Atrophied Success

When Middlesbrough supporters hold a big flag with an arrow pointing to Newcastle United supporters underneath the slogan ‘Trophy Virgins’, what, exactly, are they trying to imply? That neither I, nor any of my fellow supporters, have ever attempted to engage in the act of copulation with one? Well, frankly, I should hope not. You know, they do ask for those things back at the end of the year.

This is not to say that trophy presentations wouldn’t be spruced up if, instead of the traditional arms aloft pose, the winning captain was invited to engage with the trinket on a more intimate basis; the type of basis that is usually precipitated by two and half bottles of shared wine and concluded with a flimsy and perfunctory text correspondence. Even so, though, I’m not sure any majesty would be lent to Cup final day if Gary Lineker was forced to hand over to the presentations only after a clear NSFW warning. And I imagine those ribbons get everywhere. If this is a radical shape up to the handing out of silverware being proposed then I’m afraid I will have to be lending a dissenting voice.

Crafty buggers, they may simply have been trading on that old schoolyard trick of saying the word ‘virgin’ and waiting to see who squirmed first. Certainly, my first response on seeing the banner was to go over, again, the night when my sister’s friend- who was well fit but who left for London with her family the next day meaning that neither I nor anybody else would ever see her again- came in to my bedroom in the middle of the night and we must have been at it for at least eight hours, and she was gasping and everything and then she let me touch her boobs and I’ve definitely done it now, so just shut up about it right?

An effective form of banter, to be sure: evoking childhood trauma (or in my case, evoking memories of saucy first time romps with the friends of my sister), in the hope of psyching us out. Next time we meet- will we ever again?- they should devise something around the theme of suspicious wet patches and that time we called the teacher ‘mam’.

What they surely can not have been suggesting, contrary to what has been claimed by some unkind souls, is that Newcastle United have never won a trophy. We have won far more than most clubs, and most of those clubs have won far more than Middlesbrough. They have won precisely one, a League Cup following a 2004 victory against Bolton Wanderers. You’ll have heard the stories from elderly relatives, I’m sure: the flat caps, the urchins smiling toothily, the almost full stadium. You can probably access the Pathe newsreel coverage at the National museum of football. In some circles, it’s still referred to as ‘The Joseph Desire Job final’. Usually, clarification is sought from the other parties in the conversation as to what ‘The Joseph Desire Job final’ is in reference to. But once that administrative matter is smoothed, the reminiscing begins and just as anybody of a certain age can remember where they were when Kennedy was killed, so too can we all remember what we were watching on the other side when Middlesbrough won the league cup.

One Middlesbrough final I did watch was their 2006 Uefa Cup one against Sevillia. I even missed The Apprentice so I could catch the last twelve, goal packed, minutes. I remember being disappointed as I like to see all the North East clubs doing well- even the ones from outside the North East. But, hey, guys, nobody’s judging. They’re difficult, those ones, aren’t they, the European ones? Only the truly top clubs achieve anything in those, the likes of AC Milan and Newcastle United.

Things to do in summer when you're dropped...

After a disappointing display against Egypt, one which met the visible disapproval of coach Fabio Capello, Arsenal’s Theo Walcott may be concerned that this summer, far from the coming of age narrative he had planned to be involved with in South Africa, will, in fact, be a bit of a washout spent bumming around the house. But the youngsters today have so many more options than we did when we weren’t selected to play for our country at the highest possible level at that age- and instead spent our summers idly frolicking with chums long in to the night, before going home and downloading the new Green Day and Eminem albums from Napster- and Theo has all manner of activities to be keeping himself busy with as the days get longer and the nights shorter.

Cinema pass

Of course, it’s not unknown for kids on their six weeks to bypass payment at the cinema all together and obtain access to films by making stealthy use of the life sized cardboard cut outs of Twilight characters and an elderly relative who works there taking tickets. Or, otherwise, taking advantage of the scraggly haired college student who works there taking tickets and probably regards the issue of people sneaking into cinema showings as he regards everything else in the world, with a sort of detached amusement (something which probably helps make that little torch he has to carry around with him a bit more bearable) and acts to counter in the same way he acts to do anything, with slouched inertia.

Kids that download films illegally off the internet and watch them alone in a darkened room are part of a thrilling media revolution and no doubt feted by their parents as technological whizz kids; kids that show cunning and adventure and go to see a film the way the director intended it to be seen are ‘antisocial’. What this says about society’s media consumption habits and eagerness to label is up for debate, but it seems a fair bet that neither group particularly enjoyed Avatar.

Sneaking in would be a bit of a stretch for Theo, who would, in keeping with his display last Wednesday, probably end up gormlessly running head down in to the popcorn stand. There’s also the risk of being spotted- unless the people doing the doors are the type of fair-weather football types that only watch world cups, then he should be fine. Regardless though, the price of a cinema mega pass should not represent too much of a problem, especially if his parents, as many do, up his pocket money in keeping with the additional spare time he finds himself with over the summer. Tenner a month, jobs a good ‘un and you’re laughing. Unless you take advantage of the offer to go and watch the new Will Farrell film, obviously, in which case you’re sitting in a stone faced silence punctured only by the occasional low groan of disgust. But the point stands.

Reminder: you will need to present your I.D before each showing, and notes from your parents or highly internationally acclaimed football coaches are not considered valid.

Go travelling

The gap year option, as favoured by many rich students who use the time spent travelling not taking advantage of drunk girls at full moon parties and attempting to eat their own face after taking some dodgy acid, trying to ‘find themselves’.

For Theo, this shouldn’t prove too hard a task, he’d be best advised to start by looking around the nearest substitute bench. Don’t forget though who’ll be looking for him: Theo himself, armed with his legendary lack of positional skill and general directionless. It seems that the young whip has unwittingly stumbled into something of an existential quandary relating to the nature of self. An unwitting stumble that will probably, like most of his unwitting stumbles tend to, see him surrender possession before looking peeved and more than a little hurt.

Music festivals

U2 are headlining this year’s Glastonbury which is a bit of a shame, obviously, but should also ensure tickets are a little easier to come by on Ebay, once people do the mathematics needed to deduce how irrational it is to want to see U2 in the face of being forced to plough around muddy marshland in dignity-stripping footwear and times that by the possibility of bumping in to Edith Bowman.

One thing the World Cup does have over music festivals, outside of its lack of Edith Bowman, is the bottled water situation: there won’t be the queues to get a bottle that there traditionally are at Glastonbury, and it’s most likely free, as opposed to ludicrously expensive. This has been subtlety branded over the years, like the rain and the paucity of toilet facilities, as ‘all part of the experience’, when, in actuality, crass corporate exploitation would appear to be the anathema of what the music festival experience should be. Theo can take heart in his right to reply: he can write a letter to NME which will draw a sarcastic and one line response from a smug ponce with a stupid haircut who spent the entire festival backstage sharing complimentary champagne and an air conditioner with Florence and the Machine.

Score against Burnley

Because it is hard, isn’t it, football. Except, crucially, when you’re playing against Burnley in which case it tends to become very, very easy. Arsenal ususally like to engage themselves in quasi-glamorous pre season 'occasions', extensively sponsored tournaments with portentous names and trophies handed out at the end of it to captains doing their best to look thrilled. But this year perhaps they can make an exception and give Burnley a few games in the name of Theo’s confidence and general all round mood? Failing that, maybe they can politely ask Barcelona or Ajax if they wouldn’t mind stepping aside and letting Brian Laws’ men having a crack at the ‘Emirates Tournament’ this year. Note: It might be an idea to run this idea past Sky or whichever station has provisionally agreed to televise it this year.

Newcastle United 4 Coventry City 1/ Newcastle United 3 Preston North End 0

It was pointed out on NUFC.Com the day after the Coventry City game that the four one win after going a goal behind scarily mirrored a game against the same club eleven years ago, which we won four one after going a goal behind. Even the times of the goals were similar, some falling within a minute of each other (not counting the interceding eleven years of course, but you know what I mean, even if I’m rapidly losing track myself).

It all, depending how deeply one elects to think about these things- or any other thing involving Coventry City- seemed to say something ultimately defeating about the nature of football, sport, and life itself. If it’s all as pointlessly cyclical as this, if everything begins and ends to a unchanged effect played to a largely unmoved landscape, then why do we bother? We can’t even get a pie and cup of coffee at half time at St. James’ Park without lots of ethically anguished handwringing (although wringing would probably mark a nice change for our hands, given their usual role in the half time pie exchange is to be covered painfully in an intemperate and runny mince type substance, before being held under a cold tap until the second half begins) and it’s not as if anybody seems to enjoy going. Spiritual awakenings have as much power to diminish as they do illuminate, of course, they do as much to strip away possibly as they do to enhance it. For, for one thing to be universally true, lots of other, sometimes more juicy, things- often things that involve cute, earthily earnest girls with frizzy hair and encouragingly liberal views on group sex- have to be untrue. It’s all pointless, all of it and, even if it wasn’t, it would still revolve around Coventry City. Nice.

At least we won though. 4-1! I like Wayne Routledge: he’s bombastic, and quick. He was dropped for the Preston game on Saturday, a game I’ve crudely squeezed into this piece in a manner which gives the misleading idea that they were somehow thematically linked, but is, in fact, a nod to my lack of things to say about both games, really. Once again, the opponents were just terrible, lacking wit and flair, which is fair enough and expected, but also stomach and lustre. Once again, we weren’t much better, but done enough to have a comfortable victory secured long
before the end. I am still not sure if I’m enjoying this season or not.

I have no idea why Routlege was dropped, incidentally, perhaps he was ‘carrying a knock’. This is a big no-no, of course, and, like wedding rings and other superfluous objects, any knocks would have to be properly covered in bandages or, even better, handed to the fourth official before the game. It meant we had Guthrie in the right midfield role, except we didn’t because he kept drifting in, leaving a huge gap, to Simpson’s visible frustration. Best and Carroll together is a disaster, they run with the smooth collaborative fission of 2pac and Biggie, and spent much of the afternoon bickering like a failing couple. Carroll may get better, Best absolutely will not, and we’ve been had again. Signed him from Coventry City, you say? Spooky.

Wag Weekly...Rebecca Ellison

Rebecca and Rio were married in the summer of last year. Nothing flash, just your standard two storey glass Great Room, the usual covered up barbequed area with swim up bar, and the positively run of the mill four thousand foot outdoor ‘entertainment square’. Weddings being weddings, and the British being the British, it seems a safe bet that there was still somebody in attendance who wanted to grumble about the buffet.

The wedding cemented a seven year relationship, during which time the couple have had two children, both of whom they named after the actor Larenz Tate. They didn’t name both children Larenz Tate, which may have leant a little too hard into obsession, but rather created a hybrid of the two names, assigning one each to both children. Which is fine, you imagine, whenever the kids are together- as long as they remember to introduce themselves in the right order- but a perhaps less effective tribute whenever they are separate from one another, where it could quite easily become a hassle to have to explain again.

Tate, as anybody who has just searched his name on IMDB knows, played O-Dog in Menace to Society, hardly a suitable role model for the new England captain. But then, it could be argued that the new England captain is hardly a suitable role model for O-Dog out of Menace to Society. We’re none of us perfect. And what’s to say that it wasn’t, in fact, Tate’s memorable turn as ‘Basketball Team Captain’ in one episode of ‘The Wonder Years’ that spawned the Ferdinands’ fandom? (Pretty memorable episode, that one, it also featured Screech out of ‘Saved by the Bell’. Where, we wonder, would the Ferdinand offspring have been left had their parents’ affections been swayed the way of Dustin Diamond? Engaged in an almighty rock, paper, scissors contest to see who got the moniker ‘Diamond’ would be my guess.)

Alan Green is away....

“I wasn’t here last week,” said Alan Green on Saturday night’s 606 show. “I was in California,” he went on.


Monday
Flying is a pain. Look, I know for most people it’s a treat, and good luck to those people. Lord knows they put up with enough. But I’m expected to do this first class, often a couple of times a month. It’s ridiculous that we’re stuck with such outmoded forms of transportation. There needs to be a serious think about using the technology available to create something quicker, something which necessitates fewer lacklustre browses through the in flight magazine- something teleportable that can be forgotten about until we need it. I don’t buy this argument that says we’d be robbing something from travelling if we done this: the technology would only be available to the people that need it most, me and other football commentators.

Tuesday
The glorious Californian sun glistens and in the distance the city hums busily. Laid out poolside, a slight breeze brushing pleasingly against my hair, I notice a small group of children, smiling and laughing and playing football with a beach ball, as their parents watch on smiling lovingly. Eventually quietly asked to leave by the nearby bar staff after loudly decrying the standard of football on show- honestly, it was amateurish.
Spend the afternoon at Disneyland. ‘Where your fantasies come true’? There are the ones having fantasies if they think I’ll be going back there. Joke.

Wednesday
Missing football. Keen to get updates but stuck with newspapers weeks out of date (one of which carries a report from that farcical Liverpool/Reading cup time- honestly, how can we have any respect for a competition that allows thing like that to happen? It must be time to scrap the whole thing). Obviously in the days of twitter feeds and Mike Ingham’s facebook status updates, obtaining results and bite sized summaries of games is a comparatively simple one. But I have my role as amusingly out of touch technophobe to maintain: somebody who, if presented with an Ipad tablet, is going to ask if it works best dissolved or swallowed whole, and who thinks apps are something that were devalued in Sven Goran Eriksson's time as England manager. And lots of other amusing misunderstandings sweetly indulged by the 606 producers. (Apart from on matters of video replays, of course, where I suddenly become Johnathan bloody Ive- you know the referees I’ve spoken to want the help, and if it’s there to give them it, why not give them it?)

My wife suggests the BBC football blog, and I reply, with a touch of vexed exasperation, that I thought they only had those in Ireland, and besides I haven’t brought my wellies, before grumbling a little under my breath. She rolls her eyes and accuses me of being a stick in the mud. “That’ll happen if you forget your wellies,” I reply. Happy with that.

Thursday
Ring home. The usual holiday stuff: weather, how everybody is, a twenty minute conversational derailment centred on Liverpool’s recent upturn in form and where it leaves Raffa Benitez and the American owners. Eventually rush through the call to avoid running into the traffic and the weekend news round up.

Friday
Spend the morning at Paramount Studios. Bit of a set-to with the tour operator when he suggests this is the place where dreams come true. I point out that, in fact, my dreams- nor, I would guess, the dreams of others on the tour- tend not to involve cramped buses crawling anticlimactically around artificial New York landmarks, as an aspiring or otherwise failed actor witters on about Audrey Hepburn and Bing Crosby. When he accuses me of unhelpful literalness, I suggest he does me a favour, utilising a jabbing and beligerant overuse of the term ‘mate’. Eventually escorted off the lot but not before a quick scan of the others on the tour. Their embarrassed faces and reluctance to look me in the eye speaks volumes- it’s not just me that feels this way.

Saturday
Flight home. I’m reminded of the old saying that the best holiday is a holiday from one’s self. Nonsense. Utter garbage.

Burnt Bridges

As per the weekend hype for both subjects, I tried to follow the John Terry coverage in 3D. Promised a fully immersive experience, I have to admit to being ever so slightly disappointed. Sure, some of the sharper allegations had me ducking as if they were heading my way, and some of the rougher and more difficult to believe edges were smoothed out. And at one point I felt close enough to actually put out a hand and touch some of the more copiously exchanged bodily fluids. But, as ever, it’s wearing the glasses that’s the problem, making you feel, as they do, ever slightly stupid- which, of course, needn’t necessarily be the illusion you hope it is if you’re reading the Sunday tabloids. Nope, it’ll never catch on- which, I don’t know, may prove reassuring for any one of the parties involved.

You would have to ask them, really, though doing this alone possibly wouldn’t be enough to ensure you a straight answer. “Terry scores the winner- you couldn’t make it up” said one Radio 5 commentator on Saturday. Well, no, evidentially you couldn’t, not with the lads he has on retainer. Say what you like about his leadership qualities, his personal choices, and how vigorously he can clap his hands and say ‘come on’ at corners, but when it comes to highly paid lawyers, Terry truly has a team worthy of England captain.

The captain issue has been brought up again, which was thrilling for us that so enjoyed the original debate. Cor, took you back didn’t it? The discourse, the expert opinion, the lingering questions pertaining to what exactly it is the captain’s role actually is outside of organising the whip round for the driver on away trips. There is not another country in the world as dopily captivated by such a non subject, and when some chump in the News of the World commented that it is “one of the most sought after roles in world football” I would have been convinced he was speaking ironically if only irony were a quality in the armour of your average News of the World journalist.

What the captaincy issue did do was shift the story uncomfortably into the realm of ‘public interest’, which enabled the papers to treat it as an ‘issue’ and not as the tacky exercise in underwear drawer rifling it actually was. One of the girls interviewed about her past with Terry donated some of her fee to the Haiti earthquake fund, which was perfectly decent of her. But it also served to highlight just how squalid and petty a story this was. It’s hard to imagine that Tony Blair wasn’t grateful for the distraction too. As ever, you’re with the press on the topic of free speech. It’s just a shame that it has to be this press.

Nobody came out of this well, really, and how impressed were we supposed to be, incidentally, that Terry put in a performance at Burnley? I know it was supposed to say something about his fortitude, but from this distance it also seemed to say something about a charmless lack of remorse. His tough guy stare after scoring, for example. What point did he imagine had been proved? Unless it was one about the value of having a man on the post at corners- which seems unlikely- I fear he may misinterpreted some concerns, which were never really based on his ability to find space in the opposition penalty area and power in a header.

Oh, it’s all very embarrassing this isn’t it? Even the nice-ish elements in the story leave a disquieting taste. The ‘Team Bridge’ t-shirts may have seemed like a supportive gesture to one of the wronged parties, but the wording as taken from the Jordan and Peter Andre relationship is telling: real life human emotion reduced to tawdry catchphrases, and childish ganging up and point scoring. Is there a dignity defying public gesture that Carlos Tevez- who has a bit of history with Terry of course, (probably not in that sense, though I'm yet to study all the coverage)- is immune to? Never mind awkwardly scheduled International fixtures, in the interest of always having his full quota of strikers available, Roberto Mancini wants to be grateful they’ve scrapped Celebrity Big Brother after this year’s run.

Wag Weekly...Elena Bonzanni

The internet consensus is in on Elena Bonzanni, the girlfriend of West Ham United’s Valon Behrami: we all like her. This should be viewed as the big deal that it undoubtedly is. This is in the internet, after all, where we don’t tend to agree much. And though things like pictures of pretty television star and model types are always going to prove less decisive than, say, Tony Blair’s evidence at the Iraq inquiry, when unanimity is achieved, it’s worth acclaiming.

“Better looking than your girlfriend” claims one website, which feels initially insulting, but, looking deeper, actually displays a rather touching faith in the seductive capabilities of their readers, a faith you can’t help but feel may be ever so slightly misplaced. “Smoking hot,” says another, sounding a bit like a character in a James Ellroy novel talking about a dame.

If you’re worried, incidentally, that the demographic that scans the internet for pictures of Wags is unrepresentative, consider the sage words of one blogger on the subject: “you would cut off your hands if she asked you to.” If she’s asking that of this particular demographic and they’re agreeing? Well- though one hesitates to put it quite like this- she must be doing something right.