Marco Materazzi : Equally blessed and Cursed

 

I have always regarded football as more than just a sport.  Football is about entertainment and like every good village pantomine football has always had its fair share of heroes and villains.  One player though has managed to blur the line between good and bad, talented and violent, smart and crazy, helpful and harmful.  His name is Marco Materazzi and about a year ago he was far from a household name despite being involved in more controversial incidents than the average Kennedy cousin since his pro career began about 15 years ago.

The name Materazzi even now may not mean a lot to people around the world but if you add the words, “Italy,” “headbutt” and “World cup final” to the equation then most people will immediately recall a tall dark haired clown who conceded a penalty, scored an equaliser and then induced the worlds best player to headbutt him all within the confines of one game on live TV just less than a year ago.  For those of us familiar with Marco or “The Matrix” as his team mates call him, his World Cup final antics were not a huge surprise.

Marco had one season at Everton which consisted of goals, own goals, conceding penalties and most famously of all an unprovoked attack on an advertising hoarding.  Coventry City striker Darren Huckerby decided to take a dive that Matt Biondi would have been proud of and the ref decided to red card Materazzi by assuming his guilt based upon his past crimes rather than asking the linesman who had clearly seen that no contact was made.  Being a reasonable kind of guy Marco decided that to display his mild annoyance at the red card he would first refuse to leave the field for a few minutes, then kick the crap out of  the adverts surrounding the field and finally for his grand finale he would sit and weep hysterically on the touchline for the remainder of the game.  Poor old Everton boos Walter Smith had to explain to the media afterwards that his $3million pound defender was “not of right mind” to play another game for the club.  Wacko-razzi was sent back to Italy and after a brief spell at Perugia he came to fame again for using his elbow to poleaxe Juan Pablo Sorin in the Champions League.  He also had a major tunnel bust up which caused Cirillo to get two black eyes and to make sure he stayed in the headlines he also scored 12 goals which was a record for a defender.  That is the thing with Marco he is always in the headlines for good or bad.

The World cup was all about Materazzi.  A goal against the Czechs, a red card against Australia and then the in the last game the finest display on attention seeking insanity seen since Nero decided to burn down Rome .   Anyway the reason I mention all of this is because today Inter Milan secured their first Italian title since 1989.  They were awarded the title last year but only long after the season had ended and because all of the teams above them were docked points or relegated for match fixing so that one doesn’t really count.  They needed a win today against Sienna to seal the deal and on cue Marco Materazzi decided his name had been out of the headlines just long enough to warrant a big game and so he scored both their goals in a 2-1 win.  You may love this guy or hate him or you may variously think he is a gift from God or a curse from hell depending on his last involvement in any particular game but you have got to hand it to the lad that he is one hell of an entertainer.

Why America will never be good at soccer

Brian Clough, the real “Coach”

When I lived in Alabama I got into a discussion one day with a customer who was amazed to meet an Englishman. He asked me a lot of questions about the land of my birth and just when I was starting to think he was some kind of anglophile stalker he blurted out “Do you play soccer ?” Silly question. Everyone from England plays soccer except for hooray henrys and the last time I checked I wasn’t wearing a red coat or chasing a a fox down a hole. I explained to him I hadn’t played much since I left college to which he replied “You played at college ?” I nodded. I played soccer every day at college sometimes on a field sometimes on the Hulme Hall Wardens croquet lawn in a thunder storm (He went nuts but that is another story) and sometimes in my bedroom with a coke can as the ball and a trash can as the goal. Soccer or football as it was known back in my English days was a major part of my life. What I didn’t realise was that the words “college” and “soccer” or any other sport in the same sentence have a very different connotation in the US than they do in England. Firstly the chap assumed that when I say I “played at college” that I meant I “played for my college” and he also had no idea that college sport in England is not what it is in the US. At home any kid worth his salt is playing for a professionals clubs junior team by the age of twelve and if he stays in school until 16 he is doing well. In the USA people who want to be professional sports stars get scholarships and play sport at Uni in stadiums as big as Wembley and on live TV.

The next thing I knew I was being asked to take over as coach of the local Under 14 soccer team by this nice but rather eccentric fellow who looked a little like the “Doc” from “Back to the Future.” Unbeknown to him I wasn’t of the Gary Lineker and unbeknown to me Mr Anglophile was going to embellish my presumed resume and tell all the kids parents that I used to be a professional player in England ! It was a little awkward when I showed up for the first day of training and heard a few parents whispering about how I was the “former premier league player.” None of them seemed to have the brains to realise that since I was only 23 at the time that even if I had been a pro I must have had a pretty miserable little career ! Anyway I didn’t really feel it would be appropriate to admit I had over heard them talking and explain that I was about as near to be a professional football player as Anne Widdicombe was to being a stripper !

It soon transpired that there were to be two teams in the town. My team and the team of Coach Kimble. He was the Brian Clough of the city. He had coached the team for 17 years and never lost a championship. He was a hero. He was a good old boy. He was … a complete moron. I first discovered this on the day we had a draft and Kimble gave me a whole speech about how he wanted to have some decent competition and tipped me off to the kids who supposedly were the best ones. I initially took his advice with my first picks but as time went on it became obvious that he was up to no good as every kid who was half decent was “having a lucky day” whereas all of the no hopers were “not showing their best form.” All in all it was a stitch up and I ended up with about 2 kids who could kick a ball in a squad of 15 and not only that but the teams were mixed but somehow I had 7 girls and he had one. No offence to girls who are good at soccer but 6 of my 7 girls were only there because their parents forced them to be.

I had always been an avid armchair critic of the premier league and had won championships with every team from west Ham to Torquay United on “Championship Manager 2″ but I had never actually “coached before so I decided to invest in a book about “Dutch soccer drills.” I figured that the Dutch were usually pretty good and it would be easier to teach the kids to play the beautiful game then to teach them the long ball game given that none of them were above 5 feet tall. The book had some great ideas and fancy formations but said very little about fitness training. The author explained that ball control was key and not mindless exercise. In contrast coach Kimble on the neighbouring field was having his team run marathons and the slowest two kids would have to perform 50 push ups before being allowed to take part in the sprints. One or two parents voiced concern at our different managerial styles but I stuck to my guns believing that it might actually be useful to teach the kids how to play soccer !

I felt fully vindicated when in our first game we met the invincible coach Kimbles team and despite his complete ignorance of offside laws causing him to constantly berate the referee nothing could prevent quality shining through and my team won the game 8-2. I would go on to explain how we were unbeaten for the remainder of the season and even beat a team that had been in the State final the previous year but that would be rubbing salt into the wounds. Beyond boosting my ego what I learnt from my season coaching in Alabama is that many Americans have absolutely no bloody clue about the sport.

There is a belief in the USA that if you are a coach then you are a coach of every sport. One of the many teams we beat had a coach who doubled as the towns baseball coach and whose soccer knowledge was based upon fusbbal to the point that he got annoyed that my players “moved from their designated starting positions during the game.” More recently though in the usually more worldly Florida I met a woman who was boasting about how good her sons soccer team were likely to become. I asked her why she was so optimistic that they would be a good side given that she had just told me they lost their last game 7-1. She explained that “The coach” not Kimble but a rather better known coach of a certian college sport here in town has a kid in her team. After a recent loss “Coach” pushed aside their actual trainer and sent the 7 year olds on a 30 minute run followed by dozens of push ups ans sit ups. He explained that this was the only way to make the soccer team improve. He should know I guess because he is a “Coach” after all. The fact he coaches an entirely different sport means nothing here and that is why America is sadly crap at soccer.

Liverpools 17 years of domestic failure

 

Eat your heart out Liverpool !!!

  

There is a chance that for the second time in three years Liverpool could win the European cup this season. As an Everton fan this is something that is hard for me to accept. I like many feel that Everton probably would have won the competition if we had been able to compete in it with our 1985 championship winning team. Maybe if the English teams had not been banned from Europe then Howard Kendall would never have left and perhaps we wouldn’t have gone into the rapid decline that we have only recently started to come back from.

A lot changes in twenty years and Liverpool fans are probably also looking back to the halcion days of the mid eighties when their team would win European trophies as well as the domestic title. Sadly for them they are no nearer to winning the English title now than they were when Graeme Souness was at the helm back in 1992. Mismanagement on and off the field contributed to their decline through the nineties and during same time frame Manchester United came into a vast amount of money due to their unparalleled levels of success. Chelsea recently came into similar riches through other means but the end result is that not even the once great Liverpool can seriously compete for the domestic title any longer. The fans of the club are hoping the new American owners will bring plenty of cash with them but Aston Villa fans were hoping for the same thing earlier this season and despite the best efforts of a rich yank owner and Britains best manager they are currently battling relegation.

It may seem odd that Liverpool are good enough to win the crown as the best team in Europe but not even in contention to be the best of British. The reality is that the Champions League is no more a barometer of true quality than the FA cup is. Usually the best teams will come out on top but in any cup competition that has only a limited number of games there is a good chance that something flukey will happen and the team you least expect will win.

In contrast the Premiership is now rather like Serie A was in the mid eighties. There are lots of good teams but you need someone truly world class to win the title. Napoli needed Maradona when he was the best player in the world to win their Italian titles and their reign only ended when AC Milan had the combined powers of Van Basten and Gullitt to propel them on their way. Both men were certainly among the very best players in the world at the time. Today United have Ronaldo whilst Chelsea have Cech the best keeper in the game and Shevchenko and Drogba easily among the best strikers. Liverpool on the other hand have a lot of good players but only Gerrard stands out among them and he is not yet in the class of the all time greats who have graced the game.

Until the koppites can find someone of the quality of Ronaldinho to help their cause then they will have to content themselves with 3rd or 4th place in the premiership and that is the one thing that keeps Everton fans from completely giving up on football altogether.

Is it time to disband the England football team ?

About 50 minutes into tonights game between England and Andorra I realised that the time has finally come to disband the England football team. Whilst Northern Ireland with practically no established players were beating Sweden in the same way they recently beat Spain, our team were struggling to break down the minnows who reside on a small patch of land somewhere in the vicinity of Spain.

Some people are calling for Steve McLaren to be sacked but if you recall Sven was equally unpopular and we certainly haven’t improved since he left. Remember Keegan ? He was a joke.  Wilkinson ? Taylor ? The list goes on and yet all of these men came into the job with some degree of support from the public and media. They all had successful club careers but somehow were miserable failures with the national team. Clearly managerial changes make no differance to the side so perhaps we should look at the players. Ok so we have Lampard of Chelsea, Rooney of ManU, Gerrard of Liverpool etc etc All of them highly paid professionals and among the best players you will see play Champions League football this year. However put them together and they have the combined talent of a bunch of quadraplegic frogs trying to play hopscotch on a slew of lily pads floating across the English channel.

This inability to perform for the national team is nothing new since our team was a complete disgrace throughout the 1970’s despite the success enjoyed by our club teams in Europe.
This leads to only one conclusion : People don’t like playing for or managing England so to get out of it they play deliberately badly so they can be relieved of their duties and return to club football where there is more money to be earned. Therefore we should call it quits and put ourselves out of our misery since having the worlds worst cricket and rugby teams is humiliating enough as it is.