Thursday, May 28, 2009
The Match
I was at a talk by John Gray - the thinking man's Lionel Messi - last night so I missed all but the last ten minutes of The Match. Obviously, as a supporter of the only Manchester side with soul, I - the thinking man's Richard Dunne - glowed. There is always this assumption about English Premier League teams - as there was about the national team at the last World Cup - that they are the world's best and that United in particular are unassailable. Well, we know what happened to the worst football team in the world and, from the ten minutes I saw of Barcelona's exquisite performance, I found it hard to believe that clumsy, imagination-free United were even playing the same game. City would, of course, have wiped the floor with the bull-fighting bandits and braggarts of Barca.
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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.
Iniesta and Xavi prove the existence of the Divine.
ReplyDeleteAnd Messi the impossibility of the rest of us ever attaining it.
ReplyDeleteCan you compare Premier League teams with England? Chelsea's mercenaries overpowered Barca. Liverpool murdered Madrid. United, who easily defeated the Italian and Portuguese champions, were like rabbits frozen in the headlights against Barca. Of Supporting Man City undermines your credibility Bryan - a strange cult, the footballing equivalent of Scientology. Brit is right about Iniesta though.
ReplyDeleteCredibility! I have credibility and it is being undermined?! Who knew? Not me
ReplyDeleteCredibility in footballing matters. You were onto something withe national team - though Capello is doing a good job of undermining that too. I played golf yesterday with the blue moon golf society (all fans from a City based talkboard) - a nicer bunch of masochists you couldn't wish to meet. All with vivid memories of Bell, Summerbee and Lee, as well as defeats to Halifax, Bury and Lincoln City in more recent times. The world's richest club - who could only manage 10th in the Premier League. I had my tin hat on and survived the encounter.
ReplyDeleteI loved the close-up of a deflated balloon in the shape of the Cup being waved at Man U in the closing stages, particularly since the UK commentators began the evening by babbling of "greatness" as if we were watching a coronation. They soon changed their tune as Man U had theirs handed to them on a plate. Great match.
ReplyDeleteLeave football to us itellectuals. You lot haven't got a clue.
ReplyDeletePerformance of the season was not Liverpool showing up manyoo at OT, it was Chelsea at the nou camp.
ReplyDeleteRule one, dont let true football teams play football..seems Sir fergie was also in on the greatness crap.
Barca, burnley double 8-1, 100 quid layed, NICE :0)who says you cant predict the future?
Speaking as a Newcastle fan this season hasn't been pleasant but Man U's humbling last night was a rare beam of sunshine.
ReplyDeleteLet me get this straight, you are a god-botherer AND a City fan? You can be one. You can be the other. But surely you can't be both. It is only because of my famously tolerant nature that I will not purge you from my blogroll forthwith. If you support City I suppose you have to believe in supernatural intervention. (Although come to think of it, nothing proves the inefficacy of prayer as much as the failure of City over the decades to produce a decent team.)
ReplyDeleteThere is only one team in Manchester with soul, and that is FC United of Manchester.
ReplyDeleteTo be managed in the not too distant future by Le Dieu, Eric Cantona.
You heard it here first.....
And like Barcelona, FC United is totally owned by the fans, and the shirt sponsorship is donated to a charity.
ReplyDeleteThought tiredess meeting humidity did for United's only way of playing (yes, a deflated inflatable says it all). For more balance in the English leagues - and more opportunity for any Iniestasons - the season should run through the summer.
ReplyDeleteI thought the game showed the power of an early goal, against the run of play of the first ten minutes, to shape the following eighty. That made it even more apposite the way Messi pointed to the heavens on scoring. Joy, creativity, thankfulness ... good combination. Note how Argentina joins China and South Korea (and Brazil and many regions of Africa) as places where evangelical Christianity is booming. The distinctions made by the Guardian piece (Calvinists played off against Pentecostals) are surely much less important than what is common - a very personal devotion to Jesus Christ and his worldwide 'team', with no barriers of race, sex or class. After all these years, as characters like Marx pass from the stage, you have to hand it to the young carpenter from Palestine. Said here because it won't let me see the comments on the previous post. But it was beautiful football too, gloria a Dios.
ReplyDeleteJohn Gray as Messi and the Appleyard as Richard Dunne: Hilarious. But the burning question; the thinking mans Cristiano Ronaldo? Dawkins maybe..
ReplyDeleteCristiano Ronaldo is going to play for Real Madrid.
ReplyDelete