Monday, August 13, 2007
City: More than just a Massage
So the pattern of the Premiership is set - Manchester City fighting it out with Chelsea, Newcastle and Arsenal for the top spot. Yes, the enigmatic Swede and the mysterious Thai have shown they can do more than massages. They have worked wonders with the temperamental boys in blue, largely by replacing them all. In the light of these developments I feel I must cancel my resolution to abandon City, always the neurotic's team of choice. Go, Sven, say I, and go, whatever your name is Mr Mysterious Thai.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
All is now clear; come next May, Sven will lift the premiership trophy, declare that he intends to keep an unchanged team for the FA Cup Final, add that it will be good to put two more trophies alongside the Carling Cup, and conclude by announcing he will prepare for an assault on the Champions League by buying Rooney and Ronaldo, and Fergie will retire with a physog betraying his links back to Ghengis Khan. Ah well, It is August, a time for dreaming.
ReplyDeletehaven't a clue what it's all for.
ReplyDeletebut watching the match reviews and post match interviews, I wonder where all the intelligent footballers are? surely there can't be a correlation between intellectual shortcomings and ball control? I mean, the money's not bad and you get to retire at 30 - why haven't the brains caught up with this yet?
the brains all appear to be playing cricket and rugby. answers please. on a postcard.
Are you mad, Ian? You can't have intelligent footballers, the world would make no sense at all.
ReplyDeleteOh dear Ian. This is where we wheel out the old story about Socrates (who played for Brazil). And Rooney is a Mozart compared to Ollie Barclay's Salieri. What has (academic) intelligence got to do with it? As PJ O'Rourke once said (some years ago now it should be added), Beverley Hills is filled with millionaire ignoramuses whilst in Russia chess grandmasters are boiling stones for soup.
ReplyDeleteWith regard to City, showing encouragement to my Blues-supporting golfing partner following Saturday's classy demolition of West Ham, he excitedly told me to put a bet on them for the title at 1000-1. City fans, eh? Deluded, manic depressives. Forget the fact they've got Pol Pot running the show - three points at Upton Park and they're world beaters.
intelligence has, it seems, got little to do with it - that's my point. 99% of footballers would struggle to make anything of themselves outside of the game but it shouldn't follow that at least some intelligent boys can't make it in football.
ReplyDeleteeven the pundits are dullards. (okay, so most of them are ex-footballers, I realise.)
But they are intelligent Ian. I've played with some pretty good players and I've been astonished by their positional sense, their tactical foresight and the downwright simplicity they show in making it all look so easy (think for example of the sublime Zidane). And Match of the Day hosted by Clive James and Martin Amis might be just too arch, too knowing. Could boost the ratings on a beleagured BBC4 though.
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way Bryan, I've told myself (and others) that I'd had it with football, its Tevez nonsense, bungs, roastings, idiotic chants, crazy prices etc etc. But then the first day comes along and I was hooked right away. Wins for Newcastle, Sunderland, Everton, City and Blackburn took us back to a relative age of innocence - the 50's - when your Russian and American billionaire investors were figments of a diseased imagination. Good the see those great old clubs doing well(and of these only City in foreign ownership).
ReplyDeletegod forbid, we don't need the ratings boosted on BBC4. BBC3 is another matter - I have no idea what that's for. I wouldn't be surprise if no one at the beeb really knew either.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, I've had an abridged education, but you're talking about a talent which I don't think is the same as intelligence. I mean, it's more like Rain Man out there - it's clever but not much use in the real world. They're basically freaks, and the rest of us are paying to watch a 90 minute freak show.
ReplyDeleteyou understand how it's done though your body won't let you do it - they can do it but do you think they understand how it's done?
I went to a presentation for BBC3 when it was launched (not for fun, believe me) and was told that it's aimed at some staggeringly narrow demographic - something like 29-34. I thought at the time Whaaaat? I still do.
ReplyDelete