Aug 29 2008
Michael Ballack hurt his foot against Portsmouth on August 14 and had to leave the match. He played last week, though it seems he probably should not have, as Chelsea has sufficient depth to prevent aggrevating injuries, Now Ballack will be out for two weeks, missing Sunday’s match against Tottenham as well as Germany’s two World Cup qualifiers.
It is an injury which, like Steven Gerrard’s, seems convenient. Continue Reading »
Aug 28 2008
One of the more exciting days of the European club football season is the day the Champions League group stage is drawn.
The 32 teams that have qualified for the group stage are drawn into eight, four-team groups. Before that happens, all teams are broken into four pots, labeled A through D, where they are grouped according to a team’s strength (as determined by a formula called a coefficient). Each of the eight groups can have no more than one team from each pot, no more than one team from a country. The eight groups end up pretty even.
The draw is fun because you end up with a series of matches which, in addition to being high profile based on the quality of the teams involved, are rare. In the days before the draw, you start considering the possibilities and potential story lines: Chelsea and Fiorentina in a group, forcing Adrian Mutu to play the club he owes £14 million; Marseille being slotted with Arsenal months after having sold them Samir Nasri, and potentially getting Bayern Munich in the group, so they would have to face Franck Ribery; Barcelona being slotted with a Zenit St. Petersburg team whose star, Andrei Arshavin, so badly wanted to play at Camp Nou; FC Porto being grouped with Inter Milan and facing Jose Mourinho.
Here’s how the eight groups ended up being drawn, with the clubs listed in order of the group they were drawn from: A to D. Continue Reading »
Aug 27 2008
After Liverpool’s defeat of Standard Liège, it was announced that Steven Gerrard would undergo surgery Thursday morning to correct a groin problem that has bothered him for the last month. The Reds’ captain decided to play through the pain this weekend against Middlesbrough as well as tonight, though against the Belgian champions he was a none factor and Rafa Benitez probably would have been better served with somebody else in the lineup. That Liverpool does not have somebody to fill that spot may have contributed to the decision to play Gerrard, and thanks to the upcoming break in the club schedule for World Cup qualifiers, Liverpool should only have to go one match without Stevie G.
Aug 27 2008
Liverpool may be one of the eight teams in the top pool for tomorrow’s Champions League group stage draw, but they were the closest of the thirty-two teams to being out of the tournament after the final round of qualifying finished today.
Aug 21 2008
Raymond Domenech’s honeymoon period after being affirmed as manager of the France national team is over with a thud. One day after a 3-2 win over Sweden in which Les Blues finally started incorporating some of their younger talent, one of the players that should be a cornerstone of their next World Cup has quit over selection issues.
Whether Sebastien Frey should as upset about Steve Mandanda starting the Sweden match is questionable, but he is not the first French star to be done with the national team over Domenech. The goalkeeper that was so important to Fiorentina’s Serie A and UEFA Cup runs was not even selected, with Domenech electing to pick Lyon younger Hugo Lloris as Mandanda’s back-up. Frey, who had a strong claim to playing time over Gregory Coupet in Euro 2008, is now done with Domenech and France, telling the team that he will be devoting himself to Fiorentina full time.
Jul 29 2008
Paris St. Germain just finished a disappointing campaign which saw the club barely avoid relegation. The only bright spot was the team’s victory in the Coupe de la Ligue, though even that victory has been heavily tainted. Their March 29 victory over Lens in the finals was tainted by a group of PSG fans who help up signs deriding people from northern France as pedophiles and inbreeds. In response, the French Football Federation banned PSG from this season’s League Cup competition.
The ban was originally levied in April but has resurfaced in the wake of the French Olympic committee’s appeal to the Federation to have the punishment reduced. The committee felt the ban disproportionate and suggested a match behind closed doors as a better means to punishing the club for fan behavior. The FFF, however, has reinforced its original ruling.
It’s a common punishment throughout Europe - to take sanctions against a club for behavior of its fans. In this case, a group of PSG fans called the Boulogne Boys were responsible for the 25 meter sign. As a result, their favorite club will miss the competition which gained them entrance into European football this season. The fan group has since been disbanded.
Even allowing for the sometimes intimate link between clubs and fan groups, punishing the club and its well-behaving fans for the behavior of a few has always seemed wrong, to me. In Russia this week, Zenit St. Petersburg was fined because some of its fans made racist taunts to some Marseille players in last season’s UEFA Cup. The fine implies that Zenit bares some responsibility for what came out of its fans mouths, just as PSG’s ban implies they bare some responsibility for the Boulogne Boys’ sign. It’s a weak argument, at best, and one that I don’t buy.
But you don’t have to buy the argument to by the sanctions, sanction which imply that whether the club is responsible or not, the best way to affect the behavior of supporters is to implicit some ill on their clubs. If a punishment like this ever landed on one of my favorite sides so that the behavior of a few started to adversely affect me, I would be disgusted by the lack of justice.
Quotes
“Our disciplinary committee fined Zenit for racist conduct by their fans, the use of pyrotechnics and the display of a political banner during their match against Marseille.” - UEFA
“The spectators looked at us, openly making monkey noises.” - Ronald Zubar, Marseille
“PSG aren’t being picked on but we had to remain firm faced with something that misrepresents the sport.” - Jean-Pierre Escalettes, president, FFF
“What shocked us was to hear the CNOSF say that this sanction was ‘disproportionate’.” - Escalettes
“We think it’s a suitable sanction. At the time we were accused of being lax and now we’re told it’s too severe.” - Escalettes
Links
UEFA fine Zenit over racism
Zenit fined after UEFA racism probe
Zenit fined for racist incident
PSG ban upheld
FFF rejects PSG’s appeal to defend Cup title
No League Cup reprieve for PSG
Jul 11 2008
One day after his “modern slavery” Sepp Blatter waded back into the 6+5 controversy.
Six-plus-five is the term for a FIFA directive which required each club to at all time play with six players who qualify for play for the national team of the league’s country. The measure passed at May’s FIFA congress in Sydney by a vote of 155 to 5 but has been since dismissed by most of the big leagues and clubs. Last week, the European Club Association rejected the proposal and cited UEFA’s homegrown idea as a better approach.
Today, Blatter admitted that 6+5 is against European Union law but said that FIFA is still pursuing the matter. The FIFA president said they need to look into what would be legal within the law even though the European Union, at the behest of the leagues and clubs, has preemptively said 6+5 would be illegal as a restriction on the free flow of labor.
Although it and any reasonably close permutation of 6+5 has no chance of being instituted, Blatter continues to push the idea. Given the amount of divisiveness the issue engenders, you would think Blatter, rather than rehashing an idea that has no hope of being implemented, would just let the issue die. Wouldn’t avoiding unnecessary, unproductive controversies in favor of moving forward be prudent?
Blatter’s inability to do this is baffling.
Quotes
“Concerning the legal point of view, we have to investigate exactly what is illegal in this matter.” - Blatter
“We are now working on three different levels to get through the resolution …” - Blatter
“Therefore the mandate was given to the Fifa president and Uefa president, Michel Platini, to investigate this matter and look at, always within the limits of the law, how it can be achieved.” - Blatter
Links
Jul 03 2008
The new FIFA world rankings came out yesterday, and as expected Spain jumped to the top spot after their win in at Euro 2008. Despite losing points, Italy rose one spot to second, followed by Germany.
It is the first time Spain has ever topped the rankings.
Argentina fell all the way to sixth after being ranked first. Brazil, previously ranked second, is the highest ranked team from outside UEFA, sitting in fourth.
The Netherlands is fifth. Seventh through tenth are Croatia, the Czech Republic, Portugal, and France.
Cameroon is the highest ranked CAF team at 13th.
Mexico is the highest ranked CONCACAF team at 19th.
Japan is the highest ranked AFC team at 34th.
Links
European champions Spain top of world rankings
Jul 01 2008
Enough of me hating on other people’s selections. Here is my team of the tournament for Euro 2008, working from back to front, semi-conscious of creating a team that could actually take the field:
G - Iker Casillas, Spain - Combination of good performance, games played, and team results. Did not have the individual heroics of a Arthur Boruc or Edwin van der Sar, but was commanding - a large part of his team’s dominance.
RB - Sergio Ramos, Spain - I’ve said enough about him. I will affirm that I am an unabashed Ramos fan. He did have a sub-par game to open the tournament, but he’s more than deserving of this spot.
CB - Carles Puyol, Spain - I’m not a Puyol fan, but he definitely made up for the few errors he made in this tournament with some great, inspirational plays.
CB - Pepe, Portugal - It wasn’t a great tournament for center backs, but for the four games he played, Pepe was amongst the best. Portugal had trouble on set pieces, but thinking about things on a goal-by-goal basis, I have trouble holding much against Pepe.
LB - Yuri Zhirkov, Russia - Solid in defense, smart and aggressive in attack, and contributed on set pieces.
DMF - Marcos Senna, Spain - My player of the tournament. The key to the Spanish defense.
RMF - David Silva, Spain - I thought he was the steadiest midfielder in the tournament. Made good decisions, always played within himself while staying at a very high level.
CMF - Michael Ballack, Germany - He was not Ballackian during the last two matches, but his performance throughout the tournament makes him an easy pick. The criticism he’s received over the last could of days speaks to his greatness and the feats we’ve come to expect from him.
LMF - Lukas Podolski, Germany - Was, overall, the most dangerous player in the tournament. Set up two goals for Bastian Schweinsteiger and scored three others.
F - Roman Pavyluchenko, Russia - In addition to his goals, was a force winning balls in midfield in Russia’s wins. Had many near misses that, while not counting on the scoreboard, forced the opposition to account for him.
F - Fernando Torres, Spain - I was never as down on him as his coach or the media was. He failed to convert on a lot of chances, but his presence and effort were huge contributions to Spain’s success.
UEFA names 23 players to their all-tournament team, the same as a squad is allowed. I think that’s too many, and some of the selections the UEFA technical team made reflect that. I’ll leave mine at XI, even risking the need to explain omissions (David Villa, anybody).
Jun 28 2008
Does anybody think UEFA expanding the European Championships from 16 teams is a good idea?
Apparently, somebody does, because it’s up for consideration, with a final decision to be made in September. The obvious motivation here is more games, which leads to more money and greater exposure. The problem is that football’s main obstacle to exposure is not quantity of games; rather, it’s convincing those few places in the world where football is not accepted that the game is a quality product.
People in the United States aren’t skipping Euro 2008 because England isn’t in it. They’re skipping it because they don’t think much of football.
So to convince me on this argument, you’ll have to convince me that there are four or eight more teams who did not qualify who, when added to the pool of qualifying teams, would make the competition better. I’m open to the idea. Making each group five teams instead of four could be a good thing.
Adding eight teams and going to six, four team groups seems too much. They would have to start playing games at the same time during the first two matches of group play or else have the tournament go on for too long. There would be another round in the knockout phase. And frankly, there aren’t eight more teams that the world is interest in seeing play.
There is the thought that the current length is perfect. I’m not saying that thought is right. I just subscribe to it. There’s also the fact that these player’s schedules are getting tighter and tighter, and adding an extra week to the tournament is a bigger deal than it may otherwise seem.
If England, Scotland, Bulgaria, and Israel where in the tournament, is it really going to be that much better?
Links
UEFA to decide in September on Euro Expansion