Recently in Football (Soccer, you dope!) Category

I don't have the strength or willpower to write about last night's defeat, so I'll let the always (usually?) spot-on Tom Hall do my talking for me, here.

Sigh.

So....it's about 22 hours until the kickoff of the Champions League Final which for the second time in three years pits the Rossoneri of Ac Milan (Booooo!) against the Reds of Liverpool FC (HUZZAH!). This year the final is taking place in Athens, Greece.

Kick off is at 2:45pm EDT and we'll be watching it at Nevada Smith's.

Here's hoping for a repeat of the following scene:

So, the manager of Chelsea FC, José Mourinho (full name: José Mário dos Santos Mourinho Félix!) is having dog problems. According to the Guardian newspaper, Gullit, his "beloved Yorkshire terrier" (presumably named after the former-Holland and Chelsea player Ruud Gullit).

So, wait...José Mourinho, the multimp[le title-winning, 6th sexiest man in the world, infuriating, mouthy, manager of Chelsea FC, one of the biggest clubs in English football owns a...Yorkie?

My favorite bit from the story?

A dog warden, Lee Nash, said he had been searching in Belgravia with increasing urgency throughout the day. "I've been told to look for a Yorkshire terrier with a red bow," he said. "I don't know how big it is - but even a crow could take a miniature Yorkshire terrier."

BBC coverage of the shocking display of brutality by the Italian Carabinieri during a match between AS Roma and Manchester United in the European Champions League. Now, I hate Man U as much as anyone, but NO ONE deserves this kind of punishment. Yet another example of how far behind the times the Italian police are in terms of crowd control. With the match fixing scandals and dead policemen (although there is now doubt as to the direct cause of his death), both Italian football and their policing methods need a complete overhaul.

Perhaps the most original and technically striking films I saw at Rotterdam was Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno's Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait. A truly original style of documentary, the filmmakers trained 17 cameras of various type on one man during a football (soccer) match between Spanish giants Real Madrid and their league opponents Villareal. That man was Zinédine Zidane, the French maestro of the midfield who is one of, if not the greatest players of his generation.

An integral part of the French triumph in the 1998 World Cup, 'Zizou,' as he is known, retired under somewhat ignominious circumstances following France's loss in the final match of the 2006 Cup but that hardly dulls what was an extraordinary career on the pitch and by isolating the man Zidane attempts to capture something of what it is to be Zidane. For the 80-odd minutes he is on the pitch (Zidane gets ejected for a red card foul before the end of the match), the film does exactly that.

Remember a couple of years ago when I wrote a couple of pieces about racists and fascists in European football? Well, it seems that they still keep getting away with it. Spain national team coach Luis Aragonés has, after almost 2 years, successfully appealed a £2,000 fine for calling Arsenal striker Thierry Henry "that black shit" in an effort to rev up one of his players prior to a match against France. He maintained that he had not meant to offend anyone.

However, his vigorous defense of his comments prior to a friendly match vs. England in Spain led to "a tirade of racist abuse from fans in Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu stadium" against visit black players, according to the Guardian.

According to the paper, "The ruling is definitive and there is no right of appeal, however Aragonés could face a hostile reception when his Spain team play England in a friendly at Old Trafford tonight." Here's hoping so.

Photo © Associated Press

So apparently I had the junk filter on my blog set a little bit too high and several legitimate comments were deemed junk by the filter and thus were not emailed to me for approval. If the comment is by a legitimate person and not a spam ad for viagra, xanax, online poker, etc. I am generally of a mind to publish them and then respond to them, if needed. Thus, I apologize to Claire, Tully, Dickmac, Manohla Dargis, Richard Schenkman and others whose comments were inadvertently left off the blog. As a bit of a "make good," I will post them all in full here, complete with links to the original posts and I will, over the next day or so, reply to some of them on the original posts, themselves. Even the following insane, moronic and anti-Semitic rant by "Claire" (whose email address I was extremely tempted to post...):

You stupid kike, CNN was NOT celebrating Castro's illness, the cubans [sic] in Miami were. Why? Castro has tortured and killed thousands of Cubans during the past 40 years, that is why. CNN was just reporting their joy over that dictator's possible death. Don't you dirty jews [sic] have dozens of hollocaust [sic] movies coming out every year? should [sic] people feel happy about concentration camps? should people mourn Hitler's death? get real asswipe!
From a post entitled: CNN International - Offensive Ghouls

Well Claire, you're wrong, stupid and a bigot and really, I shouldn't waste my time responding to anyone who starts a comment with "you stupid kike" and includes the insane ramblings that you do....so I won't. Engaging people like you in debate is like trying to convince a chair that it's a butterfly. It's just not going to happen. Just crawl back into your hole and please...don't breed. Out of curiosity, does anyone else see the inherant contradiction in someone attacking Castro's perceived human rights violations while at the same time calling me a "dirty Jew?"

Which brings us to our next comment. Click the link below to see Richard Schenkman's far more rational, eloquent, educated, reasonable and intelligent response to this post: It's Time To Go, Joe: An Open Letter To Senator Joe Lieberman and the rest of the comments I missed over the past 6 months or so....

So it's before the game and we're all pretty much walking on air (and beer & brats, natch!). It's an hour before my first World Cup match and I feel good. Even Czech Man couldn't bring me down.

At every stadium and Fan Fest, outside the security gates, was a poster which listed all the items and behavior that was prohibited inside.

Apparently in addition to weapons, drugs and bull horns, also on the prohibited list are toilet paper, luggage, dogs, martinis and ninjas. The last one is just plain weird.

"Major Strosser has been shot......Round up the usual suspects."

"Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

These two lines are the last two in a long list of sublimely quotable ones in a film that might just have more classic (and misquoted) lines in film history. What does this have to do with the title of this entry? Well, as I wrote these words, I was on my way to Dusseldorf, Germany (by way of London, Brussels and Cologne...don't ask) to attend the World Cup. Upon boarding my overstuffed American Airlines flight and checking the schedule of the films on offer, I noticed that they had wisely added a classics channel and guess what was playing... Yup. Casablanca. On my way back, it's The Maltese Falcon. How cool is that?

The thing is, I'm not on my way to a film festival which is where most of you are used to seeing me or reading me. This is a much more exciting trip than your garden variety film festival or even Cannes, Sundance or Berlin, to be honest. This is the World Cup. The granddaddy of all world sporting events. Simply put, the FIFA World Cup is the biggest, most exciting and most important sporting event in the world. It's undoubtedly the world's most important sporting and cultural gathering and it's about the US got on board.

Above: The author (center) surrounded by friends Matt Bourke and Leo Simmons in Gelsenkirchen before the Czech Republic ripped us a new one.

Too funny, this bit from The Guardian's football coverage in February of 2004:

"On Saturday Bolton substituted Giannakopoulos for Ba. Is the longest name substitution for the shortest ever?" asks Brendan Lyons.

"Wayne Carlisle has scored all three of Bristol Rovers goals against Carlisle United to help the Gas win both their matches 2-0 and 1-0," says Diego Black. "Is this the first case of a player scoring all his clubs goals in a season against a club which shares his surname?"

Send your questions and answers to knowledge@guardian.co.uk

According to multiple reports, England international and Anfield hero Michael Owen is days (if not hours) away from returning to the site of his greatest goal scoring triumphs. You can click through on the links above to see what the specifics are, but the really important part of all this is, the former 'Wonder Boy' (now all of 25) is likely to be returning to Liverpool.

Rumors are also flying that the Reds are considering selling recent signing and fan favorite Djibril Cisse. As much as I am a fan of the Owen news, this is not welcome speculation. Say it ain't so!

For England, Copenhagen's Parken Stadion was last night "but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours." Clearly, Gerrard, Lampard, Owen et al. have of late--but wherefore I know not--lost all (their) mirth. And what of others in England's squad? "...what is this quintessence of dust? Ashley Cole delights not me: no, nor Joe neither.

A female streaker scores a goal and a fantastic one it is, too!

Like sands through an hourglass, these are the days of...Michael Owen. With many big name transfers already completed, including Luis Figo to Inter, Robinho and Baptista to Real Madrid (see where I'm going with this?) Bolo and Momo to Liverpool and Shaun Wright-Phillips to Chelski, the biggest move still on the fire is, of course, Wonder Boy's possible return to the place of his birth as a footballer, Anfield. Will it happen? We'll see...