Category: sport

Howard Webb – A Yorkshireman at Soccer City

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Many congratulations to local boy and colleague of my brother  – apparently, “you wouldn’t mess” – Howard Webb for being awarded (I believe this is the official technical term) the job of refereeing Sunday evening’s World Cup Final in Johannesburg.
As the Sheffield Star (ah, the memories…) reports:

The 38-year-old former police sergeant, from Rotherham, has been chosen by Fifa’s referees committee.
It makes him the first Englishman to make it to the World Cup final since 1974 – when the job went to Jack Taylor.

Webb and his assistants, Darren Cann and Michael Mullarkey, will officiate in the match between Spain and Holland at Johannesburg’s Soccer City.
Webb hung up his helmet and took a five-year career break from South Yorkshire Police in 2008 so he could concentrate on refereeing.

It might not really seem like a big thing with so many star players on show in the Dutch and Spanish sides, but I guess that for a referee, this is as big a gig as you can get and given that only 18 men before him have ever had the honour, he’s joining a pretty elite group.

I’m sure he’ll do England proud – much more so that that shower that flew home a couple of weeks ago.
[Please note that this line may be deleted on Sunday evening if deemed necessary]

Nice work, Howard.

Dear Uruguay

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Dear Uruguay,

As an honourary South African, may I first apologise for the huge amount of anti-Uruguayan sentiment that has been demonstrated amongst the locals here since Luis Suarez’s last-gasp handball against Ghana. Labeling the whole team as “cheats”, “scum” and “cheating scum” due to the instinctive actions of one player is rather foolish and unnecessary in my humble opinion. Equally as bad are the appalling and unamusing puns around the name of your country: “Ur-a-gay” and “Ur-a-gone”, which of course, you’re not, although last night’s defeat means that you will be exiled to Port Elizabeth for the weekend. I’m sorry about that too.

The popular perception amongst the nouveau riche of footballing knowledge (and by nouveau, I mean “I’ve learnt everything there is to know about soccer in the last 4 weeks”) seems to be that Suarez was at fault for Ghana’s exit. However, this is surely only the view of those who watched that game through African tinted spectacles. When viewed through neutral eyes, Ghana’s defeat was actually due to the fact that they couldn’t score any goals – especially from the penalty spot.
I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and it appears that statistically speaking, 85% of penalties are scored. In that quarter final, Ghana managed to pop a whole 40% in. Quite how that pitiful inaccuracy has been twisted and turned into apparently being Mr Suarez’s fault is somewhat beyond me.

The cheating allegations continue. That your players dive in order to get fouls. Like dear Luis again, for example, when SA goalie Itumeleng Khune tripped him up. Although, in fairness, that one was because he was tripped up by Itumeleng Khune, rather than because he dived.
But anyway: diving. It’s ugly and I dislike it.  We all do. Uruguay are, of course, the only nation whose players do this. Well, apart from Arjen Robben and Robin van Pear-See of Holland. And Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. So Uruguay, Holland and Portugal, then. And maybe Fernando Torres a bit as well. So add Spain too.
(We’d probably include France, but they weren’t really here long enough for anyone to notice.)
But Uruguay are definitely the biggest cheats at diving, because South African fans say so (while conveniently ignoring Teko Modise’s pathetic 3m springboard antics).

And talking of Teko, we can also add to this growing list of reasons that we hate each and every one of the 3,500,000 inhabitants of your country so very much, the fact that you effectively ended Bafana Bafana’s dreams of World Cup glory by comprehensively outplaying them and scoring three more goals that they did in Pretoria on the 16th. How dare you?
Of course, that’s what you came here for – to win as many games as possible.
But against the host nation? Don’t you study history at all?
Do you not recall how Germany declared war on Italy after their semi-final defeat in 2006? How Japan refused several shipments of rose-flavoured candy after Turkey knocked them out in 2002? Or how France didn’t actually take any action whatsoever after they weren’t beaten on home soil in ’98?
No Uruguay. You got lucky when South Africa just decided not to like you very much after that 3-0 drubbing in Tshwane. We could have gone a lot further, like giving your kids vuvuzelas.
(Note to parents: Just. Don’t.)

And then there’s the personal insults. Mainly about Diego Forlan’s hair. Obviously, none of the other players playing in the World Cup here have silly hair (Siphiwe Tshabalala) (cough) so this makes Diego a prime target. This is exacerbated by his annoying habit of scoring really good goals. Siphiwe only struggled with that goalscoring issue rather briefly way back when.

All in all, it’s clear to see why some South Africans have suddenly discovered this hatred from all things Uruguayan. The spirit of Ubuntu only goes so far and the bottle had obviously run dry by the time we got down to U in the alphabet. Wait til you see what they  have in store of the Zimbabweans next week – a bit of booing and some hairstyle abuse is going to seem like a game against Bafana… er… I mean like a walk in the park compared with what they’re going to get.

All in all, I think you were hard done by. Quite what people expected you to do when faced with opposition football teams in an international football tournament escapes me. I would have stopped that shot with my hand if I’d have been on the line that night. So would David Beckham, so would Lionel Messi, neither would Robert Green.
That’s just part and parcel of football. And that’s probably why so many people here just don’t get it.

UPDATE: Some more posts on this, from Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Nell.

UPDATE 2: More – Incoming from Jacques:
From a good football blog I’ve just discovered:

Then, Ghana. This is my sixth World Cup, and I have watched a lot of football over the last 20 years. (Time I’ll never get back, Isuppose.) And I’ve never seen an ending weirder, more arbitrary and more cruel than the freakshow of missed penalties and evil-doing rewarded that brought the Black Stars’ inspirational, continent-uniting underdog run to an end. I loved it.
See, Ghana distinguished itself by becoming the only African team that knows how to get a result, come what may. Dating back (at least) to their cold-blooded 2006 elimination of the United States, they’ve always been willing to do the business. Dive in the box? Waste a little time with a fake injury? Why not? It’s a Man’s Game, after all.
Football’s message to Ghana: “Oh, you think you’re hardboiled? Meet Luis Suarez’s hand!” I’ve been wracking my brain for a Hand-of-God-style sobriquet for Suarez’s last-second “save”—someone will get there, I’m quite sure—but in the end, it was just the kind of bizarre intervention that twists history one way and not another. Plan all you want, and you cannot plan for Suarez’s hand.
Sorry, Black Stars—but you had 120 minutes to win it, and you didn’t, so fare thee well.

He’s right, you know?

Helen doesn’t love me anymore

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Oh for a politician with a sense of humour. Or at least one with my sense of humour.

It’ll never happen.

We had a great time at the game on Saturday. Beers and prego rolls at &Union, heated debate over the Luis Suarez handball, the awesome Cape Town fan mile and then an entertaining, if rather one sided match at the Cape Town Stadium.
I wouldn’t have even thought about Helen Zille on Saturday if I hadn’t spotted her walking down Bree Street on the way to the match. This is one of the things that impresses me about Zille: she’s so down-to-earth (or if she’s not, she’s a damn good actor). I couldn’t see Zuma or Mbeki or even Tony Leon ever wandering down the back streets of Cape Town CBD to the stadium before heading up to the VIP section.

Anyway, I saw her, I tweeted, I moved on, stadiumward.

The first half went by and we further watched football, drank further beer and had further heated debate over the Luis Suarez handball. I took a quick pic of the front row of the VIP section: Blatter, Zuma, Merkel, Khosa, Zille, Jordaan – they were all there.

It was only when the second half began that I noticed a problem. Helen Zille had not returned to her seat. I was (obviously) filled with concern and I told my followers so:

7 mins of 2nd half gone. @helenzille still not back in her seat. Bad curry last night?

The first two thirds of this was first hand eyewitness stuff. The final third may have been pure speculation, but it was at least based on my own football watching experiences. Why else would anyone miss the first 7 minutes of the second half of such an important game? Or indeed any game?
Surely Delhi Belly is the only reasonable excuse for such behaviour.

11 minutes later and there’s still no sign.
Germany are planning their second goal and Helen is going to miss it.
I let people know:

@helenzille still stuck in toilet. Wilderness Search & Rescue have been called.

By now, “Where is Helen Zille?” and “Bad Curry?” were trending topics on twitter. Possibly.
Concern was mounting, as @simonwillo’s tweet testifies. Germany were anxiously passing it around at the back waiting for Joachim Louw’s signal that Helen was back in her seat and that they were now cleared to go up and pop another one in. The Rand had dropped 2% of its value based on the political instability caused by having the leader of the opposition MIA in a VIP toilet and Mayor Dan Puppet Plato was wondering who was going to tell him what to do now.

But thankfully, the chaos was averted as Helen returned to her seat:

@helenzille is back, but can we have some new loo roll to the Ladies in the VIP please? Thanks.

Dan breathed a huge sigh of relief, the Rand recovered instantaneously and the JSE rose slightly on buoyant toilet tissue sales figures. On the pitch, Miroslav Klose effectively put Argentina out of the World Cup.

All was right with the world and I thought nothing more about the whole politician stuck in the toilet saga until I got up on Sunday morning, all bleary-eyed and bushy-teethed, and checked my email.
And there it was:

At first it seemed as if my somewhat purile tweeting of the previous day had been taken out of context; that somehow, Helen thought I had been poking fun at her. But to unfollow me seemed like a huge over-reaction and wholly pointless, since now she’s hit the QUIT button, everyone can still read what I’m writing about her (or anyone else for that matter), except Ms Zille.

But then I saw the serious side of things.
What if Helen Zille had had a bad curry the previous evening. How would I have known that?
Not only would I have had to have followed her to her restaurant of (poor) choice, I would also have had to have been sat close enough to her to gain the knowledge that she was unhappy with the quality of her main course.
And then – how would I know of the unfortunate and dramatic half-time repercussions of that dodgy balti?

I need to go on record right now and say:
I did not film Helen Zille on the loo on Saturday afternoon.
Nor was I stalking her on Friday evening. I was watching the Ghana game, like the rest of you.
If my tweeting was suggestive that I had access to the VIP loos at the Cape Town Stadium, a la Pavlos Joseph, then it was never meant to be that way. It was merely speculation and if it was actually 100% accurate, well, that was just the fickle nature of fate.

Helen, if you’re reading this (and you surely are), I’m sorry if – by chance – my supposition around your temporary disappearance was concerningly correct in its allegations. I didn’t mean to scare you or insult you (I know you have issues with toilets).

I just didn’t want you to miss the football.

The Morning After

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And so, the dream that never was anything more than a dream is now over. And while we English lick our wounds and think about what might have been, it’s only right that those readers and tweeters who have asked for my considered opinion on matters football get their manna from heaven.
I’ve thought long and hard about how best to put my thoughts in some sort of rational order. I had plenty of time to do this last night because the neighbourhood dogs kept everyone awake all sodding night. Again. But I digress.
Anyway, I couldn’t come up with any rational order, so I’m just going to do a quick  memory dump on stuff which occurred to me yesterday and in the intervening period between then and now.

I’m angry. This is in marked contrast to when Bafana Bafana bowed out (which was essentially after their 0-3 to Uruguay) when I was sad.  To go out fair and square is disappointing. To go out because of refereeing ineptitude is infuriating.

FIFA have to introduce video technology to help refs out. Yes, I recognise that “Write to Sepp” is on every English person’s agenda today, but I’ve said this before. FIFA’s continuing refusal to instate video replays into football is frustrating and foolish. And that’s without a whole lot of other f-words I could have used. Yesterday, Lampard’s “goal” wasn’t a goal and that affected the entire game and with it, potentially, the entire tournament.
It’s not “sour grapes”. It’s embarrassing to love a sport so much and watch it become a laughing stock because its “owners” want it to stay in the Dark Ages. We saw it again in the second game yesterday – Tevez’s first goal was way offside and why didn’t we get goalline camera replays of that Mexican effort that wasn’t given? The conspiracy theorist in me is screaming out that someone had had a word upstairs.

Those who say that “it wouldn’t have made a difference” are laughably naive. Consider the game in Bloem yesterday, one side going in at 2-2 having been 0-2 down: you tell me who’s going to have the psychological edge in the second half. You tell me who’s not going to have to commit too many players forward, leaving themselves vulnerable at the back.

That said, England haven’t lived up to expectations. There’s been a lot of talk of English “arrogance”, but this is a side that won all but one of its qualifying games for this tournament – they had every right to expect to do well, but too many big name players just haven’t performed. Why? Well, I don’t think it’s this “too much football” thing, because every other team is full of players that have played the same amount of football – much of it in the Premiership. Maybe there’s the issue – not enough English players in our own leagues.
So what we’ll do is to get the tabloids to blame the “durty forrennurs” and then do nothing about it until this happens again in 2014.
Oh Joy.
Oh – and I do hope that someone introduces John Terry to Matthew Upson on the plane home, because on the Free State Stadium pitch, it did look like they’d never met before.

And then I looked at Twitter to see why things didn’t go our way. And I wondered why I didn’t look there earlier.
Look at Simon Dingle’s reasons for the Lampard wonder strike not being given:

In the run up to the World Cup Germany gave us advice and support while the English media ran us down. Justice.

Ah yes Simon – of course. Those earthquake, race war and snake stories. Although I might be missing the meaning of your word “support” there. Do you perhaps mean Bayern Munich President Uli Hoeness’ comments:

“I was never a friend of a World Cup in South Africa and Africa as long is the security issue is not 100 percent solved,” Hoeness said.
“Mr Blatter had to have his way, I always considered it wrong. Now you have to make the best out of it (but) I am convinced that deep down Mr Blatter has realised that giving the World Cup to South Africa was one of the biggest wrong decisions he ever made.”

Full on support right there. And here’s some more from Franz Beckenbauer:

Beckenbauer, who captained Germany to World Cup success in 1974 and coached the winning side in 1990, says few German fans can afford the expensive tickets and are put off by South Africa’s reputation for crime.
“Not only are there doubts by those thinking of travelling there, because of security, but the tickets are too expensive,” Beckenbauer, who is on FIFA’s executive committee, told German broadcaster Sky.

This after his earlier comments:

The organisation for the World Cup in South Africa is beset by big problems,” the German legend claimed.
“But these are not South African problems – these are African problems.”

Justice indeed, then.

And then, even more laughably, self-proclaimed social media guru, Khaya Dlanga:

England won’t stop talking about how they were robbed. well, England robbed entire countries during colonialism. Lol

Lol! Yes, if you put ‘Lol’ after something,  it makes everything ok. e.g.:

Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap after all. Lol
Paedophilia in the catholic church is actually ok, because they’re men of god. Lol

Presumably, this also explains why Norway failed to qualify, having had that Viking thing going on, but I’m not sure how the Netherlands have got this far.
Quite how colonialism is going to rear its ugly head at tomorrow night’s Spain (Mexico, America, East Indies) v Portugal (South America, Angola, Mozambique) game remains to be seen, but I’m sure Khaya (who describes himself as “Speaker. Columnist. Copywriter. Humourist. Seriousist. Typoist. I’m too schooled to be cool. I never eat black Jelly Babies.” and who I describe as “a complete tosser”) will have some pithy amusing comment to drag things down to a racial level and sort it all out.

Lol

UPDATE: Thanks to the several of you who have sent me the “What’s the difference between England and a teabag? The teabag stays in the cup longer.” “joke”.
England’s World Cup campaign kicked off in Rustenburg on 12th June and ended yesterday in Bloem on 27th June. That’s 15 days. How long do you stew your tea for? More than 15 days? Is this some sort of African thing? How do you keep it warm?
Or have you just not thought it through?

UPDATE 2: via Sky News:

Major officiating blunders in two World Cup knockout games have sparked outrage among fans.
But FIFA officials ducked the controversy when faced with hostile questioning from journalists at their daily briefing.
In fact, the governing body failed to send any officials with responsibility for refereeing to the press conference.

Spokesman Nicolas Maingot said it was “obviously not the place” to debate refereeing errors or the merits of goal line and video technology. Lol

Sigh.

Ban the Vuvuzela?

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As expected, the vuvuzela is causing a bit of a stir at the World Cup 2010. And it’s prompting a huge number of really silly comments on news sites (BBC, Sky News etc) – mainly from people whining about how they don’t like the noise.

Ag, shame.

It’s like watching the game in the middle of a beehive.

Is it? How exactly have you worked this out, because you seem very sure. Have you got vast experience of watching football matches in apiaries? Wouldn’t the whole stinging thing be worse than the noise, anyway? Presumably, you took some sort of Epi-pen or similar anti-histamine device with you to counteract any anaphylactic shock caused by being repeatedly stung. I could never do that beehive thing.
Admittedly, I did get very drunk and watch a couple of games from Korea/Japan 2002 in an anthill, but ants are pretty quiet and so the atmosphere wasn’t great. I’m not sure I’d be welcome back anyway after I fell over and broke an egg chamber – and my evening ended as I was thrown out by the bouncers. All 1,280,000 of them.
But bees – I might give that a go. Honey sandwiches all round, what ho!

Patrice Evra – We can’t hear one another out on the pitch because of them.

Patrice, dude. I was there on Friday night. It really wasn’t very loud at all. Do you know what I think? I think that your team didn’t get three points because they actually didn’t play very well. Your strikers couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo and your right back had a particularly bad game.
What – that was you? Oh – how embarrassing.
Anyway, it looked to me like Germany didn’t have many problems hearing each other on the pitch last night. Maybe it was a different kind of vuvuzela in Durban. Or maybe they just have louder voices. Or maybe they actually just played well.
And it’s not like you Frenchies don’t have a bit of history with annoying trumpets at your stadiums, is it? Who could forget that horrid little fanfare thing you repeatedly played over the PA systems at the 2007 Rugby World Cup to occasionally keep people interested? Or that annoying singing sound you call La Marseillaise?

Presumably Thierry and Sidney were blaming the ball for their errant shooting as well. It’s true that it does fly slightly differently at altitude, but then you weren’t at altitude for Friday’s match. Well – you were at about 15m altitude, I suppose. Would you like us to move all the stadiums to sea level for you? The salt water won’t do the grass much good, but then you can blame the pitch as well.
I did note that Germany were also virtually playing on the beachfront last night and I have to say that my good mate Miroslav didn’t seem to have much trouble with getting shots on target.
Probably a different ball thing, right?

Also – no protests from Mexico, who faced a 90,000-strong plastic trumpet army on Friday.
But then, they’re not French, are they?

I find them very uninspiring and I have to get up leave the room.

Patrice? Is that you again?
No – it’s some England fan from England commenting on the Sky News site. And he’s proving himself wrong. How can he call them uninspiring when he is inspired to get up and leave the room? That’s inspiration right there.
I was also inspired to get up and leave the room by Robert Green’s horror show and England’s lacklustre performance on Saturday evening, but as long as we’re talking about vuvuzelas, we’re not talking about that, are we? It’s Julius Malema style diversion tactics (as copied by Patrice Evra).
And anyway, could it have been a surprise blast from a plastic trumpet that made the England keeper spill that weak effort into the goal? Or perhaps the fear that he was being attacked by some bees?

Ha! What a pathetic shot, Mr Dempsey. I won’t even need to get my body behind that one, even though it’s the first thing they teach you at goalie school. I’ll just – ARGH! BEES! I’M BEING ATTACKED BY SOME BEES! – oops!

Look. The vuvuzela is part of the African football experience. I’m sorry you don’t like it. But what you like is not of interest to me right now – you want a World Cup in Africa, then have an African World Cup. Otherwise, let’s just go back in sterile Germany every four years with their wonderful trains, half-decent Weissbier and concerning habit of occasionally annexing other nearby nations.
Actually, it’s my concern that the traditional samba drums will prevent players hearing each other on the pitch in Brazil in 2014. But although we’re all aware of that potential issue right now, several years in advance, let’s rather wait until the first few days of the tournament and then have all the players and fans of teams that turn in below-par performances complain bitterly about it.

Ban the vuvuzela? Good luck to you.
As the (South African influenced) Kaiser Chiefs once sang: “I predict a riot”.

EDIT: Sepp’s on my side…

EDIT 2: Pierre de Vos hits the real nail on the head.