Posts tagged as:

Ian Plenderleith

The Life Lessons of Relegation

Having a team in the drop zone is like being on death watch for a relative: The world swirls around you, bee-busy, while your time slows to black-hole slowness. “Football mirrors our meritocracy, so this only works out for so many people or teams. The majority stoically settles for stasis – mid-table safety may not be ideal but we’ll plod along in the hope that something better might develop. But if people or teams must shift upwards (and they must), some of us have to shift down to accommodate them.” (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)

(Image credit: longwayround/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

{ 0 comments }

The Lincoln City Assassination

What’s worse than rooting for a crap team? Rooting for a crap one that has a good little run and fools you into thinking that it’s shed its lousy ways…only to tumble right back into the shit. Welcome to Lincoln City FC: “My English teacher once told our class: ‘You’re in school to learn, not have fun.’ Great preparation for life, and all that. Except that we never do learn, do we? And we don’t have much fun either.” (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)

Read of the Day: May This Cup Pass Us By

Hosting the World Cup is more like a home invasion than a party…FIFA tells you to remodel your house, picks the food, gets the VIP room, treats you like a waiter, has sex with your girlfriend, and “leaves you feeling used and empty — like those huge, all-seater stadiums it insisted you needed so that Chile could play Honduras.” Unless you want a political boost or are desperate to win, wouldn’t you rather watch it on TV? (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)

Rethinking the MLS Audience

MLS attendance is up almost 20% year over year, belying fears about early crowds being down this season. Anyway, the figures have always been “slavishly tracked and overanalyzed,” argues Fake Sigi — attendance is just one factor of many that determine MLS teams’ profitability. Meanwhile, Ian Plenderleith of When Saturday Comes says the annual summer march of big Euro teams to the United States for “hollow, half-hearted” friendlies shows these clubs are “stuck in the 1980s, in the condescending mindset that thinks the US is still an unconquered footballing backwater.”

Read of the Day: How Much Would You Pay for Bad Soccer Journalism?

The Times will start charging for its web content in June — no crushing loss for football fans, except for Gabriele Marcotti (and he’s published in a dozen other places). But with pay walls going up at The New York Times and other MSM outlets, will your access to soccer coverage suffer? Or is the web too big — and MSM football journalism too superficial — for us to notice? (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)

German. Soccer. Violence.

German. Soccer. Violence. The rampage by Hertha Berlin ultras after a recent loss isn’t an isolated incident of violence for German football in recent years — and the good work of two decades building positive fan vibes could be supplanted by body scanners at the gates. (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes) (Addendum: Map of the worst 30 instances of German soccer violence in 2009.)

Why Everyone Should Be a Ref

Why Everyone Should Be a Ref: What would it take to stop Arsene Wenger from complaining about calls from 60 yards away? Why every professional soccer player (and manager, and fan) should train as a referee — and then officiate some U-12 girls’ matches. (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)

Read of the Day: Against Formations

Everybody’s agog over tactics — but do they really matter anymore? Or have the global movement of players and the refusal to enforce the persistent infringement rule marginalized formation innovation? Horrors! (Ian Plenderleith/When Saturday Comes)