Football greats

So I haven’t posted in a while and this is overdue. It’s about two greats of the football world who have died recently, Pele and John Motson. I started to get really interested in footie around the age of 9/10. As well as playing I started to watch Blackpool FC and did all the boys’ soccer-mad stuff like collecting cards and accumulating, my proud and joy, numerous books on football. Of course there was no internet back then in the Middle Ages and little tv coverage of the game. So books were where I learned about the international game. And I became fasciated by Brazil and in particular by Pele. It was not just because he was a footballing genius; he was known by his nickname but how many knew then that his real name was the exotic Edson Arantes do Nascimento? I did thanks to my books.  And he was proud to be named after the genius inventor Edison.

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Oh Jimmy, Jimmy

So it was sad to learn of the death of Jimmy Greaves today, probably the best natural goal scorer the English game has ever seen.  He didn’t score 30 yard screamers and very few headers; his technique was to pass the ball into the net. And he did it for every team he played for – Chelsea, AC Milan, Spurs, West Ham and England. So why am I so interested? Well he was probably the first footballing hero I can remember.

bbc football analysts

Is it just me or are the ‘expert’ analysers employed by BBC tv and radio for its football coverage just pants? Gawd knows on what basis they are selected beyond being ex-footballers of course. But surely there must be more to it than that. How about an ability to speak near-English, or with insight about the game, or amusingly with wit and verve, or with telling opinions or anything other than mindless cliches and statements of the bleeding obvious.

can you decipher desailly?

I watched MoTD last night just to have another look at the Man U v Russia match. It wasn’t a classic was it and there’s a lot of wailing on the radio phone-ins today about dodgy refereeing decisions and bias towards Man U. And that’s just the commentators. Whatever. It looked to me like Man U were clearly dominant and deserved the win. Chelski never had a decent shot on goal and Schevchenko really hasn’t got what it takes in the Premiership. Even with a benign management regime, he has to be taken off. He knows it too. If he had pace, it’s gone. Is that the biggest waste of money ever blown on a single player?