Wednesday, May 25, 2011

 

Memories Of Watching Arsenal In Asia

1999 Thailand v Arsenal

Recent years had seen a host of European big names heading to Bangkok seeking to cash in on the growing interest in football. Especially English football. Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle. Even Middlesboro and Newcastle had come over along with Bayern Munchen, AC Milan and others so it was only right the biggest should come over.

The Arse had previously been in Asia. Back in the wonderfully dull as dishwater days of Terry Neill, bubble perms and short shorts, the Arse went to play in Indonesia a couple of meaninigless friendlies which had seen Neill fall out with all n sundry. But there had been little or no publicity. Now, especially since USA '94, Cantona and Beckham, English football was riding along at the crest of the wave and Arsenal wanted a piece of the action so a couple of friendlies were lined up, the other being in Kuala Lumpar.

But working in Bangkok at the time, this was obviously the biggie. Bergkamp had checked his Thomas Cook and found that he could get from London to Bangkok nearly by train viaMoscow, Beijing, Kunming, Hanoi and Phnom Penh with a couple of bus journeys thrown in but he decided to stay at home and water the garden. Mind you, if he'd had www.pissedupasia.com to guide him...

The stadium had been years in construction and had finally been made ready for the '98 Asian Games but I have little recollection of the venue. A bowl shaped 80,000 seater was nearly full for the visit of Anelka, Adams et all but yours truly was blissfully ignorant of all around him as lunch time in Bobby's Arms kicked in. 1 - 0 down after 5 minutes, I was convinced we had scraped an honourable 2 - 2 draw till I saw the paper the next day. Kanu scored twice in a 4 - 3 reverse but who cares...I nicked a poster, chatted up miserably a bar maid, saw my mates edge away from me and my anti Tottenham songs and suffered the ignomy of a phone call a few days later from a Thai friend who told me she had been sitting a few rows down from me but was scared to talk to me.

Seats???

2001 Man Utd v Arsenal

How well I remember our first 6 - 1 reverse in my time as an Arsenal fan. I was living in Belgium, we were the second best team in the country after United. We put out an understrength team and wa got tonked. That was 1973, Leeds were the best. In 1987 I went to Goodison Park, saw us play well enough in the first half to be clapped off the field yet we were 4 - 1 down, soon to lose 6 - 1 to the best team in the land, inspired by Gary Lineker. Fast forward another 14 years to Old Trafford, again against the best team in the land. For reasons that escape me, Grimandi and Stepanovs were our central defensive pairing. But this 6 - 1 was different. Against Leeds I was a 9 year old in love with Joanna Smith, a blonde siren in my class, just coming to terms with the fact that the football hormone can be overpowering. Goodison, well, I was there. I knew how we played and I was there in that ropey tin pot stand behind the goal cheering us daftly to oblivion. But Old Trafford...that was different...

Much older, less wiser, Dhaka Bangladesh was home for this fixture. ESPN had secured the rights for the English Premiership and to be fair the coverage weren't bad. The problem lay in areas. There was Hong Kong, there was India. India is of course obssessed with cricket and we in Dhaka received our ESPN from the Indian satellite. Which meant that we didn't get every game live. Not if there was a cricket match. Somewhere. Anywhere. And this was the case for the Manchester United Arsenal game. ESPN was showing cricket, not the football.

Unable to get to Bangkok, my usual escape clause, I had to make do with watching the game live on soccernet.com and it's tele text print out. You know what I mean

1 min Adams throw in, Giggs clears

Not an enjoyable way of watching a football match if there is such a thing, but it was all I had. Waiting for the next episode is painfully slow. 2 min Corner to Arsenal. You are then waiting on tendeerhooks while the person who does the input reads the programme, finishes his wagon wheel and panda pop before proudly telling the world 4 min Penalty United. Hold on!!! What happened to our bloody corner you bloody numpty...

So there I was, settled down in front of the monitor, connected to the ether and the game starts. The phone rings, I answer it, return to the monitor and we're 1 - 0 down. Eh? Go for a piss. 2 - 0. Download some e mails and what do ya bloody know but we're 3 - 0 down and my dinner has not finished turning in the microwave. And you know the worst thing, sitting there in Darkest Dhaka. The worst thing is I could do squiddly about it. Absolute zip. In the stadium I could scream at Grimandi and Igor along with the other fans who had made the trip. Even in a bar watching it on TV I could throw my empties at the screen. But what can you do in front of the bloody computer? The computer, the internet, for all the benefits it undoubtedly brings to the work place is ultimately a machine. A cold, mechanical, humourless, passionless machine. You are left dribbling at the screen, overcome by this feeling of impotence while thousands of miles away a stand in from a cheap hammer horror movie is wearing your shirt and playing like Andy Pandy in stilettos.

2001 Arsenal v Spurs FA Cup S/F

This was our third semi against that lot from N17 and I still hadn't seen one. I'd done the epic League Semis in 1987 which had been most enjoyable. But '91 I was living in Sydney, on the piss in Woolloomoolloo in the days before live football. In '93 I was living in Germany, had gone to see the girlie in Munchen and returned on the day of the semi to find my mate Keith crying in his beer in the Rose and Crown. So for the 3rd time in 10 years we were to meet and this time i was in Bangladesh. With no live coverage again. But this time I had Sky News with regular updates and action to supplement the soccernet.com text. 1 nil down, two one up is a regular refrain to Arsenal fans against the Totts and so it was on this day but what keeps this in the mind is not the game itself but what happened after.

You know how when you are really buzzing, really up for something. You wanna party all night, have a crack, knock back the beers...Exactly how I felt so I went down the BAGHA expecting the usual crowd, expecting to share my joy with kindred spirits, to share my delight with...3 morbid scousers who seemed to think suicide was preferable to living in Dhaka. So there I was,an excitable Gooner turning cartwheels in the bar and my audience was Tweedledee, Tweedledum and Dylan from the Magic Roundabout.

C'mon lads, have a bevy, I'm buying...

You're allright mate...

C'mon lads, who's died...

The missus has left me...

That's all right, go to Thailand tomorrow, Now get a beer...

You'd think it couldn't get any worse. You'd think anybody coming into the bar would be an improvement. Then in comes some aging Newcastle supporter. There's Gooner all excited...

Mike, what you havin'...

You're allright son...not in the mood...

Jeez you old farts. Four of them looking like death warmed up and me like I wanna party like it's 1999. I went behind the bar and changed the music.

We Gotta Get Outta This Place...

2001 Derby v Arsenal

That's all Every once in a while it becomes necessary for a long stayer in Thailand to cross the border and get a new visa. In Soppy's early days this meant a nightmare train trip down to Penang or Kota Bahru in Malaysia but as neighbouring countries Laos and Cambodia dragged themselves into the modern age then more interesting alternatives became possible. Vientiane being once such place.

Vientiane is a sleepy riverine capital of French influence and where a baguette is as widely available as rice. The nightlife will be unrecognisable to those who were here when the Americans, ahem, shouldn't have been bombing the shit outta the place, but their legacy remains. Not least in the ordanance that still claims the innocent long after the Yanks packed up their P/X and basket ball hoops and returned home.

B 52 Bar refers not to the cocktail, nor the band who sang about a rock lobster but the bloody great symbol of US power and might that is often sent out against such world powers as Iraq, Laos and Cambodia and some shells are displayed here. But this report is about a weekend trip for football and having discovered this bar was showing the game, we settled down with a local bevy.

But the bar owner decided to show Tottenham play Manchester United, probably out of sympathy for the poor totts fan in the corner so instead of watching Henry and co destroy some pissy team from the East Midlands we endured this minor stuff. The Totts were scoring for fun, 1 0, 2 0. Jeez, it was bloody 3 - 0 to 'em at half time and our resident daughter of Hoddle was turning hands stands in her little piece of paradise on the banks of the Mekhong.

But a game lasts for 90 minutes and it never pays to celebrate too early but I guess this is a lesson taught by experience and not a peeved Gooner pining cos he can't seen his own team.

Normally, the ideal result, at least from my point of view, in this game is a dull old nil nil, but such was the joy being displayed by the aforementioned lady that for once an exception could be made and, whisper it, a United 3 points was prayed for. Out of sheer bloody minded spite you understand. Man U get one back but still our Totts fan is cocky enough to beleive the 3 points are hers. A second and she starts to quieten down. Heaven forbid, the buggers equalise. Silence hangs heavy among the swirling cigarette smoke and the radiance beaming from the Arse contigent that becomes a fully fledged aurora borealis as afourth, then a fifth rattle into the back of the old onion bag and our joy is magnified by a factor of a zillion at her face. Oh what children can the football supporter be, misery was etched deep in her face.

But was it truly necessary, as the result had sunk in, confirmed by repeated re runs of United's second half goals, was it really necessary, as poor misty eyes walked out the bar, chin dragging along the floor, was it REALLY necessary to say...

Well, it's only a game...

You Bet!!!


Wednesday, May 11, 2011

 

England's World Cup Bid

A bunch of stiff necked suits will be running round England for the next few days poking their noses into every nook and cranny of England’s latest World Cup bid ahead of FIFA’s announcement in December of where the 2018 World Cup will be held.

In footballing terms it’s a no brainer. Football and logic dictates England will get to host the World Cup for the first time since 1966. Everything, but everything is in place to make the fiesta the best ever. The stadiums are in place, there is infrastructure, and there are hotels. The English are second to none when it comes to sports marketing.

There will be none of this last minute panic like we saw in South Africa as orgainsers rush to get stadiums finished.

We have a football public that leads the world in face painting, we boast the most popular league in the world with the biggest clubs in the world. We have David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and, um, Peter Crouch.

We have Wembley Stadium, Old Trafford and Milton Keynes. And of course we have the infrastructure in place from the 2012 Olympic Games.

Look at our competition. Russia, with its nascent racism and rampant corruption. A joint bid from Spain and Portugal as well as those tiny countries Belgium and the Netherlands.

Assuming the 2018 World Cup goes to Europe it has to be England.

Unfortunately World Cups are rarely about football. They are political largesse and the members who decide who will host a World Cup are political animals and when it comes to sports politics the English are neophytes.

We may have David Beckham but it’s people like the CONCACAF Chairman Jack Warner who will decide who is successful and who is not.

Warner plays the game with the subtlety of a street fighter. He has gone on record as saying that ‘for Europe, England is an irritant’ and ‘nobody in Europe likes England’ only to apologise when England promised to play his country, Trinidad & Tobago, in a friendly.

England, with our notions of fair play and steady on old chap, stand no chance against the likes of him.

Our efforts to be hosts aren’t helped by FIFA’s ‘flexible’ approach to hosts and why they select a certain host. Legacy is a buzz word for these people and one reason why South Africa got the nod for 2010 was the legacy for Africa as a whole. That African football would benefit later on down the line from it’s first ever tournament.

The same argument was also applied in 2002 when Japan and South Korea co-hosted and 1994 when the USA got the games. The World Cup, it was presumed, would generate unprecedented interest in the game locally and within the region.

That’s all nice and dandy as far as it goes.

But what about Germany in 2006? France in 1998? Italy in 1990? Spain in 1982? West Germany in 1974? There was little or no legacy from those old Europe countries hosting the games. And the fact that the Germans have twice being host tells you all about how they play the game compared to the way England pussy foot round the corridors of power.

But with a Russian bid on the table FIFA can now get back on their high horse and pontificate about how Russia is new Europe, about how it’s time for Eastern Europe to take centre stage.

The FIFA members are already in England as they assess each individual bid. They’ll know about Wembley, they’ll know about Bobby Charlton. They’ll expect cucumber sandwiches at the finest hotels and they’ll expect obsequious officials to try and ingratiate themselves.

But that may count for nothing if England’s Prime Minister, David Cameroon, continues with his holidays and sends his deputy instead to meet them.

Yes, we gave the game to the world. But unless we get street smart we may never host football’s greatest show again.

This first appeared in Jakarta Globe in 2010


Wednesday, May 4, 2011

 

The Case Against Goal Line Technology

I wonder if i was the only person who cringed when German Chancellor Angela Merkel apologized after Frank Lampard’s goal had been chalked off during the England v Germany world cup tie. Why would she feel the need to apologise for what happens on a football field? Has she apologized to the Turks yet for refusing to support their bid for EU membership?

In the wake of that decision the media went into overdrive with a clarion call demanding on goal line technology so that refs won’t make such crucial errors in the future.

Of course the problem with goal line technology is that it only covers the goal line. What about the rest of the field? A perfect case in point came when Carlos Tevez scored from an offside position for Argentina. How would technology have cancelled that goal? Or when Diego Maradona scored for Argentina against England using his hand?

Football is not like tennis or cricket where simulation can tell us whether a serve was in or whether there was a justified shout for Leg Before Wicket. Controversy can happen anywhere on a fooball field and if we are to use technology then it needs to cover the pitch, the whole pitch and nothing but the pitch.

In fact it doesn’t even need to be technology. All football needs is to put someone in with the TV editors. Then, when something happens on the field the ref can ask for a second opinion and the official can check the incident from a number of angles before coming to a final decision.

What is interesting about the Lampard incident was the reaction in the press box. As the ball spun back into play most of the gathered journalists, from the vantage point high above the field, weren’t sure whether the ball had crossed the line or not.

It was only after TV replays that they knew what a gaff had been committed.

But the match officials don’t have that luxury. They are at ground level and they have nano seconds to respond. The rules are explicit. If the referee has doubts then play on. Obviously the ref had doubts so he did what he had been trained to do.

For the English of course the fact that a perfectly good goal had been disallowed was manna from heaven. It meant that they could overlook the performance of a team that rarely looked like scoring and blame an outsider for their misfortune, albeit temporarily.

I feel sorry for match officials these days. Yes, they deserve to be called every name under the sun for the 90 minutes they are on the field. Journeys home after the game without abusing the men with the whistle and flags seem somewhat empty. Like traffic wardens and lawyers they deserve everything they get.

But now, with football being minutely analysed 24/7 it seems just too convenient. Football has become a game of two halves and when you lose you blame the ref. and TV pundits, often ex players, just can’t wait to have a dig at the man in the middle. Surely, if the ex players cared so much they would be the one with the whistle? That won’t happen of course, much easier to sit in the studio and criticize away rather than getting wet and abused on a Saturday afternoon.

Match officials are only human, rather like players in fact. And rather like players they will make mistakes. Instead of just heaping opprobrium on them we should allow them the means to get assistance on the big decisions. And the best help would surely come from an extra pair of eyes watching on TV.

There is of course no guarantee a spare set of eyes would call the decision correctly. But then that’s football and what’s wrong with the human element anyway?

NOTE - this first appeared in the Jakarta Globe!


Monday, May 2, 2011

 

Shut Up & Pay Up

I was about six years old, perhaps seven and just starting to have memories of the world around. After a few years in North London my family had moved overseas and I think I wasn't happy about it. My old man wrote to Arsenal, telling them it was my birthday but with a new school and a new language to handle I wasn't expecting much.

Then he comes home from work one day saying guess what, I got a letter from Bertie Mee. If you don't know who he is you're reading the wrong blog! I was excited with all the excitement a seven year old can muster about his latest hobby.

After dinner I was shown the letter itself. Written on Arsenal headed paper. I had never seen anything like it. The Arsenal badge at the top was slightly bumpy as if extra ink had been used to highlight the sender.

The letter went on to wish me happy birthday, I think, and told me about a few enclosures. Like an Arsenal pennent, an Arsenal rosette and a piece of paper, again with the Arsenal heading, featuring the names and signatures of our first team squad.

To say I was made up was an understatement. That somebody in North London, a place I still called home, had cared enough to scribble off a few lines, pop some souvenirs into an envelope and mail it overseas had me feeling so bloody important. Wow, my name had been spoken in the marble halls...

It was a small touch but an oh so vital one.

Now of course, football has changed beyond recognistion and as you can probably guess from the title of my drivel here I am not the biggest fan of the changes. I guess most of us get more conservative as we age; the olden days we grew up in were the best because it shaped our lives and developed our own personal culture.

Football is now a global industry where players of varying ability parley themselves obscene salaries more than matching captains of industry and the celebrity world. To pander to players clubs need to be more innovative when it comes to raising money to pay these people. One of the ways they do this in England of course is through merchandising, catering and out and out prostitution where anything has its price...like putting your name on your seat?!

I'm fine with that. If clubs are daft enough to fork out stupid money then that's their look out though they need to remember they are just custodians of something far older than them. If fans are happy to fork out on two or three new club shirts per season, plus ones for family members, then bully for them. Never underestimate people's capacity for self delusion, witness American Idol, The Apprentice and queuing to buy an I Pad 2 despite having only just bought the I Pad 1.

But like in any business it is important not to turn your backs on your customer. To take them for granted. To treat them like shit.

Last night I was at the 8th anniversary of the Arsenal Supporters' Club in Indonesia and a big night was planned at their headquarters in leafy Blok M. Special guests were lined up, a special video put together, an amazing cake shaped like the new stadium. A whole heap of work had gone into making the night a special one for the fans of the Arsenal.

All that was missing was any acknowledgement from the club at the heart of the festivities. Despite being told by various officials their anniversary was coming up, despite the fact the the club has a dedicated department overseeing supporters clubs around the world. Despite the fact that Arsene Wenger sends out a personal email each week highlighting his latest excuses for ref bashing, despite the fact that several Arsenal players have Twitter accounts, nobody could be bothered to reply or send a small momento.

How sick is that? That not one person at the Arsenal headquarters saw fit to say congrats, to send a little something says volumes about the game today and their attitude to the people who pay the bills.

Basically the club said 'we don't give a toss. By the way don't forget to buy the new club shirts when they come out.

Arsenal won, 1-0 and the fans celebrated as if they were in the Plimsoll or Gunners, but the fact that there was nothing from the club left a sour taste in manys mouths.

It seems a shame that no one there last night will ever feel the delight I did almost 40 years ago when I got that letter from Bertie Mee. Back then we didn't have so many alternatives for hobbies. Today, people play computer games, they collect hand phones and hand bags, there are many more attractions for their cash. Arsenal, and English football, need to wake up to this fact because an aging fan base, average age of fans is mid 40s and the number of teenagers on the terraces is tiny, is not a good business model despite the current flush of executive boxes and high end catering.

Big clubs are basically saying just shut up and give us your cash.

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