To quote:

But still the feeling persists that this is an oddly frictionless excellence; that Spain play a kind of platinum-selling dinner party football – Coldplay Football – that is clearly and undeniably high spec, but also devoid of jarringly revelatory spikes and twists. Playing against Spain must feel a little like playing a chess computer: strangled, impotent, you gawp helplessly at its robotic grace.

I must be fair to him; he gives them due credit for their technical excellence at various parts of the article, but you always get the sense that the admiration is grudging. He almost wishes footballing excellence were defined by being able to ride the hard tackles; by players waltzing past two-footed lunges; and by referees not being card-happy for what are—in his opinion—relatively innocuous fouls. In the piece, there’s visible uneasiness over FIFA’s supposed open endorsement of Spain’s tiki-taka style, and unhappiness over good-old blue-collar ethic relegated to the role of bridesmaid—or perhaps even worse.

My objection, of course, is in his “Coldplay Football” metaphor. I’m not a big fan of their work. [Okay, their early stuff was decent, but decent. Spain is not decent.]

The excellent Tim Vickery—the BBC’s South American football correspondent—used to say that if football was a language, the different styles and philosophy in approach that teams brought into the game were its dialects. This, by extension means that there’s no wrong style of playing the game. These approaches are constantly in a state of flux; subtle adjustments are made to varied degrees of success.

Whereas Holland dominated the 70s under Rinus Michels’ total football—a dynamic, attacking style which involved all ten outfield players interchanging positions as they moved to fill gaps, and constant off-the-ball movement—they’ve changed their style to such an extent that total football is now a comfort-food term for pundits—those who’ve failed to do their research—to use and feign knowledge of footballing history. That and numerous puns around the word Oranje. This is not to say that the Dutch stopped believing in an attacking philosophy—they continued to put out sides that entertained and delighted the neutrals. But total football, they certainly didn’t play. Primarily because it’s really hard to implement without the right personnel. The current Dutch side plays the way it does, because, save for Sneijder, Robben and van Persie in their starting line up, they are really limited creatively. The addition of another creative midfielder might improve them, but it’s the style they’ve decided to go for—presumably because an adherence to a more carefree philosophy hasn’t worked for them so far. Evidently the manager doesn’t trust his men to be capable of a more expansive style.

Which brings us to the crux of Spain’s style.

It’s a very different type of attacking football, unlike the champagne counter-attacking fare the Germans served up till the quarterfinals. The tiki-taka short-passing style is a strange attacking style because, it—much like total football—is an exceptionally difficult system to perfect. It requires players of supreme technique. There’s a thin line that separates exceptional control and penetration, and aimless sideways or backward passing.

In full flow it’s a joy to watch as Barcelona have shown us the past. As the stat that has come to pass by now would tell you, there was a phase during Spain-Germany when seven Barcelona lads made up the ten outfield players. [Maybe that’s why they’ve not scored more, since a midfield of Xavi, Iniesta and Busquets kept looking out for Messi on the right, and had to keep reminding themselves that this isn’t the Camp Nou. Of course, I kid, but think about it.] However, when not in full flow, or while protecting a lead, this short-passing style could very well be a perfect defensive tactic.

It’s not explicit, like the Catenaccio-absorb-the-pressure defending. But it’s more auto-pilot where, as long as you keep the ball, you’re probably unlikely to let the opposition score, and you can cruise along winding down the clock with pretty, short-passing. You’ll probably hear the phrase, death-by-a-thousand-passes, and whilst it’s the death of the opposition, it could also mean haemorrhaging of brain cells of the casual viewer growing increasingly suspicious of the commentator’s effusive praise of Spain’s performance so far.

What this kind of possession masks however, is how difficult the act of possession itself is. It’s noticeable more when the opposition gets the ball and promptly loses it either to a panicky hopeful punt up-field [apparently to make up for time lost due to Spain hogging the possession] or to the high pressure Spain’s players apply the moment they lose possession.

The reason why a lot of people have a problem with Spain’s style is probably because their style hasn’t really been challenged. They’ve suffered two losses in the last two years. The Switzerland loss must be a statistical anomaly; something they’ve managed to shrug off quite easily till now.

So, it’s either their methods that haven’t really been challenged, or that they have yet to meet a side that could match this talent man-for-man; which, right now, is perhaps another hypothetical Spain, as Ronay suggested.

This ease is what disturbs some. The irony of their ruthless streak—that their goal was actually ‘ugly’—scares others. When in possession it feels like watching someone who had the questions to the maths paper the day before, (and solved them all that night) so now in the exam hall he is answering the questions by rote rather than having to stretch his brain—like his peers—to solve them.

James Richardson on the Guardian podcast nailed it when he said it’s like the last scene in the Matrix where Neo has Agent Smith all figured out such that he anticipates his every single move and blocks every punch with annoying precision.

This is not to say that their system isn’t flawed—there has been a tendency to over-elaborate, often in a bid to walk the ball into the net for a perfect goal—but it’s a solid system that’s beautiful to watch; well, at least for me.

*

[In conclusion, my gushing praise for Spain’s brilliance is probably going to jinx them, much like my previous post in praise of Dunga’s Brazil. What to do? I’m no Octopus–merely human.]

I was planning to write a post on Brazil following the match against Côte d’Ivoire, but one of the most anticipated matches — at least for me — had to be skipped due to unplanned events. I had to travel out of town and back to drop off a friend at the airport. Even the choice of restaurant, while we stopped for lunch, couldn’t have been worse: no TV!

Meanwhile, due to some legalese that I will never quite understand, replays of matches telecast on ESPN’s sister (parent?) network, ABC are not allowed to be up on ESPN3.com until the next day. So I’ve decided to write about Brazil anyway. Read on.

Populist pre-world cup predictions have an unhealthy relationship with reality. In 2002, an awesome Argentina squad — with Veron at the peak of his powers — was everyone’s darling. So were France. Brazil limped its way through qualification — and went by their business almost by stealth.

Brazil was the buzzword in 2006 — and in case you missed it, Nike made sure they told you about Joga Bonito [more on that later] — whilst Italy were clambering out of a match-fixing swamp that threatened to suck Serie A (and Italian football) into oblivion.

2010: Spain and Brazil are everyone’s favourites and for good reason. Spain, for the purposes of this post, are irrelevant.

Following international football has been a largely neutral vocation for me with a soft corner for sides that play good, attractive football. It’s simple really: it’s the joie de vivre version of the game that made me fall in love with it in the first place. Also, I’m far too invested in club-level loyalties to enjoy football at that level without anything but a looney red-tinted lens.

This Brazil, however, is a strange thing. It’s frustrated purists for good reason. More accurately, Dunga has. Even as late as the eve of the World Cup, the popular emotion from the Brazilian public was for a return to their “Samba-style, beautiful football”. I’m sure the Brazilians crave for that kind of football genuinely. But Brazil have slowly but surely, under Dunga, eschewed all such pretense to play football with the intent to win: beauty if it manifests would be wonderful. But it’s incidental.

But there are two myths about Brazil, that I seek to debunk. The first is easy: the myth that Brazil are somehow the last guardian angels of the beautiful game; or as we’ve been told by snooty observers from anywhere but England: football played the right way. The fault, for that perception, isn’t Brazil’s. It’s in the marketing, and perhaps, partly the Brazil FA’s willingness to cash in on this positive worldview on their brand of flair football. [Case in point: Nike’s endless reels of commercials showing Brazil players goofing around doing silly things with the ball, and Ronaldinho’s rise (and fall?) to a mascot. Also: Brazil charging princely fees for playing friendlies against ‘lesser’ nations.] But the greater fault lay at the almost ubiquitous lazy writing and ignorant punditry that continued to assign adjectives such as free-flowing and Samba-style a good decade after they last played such football for a sustained period. So in the words of Penn & Teller: Samba style? “Bullshit!”

The other myth, which sort of works against the backdrop of debunking the first one, is this: Dunga is playing boring, negative football.

This is especially something his harshest critics love. They don’t like what they see on the pitch: football is not being played like those pretty boys from Barcelona or Spain’s national team, or heaven forbid, even like those (recently) schizophrenic Argentinians. So it’s a very powerful stick to beat Dunga with, when he fails; or, should we say, if he fails. To their disbelief, Brazil lost just one match back in October 2009 which ended a 19 match unbeaten streak. They got back from 2-0 down to the USA in the Confederations Cup final in June 2009 to win 3-2. But they just found a way to win.

Dunga’s Brazil on the surface may be ugly, but they’re not your usual ugly. They’re like that giant, intimidating, grumpy man you saw in your neighbourhood, who, Gran Torino-style threatens to shoot a trespasser, but secretly helps out poor and destitute kids in his spare time on weekends. Brazil aren’t exactly the grumpy-old-man-with-a-heart-of-gold metaphor I’ve tried to create here, but they probably are more like you don’t know if it’s the grumpy old fart or Jesus who’s going to show up. Either way, they get the job done. You get to see the grumpy, menacing (almost beastly) face more often. In the rare occasion, you’ll see Jesus in all his glory — and everyone loves Jesus. I suppose people who saw the match yesterday saw Jesus, live.

In Maicon, in Lucio, they have machines who can run up and about the pitch for 90 minutes, like they have ten lungs. In Felipe Melo and Gilberto Silva, they have the creaky, boring functional heart of the Brazilian midfield, that somehow works — presumably held together under the ‘evil’ gaze of Dunga. They have a tower up top in Luis Fabiano. But their soul, often overwhelmed by the machinery surrounding him, is Kaka. The part that’s human, beautiful (especially while working in tandem with Robinho and ably supported by Elano) and also flawed.

His form is the switch that lights up Brazil.

They’re almost always in control, even when they’re playing poorly. Which is perhaps a little different from negative football. This is a much more European-looking Brazil than any of its predecessors: tactically astute, hard to be bullied and constantly under the gaze of a man with questionable sartorial sense. Vulnerable, sure, like all of its contemporaries, but beastly too.

That’s Brazil, and I suspect the same Brazil that turned up against the Ivory Coast.

Now off I go to watch the game.

The preview is a collection of diary entries he scribbled, as well as from transcribed audio interviews.

1. Ivory Coast:

Looks like a brick shithouse, but runs like a horse,
He falls like a pansy, but shows no remorse,
Make of that, what you will,
But waxing lyrical is not my skill.

“Oh, but what of the rest,” you ask?
Oh yes, they are but the supporting cast.

2. Netherlands
Oh, why do they even bother to turn up?! Chokers is a tag losers give them. Given by those sorry excuses for pundits, I mean. They have the term right, actually. But they don’t understand that the Dutch actually attempt to choke each other. Perhaps, it’s the weed. But I’m being too harsh, so let me objectively have a look at this year’s squad:

Sneijder is good, but he’s an angry young man.
Robin van Persie is good, but he’s made of glass. He was out for 8 months due to a plane crash; the plane crash that he saw happening in the pilot of Lost.
Robben is good, but he’s made of chinaware. No, not those lead toys.
Rafael van der Vaart is good, but refer van Persie. Substitute plane crash with Bruce Willis action movie viewing.

This team looks flawless, injury-proneness aside, so far.

But they have Khalid Boulahrouz. His nickname is Khalid the Cannibal.

Now you know, it’s not just a case of choking each other. One man is going to devour the rest of the team.

3. Algeria
They are consumed by their hatred for their neighbours, Egypt. Their hatred is all-consuming. They will cease to exist after the group stages.

4. North Korea
Their players enter the world cup thinking they are puppets at the hands of their supreme leader. A nuclear option cannot be ruled out if things don’t work out. Actually things won’t work out.

5. France
Fuckin’ cunts! No one likes them. Their fans don’t like them. The players don’t like each other. Nor do they like themselves. Except Thierry Henry. Walks like he’s fuckin’ Jesus. [Oh, I remember the day they admitted me in that hell in Dublin. The hand of Satan, he truly has.]

Fuckin’ French cunts!

6. Ghana
I hear Essien is not playing? Well, that’s them sorted then.

7. South Africa
They are the hosts. Their vuvuzelas are annoying. FIFA says culture must be respected. I suggest spending time near your local beehive in preparation. The sound of a swarm of bees buzzing perilously close to one’s ears can be therapeutic, modern research has shown.

8. Argentina
Maradona, their coach, said he would run naked in Argentina if they are to win the world cup. I don’t think he’s bluffing. The man did this during last year’s World Cup qualifying.

Only last week his car ran over a journalist. He told the journalist while sat in his car, “What an asshole you are! How can you put your leg there where it can get run over, man?” [True Story]

Yes. The man does not joke.

His side has Jesus playing in it¹. They call him Messi in Argentina. I think it’s short for Messiah, but then you knew that already. The problem is even Jesus needs a little help. Other teams call that help, coach.

But in a side with Jesus, anything can happen.

9. Portugal
This team also has Christ playing in it². In Portugal he goes by Cristiano. Unfortunately, his father also named him after Ronald Reagan. [True story]

People say football is a team game. That, you know, is a load of bollocks. This team is about Ronaldo. Only Ronaldo. Ask him. If you don’t trust him, watch the Nike ad. See for yourself what’s at stake.

10. Australia
It’s just not cricket.

11. Italy
They’re the reigning world champions. A Serie A club, Internazionale, just won the Champions League. If you ignore the fact that it was coached by a Portuguese and had 4 Argentinians, 3 Brazilians, 1 Romanian, 1 Macedonian, 1 Cameroonian and 1 Dutch player in their starting XI, this is a fantastic achievement for Italian football.

The cynical among us will write Italy off at our peril. Not I.

Italy is that trainwreck popstar you secretly want to make love to. You don’t understand why she is the way she is but you would like to be a part of the ride. You don’t really care what becomes of her. But right now, she’s just so fuckin’ edgy and you don’t want that to end.

^1. According to Barcelona-based newspaper, El Mundo Deportivo
^2. According to Madrid-based newspaper, Marca

Rest of the teams will be previewed in subsequent parts.

“If you can accept losing, you can’t win.”

– Vince Lombardi

I have never hidden the fact that cricket is a sport very close to my heart. For the benefit of readers none too keen on cricket, fret not; an understanding of the game isn’t critical towards getting this post.

The ICC Champions Trophy is underway — in short, it’s a mini-world cup held every two years — hosted by South Africa. The background is this: South Africa, ever since their return to the cricketing fold in 1991 following their time in exile due to apartheid, have been a force in international cricket. They have produced sides that just brushed teams aside, played disciplined cricket, had excellent team ethic, revolutionised athleticism and fielding and for a period of time, were arguably everyone’s second team. They were impossible to hate despite their dominance. Unlike the Aussies. However — and there has to be a however — they also earned a nickname, something that continues to haunt them till date: chokers.

Earlier this year, they were destroying every other team in the Twenty20 World Cup (that’s another major tournament in the shortest format of the game) but came a cropper against the Sri Lankans in the semis, going in as firm favourites. And yesterday, it happened once again. Sadly, valiantly, their captain fought and fought, but Graeme Smith’s heroics weren’t enough to help the South Africans overcome, of all teams, England. Following this loss, they crash out of the group stage of a tournament they host! And one cannot even begin to compare them to their football team, which is not expected to progress beyond the group stage in next year’s FIFA World Cup.

[As an aside, an article talking about SA’s loss yesterday that sort of inspired this post]

Anyway, getting to the point, Smith’s words in the post match conference, mirrored his words in the post match from 2007 when his side again made a pre-mature exit. “no, we didn’t choke.” It was almost pre-meditated. A statement made to preempt the obvious question from the pressers: “Did your team choke?” It’s a question put to the Saffers everytime they exit from a major tournament. No other team is hounded with that particular question. [And I hope to God, no one should be.]

We’ve seen many great teams in sport. We’ve also seen great teams that come close, and are loved, yet stumble at the last hurdle. I’m no baseball fan, but everyone knows about Boston Red Sox (of course, now they are well over their mental block). And right now, in football, Liverpool could come close to earning the ‘chokers’ tag when they came close last season. But they haven’t been close enough to challenge prior to that, to even begin to feel what the South Africans feel. Perhaps Chelsea, in their recent Champions League attempts, could come close?

While it’s always educational to look into the minds of the perennial champions, to see what makes them tick, it’s also equally fascinating to read the mind of the perennial underachiever. Well, underachiever is not the right word here, because it’s far too generic a term. For example, underachievement could indicate loads of talent, but never performing at all. Arguably, England could be called underachievers. Choking could indicate, loads of talent, performances to match that talent on a consistent basis, yet failing to perform when it really matters. In a clutch game, as the Americans would say. Spain’s national football team could be called chokers to some extent, Euro success aside.

The question is, though, how much does the tag attached to the team affect the team? I find it hard to see parallels between the South African cricket team and any other sports team — perhaps the reader might help me out here — but when you fail on the scale South Africa have — right from the 1992 World Cup — do the players think before a game, “Hey, we have to prove to the rest of the world that we don’t choke”? And in that case, does the mere mention of the word choke prior to the game inflict them with a fear of failure so much that their limbs go weak into the game?

Chronic failure on that scale can have a debilitating effect. You are infinitely better off being inept, and going out cheaply, than performing supremely yet coming up short. In the former, you know you aren’t good enough, in the latter case, you are good enough — in fact, better — yet you can’t seem to find a way to win.

Being labelled a ‘choker’ is possibly the worst kind of label for a side. The problem with it is it doesn’t matter how dominant you are throughout the season; unfancied sides could ride a wave over the course of a season — even end up winning the title — because they may be unhinged by baggage and expectation, and are buoyed by self-belief earned due to their exploits over the season. Chokers, on the other hand, can earn bags of self-belief throughout the season, but all those bags could matter little, if counterbalanced by bags of history of having been there (yet failing miserably). It’s terrible, for want of a better word. The consequences of failure is worse; it’s possible for people to feel sorry for the losing side, but for a choker, feeling sorry for them comes with a sense of inevitability of said failure. Chokers, I think, would be justified in feeling angry about themselves — for throwing it away — and at the rest of the world — for bringing up their ‘throwing it all away’ in the first place. It’s hard to erase it from the mind in a hurry.

And the South Africans today return home bagful of guilt and anger. A better start to another tournament might help heal those wounds, but so does the realization that merely stringing together a lot of great performances, in the end, matters little.

The South Africans have indeed made choking an art form. I wonder if there are others quite like them in the world of sports.

Reason #1: Brian Phillips of the Run of Play, who made my planned post on the Kakuta/Pogba issue redundant.

Reason #2: Fredorrarci — also called ‘the Run of Play on speed’, according to Pitch Invasion — who made my planned post on the Eduardo-Rooney-diving controversy redundant. Doubly so.

I can’t even mope around looking for something worth writing about because I started watching Lost (from the beginning) earlier this week, and till the show eases its vice-like grip on me [i.e, till I’m finished with season 5] I can’t think of something worth writing here.

But if you are interested in reading an interview with Vidic in my other avatar [as a blinkered-red-tint-contact-lensed loon] be my guest.

Fan culture in sport has always fascinated me in more ways than one. Yet, nothing confounds more than that seen in football; especially its English/European model. Being exposed more to the English language media gives me a broader understanding of the psyche of the English fan than say, his Italian or Spanish counterpart. But in essence, there is nothing too broad to understand about the mental makeup of the average football fan in England that can’t be explained in two lines, at most. I can explain it — and I will in a bit — but to do so would mean running the risk of pigeonholing a vast cross-section of a possibly diverse populace. It’s a risk I’m willing to take: for one, I don’t think said populace is as varied as one might think, nor is a remark — loaded with more than its share of presumption — coming from me, going to mean much in the broad scheme of things. (It’s not going to cause a tectonic shift of continental plates, for sure.)

So here it is…

Put simply, the archetypal English fan is usually the ultimate simpleton, the eternal masochist, and is dangerously defensive about his club; almost to the detriment of his private life. [The ‘United, Kids, Wife’ banner at Old Trafford is, at times, not as tongue-in-cheek as it would appear on first glance.]

My understanding of Italian, Spanish or German fan behaviour is admittedly limited, although fleeting glimpses of memorable occasions such as Samuel Eto’o’s warm welcome at Zaragoza, or the myriad incidents of similar warmth accorded by rival Serie A fans to one another, allows me license to extend my theory to these fans too.

In England, much of the origins of the current state of fan behaviour could be traced to origins of clubs themselves. Either it was a church that spawned the club — like, say, Everton — or it was started by a group of railway workers — Newton Heath (present day Manchester United). It was fair to assume that these clubs were a product of the local community as opposed to the American franchise system, where one corporate entity plonks a club (or franchise, to be sure) in a market that has the higher chance of generating maximum revenue. This gave the local community, during simpler times, a sense of belonging and identity with the club, and hence, people had a lot more than their viewing pleasure invested in them.

It became a generational obsession too: ‘you were born into a club’; or ‘you decided to support a rival club as form of pre-pubescent rebellion against your parents’.

Be it peer-pressure, parental rebellion or supporting the local team, the fan culture revolved around a sense of identity. So, more often than not, you pick a club and you stick with it. For life. The passion, the chanting evolved differently across Europe, but it is safe to assume the level of attachment, the emotions and banter are likely to be equally intense in their own way across leagues. Which brings us to the central thrust of Ingle’s piece:

After all, you remain hooked on a sport that has, over the past decade, become as competitive as a F1 warm-up lap – while at the same time taking ever-larger chunks out of your salary. Smart people would stand up to such exploitation. Football fans prefer to revel in their “hardcore” commitment. Even if a match is shunted to some unholy hour to accommodate Sky, you think nothing of travelling hundreds of miles to sit in a stadium with all the atmosphere of a wake, to show loyalty to your club. The same club that’s always thinking of ingenious new ways to bleed you dry. When it comes to football, your rationality goes awol. […] Your idiocy doesn’t end there. For you take more interest in pre-season friendlies – games which are, without exception, about as meaningful as Gazza’s comedy breasts – than the growing inequality between football’s haves and have-nots and what to do about it.

In short, you’re an idiot.

Whilst discussing my idea of evolution of fan culture, I didn’t talk about the evolution of clubs; doing so would digress from my central piece and so, I’ll just gloss over it. Clubs grew, being propped up by unwavering support from the community, and whilst many clubs grew too big for their cradle, most of them saw the commercial benefit of a die-hard fan base and, like modern self-respecting businessmen, learned to milk their ‘consumers’. Football follows an inelastic demand-supply system, they would say. And then there was Sky and the Premier League… I hope you get the import. Fan behaviour, on the other hand, has remained as it was, cosmetic changes to expression (such as English hooliganism) aside.

Sean Ingle talks about football fans being idiots in a way that shows contempt, but also in an I-pity-you-fools sort of way. He wonders how even great minds get reduced to impetuous nutcases, and the most hardened men become lumps of mush. And it’s hard to argue against. But is such behaviour necessarily bad? I say, fans should stay idiots. And why not? It’s not that it’s injurious to health. It’s the perfect drug, the perfect escape route, and the perfect way to vent. Let fans stay in that zone; let them experience the highs and lows of a season and after that let them come back home to reality and see how unhealthy their obsession truly is to their personal lives. Let him revel in his idiocy, and do it in style. Let him go atop the watchtower, stand on his left foot hoping his adventure, which would otherwise be classed in real life as irrational behaviour, somehow conspires with a greater power to ensure his beloved side avoids the drop. And if it means wearing the same polka-dotted Scunthorpe United underwear for a week, then so be it. Who cares if he’s actually the chief economic adviser to the head of state in his day job?

Let them do all of that and more… but let them not start comparing penis sizes.

Cyrus Philbrick, who runs the engaging Footsmoke blog briefly touches upon this when discussing the supposed feud between MLS fans and, who are known commonly in these lands as, the ‘Euro-snobs’.

But I don’t really understand the way some hard-core MLS fans have framed a battle between true American soccer fans and pretenders. Can someone explain to me how more exposure to the game, especially such a high quality brand of soccer, is bad? Should we stop importing foreign beer because it’s better and undermines our domestic product? And should we blame those who want to pay to drink it. Importing a refined foreign product should help American soccer fans, of which MLS fans represent only a small subset, continue to develop a realistic comparison to their domestic product.

He puts forth his point in terms of how a better ‘product’ would bring about better appreciation, and perhaps, newer fans. And the point is well made. My argument however is on a more basic level; one of human tendency of one-upmanship and rationalising for comfort.

Referring back to Philbrick’s piece, we see the tendency of MLS fans thinking they are somehow real fans for supporting a club that plays in their backyard. Somehow, those who don’t pay much heed to the goings on in their own alley deserve to be called fans, in inverted commas, rather than just plain fans. It is akin to saying my hairless head trumps your bald head. We are all involved in an activity that in essence is irrational. This irrationality is necessarily meant to be blissfully enjoyed. Pontification ruins it for everyone. Man City (and many other) fans claiming ‘at least we are from Manchester’ as a retort to bring down ‘glory-hunting’ United fans, or Man Utd fans defending their Heysel/Hillsborough chants against Liverpool as some sort of making up for years of Munich abuse copped are just excuses that would fail the most basic of tests on logic. Fans hurl insults in the heat of the moment because it gives them a warm fuzzy feeling of riling the other. If rationality gets attached to it, the point is lost.

Which is why when someone tells another fan what he needs to do in order to become a true fan, and what physical boundaries he needs to be within in order to be eligible to support a club, it ceases to be fun. Incidents where fans took a more grounded approach in touch with reality — such as the formation of AFC Wimbledon and FC United of Manchester (even recent attempts by fan groups to take over Liverpool) — whilst based on principles of community and good intentions, are however rooted in the inherent need to find a club to identify with and grow a bond that will evolve into a relationship beyond the realms of logical explanation; or as Ingle would have it, idiocy. Yet, it’s the comparison of one form of idiocy with another — by elevating the one into a stratospheric layer of nobility — that makes it really laughable.

So, football fans, please remain idiots. But please, stop telling us how to conduct our relationship with our respective clubs. We’ve got that covered — in our own sweet, well, idiotic way.

Secondly, please switch to this feed instead.

Cheers. A new post will arrive soon, freshly delivered to your feed reader.

[Once again, Subscribe to Throw-ins here.]

He also talks about him.

Conscience has taken its toll on his football

“This is a very sad day for my Emmanuel. He had a long hard look at himself in the mirror the other night and found his inner calling. Said inner-calling threatened to eat him up alive. It was a sickening feeling and at that moment he vented that he was not going to take it anymore. It made him mad as hell. Hence he has decided that retirement was the best option for him. He may have some other reasons too, but it would be better for him to answer them himself.”

Stunned journalists were too dumbstruck to ask questions. “So what do you plan to do Emmanuel?”, blurted Nosey McClumstock, our man in Manchester.

“I’MADEBAYOR. ICOMEFROMTOGO. IGOTOTOGO.”

“But do you plan to give back to football. Perhaps, a coaching stint?”

“I’MADEBAYOR. INEEDABREAK. WHATHASFOOTBALLGIVENME. IGIVEMORETOFOOTBALLACTUALLY. IGOTBOOEDBYARSENALFANS. THERE’SNOLOYALTYINFOOTBALLTHESEDAYS. IGOBACKTOTOGO. IMMADASHELL. FOOTBALLISN’TGOODFORMYFERTILITY. ”

“Butdoyouthinkmaybeyou, er… *cough* But do you think you could maybe erm, see yourself making a come back to football?”

“YESIDO. IWANTTODOCOLORCOMMENTARY.”

“Sorry?”

“COLORCOMMENTARY. COLORCOMMENTARY. COLORCOMMENTARY. I’MFERTILE.”

His agent breaks in at that stage, “I’m sorry, he’s having his bouts of inner-calling again. This press conference is over.”

Meanwhile Man City have approached Arsenal for compensation. There is speculation that City feel they may have been conned over this transfer. (For the first time, allegedly.) Arsenal at present are failing to listen to any calls for sympathy. “This was a business decision. In business, unlike life, there is little room for sympathy. If you snooze, you lose. We evolve as a business, and hence we cannot sponsor your half-marathon,” chimed an Arsenal spokesperson.

Also, last night, three men were found emerging from an Arsenal board meeting with fingers in their ears going “LaLaLaLaLa!”.

Our man in Manchester (and North London) will report on further developments.

In other related, albeit slightly outdated, news: the one with all the lying.

Also see, events leading to Adebayor’s current state.

And, when his extraordinary fertility was first revealed.