Quotes of the Moment

“They play into our newly staked-out fort so casually it makes us swallow our collective breath momentarily, before we catch ourselves and spring to defence. But you can’t get the ball off them, so your only hope is to force them down a dead end. But then they just go back and start again, maintaining total control the whole time. On the odd occasion they do cough it up, they swarm on you, throwing a coat over your head and picking your lunch money from your pocket. It’s relentless and strangely non-aggressive. I am reminded of <a href=”http://www.62westwallabystreet.co.uk/feathers%20mcgraw.jpg”>the face of the penguin in that Wallace & Gromit film</a>. (<a href=”http://normaneinsteins.com/20/longplayer/”>Fredorrarci/Norman Einstein’s</a>)

July 2010

“Fifa’s MO is to ensure the country’s statute book has been made comfortable for its arrival, take over almost entirely for the period of time needed to siphon out the money, before pulling up anchor and moving on to the next host organism. Naturally, we all wish Brazil the best of luck – but the time has surely come to ask who regulates the regulator. Perhaps it’s one for the UN, assuming Fifa isn’t about to take its first seat on the security council.” (Marina Hyde/The Guardian)

“The machinery that is still so eagerly hoisting the fixed, looming California-grilled Beckham visage on to its elite soapbox represents an entire multi-chapter segment in the story of Everything That’s Wrong With English Football. Craven obsession with celebrity. Insatiable centralised revenue-chasing (what was he actually doing in South Africa, anyway?). And, above all, a sense of congealment, of a handsomely branded stasis. These things, you feel, aren’t about to go away just yet either.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

“Heskey seems like he’d take better advantage of an MLS berth than Henry, a player New Yorkers are going to have to get used to seeing standing outside the 18 yard box with hands on hips, staring at his midfielders like an impatient Parisian flaneur waiting for his bill at the cafe.” (Richard Whittall/A More Splendid Life)

“Great teams in other sports beat their opponents. Great teams in soccer beat both their opponents and the game. That sounds like a critique of soccer unless you’ve seen for yourself what a marvelous thing this can be.” (Brian Phillips/Slate)

June 2010

“In England, being shit at the football is the stuff of jokey tabloid headlines and self-serving coming of age novels. In France, it is a “moral crisis.” And it’s ridiculous, simply for the same reason that many French journalists remarked that the multi-ethnic banlieue team that won in 1998 and 2000 was a symbol of France’s glorious new multicultural era.

“The social problems in modern France were as rampant then as now, minus the more high-profile rioting of recent years (the prophetic La Haine was produced in 1995). A World Cup and a Euro didn’t kill it off. Neither does France’s exit mean France is headed for some internal social reckoning. At best that is the thinking of romantics, at worst, nationalist reactionaries. Let France be terrible at soccer, let the jokes ring out about Anelka’s little coup d’etat. But don’t drag your social political op-eds into the sports section, lest your social politics become mere sport.” (Richard Whittall/A More Splendid Life)

“Part of the pleasure of the last few days has been talking to many people who aren’t really following the World Cup and are not particularly into soccer, but are urgently interested in whether the foul called against us last week was, indeed, justified. Today’s call, and what followed, gave U.S. fans the opportunity to feel at aggrieved and triumphant — a heady cocktail — and, more to the point, provided the team to truly show us it’s soul.

“There, deserving fans of a team that brought us to the brink of hell and then saved us through it’s 94 minutes of play, we were precisely — for the briefest of moments — in the right place, glowing in a moment that only this oddest of human inventions can create. We’ll carry that with us for a long, long time.” (Laurent Dubois/Soccer Politics)

“As Adam Gopnik once wrote in a New Yorker essay on the World Cup: ‘Soccer was not meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be experienced. The World Cup was a festival of fate – man accepting his hard circumstances, the near certainty of his failure. There is after all, something familiar about a contest in which nobody wins and nobody pots a goal. Nil-nil is the score of life.’” (Chris Cox/The Guardian)

“French football needs some kind of revolution. French society too. For somehow, as in 2002, there was a strange imbrication between the way the team played and the way France feels right now. “It’s power to the crazies!” a friend of mine exclaimed in 2008: Domenech and Sarkozy, running things in a way that is supposed to smell of panache and creativity but instead just reeks of decay.

“Maybe the French team can start the revolution next week against South Africa. Here’s my suggestion: go on strike. Let South Africa score as many goals as they want, 10, 20, whatever, enough to go into the next round on goal differential. That would be a gesture of courage and solidarity worth of the days of 1998.” (Laurent Dubois/Soccer Politics)

“You will be told that the game was dull, turgid, abject, nothing to text home about. You will be told wrongly. This may not be a team that ‘practically have the best players in the world at every position’, as Patrice Evra claimed (listen here, Podge, no-one plays the Bendtner Role like Bendtner), but they do possess the ability that ought to make them one of the favourites. That such talent flounders so is grim and thrilling. One’s inner aesthete may be pining for some good play, but this is almost as beguiling. One doesn’t connect with it partially, but not strictly impartially either: it’s the fascination of a natural phenomenon. The pleasure one takes from this is not schadenfreude: it’s the beauty of decay. It’s like witnessing a fruit rotting in time-lapse.” (Fredorrarci/Sport is a TV Show)

“I’m stuck between wanting to give the world the middle finger and thank it for inviting us to the party. We’re not shit, but I’m not sure I know it.” (Stefan Fatsis/The Goal Post)

“Why am I tired of those who correctly point out all of the flaws and limits of the choice to host such events [as the World Cup]? Mainly because they seem to be predicated on what I think is a seriously flawed assumption: that other realms of human activity actually are governed by some sense of reason and equity. It’s as if the World Cup is somehow a unique case of human beings organizing things in a way that defies reason, and is driven instead by myths, rootless utopian visions, foolhardy certainties, and saddled by the corruption of power and greed. It’s as if its the only place where lots of effort is expended in often illusory and ineffective quests whose results are never those promised or intended.” (Laurent Dubois/Soccer Politics/The Politics of Football)

May 2010

“No wonder Abramovich is such a fan of Platini’s law; it stops a potential rival mimicking his method and busting through the glass ceiling. Now he is on the right side of it, Abramovich wants the whole thing double-glazed and reinforced.” (Martin Samuel/Daily Mail)

“Look, I know soccer boots are important (see Cruyff’s Adidas versus Holland’s Puma). And I think it’s a good ad on its own merits. But it doesn’t capture anything interesting about soccer. The tournament is about countries, rivalries, ordinary fans, not how fans go mad over the actions of individual players. That’s what separates it from baseball. I get that the ad is supposed to be hyperbolic, but the strain it extrapolates from (obsession with individual players) doesn’t really exist in the World Cup. Even with Maradona’s brilliance, you still need Barruchaga, you still need those white and blue shirts, you still need France and Italy, not Ribery wearing a featureless blue shirt and Cannavaro wearing a featureless white.” (Richard Whittall/A More Splendid Life)

“They say there’s nothing worse than seeing a grown man cry but there is. Seeing a grown man in an acrylic devil costume cry. Seeing 35 grown men cry. In front of 20,000 fans. And live on television.” (Sid Lowe/The Guardian)

“In a way you can admire the furiously literal-minded shamelessness of Portsmouth, their utter immersion in the crackhead-scale appetites of the Premier League. While also feeling a bit sorry for the FA Cup, with its foot-bath-level reservoir of dwindling magic, still standing by trying to look dignified and vital while an imported drama of opposites takes place on its lawn.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

“I just wish that Italian fans weren’t stuck in the 19fucking80s where angry people search for the most inflammatory thing they can think of to shout and let rip with no thought for the consequences. It was noticeable that from ‘inoffensive’ insults, people descended into racism as tempers frayed – as though it was this latent force ready to burst out under sufficient provocation. I hate it, it makes me feel sick & dirty and in the end I stopped caring about losing the cup. I don’t have any answers to offer right now, just a kind of nausea & despair.” (Spangly Princess)

“In the Daily Mail Chelsea and Manchester City are being “offered the chance to sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic”, in much the same way the Mill was this week “offered the chance” to buy a sliver of an as yet unbuilt Andalucian golf-carpark resort via an exclusively mailshot glossy mag idiot-lure.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

“Madrid are too conceited to admit that, if they fail to match Barcelona once more this season, they need Mourinho more than he needs them. This is not an impressive start. There should at least be respect…Mourinho will bring success to Madrid, as he has to every club, but by the end they won’t be able to stand each other. Too alike, you see.” (Martin Samuel/Daily Mail

“When you think of your new USMNT jersey you don’t think, sweet, I’m going to go masturbate now. Well, ok, maybe you do. But I would contend that this is perhaps not the sort of brand association [Nike's use of a scantily clad model to sell the new jersey] that the USSF would want to promote…Oh well, at least they didn’t paint the jersey on. We’ll give them a few days on that one.” (Fake Sigi)

29 April 2010: “As Eduardo Galeano astutely noted, soccer exists in both sun and shadow… I wanted the match to end differently, but was not sad with the way it ended, and that included Mourinho’s absurd (and hilarious) post-match antics. In a bizarre way, this lunatic is entitled to his lunacy because his discipline and (here it comes again) bloody technique are so impeccable. He’s a monster. I love/hate him. I loved/hated Inter Milan’s performance to exactly the same degree that I love/hate everything about the sport of football. Whatever makes a solider sad will make a killer smile. That could be Jose Mourinho’s motto.” (Zach Dundas/True/Slant)

28 April 2010: “It is also hard to see Bayern as favourites to beat Inter, who seem more structurally sound and have a cold-eyed winning momentum about them. Barcelona are capable of overturning any deficit, but there is still that gathering narrative sense that this season’s competition is about José Mourinho settling scores. Van Gaal, previously his master at Barcelona, is the final remaining obstacle in a campaign of almost outrageous personal vindication.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

17 April 2010: “When Tiger Woods played at the Masters people kept saying what a great comeback it would be if he went on and won it. Perhaps we should now be saying the same thing about Terry, the one person for whom Chelsea’s title win does actually represent a compelling personal tale of defiance. And who will, in time, turn out to provide the defining image of the title race: specifically those recurrent shirt-less photos of him celebrating victory, always cropped at the waist and thus giving an impression of Terry playing out the late stages of the season entirely in the nude, still defiantly tumescent and horribly unembarrassable.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

11 April 2010: “Whereas Barca had ten outfield players comfortable in possession, each capable of both retaining the ball sensibly and playing a more ambitious pass, Real looked almost anachronistic in how compartmentalized their team played. It seems a ludicrous thing to say, but Real’s problem was that their players simply filled their job description. The defenders defended, the defensive midfielders tackled, the winger ran up and down, the creative players tried their tricks and the striker looked to score. That’s pretty much the idea of football, but they were up against a side whose attackers could defend, and whose defenders could attack.” (Zonal Marking)

6 April 2010: “The people genuinely concerned about ‘English football’ as an entity tend to operate much further down the ladder, addressing the issues faced by lower- and non-league clubs who have real problems. If SKY and its peers wish to judge the health of English football on how many of our clubs are in the top four in Europe in any given season, have at it. But the real worries are far lower and, frankly, much more important.” (Chris N./Twofootedtackle)

5 April 2010: “As this new dream team [Barcelona] strives to become one of history’s great ensembles the question will arise in many high-stakes games: what do the players think they are there for, what is their raison d’etre? To captivate, certainly. But this brilliance must obliterate, too, it must crush.” (Paul Hayward/The Guardian)

31 March 2010: “In their early transitional days Arsenal were all creativity and no resilience. They lacked a defiant, muscular streak. Now they are all indignation and are much less pretty. They are adversity-addicts who had to be tailed off in the Premier League title race before fighting their way back into it. This need for difficulty, this urge to be pushed around before responding, is hammering at the hearts of their followers, who left this stadium feeling they had witnessed a kind of moral triumph.” (Paul Hayward/The Guardian

30 March 2010: “The gift of our age is to watch Messi almost as a wraparound experience, and to see the exasperation of those he leaves in vapour trails: an almost comic despair to accompany our delight.” (Paul Hayward/The Guardian)

29 March 2010: “”This warning, however, needs to be issued to any politician, no matter what colour rosette they wear, who thinks that they can simply buy our votes with cheap promises that they have no intention of seeing through – we’re not as stupid as you probably think we are, and anything you say about our game will be thoroughly scrutinised before you get our vote.” (Ian/twohundredpercent)

24 March 2010: “It is a decision Sevilla hoped never to have to make –- the idea of a genuine Sevillista, obedient and committed, at the helm was seductive –- but it is one they now they think they should have made sooner. Jiménez disagreed. ‘If I thought me leaving would help sort things out for Sevilla, I would go myself – I wouldn’t wait to be sacked,’ he snapped. ‘I am screwed … screwed … very screwed … screwdísimo.’” (Sid Lowe/The Guardian)

22 March 2010:”But it is Messi, ball at his feet, running at defenders like a clockwork mouse darting between the legs of narcoleptic cats, who makes Barca what they are at the moment.” (Derek Robson/Robbo Robson’s Blog)

17 March 2010: “I’m not trying to be cute in any way by saying that since the day I realized I would never play football (soccer) for Ireland, everything has just kind of sucked. That day really, really hurt. It was wet and grey and everything just smelled like defeat. There have been many tears, many awful grey days and many defeats since but going to crowded smelly bars and paying 20 bucks to watch Ireland labor to overcome some fledgling eastern european outpost nation is still of the utmost importance to me. I’m still the same guy who ran home from school that day to see Ashley Grimes put us one up against the Spanish. I would have given it all to wear that shirt; I just didn’t have any talent.” (WhenIsADoorNotHalfADoor)

16 March 2010: “A publisher once asserted that a biography of David Beckham would be a biography of Britain. She meant that it would tell the story of how footballing fame could be industrialised by fusing it to the adjoining worlds of pop and fashion, and then constructing retail messages that would be adjusted as the narrative rolled along.” (Paul Hayward/The Guardian)

14 March 2010 Banned phrases about Wayne Rooney:
“1. Without doubt one of the top three players in the world. If not the best right now.
2. Just 12 goals short of Cristiano Ronaldo’s sensational record haul of 42.
3. Scores a lot with his head you know.
4. Maybe something to do with his bald spot ha ha ha!
5. Carrying a nation’s hopes on his broad boxer’s shoulders.
6. Fatherhood. Settled down. Just really enjoying his football.
7. The Croxteth Maradona, Merseyside Pele, Lancashire Psukas, urban North-West England Di Stefano.
8. Anything else similar that’s been rattling around your head for the last two weeks and you’d be glad to see the back of.” (Barney Ronay/The Guardian)

8 March 2010: “UEFA are already testing additional referees who are running around in and behind the penalty box and get major calls wrong. But maybe you can put them into protective gear, let them sit inside the goal and have them stare at the goal line for 90 minutes? Ten years later, a scientific study will then publish the negative long term effects to the referee’s mental health and declare this job inhumane. But at least we’ll have 10 years worth of slightly improved goal decisions.” (World Cup Blog)

4 March 2010: “I took a few mates to a game a couple of years ago, and we all stood behind the dugout on London Road terrace, within earshot of the big man, Keith Alexander. Danny: ‘Keith, Keith, get Gritton off, he’s [rude word].’ Keith turned to Danny and said: ‘You’re not wrong’. Five minutes later Gritton got the curly finger. RIP Keith” (Chris Mawdsley, letter to The Fiver, The Guardian)

1 March 2010: “The England team itself is like a vast, creaking, timber-lashed raft of the Medusa, with its own laptop-clutching parasite crew scattered across its back, huddling, fighting, building tiny shelters, hacking bits off, carving their initials and generally servicing their own petty short-term needs.” (Barney Ronay, The Guardian)