Trashed elbow

Dear Dan,

I play for a football team with a really stupid serious name, a stupid serious black kit and all of our players take the game really, really seriously.

Some of the teams we play against have started to accuse us of being too serious, but I think we're not too serious enough. Can you offer any advice?

Seriously Confused,
Real Osaka FC



Dan says:

If you want to make a difference to how the team is perceived, I recommend the following:

1. Start up the blog again, make sure the URL is on the ALT tournament site and be sure always to say diplomatic things about the oppo (we played a great bunch of lads from Kochi, with a vociferous and not-at-all haggard cheerleading squad. We edged a close encounter 55-0).
And disable comments in order to stop anyone from ruining the feelgood vibe.

2. Take along Osaka o-miyage to present to opposing teams prior to group games. Seriously, a few handfuls of dried squid wouldn't cost the earth and make a favourable impression.

3. Change the team name - it worked for Nova!

Here are some suggestions:

Cuddly Osaka
Osaka Pet Rescue
Blackcurrant Osaka (everyone loves blackcurrants)

Alternatively, change the team name to Osaka Jets, get a new pink kit and tell everyone to boot shit out of the opposition and whinge as much as they want.

Disclaimer: The 'Dear Dan' advice column should not be relied upon as a solution to life's woes. Dan's response copied and pasted from Facebook email. Tricky may have phrased his conundrum rather differently.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

"If you expose your opponent's weaknesses enough, eventually those weaknesses will be exposed."

- Big Sam Allardyce

---

Arsene Wenger may be even more angry about losing to Blackburn after Sam Allardyce's masterly exposition on the finer tactical points of the game. It's like being outwitted by a meringue.

Labels: DULLARDS, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, WORDS

We had the joy of seeing Coventry City on the idiot box last week in their FA Cup replay against Portsmouth.

Sam and I dashed into Coral beforehand to lay a couple of wagers on the outcome.

In a fairly dire game, Coventry led from the first half, before scoring a dreadful own goal in the 89th minute.

As I had laid a fiver on Coventry to lead at half time and be level at full time, I wasn't exactly taking the kitchenware to my wrists when this happened.

Sam, also a Cov fan, was a little less chipper - none of his bets had come home.

Neither of us were particularly pleased with Cov's defending during extra time, particularly when they conceded in the 119th minute, to consign dreams of cup glory to the cupboard for another year.

I did have a £70 win to sugar the pill, though - call it heartbreak insurance.

Labels: COMRADES, MAMMON, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

A week or two back, we had Worldnet, the annual supporters' football tournament in Leeds. Tim and I, neither of us particularly in love with the idea of being "Des don't drink" on the Sunday, hit upon the idea of travelling up on the coach. Tim, upon whom I delegated bus monitor duties, booked us on to the Mega Bus.

Here's how we fared:

1. We arrive at the bus stop at 13:30, ready for a 13:50 bus.
2. At around 14:15, with ne'er a bus in sight, we start boozing, having a fairly good stock of pop / spirit mixes. Joe takes one sip out of the cola / disaronno mixture and declares that he is not touching another drop.
3. A lady at the bus stop phones the Mega Bus company to ask where the bus is. They profess ignorance.
4. We finish our two-litre bottle of cola / disaronno. Joe has drunk about half of it.
5. I ask Tim if, in fact, he has booked us onto a Meta Bus: a bus which does not exist on our plane of reality, but instead occupies a realm of potential and Platonism.
6. At around 16:00, the bus shows up. We toss our bags in the hold, keep hold of our beers and hop on.
7. After we make a stop in Birmingham, I crack open a beer. At this point, the driver announces that boozing on buses is against the law, and anyone caught boozing will be put off the bus. Sitting at the back, boozing furtively, we can imagine no greater felicity.
8. It then transpires that we are on our way to Leeds via Manchester, which, as I say at the time, is pretty much like doing two sides of a triangle, including the hypotenuse.
9. At around 17:30, we find ourselves stationary on the M6, a state of affairs in which, I believe, I have spent about three months of my life in total to date.
10. We eventually arrive in Manchester and the driver disappears. I hypothesise that he has popped off to the toilet to shoot himself. Joe expresses relief that at least he hasn't opted for the hosepipe-through-the-window option. The lad in front, overhearing this, dissolves into giggles.
11. The sun is low in the sky as we trundle along the M62, next stop Leeds! We crack open the last few of our beers which, being a bit warm and gassy, make a fair old hiss. As I crack the last one open rather too audibly, with Leeds not 13 miles distant, the driver pulls smartly over into a service station.
12. The driver stands up at the front and announces that he has been driving for four-and-a-half hours straight so, in accordance with the law, and flagrantly contrary to any kind of sense or justice, he has to take a 45-minute break. I hobble off the bus with an open almost-full beer in my pocket. We go to KFC to stock up on calories ahead of the weekend's sporting exertion.
13. At 22:00 we arrive at Bodington hall in Leeds. Total journey time: nine hours door to door. We steal a fridge from a kitchen, stick it in our bedroom with some beers inside to cool, and head off down to the bar.

We gratefully accepted offers of a lift home on the Sunday, deeming further Mega Bus travel to be hazardous to our emotional well-being.

I had visions of the harassed driver waiting for us at the bus stop, with a load of increasingly irate passengers.

"Settle down, everybody: I'm sure they won't be much longer..."

Labels: COMRADES, EVIL, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Footage from England's penalty shootout victory over Sweden in the semi final of the U21 European Championships. England went on to sustain a 4-0 thumping at the hands of Germany in the final.

The best thing is the way Milner's left boot ends up sitting on the penalty spot, with Milner sitting on his arse several yards in front.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, U-TUBE

Wednesday night is football night - a long drive out to Shirley, followed by an hour or more of running around a big astroturf pitch, making the opposition look good.

I was warming up with Paul at the top end of the pitch. I hit a low pass which missed him, but did connect with a squirrel, who'd been keeping a low profile next to the fence. The squirrel ran around in fretful circles; we had a bit of a snigger.

Unwilling to see Nutkin-san meet with further accident, I tried to shepherd him over the fence. The trouble was, he wouldn't go. I had images of him being squashed by a well-hit shot. In the end, we had to walk in formation the length of the pitch with the increasingly jittery squirrel fleeing before us to the gate, while red squirrels around the world threw beer cans at their TV sets and shouted "kill the bastard!" and similar.

Nutkin-san made it out of the gate without mishap. Possibly due to the good karma I reaped from this, I got a couple of goals and broke a streak of several weeks without being on the winning team.

Labels: NATURE, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

"Worst caretaker since Ian Huntley," pronounced Dave, getting stuck into his weissbier.

Mine nearly came out of my nose.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, WORDS

A Mexican footballer has been banned for spitting at an opponent then telling him he had swine flu. Guadalajara defender Hector Reynoso has provisionally been suspended from all matches in the Libertadores Cup after last week's game at Everton of Chile in South America's top club competition. The South American Football Confederation (CSF) said the length of the ban would be determined in the next 72 hours.

"Reynoso, following an incident in the game, reacted by spitting at Everton player Sebastian Penco and then releasing nasal secretions at the face of the player," said the CSF in a statement. "This situation, lamentable in its own right, was aggravated by the risk of a possible infection of the disease AH1N1 [swine flu]."

Mexican footballer banned for spitting and claiming he had swine flu
The Guardian, Monday 4 May 2009

***

My personal philosophy has always been to play the beautiful game like a gentleman, or as nearly as I can manage. I do have the occasional lapse, like the time recently when I distracted the defender who was marking me at a corner by pointing into the distance, saying "is that a new chippy?" then scarpering for the back post while he was looking away.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Adam Curtis did a brilliant piece on Charlie Brooker's Newswipe on BBC4 last week about "Oh Dearism", the trend for television news to show shocking events about which we can do nothing but feel helpless and sad, and to which the only possible reaction is "Oh dear".

I wonder if anybody in BBC Sport saw it. I only ask because Saturday's Football Focus and Match Of The Day used the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster to indulge in the kind of crass grief tourism that has become a media staple since Princess Diana's death. "A football match seems so unimportant in these situations," intoned a sombre Ray Stubbs on Match Of The Day. Had he followed his remark by saying, "So here instead is a short film," the cliché might have made some sense. But obviously we did not want to miss Torres's brilliant strike against Blackburn, or the seven-goal thriller at Stamford Bridge, so the show continued, but sans the theme tune at the end, and with the requisite Hillsborough chit chat between Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson after the Liverpool highlights.

Mix and Match of the Day turns tragedy to cliche
The Grauniad, April 13th

***


From the comments on above post:


johnnygoodyear
13 Apr 09, 11:57am (about 4 hours ago)

It was mawkish in some aspects, but you have to give Hansen his obviously sincere and heartfelt due.

Recommend? (1)


danmckeown
13 Apr 09, 12:05pm (about 4 hours ago)

I found Alan Hansen's bit on Football Focus the most fulsome of the lot: artistic, looping camera pan round him in the cathedral before he delivers sententious punchline. I thought it was gratuitously over-engineered and lacking in humility.

Most worthwhile comment came from Steve Claridge on final score, along the lines of "Yes, we got all-seater stadia, but we'd rather not have paid such a high price for them," which added a bit of perspective to the bon Motson on the subject.

Additional kudos to Claridge for managing to fit a word in edgewise while Garth Crooks's big self-important mouth is flapping like a barn door in a gale.

Recommend? (3)

***


I was quite pleased with "bon Motson" (derived from a bon mot delivered by ubiquitous football commentator John Motson) although a search on Google informed me that I can't claim to be the inventor of the term.

I was also happy to seize my opportunity to have a dig at Garth Crooks, a man who, I am confident, has never carried an argument by any means other than talking louder than everyone else.

Labels: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

We had the rare and special experience of seeing Coventry City FC on the idiot box a few weeks back, courtesy of their having drawn Chelsea in the quarter final of the F.A. Cup.

Sadly, cup glory will have to wait at least another year, as Chelsea romped to a 2-0 win that might as well have been eight. At least Cov's stadium looked halfway decent on the telly as they'd managed to sell out every seat in the house for once.

***


ITV COMMENTATOR: Oh, and -- er, what's going on here?

I opined that not knowing what was going on was pretty much in conflict with the duties of being a commentator, a commentator being employed to enlighten the masses, rather than confuse them further with his ignorance.

Joe went one further, declaring that there was no need for commentators, full stop. He than modified his position by conceding that they were fairly useful for the radio coverage.

***


Also, the pundits that the Beeb trot out for us: Darren Anderton got a cameo role on the Football Focus sofa recently and proceeded to justify whatever appearance fee he was getting by sitting there with his mouth firmly shut for most of the hour-long show. When asked to deliver any kind of analysis/opinion, he stammered bashfully and wouldn't look any of the other pundits in the face. Well worth the licence fee.


Last week, Dan, Joe and Tel watching Match of the Day; Alan Pardew in the studio waxing lyrical on Michael Essien's hussle in the Chelsea midfield.

AP: Essien's raped him there.

We look disbelievingly at one another. Is this really the BBC?

TEL: Did he just say--

JOE: Yep!

High fives all round- finally, a pundit worth listening to.


Pardew apologises for rape remark

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Early signs of Arctic weather were with us this morning: it was absolutely freezing in the car park at Whitley common. Me and Joe were playing for the Albany Social Club (a team stuffed with blasts from my schoolboy past) against someone higher up the league than us. Actually, all the other teams in the league are higher up the league than us, us being bottom of the league and all.

The pitch at Whitley common is exposed and has a pronounced slope. Today, the wind was going in pretty much the same direction as the slope and we had to contend with both in the first half. We cleared three shots off our goal line, they had a goal disallowed and a goal allowed. We were 1-0 down at half time.

With the conditions in our favour in the second half, we equalised. Grounds for cautious optimism.

Then things took a nasty turn: two of our defenders got in each other's way, allowing an attacker to get through down the left-hand side of our goal. I hadn't anticipated the tomfoolerous defending and had consequently let their right winger, whom I was supposed to be marking, get five yards goal side of me. He was in the centre of the penalty area, yelling for a pass to set him up with an easy finish.

I dashed back, only for the guy in possession to over-hit his pass senselessly; the ball fizzed past the forehead of their right winger and hit me squarely in the face as I caught up with him, ricocheting perfectly into our goal. Justin in goal hasn't given me such a fearsome look in seventeen years or so. My nose and mouth really hurt too.

I wandered back up to the halfway line in a foul temper, with a few disingenuous calls of "don't worry about it," from the team mates. Joe knew better than to shout any such trite nonsense and was maintaining a tactful silence. Their right winger was at least good enough not to laugh at me.

Fortunately, we levelled the score again with an almost equally ignoble goal when their keeper made a hash of a routine save and threw the ball into his own goal like Michael Jackson throwing babies off a balcony.

I had just about recovered my vision by this stage. When our side broke up the right, I made a furious charge up the left, leaving their spawny right winger standing, collected the ball as our striker flicked it on, went round their keeper and scored. Pick it out, tossers!

We won 3-2, and my good humour was restored as we trooped down to the changing room.

"You made up for it in the end, eh" said Chris, the team captain.

I grinned, somewhat painfully; the ball in the face had left me with a fat lip.

"Was it ever in doubt?"

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

I've seen Derby twice this season... and they always struck me as a puppet missing a couple of strings.

On the subject of Derby County scraping past non-league Forest Green 4-3 in the FA Cup 3rd round
Guardian football weekly podcast

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, WORDS

In the manner of the sadly discontinued "Separated at birth" section of the Grauniad sport supplement, I hereby challenge readers to spot which is which from a couple of lookalike celebrities.

Challenge #1: Elvis Costello vs Rafa Benitez.



For those happy few of you who aren't in the know, it might help if I mention that Elvis Costello wrote one of my favourite albums.

Labels: BUNKA, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

As it was to be my last Awaji tournament, Tricky handed the reins of power over to me, then continued to pester me over the phone every 20 minutes for the entire month leading up to the tournament, for such little things as completing application forms and why, oh why, had our name suddenly been changed from Real Osaka to Osaka Penguins (heh heh.)

He may have had a point though: I ballsed up the allocation of car space so badly, Bailey and I had to ride the bus out to the island.

First day:

Osaka Jets drew 0-0
Tokushima won 7-0 (?)
Inter Hyogo won 2-1
Murphys won 2-1

All good there. Highlights included me rolling back the years to 1950s Brazil with an outside-of-the-foot, banana-shot free kick against Tokushima, a richly undeserved 2-1 victory against Hyogo followed immediately by an almost equally undeserved 2-1 victory against Murphys. This latter was made possible by Eamonn (playing centre half for Murphys) going down with cramp under a speculative high ball, allowing Issei to steal in and bounce a shot off one of the other defenders into the goal.

Them's the breaks, Eamonn- you should have come jogging with me last week instead of taking your missus out to that swanky restaurant.

Having survived the first day, we were in a good position to thrive on the second day: Yuki, Takuro, Gamble were coming, as was Saito, the goalie.

Our first game was against the Hyogo side whom we'd somehow scraped past the previous day, but with our altered starting line-up, we were 6-1 up at half time. I brought myself on for the second half, and we only added another goal.

As the semi final kicked off, the weather conditions began to worsen. We went one, then two goals up against Shimane before conceding. We added another before half time and I brought myself on to add a bit more defensive steel to the team, whereupon we shipped two goals. Fortunately, Issei (whom I'd subbed off in my managerial wisdom) came back on and rocketed one home from outside the area to take us to the final.

At this point, the weather went haywire: lightning, accompanied by simultaneous thunder, forking down to the earth worryingly close to the football pitches. We scurried for shelter as the rain came down like bullets. The pyrotechnic mayhem continued for a good twenty minutes, before clearing up and leaving us contemplating a final played in ankle-deep water.

Happily, the pitch drained off very quickly (quality facility, Awaji) although some parts were still a bit mucky. Our opponents in the final were the Osaka Jets.

The first half brought a few chances, but a goal didn't come. I brought myself on for the second half and we promptly conceded. From my side of the field.

The pinkly-clad whoopsies of the Jets were ecstatic, but there was still football to play. Tricky delved down the left flank and pulled back for Gareth (aka Wee Bob) to smash home with his left. We had corners, Takuro hit the crossbar, but the time ran out and we were left with penalties.

Tricky scored (his third PK of the weekend), they equalised. Gamble pulled his fractionally wide, having probably been a bit affected by some banter from the opposition; they scored to gain the advantage. Yuki scored; Saito saved: all square. I buried mine; Saito saved. Bailey stepped up to shoot for the championship.

I thought it was going to be another "this is how to take a penalty" moment; sadly, it transpired to be a "this is how to hit the crossbar" moment. The Jets equalised with their fifth kick.

It was now sudden death. Gareth had his PK saved. Half of the Jets team rushed to celebrate their victory; the half who can count remained static on the halfway line. The premature victory celebration probably put more pressure on their kicker, whose shot Saito parried.

I sent up Takuro, who scored. They equalised. Gnashing my teeth, I sent up Graeme, who scored. They equalised again. Issei scored. They equalised. Yusuke scored. They equalised. Saito, our goalie, scored. Their goalie equalised. We had to start again from the top of the order.

For fuck's sake, I thought.

Tricky, the iceman, took and scored his fourth PK of the weekend. They equalised. Gamble, the glass slipper, hit his hard and to the right, their keeper got a hand to it, it still went in. I ran to embrace Gamble who was as limp as a strand of Ehime udon after the nervous tension of his kick. I promised him he wouldn't have to take a third spot kick, although I had my doubts as they equalised for the nth time.

Up stepped Yuki, to hit a carbon copy of his first PK, the only difference being that their keeper saved it this time.

Oh felch, I thought. Here we go...

Their lad, who'd seen his first shot saved, probably hadn't imagined that he'd be getting a chance to shoot for the championship. Fair play to him, he took it well: game, set and match to Osaka Jets.

I collected the runner's up trophy and threw it into a bush whilst the Jets were receiving the grand prize. Bailey retrieved it, and it was later passed on to Gareth who won our player of the tournament award, beating me into second place.

Other prizes given out included the "Roy Castle haircut award" for Leon, who shaved his head in the carpark after the first day's action, and the "Leon's head for a cock award" for Cameron, whose preference for a shorn member came to light in the bath-house on Saturday evening.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Introducing Mark Bailey, would-be "talent" (TV celebrity.) Sadly, he has yet to get his big break, but he's been the star of both my youtube videos to date. Here's the latest screen outing for Real Osaka's prodigal son, complete with transcript for anyone who wants to reenact this at home.

Setting: Awaji-shima, on the eve of the ALT soccer tournament (western.)



DAN: You join us here at "Bailey's soccer skills", as the ball has just gone under my chair. Here's Bailey: he's-

BAILEY (brightly): Hi! I'm Bailey. This is my soccer. Here are my skills.

Does about three keepy-ups before dollying the ball off in a random direction.

...that is my skills.

DAN: Sorry, you're going to have to be charismatic a bit louder than that: I had my thumb over the microphone.

BAILEY: (inaudible)... So, for any young kids out there watching, this is how to do skills.

GAMBLE: What do you call this one? What's the move called? "The Bailey?"

BAILEY: This is... ah... this is called "The Peasant", and it goes a little like this:

Manages to get the ball airborne, then accidentally shanks it at Gamble's head. The ball ends up on top of a dresser.

GAMBLE: Ooh God! Oh God! Argh!

DAN: That was like a magic trick, except that I think we all pretty much figured out how the ball got there.

BAILEY: Yeah, it's called "The Peasant" because it's bare, it has no substance and it's generally going to starve to death in any kind of skills tournament. If you're looking for a little meat on the bone, you probably want to go with this-

DAN (giggling): Bailey, I've seen people juggle a dead mole better than this.

BAILEY: A mole would probably be better.

GAMBLE: Show us your magnum.

DAN: A dead mole! The noise it makes when you kick a dead mole up in the air...

BAILEY: I wasn't doing so bad before, it's the camera- ah, there we go... oh god...*

Actually manages to string a couple of keepy-ups together, before spooning it again

DAN: Actually, I wasn't pointing the camera at you that time.

This is a lie designed to boost Bailey's confidence. It works: Bailey manages to keep the ball aloft.

BAILEY: This is, uh, (tries to think of a name) this is "The Hebrew."

Plays the ball off the wall, keeps it aloft, then loses control and ends up hoofing it at the camera.

DAN: Next is "Devin's soccer skills."

Devin looks anything but enthusiastic.

* "God" capitalised for Gamble, but not for Bailey, as I'm fairly sure that Bailey's an atheist.

---

Disgracefully, Bailey went on to win our Player of the tournament award as Real claimed the Western Japan ALT crown.

Fans of Bailey and Real can also check out How to get a strike: take one and take two

Labels: COMRADES, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, U-TUBE, WORDS

Brett, bless him, got me Kodansha's Dictionary of basic Japanese idioms for me birthday. The title of this post (lit: eye poison) means an eyesore. Here it is in Japanese:



First character is eye, second character denotes possession, third character is poison. It's all so simple gaijin-san.

Brett having provided me with such a handsome present, it would have been churlish and remiss of me to deny him a night's accommodation at the Casa Dan ahead of Man Ure and Chelski's European Champion's League Final on Wednesday night. We got to sleep sometime after midnight and had to be up again before 3 am, thanks to the blasted time difference between Europe and Japan.

Brett had had the foresight to bring a fruit salad breakfast for the pair of us. Where he had erred, however, was in leaving his contact lens solution at home, necessitating his purchase of a fresh bottle at the local convenience store.

Sadly, what he bought turned out to be me no doku. After a stifled yelp, Brett announced that his eyes were burning. That shouldn't be, I thought. I had a quick shuftie at the label on the bottle, beneath CONTACT LENS (English characters) there was a bit of a twist:



(Yep, there's that "poison" character again.)

"Dude," I said; "you put disinfectant in your eyes."

"That explains it," said Brett, blinking like an eight-year-old at a funeral.

***

He didn't cry as much as John Terry, though. How, in this day and age, anyone can allow an English centre half to take a clutch penalty is beyond me.

Labels: BUNKA, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Edwin has called in for the Japan leg of his world tour and it's continual mayhem: the two of us plus Brett and Mike O spent the last portion of Sunday night/ Monday morning camped out in a weird tortured-metal bombed-cathedral looking structure in the middle of one of Osaka's busiest junctions, surrounded by turbines, playing old classics on the guitar and making up some new classics while we were at it.

There's been football as well, and here we see Dan reinventing himself as the dreaded v3.0 gets closer to hitting the shelves.

We played with Baggina last Saturday and the oppo had a pretty good central midfielder (no 21) who was into the physical side of the game: lots of shirt-pulling, lots of off the ball body-checking. Most of us were getting fairly fed up with the myopic-verging-on-racial-discrimination refereeing (a fixture in Baggina games) so I unleashed the all-new Dan The Midfield Enforcer.

Number 21 passes the ball, Dan, arriving half a second late, swipes his legs out and dumps him on the hard, dusty gravel that passes for a playing surface in these parts.

The referee, true to form, was looking in entirely the wrong direction at the time, as he was a few minutes later when I gave our would-be Stevie G a pretty solid body check to the chest, narrowly missing out on the bonus points required for a knee in the family jewels.

Having sated my bloodlust, I went back to Dan v2.9: mild-mannered goal scorer. Number 21, for his part, gave up on bashing me. Probably a wise move in the circumstances: the east is red with gaijin anger.

Labels: COMRADES, THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

Last night me and Tricky, along with a new Real recruit called Cam, turned out for Baggina (sic) FC, a pretty handy Japanese side that's been providing Real with ringers since way back when. Note on pronunciation: it's Bah-jee-nah. If you pronounce it with a hard "G", you get the Japanese word for "vagina" which is unlikely to strike fear into opponents.

Prior to the game, I was arguing the toss with Tricky about tournament PK responsibility. Tricky, apparently, thinks I'm a bit of a liability from 12 yards (this on the basis of one missed in actual match play for Real, and several missed in a warm-up in Nagano when I had a rancid hangover.) I, on the other hand, remain convinced that I'm the ghost of Le Tiss, having missed only two penalties in matches out of several dozen spot kicks during my illustrious career.

It's not the first time we've had this discussion.

The game itself was played over three periods (1 * 30 mins, 2 * 35-ish, I think.) For the first period, the Real contingent (namely, all the gaijin) had to play for Baggina's opposition, who had not had sufficient foresight to bring a full complement of players, and were all about 3'7".

In the second period, we got to play for the grown-ups and, wouldn't you know it, Baggina get a penalty after their striker pulls on a defender's shirt then dives to the floor. The referee (Baggina) gives it; Yuki calls on me to take it, me having buried a PK in my previous appearance for the Baggies. I'm completely disgusted that a penalty has even been awarded and tell Yuki where to put it, whereupon Yuki calls on Tricky: hazusu kara ("because he'll miss anyway.")

Tricky puts the ball on the spot. "Go on Tricky, bury those demons" I shout, referring to his previous PK which put us out of the Awaji tournament.

Tricky runs in and fires towards the bottom right-hand corner. The midget goalie scampers across and kicks it away in a manner not dissimilar to Mario booting one of those turtle-shell thingies in the classic Nintendo game. Everyone sniggers, especially me: not the most dignified way to have one's penalty saved.

Two minutes later Dan gets the ball in the penalty area, evades two would-be challengers, runs head-on into a third and, somehow, emerges with the ball about six yards out with only the keeper to beat. Goal to Dan.

Suitably content with further evidence of my own genius (Tricky got a goal in the third period, just in case anyone's feeling sorry for him) I rounded off the night by getting top score on one of those karaoke machines that gives out random scores when Eamonn and I pulled out a heart-warming, ear wax-loosening rendition of a classic we'd been reminded of in Murphy's bog-standard Irish bar earlier on.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME, U-TUBE

Let's see: we have four Premiership teams in the last eight of the quote-unquote "Champion's" League. English football is going places, but...

This is three more than the number of Premiership teams in the FA Cup semi finals.

This being England's foremost domestic cup competition, one might reasonably expect to see the likes of Arsenal, Man Utd et al gracing the last four, but no: the sole representative of the Premiership in this year's competition's penultimate round is Portsmouth. The rest are teams from the Endsleigh, or whatever it's called this month.

Naturally, the above is likely to fuel criticisms that the FA Cup is losing its value as a competition with the big clubs more interested in their continental payday than doing away with the likes of Barnsley in midweek mud in front of football fans who still buy pies in this day and age.

(Yes, Barnsley are in the FA Cup semis also, beaten Liverpool and Chelsea in this season's competition.)

All very romantic, every dog has its day, etc. But how about the following: what if one of the Premiership's Champion's League qualifying spots (say: fourth place which is well off the pace) were removed and the winners of the FA Cup won the right to compete in the Champion's League?

Would the big clubs give their big names a day off for FA Cup ties if their Champion's league dosh was on the line?

Well, quite.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

For those of you to whom the above video is unclear, KKK Madrid, Spain's equivalent of Chelsea, have a goal disallowed for offside in the build up. Even worse is to follow as, whilst they're prancing around by the corner flag, dividing their exorbitant salaries by 90 in their heads and wondering how much cocaine and how many cabin attendants they're going to be able to get hold of this evening, the opposition take the free kick for said offside, run the ball up the pitch and score.

The beautiful game has never been so beautiful.

Labels: THE BEAUTIFUL GAME