The Absolute Nadir

An exploration of the truly dire today by Paul Hayward at the Guardian/Observer.

He starts off with this thumbsucker to end all thumbsuckers:

Respect for referees was always going to be a hard sell in a culture where civility has broken down, vituperation plagues the blogosphere and the streets seethe with random fury.

Then goes on to suck a little harder...

"Allow me a personal reflection. I have always felt it right to defend the referee against a lynch mob, especially when attacks became a softening-up tool for clubs to protect their interests..."

Just when you think he can't possibly suck any harder, he decides to switch tactics, and blow as loud and wet as he can:

"So far, so obvious. But over the past two weeks it has felt impossible to justify the performances of Martin Atkinson in the Chelsea-Manchester United Premier League match or Massimo Busacca in this week's Barcelona-Arsenal Champions League second leg. Atkinson's failure to send off Chelsea's David Luiz for a glaring second bookable offence and the dismissal of Arsenal's Robin van Persie for going through with a shot after the whistle had blown for offside were too grievous to dismiss with platitudes."

Indeed! "Let me tell you about my rock-ribbed principles, then watch me throw them to the winds as soon as Manchester United and Arsenal are the ones under the slightest threat!"

Craven displays of submission before power (or even fashion) are not rare in sports journalism. I understand this. But it's rare to see someone whine so hard on both sides of an issue as Hayward has done here. Remarkable.

The Sian Massey Nonsense

Much ado about nothing in English football this week as two idiot studio hosts, Richard Keys and Andy Gray, were rightly dismissed over a longstanding practice of hostile sexism in the studio. Keys and Gray are legendarily cheerful morons who don't deserve a moment's further thought (but if you're interested, Keys's hour-plus shambles of a non-apology apology on national radio is a quite brilliant example of a man unable to know when to stop digging the hole he's in).

Spare a thought, though, for the 25-year-old asssitant referee (what used to be called a lineswoman) at the heart of the latest piece of nonsense. Her name is Sian Massey, and she has done quite brilliantly to make it so high in the game so fast. It was her appearance in the Premier League Wolves-Liverpool match (only her second PL game) that led to Keys and Gray acting like dorks.

The predictable result of this has been screams from all corners about "PC GONE MAD" and so forth, and worse screams about Massey being unqualified, and boosted forward based on her sex. (Not to mention a horrific invasion of her privacy as the odious Daily Mail went and published half a dozen of her Myspace photos. Yuck.)

This harrumphing Blimpism has been coming in from all sides, but I found a comment on the blog EPL Talk that, I think, goes some way to showing how a 25-year-old woman could make it so far so fast in a highly competitive industry like football officiating.

I last refereed with Sian about 5 years ago in a “local” game, Sian and I qualified around the same time about 12-13 years ago and I don’t know of another referee out there that has committed the time or dedication that she has. Male or Female she is there because she has passed the assesments and the fitness tests that are allocated equally no matter of race or sex.

Despite what people may think about her being fasttracked because of her sex I can assure you that is nonsence, if anything Sian will have had a harder time from many in what is still an “old boy” establishment.

Sian first appeared on major TV three years ago officiating the Womans FA Cup Final and she did a fantastic job, she will go very far and I have no doubt that she will be our first female Level 1 or most probably Fifa official on the Mens List.

I thought it was great, is all, and wanted to share it. Well-known referee Graham Poll had further good things to say about Massey (and about the TV asshats) in another article (in the Mail, heh) which is worth reading if this interests you.

If this is football, let it die

Scottish Premier League in bold move to win backing for 10-team league...

This awful, awful nonsense has gone from bad to worse to worst. I am officially sick and tired of all of this, and have decided that I am quite pleased to announce that I am beginning a campaign to reduce the SPL to a 10-team league.

By booting Celtic and Rangers. To save Scottish football.

Are we not tired of the nonsense? I refer not only to the uncompetitive league season after season. I refer to the ridiculous, pro-wrestling like officiating displays in any game involving the Old Firm sides. To the constant low-level (or worse) warfare against press, officials and executives unless the Old Firm are given everything their way - a condition that usually occurs on the field regardless thanks to a spineless group of officials. I refer to a neverending torrent of sectarian *garbage* from both clubs and both sets of fans.

The ills of Scottish football lie squarely in the laps of the Old Firm.

Scottish football will never regain its past glory unless the Old Firm are thrown out of Scottish football. Perhaps we should let them remain to compete for the Cup.

CELTIC OUT.

RANGERS OUT.

For God's sake. If this is football, let it die.

Best and Worst of 2010 - football

Best and Worst of 2010. Football is played on the pitch, so only football moments make both of these. The Cabinda attack, the various outbursts of racist idiocy in the stands, the farcical 2018/2022 campaigns and the farcical 2018/2022 decisions, while obviously far more horrible moments for football and the world football community than any mere match, I will omit. As I will omit the literally endless moan from Ferguson, Wenger, Mourinho, Benitez, Redknapp and their ilk that makes football coverage so depressing.

Best of 2010

1. Watford 3 QPR 1 on my own TV screen. Deeeeeeeeeelightful. Tore em apart.

2. Uruguay-Ghana in the World Cup quarterfinal. Some of the best football I have ever seen at a World Cup, a match that had everything. Too bad about the penalties.

3. Blackpool 4 Wigan 0. If I hadn't been watching it I wouldn't have believed it. This was heel-on-the-throat football.

4. Matty Burrows scoring that goal in the 92nd minute of a 0-0 game for Glentoran. Holy. Frig.

5. New Zealand 1 Italy 1. I enjoyed this 100x more than I "should" have, which is why I so often tell the beautiful-gamers to go suck eggs.

Worst of 2010.

1. Canada 0 Peru 2 at BMO Field, Toronto. Gets the #1 position because I was there in person. What a nightmare. Match was a lot fun with good friends and the Voyageurs crew, so not really a terrible memory overall, but the worst footballing moment of the year by a long way.

2. Every moment of England's shambolic World Cup campaign.

3. The Netherlands, an excellent side of good players, eschewing football to kick lumps out of Spain in the World Cup Final. Gets extra demerits for the grand stage.

4. The whole of a frankly dire African Cup of Nations tournament that never fired at all. A sad retrenchment for a tournament that had been moving from strength to strength.

5. This one's for everyone who tackled with two feet this year. Note to referees - you can't do this without leaving your feet. It's impossible (try it sometime). It's therefore always, always dangerous play.

TCoE Reads Infinite Jest - #2

Currently on page: 49

Footnotes read today: 1

Today I reached the point where Infinite Jest begins to become seriously schizophrenic in tone.

I must note, here, that this isn't my first attempt at reading the book. I read a decent-sized chunk while staying with a friend, some years ago. My intention at the time was to borrow the book and finish it after my stay, but having gotten some way in I decided to give it up as a bad job, because I found the book irritating. Actually, I think I was not too far short of where I am now; I thought it was 100 pages but it seems to be somewhat less.

Well, this time I am not irritated, pleasingly enough. We've been through a number of internal narratives now, the story seeming to jump around between first and third person narration but always focusing on the lived experience of one person or other. I am finding the book much more interesting; determined to finish on deadline but taking the book only as a purely leisurely pursuit, I am free to hate it and mock it and I find that neither applies.

What I didn't remember about the book from my first reading, that is most obvious this time, is the puzzlers' delight of figuring out the temporal locus of the narrative. There is just enough (and I mean just enough) gibberus technologicus that it makes this interesting; putting oneself back into the mindset of the mid-90s is the most fun part of this. I still don't know if this is in the entertainingly-near future, or the exotically-nomenclatured present.

The best parts of today's reading were, easily, Orin's tales of bug horror, and the midnight conversation of Hal and Booboo. I have a stepbrother but not a "real" brother (I do have a sister) and I always look on my sons' relationship with a smidgen of envy. There was a breath of that in Hal and Booboo.

In fact, everything else today was a bit of a snooze. One cavil : no NFL team would ever trade a punter.

My wife, she is a Kotoko fan

David Goldblatt, the author of the transcendent and genre-changing book The Ball Is Round, is currently marking the World Cup with a brilliant series of documentaries for the BBC World Service called The Power and the Passion.

In light of Ghana's luminescent 2-1 win over the United States today at the Mundial, the third instalment in the series becomes an absolute must-listen, even if you don't much like soccer. Part Three (download from the link) wraps itself around a visit to the Ghanaian "derby" match between Asante Kotoko from the northern city of Kumasi, and Hearts of Oak from the capital, Accra. It is much-needed background to an unfolding news story.

Now I am a longtime (though distant) supporter of Hearts of Oak, so some of the story was familiar to me, but the way Goldblatt captures a rivalry that is one of the most intense in the world, and relates it to the reality of Ghana itself, is superb.

Parts one and two, about the Milan derby (Milan vs. Inter) and the Cairo derby (Al-Ahly vs. Zamalek) were very fine. (Grab them at the series website linked above). This one was unbelievably engrossing and good (plus the music in the stands is terrific). With Ghana's quarterfinal versus Uruguay looming as a game between two enterprising teams playing great team football, it is required listening.