Yank: ?
Yank: Funny and cute video of Paolo Maldini’s son slide tackling Clarence Seedorf. You’ll probably enjoy the fabulous music too.
Yank: I watched Cass, the movie. Have you seen it yet?
Limey: That’s the one about the black guy who ends up being the head of one of West Ham’s hooligan ‘firms’, right? I haven’t seen it, was it any good? It’s kind of interesting you mention it, especially after reading this news story yesterday about West Ham and Milwall fans clashing like it was some kind of weird flashback to the ’80s.
Yank: I guess these guys watched the movie and were inspired to relive the ’80s. It’s a decent movie. If you happen to be a fan of soccer and its culture like some of us are, then of course you need to watch it.
Yank: The Premier League is just about to start. Now is the time for you to lay out your predictions for the year. Since you’re an Englishman, I’m expecting you to be right in most of your predictions.
Limey: Such faith in my abilities is so endearing. Sadly, I predict things won’t be that much different this year at the top of the Premiership to how they’ve been the past ten zillion years. There’s an air of inevitability these days about it which gets kind of dull, frankly. As usual, the battle at the bottom of the division about who might or might not get relegated will probably be the more entertaining factor, as survival in the Premiership seems to warrant far more importance than actually winning the damn thing.
Once again, I expect Man Utd, even without Ronaldo, to be talented enough and managed brilliantly to win yet another title. However, rather than Liverpool, I expect Chelsea to be their main competitors this year. Liverpool will still be top four along with Arsenal, and I believe Man City will start to assert themselves and be a top five team, but it will probably still be another year or two before they really break through. The way they’re spending should see them breaking into that top four soon enough.
As for Villa, I’m not sure if they’ll have as great a start to the season as they did last year, but if they’re more consistent and don’t choke once they’re flying high, that would be nice. I’m guessing Everton and Spurs will continue to challenge them to round off the top eight.
As for the teams at the bottom? That’s always harder to predict — look at Newcastle last year. The teams that came up like Birmingham and Burnley will probably have trouble staying up, but Wolves might be good enough to compete well, though I’m judging that solely on how competent they were in the Championship last season.
Having said all this, I would really, really love to be COMPLETELY wrong about this and would enjoy returning to this post in June 2010 and laughing at my inadequacy.
So what about you? What do you predict? Or are you too busy drooling over the return of American Football so you can drink Budweiser and eat nachos on the sofa in front of your 60″ television set?
Yank: I went to RANDOM.ORG and entered all the teams. Here’s what I got…
1. Burnley
2. Everton
3. Portsmouth
4. Sunderland
5. Fulham
6. Aston Villa
7. Tottenham
8. Man City
9. Hull City
10. Wigan Athletic
11. Man Utd
12. Wolves
13. West Ham Utd
14. Bolton
15. Stoke City
16. Arsenal
17. Chelsea
18. Liverpool
19. Blackburn
20. Birmingham
Limey: That’s fantastic! Burnley winning the Premiership in their first year up. You called it. I see Aston Villa in the random standings would finish sixth. That’s a pretty good prediction. Can’t wait to see Man Utd mired in mid-table mediocrity and Arsenal, Chelsea, and Liverpool fighting for survival with Birmingham and Blackburn.
Yank: I heard that Man City signed Alex Rodriguez and that Real Madrid signed Albert Pujols. What do you think of these deals?
Limey: I heard the Yankees signed Carlos Tevez and that the Cardinals signed Kaka. How d’you like them apples?
Limey: Sad news today about the death of former England manager Bobby Robson. He was a great man who took England to the World Cup quarter-finals in 1986, then the semi-finals in 1990 when we lost to Germany in a penalty shoot-out. That was the year England had great players like Gary Lineker, Stuart Pearce, and Paul Gascoigne. It’s a sad day for English footy fans everywhere as Bobby Robson was someone we all grew up with and admired.
Limey: Q – What’s the difference between Alex Ferguson and Michael Jackson? A – At least Fergie will still be playing Giggs in August.
Yank: Are there any players who are famous for things besides soccer?
Limey: So here’s a handful to get you started…
- Joey Barton of course. He’s famous for being a criminal, so does that count?
- There’s a handful of players who not only represented England at football, but also at cricket, which is quite a feat, and is very unlikely to happen again.
- Vinnie Jones (who we’ve probably mentioned too many times before, seeing as he’s the only footballer Americans have ever heard of apart from David Beckham) is probably better known as a second-rate actor rather than a second-rate player.
- Apparently, Gordon Ramsay “lied about his football career to raise his celebrity profile”. This is according to the The Daily Mail, so take it with a pinch of salt.
Of course, many players are famous for their antics off the pitch as much as on, whether they’re caught taking drugs in nightclubs, sleeping with women other than their wives, crashing sportscars, and causing all kinds of mischief when they should know better.
Yank: So I guess the answer is no. I’m surprised.
Limey: You’ve never heard of Gordon Ramsay or Vinnie Jones?
Yank: Sure, I know that hard man, but he’s not really famous for his acting. Gordon Ramsay I’d never heard of.
Limey: Ooh, I thought of another one: George Weah. Surely you must have heard of him? After playing for Monaco, AC Milan, and his home country of Liberia, he ended up being a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, but unfortunately failed in his bid to become the Liberian president.
As you don’t know who Gordon Ramsay is, I feel it’s about time the two of you became acquainted:
Yank: Here in the US we have a long tradition of athletes becoming politicians: Jack Kemp, David Bing, etc. Any soccer player examples like that?
Limey: It’s an interesting concept. British footballers have a reputation for being notoriously dumb, so it’s hard to imagine any of them being clever enough to be politicians. Surely you have to be smart, intelligent, and intellectually savvy to be a politician… oh, wait a second, I forgot for a moment that I live in the USA.
I’m racking my brain to come up with footie players who became politicians. Sure, some of them have held authoritative position in the FA or FIFA organizations, and many have gone on to write books, become good broadcasters, or remain great ambassadors for the sport, but have any actually become MPs? I can’t think of any.
In terms of British athletes though, Sebastian Coe comes to mind. He was an English middle-distance runner who won 1500m gold at the Olympics in 1980 and 1984. After his running career he became an MP, and now he’s a Lord and pretty much overseeing the 2012 London Olympics.
Limey: So hey, Yank, I actually have a serious question for you for a change! What do you think of the ‘away goals’ rule in most European championship footie matches? I find it really interesting that such a concept is thoroughly unheard of in American sports. Even in a closely-contested, low-scoring sport like NHL ice-hockey, it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose at home or on the road, or how many goals you score away compared to home. Instead, they will use play-offs to decide who goes through to the finals.
I know footie is different because a tie is a result, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for Chelsea tonight. They HELD the mighty Barcelona in their own stadium to a scoreless 0-0 draw, which is quite an achievement, yet back home at Stanford Bridge, they ended up going out because they drew again, but this time 1-1. Those are the rules of course, but I just wondered what you thought of the concept, because Chelsea never actually lost, but out they go.
Yank: I think it’s unfair. I agree, two games ending in ties does not produce a winner, regardless of venue.
Limey: I know they introduced it because sometimes a team would win 1-0 at home and then in the next leg keep ten men behind the ball for the entire game and try and force a draw. But to be honest, if that’s the way a team wants to play, so be it… I don’t see anything in the rule books saying a team must play attacking football non-stop. Sure it’s dull, but defense is as much a part of the game as attack.
I think the situation where it bugs me the most is when a team wins the first leg 2-1 at home say. With the away goals rule, that actually becomes a not so great result. If in the next game, the home team eeks out a 1-0 win they’ll be the team that goes through because even though it’s 2-2 on aggregate, they scored that vital goal away from home to take them through to the next round.
The anomaly of the away goals rule was best exemplified in the 2003 Champions League semis when AC Milan met Inter Milan. The kicker here is that the San Siro Stadium, as you’re probably aware, is home to both teams. In the first leg, AC were the ‘home team’ and Inter the ‘away team’. The game was a 1-1 draw. The second leg was a 0-0 draw, so Inter won on the away goals ruling, which is just plain ludicrous.
I don’t like penalty shoot-outs much, mainly because English teams suck at them, but I’ve always thought that perhaps they could play the semi-finals at a neutral venue instead and make it a single match with extra-time kind of like what they did in the old days, and kind of like what happens with the domestic FA Cup semi-finals in England.
With the away goal rule still in place, it seems like that goal counts as ‘double’, and that just doesn’t seem right. In a league tournament you have the equality of playing half your games at home and half your games away, so any team that wants to win has to be good at both, but in a knock-out cup tournament, I think the away goal thing might need a little re-thinking. I’m all for attacking football, and less penalty shoot-outs, but sometimes it does seem the away goal thing is a little antiquated.
