Coworkers today, knowing of my deep interest in football supporter culture, asked me what I thought of what happened in Egypt yesterday, where 70+ people were killed in violence in Port Said after a match in which al-Masri defeated visitors al-Ahly 3–1. I meekly responded that the football pitch is often a proxy for the [...]
Continue reading about Organization and tactics: when football isn’t just a game
Spurs party refuses to end. As @Spursonside explained:
One last pic from the Emirates – our fans still inside after the final whistle, pictured from the West Stand!
I’m still buzzing, after all, why shouldn’t half of North London be the same way?
Continue reading about Spurs party refuses to end. As @Spursonside explained: One last…
Wenger wearing his “Chinese hobo grandma parka” sobs his way off the pitch after Spurs unlesh a psyops masterpiece, scoring three unanswered goals in the second half to take three points at the Emirates for the first time ever, defeating Arsenal twice in a row in the Prem for the first time in forever, and beating Arsenal at home (including Highbury) for the first time since the first season of the Prem. Oh, and Spurs haven’t beaten any of the Big Four away in something like 70 meetings.
Then to get goals from current darlings Gareth Bale and Raphael van der Vaart, as well as having Gallas be a solid central defender in his return to Arsenal… man. The only way it could be better would be to have Wenger walk off, sobbing. Oh, wait…
I still await news of his certain whingefest postmatch.
Continue reading about Wenger wearing his “Chinese hobo grandma parka” sobs his way off…
Yesterday I put together some data on the Premier League to see if an old hypothesis (relegation leads to the same couple of teams going up and down) was true. Turns out it wasn’t. In the 18 completed seasons of the Premier League, 43 different teams have participated, and most teams that come up, stay [...]
Continue reading about Right, then, Premier League running averages
Today’s huge news, regarding the agreement in principle of a sale of Liverpool Football Club to New England Sports Ventures (the company that owns, among other things, the Boston Red Sox) has prompted me to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a long, long time: look at the history of the Premiership table [...]
Continue reading about Relegating thoughts while glancing at Premiership tables
Yoann Gourcuff is blaming the vuvuzelas for France’s uninspired play on Friday night in Cape Town. The players couldn’t hear each other on the field, he whined, and they had to rely on gestures. Patrice Évra added that the players can’t sleep because the vuvuzelas start going off at 6am every morning.1 Twitter has been [...]
Continue reading about Imperialist n00bs: quit complaining about the vuvuzelas
The quarter is over, and that means that Male Fantasy Sports is also over. Since I wrote up the baseball section, I should write up the soccer section. The first book we read was Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby. The book annoyed me to no end, largely because Hornby comes across as an insufferable poser, [...]
Continue reading about More Conclusions in Male Fantasy Sports