He’s at it again…

So my least favourite footballing bureaucrat is at it again. Today the muppet that is Sepp Blatter has come out with this nonsense. As I’m aware of the situation, there has to be a set number of English born players in any given Champions League squad already. Blatter has identified a ‘problem’ that there has been too many English teams in recent Champions League semi-finals and finals.

For the past three years there has been an English finalist. This year there is two. For Blatter, that is too many. It apparently does not show the strength of the English game in comparison to other leagues, but shows that English teams are too dominant because they are reliant on foreign imports. Blatter seems to ignore the period in the late 90’s/ early 2000’s when Real Madrid pretty much bossed the competition because they had bought the best players in the world for outrageous fees. That isn’t his concern. His concern is sticking his nose into English football to limit it’s potential on a European stage. This really annoys me.

I think the concern should be not with limiting the impact of English clubs, but instead with improving the quality of the game in other countries. Blatter, in his limited wisdom, thinks otherwise. People across the world rate the Premier League as the best in the world (even allowing for a club like Derby), the nature of the league, with its fast pace and competitive spirit I believe is second to none. Looking at the top leagues in other European Countries and I’m not so sure the same can be said. Italian football, now back on our tv’s after a long absence, is watchable, but lacks the blood-and-guts passion of the English game. Spanish football likewise seems a tad, well, pedestrian. The less said about the generally poor state of German football the better. Greece (the reigning European Cup holders) have a league, which, if we are generous, is on a par with our Championship.

To me it seems everywhere else has got the problems, but not in England. Our football is so strong that there was three Championship sides in the FA Cup semi-finals. Now how much our strength is down to foreign imports is a matter of much concern, and I think this is the issue Blatter was trying to combat. I disagree from a club perspective. Foreign imports are a necessary part of our game, if only to encourage development of better English players. Theo Walcott, a rising star of Arsenal’s team, was taught by the best player in the world at the time, Thierry Henry. Foreign players serve to strengthen the leagues, and limiting their numbers would only detract from the game at a time when more and more money is being pumped into it by fans. They want to see good football, and paying the prices that they do, care little of the nationality of the players.

For me, Blatter has got it wrong. His concern should not be with limiting English clubs potential, but instead with improving foreign clubs potential.

Chitter Blatter…

Right, now I dislike Sepp Blatter. A lot. I think he’s just another suit in the world of football.  He frequently looks completely out of his depth, yet he still insists on sticking his nose into lots of different affairs.

Including the Martin Taylor affair. Now I stand very much on the side of Taylor here. I think it was a freak accident which broke Eduardo’s leg. I think he is genuinely remorseful about the whole affair. And I think he has his punishment, along with the guilt for the next 9 months or so. Basically, I would imagine that Taylor will not be able to escape his guilt until Eduardo is back playing and scoring goals for both club and country.  Taylor has apologised to Eduardo personally, he has apologised through the press. His manager Alex McLeish has apologised for the tackle. The Arsenal players (including Adebayor) have stated that they are willing to forgive Taylor for the tackle, accepting there was not the intent to break Eduardo’s leg. I think even Arsene Wenger has accepted it was just a freak accident. This, I feel, should be the end of the story.

Not though, if you are Sepp Blatter. Oh no.  Blatter, with another one of his great pearls of wisdom has decided that this isn’t the end of the matter. He thinks FIFA should intervene and impose a longer ban on Taylor.

Here are just some of Blatter’s comments:

“You have to have respect and what we witnessed there has nothing to do with football” 

“This is to destroy another player, and that is not the aim of our game” 

“Such players should not only be suspended for a certain time, they should be banned until they have realised they have done something absolutely wrong” 

 Blatter is keen to point the finger at Taylor and make an example of him. However I feel that he is jumping on the witch-hunting band-wagon. To me, the last quote is the worst. I firmly believe Taylor knows he has done something bad. I believe he is genuinely sorry for it.

With all due respect, Blatter doesn’t appear to know what he is talking about. At all. He spouts off about people and situations when he doesn’t know the full picture. To accuse someone of deliberately trying to injure someone else in that manner is digusting. And it is why Wenger retracted his post match statement.

For me, Blatter needs to look at himself and ask two things. Firstly does he believe that Martin Taylor actually went out onto that football pitch with the intent of seriously hurting Eduardo? Secondly does it do any good for him to stick his oar in and reinflame the situation as it looked to be dying down?

I think the answer to both questions is no. Blatter, however, does not seem to realise this.

It’s just a game…

There is something in sport that is still human after all. Eduardo’s horrific break yesterday served to confirm that for me. The genuine shock and horror that reflected on all the players faces during the match was really frightening for anybody to watch. The tackle, of which there are now numerous videos on YouTube (despite it being deemed too horrific to repeat during the match coverage) was awful. That Eduardo broke his leg is not anywhere near the full story though.

Arsene Wenger, somebody who I have a lot of time for, insisted in the immediate aftermath that Martin Taylor, the hapless offender, should be banned from the sport for life. He later, thankfully, retracted this statement, explaining that in the heat of the moment, he had overreacted. This is perfectly understandable, one of his players had just had his leg shattered and may, at this stage, never return to football. It has reminded me of other such things: There was David Busst of Coventry in 1996, there was Luc Nilis of Aston Villa, and, more recently, there was Djibril Cisse and Alan Smith.

It has also served to prove that in the modern big-money world of professional football, there is still a part to play for humanity. There are some things more important than the match. The players, every time, should come first.

However, I am not suggesting that football should be made non-contact, or changed in any way. I think people have to accept that these injuries, as sickening as they may be, are still very much part of the game. They always will be, especially as the game becomes quicker, and the stakes become higher.

Wenger’s reaction to Taylor was completely over the top, and distinctly out of character for this well spoken Frenchman. It simply goes to show how much he cares for his team.

For what it’s worth, I do not, and cannot believe there was any intent on Taylor’s part. As Alan Hansen said on MOTD last night, Eduardo was simply too quick for Taylor, and a freak injury happened. Arsenal should now concentrate on two things. Firstly is helping Eduardo through this injury. Secondly, they should now be even more inspired in winning something this season, for him. Like Man Utd did for Alan Smith (The FA Cup I think?).

Sometimes though, there are bigger things than tropies, or football matches, and this injury has served to prove that to me again.

The World-wide game…

There is one thing which concerned me most about the FA’s recent proposals for the English game. In case you do not know what is happening, the full story is here. But what gets to me is that of the 20 managers in the league, only 2 have come out and said that it’s a bad idea. The others have either agreed with the proposals, or have remained non-committal.

For me, the plan is just a stupid one, made to further inflate the wallets of the fat cats at the FA. Will the fans feel the benefits? Almost certainly not in Britain, and it is unlikely further around the globe too. The ‘big four’ will attract big crowds, but if the fixture list throws up, for example, Middlesborough vs Portsmouth, do the fans in America, Asia or Africa really want to see these teams devoid as they are of ‘big name’ players? I cannot imagine so.

The true fans are the ones who fill the terraces every Saturday. They are, and will remain, the corner-stone of the game. They should be who we are concerned with in all of this, not those FA officials, who, with little real experience in the game, have, in their infinite wisdom, decided that this is a good idea.

If the desire for international matches is still around after the fans have been asked, why not entertain the idea of having the Community Shield game abroad? This is the most expendable game there is in English football (although it is closely followed by the Carling Cup), so it would make sense to offload that first, before the thoughts about playing an international round of matches are ever really properly entertained again.

Confrontation aids digestion…

Trying to fathom a 4-2 defeat over my fourth curry in little over a week, whilst arguing about student housing with my mum was probably not the best time to insist my sisters friends were weird. So ran the conversation over dinner with my family. It did have the result though of making me consider two things.

Firstly, how lucky I was to find a group of mates with whom I want to keep living, safe in the knowledge that any house we live in cannot possibly look worse than some of the ones we have witnessed this week. Whilst arguments are an increasingly common symptom of living with the same people for two years, they only serve to make you realise what you have got. For me, that is like minded (mostly) people who enjoy the same things as me and are concerned about the same sorts of issues, although, in the case of politics, my privately educated backside disagrees on some issues with one certain housemate who is a firm advocate of Labourite principles, and can convincingly argue her way into and out of a paper bag. Armed with a huge array of statistics, her ‘facts’ only serve to show to me how little I actually know about a lot.

Secondly, I became aware, as I nibbled on yet another naan bread, that weirdness is something entirely subjective. My definition of weird differs greatly from my sisters definition for example. I unconvincingly tried to maintain that to be weird was to be outside of societies norms, but I was painfully aware that such an argument held little or no credibility. Consequently, the rather ill-considered slur on my sisters friends aside, I became aware of my own peculiarities. And those of others. Specifically my housemates. All of them are ‘weird’ in some way or other, if judged by the poorly considered definition outlined above. And that’s great. It is great news that nobody is normal. It is a marvellous thing that every human being is unique, and it prevents the view which I had expressed to me recently which suggested that everyone is the same, going through the same basic patterns of life until the day they die. If, by this logic, we are all the same, I could, in theory, create work of similar quality to Van Gogh, or Tchaikovsky. Instead, reality seems that no-one is the same. There is a basic framework to the human being (eat, sleep, breath, breed) but outside of that, life is one big mystery, ready to be lived and enjoyed. For me this happens when I am with the people I care about the most. This is no longer just my family (despite the frustrations), but my friends too. I will probably stop here before I begin to sound too much like a lost cause.

The nett result of dinner was that I suddenly really appreciated all the ‘weird’ people I know. I still couldn’t work out how my team had lost 4-2 though.