Categories
Soccer

Finally, someone understands how we feel about soccer


There are enough great sports here in North America that we at Sportscolumn don’t usually look across the pond for colorful commentary on athletics. But there are some quotes that just can’t be denied. Like Jorge Valdano’s remark about the poor play of Champions League participants Chelsea and Liverpool.

Put a s*** hanging from a stick in the middle of this passionate, crazy stadium and there are people who will tell you it’s a work of art.”

“It’s not — it’s a s*** hanging from a stick.

For a minute there we thought that Valdano was talking about the Green Bay Packers. But regardless of what sport it was about, that was one of the greatest quotes in the history of athletic competition. Rank it right up there with:

What’s that? Playoffs? Don’t talk about– playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs? I just hope we can win a game!

and

I mean listen, we’re sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we’re talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it’s my last but we’re talking about practice man. How silly is that?

Links:

[The Sun]: S*** hanging from a stick

Categories
Soccer

Want to buy a piece of an English soccer team?



The Target

Here’s the basic idea: 50,000 members each pony up $70 to buy a share of a “purchase fund”. The resulting $2.7M fund will be used to buy a football club. (In case you’re doing the math and it doesn’t add up — part of the membership fee goes to administrative fees, of course.) Then each member has an equal vote in determining which club to purchase, player acquisitions, starting lineups, etc.

Having fans decide on starting lineups isn’t a completely novel idea. Last summer, the Schaumburg Flyers, a minor league baseball team in Illinois, teamed up with MSN for something called Fan Club: Reality Baseball that put the daily managerial decisions in the hands of the fans. Unsurprisingly, the decisions were less than stellar.

However, Myfootballclub is novel in that it lets the fans actually have an ownership interest. Well, sort of. You can never sell your share and you have to pony up a yearly membership fee. We wonder what happens if the club gets sold for a substantial profit. Shouldn’t the shares be distributed to the ownership trust? We doubt it — but we’ll keep an eye on this site.

It’s unfortunate that a million Cubs fans couldn’t pony up $800 each to buy the Cubs this year. The bitching and moaning of Cubs fans as they argued over players, trades and lineups would have been priceless. The Cubs would be a last place team with a bloated payroll… oh wait, they already are.

Links:
[My Football Club]: How it works
[Wikipedia]: Schaumburg Flyers

Categories
Soccer

Soccer player gets yellow card instead of black eye after kissing referee

We’re not big soccer fans; in fact, the only times we report on futbol is when riots break out or some chick rips off her shirt after a goal. But a story about a soccer player kissing a ref caught our eye because the referee decided to give his admirer a yellow card for the smooch. Apparently the ref took offense to the sign of affection and started saying “You can’t kiss me. You can’t kiss me.” You can’t blame the guy for getting upset at the kissing bandit; after all, the least he could have done was take him out to dinner first.

This got us thinking about some of the more famous kisses in sports history. What we came up with can be found after the jump.

Links:

[TheOffside]: Defender kisses ref. and gets yellow carded

Categories
Soccer

Beckham gets new tattoo… immediately issues publicity photo


You want to talk about irresponsible journalism? The headline for a Sun UK article on Beckham’s new tattoo is “Bizarre: Beckham Breaks his arm.” Imagine a MLS executive seeing that on a newsreader.

Well, it turns out the headline is their clever way to say that Beckham likes the show Prison Break so much that he decided to get a similar tattoo on his arm. It took six hours but now Becks has a sleeve tattoo that says:


Let them hate as long as they fear.

What’s interesting to us is not that he got a tattoo but that he immediately had a publicity photo taken prominently showing off the tattoo. It’s only been a week. Perhaps this is how it works when you’re a celebrity athlete and the fate of the world rests in your hands. The world must know about Beckham’s new ink. Or perhaps this could just be a way for him to thwart the Beckhams lookalikes in the States.

Links:

[The Sun UK]: Beckham Breaks his arm

Categories
Soccer

Riots and soccer go together like PB&J

Well, another day and another soccer riot. Man those Europeans love to fight. Last night’s brouhaha began around the 30th minute of a UEFA Cup quarterfinal game at Seville. Seven fans from the rival Tottenham team were hospitalized, mostly with cuts the head, and a police officer was also injured in the uproar.

The creative fans decided to use more than just their fists as they ripped up the stadium’s plastic seats and began hurling them at the coppers, who returned fire by swinging their night sticks at the rowdy bunch. As usual, these blood thirsty morons didn’t wait to get inside the stadium to start brawling because there are reports that about 50 Tottenham fans got their fight on with police outside the stadium before the match even got underway. Now that’s passion.

What’s worse than the actions of the fans is the reported response from one asshole cop who was seen striking a disabled fan, striking the man so hard with his baton that he was knocked from his wheelchair. Here’s a clip from the melee.

And yes, we agree; “that’s why you’re wankers!”

Of course, Italy is trying to take all the fun out soccer by passing an Anti-Soccer Violence Law.

Links:

[ITV.com]: Spurs: Police hit disabled fan
[Scotsman.com]: Spurs fans to face Seville court

Categories
Soccer

Soccer match delays riot until halftime


Who doesn’t love to wake up in the morning and read about a good riot while sipping on a cup of coffee? We sure do, so we were thrilled to find another soccer riot had taken place in Rome.

For those of you who don’t know, the fans of Manchester United and AS Roma don’t really like each other. In fact, disorder was expected at the Champions League match on Wednesday because a partition had been erected between the sections where the two groups would come in contact with one another. But c’mon, you didn’t really think that could stop the fans from getting into it with each other, did you?

After Roma scored a goal before halftime, the war popped off between the home Roma fans and the group of about 4,500 Manchester fans as people started throwing fists, as well as other things.

I only saw glimpses of what went on. I saw some missiles flying and the police charging,” UEFA spokesman William Gaillard said. “We will be waiting for the delegate’s report and the control and disciplinary body will be looking at the television images to see the dynamics of what actually happened.

We’re pretty sure that by “missiles,” they mean flying objects. Unless, of course, those wacky Euro’s have stepped up their sports rioting defenses to include armaments they bought from Uncle Sam.

But those United fans had it coming, after all they were told to avoid certain areas within the city, and to avoid the metro system because “there is a real danger of being attacked by the ‘Ultra’ fans of AS Roma.” Now, if that doesn’t detour you from a stupid soccer game then perhaps the bloody violence at the stadium’s gates before the game would do the trick. That was where 18 United fans were hurt during fights with Roma supporters prior to the game, including one poor chap who took a shank to the neck.

Granted, this was a big game in the soccer community but don’t these fools have TV’s?

Links:

[International Herald Tribune]: Police and fans clash at Roma-Man United match

Categories
Soccer

Jim Rome has found his next Chris Everett



Jim Rome can suck my dick! And he should be very afraid, because I’m the kind of guy, if I get too many drinks in me, I will club his ass. I’ve been on with Jim Rome, and I said, “Let me get this straight, you’re more impressed with water polo???”

Where is the avenue that the real soccer people can [gravitate towards]? Where is it? You and others are sick and ***** tired of being told we are a sleeping giant. We can kick everybody’s ass, if we figure it out.

It’s guys like you and your buddies who are the real American soccer. I play in an over-30 league and say my name is Derek. Why? Because I enjoy playing.

Alright, let’s go take a piss and get another beer.

Who knew that there was such a strong rivalry between Jim Rome and… who is this guy? Just kidding, Eric, we know you were Julie Foudy’s sidekick during the World Cup. We actually would love to see soccer succeed in the United States — simply because we don’t want the embarrassment of last summer in Germany repeated again.

You can read the full interview here, where Wynalda talks about the state of U.S. Soccer before taking his random (boozy) potshot at Jim Rome. We can’t wait till Wynalda is a guest on the Jim Rome show again. What are the odds he calls him Erica?

Links:
[Sports By Brooks]: SOCCER’S ERIC WYNALDA: “JIM ROME CAN SUCK MY D—”

[FulhamUSA.com]: Beers with Wynalda: Fulham fan interviews US Soccer’s most outspoken Analyst and Critic

[YouTube]: Jim Rome vs Jim Everett

Categories
Soccer

Six hookers is one way to get over a loss



Did not have sex with that woman

After losing to Germany in the Euro qualifiers, five members of the Czech national team smuggled in six autograph hunters hookers to their hotel room to take the edge off.

Ironically, they were busted by a female Czech journalist who herself posed as an autograph seeker. She said that midfielder Jan Polak answered the door and saw a party going on where the other players “drank and hugged prostitutes”.

All the players deny sleeping with the hookers but admitted to breaking some rules and was levied about a $50,000 fine which they accepted as the correct punishment and apologized.

Meanwhile, three of the players in the incident, Tomas Rosicky, Tomas Ujfalusi, and Jan Polak are all married. Ujfalusi’s wife is a former Miss Czech Republic. Unfortunately, they were not able to blame Lawrence Taylor for the hookers.

Links:

[The Sun UK]: Arsenal ace’s six-hooker party

Categories
Soccer

Odds and Ends: They might be overestimating soccer in this country


According to a British tabloid (via the offside), the LA police are preparing a special SWAT team to be on standby during Galaxy matches in case English fans who attend his U.S. matches decide to do what English fans do, which is make NYC students look like amateurs.

We’re very skeptical that any sort of Beckhamania is going to touch off a slew of brawls and rioting at MLS games. Plus, the English fans won’t dare riot in LA. If there’s one thing LA residents know how to do, it’s riot. And of course, the LA cops are experts at controlling uprisings…

In other news…

[SignOnSanDiego]: David “fast food” Wells develops diabetes? We never saw this one coming.

[SI.com]: Iditarod racer disqualified for beating his dogs. Bob Knights says, “what’s the big deal?”

[ESPN.com]: ESPN.com chief tossed. (And yes, we hate the video that autoplays on the front door. Idiots.)

[Slate]: Duke, Eastern Kentucky, and 11 other odious schools in this year’s NCAA Tournament.

And finally, anyone who has watched sports in the past five years is sick of Subway’s Jared. But is that enough to challenge him to a fight? And if you could fight anyone from a commercial, who would you fight? We’d have to go with one of the two douchebags from the Cingular commercials.

Categories
Soccer

Everybody loves it when the goalie scores

… well except the other goalie. This kind of stuff doesn’t usually happen in the premiere leagues so when Tottenham goalkeeper Paul Robinson scored on a free kick from his own end, it instantly becomes one of the most bizarre goals in EPL history. The last time a Spurs goalkeeper scored in an EPL game was 1914 on a penalty kick.

Notice the reaction from the opposing goalie Ben Foster, who is trying to unseat him as England’s #1 goalkeeper.

This isn’t the first time Paul Robinson has scored. He also made a spectacular header against Swindon when he was a goalie for Leeds United to send the game into extra time. And of course, we cannot mention goalie goals without mentioning Ron Hextall. (Yes, it’s a different sport…)

Links:
[Reuters]: Goalie Robinson scores for Spurs
[Telegraph UK]: Foster grateful for Robinson’s low-key glee