The View from the Spaghetti Factory (proper redesign coming soon!)

And while we’re on that subject, did someone forget to tell Mascherano? Great player, but just learn to keep your trap shut, Javier. Hurrah for a more robust approach from Premiership referees and here’s to more consistent support from the FA.

FA to throw book at Mascherano (Guardian)

I’m not sure whether Rafa Benitez is just loyally protecting his player or whether he didn’t see the incidents properly, but it was pretty clear from the TV coverage that Mascherano urged the referee to “fuck off” on at least two occasions… after his initial booking and later in the game. His decision then to appoint himself as spokesman for Torres was obviously the last straw for Steve Bennett :-)

Oh dear, another gem from everyone’s favourite manager in the Cloud Cuckooland Premier Division…

Nice gesture, shame about the short-term memory, eh? Find the TV footage of every unsuccessful Man Utd penalty appeal this season, and I guarantee you’ll see the bulging eyes and furious ranting of Rooney, Carrick, Ronaldo etc.

Even worse, though, was the behaviour of Lampard, Terry and Ashley Cole last week, protesting the yellow card given to Cole after his reckless challenge on Alan Hutton. A couple of inches higher, and he could have shattered Hutton’s kneecap, but his lack of remorse was astonishing. Even worse was his refusal to face Mike Riley as he was being booked, turning his back on him like a spoiled schoolkid. Why did this not earn him a second yellow card?

I don’t know whether the root cause is a lack of respect from the players, lack of consistency from the referees or a lack of consistent support given to the referees by the FA, but I know one thing… Fabio Capello was at that Tottenham-Chelsea match, and when the camera cut to him during the Ashley Cole tantrum, he had a face like thunder.

As Arsenal take on the ageing glitterati of AC Milan tonight, one player will unfortunately be missing from the Rossoneri line-up. Yes, Football’s Daftest Goalkeeper, Mr Nélson de Jesus Silva, otherwise known as Dida, will not be there.

Dida, you may remember, endeared himself to Celtic fans earlier this year. Having been lightly tapped on the shoulder by a pitch-invading scally, he briefly gave chase, only to remember his proud Brazilian heritage, throwing himself melodramatically to the ground, clutching his face in agony as he took his last, halting breaths.

Amazingly brought back to life by… well, a two match ban from his own club for being such a drama queen, Dida has now been sidelined through yet another crushing blow. During last week’s match against Parma, the poor love had to be stretchered off after suffering muscle spasms in his back. The unfortunate rigours of being a professional footballer, eh? Well, not really… he was sitting on the bench at the time.

I’m not sure how much you can credit genetics for your choice of leisure interest, but my obsession with football doesn’t strike me as being particularly unexpected. My grandad, Bill Burnikell, played professionally before WWII (for Lincoln City, Bradford and Aldershot) and later coached teams in Sweden, Chile and Sudan.

Enough general family history, though; this is one of those “isn’t it a small world?” musings. Up at my parents’ place, we’ve got a whole load of grandad-related artefacts, mostly relating to football and/or Sweden. One of them is an issue of “Match”, a Swedish football magazine, dating from 1961.

This particular issue is largely devoted to Degerfors IF, my grandad’s last club in Sweden, who were flying high (especially for a small-town team from Värmland) in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s top division. It’s great to see his picture in the squad list centrefold feature, but I was surprised to see a promising young player called Tord Grip… now best known as Sven-Göran Eriksson’s deputy at Lazio, England and Manchester City. A browse through the club’s chronology shows that Sven was also briefly a coach at Degerfors.

I’ve scanned a couple of pages so far; more to come soon…

Swedish “Match” magazine, 1961 on Flickr

Ha! When I wrote that last football post, I had no idea quite how effective the England team would be in sealing McClaren’s fate.

England 2 - 3 Croatia

They were absolutely bloody woeful. Out of the starting eleven, Joe Cole was competent (although nowhere near his full potential) and Peter Crouch was excellent, doing everything that could be expected of him. However, the lone striker in a 4-5-1 formation is supposed to be knocking balls down to the attacking midfielders, and they just weren’t there. The introduction of Beckham added a touch of class (as well as the necessary support for Crouch in a more comfortable 4-4-2) while Defoe contributed a little extra, not least earning the penalty.

Every other player was either under par or utterly incompetent. Croatia must have wondered whether they’d mixed up their flights to Skopje and London… while Macedonia battled hard for their win, England played like international minnows, leaving Croatia players to run in acres of space and firing loose balls into dangerous positions. This was not a difficult qualification group for a major football nation, despite the improved form of Israel and Russia, nor can England blame bad luck or dodgy refereeing. To drop thirteen points in ten games is inexcusable. Croatia looked good, but barely seemed to be trying. England created their own downfall.

As I write this, McClaren has not yet resigned or been sacked, but it’s almost inevitable that he’ll be clearing his desk at some point during the next couple of days (if not, there’s something *really* wrong at the FA). Intriguingly, the BBC reveals that Marcello Lippi, former trophy-hogging coach of Juventus and Italy, has turned down the job of manager at Birmingham City. If I was in a senior position at the FA, I think I’d interpret this as a sign. There’s your next England manager, right there. Not only is he hugely successful, he also smokes cigars. On the touchline! How much cooler can a manager be? The man’s a legend… let’s get him!

(Oh, and if you’re on Facebook, join my Lippi for England group)

Steve McClaren’s comedy tenure as England coach is slowly approaching the punchline. He now insists both that England will qualify for Euro 2008 and that he’ll keep his job. Well, well. A bit of bullish confidence on behalf of his players is commendable, but what about the second claim?

There certainly seem to be vague suggestions of hints emanating from FA HQ, to the effect that things aren’t entirely hopeless for Second Choice Steve. To confuse matters, the laughably pompous John Terry has backed McClaren this week. Terry’s last foray into the world of football politics, you may recall, was (allegedly!) to stir up the dressing room mutiny that led to Jose Mourinho’s resignation from Chelsea.

With the final (and possibly academic) qualifier against Croatia looming, the likely absences of Rooney and Terry assume greater importance than they deserve. Statistically, England do perfectly well without either of them, thank you very much. However, McClaren’s constant inability to find a Plan B is obvious once more… “We need as many big-game players as possible,” he says, completely forgetting the lessons he should have learned in the recent string of 3-0 victories. We need a balanced, solid TEAM, Steve.

Personally, I don’t think McClaren’s job should depend on England qualifying. Dropping 10 points in a relatively easy qualification group is a good enough reason to dismiss him immediately after the Croatia game. If, by the grace of statistical permutation, England do qualify, it will be *despite* McClaren’s efforts, and there will still be time for a proper coach to assert his influence before the tournament starts.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s position in the Real World has often seemed tenuous in the past, but no more so than several other characters in the rarefied world of top-flight football. His latest outburst, reported in the Observer last week, is particularly daft, though… they’re going to be talking of alcoholism and mental breakdown again!

Setting the scene, Michel Platini, former French midfield hero, was recently elected president of UEFA. His initial plans for the Champions League system were pretty radical, but he’s now aiming merely to transfer one of each country’s allotted places to their domestic cup winners (who would previously have played in the UEFA Cup). Sir Alex doesn’t like the sound of that…

Or let’s make that the quarter-final, shall we? Or is he suggesting that both Tottenham and Blackburn are “nobody”? Granted, Chelsea had a relatively easy passage to the FA Cup final last season, while Man Utd played Premiership clubs in every round, but that’s how random draw competitions work. Ah, but don’t forget… along with managers of the other G-14 clubs, Sir Alex doesn’t like the risk of a random draw. That’s why the Champions League was created in the first place… to remove the plucky little hopefuls as early as possible, leaving the moneyspinning later rounds to Europe’s biggest and richest clubs.

Overlooking Ferguson’s breathtaking arrogance, his fears are unfounded, for two reasons.

Firstly, what does it matter if the FA Cup winners gain their Champions League place more easily (supposedly) than the Premiership champions? For eighteen of the last twenty years, the FA Cup has been won by one of those “big four” teams (Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) anyway!

Secondly, do the hopeful little minnows from Europe’s less fashionable leagues *really* pose such a threat to our noble heroes? The days of Liverpool 10 Oulu 1 are long gone, but apart from the occasional Rosenborg 2 Milan 1 the teams who progress to the last eight of the European Cup are generally from England, Italy, Spain and Germany.

For what it’s worth, I’m delighted that Platini has battled through the old boys’ network to become president of UEFA. I’d love to see him do what he really wants to do, which may well be to limit the Champions League to league champions and cup winners, giving equal places to every UEFA country, but he’s going to have a battle on his hands. The big clubs do so hate the idea of competition.

Iraq 1 - 0 Saudi Arabia (AFC Asian Cup final)

The 1998 World Cup-winning French team was praised as an example of diversity, featuring players from various ethnic and national backgrounds, and hey, look… the victorious Iraq team is made up of Shia and Sunni Muslims and Kurds. Some of us already know that football, despite its looming reputation for related violence, can be a force for good in society. As usual, though, the peace-keeping and “liberating” forces have missed a trick.

I’ll leave it to Bill Shankly to sum up…

In his new book “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” Nassim Nicholas Taleb discusses a phenomenon of the way we deal with our increasingly complex world. We’re hopeless at predicting major events, but we still analyse those events in the belief that we’ll be ready next time. Of course, there will never be an identical “next time”, because there’s so much randomness in these events. The lessons of 9/11 didn’t prevent Bali or 7/7, and the proven success of Google didn’t inspire us all to bet on the success of Myspace.

On a (slightly) more banal level, football is full of Black Swans. At the start of 2007, when Lincoln City were sitting comfortably in the automatic promotion positions, I was confident. After four unsuccessful attempts in the play-offs, this time they’d do it the easy way. Their scoring rate and away form were unmatched in the division (and possibly the whole Nationwide League)… why would that change?

Well, it changed. A dismal January-March run saw them slip out of the automatic promotion places and into the play-off places, remaining in the top five only by dint of their stunning autumn strike rate. Like all armchair punters, I analysed and compared, trying to spot the pattern which would explain this dip in form and produce the magic formula to turn things around. And of course there was no magic formula… despite all the tweaks to both attack and defence, the players who had performed so well in late 2006 dug in once again and won the necessary points during the last three matches. The Black Swan of the dip in form was followed by the Black Swan of the rediscovery of form.

So, to summarise, it’s play-off time again, and while Bristol Rovers (powering into the play-offs at the last gasp) aren’t the team I wanted to face at the semi-final stage, there’s no point reading too much into the fixtures. With two games to play before the Wembley final, there’s plenty of time for another Black Swan or two.

We already know that some European police forces have a rather more… let’s say “physical” approach than our own Boys in Blue. So when I heard about the trouble at the Man Utd - Roma match last week, the claims of “over-reaction” rang true. Various reports (including BBC Radio 4 news) spoke of innocent families being trapped at the mercy of the ruthless Italian police. I was ready to fume at length about the irony of the situation… while Italian football has hit yet another grim low point, hooliganism in England has been vastly reduced since the bad old days of the 1970s and 80s. And yet we’re still judged according to that outdated reputation. Who are they to batter our fans when they can’t keep their own house in order?

And then I saw the TV footage.

For all I know, there may well have been innocent families trying to enjoy the match, but they weren’t evident. What I saw was a couple of hundred bullish men facing up to the Italian police, their chests and chins thrust forward in the “CAAAAHN THEN YOU FAKKIN WANKAHS!” stance, beer-reddened faces glistening in the floodlights. I’m no expert in crowd behaviour, but I’d suggest that’s probably not the best way to stay out of trouble.

We’ve become smug about our gentrified football industry with its prawn sandwiches, celebrity guests and sponsored family enclosures. However, there’s a danger that we’re blind to a new emergence of violence. Alex Ferguson isn’t always a reliable commentator on wider football matters; the protective leniency he shows to his own players is like that of a proud grandfather. However, I thought he was right on the mark when he claimed that a “mocking culture” in our society was behind the negative behaviour of England fans in the recent Euro 2008 qualifiers.

It doesn’t take a huge psychological leap to see how that could be connected with the prevalent “Me Me ME!” attitude in England… and from there to the self-righteous, seething arrogance of that small minority of Man Utd fans at the Roma match. Far from being unfairly victimised by over-zealous policemen, some of our football “fans” are starting to believe that they have a divine right to set their own standards of behaviour.

Can readers suggest a well-known London resident and friend of George Bush who is also guilty of this, I wonder? ;-)