Gamesmanship

Dear Icelandic Football Federation,

We were surprised by your letter of complaint alleging excessive gamesmanship at the De Kuip Stadium in Rotterdam this weekend.

While we had noticed that the Icelandic economy is about as sound as going long on Black Tulips in Amsterdam in the mid-17th century, it really hadn’t crossed our minds that repeatedly showing adverts for Price Waterhouse Coopers might remind your players that they might as well have kept their savings in Wrigley spearmint gum.

Pleased to hear that you pre-paid for your airfare home, hopefully it was a pleasant flight.

Kind regards,

Netherlands Football Federation

Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond

A true Scot?

At some point in the early 90s, my cousin was in elementary school in Edinburgh, and a new kid from Canada joined the class. The teacher asked where this boy should sit, and someone pointed to the lone black kid in the class – whose parents were from Nigeria, but who had been born in Scotland – and said, “Put him next to Ali, he’s foreign.” Ali’s indignant response, “Ah’m no furrin, Ah’m Scottish!” In his mind, you don’t have to be a paler shade of white to be a Scot.

In which spirit, Chris Iwelumo proved that he is a true Scot today by missing a complete sitter against Norway to cement a goalless draw. In fact, the Guardian is soliciting comments about whether or not it was the most egregious goal-mouth miss in recent memory:

Well, Chris has done his part to show that you don’t have to have a glow-in-the-dark white arse to be a true Scot.

Scotland saves me some time

Thanks to a 1 – 0 loss to Macedonia today, Scotland doesn’t have a lot of room left for error in their qualification effort for 2010. Odds are I won’t find myself glued to a computer monitor watching a 4″ x 3″ feed of the game from the SFA, hoping that the last 20 minutes of the last match will make a difference, because it won’t.

Leaving aside the technical merits, is it really surprising that a team from Scotland with little time to acclimate to local weather conditions would struggle to play in 100 F? No, not really.

Bugger.

Is it November 2000 again?

Here’s a novel approach to dealing with a hard-fought loss in the World Cup final — sue. Apparently a French lawyer wants to have FIFA vacate the Italian victory because he thinks that the fourth official saw Zidane’s headbutt on a jumbotron, or should that be grosse-tron?

Apparently said lawyer would like to see a replay, and can’t wait for September 8th…

Zidane: Je ne regrette rien

So Zidane apologized to the children of France (unnecessarily in my view) and indicated that Materazzi did in fact insult his sister and mother, which of course Materazzi denies.

However, full points to Zidane’s mother for weighing in (or so says the Daily Mirror) with this gem:

“I have nothing but contempt for Materazzi and, if what he said is true, then I want his balls on a platter.

“Our whole family is deeply saddened that Zinedine’s career should end with a red card but at least he has his honour. Some things are bigger than football.”

Well, that would make me slightly nervous, were I Marco Materazzi. Perhaps Mdme. Zidane could get in touch with Wayne Rooney, I hear he’s good at targetting people’s swingers.

The Big Letdown

Consider this your advance warning – whatever Zidane explains, nothing will live up to what we perversely hoped Materazzi actually said.  We will all be disappointed.

I am moving on to taking bets on how innocuous the statement actually was. 

Perhaps a slight on Zidane’s waning sexiness.  A snide comment about Marseilles being relatively inconvenient for toursit travel.  Or simply mentioning that Materazzi was the proud owner of deliciously greasy locks and Zidane was a silly little baldy.

I think there will be some groans on the day of the announcement.  A crowded pressroom keep hectic with constant and sporradic flashbulbs.  Zidane enters and sits behind a sparse desk with multiple microphones and a bottle of mineral water.  The world awaits a shocking announcement to be followed that night by an emotional personal interview with an empathetic reporter.  Zidane talks, gives an emotional testimony to his life as a player and the meaning of representing France.  He then moves the subject to what was said to him on that pitch. 

The World gasps in anticipation.  Zidanes speaks.  Materazzi called his wife ugly.  The world sighs in frustration.  That’s it.

“What?!” Zidane exclaims, “You had to be there.  You have to understand where I was emotionally…I mean, it hurt.”

The flashbulbs slow and the room clears of people but not grumbles.  Domenech slowly walks up to the table and to Zidane, his Zidane.  A Zidane once so strong now so vulnerable becomes prey to the advances that Domenech had always wanted so, but could never carry out, damned social conventions being what they are.

What did Materazzi say to Zidane? (updated)

Thanks to tireless research (that is, I looked at the “busiest blogs” section of my WordPress control screen), I can now refer you to a blog in Italian speculating about what Materazzi said to Zidane.

I don’t understand Italian so about the only one I got was the threads about Materazzi saying something to Zidane that ends in “ista,” Zidane saying,” Terrorista!?!?!?” and then (as they say on this site) SBAAAM!

UPDATE:

Now that I think about it, with the nipple tweaking etc., it’s plain as day what happened…

Materazzi: “Can I get 13FM Marseille on this motherf*cker?”

Zidane: “You want to keep that hand sunshine, you stick it out of the way, maybe up your *ss”

Materazzi: “Merda, all I wanted was Johnny Hallyday!”

Both: “hahahahaha”

Materazzi: “Nice goal down there a minute ago… oh wait, Buffon smacked your ball…ssss away, didn’t he?”

Zidane: “Is Zizou going to have to choke a bitch?”

Materazzi: “Speaking of, how’s your mother?”

Zidane: …. [CRANIAL BOO-YAH!]

withdrawal

I came downstairs tonight after the kids were in bed, skipped into the back room, turned on Telefutura and holy crap it was the usual programming.

Apparently, unless you are interested in MLS or pre-season “shirt sales with bonus game included tour of the US” games as played by various foreign teams, you are facing the better part of a month with no footie. Dear me.

a few more thoughts on the final

A few more thoughts on the Final…

I meant to give a shout out to Lilian Thuram — another defensive stud. That goal-line clearance was something to behold.

And I think I enjoyed, for non-schadenfreude reasons, watching Makelele after the award of second place medal when he promptly took it off. I hadn’t really seen much of Makelele during the EPL season because I wasn’t much interested in Chelsea games (oh look, they won), but now that I see what a miserable git he is, I shall pay much closer attention. Is he half-Scottish? If not, he should be an honourary member. Weclome to the club, MacElele!

There’s been a significant amount of moralizing about the Zidane head-butt. One thread says that Zidane has disgraced himself, another that Materazzi is a racist thug who provoked Zidane, another that Zidane has prior incidents of this type, etc.

I have no clue about the causes of what happened. Zidane seemed frustrated — the shouting fit after Buffon failed to emulate Taffarel and saved Zidane’s header — so perhaps some provocation that could have been ignored proved too much.

It’s not worth tut-tutting at Zidane as many including the editor of L’Equipe have done, because he paid an immediate price in looking like a jackass at a critical moment for the team… and right at the end of his playing career.

Interestingly, in amongst all the speculation about Materazzi calling Zidane a terrorist or insulting his wife, is this post on The New Republic’s Goal Post suggesting that Materazzi accused Zidane’s father of being a turncoat in fighting for the French in Algeria.

Reverse psychology doesn’t work

Since all my picks for the quarter-finals were a disaster, I picked Italy for spite. Hmm.

So, since it’s late and I still don’t know how I feel about this, some quick impressions:

1st Half: That penalty decision was a bit marginal — not outrageous, generous, and Zidane very nearly won an award for idiocy with that penalty. Italy were unlucky not to go into half-time with a larger lead.

2nd Half: Apparently Italy wore themselves out in the first half. Their passing went to shit and the French were only too ready to jump in and take up the slack. Buffon’s save on Zidane’s header was a classic. There was a bit of defending by Cannavaro where he looked more like a one-man-ruck and he still came away with the ball (think it was in this half) — just fantastic.

Overtime: Damn that was stupid. I’m not going to jump into the crowd going on about the moral dimensions of Zindane’s headbutt, or the nature of the provocation by Materazzi — but it was a piss-poor time to lose one’s temper so completely.

Penalties: Don’t care for this, myself, but there you go.

Usually I have a team I clearly dislike, not this time, and as I watched I really thought that France was going to win in 90 minutes — but they couldn’t quite manage it.

Is it September 4th that they meet again for Euro 2008 qualification? Perhaps they will knock such lumps out of one another that the Scottish team might stand a chance hafter all (hahahahahahahahahaha!)