The Sun-Herald

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Maradona, England, & World Cup Destiny

In the week's least surprising news (ever), England are now destined to win the World Cup.

That's now the tried-and-tested view of some in England after qualifying last week for South Africa next year.

We've been here before, of course.

How about EVERY SINGLE TIME England qualifies for a major tournament?

No sooner had England played well to thrash a poor Croatia team than Poms claimed they had at least one hand on the trophy already.

"Why England Will Win the World Cup!" roared a headline from the usually sane BBC.

It was kinda-sorta-not-really a joke.

A list of reasons included coach Fabio Capello's leadership skills, the temperature in wintry South Africa next June, England's new old-school strip, and, of course, David Beckham.

"I said during the week that it wasn't about revenge but I was lying a little bit," Beckham said after Croatia had been thoroughly given the shaft.

It was Croatia, you will recall, who dumped on dismal England's Euro 2008 parade two years ago but now, how soon they forget, Capello's heroes are all bona-fide world beaters.

Just you watch.

While we can giggle at England's hyper expectations being blown out of the park just minutes after qualifying, things are a little more serious on the other side of the world.

Argentina may be stuffed.

That's Diego Maradona's Argentina.

That's Diego Maradona's Argentina with Lionel Messi, Javier Mascherano, and Carlos Tevez.

Losing to Brazil - at home! - last weekend was bad but a 1-0 loss to Paraguay in Asuncion midweek was worse.

Argentina now stand fifth in COMNEBOL's World Cup qualification table and are in direct competition with our old pals Uruguay, seemingly World Cup play-off addicts, for the final place.

Maradona, who martyred himself by taking on the poisoned position of national team coach, is now facing a crisis of confidence and cacophony of criticism at home.

God is apparently not what he used to be but Argentina has been in this position before, however.

In 1993, they were forced into continental play-offs - with Australia.

Then, Maradona made a comeback as a player to successfully steer his ship to USA '94.

Now, as a coach, things aren't working out so much.

As a fan said after last weekend's loss to Brazil.

"Even if we win the Cup, it doesn't confirm that Maradona is a great coach," said one Argentine fan after last weekend's loss to Brazil.

"It would just confirm that Maradona is God."

• by Matthew Hall at 08:32 AM
• Comments (8)

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Football and The Plague

"All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football."

So wrote French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, famous for writing a book called The Plague and for being a somewhat reasonable goalkeeper with his university football team.

Camus never claimed that life always took the high moral ground - far from it.

I once referenced that famous Camus quote on a business card - part pretension and part advisory to some of the people who once inhabited the dark world of Australian football.

That business card always got second looks.

However, some strange events have occurred in the past months that have cynics like me scratching their heads.

Things kicked off in July with A-League officials taking an initiative, of sorts.

The Australian domestic comp followed the lead of the Scottish Premier League (see, not everything that comes from Scottish football is bad) introducing retrospective bans on players found to have deceived the referee, ie "divers".

That is, players who cheat.

Hooray for that.

Diving again hit the headlines just over a week ago when Arsenal striker Eduardo, a Brazilian who plays international football for Croatia, took a dive in a UEFA Champions League game against Scottish side Celtic.

Arsenal were awarded a penalty from which Eduardo scored and killed off any ambition Celtic had of getting back into the game.

Pretty much everyone regarded Eduardo's tumble as Hollywood quality acting.

Everyone, that is, except for the referee, Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger, and die-hard Arse fans.

But perhaps more shocking than Eduardo's act of deception was that UEFA, the governing body for football in Europe, decided to take action and impose a two-match suspension on the player.

This provoked outrage from Arsenal (and the team's fans), the club responding with a 19-page dossier in Eduardo's defence.

Perhaps it was printed using a large font.

But, so far, the ban stands (unlike the player).

On cue, Arsenal met Manchester United last weekend and Wayne Rooney "won" a penalty that put United back in the game.

Arsenal fans say Rooney dived, Rooney said he didn't and doesn't so, cough, case closed.

The moral high ground rose a few metres even higher when Chelsea was banned by FIFA from signing any players until 2011 after the club was found guilty of "illegally inducing a French youth international to sign in 2007".

That sounds like baby births gone bad but FIFA isn't joking about Chelsea's controversial acquisition of Gaël Kakuta from the youth academy of French club Lens.

To make its point. FIFA also banned Kakuta for four months and fined him €780,000, somewhere close to AUD$1 million.

Chelsea plans to appeal, of course, suggesting in a statement "the sanctions are without precedent to this level".

That's true and exactly the point.

"They stole the boy off us when he was 16," Gervais Martel, President of Lens, told The Guardian.

"He was at our club since the age of eight-and-a-half. Unfortunately, 95 times out of 100, it's the English clubs who come and help themselves."

Morality and obligations?

Perhaps, slowly, professional football is being dragged up those hills.

• by Matthew Hall at 07:08 AM
• Comments (7)