the squad for the Faroe Islands qualifier (some three years or so later) which McClean accepted before then having a change of heart based on the level of football he would be playing for Sunderland and the opportunity that would afford him to play for the Republic, a dream for McClean according to the player himself and Kenny.

In short I suppose I should have avoided my slightly self-righteous conclusion on a complex issue but I suppose my main point does still stand in relation to some of the other players, how the associations are in conflict over them and how casually they can switch. Either way it is still an interesting set of circumstances and perhaps could benefit from a more reflective approach than my own.

Lee Daly is the editor of Cardboardshinguards

CBSG Podcast #5: Don't Reorganise for Me Argentina

2011-08-02T14:18:00.000-07:00

This week we talk to Sam Kelly about the politics of the proposed changes to football in Argentina and John Moriarty brings us the gripping finale of the Sparky-Taxee saga.

Before listening to the podcast, check out Sam's excellent site at hastaelgolsiempre.com as well as the equally excellent English language Argentine football podcast Hand of Pod, which Sam hosts.

John Moriarty has been kind to share his archive of Hughes-Shinawatra correspondence and you can find the full archive online at sparkytaxee.blogspot.com.

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Theme: "Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "Major Leagues" by Pavement from the Major Leagues EP on Matador Records.

Song 2: "Just Like Honey" by Jesus and Mary Chain from the Psychocandy album on Blanco y Negro.

Podcast #4: Speculate to accumulate

2011-07-29T07:43:00.000-07:00

This week we talk to Daniel Geey about the rules on ownership of football clubs and John Moriarty brings us another installment in the Hughes-Shinawatra saga.

Before listening to the podcast, be sure to check out Daniel's site at Danielgeey.com and subscribe to his newsletter.

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Theme-"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "I Fought the Law" by The Clash from The Essential Clash on Sony Records

Song 2: "Steady as She Goes" by Shellac from the Excellent Italian Greyhound album on Touch and Go Records.

CBSG Podcast #3: Kiwis Decide Tweeting for the Birds.

2011-07-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

With contributions from Ronan Harrington and John Moriarty, episode 3 of the podcast is packed full of quality discussion on social media as well as more letters from Mark Hughes.

Just after spotting two errors:

1. Ryan Babel plays for Hoffenheim not Hamburg.

2. It is Tweeting not Twittering. Way to seem like an old man.

Enjoy!

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Theme-"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "Witness (1Hope)" by Roots Manuva from the Run Come Save Me album on Big Dad

Song 2: "Love is a Battlefield" by Pat Benatar from her Live From Earth album on Chrysalis Records.

Live Audio Feed of UCD v Villareal

2011-07-09T08:53:00.000-07:00

We just got confirmation of some exciting news. Next Saturday the 16th of July at 7PM UCD will take on Villareal in a friendly at the UCD Bowl in Dublin. Action 81 will be broadcasting a live audio feed from the game and CBSG editor Lee Daly will be joining Action 81's Emmet Ryan as a commentator. We'll have a link up here on the site as well as on Twitter and Facebook. In the meantime, spread the word!

Good Things Come to Those Who Heavyweight: Reflections on Haye v Klitschko Part 1

2011-07-05T15:08:00.000-07:00

After the biggest heavyweight fight in years, Lee Daly recounts how it all went down

I settled back in my arm chair at a friend’s house, revelling in the smell of beer and baked goods which were the aromas of this particular fight night, a family affair that even included a young baby toddling across the floor during some of the undercard fights.

Of course little Lucia would have been up well past her bed time if she had seen a punch thrown in the main event, given the length of the build up. The heavyweight division of boxing has seen much better days, yet despite or perhaps because of this decline, the promoters, media and even the viewing public had managed to muster up some enthusiasm for this one. As a result it was going to take a long time to get to the action as scenarios had to be analysed, legends rolled out and ring entrances made.

Why the hell is Lennox Lewis wearing a hat?” someone shouted out when the former champ was shown in the Sky Studio, a seeming no-no for the serious job of being an analyst. After all Jamie Redknapp practically has camel toe his trousers are so tight but you would never see him busting out a trilby when chatting to Jeff Stelling.

“Because he is a former heavy weight champ and can do what he likes” came the simple riposte. It is difficult to keep your dignity in the fight game, with even the Greatest (in both senses of that term) succumbing to the sports’ age old paradox which drives fighters to keep seeking fame and wealth on the one hand, whilst taking everything they have to give physically and mentally on the other. Boxing, much like politics, seems to ensure careers always end in failure. But for a cut over Vitali Klitschko's eye during their 2003 bout, Lewis would have been made obsolete like so many before him, rather then being able to retire with his head held high.

If Lewis managed to negotiate the twilight of his career using cunning and a bit of luck, his two fellow legends for the night took a different approach. Both Mike Tyson and George Foreman embraced the fight game for all it was worth, one because it was all he ever knew or felt he was good at, the other because he seemed to genuinely enjoy it. What they have to show for it differs just as wildly; Foreman was still a world champion in his mid-forties and earned around 200 Million from his endorsement of a cooking grill. Tyson by contrast, fresh from a singing cameo in the Hangover II, had to introduce Lewis and Foreman in a video which contained a clip of him getting knocked on his ass.

After some more hurry up and wait style build up in the studio it was back down to the ring, and Michael Buffer probably should have changed his slogan to “Lets Get Ready to Custard”, such was the surrealism of what followed.

The camera moved through an audience of people passively watching clips of Klitschko and Haye on a large screen, the whole scene remiscent of Apple’s 1984 ad, before the camera went behind the screen to reveal a mock up of a London street, resplendent with the railings of Buckingham palace, tourists, Grenadier Guards and more images of Haye projected randomly on walls and pavements. There was one final clip of Haye proclaiming he was here to “save boxing” from Klitschko, a flash of light, Lennox Lewis pulling up in a Rolls and then………nothing. Well nothing except a run of the mill empty corridor with Lewis peering in. It appeared Haye’s London away from home was so accurate it included tube strikes……

Part two, entitled Sore (Toe) Loser, will be up on Thursday.

Did I Break Your Concentration?: The Science of Grunting in Tennis

2011-06-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

Éanna Kelly reviews research on one of the sounds of the sporting summer; the grunts emanating from professional tennis players.

Reactionary news features that conclude with ‘tennis grunting is annoying’ break similar ground to observing that Arsene Wenger’s teams don’t like physicality. This being so, an approach that parses the topic has to be welcomed. In 2005 Peter Clough, a sports psychologist at Hull University, defended the phenomenon: “If you hit something hard with a stick it is automatic to make a noise. It is part of the hard wiring in your brain. It allows you to concentrate your energy’’. He also acknowledged that ‘‘coaches teach players to do it to give them a competitive edge. It’s gamesmanship, after all.’’ My purpose today is to enter the debate with the review of a paper (authored by Scott Sinnett and Alan Kingstone of the University of Hawaii and the University of British Columbia respectively) propitiously titled: ‘A Preliminary Investigation Regarding the Effect of Tennis Grunting: Does White Noise During a Tennis Shot Have a Negative Impact on Shot Perception?’

The folklore and its subjects will be familiar to many. In 2009, at the French Open, Michelle Larcher de Brito ‘courted’ controversy with her loud shrieks. Organisers warned her that if these expressions interfered with opponents, she would be docked points. It is Maria Sharapova who registers highest on the ‘gruntometer’ with a ‘WHAMMY’ of 105 decimals. Following are Venus Williams and Victoria Azarenka (both 95 decimals) and Monica Seles (93 decimals). Along with the ‘gruntometer’, the Daily Beast’s typology of tennis grunting. The article describes Azarenka’s grunt as a ‘cross between a sneeze and a chirp’ and Elena Bovina’s as a ‘banshee’s roar’. More prosaically, rule 26 of the governing body of tennis (International Tennis Federation, ITF) states that: ‘‘If a player is hindered in playing the point by a deliberate act of the opponent(s), the player shall win the point.’’ What can science bring to the table?

The authors use Martina Navratilova’s comments (who claimed that grunting is “…cheating and it's got to stop”) as a scene setter: ‘‘Navratilova's argument centered around the idea that it is important to hear the ball strike the racket, and that the sound of a grunt can mask or distract attention from this important moment.’’ This strikes the reader as containing some logic: think about the effect of a phone ringing in an exam. A contrasting argument, however, is equally convincing: ‘‘grunting may provide an additional and beneficial signal to their opponent regarding the force and the timing of the ball being struck.’’ This is the moment where objective data needs to step in.

The method of data collection in preliminary studies (and for all studies in general) is critical to any subsequent success. The research design, then, deserves full exposition here. The study uses ‘‘dynamic video based clips’’ of a professional tennis player striking a ball ‘‘with or without an accompanying auditory stimulus that occurred at the same time as the visual event of the ball being struck by the racket’’. Those videos presented without auditory stimulus constituted a control group. The thirty-three participants in the experiment were asked to choose (as quickly as possible) the direction the ball was due to travel in each clip. If grunting does contribute negatively to the game, the authors argued, ‘longer response latencies and/or higher error rates would be expected’ from participants.

The results? Participants were slower to respond (by 21–33 milliseconds) when a sound was present. In addition, there were ‘more errors for clips with the auditory stimulus’ (3–4%). How might we translate these findings to the world of professional tennis? The authors argue that ‘‘if one adopts a very conservative estimate that a professional tennis shot travels at 50 mph during a rally, a 21–33 ms response delay equates to a ball traveling two extra feet on every shot before an opponent can respond.’’ Making another equivalent calculation for a real life game of tennis, the authors argue that the additional ‘‘3–4% errors observed here could be equivalent to an opponent being wrong footed by a grunting tennis shot nearly once every game.’’ This provides us with a strong sense of the potential advantage a grunter gains by grunting (considering only 4 points are needed to win a match!).

Coupled with reports from players that grunting affects an opponent’s game (Aravane Rezaï being another complainer alongside Martina Navratilova) the authors have produced strong (and statistically significant) evidence that the phenomenon is more than merely ‘annoying’. Whether it is genuinely brinksmanship or just getting an edge, science will leave that up to those that watch and enjoy the game.

Éanna Kelly writes on sport at Dare to Eat Peaches. This article first appeared there.

CBSG Podcast #2

2011-06-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

"Looks like we made it, look how far we've come now baby....."

The Second podcast is now available below the jump.

This week we chat to Paddy Duffy of What Kind of Week Has It Been about a Northern Ireland politicians' remarks on the Tyrone GAA team. We also have another exclusive reading of Mark Hughes' letters to Thaksin Shinawatra from John Moriarty.

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Music:

Theme-"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "Sometimes" by My Bloody Valentine from the Loveless album, available on Creation records.

Song 2: "Everybody's Talkin" by Harry Nilsson from the Aerial Ballet album on RCA records.

Rugby Diplomacy

2011-06-17T09:56:00.000-07:00

In the run-up to this September’s Rugby World Cup, several Fijian players have been banned from travelling to New Zealand. Thomas Lewis takes a look at the dimensions surrounding the South Pacific dispute.

The political crisis in Fiji has spilled over onto its sport, with a dispute mounting over travel restrictions for selected members of its rugby team. Fiji, a keen rugby nation, is set to take part in this September’s Rugby World Cup hosted by New Zealand. The government in Wellington has implemented travel sanctions on members of the current regime in Suva, Fiji’s capital, as a consequence of its undemocratic tendencies. As a few of the provisional Fijian squad are alleged to have connections to the armed forces, they will therefore be barred from travelling to the World Cup. The dispute has called into question the extent to which this constitutes a breach of the non-interference clause of politics into sporting matters. While the Fijians have called foul, New Zealand insists that it is standing by its decision to issue travel bans.

The background to the on-going dispute is the political conflict that has beset Fiji in recent years. The Pacific nation has always had a rocky political scene and there have been no less than four coups over the period of twenty-five years. The latest one came in 2006, when the armed forces under the aegis of Commodore Frank Bainimarama took over the government. At first seen as bringing an end to the ethnic squabbling that had previously been the backboard to the Fijian political scene, the government has since developed a worrying authoritarian streak. Commodore Bainimarama has ruled with a heavy hand, pressurising the judiciary and muzzling the media, while presiding over the relative decline of the economy. This has thrown doubt on the election date of 2014 that he has promised. Fiji, already isolated in geographical terms, has manoeuvred itself even further into a diplomatic offside after spats with Australia and New Zealand and more recently its island neighbour Tonga. New Zealand views its South Pacific backyard as a natural sphere of influence, and implemented the travel bans to prod Fiji into implementing democratic reforms.

It seems as though a large share of the world’s best rugby nations are located at the farthest possible corners of the planet. This is all the more true for the Pacific rugby sides of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. While the vast majority of the All Blacks play at home, many Fijians are currently active in Europe or New Zealand. This has caused major inconveniences for the internationals training schedule. Nevertheless, the Fijian team has racked up some impressive feats in recent years such as reaching the quarter-finals at the 2007 World Cup. Fiji can even be considered as one of the world’s leading sides on the rugby sevens pitch. The economic problems have also affected the rugby board, which has issued concerns that it might not be able to sufficiently prepare for the World Cup. The Fijian government has meddled repeatedly with issues of the board and sees the rugby team, which performs the traditional Cibi war dance prior to every match, as playing an important part of the national character.

Fiji has recently named its provisional squad for the World Cup preparations. From reports in the media it is not clear which of them will be ineligible to travel to New Zealand. The government in Wellington is standing firm on its commitment to ban players that are alleged to have affiliations with the Fijian regime. After exhausting other diplomatic corridors, it sees this as a way of striking at a cause that is dear to many ordinary Fijians. The ban is an instrument of foreign policy, a statement that New Zealand is keen to promote democratic change in its Pacific neighbour. It also comes thirty years after another rugby team hailing from a pariah state visited New Zealand to play a series of matches. Back then it was the Springboks, at the time shunned internationally as a result of the policies of apartheid-era South Africa. The government at the time stressed the separation between politics and sport and let the tour go ahead as planned. It was accompanied by formidable public protests, disrupting several matches and leading to a prolonged national debate. The 1981 tour undoubtedly left a bitter legacy for many Kiwis.

In the current dispute the International Rugby Board (IRB) has been trying to push New Zealand to drop the bans. The government however has stood by its position. The Fijians possess little leverage on the issue and it has not helped that officials there have issued conflicting statements. The chief of the Olympic Committee has called on Fiji to boycott the World Cup should the sanctions not be lifted, to be later rebutted by the Fijian Rugby Board. IRB chief executive Mike Miller has said he is in negotiations with both sides to resolve the dispute. The debate surrounding the bans has raised interesting questions surrounding the separation between politics and sport. In Fiji there has always been a close connection between the armed forces and the rugby team, New Zealand therefore might have legitimate reason for concern. At the same time it has made clear its intention to use the bans to initiate democratic change in Fiji. Given its lack of tact and diplomatic clout, it is unlikely that Fiji will resolve the issue in its favour.

In Fiji’s military regime there was a recent falling out between Commodore Bainimarama and Lieutenant Ratu Tevita Mara, who is the son of Fiji’s first post-independence prime minister. Mara, who was an active participant in the 2006 coup, fled the country in May 2011 after a dispute within the government led him to being charged with sedition. He managed to find refuge with the King of Tonga, who issued him a Tongan passport, and also happens to be a distant relative. Emphasising his democratic credentials, he has recently embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand to promote regime change in Suva. New Zealand has temporarily taken him off the list that bans him from entering the country. It seems as though in this region of the world, rugby and politics will continue to retain their own dynamic.

Despite being based in Germany, Thomas Lewis is a keen follower of both sporting and political developments in the South Pacific.

The Cardboardshinguards podcast: First edition out now!!!

2011-06-12T15:44:00.000-07:00

Having managed to harvest bits and pieces of podcast from some of our contributors, gotten busy with a sewing kit and sent a few thousands volts through the whole sodding mess, we are happy to be able to cackle "IT'S ALIVE IT'S ALIV......"

Ahem..... The first edition of our podcast, featuring a run through some of the past week's big stories as well as a feature on matchfixing in Italy and a very special discovery made by John Moriarty is available after the jump.....

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Music:

Theme-"Taurig" by the Fall from the Imperial Wax Solvent album, available on Castle records.

Song 1: "Norway" by Beach House from the Teen Dream album, available on Sub Pop Records.

Song 2: "Something for All of Us" by Brendan Canning from his Something for All of Us album on Arts and Crafts records.

Song 3: "What Can I Do" by the Corrs from the Talk on Corners album on Atlantic Records.

Celtic Football Club: Part of the Family

2011-06-12T13:52:00.000-07:00

Donegal native Paddy Duffy on the ubiquitous support for Glasgow Celtic in the North West of Ireland.

Religion classes in my Leaving Cert year were curious affairs. Our teacher, the local parish priest (secularism was eschewed after third year) would invariably spend the centrepiece of The Wednesday Morning Doss Class Hour first asking us questions from Catechism. As he always asked us questions in the same sequence, the first section of the class was a bit of a breeze, but the second half was a much more free-wheeling, engaging affair. Because our religion classes always ended up in a quiz about football.

“What team plays at...” would be his regular gambit, and people would shout out clubs with a vitality that questions surrounding venal sin couldn’t really summon. But one day, he stepped it up. “Can any of you name the members of the team who beat Italy at USA ’94?” he asked. We cobbled together a comprehensive list with relative ease, but then he turned the screw.

“And can any of you name this year’s Celtic team?”

Valiant attempts were made, but we gave up with several gaps on our team sheet. “Well, that was very good boys”, said our amiable chaplain, “but remember, try and always keep up with your Celtic”, in much the same way you’d be implored to visit your grandmother. For him, The Bhoys weren’t just a grand oul’ team to play for, they were an integral part of his life, of his character.

It was an integral part of life growing up in east Donegal too. Supporting Celtic wasn’t something done out of logic, you just did it. You didn’t start following them because they had a player you liked or any of the reasons you would choose an English or Italian team for, because Celtic chose you. Schoolyards may have been split over the dominance of Cantona, Cole, Shearer or, eh, Dean Saunders, but Jorge Cadete or John Collins would always be fine compromise candidates.

Such loyalty often provoked intriguing moral debates. One Friday, my cousin came back from Strabane market with what he only realised after buying was a Rangers ball. How he managed to procure such a thing in Strabane was a mystery all of itself, but I remember us having a bizarre debate about how we could use it. Maybe if we peeled off some of the more overt leathery references or colours we could play with it with impunity? Eventually we came to the conclusion that since the ball said “Made in India” it obviously referred to some sub-continental team with a similar name (a bit like the Donegal League team, Convoy Arsenal), thus allowing us to play guilt-free. It was, for the record, a terrific ball.

Even the secondary school I went to, the one with such involving, clerically administered Wednesday morning football classes, mirrored the parameters of Paradise. It was a hard-bit and ostensibly Catholic ex-technical school harbouring a long-held rivalry with the overwhelmingly Protestant school up the road, where every second student had a relative in Glasgow. A lot of those students “just supported Celtic”, a reference to their indifference to teams south of Hadrian’s Wall, and a phrase that was locally understood to mean their allegiance to the cause far outweighed their love of football.

As with other strongly-held fervours, such dedication can also cause considerable suffering. A few years after I left school, I heard my erstwhile religion teacher was involved in a terrifying altercation with Rangers fans on a ferry back from an Old Firm game. He approached them in an ill-judged attempt at magnanimity, and they dangled him over the edge of the boat. But for a Celtic fan, such suffering is part of the package deal. In fact it’s often a driving force.

As we’ve seen recently with the attacks - mental, physical and postal - on Neil Lennon, Celtic fans rally behind the aggrieved and adore the defiant. Celtic fans tend to be drawn from - or drawn to - a demographic that were politically victimised for decades and politically rebellious long before that. Celtic still fancy themselves as eternal underdogs, as Empire beaters who take on royalist Rangers at every opportunity and vanquished Milanese aristocracy in Lisbon with a selection of players all born within 30 miles of Jock Stein’s living room.

Celtic fans just don’t pride in trophies and the teams they beat to win them though, they take great pride in their ethos. Even when sectarianism in football was at its worst, Celtic were always keen to be seen to take the high road as regards recruitment. Jock Stein famously said if he had to choose between a Catholic and Protestant player of equal talent, he’d always choose the Protestant because Rangers wouldn’t touch the Catholic. Same goes with race: Celtic fans will proudly tell you they of their Indian cult player Mohammed Abdul Salim, or that the father of late poet and non-televised revolutionary Gil Scott Heron used to play at Parkhead back in the day too. Even if it isn’t always borne out in real life, Celtic consider themselves as the team of egalitarianism.

The problem with that is that the Celtic fans who’ll happily talk about Jamaican poetry are often not the most visible ambassadors of the green and white hoops. The jersey has been devalued to the point where it’s become associated with bleach blond Jeremy Kyle fodder, people who chant slogans with no thought about them beyond sounding out the syllables. Every club has that element, but few clubs are as defined by it as Celtic.

We can only hope that the chaotic 2010/11 season the SPL has endured will be a much-needed watershed that’ll prompt a much more image and action-conscious Old Firm. If that does happen, then there’ll always be a wide swell of support, however soft, from Celtic fans all over the world. Our football-mad religion teacher fell upon a truth when encouraging us to keep up our with our Celtic. However little we feel we have in common with them, or even if we haven’t heard tell of them in years, Celtic is still part of the family.

Paddy Duffy works in television. Every Sunday he casts a delightfully wry eye over the week's goings on at whatkindofweekhasitbeen.blogspot.com.

Super Star(craft) Power

2011-06-12T11:02:00.001-07:00

Greg Bowler writes about the sports like following enjoyed by the video game Stacraft.

Lim Yo-Hwan is a two-time world champion. He has a fan club of over a million members. His games are watched live by audiences in the thousands, and on television by millions. He makes hundreds of thousands of dollars in sponsorship deals. Prior to being conscripted into the Korean Air Force in 2006, he utterly dominated the game. He is widely considered to be the most influential player in his field, yet it is dubious whether he would be considered a sportsman at all. For Lim is a professional computer game player, specifically Blizzard Entertainment's massive-selling strategy epic Starcraft.

Starcraft was originally released in 1998. In it, the player takes charge of one of three races, the Terrans, Protoss, or Zerg, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. While the single-player campaigns were widely praised, it was the multiplayer game that truly caught people's imagination. Careful fine-tuning had ensured that all three sides were perfectly balanced, and every gamer acquired their own favourite.

What exactly constitutes a sport? It was once said of pornography that while it couldn't be defined, we know it when we see it. Similarly, there is no universal idea of what sport is, or by what proxy we should measure it. Physical power? Neither darts nor snooker players are exactly paragons of health. Coordination? Weightlifting certainly requires little other than brute strength. In any case, a professional Starcraft player is expected to do over one hundred actions a minute, and games can last for hours. A quick glance at Wiktionary informs one that sport is any form of athletic activity that uses physical skills, and this is clearly an insufficient definition. While the likes of Phil Taylor, Raymond Van Barneveld and Andy Fordham would never be considered athletes, few would deny darts' sporting pedigree.

In terms of viewing hours, ESPN's most watched "sport" is poker, which is in no way physical. Professional poker has grown from being a narrow-focus activity concentrated in Las Vegas to a multi-million dollar industry, with dozens of tournaments in venues around the world, all of which are televised. In fact, much of the early stages of professional competitions take place on the internet, which further reduces any pretences of sport. This has not stopped the likes of Doyle Brunson and Phil Ivey from becoming global celebrities.

On that basis there is certainly a case for Starcraft to be considered a sport. It involves massive amounts of coordination, and requires immense concentration for extended periods of time. In many respects, it is analogous to motor racing, which generally gets included in what we consider sport. The physical activity is undertaken by a machine, but the mental side is entirely the operator's. Certainly, the question mark over whether computer games are sports has not deterred massive amounts of money from going into tournaments.

The North American Star League currently has a prize pool of nearly half a million dollars, not bad for an extremely niche activity. There have even been match-fixing scandals, because of the amount of money bet on Starcraft matches. People have died of exhaustion playing it, and there are special rehabilitative camps to help those trying to break their addiction to the game.

What accounts for the huge popularity of the game? The common theory is simply that it was the right game in the right place at the right time. The appetite of the Far East for videogames is well known (Even before the advent of Nintendo and Sony, Space Invaders, an old arcade game, became so popular that it caused a liquidity crisis in Japan as all the one-yen coins were deposited in arcade machines). The key was the release date.

In 1998 South Korea was recovering from the Asian financial crisis, and households began to have enough disposable income to invest in technology. In addition, Windows 95 had made the Internet widely accessible to the general public, and a farsighted public investment in high-speed broadband networks meant that the Korean public had access to much better connections than the rest of the world. With the mass migration of media onto the web still a few years off, the internet offered fewer diversions than it does now, and Starcraft was paramount among them. At the time, the game was the height of new technology, and its excellent replay value has meant that it stands the tests of time far better than many of its compatriots with one in seven Korean households owning a copy. A whole raft of fan fiction has grown up around the Starcraft Universe, with short stories and even novels on commercial release.

An interesting development was the release of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty in 2010. The reactions of some fans to this has been compared to that of a chess grandmaster to the news that Chess 2 was being released, with a host of different pieces and rules. The game was announced in Seoul before a crowd of tens of thousands, and Korean Airlines repainted several aircraft in Starcraft II livery as part of the promotion for the game. Upon release, the game has received almost universal acclaim, and already professional Starcraft II tournaments are a regular occurrence.

Starcraft was one of a handful of games that pioneered the idea of an online multiplayer experience. Other titles, notably Half-Life, Unreal Tournament, and more recently Call of Duty enjoy a better name recognition factor, but none generates the sort of money the Starcraft does. Only World of Warcraft, another Blizzard title, makes more revenue from non-sales activity (WoW has 12 million subscribers, each paying twenty dollars a month for the pleasure, do the maths).

Not only are there professional players, there are also professional teams, and in a very sport-like idea, old hands like Mr Lim often become the coaches of their own teams. At this point there are hundreds of professional Starcraft players, and while they are still overwhelmingly concentrated in South Korea, recent years have seen a spread of the tournament side of the game into the rest of East Asia, as well as North America.

The software industry is one of the least reliable on the planet. Five years ago Rupert Murdoch paid $580m for MySpace, then the fastest growing site on the internet. Last month it was withdrawn from sale as nobody was willing to stump up $100m for it. In software, there is no such thing as a safe bet. However, Starcraft has been out for thirteen years. It still sells steadily, but more than that, there is a whole cottage industry built around it. With two Korean channels showing pro Starcraft matches around the clock, and journals regularly publishing articles on strategies, Starcraft has established itself as a solid money maker.

Few sports fans would consider Starcraft to be a sport. At the end of the day, though, that's probably immaterial. The sheer amount of money in professional Starcraft means that there is enough money to buy whatever prestige sport can offer. And, for the likes of Lim Yo-Hwan, the semantics of his game matter less than another win.

Film Review: Senna

2011-06-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly reviews the new documentary on Formula 1 legend Ayrton Senna. Entitled simply "Senna" it is out now in cinemas.

I first started paying attention to Formula 1 around the age of 10 (1995 for those playing along at home). I suppose it suited my disposition at the time; more inclined to recite numbers and facts such as who won the drivers championship in 1968 then to engage with schoolmates about the relative merits of Alan Shearer or Andy Cole. Formula 1 was definitive and certain.

But in burying my heads in books, looking up records it seemed like there was one person who alluded easy definition. He didn't appear on television like Jackie Stewart or Alain Prost. He had an almost ethereal presence for me; there in the records but not there every Sunday to speculate on the weather or the tyre choice of a particular driver, defying the mundane. That person was Ayrton Senna.

It found it difficult to understand why he was mentioned rarely but in reverent tones when he did come up. After all hadn't Juan Manuel Fangio or Alain Prost, both won more world championships? How could Senna be considered one of the greats when he had only won three? Why did he have a large fan club? Why did he have his own cartoon for cuss' sake? In a world easy to quantify and make sense of , Senna was a spanner in the works, with the fact that I had never watched Formula 1 when he was alive and racing only adding to the mystique.

Sitting down in the cinema to watch this new documentary about his life, I wasn't looking to fill in this gap of recognition which existed for me, indeed I hadn't really thought about it until I left the cinema. As an adult it is easy to assume we have quantified and categorized each part of history, that we understand why things happened they way they did. Over the two hours or so of the film, I was transported back to being that ten year old, only this time Senna's appeal was outlined perfectly, his story brought home in vivid colour.

Given this is a documentary, there is a temptation to explain how the film treats each fact, given it is all already on the record. This would be to diminish the film's impact,because at its heart it is not a document of historical events but rather tells the story of relationships; that between Senna and the Formula 1 authorities, between Senna and the people of Brazil and the one between Senna and the spiritual, the religious, or to put it bluntly, the deadly.

It is the first relationship which probably provides the bulk of the film's first hour, although all of these relationships are introduced at various points. The film pits Senna, with his mercurial talent and absolute focus on speed, against Alain Prost, at times portrayed as a stalking horse for the powers that be within Formula 1. This is perhaps reasonable, as Prost's career consistently shows he was able to play the political game, right into his post-driving career, given he ran a team for many years in a sport which requires herculean diplomatic skills to satisfy sponsors, investors and the authorities to even get a car on the grid.

The film's treatment of this relationship is pitch perfect, with Prost an adversary but never a bogey man, and the tension between Prost and Senna is not just a competitive one but represents a far more fundamental conflict; between self expression, vision and abandon versus rules, pragmatism and reserve. The real villains of the piece are the bungling F1 authorities, showing contempt for the sacrifices the drivers make by playing politics with safety, the rules and ultimately, the drivers' lives.

But perhaps the film's greatest achievement is the connection it establishes between Senna and the audience, as real and as genuine, if not more so, than any dramatic piece. The film begins at the start of Senna's Formula 1 career, with Senna appearing as never younger than in his late teens and constantly on screen; there are no "talking heads" to fill in the gaps, no accounts of his early childhood.

It is difficult enough to get an audience to invest in a character, even when given the luxury of constructing any past or present a writer wants for a character. It should be even more difficult with documentaries on well known events but director Asif Kapadia defies this. Having secured the full collaboration of the Senna family, the filmmakers use extraordinarily intimate footage throughout. Senna is the audience's companion at all times, allowing us to invest in him. This proves crucial given the crushing inevitability with which the film moves towards its climax; Senna's death in the 1994 San Marino grand prix. There is almost a sense of relief when the end arrives such is the tension in the build up. Without wishing to further reveal the content, it is difficult not to feel emotional during the closing moments of the film.

Senna, the presence I found so ethereal as a child, was made flesh by this film, his appeal and legacy understandable now in a way I never thought possible. For those who have never even watched a Formula 1 race, it will do the same.

Lee Daly is a co-editor of Cardboardshinguards.

FIFA's Hijab Hijinks

2011-06-07T02:26:00.000-07:00

FIFA's decision on the religious nature of the Iranian women's football kit has cost it a shot at the Olympics. Derek Doyle argues this represents a significant set back for the game in Iran and elsewhere.

When the English FA threw a tantrum in the forest, plenty of people were there to hear, but no-one cared. The football world already knows that FIFA is corrupt and for the most part sees that fact as an irrelevancy. Someone needs to run world football and FIFA do fine, particularly on the commercial side. With the amount of money floating around corruption is almost inevitable and in that light, the leadership would be characterised by most national associations as sitting somewhere between a benevolent or a benign dictatorship.

Assumed throughout this recent scandal, or storm in a teacup depending on which country's newspapers you read, is the notion that awarding rights to host the Word Cup is the most important thing that FIFA do. It isn't. We think it is because only holding the Olympics or building nuclear weapons can compete with hosting the world cup as a national vanity project. Think of the roll call of ego driven dictators drawn towards all three. If a dictator ever did manage to host them all it would be like unifying the heavyweight titles of dictatorship. A truly historic event (Sorry Putin, the Winter Olympics don't count).

However, there are issues more important than who gets to host the World Cup. Decisions made by FIFA affect the people who play the game and how people see the game. This week, FIFA made one of the most discriminatory and hypocritical rulings in the history of sport.

The Iranian Women's football team has been effectively banned from Olympic qualification because their kit involves tracksuit pants (worn by goal keepers worldwide for the bulk of the early 90's) and light headscarves which cover roughly the same area as Petr Cech's scrumcap. They had even compromised on a previous version and believed they had Sepp's approval. Optimistic seeing as he had called for shorter shorts in women's football in 2004.

The issue isn't with what they are wearing, it confers them no advantage and puts them at no danger. The problem it is with why they are wearing it. It has been made clear by FIFA that they are falling foul of the following rule;

"Players and officials shall not display political, religious,
commercial or personal messages or slogans in any language or form on
their playing or team kits.".

Here are a couple of issues with the logic of how this ruling is applied:

1)Seeing as these women come from an Islamic Republic wearing shorts and t-shirts like every other team would be an overtly political statement from the perspective of the majority of their home country. As loosely defined as the FIFA rules are it is impossible for this national team to play in any item of clothing that could not reasonably be defined as political.

2)If team kits can not display religious symbolism will Portugal be allowed to use the Crest of their National FA?

3)Keeping with the religious thing, why is it OK for Javier Hernandez to kneel in the middle of the pitch praying to his God before a Champions League final in front of one of the biggest worldwide television audiences of the year and not ok for these women to wear a headscarf and tracksuit bottoms?

4)Are they going to take the crucifixes off the necks of the young European and African players taking part in case they kiss them in celebration?

5)Is the manufacturer's logo on the team kit a commercial message?
What is it? What FIFA really mean is no unauthorised or “off message”
messages can be shown on a playing kit.

We could pick holes in this nonsense rule for weeks but the best response to a team being screwed over by the abuse of an obscure and poorly worded rule is contained in the Olympic Bobsledding documentary “Cool Runnings”.

“Oh, pardon me. I didn't realize that four black guys in a bobsled could make you blush”

FIFA has basically said that there is no place in competitive football for the tens, if not hundreds of millions of Islamic women who believe that it is immodest to wear too little even when playing sport at a high level. What harm is there in them wearing a slightly different uniform? Is international cricket worse off because Sikhs are allowed to wear turbans? If these women qualify to play how is the game worse off because the wear a headscarf?

Moving on from the obvious unfairness of this decision to the bigger picture. FIFA talks a big game about being a force for social good. What good comes of this decision? Some will argue, picking up FIFA's Islamaphobic baton, that the headscarves are an imposition by a male dominated culture ignoring the more important points that A) in this case it is merely men from a different culture who are telling women what they can and can not wear b) we are probably not looking at the most downtrodden and oppressed women in Iran when we look at their football team and c) this decision takes away good role models for young girls in Iran.

Women's football in Britain has never really recovered from it's maltreatment by the FA in the 30's, which meant women were banned from football grounds until the 1970's. It would be very sad if another cabal of narrow minded men destroyed the women's game in Iran from a thousand miles. In 1994 leading lights in women's football and advocates in the media were very vocal in telling Sepp to get his hands off their shorts... here's hoping both groups do as much to keep his hands off their colleague's headscarves.

Derek Doyle lives and works in Dublin.

Five Facts on the FIFA Affair

2011-06-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

Lee Daly gives his two cents on Seppgate.

Unless you have been living under a large rock in a cave on the moon, you have probably heard about the scandal ongoing at FIFA. The details of the whole bloody messy have been pretty well documented elsewhere but here are five points I want to present to give a different angle on the whole discussion

1. FIFA is Football.

Or it is, at the very least, seen to be football, which is all that matters really. When we talk about “football” being tarnished by the actions of the FIFA elite, and how “football” can only really be saved by somehow destroying the same elite, I can’t help but think that people can still watch, play and enjoy the game wherever there are a few people, goals and a ball. Perhaps more precision is needed and people should say the World Cup is what is being tarnished.

Even that is not true though; we still have our memories of the Hand of God or Brazil 1970, even though they are the intellectual property of FIFA. Mardonna wouldn't throw a cup of speedy coffee on Sepp if he were on fire, yet Sepp can't take away THAT other goal El Diego scored against England in 1986, and he can't take it away from us either. And sure we can always just wrap up warm and stay up late to watch Qatar 2022 in the depths of winter.

2. FIFA is an international conglomerate of private interests.

Hypocrisy, subertfuge and corruption are not rare things from international organisations comprised of states, much less those made up of what are essentially private members clubs with a monopoly on a globally popular commodity. And of course they have rules which explicitly forbid any interference by the only entity potentially powerful enough to challenge them, the state.

3. As an international conglomerate of private interests, FIFA is not particularly democratic.

What can be done about FIFA? How can we make it more accountable and democratic? Well nothing really. On Tuesday the FIFA congress reelected Blatter by a wide margin. After the English FA's David Bernstein pleaded for delegates to postpone the election, he was blasted by a conveyor belt of delegates from Benin, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Now I don't mean to belittle those countries but it is not hard to imagine that you don't achieve power within any of those countries without have a somewhat fast and loose attitude to transparency or accountability. Even for the countries which supposedly "should know better", including English representatives who were scathing about their own media before the 2018 bid was announced, there is a game to be played.

4. Life goes on.

It is perhaps a bit crazy to see how heavily this issue is dominating news stands, especially as history unfolds daily in the Middle East. Sepp Blatter may exhibit some of the characteristics of a dictator, yet his worst crimes seem to be saddling countries with white elephant stadiums which they don’t really need, rather than slaughtering innocent civilians like Gaddaffi or Al-Assad.

5. Football goes on.

See point 1. You can still pick up a ball and have a kick around with your mates this summer; you can probably go and enjoy a high enough standard of football wherever you are in the world and come August you will almost certainly plonk down on a couch and take in world class action on an almost nightly basis.

If anything this whole circus is distracting from the more important business facing football. After all Lord Triesman’s juicy allegations about FIFA delegates were made to a committee charged with improving the governance of the game within England. Clubs all over Europe are being run into the ground and saddled with huge debts. Perhaps it is more important to consider what is possible closer to home, rather than rage against external injustice. Given Blatter has only moved to establish an extremely limited review of FIFA's governance (headed by his old mucker Henry Kissinger) after sponsors like Adidas, Visa and Coca-Cola made noises, we probably also need to recognize that consumers of the game are the ones who will drive any change, given that once the gravy train is threatened, FIFA acts.

Fifa's untraceable cash leaves African football on road to nowhere. The Guardian

John Moriarty on Sepp Blatter What Kind of Week Has it Been.

Feature of the Week: Seve's legacy.

2011-05-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

Greg Bowler argues that the recent passing of Seve Ballesteros has left golf without one of the central figures to it's development in the late 20th century.

When Sevriano Ballesteros died of a brain tumour on May 7th, 2011, golf lost more than one of its greatest ever players. It lost a pioneer, a man who was a part of turning golf from an Anglo-Saxon sport into one played across the world. As the American dominance of the game continues to erode, it is worth reflecting on the changes Seve and his contemporaries brought about.

When Seve Ballesteros started his professional career, only one non-native English speaker, Frenchman Arnaud Massy, had ever won a major. Golf was a niche sport, played by a small number of middle and upper class aficionados in Europe and the former British Empire. Only in the United States, with its class-free traditions, and to a lesser degree Australia and White South Africa, had golf put down wider roots.

Coupled with its traditions of sports scholarships, which enabled promising players to be spotted at an early age, this gave the United States almost complete control of the game. The Ryder Cup, the biennial tournament played at the time between the United States and Great Britain, was won by the Americans forty-eight of the fifty years from 1933 to 1983. US players such as Gene Sarazen, Sam Snead, Walter Hagen, Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus had dominated the game, with only South Africa’s Gary Player able to match their haul of silverware.

In as much as golf had a centre in Europe, it was in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Courses here were often a century old, and with traditions to match. Membership was generally on sponsorship by another member, and most still refused to permit women full membership. In a sport that was seen as quintessentially gentlemanly, little effort was made to build a talent base. Even when good young golfers were available, clubs often preferred seniority to ability when selecting teams.

Spain was on of the few countries to defy this trend in the late 60’s and early 70’s. While there had been courses in Spain since at least the 19th century, it underwent a rapid expansion in this time, which would lay the groundwork for a succession of world-class golfers. The primary cause of this was the package holiday boom of the 1960s, which turned the Costas Blanca, Brava and Del Sol into tourism meccas. British and other Europeans, who might balk at paying extortionate membership or green fees at home, and would anyway have difficulty joining, were less budget-conscious while on holiday.

This new clutch of Spanish courses were commercial ventures rather than private clubs, and were thus willing to allow anyone who could afford to play to do so. Prestige was bought by hiring professional golfers to design the courses. In an age where a professional golf career was not as lucrative as it is now, individuals such as Hogan, Palmer and Player made considerable sums designing courses around the world.

For Spaniards, this made golf very accessible. The seasonal nature of tourism meant that in the winter, courses had to rely on a local market that was both smaller and poorer than the tourist sector, so locals generally got very competitive rates. In addition, courses were generally big employers, so a large amount of people gained familiarity with the game through work. A number of Spanish professionals started their careers as caddies.

Ballesteros came from a family of golf buffs. His three brothers all became pro golfers, though none achieved his level of success. His breakthrough came in 1976 when, at the age of 19, he came second in the British Open. By 1980, he was the top player on the European Tour, and the youngest person ever to have a Masters win to his name (that crown would be taken by Tiger Woods in 1997), as well as the first European.

In the 1980s, Seve’s heyday, golf in Europe was undergoing a transition. British courses had finally shed their exclusivity and were now more egalitarian. In continentental Europe, a number of world class players were emerging. Most importantly, golf tournaments were becoming more of a TV sport.

Unlike live audiences, who tended to be more interested in the technical side of the game, TV audiences wanted drama, and Seve was prepared to deliver in spades. His game lacked the all round competence that characterized other Europeans such as Nick Faldo or Bernhard Langer. Instead, he coupled patchy drives with an almost inhuman short game, turning matches around with spectacular chips and putts just like that other mercurially brilliant player of the period, Greg Norman. Seve also had charisma, a quality many of his contemporaries lacked

He was an enfant terrible on the course, bursting onto the scene while still in his teens. He wore his heart on his sleeve, celebrating his great shots, and agonising over his soft misses. In an age when golf was all about the stiff upper lip, he was a breath of fresh air. His personal quirks only made him more charismatic. A relentless skirt-chaser, his penchant for women was yet more fodder for television. He justified his notorious tightness with money by claiming that, despite the low cuts he gave his caddies, they still did better than those of other players as a result of his prodigious win rate.

If Seve was the first of a generation of Spanish golfing greats that included Jose Maria Olazabal, Miguel Jimenez and Sergio Garcia, then he also must be seen as one of the men who made Europe the equal of America in the Ryder cup. His partnership with Olazabal remains the most successful in Ryder Cup history. Seve, and the Spaniards who followed him, were for many years continental Europe’s only contribution to the Ryder Cup, with the exception of Bernhard Langer. Yet they were enough to tip the scales.

In the early 1980s the Europeans finally became a match for the Americans on the course. In 1985, following a dry spell of nearly thirty years, the Europeans thrashed the Americans 16.5 to 11.5. Four Spanish players featured on the winning team. Suddenly the tournament, which had lost a lot of its prestige as a result of constant American victories, had become interesting again.

Seve also gained publicity for the Ryder Cup for the wrong reasons. He got into a well-reported feud with American Paul Azinger. In the 1989 tournament, both claimed there had been irregularities in the other’s game. In 1991, Seve accused Azinger of cheating. While from a sporting point of view, such incidents are regrettable, there is no doubt that they helped generate media coverage for the competition. More than anything, the revitalised sense of parity, where both sides now have a fighting chance, coupled with the national and personal rivalries, has helped make the Ryder Cup the biggest golf tournament of them all, despite having no purse attached.

In contrast to his meteoric rise, Seve’s descent was painfully gradual. Aged only 40, he captained Europe’s 1997 Ryder Cup-winning team. He turned down the captaincy for the following tournament, saying he wanted to qualify as a player again, but it was clear that his best days were over. The last of his five Major wins was in 1988, and his last win in any professional competition came in 1995, by which time he had amassed 50 European Tour Wins, still the all-time record. By this time a whole generation of golfers in the Seve mode were coming through the ranks, aggressive young men who devoted every waking hour to improving their game. In 1997 one of these, Tiger Woods, would begin a winning streak that would eclipse Seve’s in every department.

Golf has globalised at an astonishing rate over the past 30 years. Gary Player inspired a whole generation of South Africans to take up the game. In a few years, a profusion of Korean players may regard KJ Choi and YE Yang as their progenitors. Similarly, in Spain, it was Seve. His short game remains unparalleled in golf. He is the most successful European golfer of all time. And yet, posterity may regard him as being as good for golf off the course as he was on it.

He was part of a generation of European golfers who came to prominence when television was making its way into the game, and he was the most telegenic of them all. In the thirty or so years from his first time atop the European Tour, in 1979, till his death in 2011, the money that the winner of the European Tour collected increased a hundredfold. The main event on the European Tour is now held in Dubai, and the penultimate one is in Hong Kong. Thirty years ago, almost all were in the British Isles. One Spanish player did a lot to change that. Genius on the course, pioneer off it, Seve Ballesteros leaves a serious legacy.

Greg Bowler lives in Dublin and is an avid contrarian on all matters sporting, economic and political.

What Happens After Arsenal Say Au Revoir To Arsene?

2011-05-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

With a lacklustre end to a promising season, it looks as though Arsene Wenger's days at Arsenal could be numbered. Philip Goose asks- What does it mean to the culture of a club when a manager leaves?

First things first, I'm an Arsenal fan. And as an Arsenal fan it grieves me that Wenger may leave soon, but I know it's coming. If Wenger doesn't leave this summer, his job very much depends on how successful next season is, after a summer which is supposed to be full of big investment. So all this has got me thinking about what it will feel like when Wenger goes. I'm a relative young'un in Arsenal terms, being only six when Wenger took over, and so have no real memories of the George Graham era. So in my football supporting career I've never had to deal with, or even consider dealing with, a change in management.

It is possible for a manager to impart a certain philosophy on a club. Arsene has done this both in the style of football the team now plays and relationship between the manager and the board on financial matters, the latter of which, although unlikely, may change now Stan Kroenke is in control. So can Arsenal fans contemplate a change in these styles, and how would they affect any succesor?

Chants of '1-0 to The Arsenal' and 'Boring boring Arsenal' are a distant memory to fans who watched George Graham's Arsenal. These fans are now quite happy to lambast other clubs boring approach even though other clubs can have distinct style changes too. Bolton after appointing Owen Coyle have shifted from a physical style of play to a more creative and stylish approach. Such was the transformation at the Reebok under Coyle that Wenger was happy to entrust Jack Wilshere to the Trotters. It would be difficult to imagine him doing the same under either Sam Allardyce or Gary Megson.

Club philosophies can be far more ingrained. Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley rooted two things deep within the Liverpool ethos; players were to pass and move on the pitch and the club was to act as a community for the fans. The Hillsborough disaster and the reign of Kenny Daglish as manner consolidated both ideas firmly within the club. This can make it difficult for future managers. Roy Hodgson certainly learnt that this season. Many things went wrong for him this season, but among them were that he didn't get 'it'. He didn't create a team in the pass-and-move tradition, nor get the Liverpool “community” behind him, going so far as to criticise the fans.

This was in marked contrast to Rafa Benetez, with his sides in general playing good football, whilst his continued support of the Hillsborough fund earned him a place in the hearts of Liverpool fans. Such integral philosophies are not necessarily a bad thing: the desire for a return to principles has led to the return of King Kenny and a renewed team playing quality football. It would be interesting to think where Liverpool might be without a talismanic figure such as Daglish to turn to.

As Barney Ronay pointed out in his book “The Manager”, the importance of the manager has undergone an 'absurd ascent'. Long-lived managers start to embody the club. They become fan’s communal representatives, slights against the manager become slights against the fans, the team and the club; and they become impossible to criticise. In a business sense, this seems ridiculous, as a manager should be able to take on criticism and fans and the media should be entitled to point flaws. Yet despite John Henry’s reputation for hard nosed business decisions based on statistics and benchmarksis a he was able to recognise the value of Daglish to Liverpool, aided of course by the good results.

So what does this mean for Post-Wenger Arsenal, whenever it may come? However he goes, no fan is going to regard him as a failure. We don't regard him as a failure, even if he hasn't delivered a trophy for a while. This is because fans literally love him. His successor will be granted no such grace. Arsenal fans will expect to see success very quickly. They will find it very difficult, especially if they wish to significantly change the philosophies which fans have become accustomed to. Potential successors, such as Owen Coyle, who Arsenal fans have trusted with little Jack and have seen the reward, may find it easier. It is very obvious to say that any new manager has to start well. However the shadow of a long reign means he will have to answer the question 'could we cope with this manager for ten years?' straightaway. Hopefully, fans will shift from supporting Arsene, to supporting the club. After Arsene or any long-reigning manager leaves, supporters lose the idea that departure of the manager is the death of the club, which the new honcho at The Emirates will have to work hard to regain.

Phil Goose is a lifelong Arsenal fan and studies History at the University of St Andrews. He does not know any of the Royal Family.

You can follow his thoughts on twitter @goosewrites and his blog.

The contrasting commercial fortunes of Leinster and Ireland

2011-05-14T05:40:00.001-07:00

Johnny Watterson reports in today's Irish Times that the IRFU is going to allow clubs and provinces to default on unsold tickets for the 2010 Autumn Internationals. The union, with takings for the series €3.5 to €4 million short on projections, will sell tickets online for the 2011 series, with payment required up front. Pricing structures will also be reviewed.

By contrast, last Saturday's Times had a timely article by Gerry Thornley on almost all aspects of Leinster's successes . Alongside the on pitch achievements, there has been a very noticeable improvement in the commercial and marketing side, with season ticket holders rising from 1,300 to 13,500 in the past six seasons.

Comparisons are obviously difficult, given Leinster have a game almost every week, where as Ireland play between seven and eight times a year. However Leinster have pulled off big payday games since the Aviva has opened including the quarter and semis of the Heineken Cup, as well as games against Munster and Clermont.

Although season ticket holders had the latter two games included, as well as an option for the quarter and semi-final of the Heineken Cup, that is still the guts of 30,000-40,000 general sale tickets Leinster were able to move on four occasions. The IRFU needed to move similar numbers for the autumn internationals, and by any measure were not succesful in doing so, failing about 16,000 short for the South Africa game.

The most obvious factor to point to is price, as autumn international games were sold in packages of two for prices starting at €150. By contrast, Leinster sold 1,000 tickets for the Clermont game at only €5 a pop, with the cheapest tickets for the Heineken Cup Quarter final going for €30. A revised ticketing structure for the 6 Nations, with fans being able to get into the France or England games for €50, indicates that the IRFU may have learnt its lesson.

Money isn't everything though, and the IRFU cannot lower prices to Leinster levels due to the aforementioned number of games they have a year. There are other issues which probably need to be addressed.

The Croke Park years opened up the team to a broader audience, given the stadium's location and cultural significance, and this may have been lost in the move back to the old Lansdowne site.

Lessons may also be learned from Leinster, who have a natural enough catchment area in and around the Aviva and the RDS but have not rested on their laurels either. Back when I were a lad, the branch paid little to no attention to the potential fanbase beyond the greater Dublin area, to the extent that many people supported Munster over Leinster.

Things have changed so much that my twelve year old brother's club, which is located in Carlow, got a visit last week from Johnathan Sexton and Sean O'Brien (a Carlow lad to boot) to chat about the upcoming final in Cardiff.

The IRFU may not be able to adopt similar marketing tactics but if the autumn series this year is another loss maker, a serious rethink will be required.

The president(s) of the Bosnian FA.

2011-05-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

The three Presidents of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Football Federation, Sulejman Colakovic,center, Bogdan Ceko,right, and Jasmin Bakovic.

Reports are emerging that UEFA and the Bosnian FA might be approaching a solution to the impasse which has meant the national team and Bosnian clubs have been banned from European competition since April 1. The dispute centres on the presidency of the Bosnian FA, which is currently occupied by three people, one each from the “constituent peoples” (Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks).

UEFA has been demanding that the association replace this system with a single president at its head, a difficult proposition in a country where governance is complicated by the need to placate the various nationalist interest groups. This leads to frequent standoffs which are only resolved when an outside force, such as the EU or the USA, provokes a crisis.

I visited Bosnia and Herezgovina in March of last year, and as I often heard, the political and social structures which were imposed by the international community in the 1990’s may have stopped the war but they stopped everything else as well, with low levels of economic growth and society still heavily divided.

Football is no exception, despite the success of the national team in the 2010 World Cup qualifying campaign, with a talented generation including the likes of Edin Dzeko in danger of not fulfilling their potential and chaos reigning in the domestic league.

Of course Bosnia and Herzegovina is not alone in having officials who are perceived to be putting their own interest ahead of that of sport. However at a time when the sport seems to be suffering from a bad public image (diving, disrespect of officials, alleged corruption in the World Cup bidding process) it is interesting to see FIFA and UEFA willing to impose sanctions where there are bureaucratic considerations at play, whilst letting other matters slide.

More on this story and football in Bosnia-Herzegovina:
FIFA and UEFA confirm progress with Bosnia-Herzegovina from Goal.com

Bosnian Coaches-The Axed Generation from The Slavic Football Union

Follow Saša Ibrulj on Twitter @sasaibrulj

World Cup scandal as Lord Triesman names names

2011-05-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Monday's testimony by Lord Triesman, former chair of the FA and the England 2018 World Cup Bid, to the UK parliamentary select committee on football caused a furore online and in the print media. Parliamentary privilege allowed Triesman to give juicy specfics on the names and demands of FIFA delegates as well as finger the Premier League for making their support conditional on getting an extra fixture added to the calendar.

There is, unsurprisingly, much talk in the UK media about the need for FIFA to clean up their act in the light of the revelations, as well as reaction from the Australian bid which also lost out.

Of course it could be argued that Lord Triesman's remarks are somewhat naive in the context of the power the awarding of the World Cup gives FIFA and its delegates. At the same time, FIFA invites it's members to bid on the grounds their merits will be judged along open and clear criteria but has yet to get serious about basic standards of accountability and transparency. A promised plan on corruption has failed to materialise in advance of ~~Sepp Blatter's coronation~~ presidential elections in June.

Never Within Reach: part 2

2011-05-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

This article was first published on the In Bed With Maradonna blog.

In part two of Lee Daly's look at professional football in the Republic of Ireland (part one is here), the scale of financial troubles across the league are revealed.

In 2005, Jim Duffy, then manager of Dundee, returned from a scouting trip to Dublin to report that whilst a handful of players were possibly of SPL standard, the high wages they earned made them unattainable, with some of those on view earning around €50,000 a year - roughly equivalent to wages in the English League Two at the same time.

Where did the money come from? Well it certainly wasn’t through gate receipts. The average attendance for the SPL in the 05-06 season (minus the old firm) was a shade under 9,000 with the average attendance in England’s League Two at 4,194. Given clubs in both divisions have continued to struggle with financial difficulties paying around roughly similar wages, the League of Ireland’s average attendance in 2006 of 1,550 should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing.

TV money has never been a big money spinner for the league either with an improved deal announced in 2009 giving only €20,000 to each club in the top division and a €35,000 bonus for clubs featured six or more times.

With expenditure outstripping income by a considerable distance, clubs depended upon the value of their stadiums to keep themselves going. Given the massively inflated Irish property market at the time, as well as the fact that creditors other than the tax man were not willing to call in debts least it look like they were shutting down a football club, this strategy was successful to a point. After every season players would often move around clubs or be let go only for budgetary reasons only to return closer to kick off after budgets had been rejigged.

None of this dealt with the basic insolvency of the clubs and eventually something had to give. Shelbourne had been the biggest spenders so it was no surprise when they succumbed first. The club had agreed a deal with property developer Ossie Kilkenny to finance the club in return for a future option on Tolka Park, the ground Shelbourne owned the lease for and where they had played since 1989. However Kilkenny’s funding of the club was financed through drawing down on the future value of any deal on the stadium and even though Shelbourne won the title in 2006, throughout the season they had been the subject of several wind up orders from the revenue.

Unable to complete a deal for the ground with Kilkenny and weighed down by their debts, the club were eventually denied a license to compete in the Premier Division and relegated to the First Division, where they have remained since 2007.

Drogheda United, league champions in 2007, were put into examinership in 2008 after a stadium relocation deal also went badly wrong for them and relegation to the First Division was to follow two years later. Before kick off for the 2010 season, 2005 champions Cork City were wound up by the Revenue, with a supporters run club entering the First Division. Derry City were also denied a license after it was revealed it maintained hidden contracts with its players. Derry’s holding company was dissolved only for the club to return with the same name but a different ownership structure in the First Division.

Throughout this period Bohemians exercised a modicum of self control financially, and their prudence seemed to have paid off in September 2006 when they secured a deal with the property developer Liam Carroll worth €65 million to sell Dalymount Park, a ground they had played at since 1901, and relocate to a new stadium. They would go on to win the league in 2008 and 2009.

However the move came unstuck after a court case in October 2008, when another developer who had previously negotiated a deal was found to still have legal ownership of a section of the ground. Carroll’s company has since gone bust and the club is now looking to negotiate a settlement with its creditors, including players, which would allow it to keep afloat.

As the Republic of Ireland struggles with the legacy of economic mismanagement and huge levels of public and private debt, there will be little thought given to the plight of football clubs. To a certain extent this is justified, as there are far more pressing concerns for people to concentrate on.

However a recent disagreement over a friendly game involving Barcelona probably demonstrates the frustrations of fans of the League of Ireland perfectly. Limerick FC, a First Division club struggling to stay afloat like so many others, had signed an agreement with Barcelona for a friendly game which would feature Xavi and Lionel Messi. The FAI refused to sanction the game, citing fixture conflicts before eventually stating that under the terms of the agreement between the Association and the clubs it was able to make commercial decisions on their behalf and they had signed a deal with multinational company Endemol which gave them the rights to any friendly with attendance of over 15,000.

Limerick went public with their frustrations, as they had been informed by an FAI spokesperson that the limit was 20,000 rather than 15,000. In addition it also emerged the FAI were negotiating with Barcelona for a friendly of their own, badly needed due to the €45 million the Association had accumulated from building its own stadium. The dispute is currently due to go before the Irish High Court, though at the time of writing there are indications the parties may negotiate a settlement.

It is the sense of powerlessness on the part of fans at the behaviour of the Association and of many of the owners of the clubs that may be the lasting legacy. Professional football in the Republic of Ireland was built on using the economic value of property to prop up ludicrous investments which were never likely to make a return. Even despite the vast sums spent, European success and the mass following it was supposed to bring were never really in reach. Fans, players and administrators now need to negotiate what the limits of football in the Republic should be, and do their best to pick up the pieces of what went before.

Never Within Reach: part 1

2011-05-11T13:21:00.001-07:00

This article first appeared on the In Bed With Maradona blog.

As the economic crisis affects all areas of daily life in the Republic of Ireland, Lee Daly looks at how the football league has suffered and discovers that not everything can be blamed on the politicians.

Football clubs in the Republic of Ireland are in line with the rest of country's institutions right now, in that generally speaking they're broke. Just this past week two players from 2009 League of Ireland (not to be confused with the Irish League, Northern Ireland’s top flight) champions Bohemians started wind-up proceedings against the club for unpaid wages. The Dublin based team are just the latest in a long series of clubs to be riding high in the table whilst battling for their very existence in the courts.

Of the five teams to have won the title since the turn of the century, three (Cork City, Drogheda United and Shelbourne) have been relegated to the First Division as a direct or indirect result of financial troubles, with only last year’s champions Shamrock Rovers and Bohemians not to have suffered the same fate, although if the latter survives in its current form it will be nothing short of a miracle.

Stephen McGuiness, the head of the player’s union, was unforgiving about the club’s actions 'There's been a complete lack of urgency on their part and a lack of communication; when this sort of thing was going on at Drogheda United and Cork City, there was frantic activity. You had kids out selling their PlayStations to raise the money.'

McGuiness is certainly correct about the frantic activity which has surrounded clubs in the midst of financial trouble, although the willingness of fans to sacrifice playing Call of Duty to have a football team to watch is not as thoroughly documented. In the past, even as creditors were pounding at the door demanding to be paid, club owners and officials would remain defiant.

Nowhere was this bravado in the face of disaster more evident then at Shelbourne FC, a Dublin club which this blogger has supported since being taken to games as a 5 year old. In 2006 there was a meeting held by the late Ollie Byrne, the chief executive of Shelbourne. Although they had lead the league from start to finish, the club was in dire straits, with the taxman ready to shut it down and players going unpaid for weeks. However Byrne’s response was to defiantly name a new manager and a handful of players who had agreed to stay on for the next season. He was met by applause from the fans in the room. The majority of those players never took the field and the club was relegated to the First Division by the Football Association of Ireland a few short months afterwards.

In order to understand why so many clubs have faced this nadir it is necessary to examine the very foundations which professional soccer was built on. In 2003 the league switched to a summer season, running from March to October. As most Irish soccer fans follow English Premier League teams, it was argued that more attention would be paid to the domestic league when Manchester United et al were not playing. Many clubs also went to a full time professional set up in an effort to improve fitness levels and attract Irish players playing in England.

This lead to rapid progress in European competitions as Irish teams took advantage of their superior match fitness against continental opponents who had played only a handful of friendly games by the first qualifying rounds in late June. The high point of these efforts was probably Shelbourne’s European adventure in 2004, which saw them beat KR Reykjavik of Iceland and Hadjuk Split of Croatia on the way to the 3rd qualification round of the Champions League. A crowd of nearly 20,000 turned up at Lansdowne Road to see them draw 0-0 against Deportivo La Coruna in a match they could easily have won. Deportivo won the return fixture 3-0 but Irish success continued with victories in early rounds of European competition setting up glamour ties against the likes of Dynamo Kiev, Steua Bucharest and Red Star Belgrade, although no clubs have yet reached the group stages of the Europa League or the Champions League.

At the same time grand plans were made for new stadiums and a merger of the league, which had been run collectively by the clubs, with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) produced an emphasis on marketing and improving the “product”. At the end of 2006, this lead to an expansion of the Premier Division based on criteria on and off the pitch. Dundalk FC, a team from the First Division who had won a promotion/relegation playoff, were not allowed to compete in the Premier Division, losing out to Galway United, due to the potential growth administrators saw in the latter’s business plan.

Galway United’s business plan was largely spearheaded by Nick Leeson, whose speculations on the international stock market had caused the multi million dollar collapse of Barings bank in 1995, an incident immortalized in the Ewan McGregor film “Rogue Trader”. If the idea of a man who had brought down an entire multinational bank being seen as a model of responsible financial planning was bizarre, it paled in comparison to what came next.

A disgruntled Dundalk FC fan stormed FAI headquarters, dousing himself and a Christmas tree in petrol and threatening to self-immolate until his demands were met. The protestor, a taxi driver named Maxi who quickly entered fan folklore, was eventually persuaded to give himself up. He later revealed his lighter was actually without a flint and the whole stunt had been a peaceful protest. You can judge for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uWsk9FQzjg although the clip is unfortunately without sound.

As equally useless as Maxi’s lighter was the financial planning of the clubs. Expenditure was running at unsustainable levels with players earning vast amounts of money, funded by deals secured against the value of stadiums. Part two of this article will be up on Wednesday and will delve into some of the financial recklessness which was eventually to destroy full-time football in the Republic of Ireland.

Colonel Gaddafi, his son, and their complicated relationship with Serie A

2011-05-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

This article first appeared on the Action 81 blog.

With the current situation in Libya in mind, Lee Daly takes a closer look at the Gaddafi family’s ties to Italian Football.

When UN resolution 1973, which authorized a no-fly zone over Libya, was passed, shots rang out in celebration in the western town of Benghazi, a name now synonymous with the rebellion against Colonel Mummar Gaddafi. The military might of the western powers have since been brought to bear on Gaddafi’s tanks and aircraft but it is still too early to tell if the 68 year old will be dislodged from power.

Resolution 1973 spelled trouble for another elderly institution of the Mediterranean, Italian Serie A giants Juventus. The UN Security Council approved the freezing of assets of the Libyan Investment Authority, a front company for investments made by Gaddafi, his family and other members of Libya’s ruling elite. However, it does not cause the club any immediate issues apart from the reputational damage of being associated with a man long known to be an eccentric dictator but whom has now reminded the world he is an exceptionally brutal eccentric dictator.

This is not the only involvement Gaddafi and his family have had with the Italian game. Most of the regime’s investments in football have been driven by Al-Saadi Gaddafi, Mummar’s third eldest son. In 2003, the then 30 year old signed with Perugia, a team owned by Luciano Gaucci, a man who, even by Italian football’s high (low?) standards, could be described as being very shady indeed.

The year before he signed Al Saadi, Gaucci claimed to have sacked Anh-Jung Whan, a member of the Perugia squad who had scored the goal for South Korea that had knocked Giovanni Trapattoni’s Italy out of the 2002 World Cup. Of course Whan was just on loan at the club but good old Luciano was always economical with the truth, a tendency that would lead to him being investigated by the Italian authorities in 2005 after Perugia were declared bankrupt.

It will come as no surprise that Al Saadi’s time at Perugia was far more to do with the payments made to the club then with his abilities as a player. It is thought that his investments into Juventus were made in the hope of receiving an invitation to play for them, but the “old lady” demurred. As a small town club controlled completely by Gaucci, Perugia had no such qualms.

Saadi may have been part of the squad, but the owner still had to plead with manager Serse Cosmi to give Gaddafi game time. Despite being capped for Libya, Al Saadi was a long way off the standard required of a Serie A player and his short run at the club (he played for 15 minutes in total) was mercifully cut short by a failed drugs test and an attack of appendicitis. He would go on to have similar madcap adventures at Udinese and Sampdoria, only getting on the pitch for 11 minutes in total.

Willingness to accept the Gaddafi dime is not limited to just Italian clubs. In July 2004, Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan confirmed that the Gaddafis were interested in investing in the club. At the time, Jordan commented, “If Gaddafi’s money was able to progress Palace and allow them to compete at the top of the tree and be a successful football club, then one would have to take that into consideration”.

Out of interest, this blogger had a look at the Premier League’s ‘fit and proper persons’ test, which is used to determine if an individual can act as a director of a club. The test was highlighted frequently in media reports on Thaksin Shinawatra’s take over of Manchester city in 2007, as Shinawatra has been accused of authorizing shoot to kill operations as well as corruption and fraud in his former role as Prime Minister of Thailand.

Upon a quick examination it is not unreasonable to suggest that despite ordering or facilitating several acts of terrorism which took place on UK soil (including arming the IRA, the Lockerbie Bombings and the murder of PC Yvonne Fletcher) Col. Gaddafi would still have been able to act as a director of Palace if he had invested.

Since the uprising in Libya began, the Gaddafi family’s activities in other areas have come under increased scrutiny. Beyonce, Mariah Carey and Nelly Furtado have come under pressure over fees from private concerts they played for Saif Gaddafi, another of the dictator’s sons. Sir Howard Davies, director of The London School of Economics resigned after it was revealed that Saif had been awarded a PhD for a thesis which was heavily plagiarized.

It is sad to think that artists and academics had neither the courage of their convictions to keep the money they earned from the Gaddafis nor the moral fibre to ask where the money came from in the first place.

By contrast, at least the more accepting attitude of some in football is not as hypocritical. Fans and owners seem indifferent to the source of investments so long as it keeps on coming. However, bankrolling football can come at a cost. Saadi Gaddaffi, and other morally questionable backers of the game such as Ramzan Kadryrov, the President of Chechnya who arranged a game against Brazil in which he took part, are not content with just staying in the stands and soaking up the adulation.

They want to get onto the pitch, reminding the fans and players alike who really holds the power, denying them the escape they may be looking for. No matter what your political or moral viewpoint, that is surely something to be regretted.