Put a monkey on it - betting on football

You've seen the queues. Desperate men, waving bits of paper, screaming random numbers at each other. Nope, not the Stock Exchange, but the pokey stall on the stadium concourse... Men who have been putting a fiver on Lee Dixon to score first goal at 40/1 since the year dot; or those who believe that today is the day, when he can quit his job and live a life of luxury, yet still turn up on the terraces on a Saturday afternoon (or Sunday - see earlier blog!)

What's the attraction? Do we need an extra incentive to make a game that more exciting? Knowing full well that one goal, booking or throw in can make a difference is unpredictably brilliant sure, but for money as well?

And then... Players themselves get involved...

 Beppe celebrates his accumulator coming off

In the summer of 2011, it emerged that the latest betting scandal to affect football was to engulf Serie B in Italy, involving teams including Atalanta, Cremonese and Hellas Verona. The usual allegations were made, people being part of certain crime rings and owing money, but the most amazing thing was that Marco Paoloni of Benevento even went so far as to dope his former teammates in games. And for what? Pure greed? Infamy? Or just a belief that it was fine?

The most famous betting scandals in England involved a handful of players in the early 90s including Liverpool legend Bruce Grobbelaar. He, along with John 'Awooga' Fashanu and Hans Segers, were charged with conspiring to corrupt after being caught out by the Sun newspaper. Although no specific matches were mentioned, he was ordered to pay £500,000 due to evidence of dishonesty. The first match after the allegations was for Southampton at home to Arsenal, and he was showered with fake £20 notes bearing the 'Bank of Grob'. Alas he also kept a clean sheet and watched a penalty from Paul Dickov reach orbit.

Bruce was nervous at the visit from the Police

Betting is fun. Betting is dangerous. Maybe that's why it's fun. It's a different beast from fantasy football or office sweepstakes. The fact that most big clubs have an affiliation with a betting company (what do we call them? Bookies? Turf accountants?) means that it's big business, and they want us to splash the cash, and even better, the clubs know that if you win, you're more likely to buy that new 4th choice keeper shirt for your kid, or the limited edition club cushion.

But we can't the corrupt few players or the mega-rich clubs ruin it for us... And next time we get an offer of a free bet, or see Ray Winstone's head floating in the air saying "Bet, naaaaaaaaaaaaah", just have a flutter - it could make that Europa League tie live from Andorra just that little bit sweeter...

Stick a ton on it you schlaggggggg

The Fourth Estate - football in print

Football in the papers. It's part of life. We can spot a sports fan just by watching them in a newsagent, on the train or in a library. They're the one who pick up the paper, ignore perhaps world changing events on the front page, and flip straight to the back. But what else do we see when we pick up that paper?

Like most other parts of the printed media, you can get a good idea of the philosophy of that paper just by the name on the top. Humour, gossip, agendas and good traditional journalism can be found in different measures in each.Take Britain's dailies for example. Each will have a different viewpoint on events, and you could quite easily read a different one every day and have that day's mood satisfied.

Classic headline? Or just lame pun?

Twitter has made minor celebrities of football writers, oracles in a community of people wanting everything yesterday, where free opinions aren't enough. A retweet of an up-and-coming blog or an endorsement can do the power of good. A good teaser post by a journo could earn their paper hundreds of sales.

But papers (and of course their writers and editors) can create a huge amount of controversy. The most famous (infamous?) perhaps being the Sun's reporting of the Hillsborough tragedy, recently re-visited as part of the Parliamentary debate. The Guardian's Barry Glendenning caused a small ripple of annoyance after making a comment about Spurs perhaps milking minor miracles... Reputations are made and broken, and again going back to the Sun, the Graham Taylor turnip incident.

Taylor's alternative to the England manager umbrella

After England's miserable Euro '92 campaign, The Sun referred to the manager Taylor as a turnip, and thus pretty much tarring him for life, even now as he is a fairly regular (and often insightful) contributor to BBC Radio 5.

Does our choice of newspaper reflect us? Should we pigeon-hole the papers, to the point where we have to be exclusive - the Guardian is capable of being just as humourous as a red-top, while the Star has been known to make the odd insightful article... Even if it is just Sepp Blatter's designs for women's football kits...

The Telegraph's coverage of women's cricket was obviously flawed

Clothes maketh the man - football shirts

Iconic images. We always have those ingrained somewhere in our heads - when we think of certain players, we look back to the grainy black and white photos, the fuzzy TV screens, or the incomplete Panini Mexico 86 sticker books.

Terry Butcher is immortalised in a blood stained England shirt from 1989. Pele in the simple yellow Brazil shirt of 1970. The memories of Croatia v Denmark at Hillsborough in 1996, a team of mysterious strangers (mostly) donned in tablecloths swiped from a local Italian restaurant.

A huge market exists for the replicas of such jerseys. eBay, websites and collectors make a killing helping big kids lust after the shirts we remember. Some of these shirts get reproduced, perhaps as a money-making lust from the manufacturers. We see the football stadia full of men squeezing into the shirts of young boys. But is it ever the same?

 

Awesome player, but is the shirt now worth more?

The shirts are polyester firestarters, itchy as hell, not the supposedly eco-friendly pieces of today, which claim to be made of recycled bottles, absorb sweat and are supposed to look good with jeans. Classic designs, with enormous collars, simple stripes and peeling sponsor logos.

But will any of today's shirts be classics? And indeed how long can we wait before a shirt is a true antique? Sport shops sell current England shirts for less than a plain white t-shirt, ensuring that they are seen all over, a triumph for now, but I doubt they'll be remembered.

We all have our memories. Mine are of Michael Thomas in 1989, the classic Adidas yellow shirt, and I queued for hours to have him sign my replica at Islington Woolworths, only for him to pass comment that it had a large 2 on the back, the number of Lee Dixon, saying "I hope that was the score and not for Dicko".

Up for grabs now...

Maybe after the research for this blog, we can drum up a market for this shirt, and hopefully the video below will explain why!

Brazil v Zaire, 1974 World Cup

Brilliant. No amount of awful clip shows will take this away from me.

Punditry, the ultimate old boys club

It seems fitting today to write a blog about pundits today after it emerged that Andy Gray and Richard Keys are doing a national speaking tour, strangely enough starting in Wolverhampton, where their career on Sky began it's meteoric descent with their comments about assistant referee Sian Massey in a game between Wolves and Liverpool. The two seem intent on becoming a double act channeling Alan Partridge, where no doubt a Keys and Gray tie and blazer badge pack will be available after the show...

Smashing all box office records (credit @tomEurosport in reply to @Zonal_Marking)

But is this where punditry is headed? Most have been leading international footballers, so have their own followings already, and are expected to provide a level of insight that perhaps your average fan may not see. The idea is to explain why something happened, how something could have happened, and what could be done about it. But in the age of Twitter, the average fan can indeed pass sentence on the pundits instantaneously.

Alan Shearer in particular has got it in the neck, and perhaps rightly so. On two occasions in particular, he has been castigated for showing a lack of knowledge and respect, while sitting there happily claiming the license payer's money. He claimed that no-one knew about Hatem Ben Arfa (French international), and criticised Lee Dixon for actually making the effort to learn the names of players during the 2010 World Cup, in particular Marek Hamsik, currently gracing the Champion's League with Napoli.

 Lineker was getting ID'd at the bar

Another 'victim' of Twitter was Ray Wilkins - his punditry during the Real Madrid v Tottenham quarter final in the 2010/11 Champion's League seemed to feature the phrase 'stay on your feet' several times, to the point that even Rio Ferdinand, well known for his broad vocabulary, passed comment. The line trended and now it's almost expected, and has caused a rush for photos such as these...

Butch practises what he preaches

FIFA 12 now gives the option of switching commentators should they particularly grind you, and if you look hard enough, you can still turn the noise off on Sky and purely listen to the fans, or listen with the radio if you can manage with the slight time delay.

In these multi-media days, we are spoilt for choice, but who would you have on your ideal pundit team?

Sunday football

Saturday afternoon, 3pm. Kick-off time. A time and day that is so sacred, it is protected by legislation.  No UK based broadcaster is allowed to show league football that kicks off at 3pm. Football has kicked off at 3pm on a Saturday since what seems like the year dot. But is any day or time so traditional anymore?

Before and after European weeks, matches are moved to accommodate the teams involved in the Champions League and the Europa League. Stoke and Birmingham are getting used to the concept of playing on Thursdays and Sundays. TV already get a say and show (usually) two games on a Sunday, at 1.30pm and 4pm (Super Sunday!).

So has Sunday football become indoctrinated into our enjoyment of football?

Nike's view of Hackney Marshes

Sunday morning football is a very English tradition, Hackney Marshes being the epicentre. In issue one of the excellent Blizzard , Simon Hooper writes about a team of Romanian ex-pats who meet on a Sunday morning to compete, along with hundreds of teams in numerous leagues. Isn't this what most of us think about Sunday football? All amateurs, some better than others, and some of these matches are as feisty as an Old Firm derby.

When the fixture lists come out, Sky and ESPN look at those Sundays when the big four collide, and those Sundays aren't just super, they're GRAND SLAM SUNDAYS!!! The fan looks at those weekends, but there is the nervous wait - do you book the train and hotel for the away game, or wait til Sky decide whether to show it or not?

 Not just any Sunday...

But looking abroad, Sunday football is the staple - Serie A games all occur on a Sunday (again excepting European games), as part of the day - church, football, dinner. Would England revolt if Saturday 3pm was the exception rather than the rule?

My personal favourite was the Friday night game, an option used by Arsenal in the early 2000s, but veto-ed by the police, surely worth experimenting again!

Live on the crystal ball, in HD

On Tuesday evening, it was reported that Liverpool managing director Ian Ayre spoke of breaking one of the last great features of English football - the collective arranging of television rights. Naturally most of the voices in the game and media have come out in outrage, but why the surprise? After all, one of the reasons the Premier League was formed was in order to maximise TV income...

But what could we expect from football on television if this occurred? MUTV to become the next Sky Sports? Let's have a look into the future...

Coming up next on MUTV HD

Man Utd at home to Liverpool. One of the biggest games in the season, one of the first that will be on the list of matches to move for television... But Sky Sports no longer show Premier League football, so other than the 76,000 or so with tickets, how do you watch it? The clubs have shown a lot more spine to eradicate online streaming, and have squashed the pubs showing Greek satellites. Does your average Liverpool fan have to subscribe to MUTV for a minimum contract? Or pay the best part of £30 for a pay-per-view event? You can argue until blue in the face - people will pay it. The fan knows it, and boy do the home clubs know it.

Your average Saturday afternoon in the high street will resemble the episode of Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads?, where the boys went through hell to avoid hearing the score, keeping away from traditional haunts such as Dixons and John Lewis, maybe even volunteering to hold the wife's shopping bags. All to catch a glimpse of the action on Match of the Day, just to justify the massive licence fee you've had to shell out so Auntie can afford the highlights.

Shock ensued when Babestation bought the Premier League highlights

The obvious will happen however. The rich get (even) richer, the poorer struggle to sell rights and end up letting their bigger rivals sell their games, for a price of course. The European Super League follows, the rest of the clubs vainly carry on, and after that? The fall-out would last a generation, cries of "why not us?" filling the chatrooms and forums.

Coming up next on the History Channel, the 2006 World Cup

Is there anything the average fan can do? Well, Game 39 was stopped dead in the tracks, but was that a fluke? Italian football provided a good compromise of playing their version of the Community Shield abroad, and now they have collective TV rights, and Serie A looks like a fairly open event for the first time in years. Maybe we'll all just tweet, moan and groan - but it seems inevitable.

Football in the box is going to go the way of football in the flesh - a rich man's game.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

In the age of information overload, football is no different from any other sport or TV show. But these days, it's almost impossible to watch a game and not feel like you need to be plugged into the Matrix in order to keep fully abreast of what's really happening. How many passes has Xavi completed? Did Ibrahimovic really make fewer passes than the goalkeeper? How many strands of hair has Rooney had implanted?

 

Dave tries to watch the game while tweeting and blogging...

But how much of it really matters? Is there too much reliability on them? We see Sam Allardyce with his headsets and Prozone, and perhaps see the irony that his teams have a somewhat agricultural reputation. Nowadays everything is analysed so much, it almost removes the human factor that makes football so great. Arsenal didn't have a single shot on goal away to Barcelona in 2011, yet were a Nicklas Bendtner balls-up away from an away goal which probably would have seen them progress.

52 attempts and he still wouldn't score

We have a wealth of information online that gives that extra dimension, that makes you see the beautiful game in a different way. Zonal Marking shows the how tactics work in real life. OptaJoe on Twitter has a wealth of data on all sorts that would make a time-travelling spread better weep. The Premier League have even launched a Twitter feed that lists the weekend's referees, in plenty of time for fans to get their excuses in early, I'm sure Ryan Babel can sleep safely now.

But sometimes there is just nothing that can really explain those great, sometimes unanswerable debates. Messi v Ronaldo, Pele v Maradona. The debate that keeps on going, that no amount of data or opinion will ever fully conclude. Or those moments that will dumbfound you because that's the way it is. John Barnes' goal against Brazil, or Gascoigne's challenge in the 91 cup final that just seemed so random.

One thing's for sure. No matter how many fouls Mark van Bommel commits in a game, or how many successful dribbles Messi makes... You don't need a maths degree to know that the only statistic that really matters is the one that we look for in on Final Score. And hope that when it says 8 (EIGHT), that your team are the winners...

And do we really want our managers to be robots? To rely totally on technology? Do what Paul Ince does, and just write down the first thing that comes into your head...

Ince's magazine shopping list

When footballers sing...

There are traditions in the game which seem to peak and trough. Some for the better perhaps, but some just bring some big old bouts of nostalgia. One such item is the footballer's attempts at the charts.

Maybe it wasn't so tempting to reminisce about the songs that we couldn't stand, the ones that tried too hard, or that ruined those evenings in front of Top of the Pops, where a squad of mostly ugly central defenders would drone about bringing the cup home, while all we wanted was to see Kylie or Bananarama.

But would any of today's stars do the same? We all laugh at 'Glenn and Chris', but could you imagine 'Wayne and Frank' doing the same? Fair play to them, they gave it a go. And the Anfield Rap? Oh dear. But the alternative these days? "Well Steve Gerrard sure can rap" etc.

 

Wow, free poster!!                               7 inches of pure terror

 Then there is the World Cup or cup final anthem, an excuse to dust down a cover of Status Quo or similar. Perhaps it was an early team-building exercise, get the lads in for a morning to murder a Dave Clark Five number and then out on the pop, the Tuesday club maybe. Gleeful fans would line up to buy the 7" single, and then consign it to the hell that is the clip show or compilation album.

Alan Pardew sporting Top Man's new shell-suit...

We all have fond memories of the songs. Attempting to recite them when drunk or on a cup run. Laugh at the fashions, be they Pringle jumpers or lame moustaches on 21 year olds. But like or not, we all know we try (and mostly fail) to rap as good as John Barnes, on what was the finest football song of all time.

"You've got to hold and give, but do it at the right time..."

 

 Arrivederci...

The 'celebrity' fans

I've supported X since I was a boy. Y is the name I look for first after a match. I have Z blood running through my veins. No, not another press conference unveiling Robbie Keane, but the predictable spiel from your average celebrity fan.

They spout their opinions on Twitter, trying to wind up players and other fans alike and turn up at pubs post-match and act like they're handing out free money.

You know it's bad when you flick through your wife's Heat magazine and see your team's colours adorning the paparazzi pages.

Alan Davies. Angus Deayton. Even Will Ferrell has been pictured in a Chelsea shirt. Ron Burgundy at Stamford Bridge, a sad state of affairs. Just as well he never got the ESPN gig...

In the old days, you'd have the old favourites turn out before the FA Cup final, a little kick-around and a bit of banter. Now you'd have a panel show throughout the World Cup by some rotund oaf of a mildly successful sitcom, or a rolling news network fronted by an attractive lady who probably had a famous footballing dad in the 70s.

Where will it end though? Surely it won't be long before a former X Factor favourite gets a spot in a Premier League squad as part of a reality show. I shudder to think.

And a thought to leave you all with - you and your mates go for a curry post-game, all having a laugh, and in walks a minor celebrity whose whole act is a man of the people, big fan, good egg. You don't approach him, merely sit there and nod acknowledgement... But he reels off a line such as "guys, don't disturb me, I'm here for a quiet meal". Is it possible to lose any respect for that 'celeb' in one go?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ADDITION: I also remember the North London derby on Sunday, where Roger Lloyd-Pack, who played Trigger in Only Fools And Horses made an appearance on the pitch at half-time. A well loved character from our screens, immediately 'sentenced' by Arsenal fans to a rendition of "Trigger, Trigger, you're a c**t". But maybe Harry Redknapp didn't moan enough about that, hence why it didn't make the papers...

Club vs Country

The debate that has gone on forever. No, not who'd win in a fight between Superman and Indiana Jones... Club vs Country. Which means more? What would you prefer?

The vast majority of people in England support teams in the Premier League. Nothing new, not much research required there. But how do those fans feel watching England? Is it harder for Fulham fans to cheer for John Terry as captain? Ashley Cole is certainly one of the least popular footballers around (thanks to Heat magazine and his own biography), but he's also one of the best left-backs in the world and would walk into most teams.

But what about Arsenal fans? In the last 10 years, Gunners in the Three Lions have been hard to come by. In the early days of the Wenger era, it would be safe to say that many Arsenal fans adopted France as they're second team, and the sight of Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit celebrating the third goal in Les Bleus win over Brazil in 1998 would bring joy...

Arsenal win the World Cup (as said the Daily Mirror headline)

But in February 1989, Arsenal lined up against the French national team at Highbury (managed by Platini, with Cantona in the line up)... Had it been repeated under the Wenger, who would the fans support? It got close in 1999, when England lined up against the World Champions at Wembley, with England featuring Seaman, Dixon, Adams, Keown and Winterburn as sub, versus the French who included Petit, Vieira and Anelka (then of Arsenal). PS Arsenal beat France 2-0, while France beat England 2-0. Telling?

Arsenal beat the French at Highbury

It's just a theory, but one wonders if the fans occasionally let it known how they feel - how many Man Utd fans were abusing Wayne Rooney after England's lifeless showing against Algeria in 2010? You'd imagine Evertonians enjoyed the chance!

Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be...

So in this international week, something to think about. Would you prefer your team to win the Champion's League or for your country to win the World Cup? Or maybe just for your star striker to not have to worry about a flight to Montenegro this week...