Writing Nonsense

Yesterday morning as I was browsing through the NY Times during a break at work I stumbled into this piece written by Rob Hughes in which he claimed that the Inter - Barcellona scoreless draw on Wednesday was far less entertaining than the S. Liege - Arsenal game.

He started saying that: "Goals, it’s true, do not by themselves denote quality. But they are the purpose of the game" making here a normal mistake for many american soccer wannabes. He then went on calling "Rubbish" Mourinho's explanations that the game had been a tactical war between him and Guardiola aknowledging the superiority - at this point - of the Barcelona team. For Hughes the S. Liege team "sent the fans home with the knowledge that they tried, they dared to take on superior foes, and they just ran out of stamina and luck in the end" while implicity saying that Inter and Barcelona fans, plus the billions of soccer/football fans worldwide should and/or would have gone home or turned off their TVs disappointed because of the scoreless draw and because the "inferior" team didn't fought to its death to score.

I can assure Mr. Hughes though that reality is a lot different from the representation he tried to give. While it can be comprehensible that the Belgian fans may have been in delight 5 minutes into the game, I can confirm to him (after hearing an acquaintance of mine who was at the stadium in Liege on Wednesday) that all of the S. Liege supporters would have given an arm to sneak home with a 1-0 nothing boring win than witnessing their team go down that way.

The same is true for the Inter - Barcelona game (that I witnessed as a neautral spectator being a fan of Udinese and Osasuna). On Thursday I spoke with a dozen people who were in San Siro and every one of them was thrilled for the game they saw; every one of them had no problems in admitting that the Barcelona side was superior to theirs as far as attacking was concerned, but they were on Cloud 9 for the adrenaline and the emotions that the match gave them on Wednesday night.

They could clearly recall their feelings at seeing Ibrahimovic wearing a different shirt, a friend of mine recalled cutting abruptly a call to his girlfriend because of a Messi drive towards Inter's goal, my friend sitting next to me at his house was cursing both assistant referees for another offside wrongly signalled.

The game may have been scoreless but I challenge Mr. Hughes to find a man who saw both games (in Liege and Milan) and that would choose Arsenal's win over Inter-Barcelona's hard fought draw, a battle on the pitch where in the end there were no winners and losers. Not a game for the ages but definitively one more worth remembering than a 2-3 game played in Belgium.

City Domination, for 18 more games

Despite vowing to myself that I'd refrain to talk about big time football but since the only sports event I was able to catch up in the last couple of days was the Milan derby (and since I'm working in Milan at the moment) I'm going to write a couple of paragraphs on how it went and why.

Wel, first of all I guess everyone knows what the final score was, and I might say that only over-enthusiastic Milan fans or people who do not follow Italian football could have expected Inter to lose this game. Last week's results could have led some people to believe that Inter was not the team to beat and that Milan had finally found some groove after its disastrous pre-season. The problem is that Mourinho got what he wanted (Snejider) and was finally able to bench the useless armchair called Vieira this week. The Inter side was also able to exploit and show to everyone who still hadn't got it (like its President, who never gets anything) Milan's weaknesses: the wings. Especially on the right side Maicon and Eto'o did whatever they wanted and all the first three goals came from attacks down that side.

I won't be in the office tomorrow, but I do believe that the minority of Inter fans will send plenty of emails to the majority Milan fans (with us neutrals as cc) with jokes and trash talk. The Milan Derby is something that is strongly felt throughout the city, something enhanced by the fact that football is the official religion of Italy.

On a different note, mixed results for the teams I support during this weekend. To quote just a few:
- wins for Man City, NAC and Istra Pula
- draws for Osasuna, Bodo/Glimt and Keflavik
- losses for my beloved TPS (on ET in the Cup), Udinese and Belenenses (both 3-1s away); plus for Hannover 96

A Home Debut With Many Firsts

The diving header is one of the most exciting way to score a goal in football, it takes timing, decision and bravery since sometimes you don’t know where other people’s foot might be – and it can happen that they’ll land exactly on your face. Yesterday’s match against Naval 1° Maio was instead decided by a play that you seldom see on a football pitch: the “diving chester”.

The newly signed Cameroonian striker Yontcha threw himself in the air, in my opinion badly misjudging the time of the dive, and with a spectacular chest movement netted the ball for the first Belenenses’ goal of the season. Yontcha was also instrumental for the set up of the second goal, when he received the ball from right-back Mano and crossed the ball that Ivan Santos left-footed into the net for the final goal of Belenenses 2 – 0 win against Naval.

The win is the first ever at home against Naval for the Azuis (and I have crystal clear memories of that horrible scoreless draw back in October 2006 that had been my first ever game at the Estàdio do Restelo) and avenged last March’s 1-2 defeat that sent Belenenses deep into the downward spiral that led towards relegation.

The game was a two-faced one: it was terrible, to say the least in the first half, with both teams focused more on preventing their opponent from scoring than on build dangerous attacks. Naval was probably the better team throughout the half, but they never managed to pose real threats for Nélson. The Belenenses’ defensive line proved to be rock solid for the second game in a row despite having a former midfielder at right back (Mano) and a 19 y.o. youngster at left back (André Pires).

The second half of the game developed differently from the first especially after Fredy, who was active but in a Denilson mid-‘90s style until then (read: useless), skipped past his man on the right side of the area and crossed the ball to Yontcha who scored in that unusual way. The game sped up after the tie was broken but Naval’s reaction was sterile and fruitless with Belenenses attending their opponents in their own 25m ready to counter-attack. A funny and frustrating event occurred in the 74th minute when the referee, instead of focusing on the game, booked centre back Rodrigo Arroz while the player was outside the pitch waiting to re-enter the contest. Even the – boring and not-so-competent Portuguese commentators were surprised by this decision and said that the ref should have focused on the play instead of doing such a theatrical act.

The only real scare for Belenenses came in the 88th minute when a freekick from the edge of area was sent inches above the bar by Diego Ângelo. Moreover, three minutes later Mano came out of his own half with the ball, timed perfectly his forward pass down the right side for Yontcha who then centered the ball where another new signing, Ivan Santos, one-timed it into the net to put an end to the ballgame.

This season has then, so far, started very differently than the last one, and Belenenses was able to capitalize on the chance of getting immediately a win on their home debut (while last year we had to thank Rodrigo Arroz whose 95th minute goal evened the score against Paços de Ferreira). It’ll be fundamental for this young Belenenses side to win as many games as possible against fellow mid-table contenders such as Naval in order to, firstly, have a quite and sufferance-free campaign (something that we fans would love after last year’s struggles) and, secondly, who knows maybe aim higher.

Next game will be Sunday in Braga against a strong Sporting Braga side which won its first two matches. I’d personally be more than happy to come out of the pitch with a point, something that can be possible if the Azuis keep playing like they did in the second half of the game yesterday.

Unflushables

The last five years have been a rollercoaster ride for C.F. Os Belenenses fans like myself, with the team getting relegated twice and twice being rescued because of other teams' troubles, financials or judiciaries.

The 2004-2005 season saw Belenenses finish in a comfortamble mid-table position (9th) 12 points clear of relegation, with Gabonese striker Henry Antchouet finishing fifth in the goal scorers classification.

The 2005-2006 season saw a struggling Belenenses' side finish fourth from bottom because of a worst score in games played against Academica Coimbra and Naval, who finished even on points with the Azuis. But despite the reduction of teams in the top flgiht from 18 to 16 which meant that 4 teams were getting relegated that year, Belenenses maintained its spot in the Portuguese Superliga thanks to what became the Caso Mateus, the scandal that sent Gil Vicente down into the Liga de Honra allowing the Azuis to avoid relegation.

The 2006-2007 season has been probably the most spectacular and gratifying for the Belenenses supporters in more than 15 years (and was directly followed by yours truly throughout the runs in the league and the Cup). With Jorge Jesús at the helm the Belenenses players, after a shaky start, blended wonderfully together and lead by Silas, Zé Pedro and Dady reached the Portuguese Cup Final (with highlights being a come-from-behind 2-1 victory away at Bragança in the quarterfinals and an epic extra-time victory against Sporting Braga in the semifinal) and finished 5th in the league one point shy of fourth place. The Portuguese Cup final, played in the Estadio Nacional, saw Sporting Lisbon claim a 1-0 win with a late goal from Liedson thanks to a Pedro Proença's decision not to allow Cândido Costa (Belenenses' full-back) back on the pitch after medication and before the decisive corner kick.

There were high expectations for the 2007-2008 season, but the team underperformed and was yet again involved in a scandal, this time on the losing side, when they signed Cameroonian striker Meyong on loan from Levante and played him in the Liga, officially unaware that the player had already seen action with two different teams that season hence being ineligible to play for a third under FIFA rules. For this reason Belenenses was deducted 3 points in the table and finished 8th, yet again one point below Sporting Braga, but this time this single point meant that Belenenses was out of Europe, with the minhotos claiming the last available spot.

The 2007-2008 season didn't see only the Meyong affair, but also the final word on the Apito Dourado one, which involved the (attempted or actual) bribery of referees by the Porto's teams, F.C. Porto and Boavista, with the former being penalized 6 points in the table and the latter being relegated to the Liga de Honra despite finishing 10th in the table.

The 2008-2009 season was even more frustrating than the 2005-2006 one, since Belenenses played well below its potential, changed the manager twice in 28 matches and let good chances of avoiding relegation slip between its fingers too many times conceding points in games where they could have easily gotten the win or at least draws. The team finished 15th out of 16 teams with 34 points and was hence relegated. But once again something happened, this time closer to Lisbon where Estrela Amadora was having serious financial troubles and the Portuguese Federation in the end rejected the suburbs' team inscription to the Superliga hence giving the guys from Belém another shot in the big show.

The 2009-2010 season kicked off last week and Belenenses earned a good point away in Matosinhos against a good Leixões team that finished in the top half of the table last season. The Azuis had to thank their new goalkeeper Nélson, who plays with number 3 and comes ironically from the Estrela Amadora team that allowed Belenenses to avoid being relegated, who made a crucial one-on-one save in the 69th minute.

This year Belenenses has a new manager, João Carlos Pereira, and a team that is fairly young compared to other teams in the Superliga despite the latest acquisition (33yo central defender Beto) being one that goes for experience rather than youth.

Tomorrow this new Belenenses team will make its home debut against Naval at 21.15 CEST, a game that I'll try to watch through a stream and then comment on here.

Championships of Despair

When Alex Schwazer decided to quit today's 50km Walk at the Berlin Leichtatletik Weltmeisterschaften midway through the race because of stomach problems, the (almost) last hope for Italy to finally get a medal in the competition faded away.

This lack of medals, which would be the first ever for Italy in an Athletics World Championships worsening their previous negative record of one single bronze in the 2005 event in Helsinki, shows that the Italian athletics movement is not what it used to be. Most of the medals that were won in the last few years by Italian athletes had been the results of either "imported" talents (like Fiona May or Magdelin Martinez) or of athletes who had then been involved in doping cases (Giuseppe Gibilisco) or of a long-standing tradition and school in a complex discipline such as the Walk - in those Helsinki Champs it was the very same Alex Schwazer who salvaged the Italian pride winning the bronze (with the NR) in the 50kms.

It would be unfair to put the blame all on the shoulders of the Italian Athletics Federation or on the single trainers, even though both these parties have their fair share of blame to carry; in fact Athletics, like almost every other sport (individual or team sport), suffers in Italy the looming and larger than life presence of football. Many people in Italy joke on the first article of the consitution saying that "Italy is a Republic founded on (other people's) work (and football is its religion)".

The popularity and all-around presence of football in the average Italian's mind mean that every other sport is considered to be second-tier and when some Italian says that he's interested in other sports or (horror and shock) that he doesn't care about football he's looked at by the majority as a weirdo or a goon. Moving to the economics, this means that football gets the lion, the leoness, the tiger and the panther's share of the TV money that the different channels are willing to spend on sports in the Italian market, while the other sports are left to fight between them the few tens of thousands Euros leftovers. Unluckily, without money a sport cannot thrive and expand its popularity and the number of its practitioners because of another Italian peculiarity: everywhere in the world winning a medal in an international competition, even a silver or a bronze, would be regarded as a wonderful achievement for an athlete or a team. Not so in Italy, in the Bel Paese everything below first place is regarded as not good enough and if an athlete or a team finishes as silver or bronze medal he/she is considered a loser by the majority of the Italian people and, even when he/she wins the reaction will be: "Yes yes he/she has won, but it's not like he/she won the Football World Cup". The consequence of this peculiarity is that an achievement in any other sport different than football is forgotten after a couple of weeks, while today, more than three years after the event, the commentator of our national football team is always stressing how many "world champions" are still playing in the First XI and that we're the world champions. I wish and hope that somebody will hit him in the head with a club in order for him to understand that he's redundant and that nobody cares anymore after Euro 2008 and this summer's Confederation Cup.

All this means that most italian athletes that are involved in "minnow" sports (minnow only for football fans) have to rely on the armed forces' teams in order to be able to train sufficiently and hard enough to be able to compete at the highest level and the kind of money that an average Serie A player earns in one year they will be lucky to be able to earn it in 25. This system implies that while the big talent is still going to emerge despite all the (financial, organizational, etc.) problems that his/her federation has, a broad movement and the nurturing of additional talent that will shine if developed correctly by top-tier trainers and staff will be very difficult to obtain because the Italian state can spend only a certain amount on money on these sports because, as we all know, the Italian finances are at best a mess.

So hopefully Ciotti will prove me wrong tonight by winning a medal in the high jump final in Berlin, but the roots of the problem will remain deeply buried in the Italian society and in the coming London Olympics the U-23 Football team will continue to fly in business class despite being kicked out early from the tournament while many olympic champions will fly in economy class because the Italian National Olympic Committee has only very limited funds.