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Things we should all love and hate about football
Soccer magazine FourFourTwo has published a superb article this month: 49 Things We Hate About Football — Even Though Its Still The Best Thing on the Planet.
I reckon every real fan would agree with almost all of the things we probably hate about football and I give you a random selection of their choices, in no particular order:
— Fans booing their own players
— Contrived goal celebrations (“Give it up, even your own fans think you look stupid”)
— Immediate post-match interviews (“always rubbish”)
— 23-year-old’s autobiographies (“Bought exclusively by well-intentioned but misguided mums two days before Christmas”)
— Irrelevant mascots (“at what point did Gunnersaurus Rex play a part in Arsenal’s long and distinguished history ?”)
— Manufacturers claiming to have made “the roundest ball ever”
and my personal favourite:
— Sky Sports News interviews with fans outside the ground (“Its 11.24am on Tuesday and the only supporters around are a deranged pensioner wearing 837 club pin badges and an alcoholic maniac with a thin grasp of reality who is almost certainly outraged. Pointless.”)
The Spanish secretly love Beckham too
David Beckham was roundly booed when he was booked for dissent in Seville on Wednesday but most of the local fans had their tongues firmly in their cheeks given there is a good deal of affection in Spain for the former Real Madrid midfielder.
His feat in equalling Bobby Moore’s England outfield appearance record of 108 is impressive to the Spanish, whose most-capped non-goalkeeper is Beckham’s former Real colleague Raul with 102, followed by Fernando Hierro on 89.
Beckham deserves to stand alongside Moore
A great many people, most of whom never saw Bobby Moore play, have decided that it is an insult to his memory that David Beckham will equal his outfield record of 108 England caps if he plays against Spain on Wednesday.
But if Moore , who died in 1993, had been around today you can be sure he would have been the first to sincerely congratulate a fellow gentleman of the game. The Golden-locked hero of 1966 would have recognised much of himself in Goldenballs.
