Modern Football Is Still Rubbish , livre ebook

Sportsbooks - Nick Davidson

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137 pages

English

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Nick Davidson and Shaun Hunt were hoping that their first book, Modern Football is Rubbish, would put right all the ills of the present day game. But, amazingly, the administrators at club and national level took no notice and the putrification of the beautiful game continued. Hence they return - slinging mud at what's left of the game they love.

Informations

Publié par	Sportsbooks
Date de parution	14 mars 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781907524172
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0350€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Nick would like to thank all the children of the MFIR revolution. You know who you are. Gegen den modernen Fußball. Forza Sankt Pauli.

Shaun would like to thank all his family and friends who gave so much support throughout. YNWA. Special thanks to Derek Marsden (Phoenix from comicsuk) for help with The Cannonball Kid.

Nick and Shaun would both like to thank to our publisher, Randall Northam – without his vision the contents of this book (and the previous one) would be confined to a car park in Coventry where so much of it was conceived.
Contents
Title page
Dedication

Against Modern Football
Anthem jackets
Anthem jackets
Binders/The Collection
Bloodsport for all
Bottle Top Old Bill
Brand identity
Britain’s Got Talent
Camera Obscura
Cannes you kick it?
Can’t see the wood for the trees
Cars in the ground
Chester-le-Street
Children of Magic Sponge Mountain
Commercial suicide
Compulsory purchase
Cup final yin-yang
Deal or No Deal
Dr Football: Own goals count double
Dropping anchormen
End of season videos killed the radio star
Eric Steele iPod, the
Europa League
Famous five-a-side
Faux-centenaries
Fifteen seconds of fame
Football killed The Man from Del Monte
Forgotten pains of football No.1: the grass burn
Forgotten pains of football No.2: the stitch
Forgotten smells of football No.1: dubbin
Forgotten smells of football No.2: onions
Games you couldn’t make up No.1: balloon football
Games you couldn’t make up No.2: it’s just not cricket
Games you couldn’t make up No.3: roofball
Games you couldn’t make up No.4: stairball
Gardening leave
Geordie Messiahs
Getting the Goldie Horn
Goal-kicks for centres
Goalie’s golden rule
Gordon Ramsay’s F-word
Here’s to you Michael Robinson…
Hero for a day
Hitman and Him, The
Holmes advantage
Horn of Africa, the
Hot-Shot Hamish v The Cannonball Kid v Murdo McLeod
I say UEFA, you say UEFA
If the cap fits
Instant replay
Izzy Clarke
Joy of Six, the
Kettering to Palestine
Kitsch clash
Language, Timothy
Lofty peaks and dizzy rascals
Lovejoy division
Mansize rooster
Matchday magazine
Military tattoos
Missing links
Mitchell and Webb
Modern footballs are rubbish
More than three Sheikhs…
Moveable feasts
My balls have dropped
No Ball Games Allowed
Nouveaux riches
Odd job
One hundred million dollar match, the
Origins of symmetry
Partisan ballboys
Pen pictures
Perfect penalty, my arse
Pierless
Post-match interviews
Renegade linesmen
Rory Delap™
Rugby players or footballers: who’s the hardest?
Rush, Stick or Scramble
Signature haircuts
Sketchy past
Skins
Slaves to the rhythm
Snatch of the Day
Snood not to
Spin doctors
Stinging Nettles
Streakers
Sub standards
Terrace vernacular
The People versus Michel Platini
There’s only 101 great goals
Ticker-tape
Tony Kempster RIP
Too many singers spoil the Cup Final
Total recall
Tree is the magic number
Tunnel vision
Turin Shroud
Turnstiles
TV infidelity – No. 2: This Is Your Life
TV Infidelity No.2: Superstars
TV rights and wrongs
U is for Undisclosed
Volker Ippig
Vote-rigging
World turned upside down

Notes
Copyright
Against Modern Football
We knew we were onto something when we wrote the first book. Sure, we were labelled the ‘grumpy old men of football’, but it wasn’t just the misplaced nostalgia and the inability to come to terms with life in the 21st century that drove us on – we knew we weren’t alone. We knew there were thousands of people out there sick to the back teeth of the modern game. You only have to tune in to 606 or spend five minutes on a football messageboard to realise the extent of the malaise. The football we knew was eating itself – gorging on a feast of television money and self-importance.
That said, we weren’t touting ourselves as suburban prophets – radical visionaries here to reclaim football for the working man (well, not out loud at least). We knew our words wouldn’t change a thing. After all, football fans are a disparate bunch, divided by decades of local, regional and international rivalry – they couldn’t possibly come together to fight the moneymen intent on ruining the modern game.
But then, while surfing the internet, we stumbled across a series of articles about the ‘No al Calcio Moderno’ movement. No al Calcio Moderno (rough translation, ‘Against Modern Football’) began at the end of the 1990s among the ultra groups of Italian football. Although championed most passionately by the Antifa Ultras – a broad coalition of left-wing fan groups who take a radical stance against racism, fascism and commercialism in football – the No al Calcio Moderno movement has transcended the traditional left/right ultra division and united fan groups across Italian football.
We hadn’t been so excited by a political movement since our short-lived attempt to run for parliament as founder members of the Alliance of Rainbow Socialist Entities (think about it) in the early ’90s. Here was a significant body of fans that shared our ideals.
No al Calcio Moderno banners have appeared at grounds all over Italy as fans react against: increased commercialisation; all-seater stadiums; rip-off ticket prices; ridiculous kick-off times that are dictated by the television companies; heavy-handed policing; and players bought and sold like merchandise. The movement has spread across Europe to the Bundesliga with Gegen den Modernen Fussball becoming a rallying cry for German football fans.
The ultra scene in Germany doesn’t have the same reputation for lapsing into violence as its Italian counterpart – but it is equally political. Supporters across the country have protested fervently against modern football. Bayern Munich’s ultras even compared themselves to the oppressed Tibetan people with a banner at the Alliance Arena reading, ‘In Tibet and here: freedom instead of a police state’. When FC St Pauli took on 1860 Munich in the dreaded Monday night television slot, a spectacular protest against the broadcaster, DSF, took place. Banners proclaiming, ‘Scheiss DSF’ (you can work it out) littered the ground, and a chant of the same was clearly audible for the entire first half. The protest was so successful that, suitably embarrassed, DSF didn’t show FC St Pauli at home on a Monday night for the rest of the 2007/08 season. Just imagine protests on a similar scale against Sky in this country? Richard Keys would be tearing his hair out.
Television is of great significance for Germany’s fan groups. The 2009/10 season has seen large swathes of football coverage fall under Sky’s remit and with it the very real prospect of Bundesliga matches spread out across the weekend in a similar fashion to the UK. But unlike the passive acceptance of British fans, supporters Gegen den Modernen Fussball have rallied behind the Ohne Uns Kein Kick ( Without Us No Game ) campaign. They want to see a return to the traditional 15.30 Saturday kick-offs and have launched regular protests at matches and a postcard campaign that could see 250,000 cards arriving on the doorstep of the German broadcaster. If successful in forcing DSF to compromise over fixtures it would be a landmark victory for football fans not just in Germany but across the globe.
Our European comrades have restored our faith and given us hope. They have reminded us that it is possible to facilitate change and claim the game back from the moneymen. If fans in Germany and Italy can dispense with petty rivalries and unite for the good of the game then, surely, we can put down the remote control, get out of our armchairs and fight for the game we love?
Is being Against Modern Football just misplaced nostalgia? We don’t think so.
Anthem jackets
When is a tracksuit top not a tracksuit top? When it’s a sodding ‘anthem jacket’.
We first noticed this phenomenon as the camera lingered on England’s players lining up in the bowels of Wembley Stadium prior to the friendly against Slovakia in 2009. The game had been chosen to launch England’s latest kit, and the design of the new shirt had been shrouded in secrecy. Obviously, the shirt had to be properly unveiled and the tunnel at Wembley was not an appropriate location. The big reveal had to happen out on the pitch. So, how to get the new shirt out there without anyone noticing? Easy, tracky tops.
But tracksuit tops are mundane, functional garments and not exactly aspirational. You can almost picture the panic and the frantic scratching of heads in the weekly marketing meetings as the day of the kit launch approached. At least until some bright spark piped-up: ‘Anthems! They have to play the bloody national anthems!’ Genius. ‘We’ll clothe them in chav-tastic white tracky-tops, but we’ll call them “anthem jackets”, and they sell by the bucket load down at JD Sports!’
Problem solved. That’s what we thought, anyway. But then we discovered that anthem jackets have been around for ages. England’s kit launch was just the first time they’d appeared on our radar. We are so hopelessly out of touch. That tatty, old zip-up top you’ve been wearing to football on a Sunday morning for the last 15 years? Think of it as an anthem jacket, and consider yourself an avant-garde fashionista.
Beautiful Goal!, The
When FIFA announced plans to award a trophy to the player who scores the most beautiful goal of the year, we got all excited. The FIFA Puskás Award is awarded in memory of the legendary Hungarian striker Ferenc Puskás.
At first we thought this was a wonderful initiative, but we’ve become increasingly concerned that not all goals will have an equal chance to qualify. We don’t like to blow our own trumpet, but we have scored some cracking goals at five-a-side this year. Unfortunately, there were no cameras to record them. We are thinking of sending in a storyboard to Sepp Blatter, so that he can have a look at a few of them. One even secured us a place in the