FFC Mariner
Well-Known Member
I disagree
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The disgrace that is modern football
- Thread starter David Votoupal
- Start date
bulldogmariner
Well-Known Member
45 mins away from the biggest party on Earth. Come on Kiwi's.
serious14
Well-Known Member
To counter your argument - from Football365:
Football changes all the time. Last week Johnny wondered whatever happened to some of his favourite things. This week, he celebrates the things he loves about today's game...
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Arsene Wenger
At a time when the football world has gone financially insane, only Arsene is wilfully holding out against the madness with his, almost moralistic, approach to running the club on a fiscally prudent budget, unearthing and developing low-cost talent and insisting that his teams play a passing game, now evolved to the point of being a high art form. Anyone who watched Aaron Ramsey's great display for Wales was, in effect, seeing Wenger on the pitch. His vision and long-term thinking in such a short-term, reactionary environment is noble.
He manages to resist the shrill voices demanding silverware every year, considering success should be defined by the quality of the football played as well as by trophies. This is a genuinely brave stance because it goes against all the brash modern culture which says 'winning is everything' and 'second is nowhere' and all other such nouveau-echoes of Thatcherite drivel. Football is not primarily about winning, it is primarily about being entertained and thrilled. Perhaps only football's Professor Yaffle really understands this.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Not Getting Beat Up
Time was you had to be an urban guerrilla to get in and out of a football ground without getting caught up in a mass brawl or being hit in the face with a brick. Violence was an everyday part of life.
Similarly, there's only so many times you want to stand on the Kop as a river of wee cascaded like an ammonia tsunami down the terrace. We've traded in a heightened, visceral atmosphere for quiet safety. It's not ideal but frankly, I'd rather that than being chased through the streets, hit with a baseball bat and left bleeding to death in the gutter of some post-industrial hell-hole.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...It's Always On TV
In a Europa Cup week, there are often 12 consecutive days of football on TV. Add to that the Dutch, German, Spanish and Italian leagues and you need never be without some Association Football to watch.
Of course you don't have to view it all but it's always there for you, like your skeleton, giving your life form and shape. Best of all, it soaks up time that you would otherwise spend on worrying about other stuff such as; how best to humiliate Dave Cameron using only a carrot and a cattle prod; how can anyone seriously employ Danni Minogue to judge singing? Where do you apply for the job as an 'Ingredients Expert' and how to best shut up those people who pompously use the expression, 'they just don't get it.'
Football takes away all that angst and excuses you from sanity-sapping trips to B & Q and Sainsburys. In a pure Marxist sense, football is an opiate for the masses.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...5live
As much as I love it, I could live without football on TV if I had my radio. 5live is only for people who are utterly obsessed with the game. The Monday Night Club with the likes of John Motson, Pat Nevin, Middlesbrough's Mark Clemet, and a whole host of passing journalists and contributors, talks about the weekend's football for over three hours. Three hours! It would bore most people to the point of suicide, but for me, it is essential listening, as is new boy Colin Murray's three hours on a Friday, aided by the excellent Nevin and Perry Groves.
The phone-ins with Alan Green are hilarious as an increasingly dyspeptic Greeny tries and fails not to lose his temper with people whose views he disagrees with. The commentaries are never less than entertaining. I know many people don't like Greeny's moaning but better that than the all-smiles hyperbole of some of TV's worst presenters and commentators. The likes of John Murray do a great job. Co-commentators from Robbie Savage to Matt Holland to The Waddler and Graham Taylor all entertain. Somehow, radio brings out the best in people. Motson and Lawro, far superior in this medium than in their TV work. The latter's rant at Drogba after the Barcelona game last season was especially fantastic.
And then there's the high priest of Dadaist football programmes, Danny Baker, who on Saturday mornings undertakes a unique football-based adventure into the bizarre. High brow above the eyebrow, sir?! And he uses ELP for his intro music. Magnificent.
All weekend and every night there's something to entertain, inform and stimulate your football glands and it's free from any vacuous top, top, at the of the day its all about top players Richard, inanities. The only downside is the occasional appearance of Tim Lovejoy who seems to drift through various media opportunities like a sad, stray dog looking for a biscuit.
It's all the more ironic that 5live should be so great at doing football when the rest of the day is full of sensationalist, 'we-asked-some-people-who-know-nothing-about-this issue-what-they-think-about-it news features along with button-pressing phone-ins for air-heads and the emotionally incontinent who think the world needs to hear how furious they are.
In short, the football coverage is everything their news coverage isn't. In-depth, informed, detailed, intelligent, amusing and treats the listeners as adult, sentient creatures.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Soccer Saturday
Existential TV at its best. Four men looking at football on TV screens that we can't see. Here the football is a kind of God whose existence we have to take on trust. It should be awful. But it's brilliant.
Teesside's finest, Jeff Stelling, is the ringmaster driving it forward with relentless fun and energy.
Trying to understand what Paul Merson is saying is a thrilling exercise in speech therapy. His recent trend of repeating the last few words of each sentence, literally repeating the last words of each sentence, literally repeating them, Merson is amusing in the same way trying to make a dog say "sausages" is amusing. It is all part of the charm of the SS.
When he's on, Iain Dowie is compulsive viewing. His eyes dart back and forth; his facial mannerisms suggesting a man whose brain is racing faster than his mouth can speak. And he knows everything. Ask him about some full back from Sc**thorpe and he'll tell you how he was originally a midfielder, had six months out with a hernia after an accident with a hamster and can bake a cheese souffl.
Phil Thompson has developed a slightly camp expression, especially in response to nose-based jibes. Alan McInally sits there, a face like thunder, as giant as a bear, looking as though he is sweating pure brandy. Matt Le Tissier seems more concerned with eating. Whoever comes to the feast brings something worthwhile. All individuals. All with much to offer.
You can tell it's a proper football programme because everyone who isn't obsessed with the game just looks at it for a minute and then inevitably says 'I don't know what you see in this rubbish.'
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Err...The Football
Yes, we all know that it's not as utterly brilliant as it's often sold to us as being, but that should not blind us to the fact that a lot of games are tremendous entertainment, at all levels. From the lowest leagues to the top of the Premier League you can watch entertaining football. Rochdale v Luton in the cup was excellent stuff, for example. The Championship is stuffed full of 'big' clubs and is always hugely competitive.
And then at the summit there's Arsenal and their utterly sublime, compelling style of play; Chelsea's ruthless, brutal strength; Manchester United's blend of work-rate and skill and the chance for a flash of brilliance from Torres or Gerrard at Liverpool. And who amongst us is not already looking forward to the World Cup and watching Ivory Coast win the thing? Despite all the issues, the problems, the crazy money and crazy chairmen, football pervades and sustains.
Frankly, if you love football, these are lush, golden times. We are lucky people.
Football changes all the time. Last week Johnny wondered whatever happened to some of his favourite things. This week, he celebrates the things he loves about today's game...
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Arsene Wenger
At a time when the football world has gone financially insane, only Arsene is wilfully holding out against the madness with his, almost moralistic, approach to running the club on a fiscally prudent budget, unearthing and developing low-cost talent and insisting that his teams play a passing game, now evolved to the point of being a high art form. Anyone who watched Aaron Ramsey's great display for Wales was, in effect, seeing Wenger on the pitch. His vision and long-term thinking in such a short-term, reactionary environment is noble.
He manages to resist the shrill voices demanding silverware every year, considering success should be defined by the quality of the football played as well as by trophies. This is a genuinely brave stance because it goes against all the brash modern culture which says 'winning is everything' and 'second is nowhere' and all other such nouveau-echoes of Thatcherite drivel. Football is not primarily about winning, it is primarily about being entertained and thrilled. Perhaps only football's Professor Yaffle really understands this.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Not Getting Beat Up
Time was you had to be an urban guerrilla to get in and out of a football ground without getting caught up in a mass brawl or being hit in the face with a brick. Violence was an everyday part of life.
Similarly, there's only so many times you want to stand on the Kop as a river of wee cascaded like an ammonia tsunami down the terrace. We've traded in a heightened, visceral atmosphere for quiet safety. It's not ideal but frankly, I'd rather that than being chased through the streets, hit with a baseball bat and left bleeding to death in the gutter of some post-industrial hell-hole.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...It's Always On TV
In a Europa Cup week, there are often 12 consecutive days of football on TV. Add to that the Dutch, German, Spanish and Italian leagues and you need never be without some Association Football to watch.
Of course you don't have to view it all but it's always there for you, like your skeleton, giving your life form and shape. Best of all, it soaks up time that you would otherwise spend on worrying about other stuff such as; how best to humiliate Dave Cameron using only a carrot and a cattle prod; how can anyone seriously employ Danni Minogue to judge singing? Where do you apply for the job as an 'Ingredients Expert' and how to best shut up those people who pompously use the expression, 'they just don't get it.'
Football takes away all that angst and excuses you from sanity-sapping trips to B & Q and Sainsburys. In a pure Marxist sense, football is an opiate for the masses.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...5live
As much as I love it, I could live without football on TV if I had my radio. 5live is only for people who are utterly obsessed with the game. The Monday Night Club with the likes of John Motson, Pat Nevin, Middlesbrough's Mark Clemet, and a whole host of passing journalists and contributors, talks about the weekend's football for over three hours. Three hours! It would bore most people to the point of suicide, but for me, it is essential listening, as is new boy Colin Murray's three hours on a Friday, aided by the excellent Nevin and Perry Groves.
The phone-ins with Alan Green are hilarious as an increasingly dyspeptic Greeny tries and fails not to lose his temper with people whose views he disagrees with. The commentaries are never less than entertaining. I know many people don't like Greeny's moaning but better that than the all-smiles hyperbole of some of TV's worst presenters and commentators. The likes of John Murray do a great job. Co-commentators from Robbie Savage to Matt Holland to The Waddler and Graham Taylor all entertain. Somehow, radio brings out the best in people. Motson and Lawro, far superior in this medium than in their TV work. The latter's rant at Drogba after the Barcelona game last season was especially fantastic.
And then there's the high priest of Dadaist football programmes, Danny Baker, who on Saturday mornings undertakes a unique football-based adventure into the bizarre. High brow above the eyebrow, sir?! And he uses ELP for his intro music. Magnificent.
All weekend and every night there's something to entertain, inform and stimulate your football glands and it's free from any vacuous top, top, at the of the day its all about top players Richard, inanities. The only downside is the occasional appearance of Tim Lovejoy who seems to drift through various media opportunities like a sad, stray dog looking for a biscuit.
It's all the more ironic that 5live should be so great at doing football when the rest of the day is full of sensationalist, 'we-asked-some-people-who-know-nothing-about-this issue-what-they-think-about-it news features along with button-pressing phone-ins for air-heads and the emotionally incontinent who think the world needs to hear how furious they are.
In short, the football coverage is everything their news coverage isn't. In-depth, informed, detailed, intelligent, amusing and treats the listeners as adult, sentient creatures.
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Soccer Saturday
Existential TV at its best. Four men looking at football on TV screens that we can't see. Here the football is a kind of God whose existence we have to take on trust. It should be awful. But it's brilliant.
Teesside's finest, Jeff Stelling, is the ringmaster driving it forward with relentless fun and energy.
Trying to understand what Paul Merson is saying is a thrilling exercise in speech therapy. His recent trend of repeating the last few words of each sentence, literally repeating the last words of each sentence, literally repeating them, Merson is amusing in the same way trying to make a dog say "sausages" is amusing. It is all part of the charm of the SS.
When he's on, Iain Dowie is compulsive viewing. His eyes dart back and forth; his facial mannerisms suggesting a man whose brain is racing faster than his mouth can speak. And he knows everything. Ask him about some full back from Sc**thorpe and he'll tell you how he was originally a midfielder, had six months out with a hernia after an accident with a hamster and can bake a cheese souffl.
Phil Thompson has developed a slightly camp expression, especially in response to nose-based jibes. Alan McInally sits there, a face like thunder, as giant as a bear, looking as though he is sweating pure brandy. Matt Le Tissier seems more concerned with eating. Whoever comes to the feast brings something worthwhile. All individuals. All with much to offer.
You can tell it's a proper football programme because everyone who isn't obsessed with the game just looks at it for a minute and then inevitably says 'I don't know what you see in this rubbish.'
The Best Thing About Football Today Is...Err...The Football
Yes, we all know that it's not as utterly brilliant as it's often sold to us as being, but that should not blind us to the fact that a lot of games are tremendous entertainment, at all levels. From the lowest leagues to the top of the Premier League you can watch entertaining football. Rochdale v Luton in the cup was excellent stuff, for example. The Championship is stuffed full of 'big' clubs and is always hugely competitive.
And then at the summit there's Arsenal and their utterly sublime, compelling style of play; Chelsea's ruthless, brutal strength; Manchester United's blend of work-rate and skill and the chance for a flash of brilliance from Torres or Gerrard at Liverpool. And who amongst us is not already looking forward to the World Cup and watching Ivory Coast win the thing? Despite all the issues, the problems, the crazy money and crazy chairmen, football pervades and sustains.
Frankly, if you love football, these are lush, golden times. We are lucky people.
scottmac
Suspended
David Votoupal said:
After the whistle goes, is there really that much difference to the old days?
No amount of money, commercialisation, hype etc, can stop or change a game of football once its started.
Its a ball and 22 guys or girls plus a few whistle blowers.
Things constantly change in life, and the reason for your moan is more a society one than a football one.
Its amazing that in this day and age of technology, the GAME has been able to remain reasonably untouched, where as other sports have lost all but a fraction of the way they once were. League, cricket, union, tennis to name just a few have undergone rule change after rule change and implemented so much technology that many of historys players could not walk back into the sport if given their time again.
Any footballer throughout history, if given their time again, could pull on a pair of boots walk onto a field and still play the game.
dibo
Well-Known Member
^^^
What he said x 100 and what Serious said before that.
Australia's actually a good advertisement for what modern football should be. It's improved the game, it's now accessible to far more people than before, the standard of play is improving and more people play, watch and talk about the game than ever before. You can go to games for not a lot of cash, sit in comfortable grounds and watch a good game.
While there are certainly problems with the game in the UK as far as being too damn expensive and too sterilised, in other parts of the world the reverse is true.
Look at Italy and tell me that the Serie A wouldn't be better off with a few broad sweeps of the broom. The game's a f**king mess there, and 'calcio moderno' is not to blame.
And then in Germany, they've struck a terrific balance. Affordable tickets, great new grounds, competitive football, amazing atmosphere and it's very much 'modern football' there.
The UK has made some bad choices in particular to do with grounds and ticket pricing, but there's not a lot that you'd have to change to bring it around.
What he said x 100 and what Serious said before that.
Australia's actually a good advertisement for what modern football should be. It's improved the game, it's now accessible to far more people than before, the standard of play is improving and more people play, watch and talk about the game than ever before. You can go to games for not a lot of cash, sit in comfortable grounds and watch a good game.
While there are certainly problems with the game in the UK as far as being too damn expensive and too sterilised, in other parts of the world the reverse is true.
Look at Italy and tell me that the Serie A wouldn't be better off with a few broad sweeps of the broom. The game's a f**king mess there, and 'calcio moderno' is not to blame.
And then in Germany, they've struck a terrific balance. Affordable tickets, great new grounds, competitive football, amazing atmosphere and it's very much 'modern football' there.
The UK has made some bad choices in particular to do with grounds and ticket pricing, but there's not a lot that you'd have to change to bring it around.
serious14
Well-Known Member
dibo said:
One of the few things I don't like about football here - the "ticket prices are based on the opponent" structure.
Barnsley vs. Peterborough - 14 quid
Barnsley vs. West Brom - 19 quid
Barnsley vs. Manchester United - 25 quid
Barnsley vs. Sheffield United - 26 quid (local derby)
Would be suicide if that sort of thing was adopted in the A-League..... I guess they do it here because they realise that people are going to go regardless.
Atmosphere's here are still insane though - I know they're "not what they used to be", but compared to a lot of other places I've been it's still intense.
Arabmariner
Well-Known Member
Agree with Dibo on the Germany thing.
But the UK no way.The ordinary punter simply can't afford it anymore.
I don't really expect anyone under about 40 years of age to understand but I'd rather be standing on a packed terracing in pishing rain,having to search around to find your mates after a goal is scored because you all ended up a mile from where you started.I'd rather that than sitting in a soulless,sterile,'modern' concrete bowl anyday.
I think you need to have experienced it to understand.
But the UK no way.The ordinary punter simply can't afford it anymore.
I don't really expect anyone under about 40 years of age to understand but I'd rather be standing on a packed terracing in pishing rain,having to search around to find your mates after a goal is scored because you all ended up a mile from where you started.I'd rather that than sitting in a soulless,sterile,'modern' concrete bowl anyday.
I think you need to have experienced it to understand.
Arabmariner
Well-Known Member
;Dserious14 said:"Back in my day....", "kids today don't get it...."
serious14 said:
... already being done here:
Premium Events - Hyundai A-League 2009/10 fixtures against Newcastle Jets (14 August), Sydney FC (22 August), Wellington Phoenix (31 December), Newcastle Jets (6 February).
... where premium event tickets look to be $3 more across the board.
dibo said:
Maybe easing people into the idea of paying more for some games so that when these ones are actually selling out, they can start charging shit loads more rather that a few $ more... then people can't complain because they can say "we were charging more for these games other seasons and it was fine..." ??? Just a guess of course.
MagpieMariner
Well-Known Member
I have experienced it, although not in UK and not at a football match.Arabmariner said:
I've been at Australian Rules matches (for those too young to remember, that's what "AFL" used to be, and still should be, called) in Tassie - smaller grounds & crowds, but still packed. I've been to League matches at Penrith Park and the old Lidcombe Oval, and other places as well.
I prefer the small suburban grounds for the atmosphere, but not when it's blowing a gale and p**sing with rain, or even worse, snowing. Stuff that for a joke, I'll stay home and keep dry and warm or sit up in the sterile concrete bowls.
Hagar the Horrible
Well-Known Member
Wasn't that the match where a flat chested lass got her "tits" out in Bay 16?serious14 said:
Arabmariner
Well-Known Member
Pffft.......................soft imo....spike said:
Arabmariner
Well-Known Member
What ?...........not "back in the day" surely ?serious14 said:
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