Day -767. WorldCup2018.
Andrea Bocelli sang "Nessun Dorma" before Leicester played their celebratory match against Everton today. It brought back memories of summer nights in 1990: BBC's adoption of Luciano Pavarotti's singing that same piece as their theme for their World Cup broadcasts brought a bit of opera to football fans, and meant it forever stands as an unofficial football song.
It wasn't the greatest of World Cups but it did have a few stories. One of them was Italy's star centre forward, Toto Schillaci, who was virtually unknown outside of Italy before the World Cup. Today, Jamie Vardy scored 2 more goals for Leicester today. Could he be England's Toto in 2018? Yes, he won't be unknown, but his meteoric rise from part time footballer to the English Premier League, to playing for England has been a real Roy of the Rovers story.
Here's to a few "Notte Magiche" from that summer and a bit of Italian nostalgia.
Saturday, 7 May 2016
Friday, 6 May 2016
Filler
Day -768. WorldCup2018
When I started this latest countdown I said it wouldn't be everyday (you can look it up) but not a late night goes by where I think I have to get something in for the day. The press conference thought is still brewing in my head. One day soon I'll have the time to write about it.
When I started this latest countdown I said it wouldn't be everyday (you can look it up) but not a late night goes by where I think I have to get something in for the day. The press conference thought is still brewing in my head. One day soon I'll have the time to write about it.
Thursday, 5 May 2016
Short.
Day -769. Worldcup2018
Press conferences have to wait one more day. The day is too short. Later....
Press conferences have to wait one more day. The day is too short. Later....
Wednesday, 4 May 2016
Three days late but.....
Day -770. WorldCup2018
Press conferences! The uselessness of press conferences. That's what I was going to write about three days ago (day -773) when I couldn't remember what it was that I was thinking about earlier in the day. I'm just happy I remembered. Fifa, and sponsors, require that a player or two and the manager are at a press conference before or after a match at the World Cup (as do leagues and local associations in most countries). That the majority don't want to be there is painfully obvious. Time is not my ally right now so I will come back to this.
But in the meantime here's a recent classic from the King of dour (not Mourinho, the other one). The master tactician at the last World Cup with Holland has become the champion of self-defence in England, with some colourful explanations.
Press conferences! The uselessness of press conferences. That's what I was going to write about three days ago (day -773) when I couldn't remember what it was that I was thinking about earlier in the day. I'm just happy I remembered. Fifa, and sponsors, require that a player or two and the manager are at a press conference before or after a match at the World Cup (as do leagues and local associations in most countries). That the majority don't want to be there is painfully obvious. Time is not my ally right now so I will come back to this.
But in the meantime here's a recent classic from the King of dour (not Mourinho, the other one). The master tactician at the last World Cup with Holland has become the champion of self-defence in England, with some colourful explanations.
Kosovo
Day -771. WorldCup2018.
When does a country become a country? Is it when UEFA say so? Today Kosovo was accepted as a member of UEFA. Still not a member of the United Nations, Kosovo can now apply to become a member of Fifa and therefore play in the qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. So not a country in the UN's eyes but a country when it comes to football.
The citizenship issues of who qualifies to play for a country that is not really a country are going to be very interesting. Some players who were born in Kosovo played for other countries already because their state of birth wasn't a country. Fifa doesn't allow players to play for more than one country if they represented a country at senior level. So Xherdan Shaqiri and Valon Behrami (Switzerland), Shefki Kuqi (Finland) and Lorik Cana (Albania) are Kosovans who will not be playing for their "country" of birth. Nor can Adnan Januzaj of Manchester United , who Kosovo tried to recruit. His parents are Kosovo-Albanian but he has played for Belgium. I see an interesting case for an enterprising citizenship lawyer.
When does a country become a country? Is it when UEFA say so? Today Kosovo was accepted as a member of UEFA. Still not a member of the United Nations, Kosovo can now apply to become a member of Fifa and therefore play in the qualifying for the 2018 World Cup. So not a country in the UN's eyes but a country when it comes to football.
The citizenship issues of who qualifies to play for a country that is not really a country are going to be very interesting. Some players who were born in Kosovo played for other countries already because their state of birth wasn't a country. Fifa doesn't allow players to play for more than one country if they represented a country at senior level. So Xherdan Shaqiri and Valon Behrami (Switzerland), Shefki Kuqi (Finland) and Lorik Cana (Albania) are Kosovans who will not be playing for their "country" of birth. Nor can Adnan Januzaj of Manchester United , who Kosovo tried to recruit. His parents are Kosovo-Albanian but he has played for Belgium. I see an interesting case for an enterprising citizenship lawyer.
Monday, 2 May 2016
King Ranieri!
Day -772. WorldCup2018.
So they did it. Leicester City, Champions of England. It feels like 30, 40 years ago when teams like Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Everton were winning the league before the dominance of Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, and more recently Chelsea and Manchester City. The big teams, with the big money. The small club, the team that fought back from the brink of relegation last year. It is a pretty incredible achievement. The nature of football, not North American leagues though, is that you watch it unfold week after week from August to May. It's a league where the team at the top of the pile come May is the winner. There's no play-offs where the team in 8th place can come from nowhere and win. We all followed Leicester, week after week, stay at the top. In the end, only die-hard Tottenham fans thought it might not happen. So we had time to digest the surprise factor. It was a slow-building surprise. But it is pretty amazing that it happened. Maybe every country, no matter how small, that qualifies for the 2018 World Cup will believe that they can "do a Leicester"
But will theyhave a manager like Claudio Ranieri? I almost wish some country hire him just before the World Cup for the entertainment he will provide. Greece will definitely not be in the running to hire him after his disastrous spell with them in 2014 where they lost to the Faroe Islands, twice. Ever since he was Chelsea's manager, in what seems like a different lifetime now, I've been a fan of Claudio and his honesty and his humour. And within the Leicester team he has obviously used some incredible managerial skills to create an incredible winning formula. And it takes a very smart man to get a clause written in his contract that he would get a £5m bonus if Leicester did win the league. Was that confidence or a sense of humour?
So give me Vardy and Mahrez, Kante and Fuchs, Drinkwater and Huth and their happy go-lucky style of play. But most of all give me a happy man, a happy manger like Claudio Ranieri any day. If you haven't seen it already here is one of the best press conferences ever, so typical of the man. This is when he first admitted a couple of weeks ago that they could actually win the league.
Dilly ding dilly dong
So they did it. Leicester City, Champions of England. It feels like 30, 40 years ago when teams like Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Everton were winning the league before the dominance of Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, and more recently Chelsea and Manchester City. The big teams, with the big money. The small club, the team that fought back from the brink of relegation last year. It is a pretty incredible achievement. The nature of football, not North American leagues though, is that you watch it unfold week after week from August to May. It's a league where the team at the top of the pile come May is the winner. There's no play-offs where the team in 8th place can come from nowhere and win. We all followed Leicester, week after week, stay at the top. In the end, only die-hard Tottenham fans thought it might not happen. So we had time to digest the surprise factor. It was a slow-building surprise. But it is pretty amazing that it happened. Maybe every country, no matter how small, that qualifies for the 2018 World Cup will believe that they can "do a Leicester"
But will theyhave a manager like Claudio Ranieri? I almost wish some country hire him just before the World Cup for the entertainment he will provide. Greece will definitely not be in the running to hire him after his disastrous spell with them in 2014 where they lost to the Faroe Islands, twice. Ever since he was Chelsea's manager, in what seems like a different lifetime now, I've been a fan of Claudio and his honesty and his humour. And within the Leicester team he has obviously used some incredible managerial skills to create an incredible winning formula. And it takes a very smart man to get a clause written in his contract that he would get a £5m bonus if Leicester did win the league. Was that confidence or a sense of humour?
So give me Vardy and Mahrez, Kante and Fuchs, Drinkwater and Huth and their happy go-lucky style of play. But most of all give me a happy man, a happy manger like Claudio Ranieri any day. If you haven't seen it already here is one of the best press conferences ever, so typical of the man. This is when he first admitted a couple of weeks ago that they could actually win the league.
Dilly ding dilly dong
Sunday, 1 May 2016
Football on the radio
Day -773. #WorldCup2018
Leicester didn't "do a Leicester" yet. So the dream is still alive. The Tottenham dream. And while Leicester were busy not quite doing what the whole of the world that still believes in the little guy winning was willing them to do, I was busy looking for a way to watch their league winning match against Manchester United on my phone or on any available TV while happily doing Dad stuff away from home. With no luck I turned to online radio. As I rediscovered the joy of listening to football on the radio, I formulated a post for today in my head. It was perfect, was to be a wonderful addition to my Sunday memories posts. What a genius I am, I thought. In the euphoria of my self-proclaimed brilliance, I did not take into account my not-so-brilliant memory. And try as I may, I cannot remember what wonderful thoughts I was going to share with you tonight.
So instead it's radio talk. There was something old fashioned romantic about sitting in a crowded shopping mall, headphones on, listening to commentary of a football match. Good radio commentators have a way to describe what's going on that television commentators cannot. (In fairness TV commentators don't have to be so descriptive because, well, you can see what's going on.)
Something funny happened later in the day. In my early days of watching football on North American TV I was amused and irritated by how much the commentators spoke constantly. "They sound like they're on the radio," I thought. Today I started watching Toronto FC on TV but when I had to go out I turned on the car radio to check the score and, yes, the radio commentary was the same TV commentary. So they really are on the radio!
In the days before live football on TV, and when I was at University, I developed a superstition about listening to a match on the radio. If I had BBC Radio 5 Live on (that was good radio) and Aston Villa scored then I had to keep the radio on, even if it was a mid-week evening when I was desperately trying to get an essay written. But if I turned the radio on mid-match and Villa were winning then I had to turn it off again. I wish I could report on statistics of how true this was, but my memory was that it was a superstition with strong evidence of it being well founded.
Before there was even a hint of live football on TV, BBC World Service at around 5.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in Malta was my friend. There was always live commentary of the last 15 or 20 minutes of the day's most important match, followed by the final scores read by the man with the legendary intonation.
I had never listened to a World Cup match on the radio until 2014, when I found it necessary to have it on in the car as many of the matches were played as I was on my home. And happily, even though the pre-match was Canadian, when the match started it switched over to the BBC feed.
(Now I even thought there was something more interesting I was going to say about football on the radio, but that's it. So I'm going to fade out quietly here and pray for a memory flashback tomorrow).
Leicester didn't "do a Leicester" yet. So the dream is still alive. The Tottenham dream. And while Leicester were busy not quite doing what the whole of the world that still believes in the little guy winning was willing them to do, I was busy looking for a way to watch their league winning match against Manchester United on my phone or on any available TV while happily doing Dad stuff away from home. With no luck I turned to online radio. As I rediscovered the joy of listening to football on the radio, I formulated a post for today in my head. It was perfect, was to be a wonderful addition to my Sunday memories posts. What a genius I am, I thought. In the euphoria of my self-proclaimed brilliance, I did not take into account my not-so-brilliant memory. And try as I may, I cannot remember what wonderful thoughts I was going to share with you tonight.
So instead it's radio talk. There was something old fashioned romantic about sitting in a crowded shopping mall, headphones on, listening to commentary of a football match. Good radio commentators have a way to describe what's going on that television commentators cannot. (In fairness TV commentators don't have to be so descriptive because, well, you can see what's going on.)
Something funny happened later in the day. In my early days of watching football on North American TV I was amused and irritated by how much the commentators spoke constantly. "They sound like they're on the radio," I thought. Today I started watching Toronto FC on TV but when I had to go out I turned on the car radio to check the score and, yes, the radio commentary was the same TV commentary. So they really are on the radio!
In the days before live football on TV, and when I was at University, I developed a superstition about listening to a match on the radio. If I had BBC Radio 5 Live on (that was good radio) and Aston Villa scored then I had to keep the radio on, even if it was a mid-week evening when I was desperately trying to get an essay written. But if I turned the radio on mid-match and Villa were winning then I had to turn it off again. I wish I could report on statistics of how true this was, but my memory was that it was a superstition with strong evidence of it being well founded.
Before there was even a hint of live football on TV, BBC World Service at around 5.30pm on a Saturday afternoon in Malta was my friend. There was always live commentary of the last 15 or 20 minutes of the day's most important match, followed by the final scores read by the man with the legendary intonation.
I had never listened to a World Cup match on the radio until 2014, when I found it necessary to have it on in the car as many of the matches were played as I was on my home. And happily, even though the pre-match was Canadian, when the match started it switched over to the BBC feed.
(Now I even thought there was something more interesting I was going to say about football on the radio, but that's it. So I'm going to fade out quietly here and pray for a memory flashback tomorrow).
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