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23 May 2008 ~

Anyone who tried to read all the reports of the Champions League final would use up all their waking hours until Christmas. So we’ve compressed a few post-match ruminations from the Sun, Daily Mail and Daily Express into a modest verse that we feel compelled to call JT:

No amount of rain could wash away John Terry’s tears
The iron Terry who shook off the pain of a dislocated elbow
To leads his troops to Moscow
With true blue blood coursing through his veins
Terry stepped forward
Ready to conclude it all
With a final thump of English oak
Studs sliding across the wet Moscow turf
In the sheeting rain
The footballing gods
Drove a stake through John Terry’s heart
The one with Chelsea engraved on it
Terry was white with shock
It will take him a long time to recover
In one sense he never will

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Badge of the week
Olympiakos Nicosia, relegated at the end of this season from the Cypriot First Division, have a club crest that dispenses with the usual images associated with the genre. Sensation seekers will be disappointed to learn that Olympiakos play in green and black and their nickname, prosaically, is the Green Blacks. Their badge, however, is not so starkly literal. The depiction of a tent on a green background immediately raises two questions: “Why?” And “Would it be easy to pitch on a windy night in the New Forest?” This tent is not one of the modern tunnel or dome variety but an old-fashioned Trail Tent popularised by the early Scouting movement. No sign here of a storm flap, zippered mesh rear window or bendable frame systems – this is a porchless, windowless survival tent for people who go camping not for pleasure, but to teach themselves a lesson. It is the type of tent that you do not throw your Frisbee near for fear of disturbing the alienated misanthrope inside. And this association possibly gets through to Olympiakos's opponents. “If these people favour this kind of tent,” the opposition player finds himself asking, “above the more commodious and flexible new models available, then what is he going to do to me in a 50-50 tackle?” By the end of this season, though, the psychological edge given by this subtle design had clearly run out of time. Cameron Carter

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Spotting players
from Craig Tripney
“I was enjoying a couple of pints after work one April evening back in 2007, when in stumbled half of the Bristol Rovers play-off chasing squad. They started the evening on bottles of lager but after a swift couple of rounds, star striker Rickie Lambert strolled up to bar and ordered a bottle of rosé. Asked how many glasses he wanted, Lambo replied ‘Twelve, please mate’ in his broad Scouse accent. When informed by the barman that one bottle wouldn’t be enough to fill 12 glasses, Lambo looked puzzled and said ‘Ten?’ ‘No,’ replied the barman. ‘Eight?’ ‘No.’ ‘Six?’ ‘Yes!’ The barman handed over the glasses and said ‘That’s £9.95 please.’ Lambo handed over a tenner and cheerfully said ‘Keep the change, mate. Thanks for your help.’ Every time I visited the Gents during the evening, midfielder Craig Disley would either be at the urinal, or would come in while I was relieving the pressure on my bladder. This happened at least five times and was so embarrassing for ‘Dis’ that on leaving the pub he decided to urinate in the car park rather than risking meeting with me again.” 

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Historic Football Websites No 7 ~ Danger Here
This site’s been going since 2001, and although it only seems to post up links to YouTube clips nowadays (in other words, it’s become another among the millions of unremarkable blogs), there’s a treasure trove of old content in its Hall of Guff. Here you can pick a commentator of your choice and enjoy the history of his finest blunders. As Tommy Smyth of ESPN once said: “Venegoor just turns and lampoons it into the net.” Ian Plenderleith

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Tales From The Landesliga ~ No 7
WSC contributor Matt Nation's series about watching lower-league football in Hamburg
Çamlica Gençlik versus Turn- und Sportverein Sparrieshoop is normally the plainest of Janes among Landesliga clashes. However, there’s a right old knees-up going on at today’s game. The contents of half an abattoir sizzle away on enormous swing grilles. Scarf-sellers smile self-satisfied smiles as they fleece little kids. Entire Spielmannszüge, marching bands that form the staple entertainment in the Hamburg commuter belt, have turned up armed to the teeth with big bass drums. It’s a turn-out fit to grace the Bundesliga.

In fact, it is gracing the Bundesliga. HSV women are at home to Bayern Munich in the proper ground, so the lesser match takes place on the forecourt, a cinder pitch with the sort of surface usually presided over by a ringmaster rather than a referee. The visitors, country lads with a grass pitch, would obviously rather not be here and try to get things over with as quickly as possible. Despite playing into a force-eight gale, Sparrieshoop are two up within ten minutes. The first a mis-hit that pings around like a lump of sodium chucked into a bucket of water and goes in off half a dozen divots and the post, the second a hit-and-hopeless toe-plonker that bounces over the smallest goalkeeper this side of a Subbuteo table.

With the wind behind them in the second half, Sparrieshoop adopt a new tactic: ten men behind the ball and 60-yard welts downfield. Their lone front man, a big eater with the body shape of a cartoon character who’s swallowed an anvil, lopes around gamely but to no avail; the opposing goalkeeper spends most of his time retrieving the ball from behind the perimeter fence. It’s all a bit like watching the closing minute of a closely fought basketball game, except that it goes on for 45 times too long.

To their credit, Çamlica try to keep the ball on the ground, but they can’t. The pitch might be bad, but they’re worse. Every pass turns into the first half of a one-two with an invisible team mate, the number of throw-ins reaches three figures and, by the end, even the linesman is swearing in frustration at having given up his Sunday afternoon for this.

At the final whistle, with neither team having managed a shot on goal for 80 minutes, Sparrieshoop sprint off before the local rag’s cameraman can snap them at the scene of the crime. The home team pull their shirts over their heads, although you get the impression their histrionics owe less to a sense of shame and more to a desire to “show they care” in front of the homeward-bound fans coming out of the women’s game next door. The post-match entertainment kicks off and The Taste Of Summer blares out over the loudspeakers. It sounds like Christian Wörns singing his kids to sleep. If it’s the aftertaste of the game he’s on about, then September just can’t come round soon enough.

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WSC Trivia ~ No 16
In a dusty and cobwebbed corner of the WSC office is a row of filing cabinets containing fanzines going back to the mid-1980s. In there somewhere, gathering value with age like vintage bottles of wine, are some copies of a 1990s QPR zine called All Quiet On The Western Avenue, edited by the 16-year-old Pete Doherty. There might even be a handwritten note from him, with doodles of Tony Hancock and Stan Bowles in the margin, which signs off with a cheery “Up The R’s!”. Or so we thought, until we looked just now. We seem to have copies of every QPR zine produced except that one. Did an eagle-eyed work experience student spot those issues a few years ago and make off with them? It may simply be that we put them somewhere safe a while ago, possibly in a folder marked “WSC Business Plan 2010”, only we can’t recall where. Could a mouse have eaten them? No, they’ll turn up. They will.

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Stickipedia  
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards

Rob McDonald, FC Groningen Voetbal 84
Rob McDonald was part of the wave of English players who moved to the Netherlands during the 1980s. Like many of his migrating compatriots McDonald was a tall centre-forward who hadn't made the grade in League football – in three years at Hull City he had managed 25 appearances, scoring only twice. He became a big success in Holland, however, initially in the second division, then with FC Groningen at the top level. At the age of 26, he got a move to PSV Eindhoven and in 25 games scored 15 goals – most of them headers – for a title-winning team. There then followed a short spell at Sporting Lisbon and a disastrous transfer back home to Newcastle where, as a largely immobile target man, he came to be regarded as one of the club's worst-ever signings. After one goal in ten games at St James' Park, McDonald wound down his career in Holland where he is now a respected coach.

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