Of Businessmen and Betting

Some people just aren’t cut out for certain jobs in life as specialist skills and talents are required for the rigours of certain professions. Hence qualifications being needed for jobs and regulation in place to monitor when work is not being done well.

This, of course, does not apply in the wonderful world of football governance and football club ownership.

The peerless Matt ‘Digger’ Scott of the Guardian reports that a Laurence Bassini will take over Watford after being sold 53.95% of the club’s shares, this despite the fact that Bassini has been declared bankrupt and lived on benefits for a six months or so in 2007 and has been a director with (according to Scott) twelve companies, ten of which were stuck off without filing accounts and another one which folded after only ever filing one set of accounts.

Furthermore, Bassini changed his name after his bankruptcy, from Bazini, refuses to reveal who his backers are for his takeover of Watford, despite the £3.5 million loan not being his money and the shares will be held not by Bassini, but a knee surgeon in Highgate by the name of Panos Thomas. For the record, none of the above sounds remotely suspect, whatsoever.

Again, just what is the Fit and Proper Persons test exactly for? This is the equivalent of a whale slipping through a fishing net.

Meanwhile, over in Nyon, the Professional Football Strategy Council (who?! I hear you cry) have had a meeting and came out with some points about the issue of betting in football.

Basically, these points state that betting companies are exploiting football competitions for their own ends and that there should be government intervention at a national and EU level to help alleviate this problem through compensation from the betting companies. They state that the organisers of competitions such as the Champions League and Europa League “should have the right, including intellectual property right, to consent to their events being used by betting companies and that such companies should pay fair financial compensation”  They go on to say that this increased revenue will be fairly distributed down to the grassroots level of football in Europe.

But, taking into account the Professional Football Strategy Council consists of representatives of European players (through FIFpro), European clubs (through the European Clubs Association) and European leagues (via the European Professional Leagues group) it would appear the real target is to get these groups more money, by stating their desire to help the grassroots to mask the greed as, UEFA aside (the final representative of the Council) they do not have a rich history of fairer distribution of wealth in football.

Furthermore, in the points outlined in the press release (link here http://tinyurl.com/6ya2n4u), the aim to combat match fixing is only referred to twice, compared to financial issues which is mentioned in every bullet point. When you consider the current match fixing concerns over international friendlies held in Tunisia in the last international break and the concerns over games in the earlier rounds held in Eastern Europe in the Europa League this season, this should be a far more pressing concern for the Council. In theory.

This post also appeared at www.footballfriendsonline.com/blogs/

Urban Annoyance #1440- Prams

In this time of great world problems what with that bad thing that happened in Japan and that other, ongoing bad thing happening in Libya and that ongoing bad thing about some song about what day of the week it is (thank you for keeping me abreast of memes Twitter!), sometimes, it’s nice to go away from this bad news and focus on something a little less harrowing, like prams.

When walking down a road, British people, when they encounter another person/people walking towards them, do the delightful shuffle from one side to the other, to move out of the way of the other person, as that other person attempts to do the exact same thing, leading to much to-ing and fro-ing. Cue nervous smiles, apologies, a distinct lack of eye contact and industrial size loads of embarrassment. All lovely, quaint and endearing.

But something happens when one of the groups of people are pushing along an infant in a chair on wheels in front of them. Suddenly, they are completely incapable of moving to one side of the pavement to allow space for both parties to pass, instead ploughing a path straight through what is in front of them; human being, animal, brick walls, lampposts, the exaggeration for comic effect, everything.

Essentially, the pram becomes some kind of battering ram, or a snow plough, to be used to move people out of the way. Obviously, it is not much of a physical battering ram as it is neither particularly big, nor particularly strong and a ram with a baby as a key component will be largely ineffectual, what with those soft spots and all. It is more of a mental battering ram as walking into baby transportation devices is generally frowned upon by society for some reason.

Unfortunately, parents seem to take advantage of this rule and use it to their advantage. Yes child-rearers, you have reproduced successfully, congratulations for fulfilling your biological role as an animal, don’t use it as some kind of weapon, least of all when you do it in tandem and two mothers walk side by side down the road, advancing with all the menace of a tank driver in Tiananmen Square (and no amount of hand signal stop signs is going to put them off), leaving one to take evasive by diving in to the road.

God knows what happens when two sets of parents advance on each other, maybe they just keep walking and some platform 10 and 3/4’s magic occurs where they walk through each other and continue on with their lives.

It’s all a far cry from babies being left to their own devices out on the farm and being eaten by foxes (although that does still happen…too soon?) or doing their fair share of the harvesting work, instead of being used in psychological, pavement-based urban warfare.

Glory Daze@ 9pm, Thursdays E4- 4 out of 10

The term 'hit and miss' was probably coined with the foresight that E4 was coming along. Every single sitcom/comedy show on E4 is hit or miss, often magically being both. For example, The Inbetweeners? Hit and then miss. Skins? Hit and then miss. Phoneshop? Tragic miss. Big Bang Theory? Hit. And so on.


The latest show to come along is centred on a group of young people (like Skins) that attend an educational establishment (like The Inbetweeners) and is an American export (like Big Bang Theory). Getting some kind of picture here about the conformity of E4's transmission?


Anywho, Glory Daze follows the exploits of a group of American guys as they head off to a college, loosely-based on every single US college show in every single American TV show or film, looking for a place in the college eco-system and documenting all the shenanigans they get up to.


You will never guess what these shenanigans involve. That's right, drinking, drugs and women. Originality is dead you say? Purlease! Though I suppose the diversity is something to applaud; Catholics, Republicans, Chinese, African Americans, Jews, women, all are represented in this equal opportunities 45 minutes of wonderment. Didn't see that in American Pie, did we?


Perhaps the one shred of originality is that the show is set in the 1980s, the pro being the viewer is treated to a killer 80s soundtrack, the con being the audience is subjected to terrible dialogue based on words that were not actually 'hip' or 'rad' back in the 80s and some horrible camerawork where it's meant to look like it was shot on 1980s recording technology but it just makes it look really bright and sunny all the time.


When a show is described in its marketing as a "hit US smash" it might as well say "endorsed by the Pope, Barack Obama and the Queen", for all the amount it's going to sway people. "Hit US smash" basically means very average show as the fact that Glory Daze was cancelled after one series kind of demonstrates. Being canned by the TBS network, that is a low.


All in all, watch Glory Daze if you were a big fan of the 80s and dated humour, avoid if you are a distinctly normal person.

This post also appeared on Pugwash News' wbesite at www.pugwashnews.com

Misspent (Money on) Youth (Development)

f you were to give a small child, or an easily distracted adult even, a toy to play with, it would immediately discard the previous object of its affection in favour of this shiny, new, exciting alternative. The FA works pretty much in a similar way.

Around 30 years ago, the idea for a national training centre was proposed where the cream of English football talent, both playing and coaching staff, would convene to aid the development of English football as a whole. The centre would, the proponents of the project argued, enhance the standard of the England

But, over the last 30 years, various shiny, new, exciting ‘toys’ have taken the FA’s attention span away from the National Football Centre, ‘toys’ like one successful and two unsuccessful bids for major international football championships, rebuilding Wembley Stadium, various initiatives to tackle behaviour in football and so on.

And last week, we went completely full circle and the FA’s attention refocused back on to the National Football Centre, now called the St George’s Park National Football Centre, to make it more patriotic I suppose.

Since the FA acquired the land at Burton in 2001 for around £2 million, the organisation has spent £25 million on the project, this despite the fact that all work was suspended in 2004 to allow the FA to focus their resources on throwing more and more bundles of money down the Wembley bottomless hole.

Last week, the FA unveiled the latest incarnation of the project, to be completed by 2012 for it to host the British men and women’s Olympic football teams. The centre will house 12 outdoor and 1 indoor full-size pitches, including an exact replica of the Wembley pitch and a 142-room 4-star hotel and an 86-room 3-star hotel.

After the FA had to underwrite a £1.2 million shortfall on the project in November last year, it is hoped the Centre will be self-funding for the rest of its existence due to deals with its sponsor, Umbro and funding from the on-site Hilton hotels and conference facilities but let’s see just how many people want to have meetings in a rural location in Burton with a bunch of 16-year old footballers kicking footballs outside.

This is the latest attempt from the FA to produce a sea change in coaching in England from the top-down, with the Centre being the, well, centrepiece, of another initiative based on a change in mentality when it comes to youth coaching, emphasising on skill rather than strength and a ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality.

This, obviously, is a step forward as the youth coaching system in England has been in need of an overhaul for many years, as anyone that has played football at a youth level will tell you. Asking a 11-year old to play on a full size pitch in a full size goal is pure stupidity as it encourages the biggest and strongest players dominate, leaving the smaller, skilful players lagging behind.

If a system can be put in place where youth development is based on more ‘pass and move’ type football rather than strength and how far a kid can kick a ball, the national team will be better for it. If the St George’s Park National Football Centre can provide a framework for youth coaches to implement at grassroots level, then it will be a success. If it can bring together all of the national teams, from Under 16s to the senior team, and give them time together to practice and become a team, England will perform better at international tournaments.

However, call it cynical, but like everything the FA does, it appears to be something of a knee-jerk reaction , this time to the public reaction to England’s loss to Germany in the World Cup last year and the outcry about technically outstanding the German and Spanish teams were compared to England. This coupled with the too many foreigners in the Premier League argument becoming louder and louder, seems like the FA’s reaction to these outcries; an idea that should have implemented years and years ago.

If the FA was serious about the future of youth development in English football, they would have tackled the problem earlier, rather than spending money on a white elephant like Wembley, which helped no-one but the FA as it gave them a showpiece venue for their organisation, whilst also being the most misplaced plan for profit making machine since Hicks and Gillett took over Liverpool.

Here is hoping this venture of the FA’s will prove far more successful, it was overdue and if it can have a ‘Clarefontaine’ effect, we could be looking at a golden future for English football. Perhaps.

The World’s Madness feat. Charlie Sheen

Do you remember the Eastenders story arc last year where Phil Mitchell went completely mad, took a load of drugs and booze, wound up naked on the floor with some other woman (Rainie so Wikipedia informs me) and got up to a load of general shenanigans that kept lots of viewers captivated for weeks? Sound vaguely familiar?

Now, replace the words "Eastenders story arc" with "real life story", "Phil Mitchell" with "Charlie Sheen", "Rainie" with "a porn star and a model" and "general shenanigans" to "incidents involving machetes, unwise phone calls, bizarre interviews and Twitter". Welcome to the wonderful world of the public mental breakdown.

Charlie Sheen became well known (in America at least) as the only man that could have sex with a string of beautiful women whilst also, simultaneously, being in his mid-30s and wearing shorts with white socks, in TV show Two and a Half Men, pocketing $2 million an episode to boot.

Meanwhile, at the very same time as being insanely popular, he also started going a wee bit mad. For example, over the last six years, his roll call of misdemeanours goes something like; divorce citing alcohol/drug abuse and threats of violence, felony menacing, criminal mischief and third degree assault, rehab, anger management and being banned from owning a gun (In America, somehow). Yet, he was still something of a media darling through his role in Two and a Half Men.

And, now, over the last year he has stepped it up a notch on the mental breakdown Richter Scale, incorporating more drug taking, trashing hotel rooms, abusing the Executive Producer and writer of his hit show, getting fired from his show, staging insane interviews with national news channels in the USA, wielding a machete from his balcony window, living in something of a harem with two busty blondes and becoming a Twitter millionaire (and popularising the hashtags #tigersblood and #winning). That's how to crank up the crazy to 11. The next thing to do would be to start bombing people that don't like you.

All the while, the media has been there to capture his latest act of madness. Now, obviously, Sheen has been courting the media, inviting them into his home to talk/ramble on to them, phoning up radio stations that fly planes over his house with the station's number trailing behind the planes and setting up a Twitter account for the masses to see his thoughts. Naturally, the media has sensed a good story here and will take all their opportunities they can get to get some more column inches/airtime about it.

But here is the rub. Clearly, this is a man in the throes of some kind of mental breakdown after years of drug abuse and a pretty unstable personality anyway. What is the solution to a person suffering mental trauma? Oh yeah, recording his every move and giving him huge exposure and then crying crocodile tears when it all goes tits up, as it inevitably will as huge drug taking by a person in their mid-40s has but one outcome; death.

However, in the Twitter age, this goes beyond a problem to blame on 'the media' with the masses also playing a role in the unhealthy obsession with a man suffering from the after-effects of a bitter divorce battle. Yes, he courts the limelight but can you honestly believe that he is a man in control of himself currently? Perhaps some of the people who got #tigersblood trending or #winning were innocent enough to believe it was a jocular comment made by a reasoned Sheen but I'm just as certain many people saw it as a laugh at the expense of the poor man.

Where will this obsession end? Will it be when he goes to rehab? When he stops talking to the cameras? If he self-harms? If he kills himself? Perhaps, at some point, it will become clear that the blood sport of taunting fallen celebrities has a limit though don't count on it, the Internet is a harmful enough place for the sane to roam, let alone the mentally unstable.

Urban Annoyance #1439- Fashion

Way back in the mists of time, back when the urban jungle was merely but an urban woods, fashion never existed.

Sure, the landed classes would have magnificent dresses and britches and so on but, down at our level, the pleb level, all one peasant could do if wanted to look a bit different to the next peasant was perhaps painting their deer pelt in a different shade or pattern of mud or sticking some grass to his tatty tunic but that was about it. And we were all a lot happier, apart from the low life expectancy, the back breaking labour and the syphilis. Fashion was pretty much unheard, clothes were worn for a bit of dignity and to stop your sensitive parts from being continually snagged on twigs or munched on by animals who thought they were odd looking fruit.

But all that changed with the advent of urbanisation.

Not at first of course, the first 75 years or so of urbanisation were pretty much the same for our ancestors as it was in the countryside, just with more soot, less mud and pastier complexions. Same low life expectancy, same back breaking labour, same syphilis, same cheerful misery and same range of fashion accessories, i.e. beggar all.

However as people moved from the factories to the offices and got more disposable income, so aspirations changed. No longer was it ok to wear the same clothes day after day, wearing them until they were too frayed and your accessories consisted of nothing but the scars from the machinery you worked on. Furthermore, TV showed us what the rich and famous were wearing and us plebs were overcome with jealousy and envy and we wanted what they were wearing. And now, we could afford it too.

And thus began the horrible descent into people being 'fashionable' and being expected to wear clothes that were 'in' for 'this season', not stuff YOU felt was nice or clothes that YOU thought looked good or YOU felt good about yourself in.

No, urbanisation meant YOUR opinions on clothes didn't matter anymore, just as long as you follow the doctrine laid down by the high street stores and the catalogues and looked much like everyone else then you were granted being perceived as popular and beautiful, the twin aspirations of every human being. If you can't follow this doctrine, well fuck you, say the stores.

In a roundabout and somewhat apt way, communism has won, everyone now looks the same, though instead of all wearing poorly assembled grey overalls made by a sad man in Moscow, we are all wearing Topman t-shirts and leggings with shorts made by sad children in the Philippines. And do you know what is to blame? The urban jungle.

The Fergie Paradox

They say that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But perhaps a fairer observation would be that power warps one’s perceptions about oneself and absolute power warps those perceptions absolutely.
Take Sir Alex Ferguson for example; self-proclaimed socialist and son of working-class Govan in Glasgow. One of the key tenets of socialism is the necessity for everyone to chip in and help society and help each other though perhaps the Fabian Society (founders of the modern Labour party) forgot to add that referees and the media were not part of society, either that or some reading in between the lines is required to understand this fundamental truth.
Let us take this last’s week refereeing saga as an example. Last Saturday, Wayne Rooney committed an act of physical assault on another professional which the referee took no action over. Cue Mike Phelan (basically a human-shaped voice recorder loaded with Fergie’s opinions) to say that it was not the job of any of the management staff of Manchester United to referee the game, knowing full well that if the elbow was in the other face, Mark Clattenburg would be getting a few pointers on how to do his job. Doublethink is clearly alive and well.
For lovers of irony, the situation went full circle on Tuesday in the aftermath of the United-Chelsea game where Ferguson, aggrieved about perceived refereeing injustices against his team, promptly told the referee how to do his job and undermine him completely by saying he was basically biased, using the media to convey this serious message about the integrity of the world’s best league TM rather than perhaps, a personal letter to the FA or to the Referee’s Association expressing such concerns. Que sera, eh?
Which leads me on to the subject of the media. Another socialist ideal is that every person is treated equally and has access to the same opportunities as the next man. Unless you are a viewer of Match of the Day or a viewer/reader of whichever media outlet Ferguson refuses to speak to next, this week, MUTV. If you get your information from one of these outlets and want to know the information from the manager, well, screw you Ferguson kind of says.
Ferguson also controls his club like a personal fiefdom whereby certain members of the press are banned from club press conferences should a journalist publish a story disparaging towards the club or the man himself, fair treatment of all men indeed.
But the ultimate paradox about Ferguson is that he doesn’t seem an at all bad person; always being on hand to help out a fellow manager in need, usually being the first to call a recently sacked manager and giving fellow managers the fruit of the United youth system to polish.
Perhaps this serves to undermine his socialist ideals, where he seems to be more protecting and advancing the causes of people in a similar bracket to him (managers) and helping out similarly powerful friends, a (whisper it) Tory kind of outlook.
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As a follow up to a blog post last week, regarding IFAB ‘s (International Football Association Board) meeting at Celtic Manor and the agenda of the weekend, you will be glad to hear that some stuff has been announced.
Firstly, extended testing on goal-line technology is to be continued for the next year with a view to it being in place in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, should a workable system be found. Using the system at the 2012 Euro Championships was ruled out although the five-man refereeing teams seen in European club competitions may be used.
Secondly, as of July 1 this year, snoods have been banned from football on the grounds that they are dangerous and players “risk hanging [themselves]” according to Sepp Blatter. Which begs the question, if hanging one’s self is such a risk, why wait until July to ban it? Furthermore, shoelaces are routinely used to hang oneself, they should also be banned. As should; necklaces for referee’s whistles, goal nets, football shirts and ties for managers as they all pose the same risk.
Lastly, the trialling of a spray to be used on football pitches to mark out the 10 yards a player can be from a free kick and corner when it is being taken is to be continued in South America, a concept I like. First of all, because it is practical (as the spray disappears after 30 seconds or so), secondly as it will help the game and help referees and thirdly as I imagine referee’s store the spray in some kind of Batman-esque utility belt. The belt will also come equipped with mace spray to ward off head-vein-throbbing morons who shout at referees for no reason.