Day -475. WorldCup2018
Most days I write this late at night, the last thing I do everyday. It really is the last thing. Reading it again would be a good epilogue to my post but I don't even do that. So then I may return to it the next day, or when I'm updating my blog which I keep updated for the day I get discovered, and I think, "on no, did I really write that?" I cringe at grammatical mistakes in others and am ashamed when I do it. Auto correct takes care of most spelling mistakes but it sometimes picks words which I did not intend to write, but I miss the change. I realised just today that a couple of days ago I wrote about Aston Villa's reparation when I meant to say relegation. It explained why somebody who has never liked my posts before liked that one. He/she (I will not give him/her away) must have appreciated my sentiments that Aston Villa needed to make amends to some particular group for injustices caused by the football club. I'm sorry. I was not being political or philosophical, only bemoaning the fact that Aston Villa may be facing the humiliation of further relegation. The owners of the club, previous one included, may have to make some reparations to the fans for all the suffering they have endured over the last few years.
Many days I write this as an easy escape or distraction from the crazy news from the real world: wars, bombings, refugees, insane Presidents of world superpowers and such. Things that I wish didn't happen, that I could do something about, but can't so I write about football.
Other days I superimpose my emotional reaction to something that happened in the football world onto my emotional reaction to a personal event. So that retirement of a player or sacking of a manager becomes a bigger event in my head than if I was in the different frame of mind. Today it's Claudio Ranieri.
Now to be fair to myself I don't think I was the only one who was saddened a little bit more about this than I should have been about a football manager losing his job. BBC online runs a daily sports news update page. It was dominated today by reactions to Ranieri's sacking. At regular intervals the journalist running the page had to clarify that nobody had died, it was just a sacking, such was the outpouring of grief from people writing in.
Apart from the perceived unfairness at the decision after Ranieri's fairytale with Leicester last year, wasn't part of the sadness because it seemed like somebody who could be your wonderful father had come to the end of the road? There was sadness for the man, that a person who led a group of footballers to their dreams was being discarded for being not up to it anymore. After reading all the tributes today (again nobody died!) I suddenly got the urge to contact Ranieri. I've always wanted to talk to somebody of some importance who can add some legitimacy to my daily ramblings. And I thought Ranieri would be a fantastic start. It would also be an amazing conversation. I imagined myself on the phone with him, talking to him about football just like I do with my dad. So I was searching online for "Ranieri contact" and "Ranieri email". No luck. There are a couple of twitter accounts and a lot of Facebook pages with his name but are not really him. I hear he left for Rome right after losing his job. So if anybody knows where to track him down.....
The last word about Ranieri is the first sentence of his statement today. It says it all about how upset he must be and why so many of us feel sad about what happened: "Yesterday my dream died."
My day did start with a bit of humour, for myself. The draw for the last 16 of the Europa League took place today. BBC took some time out of the Ranieri obituaries to report on the draw. I looked through it and had varied thoughts.
Celta Vigo vs. FC Krasnodar: they're still in it? Last July, yes July, Krasnodar stood in the way of Malta's Birkirkara and the group stages. Birkirkara had made it to the third qualifying round after an historical win against Hearts. They were dreaming o further greatness but the Russians swept them aside and here they are many months later amongst the last 16.
Then, a match-up I don't care much about followed by Schalke vs Borussia Monchengladbach. An all German affair. That will be fun, for the fans of those two teams.
Next was Lyon vs Roma. Now that will be good and these teams might even start caring about the competition for losers and put on a good show.
Then it's Manchester United against FC Rostov. Stories of long trips to Russia abounded. I'm not interested, yet.
Olympiakos vs Besiktas. The Greeks against the Turks. Those jokes about the London police being concerned about Tottenham playing Millwall in the FA Cup seem like just that now, jokes, compared to what the armed police must be fearing in Greece and Turkey.
And then there it was: Gent, of Belgium, drawn to play Genk, of Belgium. So they are two different teams! When Tottenham played Gent in the last round I thought again what I had believed in my head to be true for many years: that they were the same team but there were different spellings depending on whether they were being talked about in English, Walloon or Flemish, Dutch or French. A bit like Basel, Basle or Bale (with the accent on the "a"). Belgians, and people living in Belgium, please excuse my ignorance. At least after this round there will only be on on them left.
And the last tie is Copenhagen vs Ajax. It could be a good one between two teams who always think they should be doing a lot better than they actually are. But after the Belgian teams who are not one and the same, I didn't care anymore.
After the length of this it is definitely the last thing I am doing tonight.
Most days I write this late at night, the last thing I do everyday. It really is the last thing. Reading it again would be a good epilogue to my post but I don't even do that. So then I may return to it the next day, or when I'm updating my blog which I keep updated for the day I get discovered, and I think, "on no, did I really write that?" I cringe at grammatical mistakes in others and am ashamed when I do it. Auto correct takes care of most spelling mistakes but it sometimes picks words which I did not intend to write, but I miss the change. I realised just today that a couple of days ago I wrote about Aston Villa's reparation when I meant to say relegation. It explained why somebody who has never liked my posts before liked that one. He/she (I will not give him/her away) must have appreciated my sentiments that Aston Villa needed to make amends to some particular group for injustices caused by the football club. I'm sorry. I was not being political or philosophical, only bemoaning the fact that Aston Villa may be facing the humiliation of further relegation. The owners of the club, previous one included, may have to make some reparations to the fans for all the suffering they have endured over the last few years.
Many days I write this as an easy escape or distraction from the crazy news from the real world: wars, bombings, refugees, insane Presidents of world superpowers and such. Things that I wish didn't happen, that I could do something about, but can't so I write about football.
Other days I superimpose my emotional reaction to something that happened in the football world onto my emotional reaction to a personal event. So that retirement of a player or sacking of a manager becomes a bigger event in my head than if I was in the different frame of mind. Today it's Claudio Ranieri.
Now to be fair to myself I don't think I was the only one who was saddened a little bit more about this than I should have been about a football manager losing his job. BBC online runs a daily sports news update page. It was dominated today by reactions to Ranieri's sacking. At regular intervals the journalist running the page had to clarify that nobody had died, it was just a sacking, such was the outpouring of grief from people writing in.
Apart from the perceived unfairness at the decision after Ranieri's fairytale with Leicester last year, wasn't part of the sadness because it seemed like somebody who could be your wonderful father had come to the end of the road? There was sadness for the man, that a person who led a group of footballers to their dreams was being discarded for being not up to it anymore. After reading all the tributes today (again nobody died!) I suddenly got the urge to contact Ranieri. I've always wanted to talk to somebody of some importance who can add some legitimacy to my daily ramblings. And I thought Ranieri would be a fantastic start. It would also be an amazing conversation. I imagined myself on the phone with him, talking to him about football just like I do with my dad. So I was searching online for "Ranieri contact" and "Ranieri email". No luck. There are a couple of twitter accounts and a lot of Facebook pages with his name but are not really him. I hear he left for Rome right after losing his job. So if anybody knows where to track him down.....
The last word about Ranieri is the first sentence of his statement today. It says it all about how upset he must be and why so many of us feel sad about what happened: "Yesterday my dream died."
My day did start with a bit of humour, for myself. The draw for the last 16 of the Europa League took place today. BBC took some time out of the Ranieri obituaries to report on the draw. I looked through it and had varied thoughts.
Celta Vigo vs. FC Krasnodar: they're still in it? Last July, yes July, Krasnodar stood in the way of Malta's Birkirkara and the group stages. Birkirkara had made it to the third qualifying round after an historical win against Hearts. They were dreaming o further greatness but the Russians swept them aside and here they are many months later amongst the last 16.
Then, a match-up I don't care much about followed by Schalke vs Borussia Monchengladbach. An all German affair. That will be fun, for the fans of those two teams.
Next was Lyon vs Roma. Now that will be good and these teams might even start caring about the competition for losers and put on a good show.
Then it's Manchester United against FC Rostov. Stories of long trips to Russia abounded. I'm not interested, yet.
Olympiakos vs Besiktas. The Greeks against the Turks. Those jokes about the London police being concerned about Tottenham playing Millwall in the FA Cup seem like just that now, jokes, compared to what the armed police must be fearing in Greece and Turkey.
And then there it was: Gent, of Belgium, drawn to play Genk, of Belgium. So they are two different teams! When Tottenham played Gent in the last round I thought again what I had believed in my head to be true for many years: that they were the same team but there were different spellings depending on whether they were being talked about in English, Walloon or Flemish, Dutch or French. A bit like Basel, Basle or Bale (with the accent on the "a"). Belgians, and people living in Belgium, please excuse my ignorance. At least after this round there will only be on on them left.
And the last tie is Copenhagen vs Ajax. It could be a good one between two teams who always think they should be doing a lot better than they actually are. But after the Belgian teams who are not one and the same, I didn't care anymore.
After the length of this it is definitely the last thing I am doing tonight.
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