The BBC have just announced that they have secured the same TV package that they have now for another four years which means more of Hansen, Lawrenson, Shearer and Lineker moans and sarcasm.
The reason why I mention this is because of course the season has just finished so no more Match of the Day until August. So, I thought that I would make up for it with a good old rant of the day to take its place seeing as right now it is Saturday evening when the programme would normally be on . It is possible that this rant is going to be affected by the weather because in the UK right now we are having a very warm snap. No time to even adjust – it has just gone from three months of rain and cold (and winter was before that) to just hot and humid.
So seeing as I started on the subject of Saturday night TV that is where the initial part of this rant is going to take me. In the UK there are two major free to watch TV channels and they are the BBC and ITV. There are others such Channels 4 and 5 and others if you have a digi-box but these are the big two. On the BBC all night long we had the Eurovision Song Contest (more on that in a bit) and on ITV the live friendly game between Norway and England. After the game was the news and after that was guess what? Highlights of the same bloody match!
I understand the need to show the England matches live but lets get this into perspective – it was a “friendly” - who cares! Yes, it was new England manager Roy Hodgson's first game in charge – so what? Then we see the team and some of the players included in the line-up are not even in the squad for Euro 2012 – what is that all about? There is another England friendly or “warm up game” next Saturday before the team fly out to Poland – and play their games in Ukraine (doh!) which I have written about before. Next Saturday England are playing Belgium. So is there any reason for the selection of Norway and Belgium? The so-called experts will say most definitely as England's group includes Sweden (Scandinavian connection) and France which of course borders Belgium. So are they trying to tell us that by playing Norway we will learn something about playing Sweden and by playing Belgium it will us when we play France?
Friendlies as they are right now should just be banned – period. I can understand the need for warm up matches to get the squad functioning together but why not play them behind closed doors on the training fields? We, as the viewing public gain nothing by watching them at all. A team that lets say has six friendlies and wins them all 5-0 could still very easily go into a tournament and lose every game – England at times have been past masters at this. I also do not want to hear this crap about players needing to play in front of crowds to get used to it – we are talking about the cream of England's players here that are used to playing in front of big crowds at stadiums such as Old Trafford, Anfield and in fact every other stadium in both the Premier League and probably most of the Championship than were present in the game at Norway.
The reason why I mention this is because of course the season has just finished so no more Match of the Day until August. So, I thought that I would make up for it with a good old rant of the day to take its place seeing as right now it is Saturday evening when the programme would normally be on . It is possible that this rant is going to be affected by the weather because in the UK right now we are having a very warm snap. No time to even adjust – it has just gone from three months of rain and cold (and winter was before that) to just hot and humid.
So seeing as I started on the subject of Saturday night TV that is where the initial part of this rant is going to take me. In the UK there are two major free to watch TV channels and they are the BBC and ITV. There are others such Channels 4 and 5 and others if you have a digi-box but these are the big two. On the BBC all night long we had the Eurovision Song Contest (more on that in a bit) and on ITV the live friendly game between Norway and England. After the game was the news and after that was guess what? Highlights of the same bloody match!
I understand the need to show the England matches live but lets get this into perspective – it was a “friendly” - who cares! Yes, it was new England manager Roy Hodgson's first game in charge – so what? Then we see the team and some of the players included in the line-up are not even in the squad for Euro 2012 – what is that all about? There is another England friendly or “warm up game” next Saturday before the team fly out to Poland – and play their games in Ukraine (doh!) which I have written about before. Next Saturday England are playing Belgium. So is there any reason for the selection of Norway and Belgium? The so-called experts will say most definitely as England's group includes Sweden (Scandinavian connection) and France which of course borders Belgium. So are they trying to tell us that by playing Norway we will learn something about playing Sweden and by playing Belgium it will us when we play France?
Friendlies as they are right now should just be banned – period. I can understand the need for warm up matches to get the squad functioning together but why not play them behind closed doors on the training fields? We, as the viewing public gain nothing by watching them at all. A team that lets say has six friendlies and wins them all 5-0 could still very easily go into a tournament and lose every game – England at times have been past masters at this. I also do not want to hear this crap about players needing to play in front of crowds to get used to it – we are talking about the cream of England's players here that are used to playing in front of big crowds at stadiums such as Old Trafford, Anfield and in fact every other stadium in both the Premier League and probably most of the Championship than were present in the game at Norway.
Is this rant happening because of events at Wembley this afternoon because the team that I follow lost in the play-off final to Huddersfield? Read my previous article on this page and you will see that I actually predicted what would happen. The Blades had no real goal threat and were beaten by the better side. The fact that it went to penalties was the nearest we have come to winning one of these damn play-offs and we are still to score a goal (apart from the ones scored in the shoot-out). For Huddersfield to miss their first three penalties then surely whoever the opposition are they are going to take advantage of this and win – not our boys! What is even more concerning is the fact that the five elected kickers for both teams contained players that took the worst spot kicks amongst every other player in both teams. When it went to sudden death, both teams – now using the other players that I guess did not want to be selected originally stepped up and delivered with perfect precision. For it to go to the two keepers to decide the fate of promotion really hurts. Neither keeper could have ever guessed that they would be taking a spot-kick themselves. Of course they scored and we missed and for once I am not blaming a player for blazing a ball over the cross-bar – he was our goalkeeper, for him it is most natural thing to do when striking the ball hard is to see it elevate quickly. It was a shockingly bad game and yes the heat did play a factor for sure but to decide a play-off on penalties is as bad as deciding the Champions League Final on them if not worse. Next season we will welcome Crawley Town to Bramall Lane where as Huddersfield will entertain the likes of Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Blackburn and Wolves to name a few.
It is rather ironic that “God” should mention penalty kicks in these past few days shortly after Chelsea's triumph last weekend. I wonder if also knows that their ladies team lost in their FA Cup Final today to Birmingham on penalties as well. I am of course talking about none other than Sepp Blatter who suddenly asked for help in trying to think of other ways in ending the game other than this cruel way. I have already read some crazy and not too serious ideas elsewhere but the answer is so simple, it has been talked about before but never implemented – I do not know why.
I am not talking about American style shoot-outs where the players have ten seconds to score and start by dribbling the ball from the half-way line. I am not talking about corner counts, possession percentages or even silver or golden goals.
The only way to do this and make it so the game finishes with the players playing the game and one where is a decisive result at the end of extra time is to make the players take penalties at the end of 90 minutes should the scores be level. Call it what you will – a half a goal if you like but it then means that entering extra time the two teams can never be level again and once the 120 minutes is up we have a winner. Just to make it more clear if you are not getting this concept just yet and I will use today's game as an example. At 90 minutes Huddersfield and Sheffield United are level at 0-0. The full time whistle blows and immediately the penalty shoot-out takes place. Huddersfield win the shoot-out and therefore now technically half a goal up going into extra time. If the Blades were then to score in extra time they would then be half a goal up but the two sides could never again be level and when the final whistle goes the game is finished as a normal match and not without a penalty shoot-out. It would also change the pattern of the game. United would go into extra time now knowing that they must score to win the match. If Huddersfield score they have to score twice.
Is this so plainly simple and obvious? Why does it feel that I am the only one seeing this? I am sure if you asked most football fans if they preferred this outcome they would say yes. It would certainly make extra time a lot more exciting as you could no longer have a position where a team is playing for penalties and one team is always going to be on the back foot with the other desperate to score.
It is rather ironic that “God” should mention penalty kicks in these past few days shortly after Chelsea's triumph last weekend. I wonder if also knows that their ladies team lost in their FA Cup Final today to Birmingham on penalties as well. I am of course talking about none other than Sepp Blatter who suddenly asked for help in trying to think of other ways in ending the game other than this cruel way. I have already read some crazy and not too serious ideas elsewhere but the answer is so simple, it has been talked about before but never implemented – I do not know why.
I am not talking about American style shoot-outs where the players have ten seconds to score and start by dribbling the ball from the half-way line. I am not talking about corner counts, possession percentages or even silver or golden goals.
The only way to do this and make it so the game finishes with the players playing the game and one where is a decisive result at the end of extra time is to make the players take penalties at the end of 90 minutes should the scores be level. Call it what you will – a half a goal if you like but it then means that entering extra time the two teams can never be level again and once the 120 minutes is up we have a winner. Just to make it more clear if you are not getting this concept just yet and I will use today's game as an example. At 90 minutes Huddersfield and Sheffield United are level at 0-0. The full time whistle blows and immediately the penalty shoot-out takes place. Huddersfield win the shoot-out and therefore now technically half a goal up going into extra time. If the Blades were then to score in extra time they would then be half a goal up but the two sides could never again be level and when the final whistle goes the game is finished as a normal match and not without a penalty shoot-out. It would also change the pattern of the game. United would go into extra time now knowing that they must score to win the match. If Huddersfield score they have to score twice.
Is this so plainly simple and obvious? Why does it feel that I am the only one seeing this? I am sure if you asked most football fans if they preferred this outcome they would say yes. It would certainly make extra time a lot more exciting as you could no longer have a position where a team is playing for penalties and one team is always going to be on the back foot with the other desperate to score.
Coming back to our TV schedule tonight – if you have the pleasure of NOT living anywhere in Europe then you may well have escaped the most corrupt annual show that has been on TV here since I can remember. Unless one day they decide to change it from Eurovision to “Worldvision” you are the lucky ones.
For those of you reading this you have not got a clue what I am talking about let me give you a brief fill in and what we suffer that makes me embarrassed to be classified as a “European” these days.
In essence, this is a TV show which is a song contest. It is all supposed to be about the song, not who is singing and how pretty she is or which country she is representing. With 25 nations competing in the final (we even have semi-finals now because we have so many countries now with all the break-ups of the former Soviet republics and Baltic States) so we have to suffer for the first three hours song after song being sung by each of the countries in the final.
In general, I do not even watch this part of the show although I did catch a glimpse of what looked like five very elderly ladies dressed up deliberately as old spinsters that were representing Russia of all countries – it was quite unbelievable. The last hour of the show is the bit that needs to be watched and even though it remains cringe-worthy in more ways than one. After the last song has been performed there is a period in the show where the audience are entertained and all of Europe is now voting for their favourite “song”. The golden rule here is that for example if I rang up to vote living in the UK I can vote for whoever I like but because I am in the UK I am not allowed to vote for my own country. This rule in its simplest state sounds fair enough but let me just think this through – how many Polish, Italians, Serbs, Croatians – even Russians these days now live in the UK? None of them are going to ring up to find out that unfortunately they cannot vote for the UK – it does not bother them at all. They want to vote for their country – a country that they are not actually living in so this rule is a waste of time!
For those of you reading this you have not got a clue what I am talking about let me give you a brief fill in and what we suffer that makes me embarrassed to be classified as a “European” these days.
In essence, this is a TV show which is a song contest. It is all supposed to be about the song, not who is singing and how pretty she is or which country she is representing. With 25 nations competing in the final (we even have semi-finals now because we have so many countries now with all the break-ups of the former Soviet republics and Baltic States) so we have to suffer for the first three hours song after song being sung by each of the countries in the final.
In general, I do not even watch this part of the show although I did catch a glimpse of what looked like five very elderly ladies dressed up deliberately as old spinsters that were representing Russia of all countries – it was quite unbelievable. The last hour of the show is the bit that needs to be watched and even though it remains cringe-worthy in more ways than one. After the last song has been performed there is a period in the show where the audience are entertained and all of Europe is now voting for their favourite “song”. The golden rule here is that for example if I rang up to vote living in the UK I can vote for whoever I like but because I am in the UK I am not allowed to vote for my own country. This rule in its simplest state sounds fair enough but let me just think this through – how many Polish, Italians, Serbs, Croatians – even Russians these days now live in the UK? None of them are going to ring up to find out that unfortunately they cannot vote for the UK – it does not bother them at all. They want to vote for their country – a country that they are not actually living in so this rule is a waste of time!
(Left - The full Results of Euro Vision 2012 - you going to need this blow this up by clicking it)
Remember I said this contest is supposed to be about the song – not the performer and definitely not which country they are from. It is therefore amazing to watch the votes coming in from lets say Norway and each year they give the highest marks to Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Its even worse now with all the nations that were once behind the Iron Curtain. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus and the Ukraine have got a nice little you scratch our back and we will scratch yours going on. Do you think that Turkey are going to give Greece anything – hell no! Do you think Cyprus are going to Greece top marks – hell yes! Even Portugal and Spain look after one another but the weirdest one I think because of what happened just twenty years ago is what happens between the Baltic nations. All the machine guns and war zones are certainly now a thing of the past and Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia always give one another the top marks. Romania look after Moldova and vice versa and there are many more pockets like this all over Eastern Europe in particular.
So where does this leave nations such as the UK? You guessed it – right at the bottom of the heap lucky to score any points off of anybody. Ireland sometimes give us a few (and vice versa) but that is about it. This contest would be much better if nobody knew which country was being represented by which song and then and only then would people genuinely vote for the song that they liked (although it still does not completely solve the problem of the good looking man or woman singing it). Do you think the UK ever get even one miserly point from France? No chance!
This so called competition is just a political vote that outlines which countries actually like one another and in most cases just voting for their neighbours. If England and Scotland were in this I cannot see it working the same way between these two though! I cannot understand why the UK bother entering it – to make matters worse the four countries that invest the most money into it include the UK which allows them a free pass into each years final – stop blowing our cash please as we already know the rest of Europe do not like us.
If it do go on to being World Vision then the USA might even find it even more difficult to pick up as many votes as we do! Can you imagine if Euro 2012 was played out in this way or any other major sporting event? On the basis of what this years Eurovision has told me is that Sweden are going to be the most popular team playing in this tournament. The girl that won representing Sweden did not even do anything new – in fact she reminded me of Kate Bush from about 35 years ago!
It is worrying though in all seriousness what the Eurovision voting does reveal about the UK. We are for sure one of the most disliked nations in the whole continent. People from all over Europe though will still watch our Premier League and actually buy our music when they do not have to actually vote on it. A recent series of documentaries on British TV are also showing the very dark side of both Poland and the Ukraine and the fact that hooliganism and racism is still rife there. Because of this countries reputation of one side having a stiff upper lip and on the other being filled with gangs of lager drinking thugs that go on the rampage after a bit too much sun and a bit too much to drink then our case is not helped and we are targeted. Although there are still some problems here, the days are long gone when grounds were filled with hatred and working class young men looking to relieve some energy with violence on a Saturday afternoon. Football has done its bit in working hard in these past few years in trying to provide fans with a safe environment to go and watch a game again and make it more a family affair. The amount of women and children in English grounds these days is higher than it has been for many years.
This was firstly achieved by out-pricing the bulk of hooligan element. I for one believe that is has gone way too far the other way now as the cost to go to a game is just silly money in general. I can remember years ago watching baseball or American football and thinking how safe and family orientated their stadiums appeared to be. The only problem was that the Americans had a problem in general on their streets with crime galore ranging from shootings, assaults and robberies to name just a few seemingly happening everywhere. In the UK, it was the other way around for the best part with our problems being contained in and around the stadiums but the streets were a reasonably safe place to walk – now Britain is much more like America than ever.
And so I could go with this rant and I know for sure that there are many things that I have mentioned that many people would vehemently disagree with in what I have written here. Am I going to stick to what I have said with conviction? My answer is no, not really which might surprise you and that it is why it is just a rant. Some of the things that I have mentioned I would probably stick to and fight for but with others I am prepared to listen to other views even if they are 100% opposed to my viewpoint. A decent argument could easily make me agree with you if you can make a relevant point – so there you go – I am open to suggestion.
Remember I said this contest is supposed to be about the song – not the performer and definitely not which country they are from. It is therefore amazing to watch the votes coming in from lets say Norway and each year they give the highest marks to Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Its even worse now with all the nations that were once behind the Iron Curtain. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus and the Ukraine have got a nice little you scratch our back and we will scratch yours going on. Do you think that Turkey are going to give Greece anything – hell no! Do you think Cyprus are going to Greece top marks – hell yes! Even Portugal and Spain look after one another but the weirdest one I think because of what happened just twenty years ago is what happens between the Baltic nations. All the machine guns and war zones are certainly now a thing of the past and Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia always give one another the top marks. Romania look after Moldova and vice versa and there are many more pockets like this all over Eastern Europe in particular.
So where does this leave nations such as the UK? You guessed it – right at the bottom of the heap lucky to score any points off of anybody. Ireland sometimes give us a few (and vice versa) but that is about it. This contest would be much better if nobody knew which country was being represented by which song and then and only then would people genuinely vote for the song that they liked (although it still does not completely solve the problem of the good looking man or woman singing it). Do you think the UK ever get even one miserly point from France? No chance!
This so called competition is just a political vote that outlines which countries actually like one another and in most cases just voting for their neighbours. If England and Scotland were in this I cannot see it working the same way between these two though! I cannot understand why the UK bother entering it – to make matters worse the four countries that invest the most money into it include the UK which allows them a free pass into each years final – stop blowing our cash please as we already know the rest of Europe do not like us.
If it do go on to being World Vision then the USA might even find it even more difficult to pick up as many votes as we do! Can you imagine if Euro 2012 was played out in this way or any other major sporting event? On the basis of what this years Eurovision has told me is that Sweden are going to be the most popular team playing in this tournament. The girl that won representing Sweden did not even do anything new – in fact she reminded me of Kate Bush from about 35 years ago!
It is worrying though in all seriousness what the Eurovision voting does reveal about the UK. We are for sure one of the most disliked nations in the whole continent. People from all over Europe though will still watch our Premier League and actually buy our music when they do not have to actually vote on it. A recent series of documentaries on British TV are also showing the very dark side of both Poland and the Ukraine and the fact that hooliganism and racism is still rife there. Because of this countries reputation of one side having a stiff upper lip and on the other being filled with gangs of lager drinking thugs that go on the rampage after a bit too much sun and a bit too much to drink then our case is not helped and we are targeted. Although there are still some problems here, the days are long gone when grounds were filled with hatred and working class young men looking to relieve some energy with violence on a Saturday afternoon. Football has done its bit in working hard in these past few years in trying to provide fans with a safe environment to go and watch a game again and make it more a family affair. The amount of women and children in English grounds these days is higher than it has been for many years.
This was firstly achieved by out-pricing the bulk of hooligan element. I for one believe that is has gone way too far the other way now as the cost to go to a game is just silly money in general. I can remember years ago watching baseball or American football and thinking how safe and family orientated their stadiums appeared to be. The only problem was that the Americans had a problem in general on their streets with crime galore ranging from shootings, assaults and robberies to name just a few seemingly happening everywhere. In the UK, it was the other way around for the best part with our problems being contained in and around the stadiums but the streets were a reasonably safe place to walk – now Britain is much more like America than ever.
And so I could go with this rant and I know for sure that there are many things that I have mentioned that many people would vehemently disagree with in what I have written here. Am I going to stick to what I have said with conviction? My answer is no, not really which might surprise you and that it is why it is just a rant. Some of the things that I have mentioned I would probably stick to and fight for but with others I am prepared to listen to other views even if they are 100% opposed to my viewpoint. A decent argument could easily make me agree with you if you can make a relevant point – so there you go – I am open to suggestion.
RSS Feed