toro, it's about as plausible as his philosophical concern for the typical english person. it is just unbelievably likely that someone will have grown up in a copper smelting town is going to be that misty eyed for the eastern bloc way of life.

It's not as embarrasing as the carragher love. They think he's some kind of purple faced scouse god.

It's hilarious that people seem to demand players for their club love evrything about it's geographical location and culture. Why does it matter? Vidic will still play for Man United even if he thinks it's a bit rainy and cold. Given the money they pay him, that (fairly uncontroversial) opinion, frankly, is barely relevant.

When he retires, or possibly in a couple of years time when he starts thinking about his next contract, he will move somewhere where the climate is nicer. So what. It's not going to stop him playing well at centre-back for his club for the forseeable future.


It's reaction like this to non-stories that makes footballers such bland people to interview. If the slightest bit of honesty gets turn into an "Unprovoked attack on Manchester", then you can't blame players for saying nothing.

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it is just unbelievably likely that someone will have grown up in a copper smelting town is going to be that misty eyed for the eastern bloc way of life.

That is a ridiculous thing to say, though. Slavic countries are home for Vidic. He is hardly going to be thinking about life in an impoverished town when he is picturing himself living somewhere post-football. He will have a luxurious life somewhere fancy and familiar. Such places definetly exist in Russia and Serbia.

AIATL's weather stats are cack for the purpose of the fight he's trying to win with them.
Here in Sydney we have a fuck load more rain than Manchester per annum, yet I think it's possible to accept that we may just have better, sunnier, warmer weather in general.

The thing about UK precipitation is that it drizzles and settles down slowly and gloomily in a general pall that lasts for weeks, whereas in other climates, it will just do it raining business, properly, then fuck off and let the sun do its thing.

Same with Vidic's remarks about the mild winter - that's true too, but it comes at the cost of there being little or no sunlight all winter which is what can really get people down. Some stats on mean hours of sunshine per year (winter in particular) might better illustrate Vidic's complaint.

i also like the way that AIATL, in addition to finding out about average rainfall in belgrade, seems keen to portray the "vidic slams manchester weather" interview as part of an ongoing kremlin-orchestrated psyops campaign against the western allies.

It's a conspiracy to attempt to keep Pavlyuchenko and Arshavin in Russia and away from our rain sodden shores. Swear down. Martin Samuel told me. It goes all the way to the top.

nah, I didn't say it was a kremlin conspiracy, It is however three days before they play against zenit st petersberg. I doubt in general though that there are very many positive news stories about england in the russian media given the current political climate, and russia's quite singular media ownership structure. The article is just full of the most obvious bullshit. Particularly the They don't have time to feel the joy of life like they do in Russia.

Janik there is supposed to be an un before likely. my point was that he in particular was unlikely to get all misty eyed about the life of the average working stiff in eastern europe. His father smelted copper for a living.

Rory these are the climate figures for Manchester

For the months october through to february manchester has as much sunshine as belgrade, so the winters aren't any more dreary, or wet. They are considerably warmer The summer though doesn't get hugely summery, but that is what holidays are for. Then again it rains 20% more in uzice than belgrade. so it's hard to make a comparison. Roughly though it's very little different to what he is used to.

Apparently, The average annual insolation is 2096 hours which is nearly 1.5 times that of Manchester.

Also:

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The characteristic of Belgrade climate is also Košava - the southeast-east wind, which brings clear and dry weather. It mostly blows in autumn and winter, in 2-3 days intervals.

While I'm sure there are plenty of great things about Manchester, disputing that its weather isn't to most people's tastes is a bit of a dead end.

A lack of 'joy in life' is something many people from non-Anglo cultures often bring up, rightly or wrongly. My parents go on about it. I think it's just plain old nostalgia. When you grow up with a certain language, cultural reference points, food and so on, it's always hard being an immigrant and changing all of that.

For him, Russians are people he could communicate with. He could conduct proper conversations and have a laugh. Oh, and he had money to spend, which renders all this talk about average income meaningless, and as a mercenary (ie professional footballer) he's not likely to give a toss about fair government or a free press. Why wouldn't life be more difficult and less filled with joy for him in Manchester?

It was Lenin who said that capturing Germany was the key to winning the ideological battle and imposing Communism on Europe.

Evidently it seems that Putin and Medvedev have updated this philosopy, capture Manchester United and the rest of Europe can surely only follow.

The propaganda war has begun, next thing we know they'll have given a Russian passport to Darren Fletcher.