Cult Football - Rob Kirby

main

Asia Commentary History Long Reads

Dictators and Soccer: Kim Jong-il and North Korea (or Football, Famine and Giant Rabbits)

January 18, 2013 — by Rob Kirby — 3

[Editor’s note: This is the 3rd installment in the ongoing Dictators and Soccer series. See also the previous installments on Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania and Mobutu Sésé Seko of Zaïre and later installments on Pope Benedict XVI of Vatican City and beyond.]

While some dictators qualify as relatively batshit crazy, North Korean Supreme Commander Kim Jong-il took run-of-the-mill guano and weaponized it with a deep, visceral nuclear fear factor. Against the backdrop of a starving nation, he enriched uranium, trained missiles on South Korea and Japan and generally gave everyone the heebie jeebies with the supremely iffy accuracy of the North Korean military’s test fires. To show another side—for, if nothing else, he was a well-rounded pot-bellied man—he then broadcast his eccentricities at back to back World Cups (his and hers, 2010 and 2011). Ultimately, this one-two proved too show stopping to top, so the tiny strongman took his bow and exited parts terrestrial for good in December 2011.

As two jumbo-sized phenomena in small form factors, Kim Jong-il and soccer were bound to collide, despite Kim Jong-il’s minimal interest in the sport (he preferred “mass games,” state-sponsored stadium displays of gymnastics and audience participation propaganda designed to praise all things Kim Jong-il; he also reportedly had video of nearly every game Michael Jordan ever played). The collision happened late in his totalitarian career, but collide they did.

In 2010, North Korea qualified for the World Cup for only the second time, the first since 1966, at the dawn of dictatorship of his father and Soviet apparatchik predecessor Kim Il-sung. Then, a mere year later, the women’s team qualified for the 2011 Women’s World Cup. The notoriously insular, isolationist state had two high-profile football events in a row, choc-a-bloc jam-packed crammed-in tight. Kim Jong-il got ready for his close-up, the cameras zeroed in and the world watched to see what he’d do. He did not disappoint.

In the lead up to the World Cup, Kim Jong-il was known for so many things: the long-standing nuclear standoff with the world community, labor camps for any that incurred his chimerical wrath, his star-turning role as a surly puppet in Team America: World Police, his bouffant hairdo, his grandma sunglasses and the food shortages that crippled his country as he had sides of donkey and lobster airlifted to him traveling by train. Yet, for all his fame, so few knew about his tactical prowess in soccer.

Before soccer blew up in the Dear Leader’s face—sorry to spoil the surprise—the sports community probably best knew Kim Jong-il for his renown as a crack golfer. According Pyongyang media in 1994, he shot 38 under par on a regulation 18-hole 7,700-yard golf course, featuring between 5 and 11 holes in one (reports vary). It was his first ever round of golf. Then, tearing himself away from his reported thousands of hours of Michael Jordan footage (intermixed with the world’s allegedly largest collection of porn), he bowled a perfect 300 his first go at Pyongyang Lanes, again according to state media. The platform-shoed leader clearly possessed uncommon athletic genius. Most likely, he also could destroy anyone domestically at competitive eating, but then he was one of the only people in the country with food, so it may have seemed in bad taste to flaunt that particular feat of physical excellence. After all, North Korea had initiated a “Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day” campaign, which many would happily have done, given the choice, as it wouldn’t have been revising downward so much as upward.

After North Korea qualified for the World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe got the circus started. In March 2010, Mugabe sent a celebratory if unorthodox World Cup qualification gift: an ark populated with pairs of giraffes, baby elephants, warthogs, zebras and other animals the Bible considers essential to post-diluvian life. Cue wildlife conservation group hysteria. Cue also a personal invitation from Mugabe for training ground hospitality in Zimbabwe, northern neighbor of the tournament host. Kim Jong-il graciously accepted the kind offer, very possibly for the allure of more game meat. The two dictatorships go way back, most formatively between North Korea’s care packages of guns and military aid during Mugabe’s post-revolution massacres of the Matabele tribe (20,000 dead) in the early 1980s. Training grounds just a hop from the host country, acclimation without the riffraff, nestled in the lap of troubled-nation luxury, feast amidst famine just like home. It all added up to good times and minimal culture shock.

Then, the North Korean national coach spilled the beans on the secret behind the team’s success. North Korean manager Kim Jong-hun reportedly got his coaching mandates straight from the man himself by means of an invisible headset that the Dear Leader had invented. According to Radio Free Asia, the coach received “regular tactical advice during matches” from Kim Jong-il “using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye.” Now that’s innovation. Of course, it’s not like he hadn’t invented impressive things before. North Korean history books proclaim that Kim Jong-Il invented the hamburger in 2000. He named it Double Bread with Meat.

After the invisible headset comments, journalists naturally peppered the North Korean manager with a barrage of questions, but he shut down into No Comment mode, especially after the additional fiasco of trying to sneak an extra striker into the squad. At some point, FIFA had noticed that of the three goalkeepers named in the 23-man squad, one had never actually ever goalkept. Rather, he was one of the country’s best strikers, and FIFA ejected him from the team. North Korea had tried to sneak an extra goalscorer into their team but ultimately went a player down. Chalk up an own goal to North Korea.

The tactical soccer genius had many personae. Perhaps you know Kim Jong-il by one of his many descriptive titles, such as Dear Leader, Who Is a Perfect Incarnation of the Appearance That a Leader Should Have. (This of a jump-suited pudgy anti-fashion plate who gravitated to platform shoes and a thinning bouffant befitting a character on Golden Girls.) Perhaps one of his cosmological honorifics has caught your ear: Sun of Socialism, Sun of the Nation, Sun of the Communist Future, Bright Sun of Juche (Self-Reliance), Bright Sun of the 21st Century, Guiding Sun Ray, Shining Star of Paektu Mountain, Guiding Star of the 21st Century. No? Perhaps one more military-minded: Glorious General, Who Descended From Heaven; Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love; Beloved and Respected General; Peerless Leader; Invincible and Ever-Triumphant General. Kim Jong-il had split personalities in spades, all of which were eccentric and several that were deadly. You really didn’t want to see him angry. Cross him and he’d take that world-famous comradely love and Hulkslam you onto a pile of concentration camp bones.

Born in a log cabin on North Korea’s tallest peak, the heavens heralded Kim Jong-il’s coming with the call of a sparrow, a double rainbow and a new, incomparably bright star in the skies. As the son of a dictator, let alone Sun of just about everything, the man’s destiny saw writ the country in the palm of his grubby little hands. Kim Jong-Il had dynasty on his side. Add a cult of personality in overdrive and the image of the permed Peerless Leader beaming forth from every North Korean corner, with his trademark demeanor of divine, slightly ill-tempered apathy. Rays of light streamed from behind and silhouetted him in classic Brother Communist shock and awe.

North Koreans were told their leader was vastly famous and revered worldwide. He didn’t heap those just-mentioned honorifics titles on himself, his admirers clamored to bestow them, both domestically and abroad. He simply accepted them with humility. Citizen comrades learned all this and more from the solitary state-run TV channel feeding a steady stream of Kim Jong-il praise clips and purported quotes and accolades from other world leaders about the Dear Leader. Newscasters had to recite them via TelePrompTer, as no video seemed available.

Then came the 2010 World Cup, for which Kim Jong-il had banned any live broadcast of the country’s matches. For its group stage, North Korea had gotten the worst draw possible: they faced Brazil, Portugal and the Ivory Coast in the proverbial Group of Death. Portugal had reached the semifinals in both the 2006 World Cup and the 2008 Euros, Brazil had won the tournament a record five times, and the power-packed Ivory Coast squad represented the foremost hope of an African team winning on African soil. The North Korean dictator didn’t want to open himself up to embarrassment, and with good reason.

However, after a respectable 2-1 loss to Brazil in the opening match, in a moment of glorious optimism, Kim relaxed the restrictions and allowed broadcast of the next match against Portugal, the first sports event ever broadcast live in the country. Cristiano Ronaldo & Co. slaughtered the team 7-0. The state recoiled from the blow by reflexive ceasing of all further broadcasts to stanch the blood flow, although the damage had been done. North Koreans merely missed seeing the subsequent 3-0 loss to the Ivory Coast.

In addition to the scoreline, North Koreans may have puzzled at the North Korean rent-a-fans pictured in the stands at the 2010 World Cup. The “North Koreans” were Chinese actors paid to attend the North Korea games in South Africa. FIFA had granted North Korea 17,000 tickets for the matches, but actual North Koreans posed far too obvious a defection flight risk, so Kim hired Chinese extras to represent by proxy with their best North Korean impressions. The roles of their careers, right there on the world stage. Too bad they sucked at acting, and as a result the news spread like tabloid wildfire. In addition to all the goals scored by Brazil, Portugal and the Ivory Coast, North Korea scored another great big own goal on itself.

All together, North Korea conceded the most goals of the tournament, though their total of 12 failed to equal the conceded goal tally of Zaire’s 1974 squad (14). Like the 1974 Zaire squad, however, there was hell to pay upon reentry home. Summoned to Pyongyang and placed on a stage of shame at the People’s Palace of Culture, the squad got pummeled by a torrent of glares, disappointment and betrayed looks, pilloried by 400 students, government lackeys and others for six hours, charged with “betraying the trust of Kim Jong-un.” (Kim Jong-il, heartbreakingly paternal, taught by example and perfectly demonstrated the art of passing the buck to his heir.) A wounded look from Jong-Il hurt more than 1000 deaths, went the rationale. After phase one of the public scolding, each of the players was ordered to reprimand the coach individually in turn. The state then reportedly sentenced Kim Jong-hun to hard labor for the team’s failings. It’s not certain that any nonverbal torture transpired after the theatrically staged rebuke and the inconsolable disappointment of the Kims, but neither can anyone entirely rule it out. No word on whether Kim Jong-il ventriloquized any scathing remarks via invisible headset.

Going into the tournament, players had received the bounty of Kim’s affection in the form of new apartments, refrigerators, cars, and televisions. Not much use if you’re sent to the coal mines upon return, but there you have it. (Carrot, meet stick.) Of course, many North Koreans minding their own business go to the coal mines on the daily, anyway.

The men’s team was not the only World Cup team to let Kim Jong-il down in that 12-month span. In the Women’s World Cup in the summer of 2011, after the North Koreans lost 2-0 to the U.S.—bad enough given the country’s geopolitical stance—five of their athletes tested positive for suspicious levels of testosterone. North Korea swiftly trotted out a perfectly reasonable explanation. The coach explained that a large portion of the squad had recently been struck by lightning, which would throw off anyone’s game. Using the time-honored traditional lightning-strike cure of deer musk gland, medics nursed the women back to health. Far from being cheats, these women had exhibited just the sort of self-reliance (or juche) that the state always drilled into them, with a healthy side of deer testosterone. Lightning clearly explained everything.

Kim Jong-il naturally excelled at golf, bowling, competitive eating and soccer tactics, but perhaps the feat of strength Kim Jong-il mastered most was the totalitarian stranglehold. Propaganda tightened his grip over the people and perpetually indoctrinated the hapless, hungry masses in a feedback loop. The state employed propaganda as varied as it was pervasive: marches, rallies, parades, textbooks, airbrushed photographs, statues, murals, billboards, posters, signs, state-run print and TV media reports, speeches, gun-in-the-back endorsements—you name it. At the arena where the national soccer team played, up to 20,000 schoolchildren in the mass games would collectively present huge stadiumwide depictions of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung as thousands more enacted contortionist gymnastics on the field. The oversize pixel-picture books they held aloft contained approximately 170 pages, so that in an instant they could all flip to a specified page in tandem and display yet another victorious image of the Dear Leader. Such books may strike one as a bit heavy for schoolchildren eking by on two meals a day, but again, there you have it.

According to Kim, however, no food shortages existed. He should know, he lived there. In his universe, Kim said “Do as I say” without bothering with “or else.” One didn’t brook dissent. Nor did one mention Let’s Eat Two Meals a Day unless he did first. He made his fictitious North Korea real by simply refusing to countenance any other reality. To speak of any other reality meant detention, labor camps or execution. According to Amnesty International, approximately 200,000 prisoners in North Korean concentration camps perform 12-hour shifts of forced labor under the eye of guards who see beatings, torture and execution as the three levels of disciplinary action, three legs of a stool, all essential. Even relatives of convicts were sometimes imprisoned, due to Kim Jong-il’s belief that a propensity to criminality persists for three generations.

Incidentally, according to Kim Jong-il, no labor camps existed. Meanwhile, prisoners at the camps memorized and sang Kim Jong-il praise songs while working. They got soundly beaten if they didn’t sing loud enough or took overly long pauses.

Another crime worthy of corporal punishment: calling the country North Korea. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea represented the only Korea, full stop. Nothing lay to the south, unless one day Kim Jong-il managed to annex it. When South Korea held the World Cup in 2002, he rebuffed all offers to host a match and banned all broadcast of the event in his country, though he did not turn away food aid, as long as it arrived unpublicized. South Korea, with China, remains one of the largest donors of food aid, so the imaginary land beyond known borders served Kim Jong-il’s purposes. He conjured food out of thin air, like a giant rabbit out of a magician’s hat. (This is foreshadowing.)

Amnesty International estimates that nearly 1 million North Koreans have died of starvation since the mid-1990s, when the food shortages and Kim Jong-il’s reign (of terror) began. With regard to the concentration camps, Amnesty International has speculated on a 40 percent yearly death rate between 1999 and 2001, with malnutrition and starvation two primary factors. Extrapolating to the present, 80,000 political prisoners die per year in the camps. Accounting for possibly inflated figures, even a fraction of that number astounds.

Food shortages arose in part from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, from which North Korea received chemical fertilizer and other crucial aid. Once the stream from its Soviet benefactor dried up, agricultural mismanagement, food-delivery shutdowns from fuel shortages and serious flooding in 1995 combined to result in a reported 3 million dead from famine. Which one could argue was not Kim Jong-il’s fault, except when factoring in a military budget of $6 billion.

North Korea has the fourth largest military in the world, the Korea People’s Army. In a nation of less than 5 million men “fit for military service” (ages 17-49), North Korea fielded 1,106,000 armed personnel in a 2010 estimate. Largely attributable to the mandatory 10-year military service, that’s over 20%, a staggering percentage. In a country ravaged by famine and undernutrition, perhaps it also represented one of the safest bets for three square meals.

Meanwhile, the numbers quoted for his yearly bill for Hennessy cognac added up to astronomical sums—an estimated $650,000 to $800,000 annually, depending on the source, going back to the ’90s. Half gallons of Hennessy bestseller VS go for $65, so that amounts to a lot of booze, and at 5’2, one wouldn’t expect him capable of downing all that much by himself. Yet neither does he seem like the kind of guy who throws a party and exhorts all his guests to “Drink! Drink!” Perhaps he bathed in it, or cognac formed some part of the North Korean uranium enrichment program.

The U.S. went so far as to issue an embargo on luxury goods to North Korea to get to one man. Aside from Hennessy, the embargo theoretically deprived Kim Jong-il of favorites such as culinary delicacies and other goodies one might find in a duty-free shop. However, since he headed an exporting nation of arms and nuclear secrets, it’s unlikely Kim Jong-il encountered much difficulty acquiring any goods he wanted on the black market. The man had roast donkey and lobster regularly airlifted to him when he traveled by train to China, Russia, or wherever. (He had a fear of flying.) Kim Jong-il also had his personal chef personally fetch caviar from Iran and Uzbekistan, pork from Denmark and mugwort-scented rice cakes from a Tokyo department store. Until the personal chef defected on a sea urchin run to Japan, that is–a truly sad day for the Dear Leader.

Despite splurging on Hennessy and many and varied culinary whims, it’s not like Kim Jong-il didn’t try to solve the food shortages that didn’t exist. Yes, he pocketed foreign aid earmarked to feed his starving countrymen, but he also had a genius brainstorm one day: mutant-like giant rabbits.

In 2006, Kim Jong-il learned of a man named Karl Szmolinsky in Germany who bred giant rabbits. The Dear Leader saw pictures of the abnormally huge bunnies, found them delightfully appealing and deemed giant rabbit meat the key to solving North Korea’s food problems, or lack thereof. He ordered 12 rabbits and told Szmolinsky he planned to keep the rabbits at a petting zoo in Pyongyang, with a long-range plan of setting up a breeding farm. He offered to fly Szmolinsky over, but quickly reversed and rescinded the offer. After learning the rabbits cost upwards of $115 apiece, he despaired of solving the problem and just ate them himself.

Giant rabbits predictably return the discussion back to soccer tactics. Perhaps he could have fielded a team of ultra-technical springy-stepped giant rabbits. If anyone were to try, it would have been Kim Jong-il. Two problems, though. One, they had long since gone down the hatch, and two, FIFA had deemed the World Cup human-only, just as they had refused to allow fake goalkeepers to be strikers. Kim might have considered keeping the giant rabbits around for sport, whether rabbit races or rabbit polo, with those giant lucky feet. Instead, they passed through his digestive tract. (One consequently wonders what became of all the zebras, warthogs and giraffes from Mugabe’s ark.) So ultimately the rabbits did not put a dent in the nation’s food shortage problems, though their flesh did temporarily quell the hunger of one man, a man who, in fairness, did embody the nation, according to propaganda.

Kim Jong-il was an erratic character, but the man knew how to manipulate. He orchestrated never-before-seen feats of unpredictability in the art of brinksmanship, as shown by all the ever-ongoing talks about unilateral/multi-lateral talks about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. In the arena of international soccer, however, he landed flat on his face. Everyone agrees that when you score a goal on yourself, it’s called an own goal. No precise term exists for 12 goals in the back of the wrong net. Dodeca-catastro-own goal will have to suffice.

North Korea is reclusive in the extreme, but Kim Jong-il certainly knew how success in the World Cup could amplify his cult of personality domestically. But like so many other dictators before him, he probably dreamed of how international soccer success might help on a broader international level. Move higher in the estimation of trader nations, at the very least, or get one over on the Japanese or South Korea, which would work perfectly for a tapeloop sound bite. Unfortunately for him, he hadn’t done his homework on how potent soccer can often be in backfiring in a dictator’s face. (See Dictators and Soccer: Mobutu Sésé Seko and Zaire.)

Soccer represented little more than a tangential curiosity to Kim Jong-il. His dangerous megalomania simply spread in every direction. Sports, and therefore soccer, just got sucked into the tractor beam along with everything else, as had other entertainment forms before, such as when in 1978 Kim Jong-il had South Korean filmmaker Shin Sang-ok and his leading actress wife kidnapped and held captive for 8 years, forcing the couple to produce propaganda movies, including Godzilla ripoff Pulgasari, considered a cult classic of B-movie awfulness.

Kim Jong-Il stabbed the Ministry of Culture with a ballpoint pen and spat at the screen when he saw himself parodied in the James Bond film Die Another Day. One does not know if he saw Team America or what poor sap got stuck with what office supplies that time. Kim with a stapler gun strikes one as a scary proposition. With putative superhuman strength like his, he could easily pile drive a minister onto a fax machine. He may have seen and drawn inspiration from the printer beatdown scene in Office Space, noted cinephile that he was.

What was the Jong-illian reaction to Team America: World Police and a parody-puppet Kim’s turn as a surly bulldog-jowled yet deep down just “ronery” puppet bent on world domination? More importantly, what would have been his new tactical approach for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil? We just don’t know. Logic suggests someone got stabbed with something and a few teams would have been stabbed, respectively. Perhaps in the post-Jong-un era, the answers to burning questions such as these and more will finally emerge.

Extra Special Kim Sung-il and Soccer Bonus:

For some historical perspective, the North Korea team of 1966 thrilled the nation. As one of the only all-Asian teams in the competition, as opposed to those limping out of colonialism, they had a successful tournament, showcasing the kind of prestige befitting Eternal Leader Kim Il-sung and his heir, the future Dear Leader. Kim Il-Sung proudly sent out his soldier athletes to the field of battle, their first ever involvement in the tournament in the promising years after the Korean War.

North Korea lost 3-0 in the first match to the USSR, probably a wise move since the country could not survive financially without the backing of the big Soviet bear. A 1-1 draw with Chile followed. Time to step it up for the third match, the last chance to qualify for the knockout stages, except the opponent was Italy, the pre-tournament favorites. Stunning the Italians, North Korea beat the team 1-0 in the final match of the group stages, sending the Italians packing and themselves into the quarterfinals. Pandemonium ensued. They were through, the first Asian team to make the knockouts. They beat the world giants and solidly announced the newish nation to the world. They were there to win it, to honor the sovereignty and divinity of Kim Il-sung.

All this from a team for whom the English FA officials refused to play the national anthem, in protest of the regime. Oddly, the incident was partially relived 46 years later in England, as well, albeit unintentionally and flag swapped for anthem in the 21st-century rendition. At the 2012 London Olympics, when introducing the North Korean women’s team, the video screen projected the South Korean rather than the North Korean flag, a gaffe made worse when organizers apologized to “North Korea,” which doesn’t recognize itself as North anything, prompting the organizers to release yet another apology, this time directed to the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” as the country self-identifies.

Returning to 1966, however, North Korea faced another dictatorship nation in the quarterfinals, Portugal under the rule of António de Oliveira Salazar. The team featured one of the standout talents of the team and the generation, a Mozambique-born gentleman named Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, also known simply as Eusébio or “The Black Panther.”

In the knockout match against Portugal, the North Koreans were even 3-0 up at one point, before superstriker Eusébio scored four straight and Portugal emerged victorious with a 5-3 scoreline. Although England beat Portugal in the semifinals and triumphed over West Germany in the final, Eusébio won the Golden Boot, finishing the tournament as the highest goal scorer. However, the Black Panther had performed so well that Salazar refused to allow him the leave the country for a big-money offer at Inter Milan. Scoring 638 goals in 614 matches for Benfica may have granted him some solace.

Kim Il-sung’s North Korea was even more secretive than the current-day incarnation, so it’s unclear what became of the 1966 heroes. Rumors circulated that upon their return the players were imprisoned for their hedonistic Western-style partying. Those familiar with the labor camps and torture activity in North Korea find this plausible, though there’s no definitive proof. Safest bet: players and coach were sentenced to labor camps, torture optional, depending on whether they tried to escape. Perhaps they were subjected to a nonstop recording of the national anthem, or conversely were deprived of the privilege. (Current-day striker Jong Tae-Se, the “North Korean Rooney,” weeps copious tears of joy whenever the national anthem is played, like an obedient if a bit obsequious comrade. Or maybe he weeps tears of non-joy—hard to say.)

The scrappy team of ‘66 wasn’t called upon for the soccer field again, at any rate. When the government refused to play Israel in the qualifying rounds for the 1970 World Cup, the team was disqualified and the world had to go nearly a half-century without the soccer stylings of North Korea until the looney-tunes antics of Kim Il-sung’s son, a man the likes of whom we may (hopefully) never see in power again.

Dictators and Soccer/Football:

Mobutu Sésé Seko (Zaïre)

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania)

Kim Jong-il (North Korea)

Pope Benedict XVI (Vatican City)

https://twitter.com/tyrannosoccer

https://www.facebook.com/DictatorsAndSoccer

Commentary England Preview transfers

A CultFootball Roundtable: Demba Ba, Agents, Money Business–How Loyalty May Miss the Point

January 5, 2013 — by Rob Kirby

Some CultFootball roundtable reactions to a Telegraph piece on Ba leaving Newcastle for the money (and why shouldn’t he?):

Tyler:

Roman and Demba, cut from similar cloth?

The Cunning Linguist:

No way!

That article reeks of the old love of the game mentality and “where are English players in the EPL” rant. Ba went to a club that may play Champs League and will get paid more money while slotting into the lone striker role in a 4-2-3-1 set up as opposed to the 4-3-3 of Newcastle.

Football’s a business, a money business. 7.5mm quid for a 13 goal scorer is good business. That said, I’d have preferred to see a recall for Lukaku as I think he can spell a clearly tired and out of confidence Torres.

Lally (aka Political Footballs):

Also, Newcastle put the release clause in the contract whilst not guaranteeing him money if he didn’t play because of his suspect knees. He didn’t engineer the move, merely agreed terms when Chelsea matched the price Newcastle had set for him.

Suman:

I agree with Cunning Linguist that football is a money business, up to a point. If we can get all Clintonian up in here, it depends on what your definition of “is” is. (This also recalls, I think, a class THC & I took together at UofC in analytic philosophy…remember that Tyler? More on that topic to come soon.)

I’d agree if you say professional club football at this moment in time (what some people call “modern football”?) is a money business. but certainly we can agree (can we?) that it’s not been true of club football at all times, and certainly not of our Saturday morning “Mario’s Incredible Liga Fabulosa” matches.

So actually I suppose it depends on what you mean by “football.”

Tyler:

“Of sense and reference“, Frege I believe. Can’t recall the course title.

No arguments against any of the above. Could have easily replaced “Roman” with Walcott/RVP/Nasri. Ba seems risky to me but I think that’s due to his poor form second half of last season. It’s certainly not a bad deal given the relatively low price for him (depending on one’s definition of “low”).

The link was in an Arsenal blog about transfers and I had only skimmed before posting it. After reading further, there seems to be a decent amount of conjecture about team dynamics at Newcastle. Not mentioned in the piece, unfortunately, was that Ba reportedly has 5 agents that will benefit from the deal, which I think was the “what the fuck” moment that made me want to send the link to begin with.

Cunning Linguist:

That’s actually a pretty fair point. The side “business” of holding shares in an individual and multiple business consortiums engineering moves to churn fees is pretty disgusting. Remember the Mascherano and Tevez deals that were churned through West Ham by Kia Joorabchian? Wasn’t Pardew boss at WH back then, or am I misremembering? That agent shit is outta control. Didn’t Big Sam’s son have some involvement with agent fees or some shit?

Tyler:

Arseblog has mentioned repeatedly that Theo is being led astray by his agent. He’s getting everything he wants, he’s been the striker and scored or assisted in each of the last four games, he’s the team’s leading scorer, and he’s paid pretty well. But still no new contract. No legit title contender (Manchesters) will sign him, he probably wouldn’t start for Chelsea, and Liverpool will barely miss out on the top four this season. So it’s not about trophies, it’s about money. He’s a decent and honest guy it seems, but he’s young and marketable, so the money-grubbing agent influence is believable.

Digress… I like the Lukaku idea, and I will be paying attention to Ba’s integration into his new team. After all, isn’t Chelsea the soccer world’s favorite science experiment?

Gu, I think the course was actually called, “Introduction to analytical philosophy”. Is the morning star the same as Venus, unicorns do and don’t exist, etc.

Rob:

The deal with the agents is that there’s not much incentive in them telling the player “you’re happy here, there’s no reason to move and generate a fee from which I’ll take a nice 10% cut.” They can’t do it so often that they run afoul of the player through particularly bad advice, but the move argument is certainly good for a couple paydays.

Then with Ba and others where there may be more than one agent (he’s the only one I’ve heard of, but I imagine there are others), one is a family member, one is the guy they brought in because what real experience does the family member have except for the ear of the player, and so on–I can see where it gets really convoluted really quickly.

Then for Arsenal players, they bring on Darren Dein (of Henry, Cesc, RvP & Song departure fame, and son of someone or other), and it’s history.

Piggybacking on what Cunning Linguist said earlier about an old view of club loyalty vs. a modern view, when it comes down to it the globalization of the Premier League in terms of audience, but especially in terms of talent pool, it means that few of these guys are playing for their boyhood clubs. They won’t be retiring after many years of service and reentering the town community, running into fans at pubs for the rest of their lives–or running the pub–as once it may have been. Ba is from Senegal, he’s probably supporting/subsidizing a huge contingent of family, he grew up neither a West Ham nor a Newcastle fan, and if his knee had detonated on him, he would have been cut loose on the spot. I get wrapped up in my hopes for what certain players will do for Arsenal, but with Adebayor, for example, I now respect the fact that he refused to lower his wage demands or fall for any sympathy plays. I think he’s delusional on some levels, but on a money level, he’s right on. I didn’t like it when he did it to us, but I understood his position more when he messed with City (which, really, was just awesome to witness). He wasn’t going to make it easy for them, because he knew he didn’t have to. He has a couple years to make cash, his country is a mess, he knew his negotiating position. Even if he’s not a grade-A humanitarian, building hospitals around Togo (although I think he did fund one), he knows where his allegiances lie: to himself, his extended family, and then far later in the list people like Wenger, Mancini etc.

I used to really dislike Drogba until I learned more about his off-the-field persona. He’s actually an awesome dude. And then I could see how awesome he was on the pitch after shedding my dislike of his diving or continual single-handed reaming of the Arsenal defense year after year.

Anyway, this is a rare moment of perspective. I’ll be fuming about how disloyal some departing player is soon enough, I’m sure.

Suman:

One quick note–the bit about “few of these guys are playing for their boyhood clubs. They won’t be retiring after many years of service and reentering the community, running into fans at pubs for the rest of their lives, as once it may have been” echoed, ironically, Jonathan Wilson’s column about the Zenit fans’ open letter.

The opening paragraphs, in case you didn’t read it before:

Let’s imagine that fans of Sunderland (and I use the example purely because that is who I support), tiring of the constant churn of the transfer market, decide that enough is enough and they want their team to do things differently. They get together and hammer out a manifesto which they then post as an open letter to the club hierarchy. Among a number of points about the need for absolute commitment and an abhorrence of cheating, they suggest they would rather the club focused on local players.

How would the world regard that? Some might argue that is not the most efficient way to run a club in the modern game but most would surely accept that, if nothing else, a strong local identity can help foster a sense of common purpose. Athletic Bilbao select only Basque players while Barcelona are proud of their Catalan core; why shouldn’t Sunderland fans dream of a team built around half a dozen Wearsiders?

Larry:

I have just one question. Without Ba’s presence already at Newcastle, does Cisse sign there?

Edhino:

Y’all can think wishfully all you want to, hark back to the good old days of club and community loyalty, but the political economy of modern football will ensure a tiered class system of wealthy clubs amassing known talents, mid-level clubs with canny ‘value’ hunting managers (like Wenger) punching above their weight, and the rest pitifully swearing to virtues of local talent as an excuse for their empty coffers. But rather than lamenting this unequal state of football affairs, I forfeit bourgeois sympathy for the underdeveloped clubs and embrace the opportunity for beautiful football that unfettered markets create in the elite level. Who cares about Leeds role in Yorkshire talent development – I wish a rich sheikh would buy it and fill it full of Drogbas and Messis so I can watch the best football that money can buy.

Cunning Linguist:

Preach!

Political Footballs:

You guys did that. It was called the 2000/2001 season. Fat Aussie wanker.

George:

But does a class system not truly offend us at some level? Yes, sport is not intended to celebrate mediocrity. As much as the super rich clubs have injected quality into the game by assembling an array of talent until then only imagined in school yards (or fantasy soccer leagues), the gulf between the haves and have nots is so large that it’s a fantasy to think someone other than the big 3 will win it. “Hey, you never know”. That tagline sells a lot of tickets–and I guess the EPL hopes so too.

I don’t know what happened/went wrong with the likes of Preston North End and Huddersfield Town. Perhaps this current crop of champions will be a memory in years to come. I can only hope.

Tyler:

Without going back through each and every post, I don’t think there has been much yearning for the good ole days in our posts. Cunning Linguist and Rob have made valid points with regard to agents and self-preservation/securing one’s and one’s family’s future.

I too used to HATE Drogba the Gunner Killer, then read about what he’d done for his country, saw him mature on the field, watched him beat Munich, and now he’s a sporting hero of mine. The only problem I have with him moving to China is that now I can’t watch him. Maybe I’d be more upset if I supported Chelsea, but I doubt it. He left at his peak.

That says something about loyalty, I suppose. I shouldn’t like him, right? But at the end of the day sport is, among other things, entertainment and glory and he provided ample amounts of both.

What is loyalty? I chose Arsenal because I discovered FSC and the first thing I saw was Henry change direction and cause two defenders to lose their footing and fall. Then I saw that year’s squad was Invincible. I rooted for France and recorded every WC game of theirs because of Henry, I had recently been to France, I watched more Arsenal the next year and loved what I saw. I know nearly nothing about North London; the most time I’ve spent in England was sleeping on the floor of Gatwick airport, but that’s my team and it always will be.

(I’ll pause and wait for the scoffing to end.)

When some of us complain about player loyalty in this era, we might feel scorned because we expect that the player knows us like we know him. We forget he’s not our buddy, we spend money and set aside our time to watch him while he makes more and more money and has so much time to enjoy a rich and famous lifestyle while never knowing us. We think he should repay our loyalty but he has his own loyalties.

So I sent the Ba link with no comment save for a comparison between him and Abramovich. At least we know where they stand as individuals who want to be successful financially and competitively no matter who gets in their way. The issue we Gooners have with Nasri is that he used the team to get where he is then trashed the team and its fans. So he’s a disrespectful juvenile who we thought was our buddy but he wasn’t, and we moved on (but we love that he was ejected last game because we thought he was once our buddy). Our problem with Adebayor is similar; he has character and temperament flaws and he really provided a reality check for sure–oops, not our buddy! We moved past it and now he just seems sad.

RVP, Theo, Wenger, Arsenal as an organization, the problem we have with them is that they say one thing and do another, but they want us to stay their buddy. Or, they actually say nothing and let us guess, pretending to hope we are their buddy while secretly not caring? Yet they give us just enough to hold on to and because we want entertainment and glory we put up with it, rationalize it, and somehow love it no matter how dysfunctional it gets. We hope!

The reason we’ll never question Cesc or have a problem with him is that we knew where he stood. He proved his loyalty by chastising Spanish press for misquoting him against Arsenal. Henry won everything he could with Arsenal and left to win that one last trophy. We understood and he proved loyalty by returning. They gave us beginning and end and were a bit clearer about it than the others.

Years ago I decided, only half-jokingly, that for fairness and entertainment’s sake, the MLB and the Olympics should offer two separate competitions, one for the purists and one for the dopers. Entertainment and glory would abound, and we would know where they, and we, stand.

A “super fantastic Blatteristic Euro league” full of the big money teams? Why not? (Ahem, next roundtable topic?) Entertainment and glory for sure, talent and competition through the roof. Just don’t expect anyone you’re watching to be your buddy.

Loyalty… I once hated Peyton Manning simply because he was THAT good, a Broncos killer. (For the same reasons as Kobe to the Nuggets but not nearly as vile. Sports heroes are villains because they’re heroes to someone.) But now Peyton is totally my buddy! He’s curious about what I’m having for breakfast and I’m pretty sure we’re going to see “Les Mis” after the Super Bowl. I’m sure of it!

Commentary England transfers

The End of the Arsenal Is Not At Hand

December 31, 2012 — by Rob Kirby

Calendar finale 2012 miraculously witnessed Arsenal removing the pesky “handbrake” to which manager Arsène Wenger so often refers (why would any team so repeatedly employ such an antiquated and momentum-killing device?) and the team won four successive matches in December: the crisp 2-0 v. West Brom, followed by the toyingly awesome 5-2 v. Reading, the limp but who cares 1-0 v. Wigan, finally concluding with the scoreline-busting 7-3 v. Newcastle. Suffice it to say, two of the four failed to feature historic defensive displays from either side. But no gripes with goals. No, sir. Midfield marshal Santi Cazorla could have even pushed those scorelines higher if ballhog teammates reciprocated on occasion and passed to him on his own forward runs. Theo, to your direction this last statement looks.

After all the negative press bullshit, we marched into the Boxing Day match in fourth place. Fourth! Unexpected, perhaps undeserved, but definitely level with three other teams and above on goal difference. In times like these, one takes the good when it arrives, no questions asked, without a single horse chomper inspected. Then the London subway/tube strike saw the West Ham match postponed while everyone level on points with us won and left us three points behind. Rested, on the 29th, Theo Walcott, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud then went delightfully über-nuts on Newcastle in the end-of-year goalfest extravaganza, two of those tied-for-fourth fools lost, and we now sit fifth, with a chance to overtake/draw level with Tottenham if we do manage to win the postponed game against formerly resurgent West Ham. And thanks to two certain lopsided scorelines, we continue to pack a superior goal difference.

A bit of union-dispute luck arrived for old Arsenal on December 26, in that the tube strike gave the team a welcome breather. West Ham, though not currently as good as when the Hammers roared out of the gates and back into the Premier League early season, are still good, and the game would have made for three matches in 8 days. Same as everyone else, except then it wasn’t, which can’t but have helped in delivering fresher legs and fewer squad rotations to the second match, where we happened to especially turn it on in the second half against tired Newcastlian legs. Newcastle had just lost a hard-fought 7-goaler against Manchester United three days previous while the Gunners enjoyed their gift certificates for training ground spa days. A postponement in the middle of the Christmas fixture congestion suited us just fine. Perhaps we even engineered the tube strike, and if so, well played, Arsène. I think maybe I get the handbrake thing now.

As to any potential West Ham fear factor, we can get a result against them, almost definitely. Probably. However, there’s still that fundamental uncertainty, not to mention the more certain uncertainty had we faced them in their best run of form. They’ve been above us in the league table for most of the season. As fans, we enter the match with some trepidation. As red flags go, that flaps about as one that bespeaks/be-signals neither a title-contending nor a top-four state of mind. Until we make up the postponement, people will spout off about the “game in hand” as if it’s merely a formality, which just seems asking for a reality check. I, for one, will not do so. I don’t like reality checks in the form of boxed-ear reprisals, fiscal cliffs and least of all in the form of humiliating Arsenal losses.

Even before the Newcastle demolition, the season has revolved around the fates of three people: Robin van Persie, Theo Walcott and Arsène Wenger. (Cazorla and Wilshere get the occasional shout-out.) One already departed, the other threatening and the third beset by villagers with pitchforks and short memories baying for the blood.

Gone are the days of the “Bould effect” and the initial wow factor of Cazorla (who quickly became my favorite player on the team, except maybe Wilshere, or Arteta, maybe Sagna, Szczesny for spirit, Frimpong for the thuggery). It’s all about recriminations of how we let RvP get away, the contract hell of Walcott and the scapegoat for both, the manager.

Fearing that this post would fail to eclipse my previous longest, I asked two friends to weigh in on their thoughts at year’s end. (Note: both sent words before the Newcastle match, which may have changed perspectives. A stomach flu has set me back to the proverbial eleventh hour of the year.)

Roland A. – “I don’t really have any particularly deep thoughts about The Arse at the moment. Just that Wenger is probably near the end of his rope, he knows it, but the marriage/relationship he and the board seem to share make a divorce such a difficult, and still at this point, improbable proposition. I don’t know exactly what it is that he seemed he used to have—motivational nous? Contagious belief? But it does appear to have deserted him, and the squad. Really just hoping at this point that 1) he signs 1 or 2 quality attacking options, and 2) he somehow manages to modify his seemingly rigid tactical beliefs to reflect what’s happening on the pitch. I realize that only the first has any decent chance at taking place.”

Sean F. – “Despite the recent results, we need to buy another striker, another defensive mid with some steel and keep Walcott. We are still in 4th place with all the dropped points and fan backlash (a whole another blog), so we just need a good run and some health fortune. Arsenal is so much better when we play with pace and directness. If you look at the tables, our defensive record is not that bad but the lack of scoring is why we end up in ties.”

Wenger, Walcott and the ever-present specter of the departed van Persie.

Let’s start with the second, taking at face value and a minimum of derisive snorts that Walcott’s stalled contract really is about him playing as central striker and not about him wanting something so grubby as the most money at the club.

Walcott is the king of consistency in patches, his words (well, not the “king of” part). Any club that gambles on him–including Arsenal–has to know this, unless he cocoons and caterpillar-transforms into something majestically different than the stop-start-backslide player of the past seven years, where he has reigned as the quintessential mindfuck for Arsenal supporters. He’s just as likely to score a back-to-back hat trick as he is to go the rest of the season scoreless. Especially as the contract situation rumbles. The inner pessimist says he’ll perform out of his skin until he signs a contract extension and no further (until the next contract extension talks begin). So, don’t extend, you say. But then you freeze up, knowing how amazingly he’ll perform elsewhere. But then you relax, remember who you’re dealing with, then tighten, relax, freak out, go full-jelly, then suffer a cardiac infarction. This isn’t a yogic stress relief exercise, it’s Arsenal fan hell.

And like Walcott in particular, Arsenal as a whole confounds and spellbinds because one never knows what team will show up and what fans will get on any given matchday. (There’s anxiety medicine out there for this condition, and yes, every Arsenal supporter should take it.) This is where the narrative comes to Arsène Wenger. (As always, there is no need to actually address van Persie directly. He is like the Ghost of Exceptional Single Season Past that shall forever haunt the present and future.)

Suman, site co-founder with Sean (different than the aforequoted Sean), suggested charting the ups and downs over the course of the year, starting with the best striker in the land Robin van Persie, then the backlash against Wenger, the backlash against the backlash, the backlash against the backlash against the backlash, etc., ad infinitum. Arsène got whiplashed something evil with backlashes all year, with the occasional reprieve in light of a mirage Bould effect or super-signing like Cazorla. Short text version: any such chart, even with all the sharp peaks and nadir valleys, goes steadily down over time like the worst stock pick ever. And then buoys back up every so often just to mess with your head and set you up with a Champions League showdown with Bayern Munich who will totally murder you.

Anyhow, Wenger and the ups and downs. To sit fifth at year’s end, after the all the “Arsène OUT!!!” signs, the post-Bould-effect meltdown and the overall freakouts in general lands somewhere between miracle and justice. As an outsider American who (rabidly) digs the team, I’m always astounded by how maliciously gleefully fans, journalists and haters alike pile on the criticism after any poor showing, regardless of their own particular allegiance. And though I generally publish posts when Arsenal’s doing poorly, as there’s usually more to talk about re: team improvement, the manager and the team deserve props right now, even as a “club in crisis.” They’re grinding out the exact species of results detractors declared impossible, as Wenger had so fully lost the plot.

That said, the argument can still be made that the team is not entirely sitting pretty. Be that as it may, better a fifth place crisis (“don’t forget the game in hand…”—shut it) than one perched further down the table.

For months the makers of facile critiques have taken easy jabs at Arsène, just like every other season since the last trophy (the FA Cup in 2005, in case it hasn’t been seared into the neural hide of your mind from the millions of times it gets incandescently referenced). After seven trophyless seasons, more than a few have taken a swipe at Arsène and his failed youth project—the one that developed Cesc Fàbregas, Alex Song, Theo Walcott, Jack Wilshere, Wojciech Szczesny, and no-talent ass clowns like that. The same constituents have had their easy snarky goes at Arsène’s idiocy at keeping “perma-crocks” like Robin van Persie who’d never stay fit for an entire calendar year and/or season and become the highest scorer in the league, most likely for two seasons running.

Before the youth project, he fished the seas of France and French-speaking Africa, as if there were any use in that. Nobodies from Africa like Lauren, Song, Nwankwo Kanu, Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Toure came and went. From France, Nicolas Anelka, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires, Bacary Sagna, Gael Clichy, Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Petit plied their trade, but since they’re essentially nobodies they hardly merit mention.

Also, if some of those ersatz diamonds in the rough seem distant memories, it’s because they are, although you can still visit a few in Barcelona or Manchester if the mood arises and they haven’t yet been sold off like some sub-par Hleb, Flamini or François the Used Car Salesman (if you haven’t checked out the bizarre extramarital alterego of Kolo Toure, treat yourself now).

Many of those talents—young, Francophonic or both—left for other teams, which theoretically strengthens the argument for those who wish to grumble. Before Arsène, those ass clowns were unknown, but how dare he sell off such now-household names? Whether ironically ungrateful or not, people switched the criticism from “What does Arsène see in these losers?” to “Why does Arsène so idiotically fail to tie these world-class players to lucrative long-term deals?”

A critic’s mantra: Move the goalposts and you’ve always got a job.

Fair enough. While Arsène might be the perfect early career manager for many players, it’s clear that the team has failed to keep many of those same players because they want titles and Arsenal hasn’t exactly been flush with them of late. (They could have stayed and actually helped deliver those titles, but we can all agree that at this point, it’s a moot point.) Maybe it was a board issue, maybe an egomaniacal manager pathologically opposed to spending money, but no matter the case, these players left, and in latter years the players left without titles in the cabinet.

Wenger has made some mistakes and some gambles have blown up in his face like they were Acme Goods and he, Wyle E. Coyote. Fifth place (like third last year) owes largely to a couple players majorly saving us at crucial moments. Cazorla has proven one of the best signings of the trophyless years–a recent one at that, and none too soon. Carl Jenkinson and Per Mertesacker drew heavy criticism until a season later when they emerged as integral players during a difficult spell, namely the departure of our one-man offense. Third-choice goalkeeper Vito Mannone saved the collective bacon when he manned the sticks during Szczesny’s longer-than-expected absence. The emergence of quality from unexpected places has helped compensate for the elephant-sized void where Robin van Persie pulled the whole team on his back last year (himself emerging from the void resulting from Cesc’s departure, Cesc the previous player who pulled the team seemingly single-handedly after Henry, and so on).

I just wish the commentary so often leveled at the team and its manager not be made in such snap-tackle fashion. When you consistently reach the top four with an “abysmal” squad, perhaps it’s not just dumb luck. Arsène has been a great steward for the club. Not to say we didn’t get lucky at times or that we’ll finish in the Champions League spots this year, but the league table generally tells it as it is, especially with regard to year on year. If Arsenal must always feel the brunt of fans pointing to a non-ideal standing in the table, those same fans should likewise give the team credit when they claw their way back up. However, criticism is obviously easier.

Ridiculed for losing to Norwich, the team has now seen many go down to the very same, including Manchester United. We lost to Swansea. Again, they just held off the champions to possibly be.

But though the team situation looks better now than a month ago, or during the summer when van Persie declared he was off, or last year during the fullbackless slide in January/February or the cataclysmic August after the departure of Fàbregas and Nasri, the manager and the club look more than ever like they will part ways. In many ways, this year’s Swansea and last year’s Newcastle demonstrate both the problems at the club and the changed idea of the manager who changed English football. Fortunately, the team we just faced was this year’s Newcastle, not last year’s.

Managers across the league now monitor diet, fitness and spreadsheets the way Wenger once did alone among the crowd. If Wenger arrived in England the only economist versed in Moneyball (or Soccernomics) analysis, most likely have the tomes on their bookshelves now. Wenger’s schtick was once plucking rough chunks of stone from faraway shores and transforming them into gems (Henry, Vieira, Anelka, Fàbregas, Adebayor, Nasri, Song, van Persie), but now that list reads like a who’s who of who left the club for better money or better title contenders. Arsenal scouts that once unearthed the finest Francophones in Africa seem to have been bested by Alan Pardew. Demba Ba, Papiss Cisse, Hatem Ben Arfa, Cheikh Tiote and Yohan Cabaye seemed tailor-made for Arsenal but rocketed Newcastle (near) the top instead last season. Instead of them, nowadays we get Marouane Chamakh and Gervinho.

With Swansea, the Welsh underdogs have perpetrated another episode of Wenger identity theft. Overlapping fullbacks bomb forward, names emerge from obscurity, and Laudrup (using Rodgers’ leftovers) produces soccer that’s both easy on the eyes and the managerial checkbook. Michu is the Wenger signing that wasn’t, and not because a bigger wallet came in and snatched the player away before we had a chance. As someone who can’t help but read up about any player linked to us in a transfer window, I never heard the faintest whiff of a link to Michu, who racked up an impressive 15 goals in La Liga last season and looks exactly the sort of buy Wenger once would have made—in for cheap and then a sensation in the league. Cazorla shows Wenger still hasn’t entirely lost that side of his repertoire, but their price tags stand miles apart. Arsenal still got a fantastic deal, but £2 million and £15 million don’t represent parity. More egregiously, though, Swansea passed the ball with attacking fluidity, out-Arsenaling Arsenal at Arsenal’s home ground.

Fans used to the success and genius that Wenger brought to the Premier League increasingly call for the manager to go. I didn’t see it happening, even last year. But now, more than at any other time, I see Wenger fulfilling his contract and moving on. The differences are not irreconcilable from Wenger’s perspective, but the fans make the relationship increasingly untenable whenever the team goes through a bad patch. Frankly, we no longer deserve Wenger and his loyalty. Arsenal fans are looking more and more like a pack of ingrates. Realistically, who would replace him. What top manager will swoop in and do everything right that Wenger does so horribly wrong? There are many top managers, but something tells me Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho, et al, would prefer Manchester United over Arsenal.

Before I forget, getting back to Sean F.’s comment, yes, we need a defensive midfielder. We also need another striker. The specter of Robin van Persie is more than just the goal colossus himself–his absence swells to the lack of all the others who left and were not adequately replaced. It’s the unreplaced Alex Song DM, the unreplaced Nasri, Adebayor, Gilberto and other key pieces left missing when so many top players departed. Cazorla, Podolski and Giroud strengthened the depleted squad hugely, but Cazorla is the only player to come close to providing the spark and precision that Cesc provided. And the exit list still includes: Clichy, Kolo, Gallas, even Flamini and Hleb. Vieira and Henry started it off, and it just kept on going.

Meanwhile, striker-in-training Walcott throws toys out of prams and threatens to go, theoretically to be lone striker at some other Champions League club. Arsène has deployed him in his “dream position” as lone striker the past few matches, which could be seen as a concession for contract talks or an admission that anyone’s better than Gervinho, given Giroud’s illness. Either way, it has worked (so far) and perhaps may induce Walcott to sign a contract extension. Except that’s never really been the issue and isn’t really what has prevented Walcott from signing. He wants more money and his patch of consistency is surely almost up. (Prepare yourself for a bit of a diatribe. Kind of like the last one.)

He’ll sign or he won’t, he’ll stay or he’ll go. If go he must, go he should. Chase the cash, Theo, by all means. However, if he expects to play as lone striker for a Champions League club in the UK or anywhere, really, he will soon find out how much of an idiot he is, something many came to the realization of long ago. His pace makes him good to great on the right flank, but only when the defense gives him space, something they’ve learned not to do, and something they’ll certainly stamp out if he’s in the lead role. He has Henry’s number, but he’s nowhere close to Henry. To be fair, few are.

So go, Theo, go. Arsenal confounds its fans, delights its detractors when the club does poorly. He’ll be making someone happy, at the very least. And if he stays, he should stay as a backup striker. As shown at the end of the Newcastle match when he shunted off to the flank to give Giroud centrality and then put in good crosses and finalized his own hat trick. he can make it happen from the flank. Funny that, as it’s his best, if not preferred, position.

Things may get worse before they get better. Fifth at the halfway point means nothing. Inconsistency has become the Arsenal status quo, just like our mascot Theodore. The day that a player like Theo truly holds the club’s fortunes at his feet has not yet arrived, however. Giroud, for all the negativity leveled at him (until recently), is a real center forward. May he get fully well from illness soon, and may he help the club get truly fit and solid, as well.

For midterm status reports, Cazorla, Podolski and Giroud all have delivered as players midway through their first Premier League season. (Giroud took the longest to contribute, but he did just score a brace against Newcastle, where Podolski and Cazorla had a hand in nearly all the positive proceedings.) Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker have held it down in their second seasons. As new returnee Jack Wilshere can attest, the team is all new, and it’s not all bad. With Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Kieran Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson having all just last week signed on the dotted line, the blueprint of the club’s future is there. Keep Cazorla and the other new boys and it’s still a team in contention. Whether for “trophy” fourth or an actual trophy, we’ll see. Perhaps it will have to wait another year. One way or the other, the season, for all its ups and downs, provides optimism for the future. If others feel different, fine.

Dismiss the Arsenal and, like a departure-scenario Theo, prepare to find out that it’s not always so simple. Arsenal may no longer be a glamor team, nor Wenger the revolutionarily gifted Professor. Arsène should not go. Theo can if he chooses, but best for all if he stays. Stay, Theo, stay. Or go. But know your strengths, know your place, or see you on the Liverpool bench. Or on the right flank. You can get the money you want, if that’s all you want.

Theo provides assists and can display some classy finishing, but anyone who has seen him week in, week out, knows he’s not a Berbatov fox in the box or the second coming of either Thierry Henry or Robin van Persie, the chocolate-legged inner-child-crying-for-United boy wonder.

Anyhow, Walcott’s probably off, most likely on a Bosman at the end of the summer, though January can’t be ruled out. Or he’ll sign the deal and either will or won’t start sucking again. Regardless, his stock has risen in the past few months from the hat trick at Reading in the Capital Cup, the past three matches away to Reading and Wigan and the year-end blowout at home against Newcastle, which must rank as the match of his life. Just before the transfer window opens…

Clubs want him. Champions League clubs want him. Just not for starting striker. He could have a career as an impact sub or the speed demon on the right flank, but he’s unlikely to replace Torres, van Persie, Tevez or Aguero. If Spurs end the season in the top four and clinch qualification for the Champions League, they’d gladly forgive his Arsenal past (especially as a fuck you to Arsenal, landing one of our top players and righting the Sol Campbell wrongs), but he wouldn’t replace Jermaine Defoe or whoever else does replace Defoe. Imagine the reception Adebayor and Walcott would get at the Emirates as the two strikers. It nearly makes you want it to happen. The scenario of them being booed in tandem may come to pass, just not as the “strike partnership” part, and by then Adebayor must certainly will have burned bridges at yet another club. Scoring one goal thus far this season is the first step. That and getting sent off, leaving the 10 remaining men to get hammered 5-2 by their fiercest rivals, namely us.

A lower level team would give Walcott a striker berth, but if he’s too big for 75,000, he’s too big for anything like that. He’ll stay in England and he’ll want a Champions League club.

Okay, enough Walcott speculation, except to say finally that I hope he excels for as long as he wears the Arsenal colors. After that, as long as he keeps his mouth shut about Arsenal, come what may.

Having Wilshere back in the team is huge. He missed far too much football, but he’s getting back into the groove again and the growing understanding between Arteta, Cazorla and the English bulldog can only continue to develop and grow. Podolski and Giroud look increasingly more comfortable in the team and in the league and all signs point to that going yet further in the right direction. The team sheet has utterly changed in the time period separating Wilshere’s injury at the meaningless Emirates Cup in August 2011 and his return this season and his recent return. Cesc, Song, Nasri, van Persie and Clichy out; Arteta, Cazorla, Podolski, Giroud, Jenkinson, Mertesacker, in. The captain of the South Korean national team even came and went during that period. Park Ju-Young, we hardly knew ye.

Having Cazorla in the team is huge. Podolski, Giroud, Sagna, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Rosicky, Gibbs, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Arteta, Jenkinson, Szczesny. I’m not intentionally trying to list the starting XI (obviously, since there are two right backs) but these are the ones that stick out in my mind.

Henry left. Then Cesc. Then Robin. Walcott may. But if Wenger goes–and the odds no longer look so different from that of Walcott–it will be something totally and utterly different. And awful.

But for the moment the Boss is still here. And kickoff kicks off against Southampton sharpish tomorrow, our first match of 2013. Hopefully there will be more rejoicing, fewer backlashes and a nice tidy 2013 line that charts steadily onward and upward.

Come On You Gunners!

Commentary Europe History

Dictators and Soccer: Nicolae Ceaușescu, Genius of the Carpathians

November 8, 2012 — by Rob Kirby — 4

[Editor’s note: This is the 2nd installment in the ongoing Dictators and Soccer series. See also the previous article on Mobutu Sésé Seko of Zaïre and subsequent articles on Kim Jong-il and North Korea (or Football, Famine and Giant Rabbits) and Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican City. Stay tuned for Col. Gaddafi next.]

Up until Christmas 1989 when a three-man firing squad executed Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena after a quickie two hour tribunal, the archetypal Iron Curtain strongman ruled Romania with an iron fist. After getting strafed with bullets, however, the iron fist swiftly went limp, then rigor mortis. And as the title up top suggests, soccer most definitely played its part in the image engine of the autocratic regime.

Ceaușescu served as the General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party from 1967 to 1989. He loomed larger than life, largely due to his carefully cultivated cult of personality, replete with relentless news propaganda, giant-sized murals and so on. He even nicknamed himself “Genius of the Carpathians,” ”The Great Conductor” and ”The Danube of Thought.” One imagines that someone else bestowed the dubious honorific of “The Idi Amin of Communism.” (To read about the “Mobutu of Soccer Mogul Marketing,” see here.)

No one would accuse Ceaușescu of being a rabid soccer fan, but he spotted the usefulness of rabid devotion in any form and fully intended to bend such to his purposes. Enter the Romanian capital’s soccer powerhouse, Steaua Bucharest (anglicized form of Steaua București). The lyrics of a popular Romanian song, “Poți să fii câine sau poți fi stelist,” epitomized the mantra of the time. Translation, “You can be a dog, or you can be a Steaua fan.” With Ceaușescu as benefactor, Steaua went on a run of consecutive titles and undefeated in 104 straight domestic matches from 1986 to 1989, which blows away anything as piddling as a one-season Premier League “Invincibles” streak. To get to 104, you’re talking multiple and consecutive, which inhabits a whole different plane of non-losing. Curiously (or not), it all crashed to an abrupt halt with Ceaușescu’s 1989 execution.

Ceaușescu sought to legitimize and whitewash the nation state through sport, with the mentality that good PR sweeps human rights atrocities under the rug. If the soccer’s good, people will give you some leeway and even participate in the charade. So, with the best Romanian players at its disposal, as well as opposing managers and referees in its pocket, Steaua went without a loss for three consecutive domestic seasons. Steaua became the first club from Eastern Europe to hoist the European Cup, in 1986, and reached the finals in 1989. Ceaușescu lived long enough to see it, but not much beyond.

To flesh out the dictator a bit, let’s itemize a few of his eccentricities. Aside from the usual nepotism (27 close relatives in the top party and state offices), he and his wife Elena once visited Queen Elizabeth II and stayed at the palace. After shaking anyone’s hand, including the queen, he would wash his hands, OCD style. This was debatably less offensive than their bringing a personal food taster and their own bed sheets, out of distrust. Ceaușescu harbored a bizarre fear of poison-dusted cloth. All his clothes were manufactured by state police under surveillance, worn once and then burned. The purpose of the UK visit was to buy aerospace technology, but when quoted the price, he explained he’d have to pay a large part in yogurt, strawberries and ice cream. Despite the sweet deal, no deal.

If a newspaper mentioned Ceaușescu, no one else but his wife could be named in the same paragraph. And if both he and Elena were mentioned in a paragraph, they had to both be on the same line. Furthermore, each page of a paper had to mention him a minimum of 40 times, with his name in a specialized font. Every telephone manufactured during his reign came standard with bugs for surveillance, and after once receiving a death threat letter, he instructed the secret police to procure handwriting samples of everyone in the country. His presidential parliamentary palace, widely considered one of the greatest eyesores ever, was the second biggest administrative building in the world, after the Pentagon. It has since been transformed into a shopping mall.

In the ’80s, Ceaușescu shut down all radio stations outside the capital and limited TV to a two-hour broadcast on one solitary channel. The two hours part was simply pragmatism. The country battled with foreign debt that caused a trickledown effect characterized by drastic food rations, gas shortages and regular power blackouts.

Oh right, Ceaușescu also ruthlessly persecuted ethnic Hungarians, emptied the treasury and generally held the title of biggest asshole on the block, or bloc.

Returning to how soccer played into the man’s plans, even before Ceaușescu came to power, Romania had a fixed soccer duopoly in Dinamo Bucharest and Steaua Bucharest, supported and financed by the secret police and army, respectively. They had an “arrangement” between them known as the cooperativa. Whenever one needed a win or a specific scoreline in a head to head, the other complied. This arrangement itself transpired against a backdrop of deeply entrenched match fixing elsewhere in the league. Money needn’t exchange hands. If you played one of the top dogs, you obediently lost, or faced the consequences. Needless to say, neither came close to relegation during the ‘60s, ‘70s or ‘80s. Several sources speak of a phenomenon in which teams playing either of the Bucharest teams would concede goal after goal until the manager stepped from the dugout and raised his hand, signaling that the opposition could actually start going for goal.

Threats, intimidation and payoffs ensured that Steaua and Dinamo stayed top. But since the country as a whole was strapped for cash, intimidation of other club owners, managers, players and referees usually did the trick, and at an undeniably cut rate.

A brief aside on Dinamo Bucharest. All the Dinamo/Dynamo teams in the Soviet era had links to the secret police, based on the mother club Dynamo Moscow in Mother Russia. (Think about that next time you taunt supporters of Dinamo Zagreb or Dynamo Kiev, though you’re probably pretty safe with regard to the Houston Dynamo.) Just as Dynamo Moscow essentially reported directly to the KGB, and Dynamos Berlin and Dresden to the Stasi—a terrifying proposition—Dinamo Bucharest grabbed the proffered appendage of the brutal Securitate and the two went hand in hand.

When Ceaușescu bestowed his allegiance on Steaua Bucharest, it spelled the decline of Dinamo Bucharest, which had ruled supreme in the ‘70s. In the early 1980s, however, the Ceaușescus became directly involved in running Steaua, shifting the balance of power decidedly to the army team. Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu’s eldest son, Valentin, finagled his way into the organization and served as the club’s unofficial president (whether they wanted it or not). The backing of Ceaușescu gifted Steaua a powerful upper hand and fortunes swapped soon after.

With the army and the dictator as benefactors, many of the best young players joined Steaua for the many advantages of the club—not only better conditions and luxuries like television sets and video recorders but also a quite handy exemption from compulsory military service. And those players who didn’t come of their own free will came anyway. Steaua “borrowed” star player Gheorghe Hagi from FC Sportul Studențesc in 1987 and never returned him, despite his home club’s opposition. In 1988, Steaua didn’t even bother borrowing. They plucked Gheorghe Popescu from FC Universitatea Craiova with neither the club’s nor the player’s consent.

Also in 1988, Steaua and Dinamo faced off in the Romanian Cup. By this point Steaua had long been the dictatorship’s pet team. Tied 1-1 in the 90th minute, Steaua scored but the goal was disallowed as offside. Outraged, and perhaps slightly stunned at the referee’s audacity, Valentin Ceaușescu refused to play on and ordered his team back to the locker room. After they’d left the field, the referee gave the game and the trophy to Dinamo, by virtue of default.

The Minister of Sport instructed the media to report nothing. The next day, the referee recanted, declared the winning goal valid and Steaua got the trophy. All video of the match was destroyed. The referee and the offsides linesman were fired.

A happy ending for some, though probably not the referee and linesman, who likely have a few permanently damaged fingers, kneecaps or both.

Perhaps Ceaușescu’s small potatoes hometown village team Olt Scornicești best illustrates the state-soccer corruption connection and the absurdity and the totality of power possessed by the dictator. Adrift in the fourth tier of Romanian football in the late ‘70s, the team earned three promotions in three consecutive years. On the final day of the season before promotion to the top flight, the team had to beat Electrodul Slatina by a goal margin equal to or more than Flacara Moreni. Erroneously informed that Flacara Moreni were winning 9-0 (as opposed to the actual 3-0), with more than a slight touch of overkill, Ceaușescu’s team upped the ante and won 18-0. No use taking chances when goals come so easily. Finally, the team resembled one befitting the standing of the sitting dictator, order restored to the universe of the bizarro world. Furthermore, Ceaușescu built a 30,000 capacity stadium for Scornicești, despite the village being a third that size.

Beyond this classic, ridiculous case of miscommunication, the episode registers as a vintage example of sports corruption in the Soviet bloc. No phone line connected the two villages where Steaua and Flacara Moreni were playing, so men with hand radios stationed at intervals between the grounds relayed and garbled the score like Chinese whispers or plain old Telephone. (With all phones bugged, who dropped the ball on getting these villages on the telephone grid? It’s an issue of national security, after all.) After the referee blew for full-time and the teams filed off the pitch, he actually brought the teams back out for enough extra-special injury time in order for Olt Scornicești to bang in the goals they needed and rack up a monstrous tally to promotion. Scornicești scored once in the first half, 17 times in the “second half.”

(Sidenote on Scornicești coach Florin Halagian. He also employed such heartwarming antics as kicking underperforming players off the bus at away matches to find their own way home.)

By the end of the ‘80s, the jig was up for Nicolae and Elena and in December 1989 a populist uprising threw off the oppressive Ceaușescu regime. In the resulting proto-Saddam trial, Ceaușescu denounced the tribunal, trying to the last to intimidate, denying the court had any authority to try him for anything. After a hurry-up two hour trial and the foregone guilty verdict for genocide of ethnic Hungarians, corruption and more, he and Elena were shot. The moment, however, did not get recorded for posterity, even though the show trial was televised. One imagines it was some weird video format, anyhow, like a Betamax made by the folks at Yugo.

Apparently hundreds volunteered for the firing squad, but only three lucky comrades got the job, comrades so eager that they started firing as soon as the ex First Couple touched backs to wall. The video cameras hadn’t had time to start rolling before it was all over. Sadly, this dictatorial snuff film must ever remain incomplete.

And now Cluj is the nation’s team, with a definite chance of qualifying for the knockout stages of the Champions League. Poor Steaua. Dictators and their passing whims can be so quixotic, especially when they get executed.

For anyone interested, Scornicești long ago resettled back into the fourth tier of the Romanian leagues. Romanian match fixing apparently remains robust, but after the fall of the dictatorship, some things at least returned to normal.

Dictators and Soccer/Football:

Mobutu Sésé Seko (Zaïre)

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania)

Kim Jong-il (North Korea)

Pope Benedict XVI (Vatican City)

https://twitter.com/tyrannosoccer

https://www.facebook.com/DictatorsAndSoccer

Africa Commentary History Long Reads

Dictators and Soccer: Mobutu Sésé Seko of Zaïre

October 29, 2012 — by Rob Kirby — 3

2d-zaccour-pele-mobutufull-size-e1351557014428-1024x778.jpg

[Editor’s note: This was the inaugural installment in what’s become an ongoing Dictators and Soccer series. See also subsequent articles on Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, Kim Jong-il and North Korea (or Football, Famine and Giant Rabbits), and Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican City. Stay tuned for Col. Gaddafi]

In 1974 the ex-colonial and newly named Zaïre played its first World Cup in West Germany. The country’s diminutive strongman Mobutu Sésé Seko, famous for his trademark leopard-print pillbox hat, had rechristened the Lions the Leopards. (Consistency is key in propaganda.) He had convinced himself that Zaïrean soccer could further elevate his own stature. He liked elevating himself and he liked renaming things. He’d re-minted the country from Congo Crisis First Republic (formerly The Belgian Congo) to Zaïre, which translated to, “The river that swallows other rivers.” He fully intended to hoover up every power and exploit every possibility. He’d already outlawed all political parties except his own, and outlawed all wearing of leopard-print hats, except of course his own.

A huge fan of the cult of personality concept, he’d previously changed his own name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sésé Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, or “The All-Conquering Warrior, Who Goes from Triumph to Triumph.” Clearly, Mobutu would accept nothing less than glorious triumph. Some translate the phrase as, “The Cock That Leaves No Hen Unruffled,” in reference to his boasted sexual prowess. (It’s odd how one long phrase could mean both, but Mobutu was an inscrutable master in the arts of naming and renaming.) He also went by the names “The Big Man,” “The Leopard” and, most humbly, “The Messiah.” Mobutu and his female companions took frequent shopping trips to Paris and Brussels by Concorde. (These female companions included his first wife Marie-Antoinette, his second wife Bobi and his mistress, somewhat creepily Bobi’s identical twin sister.)

Known more for plundering the treasury, pocketing $46 billion in foreign aid and trampling the rights of his people than bestowing gifts upon the people, he surprised everyone by inviting the soccer players to his presidential palace and giving each a house and car, upon qualifying for the tournament. Fake it to make it. Spend money to make money. He had similarly exhibited a shrewd marketing mind in teaming with Don King and fronting the $10 million outlay for Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle with George Foreman in 1974.

Of Mobutu and Zaïre, Ali famously said, “Some countries go to war to get their names out there, and wars cost a lot more than $10 million.” When Muhammad Ali praises your image technique, you know you’re on the right track.

As part of said propaganda campaign, law dictated every public building must hang Mobutu’s picture somewhere. The evening news showed a spectral image of him arriving to Earth on a sort of magic carpet of pillowy clouds. Only his name could be spoken, and the TV really just largely reported supernatural feats of Mobutu’s, such as killing a lion with bare hands at age 7, or how bullets and spears would deflect off his bare chest as if he were made of adamantium.

But back to soccer in contact with Mobutu’s relentless ambition. With the boxing match set for October 1974, and with summer generally preceding fall, Mobutu first demanded greatness in the 1974 World Cup. Zaïre had just won the 1974 African Cup of Nations, they were sub-Saharan Africa’s celebrity squad and greatness seemed within their grasp. Only it didn’t quite work out that way for the first all-black African team in the tournament.

In the first group stage match, Zaïre lost to Scotland 2-0. No catastrophe there. The 9-0 mauling from Yugoslavia the next match smarted somewhat more. The night before its third match versus reigning champions Brazil, Mobutu sent presidential guards to threaten the players, saying if they lost 4-0, there would be hell to pay. Forget 4-0, a double-digit scoreline seemed more likely—even without Pelé, Brazil was still Brazil, and the team packed legends such as Rivelino, Jairzinho and Edu. Fortunately, Zaïre escaped with merely a 3-0 hiding. Bizarrely, as Rivelino lined up to take a Brazil free kick 30 yards from the Zaïre goal with five minutes to go, one of the Zaïreans burst from the defensive wall and hoofed it downfield. He got a yellow card. He probably preferred West German jail time with some remote possibility of defection.

Zero goals scored, 14 conceded. One of the weirdest free kick moments ever. The players understandably did not relish their homecoming. Mobutu may have looked playfully cartoonish in his leopard print, but in his daily dictatorship duties, coldblooded cruelty defined his persona much more accurately.

Six years previous, in 1968, when the Leopards had won the African Cup of Nations, the homecoming was vintage bizarre Mobutu. Garlanded with flowers, players disembarked the plane wearing large white boards hung around their necks, their names printed on the unwieldy semi-sandwich boards. Afterwards, Mobutu had invited Pelé and Brazilian club team Santos for exhibition matches in Zaïre and elsewhere, introduced the the teams in lavish PR grandstands and it was officially football fever.

Such was not the case in post-defeat 1974. The stadia at the World Cup may have featured slogans on expensive advertising boards proclaiming “Zaïre – Peace” and “Go to Zaïre,” but returning players would be excused for not dying to go back to Zaïre and the alleged peace that awaited. One thing that did not await at the airport in Kinshasa, the capital, however, was any sort of welcome committee or transportation. Players had to cadge rides from sympathetic cab drivers, as they had no money. Officials from the Zaïre football federation had apparently appropriated players’ wages for themselves.

“We got back home without a penny in our pockets.” Leopards star Ilunga Mwepu (the guy who beat Brazil to the free kick, from the wrong direction) told the BBC in 2002, “but we had the erroneous belief that we would returning from the World Cup as millionaires.” He claimed he intentionally took the kick to get sent off in protest against Mobutu, the strongarm tactics and the (correct) suspicion that the players would not get paid. Others say he didn’t know the rules, which seems pretty ridiculous since he was a professional soccer player.

The rumor mill says that Mobutu dressed down the players in no uncertain terms the following day, and everyone not wearing a leopard-skin hat slunk off with a sort of bad omen clinging to them that more than a few would have interpreted as of premonition of death. The country’s best players like Mwepu were forbidden to seek out pastures new in other countries, toiling away in the country’s barely remunerative home league. This included all the recently repatriated Belgian Congo-born players playing in Belgium that Mobutu hoodwinked into returning home. The country withdrew from 1978 World Cup qualification and Mobutu washed his hands of the miserable affair.

It’s not a happy story. So we’ll end with a little random factoid. Mobutu played goalkeeper for his Catholic high school in the ’30s until he got kicked out for chasing the drinks and ladies of Leopoldville, the town that in his later renaming frenzy he would one day call Kinshasa, where it’s sometimes hard to get a ride home from the airport. By Belgian Congo law, getting kicked out meant he had to join the army, which is ultimately how he seized power.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (*breath*…the country’s current name) will play in the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations. Hopefully post-Mobutu, who was overthrown in 1997, the DR Congo has a shot to return triumphs again to the beleaguered nation. (In the knockout qualification round, they beat Equatorial Guinea, one of last year’s co-hosts and the subject of an upcoming Dictators and Soccer installment. Two Equatorial Guinea dictators, uncle and nephew, occasionally included soccer in their nefarious plots, not least in suppressing freedom of the foreign press in the 2012 Africa Cup of Nations, or when the uncle assembled 150 political opponents in a soccer stadium and had them all shot. To read about Nicolae Ceaușescu, match fixer, see here.)

A 2010 documentary Between the Cup and the Election chronicles a reunion of the ’74 Leopards, with a walk down memory lane in “The Leopard Neighborhood,” where Mobutu had gifted some the houses they later had to sell to survive. Good times, golden memories.

Dictators and Soccer/Football:

Mobutu Sésé Seko (Zaïre)

Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania)

Kim Jong-il (North Korea)

Pope Benedict XVI (Vatican City)

https://twitter.com/tyrannosoccer

https://www.facebook.com/DictatorsAndSoccer

Commentary England

Southampton Preview, Liverpool Postview

September 14, 2012 — by Rob Kirby

In the 2-0 win away at Anfield almost a fortnight back, Santi Cazorla and Lukas Podolski scored their first goals for Arsenal. Important for them, important for us. The two goals represent our only goals post-Robin van Persie, period. In other words, we broke some ducks and flung some annoying monkeys off our backs.

So, we’ve put the dubious record of longest scoreless start to a season to bed. Now we can focus instead on the far better record–match minutes without conceding a goal. So far, three games and counting. Arsenal is the only team in the top four divisions of English soccer to have yet to concede a goal.

After the away trip to Liverpool came two weeks of international break for some World Cup qualifiers. As usual, it kind of killed the mood and players came back injured.

This time last year, we welcomed the international break. On the heels of the 8-2 mauling at Old Trafford, it came at just the right moment for licking wounds. Comparatively, this particular go-round had less to recommend it. We went into the international break having a one match “winning streak.” It was not a run. Nor did it stop a slide of calamitously bad form. It was simply what it was and mostly just got in the way. Fans had to find new, potentially worthwhile activities on Saturday and Sunday. These things happen.

To remind, then, where we left off two weeks’ back, we’ve picked up 5 points in three matches and we have an eminently winnable match at home against Southampton. At Anfield, Podolski and Cazorla notched a goal and an assist apiece (reciprocal assists to one another). Olivier Giroud came close and still looks just one small opportunity away from joining them in the Goals Scored column. It should be noted that Giroud’s movement, pulling Skrtel off Cazorla, factored largely in the first goal against Liverpool. Giroud didn’t score, but he helped it happen. He enabled Cazorla the space to deliver the ball back to Podolski for the match winner.

The defense has undergone a sea change from a year ago. New assistant coach Steve Bould seems to be having a huge effect. Perhaps the players are channeling the defensive nous of his player days. Perhaps a full year together has made everything click. Perhaps the back 4 had it in them all along. Whatever it is, it’s working. Long may it continue. Considering Sagna’s still out, Mannone filled in for Szczesny for the past two matches and Koscielny has yet to start a game this season, it’s pretty impressive.

After the match, people heaped praise on the defense, quite legitimately. The midfield also received a fair amount of plaudits, similarly legitimately. Abou Diaby had perhaps his best match in an Arsenal shirt, integral both defensively and offensively. Mikel Arteta covered whenever Diaby went forward and otherwise stifled the forward action of the Liverpool offense. The clean sheets have as much to do with Arteta’s immaculate defensive work as anyone in the back four. And Cazorla pulled off the string pulling in midfield we’ve lacked since Cesc’s last outing with us. He scored, threaded balls through the opposition and generally ran the pitch from side to side, back to front. He was fantastic. Giroud chose a good season to come to Arsenal. Cazorla will give him the chances he needs to get to scoring.

For the first time, watching Arsenal’s defense doesn’t terrify. Last season and in seasons past, one felt Arsenal could and would concede at any moment. So far this season, that feeling has retreated somewhat. Three matches is too soon to declare a defense unassailable, but for something that used to be our weakest area to now be an area of strength? This is good.

Tomorrow, Southampton at the Emirates. With a home match against a recently promoted side, one normally expects nothing less than three points. However, considering we dropped points to all the promoted teams last season, perhaps we need to rethink our approach. For several seasons we’ve sloppily dropped points against bottom table teams and eventually relegated teams, which speaks to a mental weakness against lower-rated teams that essentially equates to “show up, clock in, collect.” The team has to do something in between clock in and collect. No points are gimmes, and trite as it may sound, there are no easy matches in the Premier League.

On top of which, Southampton doesn’t seem like a pushover. They have had a hellish draw to begin the season, but they came very close to beating both Manchester clubs. In their place would we have done as well? Far from certain. Against Wigan they failed to perform, so hopefully we’ll see that team instead of the one that took the lead over both of the Manchester monsters.

Speaking of Manchester United, in the match televised directly following the Liverpool-Arsenal matchup on that day so very long ago, United looked at risk of losing to Southampton until van Persie put it into turbo and racked up a classic hat trick. RvP ‘s goals looked inevitable, with him picking up exactly where he left off last season. Antonio Valencia delivered a great across-goal cross that he slammed in. For the second, a quick-reflex poacher goal. Then the header for the hat trick.

It seemed totally natural to see him kicking ass and in fine fettle. And then the camera panned back to show the United jersey against a sea of United fans. Much less cool. And now, the Dutch return him injured, just as they did time and time again with us. I never cheer an injury to a player, and I don’t intend to do so now. I feel bad for Robin, but half the time he joins the Dutch national team, he returns carrying some new injury. He should really stop joining the national team.

As for injury news involving an actual current player, France selected Diaby on the strength of his fantastic display at Anfield and he returns to us injured, though it’s reported to be minor and short-term. (Aren’t they always, though?) One imagines this will give Francis Coquelin his first start of the season and move Arteta further forward. Wenger wouldn’t have taken it for granted that Diaby would stay fit until Jack Wilshere’s mythical return, so Saturday’s selection will reveal who he’s had in mind since the decision to sell but not replace Alex Song.

As a small subplot to the proceedings, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott face their former club. Theo missed the England versus Ukraine qualifier due to a virus, so his fitness is uncertain, but Oxlade-Chamberlain would likely get at least a substitute appearance, if not a starting berth. It’ll be interesting to see how the Southampton away support take to their former academy prodigies. The Guardian had a great article on the current Southampton academy today, incidentally.

Here’s to three points and a clean sheet tomorrow. And a goal for the front Frenchman. It can’t be fun getting likened to Chamakh all the time. Let’s let the man return back to his former club with at least one goal under his belt. (Arsenal travels to Montpellier for the Champions League on Tuesday, before a trip to the Etihad against Manchester City in the domestic league a week from Sunday. We’ve got an important stretch ahead.)

Commentary England Preview

Ducks To Shatter To Duck Dust At Anfield; Liverpool Preview, Stoke Post Mortem

August 31, 2012 — by Rob Kirby — 5

Arsenal has a crunch match against Liverpool up at Anfield on Sunday (8:30 EST, Fox Soccer Channel). Both teams have yet to win a game this season, although it’s not quite crisis intervention time, as it’s only the third game in. Still, Arsenal has yet to score a goal, which is worrying since we just sold the player who scored 40% of our goals last season. Coupled with that, we sold the one who provided the most assists. Also, Liverpool nearly beat the champions last weekend in their 2-2 home draw with Manchester City. I don’t know that we could have done the same. In fact, I’m pretty sure we couldn’t. However, I don’t know that Liverpool could do so again, either.

Liverpool get Daniel Agger back from suspension, while reports have Laurent Koscielny in contention to return to the central defence, with Wojciech Szczesny facing a fitness test on Saturday. Liverpool have bolstered their ranks with the likes of the impressive Joe Allen (Brendan Rodgers’ playmaker at Swansea) and almost-Gunner Nuri Sahin, on loan from Madrid. More on Sahin to follow. They’ve also shipped out Charlie Adam to Stoke and loaned Jay Spearing to Bolton, Andy Carroll to West Ham. As a team stacked with dead wood ourselves, we could learn a thing or two there. But surely they can’t dislike Adam so much as to subject him to the knuckledraggers at Stoke.

Arsenal embark on a tough stretch of sorts. After Liverpool, we get a potential breather against Southampton at home, yet whenever we think we’ve got it in the bag, we blow it. Next we travel to the Eithad to play City and all our former players, swiftly followed by Chelsea at home. That would be the Chelsea of Hazard, Oscar, Mata and more. The team that’s been kicking ass while we’ve gone goalless. The team stacked with all the young stars we missed out on. Damn you, Chelsea and your 2012 Champions League medal and your sesquiquintillion quadrillions!

Of these four, most would expect us to get three points against Southampton, but to do that we will have to actually score. And even if we’re thinking we’ll scoreless-draw our way through the season (Invincibles Mk II), that would assume our “watertight” defense will hold up forever. We conceded 49 goals last season and have brought in no new defenders. We sold Alex Song to Barcelona. Everyone in the back 5 has another year under their belt, which is great and commendable and tentatively encouraging, but without a total rethink, the defensive coaching nous of Steve Bould can only go so far.

Anyhoo, let’s put it in perspective. Rewind a year and you’ll clearly see the comparatively kickass position in which we currently find ourselves. Not so much because now is so kickass, but this time last year we were bodyslammed into the deepest nadir in modern memory.

Favorite son Cesc Fabregas had just left, talented ugly stepchild Samir Nasri edged as close to the exit as humanly possible, essentially melding into the exit as he crammed into the tiny space at the threshold. Wilshere had injured his Achilles in the meaningless Emirates Cup. We’d drawn against Newcastle, which saw Gervinho get sent off and a three match ban for Song in light of video replay. We had then proceeded to lose 2-0 to Liverpool at home, Emmanuel Frimpong shown red and sent off. None of the transfer-deadline reinforcements had arrived. We relied on Robin van Persie, Mr. Glass, to stay fit for the season, which anyone could tell you was stupidity meets crazy talk (and yet it came to pass…). For Manchester United, like tomorrow, the third match of the season, Arsene was selecting players we’d never heard of from the academy to deputize: Nico Yennaris, Ignasi Miquel, Francis Coquelin, etc. Carl Jenkinson was playing in the Premier League for the first time. Armand Traore was one of our “experienced heads” at the back. And for good measure, Wenger threw on Oxlade-Chamberlain for an ill-timed debut, chucked onto the park for a trial by inferno fire as we were well into the the calamitous, humiliating 8-2 mega mauling at Old Trafford.

So, a year on and it’s looking a bit better, yes? We’re in the enviable position of staying on track for an undefeated season, having kept clean sheets in every game thus far. Okay, but in seriousness, the defense is looking better, especially factoring in the return of Koscielny and Szczesny. Well done to Vito Mannone at Stoke, incidentally. First time he didn’t cock it all up and make it go all pear shaped (I read too many British sites). That said, please return to the bench now, Vito.

We’ve lost two of our three best players for the second year running, except we opted not to wait until deadline day with the shadow of the executioner’s blade hovering above throughout the month of August. “Panic buy” Mikel Arteta has us rethinking how a midfield three can go about its defensive duties with precision tackling in a small form factor as opposed to brute force. Panic purchase Per Mertesacker, accused of being too slow, ponderous and clumsy, has combined with captain Thomas Vermaelen to shut down the opposition goal spree, meaning that to match last year’s total, we’ll need to ship 49 goals in the remaining 36 matches, as opposed to amortizing the lot over 38.

Last weekend, Stoke resumed booing Aaron Ramsey for intentionally inserting his leg in the exact spot where Ryan Shawcross was innocently sliding along with his feet out, breaking Ramsey’s leg all over the hills and valleys of the Brittania pitch in 2010. The ingrate got stretchered off and didn’t think twice about the mess of bone fragments and blood he’d strewn all over the grass.

As for no goals yet this season, it is easy, simplistic and relatively accurate to point to the sale of Robin van Persie. However, Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud each moved closer to “breaking their duck,” “getting off the mark” and/or “opening their Arsenal account.” Insert appropriate Britishism for scoring one’s first goal. Yet you never hear of cherries popped. So prim.

The offense hasn’t yet totally clicked, but regardless the 5’6 Santi Cazorla has shined most gleamingly since season’s start. Imagine how he’ll look when all the pistons are firing. Cazorla in particular seems the best signing we’ve made in more or less forever. Both he and Mikel Arteta, only slightly less close to the ground, dealt with the physicality of Stoke excellently, proving that positioning can indeed be more important than thuggery. The only drawback is that Arteta is so dependable and consistent that we want him in more forward positions, especially if we’re looking to smash ducks.

During his Everton days, Arteta always looked technically gifted and dangerous in the final third, with several goals and excellent assists. Last season with us, he played a more restrained and disciplined role, steady midfield presence distributing forward with passing precision (completion percentage usually 90% or higher).

While the back four looked solid, if not quite ironclad watertight, Arteta may deserve the most credit for our two clean sheets. We’ve hobbled him with regard to goal-scoring possibilities, but with his tactical positioning and determination to win the ball–four interceptions against Sunderland, three against Stoke–his lack of imposing physical dominance is overcome by his smart play and well-timed challenges, he’s proving a better defensive midfielder than Song. It would be terrific if Diaby could be doing that, though, in order to free Arteta for his ball distribution talents and linkup with Cazorla. Seeing them together makes you wonder how much better we would have fared with Fabregas and Arteta together, or perhaps Fabregas and Xabi Alonso a few years earlier. Alas, roads not taken, lives not lived.

Abou Diaby killed the momentum at times, not least of which at the edge of the 6-yard box where he spurned the opportunity for a match winner. His performance reminded fans that he’s not (always) a bad player when actually playing, and two games on the trot for a man with his injury record is promising. I write this tentatively and with fingers quintuple crossed. (Single-finger typing.)

Both fullbacks did well, largely due to good cover from Arteta. Carl Jenkinson will need to continue to do so until Bacary Sagna’s fit again, barring a late transfer on that front. On the left, Kieran Gibbs has done well to solidify his place in front of that cuddly Brazilian jokester with a penchant for high-speed chases.

The team is slowly coming together. Giroud looked robust and every bit his reported 6’4 as he repelled the dirty tactics and refused to get pushed around Stoke, which was excellent to see. He looked generally much more in his element than in the opening day match against Sunderland. Podolski nearly decimated his duck, etc., until a short-range shot got blocked by a handy Stoke arm. Penalty award denied.

Giroud will score, and once he does, he’ll continue the trend. It took Thierry Henry nine games before he first scored, and things seemed to go relatively okay for him in the long run. Giroud came within inches of sailing a wonder strike over Begovic’s head and into goal from 40 yards, which would have been insane. You could point out that passing to Ramsey would have been the better choice, but that seems a bit churlish.

Despite two underwhelming 0-0 draws, a point at Stoke is not a bad result. The same can’t be said for Sunderland. Ultimately, Arsenal has two points. One could also look at it as four points dropped against mid table teams, but again, churlish.

As for the fates of Gervinho, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Theo Walcott, if Podolski locks down his spot on the left wing with Giroud central, Gervinho and Walcott will probably battle for the wide right, with the Ox more likely in the central midfield, which Wenger has previously specified as his ultimate destination. This creates a rich midfield choice of Cazorla, Arteta, Ramsey, Diaby, and Wilshere and Tomas Rosicky when again fit, as well as former academy kids Coquelin, Frimpong and potentially Yennaris, unless he’s slotted for fullback cover. Sahin might have added yet more, but such was not to be.

Which brings us to a meditation on the misleading “Liverpool beat Arsenal to Sahin” headlines. We were in pole position and we elected to not take him on loan, given his wage demands (£120,000 a week), the couple million loan fee and non-option to buy at the end of the season. Liverpool conceded on every demand and landed the player. They pay a heavy price for the ability to make him a better player for Real Madrid, at the expense of blocking in-team personnel or directing those funds on a new player who’s actually theirs. If Liverpool had succeeded in getting him for the terms we were after, that would be like for like. They did not. In reality, he chose Real Madrid over Arsenal, as would just about any player. Sahin is a great player and will improve Liverpool, no doubt. They are paying a not inconsiderable price for one season of his services, however.

After the post-match handshake Tony Pulis jogged across the pitch with a shit-eating grin on his face, clearly pleased with whatever he’d said to Wenger. He claims in the media that he is powerless to stop Stoke fans from booing Ramsey, yet he has never tried. He constantly talks about how hard it was for the player—Ryan Shawcross, not Ramsey—and praises Shawcross’ bravery in soldiering on (uninjured). While Ramsey lay in bed for a year, Shawcross drew a line under the (for him) difficult incident. Pulis rewarded him with the captainship for this bravery.

The match Sunday could be great. Let’s hope that it is, to the tune of a goal bonanza. In our favor, to clarify.

Commentary England transfers

Late-Breaking Walcott Defection

August 29, 2012 — by Rob Kirby

For my first Arsenal match in August 2006, covered in the 10 am yell spit and spilled beers of fellow patrons at Nevada Smith’s in New York, I saw Robin van Persie and Theo Walcott come on as subs after Thierry Henry had done something or other phenomenal. My buddy Roland, who deserves all the blame for me being a Gunner, had filled me in on the Walcott World Cup call up fiasco and considered van Persie his favorite player. I was intrigued to see RvP play, and he pulled off an incredible shot on goal within minutes. Walcott did not. But then, he was still 16 at the time.

Van Persie now seems as if he’s been off for ages, though it’s only been a couple weeks and we will face him domestically for seasons to come. Alex Song’s deal transpired in seemingly days, though the recriminations linger on from his camp. And now 48 hours before the transfer deadline, Walcott looks to be off as well, unless he gets a substantial pay packet increase. We’ve offered a deal worth £75,000 a week, he’s currently on £60,000 a week, and he wants £100,000 a week. Arsenal do not believe he yet merits 100K, relative to the levels he has so far achieved (or failed to achieve) at the club in 222 first team appearances. We’ve got 48 hours to decide. If he doesn’t sign for us or someone else before the close of the transfer window, he leaves for free in June. We paid close to £10 million in 2006. Zero compensation doesn’t sit well with the accountants and 48 hours is neither much time to arrange a deal nor much time to arrange for a suitable replacement.

Walcott has shown “consistency in patches” (his words) and flashes of genius. Rare, yes, ephemeral, but still. The pain in the ass about the Theo contract non-extension is that no one would be broken up about the current version of the player leaving. He can sprint but otherwise he has a limited number of actual soccer-related tricks up his sleeve. Primarily the exit fear comes from the possibility that he’ll finally achieve his true potential in a different uniform. But currently, no, he doesn’t deserve what he’s demanding. He hopes to earn the highest wages at the club. It looks as if he won’t. But will we get an acceptable bid with next to no time remaining? Not looking promising, you’d have to say. Clearly, the timing of the refusal was engineered for Theo’s benefit alone. He will almost certainly leave and Arsenal will almost certainly get short-changed in the rush deal. At least RvP pitched his fake-pally public fit with enough time to deal with it.

This month, we’ve lost two of our best players to Manchester United and Barcelona, respectively. That makes two summers in a row, after two of the three best exited for Manchester City and Barcelona, respectively, last year. (We also sold Gaël Clichy to Manchester City, but no big deal there, since end-product-wise he mainly channeled ex-Gunner Alex Hleb, except Hleb could put in a better cross.) The summer before that, our for-one-season-only top scorer Emmanuel Adebayor pimped himself out to City. The summer before that, the stalwart (and alone of them all, non-money-grubbing) centerback Kolo Toure got free of William Gallas by heading to City. And before that, our all-time leading scorer Thierry Henry floated over to Barcelona. But at least we later suckered Barcelona with Hleb. Ha-ha.

When we want to see former players, whether in away fixtures or simply for social calls, luckily we can just visit two principal cities. Manchester and Barcelona. Early reports peg Walcott for City, naturally, since they’ve got more than enough money, despite the fact that they’ve got far better personnel in his position. But that, as they say, is not our problem. Perhaps someone just forgot to update the Arsenal to City multiple-use media template. The other main mooted destination, Liverpool, makes more sense, because their wingers need help. Chelsea’s name pops up, as well, but that seems unlikely. Why would they downgrade? Hazard, Oscar, Mata and … the headless sprinting chicken. But a clean-cut, very marketable because English-born, speedy headless chicken.

We can either go with the hysteria cue or take a more measured approach. Let’s do the latter.

In the past 14 months, we’ve lost two world class players, Robin van Persie and Cesc Fabregas. The next level down, Samir Nasri. Another level down, Alex Song. Level down again, Walcott and Clichy.

In the meantime, we’ve strengthened with Santi Cazorla, who’s definitely world class. Next level down, Lukas Podolski, Olivier Giroud and Mikel Arteta. We’ve brought in future bright lights in Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and possibly Ryo Miyaichi. Andre Santos, Per Mertesacker and Gervinho can each put in a solid shift on their day. And from the academy, Ignasi Miquel, Francis Coquelin, Nico Yennaris and Emmanuel Frimpong. Meanwhile, Kieran Gibbs is at least as good as Clichy, whose main strength was resistance to injury, so perhaps we’re even there. And one day, our young savior Jack Wilshere may reenter the mix matrix.

Much could happen in the next 48 hours, even though reinforcements may not be forthcoming. At the very least, one would hope the “exodus” will include the dead weight we’ve been trying to unload all summer: Nicklas Bendtner, Park Ju Yung, Marouane Chamakh, Andrey Arshavin, Denilson and so on.

Back to Theo. He has long divided opinion, but the contract rejection couldn’t come at a worse time, not least from an “Arsenal are a selling club” PR point of view. To avoid losing him on a free, we have a grand total of two days to move him on before the close of the transfer window. Deja vu in everyday life can sometimes be interesting, but in Arsenal transfer dealings it’s a horrible, horrible thing.

Newer Posts Older Posts