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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From the ridiculous to the simply brilliant

Well here’s a little twist on the theme of yesterdays’s piece. First up the ridiculous; this time it’s about a car, a very rare one. The car isn’t the ridiculous item, in fact it’s rather beautiful…

Random thoughts

Well dear readers for the first time in a very long time I thought I’d do a posting not linked to a single theme but just a series of random thoughts zapping around in my mind at the moment. Each of these could be the subject of a separate posting but I thought I’d just shorthand it for fun.

It’s how you say it…

Well I mentioned in the last post that I thought Matt Hancock was the crappest person in the UK because of his atrocious performance in the role of Health Secretary. And within days Dominic Cummings had delivered evidence of private text messages with Boris J confirming that he (Boris) also agreed that Hancock was totally fucki*g useless. Not my words; the Prime Minister’s. It’s nice to know that people in high office agree with you but also damn scary that Hancock’s still in control of policies around the NHS response to the pandemic whilst his boss, the Head of the UK Government, thinks he’s a complete fuckwit. Thank god we don’t have rapidly rising cases of a new variant affecting us. Oh we do? FFS how many waves and restrictions do we have to endure because this fuckwit of a Minister cannot get a firm final grip on the problem? I suspect it’s because Johnson only wants to retain him as the sacrificial scapegoat when the inevitable enquiry makes its findings and appoints blame. Keep your real feelings discreet eh Bojo?

Football belongs to me

So the fiasco of that European Super league is over, for now. It was a hideous concept dreamt up by the billionaire owners of a dozen or so of the top teams in Europe or those faced with the biggest debts. Let’s face it these guys, be they Middle Eastern potentates, Asian oligarchs or American tycoons, made an investment in football – the world’s greatest sport – not because they had a love for the game but because at some point they wanted to make a serious return. And the American bunch convinced their counterparts to adopt the franchise example of American football; a closed group of teams protected from the threat of automatic relegation and promotion, able to soak their fans and maximise/share the incredible broadcast revenues whilst imposing a salary cap on the talent. Let’s face it, if you could afford to be in the club it must have looked liked a recipe for unbridled success with the share prices soaring  along with the profits. 5 years of this model and the debts would be paid off and the asset put up for sale to the next batch of uber-entrepreneurs for huge profits. Bastards.

Lorimer!

Well after the news of Murray’s death, it was very sad to learn about the passing of Leeds United great Peter Lorimer. Not that I was a Leeds fan; anything but. They were the original team to hate but boy did they have some players and Lasher Lorimer was one of their greatest – the youngest ever player at 15 years +,  he went on to make 703 appearances no less and scored 238 goals, many of them absolute rockets.

New norm

Yesterday was a little bit of a special day. You see I’m a big sports fan and yesterday afternoon I found myself watching the F1 GP qualifying sessions and between times catching up with England’s progress in the Test match v the W Indies. And then I checked into Sky’s Soccer Saturday and gorged on Jeff Stelling and the footie all afternoon. For the last 3 months we haven’t been able to do any of that of course and it felt decadent and good at the same time. Ah welcome back top level sport that we are pretty darn good at. Do you ever wonder what it must be like doing that if you’re say Scottish or Welsh? Ha! Cheap joke sorry.  And not that funny. And a bit offensive. Sorry again. Well slightly amusing.

Funny that…

Well I see that the Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden is having talks today with football administrators and medical experts over the possibility of allowing top class English football to return next month behind closed doors and at neutral venues. Now nobody would be happier than me to see football’s return – so long as it is safe for all concerned. Indeed yesterday the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, was gushing  about how the Premier League’s return could ‘lift the spirits of the nation’. Wow it only seems a few days since Matt Hancock publicly pilloried top flight footballers for their wealthy lifestyles and shaming them into making a bigger contribution towards the cost of the NHS (that is in addition to the heavy tax they pay on their massive earnings) which many were already doing privately. It makes you laugh doesn’t it. The Government targets easy scapegoats but with 30,000 covid-19 deaths already on their watch (the largest in any country bar the USA which does have 4 times our population) they are suddenly in need of those overpaid footballers to take the attention and the pressure off them. And people accuse me of being cynical. Pah

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